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mj12games.com/forum → Posts by Ken_Burnside
Dan did not say which year it was.
I'm not sure that an impulse system is worth the overhead it adds to Starmada.
Impulse systems give you a more finely grained decision making cycle; in Starmada, your decision making cycle is built on running more ships.
AV:T shows how to do arbitrary speeds in an impulse movement system, including splitting vectors and timing their motion properly in multiple directions.
That said, for what SM is, I'm not sure it's worth the overhead.
Segmented movement systems tend to go...poorly...with initiative die rolls. Not impossible, but poorly.
Pretty much what you'll be doing is subdividing a turn into two, three or four segments and making a lookup table showing what speeds move on what segments.
More than 4 segments for SM seems excessive to me, since the map is so small and ships move under 10 hexes per turn most times.
What segmented movement systems do is make it harder for a unit to "jump" through range brackets without getting shot at. With fewer ships, this is useful - with more ships its utility declines somewhat.
Deflector Shields
Covered in Starmada by "Shields".
Similar to. Not quite the same; your shields (if like SM-AE) are an all or nothing defense. Deflector Shields in SS can be whittled down before you get to damage allocation, and they can be regenerated.
Armor
Inclusion in Starmada would require an additional type of defense. Perhaps a special trait?
Possibly - but I'm not sure your damage resolution handles it, given that "one damage point" is "enough to mark off one Hull box."
Component Armor
Not sure I get the difference between, for example, "Armor 1" and "Component Armor 2".
Armor reduces damage before it gets into the damage allocation routine. Component Armor says "When you get to this group of boxes, each one takes an extra point of damage to remove."
Think back to SM-X. where your ship was made up of 6 strings of systems, numbered 1-6. In SM-X, one damage point was enough to mark off one system indicated by a letter in that string. Component Armor would allow you to say "No, to kill the ECM system, you need to do 2 points of damage that deep into that hit location." and if there wasn't 2 damage -left-, the system remains up and the singleton point of damage is wasted.
It might not be transferable to SM-NE.
Hull
Would be covered in Starmada by increasing hull size.
And in SM-X by buying marines. 
Prismatic Globe
Definitely would require a Starmada trait.
Cloaking Device
Covered in Starmada by "Cloaking Device".
Ebon Globe
Again, Starmada trait.
Yep.
This is (sort of) stirring the pot - it's not meant to be a knock on Starmada, which is aiming more for the "12 to 20 ships at a time" niche than Squadron Strike, which is firmly in the "1-5 ships per player" niche.
But these are the defenses currently in Squadron Strike. Dan, you're welcome to use any of these for inspiration.
SS uses incoming damage facings - Nose, Aft, Top, Bottom, Left and Right. Depending on the universe variables selected, you may also have a Profile rating which adds a variable between +2 and -4 to the shooter's Accuracy target number. Faced Defenses are allocated per facing of the ship (sort of like faceted shields in SM). spherical defenses mean the facing of the ship doesn't matter.
In SS, the conventional defenses are:
ECM: Adds to the Accuracy TN of the weapon firing at you. (Lower Accuracy numbers are better; it's on a d10 based system.) This is a spherical defense. Profile Numbers are effectively side/shape/dimension-based ECM-like modifiers.
Deflector Shields (Mixture of DR and shielding - every unit of deflectors provides 4 shield bubbles; the last of those bubbles provides DR.). The last box removed (and the first regenerated) in a give group restores the DR. This results in an oddly brittle defense. You're nigh invulnerable up until the incoming weapon fire can do 4 more damage than you have DR, then your defenses crumble quickly. It's an interesting dynamic. - Faced defense
Ablative Shields: SFB-style shields. Every unit of protection provides 6 shield bubbles, but no DR. You can have both Deflector and Ablative shields on the same ship; the Deflector shields are on the 'outside'. Shield regeneration works from the inside out, must complete repairing a single group of shield bubbles before moving to the next on that facing. - Faced Defense
Armor - Acts like DR. Values range from 1 to 9 - Faced defense
Component Armor - increases the amount of damage needed to remove one box out of a group of boxes on a hit location row. Values range from 0 (the default) to 2 (which means it takes 3 damage to remove one box of that particular type.) - Spherical Defense.
Hull & Cargo - the 'padding' boxes at the beginning of each hit location row. Extra hit points that, when they ablate, are harder to restore, and which provide an imperfect defense.
Unusual Defenses:
Prismatic Globe: This is outside of shields. When active, roll a d10 for each point of damage that comes in; every d10 that equals or exceeds the target number on the globe means one point of energy is caught by the globe and is stored by the accumulator. The remaining damage from that weapon strike passes through to other defenses normally; e.g, it doesn't turn a 7 point hit with 3 absorbed damage into 4 1 point hits, it turns it into a 4 point hit.. Spherical Defense, does not put any restrictions on the mounting ship, other than the fact that accumulators can explode when they take damage, and they have a limited capacity to absorb damage.
Cloaking Device: This doubles your ECM value and adds its level to the result on top of that for an Accuracy modiifer. When a weapon hits you in spite of this, your ship makes a Crew Rate check, adding the level to the result. If the Crew Rate check succeeds, you take half damage from the weapon. If the Crew Rate check plus modifiers exceeds 10, you take 1/4 of the damage from that weapon. Spherical Defense, prohibits the unit from firing while it's active, has a limited percentage of turns it can be active in a scenario.
Ebon Globe: This adds its value to the Armor or Deflector Shields DR value while active. Spherical Defense. While active, you cannot fire, cannot apply thrust, and for Mode 1 movement, cannot change facing - you'll continue to drift on your prior vector. It can be set to only cover two facings of the ship, but they must be opposite facings. If Nose/Aft, it still interferes with thrust.
For those who liked Starmada-X's damage allocation (with the ability to 'pad' parts of the ship), my damage allocation system is something of a spiritual descendent of that system.
Trust me, through running eyes anything more complicated than 2+2=4 looks like a maths lesson...:)
EDIT: Also, with little knowledge beyond the outline of rules Dan sent me a month ago for a quick read-through, I don't have any insight into what you and Dan are talking about, which of course makes it difficult for me to figure out what you're talking about...:(
OK - I'm only running from what Dan's posting in the topics here.
Dan has made a standardized progression for how the number of dice rolled to make an attack are reduced/affected by damage, rather than having it be 1-to-1.
Think of the progression as "Leftmost box is 100%" and each box going to the right is a reduction in the number of dice, rounded up.
His progression is as follows:
100%/70.7%/50%/35%/25%/17.6%/12.5%/8.8%/6.25%/4.4%/3.1%
The formula that generates that progression is N/(2^0.5) where N is the prior percentage, and 2^0.5 is 1.414, or the square root of 2.
There are other progressions that give a shallower drop off than Dan's progression does. One of them is the Richter scale, which, because I was curious, I ran out the numbers.
100%/80%/64%/51.2%/40.9%/32.8%/26.2%/20.1%/16.7%/13.4%/10.7%/8.6%/6.8%/5.5%/4.4%/3.5%
It requires about 50% more "steps" to get down to the 3% level, which appears to be Dan's cut-off on "Don't bother.".
I happen to like it because it keeps ships in fighting shape a bit longer; I am mildly concerned that ships will erode in fighting capabilities too quickly with Dan's case, and am aware that my concern is more a play style preference.
*blink* That's maths?
That's not even as complex as figuring out a gratuity...
Ken_Burnside wrote:Each hit is reduced by N points of damage that comes in.
But what constitutes a "hit": Each weapon? Each battery? All weapons fire from one ship to another in a single game turn?
Each weapon hit, ideally. I know you're more or less abstracting everything into batteries.
Does damage follow your dice-column-shift methodology?
Not sure what you mean... there are two ways of simulating damage to weapons:
1) The "simple" way, where a single roll is made at 1/3 and 2/3 damage, with the result determining an overall attack modifier applied to all weapons, or
2) The "complex" way, where a roll is made for each weapon mount, with that mount becoming either damaged (-2 to attacks) or destroyed.
Right. You're more or less abstracting out individual weapons in favor of aggregated firepower factors.
As to putting it into the point costing system - not easily! You more or less need to decide what the statistical average damage of a baseline weapon is and price your armor thresholds on how much they interfere with that, and all weapons with lower damage than that.
This is the main reason I wouldn't be able to put DR in the game -- at least not right now.
Especially if you're forgoing weapon-level resolution at the game table.
That's what I'm referring to.
Each hit is reduced by N points of damage that comes in. I would recommend that on an
Ablative Armor is "armor as styrofoam blocks", DR is "armor as chunks of something hard and difficult to break." Dan's original Impact/Shield mechanism is that armor either works perfectly, or fails perfectly; this would be something that sorta kinda splits the difference.
I don't know enough about what Dan intends for the new damage systems to know if there's any difference between 3 1 point hits and 1 3 point hit. DR is where that difference is really easy to show.
As to when it fails, I'd make it a threshold check like engines and weapons.
Does damage follow your dice-column-shift methodology?
As to putting it into the point costing system - not easily! You more or less need to decide what the statistical average damage of a baseline weapon is and price your armor thresholds on how much they interfere with that, and all weapons with lower damage than that.
In several games, armor works like this:
"I have 7 armor(damage resistance), you hit me for 10 damage, I take 10-7=3 damage as a single hit."
"I have 7 armor(damage resistance). Your weapon does 5 damage. I can take an infinite number of shots from that weapon and not get hurt."
In Starmada, you can eventually kill an M1 Abrams tank by firing at it with enough .45 ACP ammo at the front glacis. In the real world, any tank from about 1925 onwards is immune to small arms fire.
Is there a way to get armor that works like "Damage Resistance" without breaking the game engine?
Or is there no longer an option for "this is a 16" shell, that's a 5" shell. You hit a battleship with a 5" shell and the Bosun's Mate curses because he's got to command First Division to repaint the mess you made. You hit a battleship with a 16" shell and it's got a hole in it."
Ken_Burnside wrote:Marc, I've been very careful to be friendly and polite, and not knock other people's choices in games. I'm offering my opinions to help Dan make the best version of HIS game that he can, including clarifying terminology.
And the effort is appreciated.
One of your ardent fans turned discussions about my products into a flame war about how Starmada renders every other form of entertainment not related to the propagation of the species obsolete...in about four forums in 2005. This irritated me enough to write Squadron Strike, rather than say "With FT and Starmada, there's no real reason to go after that market segment." Turns out there is a market there, and it's made me some money.
Least I can do is pay it forward and try to help you make better games. These are games, not religions.
Though I did have a campaign game that ran Mode 2 versus Mode 1, where the three Mode 2 players formed a grand alliance, called the Newtonian Jihad.
"We must cleanse the universe of those who do not follow our holy laws. Of physics."
I first heard about this re-design from customers who said "Well, it looks like your only competition for "Design everything in the game" product space is abandoning it." ... I hope that the people who've come to me worried that he's gutting the design engine are proven wrong;
I find this odd... certainly, I expected there would be those who disagree with some of the choices being made in the new edition. But I'm at a loss to figure out where people would get the impression that I'm "abandoning" the design-anything-you-want approach... ?
Starmada was really the first game that made a useable "design your own weapons" system. The discussion on your modification of attack and damage rolls really does read like "We're throwing out all the nifty crunchy weapon design abilities" for someone on a casual read through. I look forward to the final result when you're done.
As long as we're all blowing up spaceships, we all win. I try to encourage everyone to play everything ...
May I get the same courtesy in return, please?Hear, hear.
Sorry Ken, I really don't understand why you reacted to my message this way. I was just joking about the term 'vector', not about what you said, and surely not about you, G.od forbids.
Y'all are aware that I wrote that game that you claim isn't fun and enjoyable? It still sells well.
And I agree with you, what Dan presented to us currently is very interesting. Other than that, I've been reading what you wrote, neither agreeing nor disagreeing (neither understanding a lot too
), but what Dan designed with the new edition is very neat and simple. Of course, it could be improved, but at what cost.
I'm not even suggesting he change the movement mechanics - I'm just suggesting some terminology differences, both in the name of the system, and in terms for movement orders.
I'm also possibly pointing out a way to let ships move in reverse if he wants them to - I'm not sure he does. I know that movement in reverse in SFB (with a larger map to play in) is a balance problem, and I explicitly forbid it in Mode 1 movement in SS for that reason specifically.
Your clever 1/SQRT2 method lays out your dice in columns, like this:
8-6-4-3-2-1-1-1
You refer to things as having a -N modifier, where -N determines how many columns you shift to the right. A -2 shift takes a weapon/battery with 6 dice and moves them down to 3 dice. It is not subtracting two dice (which is what I'd think of first), nor is it subtracting 2 from the total on the dice (which is what I'd think of second), nor is it subtracting 2 from the result of each die (which is what I'd think of third).
It's saying "Shift 2 columns right." I'd be tempted to make the convention N> for right shifts, and N< for left shifts, and explicitly call them column shifts.
I would also try to make sure that the unmodified use of the weapon used the leftmost column, and make sure that ALL of the column shifts went right.
So instead of this:
Medium Range is just the arc modifier, short range is the arc modifier plus 1, and long is the arc modifier minus 1
I'd make it like this:
Short range is the arc modifier, medium range is the arc modifier with a shift of 1>, and long range is the arc modifier with a shift of 2>
While it's a small amount of overhead to shift left by one, and shift right by two, rather than shift right by one, having only one kind of shift to think of ("all modifiers shift to the right") is less overhead overall.
I make more complicated games than you do, so I tend to focus on every bit of player aid and mental overhead reduction that I can get.
We went to the "always shift right" nomenclature for SITS and its missile defenses, which uses a "tally up modifiers, add die roll, to find column header, cross reference missiles with column to see what's still alive." system for dealing with David Weber's umpteen zillion missiles blotting out the sun combat scenes, and your attack roll system is thematically similar.
Did you consider using the Decibel/Richter scale for this for increased granularity? That one has the advantage that +3 steps is a factor of 2 and +10 steps is a factor of 10. If you're not familiar with it and are interested, I'll walk you through the numbers. (I use it for population level mapping in Squadron Strike campaign games.) It would probably multiply the length of your tracks by 50%; I'm not certain, given the scale of game you're making, that the granularity it gives is worth the extra printed space on the ship sheet.
Marc, I've been very careful to be friendly and polite, and not knock other people's choices in games. I'm offering my opinions to help Dan make the best version of HIS game that he can, including clarifying terminology.
I hear from people who come to Squadron Strike from Starmada. Indeed, I first heard about this re-design from customers who said "Well, it looks like your only competition for "Design everything in the game" product space is abandoning it." I'm glad that's not the case.
No single game can meet the needs of every gamer. I direct people to Starmada and Colonial Battlefleet on a regular basis on TMP and SCN, even though I publish a competing product. As long as we're all blowing up spaceships, we all win. I try to encourage everyone to play everything.
I'm pleased by the streamlining Dan is doing on the repetitive die rolling. It's a nice, elegant out-of-the-box solution. I hope that the people who've come to me worried that he's gutting the design engine are proven wrong; Dan's pretty good at this, and the more people playing these games, the more minis (and games) I sell.
May I get the same courtesy in return, please?
Not sure I understand why this does not constitute "vector" movement.
Technically the way airplanes move is vector mechanics too - there's a thrust vector, a lift vector, a gravity vector, and drag, which is effectively a negative modifier applied to the first two. (This is a simplification that makes my aeronautical engineering friends reach for something strong to drink...)
A vector is a mathematical expression of magnitude and direction. In this system, every ship has a speed (magnitude) and heading (direction). The limitations on a ship's movement are based on the amount of thrust required to change from one vector to another. (e.g. if a ship starts the turn traveling 3 hexes/turn to the "north" and ends moving 4 hexes/turn to the "south", the amount of thrust applied was 3 + 4 = 7.)
In the context of space combat games, a vector movement system is a system where the vectors of travel are completely independent of the ship's facing. A ship's direction of thrust IS tied to its facing (usually), and changing facing is used to rotate the ship, generate thrust, and create a vector in a different direction, with those vectors being added together and consolidated.
Your system conflates direction of thrust-and-facing to direction-of-travel as a simplification, as a way to minimize record keeping, and does not produce an actual Newtonian vector solution. It does teach players how to maneuver with momentum.
(Your system is like Mode 1 movement in Squadron Strike, vector movement is Mode 2. Your original, momentum-less movement system is equal to Mode 0 movement in SS. AV:T would be Mode 3, since it's vectors, plus continuous thrust over time scales less than a turn, and tracks fuel mass fractions and their impact on thrust.)
The fact that the actual math is hidden from players, or that for simplicity's sake a ship's facing always equals its heading (absent the optional "pivot" rule), doesn't mean the system is any less vector-based (which is typically how I refer to it). But to call it "momentum-based" or "airplanes in space" doesn't really encompass what's going on -- IMHO, of course.
If someone can add or subtract their thrust rating from their current velocity by using the STRAIGHT AHEAD maneuver, why can't they move backwards? This is something that a vector movement system WOULD allow.
If I have a vector of 12 in map direction A and apply a thrust of 3 in direction C (120 degrees off), I will end up with a vector of 9 in A and 3 in B....and my ship (assuming I have one thrust direction capable of moving the ship), will be facing direction C while I do this. This is another thing a vector movement system allows, and yours does not.
Vector movement with Newton's laws is a different experience from what you're providing; you're doing a momentum based movement system. All I'm quibbling on is the terminology; you're using a privileged frame of reference where the ship's facing directs its momentum, hence momentum-based movement.
By the way - consider renaming your STRAIGHT AHEAD maneuver to APPLY THRUST and SLOW DOWN, while moving the "subtract your thrust from your current speed" to SLOW DOWN and make it a fourth maneuver order. I say this because it took my third read through the rules to realize that STRAIGHT AHEAD would slow me down before I caught it, and I was actively looking for "OK, so I can't turn when my speed is higher than my thrust, how the hell do I slow down?"
Regarding the 30* changes in heading/facing, I think it could be done -- it would, however, wreak havoc on firing arcs...
Not really - your old 12-point firing arc system where you listed arc letters is 30 degree firing arc resolution. Your nomenclature was interesting; I'd done it as 12-o-clock-is-forward and going clockwise around the base, because most people remember "He's on your 6! He's on your 6!" from WWII movies.
It does add an extra hex counting step - is the target 3x as far away in one map direction as its adjacent one. If so it's in a cardinal map direction, otherwise it's on a spine.
You could be referring to the firing arc penalty that's part of yourcolumn shift dice system, but I strongly suspect that that's solvable.
I'd also seriously think about referring to these not as -1 and -2 modifiers, but as "column shifts". I'd also set your convention to the base shift as the left most column and make all the shifts go in the same direction, rather than your current minus-and-plus system. It saves a type of math step at the table.
Could you call this "Momentum-Based Movement" rather than "Vector Movement"?
"Vector Movement" means something fairly specific in this genre of game, and what this is is a nice "Airplanes in space" movement engine, not vector based, where your facing is independent of your direction of travel, and your ability to change velocity doesn't really require you to spin around 180 degrees and slow down.
I don't see anything in this movement rule system that would prevent you from using 30 degree angular resolution for movement if you wanted to. Perhaps as an option?
I have two ships from Charles Oines' Voidstriker setting that I've gotten his permission to use for a project.
The project is intended to give someone who's new to the genre a pair of dueling ships that they can run that are a reasonable pair. The ships are the Xuvaxi and the N'Gasku. The Xuvaxi are Charles's 'Not The Federation' minis, the N'Gasku are his "Not The Klingons" minis.
So, here are the ground rules
1) I write a class history for each of them.
2) I send the class history and the art assets out to designers; the games I am aware of are Squadron Strike, Starmada, Full Thrust and Colonial Battlefleet.
3) We all agree on some baselines like weapon ranges and type of thrust/thrust rating (I'm thinking 'Cinematic/Mode 1, Thrust 4'. Maximum weapon range will probably end up requiring the most negotiation.
4) Each person designs the ship for their favorite game and generates a PDF. We all then post the ships on Star Ranger's Forums, along with extensive designer's notes.
While these are Charles' Not Feds and Not Klingons, to avoid causing problems, I will be writing the class histories such that they do NOT mirror the capabilities of the SFU's Federation Heavy Cruiser and Klingon D7. I will ask that any ship designers do the same.
I have designers on hand for SS, FT and CB. I do not have a designer for SM. Any takers?
If this works out well, I know a few other people who are doing Shapeways Minis who'd be interested in being in future rounds of this, but the primary goal is to give everyone a chance to do a 'beam to beam' comparison of ships in different systems, and hopefully get them to go "OK, I've played this in system X, let's kick the tires in system Y."
Is a 150% increase in price right for tripling the effectiveness on the jump from shield 5 to shield 6? The other two multipliers, relative to the first, seem about right (they represent a doubling of effectiveness at each step.)
That first multiplier seems a bit low...
(And: More conditional rerolls. Sigh. )
Squelch#
6 letters: Check
Doesn't sound high tech: Check
Verbs the mechanic: (Spells are Squelched)
A decent approximation for most "hull spaces" is 25 metric tonnes in a cube of roughly 100 cubic meters.
This gives a density roughly comparable to modern jets; I generally presume (unless the setting precludes otherwise) that the spaceships we're making are built out of diamondoid unobtanium laminate, reinforced heavily with pixie dust.
Some systems will be less dense than that (hydrogen fuel tanks come to mind). Others will be more dense (your neutronium armor belts). But as an average, it's plausible.
I would prefer expensive to fiddly for the ECM.
Heh. That's less fiddly than what's already in Starmada.
"I have 4d of ECM, succeeding on a 5+." Roll. "OK, 2 successes." Put die next to base with a "2" up.
We tried a LOT of options. This one sucked least. It didn't turn ECM/ECCM into its own tedious mini game (a'la SFB), it allowed Crew Rate to matter, and allows tech level differences to impact the ECM/ECCM game over time.
Electronic Warfare Suite: Operates in either ECM mode (-1 to hit by enemy) or in Scan Boost Mode (+1 to hit against enemy). Only affects equipped ship...
exception-
(Scout) Data Link: allows ship within X hexes of another friendly to share target data, including that by EWS-scan boost mode, even if other ship does not have data link.
My experience with this (we had something like it for Squadron Strike during testing): If you put this on ships, such that it works automatically, unless you make it so expensive that nobody bothers to put it on the hull, you can expect that everyone will put two on their hull, one to jam, one to counter. At which point, most of the decision making goes out of it.
What we ended up doing instead (not trying to pitch my own game here, just showing what we had for 'least bad' alternatives) was that ECM always worked, ECCM was rated in dice; roll your ECCM dice per ship, compare each roll to Crew Rate. Each ECCM die that equalled or exceeded the Crew Rate target by countered one point of ECM for all targets that ship engaged this turn. It could be ranged (out to range 3), such that nearby ships could get the benefit of it (but would get the better of their own roll or the lending ships, not the cumulative sum).
Each set of double 10s (would be double 6s in 'Mada) allowed the ECCM-using player to declare one level of ECM null and void on one class of enemy ships for the rest of the battle. The second nullification took a triple 10, the third a quadruple, and so on. Tech differences added (or subtracted) from the number of 10s needed to burn through ECM, but you still needed at least two.
What happens on the table is that everyone rolls ECCM per ship, and puts a die next to the base to show how many levels of burnthrough they have.
Ken_Burnside wrote:Please tell me Dan isn't doing page layout in Word...
Actually, yes. Yes I am.
I've tried Quark Xpress, I've used Adobe Pagemaker, and I honestly have yet to find anything I can't do in Word that I could have done with those.
I use InDesign.
1) Better control of typography.
2) MUCH better control over page breaks, jumps, and setting master pages that vary by document section
3) A good indexing tool.
4) The ability to embed Photoshop and Illustrator documents directly - see something wrong, right click, edit the file, save, it automatically updates
5) The ability to package files for direct export to an offset printer.
6) Much better table functionality.
7) Vastly more robust style sheets.
8) Access to the One True Color Space (CMYK), and Swatches
... and more.
(Probably more a commentary on my skills in Xpress/Pagemaker than an endorsement of Word's functionality...
XPress was painful to use, but very powerful once learned. Pagemaker is something I have a strong aversion to, from having been forced to use an ancient version of it at ADB. (Seriously, they're using Macintoshes that are 12 years old at this point, regard OS X as the being the spawn of Satan, and I shudder at their backup and data recovery procedures.)
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