Yeah, the Hiem space idea is interesting and does some nifty stuff.  It all boils down to the story you want to tell.  Unless you're the masocistic character writers like they have over at BSG.  But even then a wormhole universe wouldn't allow them to just do a jump "thatta way"

When it comes down to it if I need psycic females to pull off the strategic environment or hot tea, I will use them.  However it really depends on how you want things to work and what contraints you want.

That's the bitch of the thing when it comes to new sci-fi backgrounds, you have too many options.

points to whoever gets those references (psycic females and hot tea).

-K

Awake AND cafinated

Go0gleplex,

I guess I'm a bit more of a Mahan than you are.  I'm not say that's good or bad, just where I'm comming from.

From my POV, the FTL systems:

1) Wormholes, they limit your options, you can have a little bit of fun with it like Heavy Gear does.

2) Jumping allows you to really do the fleet in being thing, taken to an extreme it makes it impossible to have a real strategy.

3) Hyperspace, depending on the physics/sensor ranges this can be anything you want it to be, more paperwork, but still fun to play around. 

4) Fold Space, this in my view is just another name for Jumping from an applied standpoint.

5) Warp is the easiest to think about, just pull out 5th Fleet, redraw the map and a few other things and presto you have your strategic space combat game:)

You're right about wormholes making the campaign simpler choices that lead to more battles, which is fine if you want something that looks more like a grinding land campaign.

Sorry if I'm comming across as cranky/preachy, my coffee maker broke

-K

The K stands for Kranky

Cricket,

I think you can have more fun with converting sectors over than just a mechanical in -> out type thing.  You're also looking at more of larger issues, it really depends on what data you need to make it look and feel different.  Really, how should a dense star rich heartland be different than a fringe providence that doesn't have many stars and few of those are populated?

The jump range point gets close to an understanding and works fine if we're going to track starships based on how many months of endurance.  That's fine, We might want to figure out if we can make the turn length long enough that we just base ships at ports or other facilities that can support them and then have them undertake operations from there.  It depends on what is simpler from a paperwork perspective.

Go0gleplex:
I always assumed the Starmada FTL Drive was like the drive in Homeworld or BSG, zip-zang-bang I'm back!  That way you can move any distance you want within a sphere.  Adjusted for gravity stuff, jumping from deep within a star might not be the best option, maybe this would make giant stars fleet bases?

Wtih Harrington you gotta remember that there are other options beyond those wormholes that make the entire thing WAY cool.

Starfire is a very much, you go to point XYZ, go into the warp point and you're in ABC.  same zip-zang-bang, but makes it easy to defend, not the type of thing that works well for fleet in being operations.  Unless you have a butt load of stars, the other guys can't defend any of them well enough to smash a raiding party and/or they have REALLY limited information on where these lines are.

Suggestions:
1) look at The Great Game for 2300, it has some ideas for developing land based provinces, it might be in order to check it out.

I'm sorta getting the idea of something a little more modern than hex tiles just labeled "Marsh" "Forst" "Mountains" "Plains" that you can put tokens on, but not by much for build your own galaxy.

2) Look at Combat Operations for Classic Battletech as an example of how very wrong a game can go, but it does have some interesting logistics rules.

-K

Taltos,

That's part of what I'm trying to figure out too.  I see some possiblities with the Expanse comming for humanity, the Dragons showing up, or even an Alliance civil war or something happening in the Commonwealth between the Imperium and the Federation.  In putting that together, I'm looking for several bits of info:

1) size of the empires, are we talking about a few star systems, or many many star systems?

2) FTL drive nature, as far as I can tell the only rules that we've seen are in the jumping out rules.  Given the Imperium/Federation war background, it has to be hard to force a decisive battle.
I think this means that the concept of jump point assaults is out.
So a jump lane system might be out too.

3) Logistics, this could help explain why the Federation was able to play their game for as long as they could.  I remember when the first Sovereign Stars demo came out and it seems really explicit what the Federation Adm. did, cut a supply depot and skyrocketed the logistics cost.

As an aside, I think VBAM is great, it's the right "here is your empire, have a nice day" rule set that feels epic, but the more complicated rules seem to go into to much detail and can be frustrating when you want the bigger picture. 

The ultimate plan, and this ties in with my other question about weapons equivilants is to create at least a thought model about how a total universe campaign would be run in the Starmada background to the end of developing a campaign arc. 

-K

The MJ12Games group on Yahoo! Has a few conversions,  IIRC they didn't follow the construction rules but were still fun to look at.

Thanks for the double check on those.  I'm still trying to figure out Needle Beams and Anti-Matter Beams.  I think for ballance purposes just choosing something that has a proportional WP modifier might work.