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mj12games.com/forum → Posts by mj12srwstlouis
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Just wondering.
Thanks, I thought I had missed their reincarnation......
Every edition of Starmada has a blurb for Hotzmats- that's fine, I liked their mats-but aren't they dead and gone?
Not sure to what you are referring... as I am not a "fan" but the designer.
Artists are never appreciated until they die, Dan...
He used his mutant brain power to make me open my wallet and update once again.
I feel used and cheap, addicted to Starmada porn.
Curses!
But they do look really fun....
May be an old series of posts but great for the obsolete Starmada X and AE player like me.
Thanks to Robin the and all his hard work.
I am uncomfortable with the amount of rules data reproduced on the QRS.
As a very occasional player of all the flavors of Starmada since 1998 I don't think this QRS is giving away the milk. A few players may be able to reverse engineer the Nova system, but I think most Starmadans are going to go buy the cow...eh, rulebook. And once they do have the rulebook, the QRS will be very handy.
For game developers, a sentence on a QRS brings up mental reams of knowledge about the game system. Same thing for most of the posters here...who will buy the Nova edition regardless of any QRS or play summaries posted. Heck, they'll buy "Starmada: The Cruddy Prequel Edition with Forward by Ridley Scott" just because it's Starmada. But to the rest of us, the QRS is just a teaser and brings to mind thoughts like "Cool! New arcs. And I roll a dice and modify with...something....to hit the target...with modifications from...a squiggy thingy + some number....okay, yeah, okay, I got it. I can play this. I'm smart, I'm happening. I don't NEED the rulebook. But hey, you know, it doesn't hurt anything if I own it...and I can figure what those little bomb things are....Are there anarchist pillbugs in this game?"
Just my two cents worth. Dan can now roast me. Just remember, Dan, I've bought almost every game MJ12 has ever released...even the skunks!
Love the fonts!
What program are you using to make these fonts? I'm assuming these are TrueTypes or something similar.
Thanks BlackLancer! That's exactly what I wanted to hear.
I've been using that rule (I think of it as "reroll"), but thought I was missing something else. I saw hoof prints and started thinking zebras, not horses.
I wonder if Dan or Kevin could comment on the calculations that converted gun, shell and fire control data into SAE Dreadnoughts' Rng/RoF/Acc/Imp/Dam stats?
(I'm thinking of modeling Lord Nelsons and similar pre-dreadnoughts)
And I'm puzzled about the torpedoes: Wyoming carries 21" torps listed as 12/1/6+/5/1 while poor ol' South Carolina carries a 21" torp rated at 3/1/6+/2/1.
Lastly, I know I'm missing something, but how does a torp hit at long range? I keep trying to roll a 7 on a d6 but keep failing.
Okay, you didn't "fudge"-you applied "undocumented" tech levels.
And there was this post from somebody named "cricket" back in Oct09
"...Yes, the values are "wrong", and yes, it's frustrating to those of you trying to recreate the ships on your own -- ..."
This cricket dude seemed to imply that we unwashed masses couldn't reproduce the KLA combat values using the essential Starmada construction rules, where Tech Level is an option, not a core rule.
So I assumed Dan had to shoehorn some calcs.
So far as SBF/FC SSD boxes not directly relating to Starmada SUs, I understand that. SFB gave the player predesigned ships and "rolling your own" was not part of the game system. I consider that ability to design your own ships in Starmada to be a HUGE advantage for the Starmada game system. And now I can, with some "rationality", refit my Fed CA with a Type R Plasma torp while trying to figure out what equipment to ditch. And for that, Dan, I thank you.
Is there somewhere online the actual Shipbuilder spreadsheets that you used to work up the SFU ships?
KLA and RMA are based off the Federation Commander game and are not a direct port of SFB (if I remember my discussion with Dan back in June 09).
Further, in my own humble opinion, the problem lies in SFB. I enjoy SFB. But Starmada is internally consistent in ship construction, while SFB is not. As Cole said way back in 1979, it's a little hard to create a real-world battle simulation off a 100+ hours of television film and a few blueprints by an architect. As far as I know, SFB never had a published design system, so shoehorning more and more weapons and systems into the same basic hull became a way of life (in real-world navies the term is "squeezing too many quarts into a pint pot"). Steve Cole himself mentioned in early designer's notes that he liked smaller ships with more weapons and that's the way SFB headed.
In SFB, turning a D6 into a carrier D6CV involved removing two phaser 2s and adding 6 shuttle bays. No SU calcs, just a fiat. (Does a phaser 2 installation REALLY consume the same volume as three shuttle bays? How about a Phaser 1? And if a Phaser 3 can fit on a shuttle craft leaving room for 8 people, a rest room, galley, and transporter...why does it consume even one system box on the SSD of a 500 meter long starship and take a half power point to fire? And just why is a Phaser 4 restricted to starbases? Because it's too big? But 14 phaser 1s and 8 disruptors have no trouble fitting on the GomperStomper dreadnought?)
Want a Constellation-class command cruiser? Well, add a couple flag bridges, couple all-arc phaser 1s, and bang, you're done. There was no real consideration how you fit all this extra stuff into the same size hull. I guess they took out the swimming pools and discos (swimming pools were actually mentioned in the original Designer's Edition (tongue in cheek, I'm sure)).
Anyway, since Starmada (and Full Thrust to a lesser extent) starts with the concept that Things consume Space, and Things' functionality is proportional to Space consumed, you're bound to have some misalignment with SFB's "wishlist" ship design.
I'm not sure why Dan felt it necessary to "fudge" the ratings for the Starfleet ships. I'm guessing essential Starmada calcs ended up having the core "cruisers" (Fed CA, D7) being very unbalanced while SFB maintains they are roughly equal. Anyone tried making a Fed CA vs a Klingon D7 using plain vanilla Starmada construction rules?
Hey, Dan...
I'm assuming that for licensing reasons the appendix update for KLA and RA has not been posted online, correct?
Cathy and I used the Mayday/Triplanetary vector system in a couple of games at Archon in 2002 or 2003 (I remember Kevin and Dan studiously ignoring us)(we didn't take it personally). This was before the new movement rules used in SAE were introduced. And we used it for our home games. (one of the advantages of having a wife who liked wargaming)
We used the movement points as thrust points and each facing change required a thrust point. Whereas Triplanetary allowed only one thrust point to be expended per turn, we allowed speed to be the max thrust. The mini/counter had to face in the direction of your thrust burn at the end of the burn unless you spent thrust points to rotate to a new heading, which if you think about it, automatically limited the thrust vs time without any ""fiddling".
It worked very well. One interesting side "effect" was you left movement plots all over the map. (Triplanetary uses a marker to plot movements on the grid; Mayday uses counters)-you feel like you're actually plotting TMAs in a CIC.
We noticed a couple of things:
-we seemed to maneuver more than we did using essential Starmada (version Prehistoric)
-In the final analysis the game feel was different, but today using SAE movements would yield very similar results. (Cathy spanked me hard).
That said, there was something very cool about drawing your ships' movements while watching your opponent's target tracks firm up.
For those unfortunate enough not have played these GDW games, a short expo on Triplanetary can be found here:
http://www.kentaurus.com/triplan.htm
Cathy loved playing Triplanetary, especially the race scenario.
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