The larger ones are impressive, but 7000 points would be a large game!

For me, I was hopping to capture the feel of the shows but make it so that each "fleet" is around 1500 points.  I don't have much of the other classes of ships so I figured that two Battlestars (at around 750 points apiece) would be a good starting point. 

I would up the range of the railguns. I feel like those had both distance and power at long range.

-B

Having this kind of limitation in an universal setting is an issue in my opinion. I would leave it for the  specific settings/ universes and/or 'tournament' play

I have a couple of things.

1. I know you are going to cringe on this one (and you actually talk about it in the designer notes) are customized fighters with carrier holds.  Many Sci Fi shows have a lot in the small fighter range (Star Wars, Babylon 5, BSG) and the fighter variant section does help, but I feel there is room to expand.   With fighters having to deal with momentum, it is an easy way to model the BSG universe without adding a lot of additional ship cards.  Granted with the way seekers work, it might be easier to use those rules, make the seekers expendable and just have the seekers stay around until destroyed (hmm - might be on to something here)... 

2. I agree with the source book for Imperial Starmada, but I'd like to up the ante and have ships designed and printed as well.  I'd back a kickstarter to FINALLY have a Majestic ship miniature.

In the end, I have about 8 fleet designs (Star Wars, BSG, Babylon 5, Star Frontiers - thankfully the Star Trek ones will be done for me)  that need to be finished and stats created.  This new edition has got me excited for that project again!

Thanks for the Tip!

-B

This is going to be the one thing that is going to be hard to wrap my brain around.  Especially since I have a bunch of tiny fighters on bases for the old edition.  Any chance that the fighter options are going to make their way back in the nova edition.  I need fighters to behave differently!

-B

Going with your second question - The key for me on what 'size" is a star destroyer is the size to make a game 'fun'.  I know this sounds like a cop out and it kinda is, but I'm assuming that each player (for convention games) gets between 2 and 5 ships costing about 1000 points.  So my two star destroyers will be around 500 points each.  Cylon will be around 330 points (since I have 3 of them) and so forth and so forth...

Make the game fun first and then worry about how many hull points a start destroyer has!

There is definitely something to be said that weapons in the arc of travel are a lot easier to bring to bear and might need some modifier. I couldn't even begin to tell you what that is.

On the other hand in a vector movement system a fleet showing in the aft of my ships isn't much of an issue as with sailing ships since at low speeds, I can just turn about relatively quickly. A single turn is probably the most issue.  Now if it was a stern chase and my ships needed to make it off board, then there's something there...

-B

They do that for boardgames and I still buy the game so I'd still buy the book from Dan...

What does that say about me?
-Bren

Anytime a shield arc gets first 'damaged' by an attack in a turn, you add a tick mark to that shield arc.  You add bonus dice equal to the number of tick marks times 2 (additive would be awesome).

For Example: A battleship take damage to the front shield facing doing damage and a single tick mark is add to the Forward facing.  On the next turn, the same shield arc is hit and the attacker gets to add two dice.  That also adds a second tick mark.  In the third turn, the same ship is hit in the same arc (my advice is to turn). Since there are two tick marks, you add 4 dice to the attack (and a third tick mark). In the fourth turn, the ship is attack in the forward arc again, three tick marks add 6 dice for the attack to a maximum of 5 tick marks (or 10 dice!)

If you go the additive way, the bonus dice are below:

Number of tick marks:1  2  3  4  5
Number of extra dice: 1  3  6 10 15
Or don't get hit a 6th time is the same arc (tick marks could be per attack and not per turn if you wanted some quick battles)

-Bren

An idea to make tech 'worth' more is to factor the hull size of the ship for maintenance each round.

For Example:  At weapon, engine and shield tech 0.
A hull 2 with an engine of 5 and a shield of 2 with the weapons below costs 32
Battery V:   Laser,  1-3/4-6/7-9,  2/3+/2/2
[ab]

but at weapon, engine and shield tech 2.
You can create a hull 2 with an engine of 4 and a shield of 3 with the weapons below for 61
Battery V:   Laser  TL2,  1-3/4-6/7-9,  2/3+/2/2
[ab]  [ab]  [ab]

Now this is nothing that you didn't know already.  But lets say you have to pay a maintenance fee of hull size x 5 each turn. Nation A who has the first low-tech ship wants to build a fleet of ~300 credit fleet and purchases 10 of those ships. Nation B who has the second high-tech ship also builds a fleet of ~300 credits but only gets 5. In terms of CR, we are considered 'balance'.

However, the next turn Nation A has to spend 10 credits per ship in maintenance or 100 credits, but Nation B only spends 50 credits!  It now pays to increase your tech levels.

When I was using Starmada / VBAM system for solo games. I had 11 tech levels giving a lot of room to grow (the base tech level in starmada - tech level 0 was actually TL6 for me).  I also made it a curve (new tech level squared x 100) so to go to TL1 to TL2 cost 400 credits but to go from TL8 to TL9 was 8100 credits.

Food for thought?
-B