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LOL! Indeed, and that's what I meant as far as arguing engine ratings a point here or there. I agree it's much ado about very little. The two Eagle ships would qualify as exactly those sorts of outliers given the drastic increase in their abilities in comparison to their SFB/FC counterparts.
One suggestion I might make for later books *gazes longingly at the hydrans and lyrans* might be to use what we refer to in our group as the ship's "combat speed" rather it's raw power as compared to it's movement cost. Tthough it is much more time-intensive, it will give a better reflection of a ship's relative speed in the source material. We use a simple calc subtracting the power to arm a ship's heavy weapons and 1/2 it's phasers to get a feel for how much power a particular ship has for movement. That will give the 'war' era ships and fast cruisers their slight edge in speed. You could then modify that value up or down a smidge to reflect particulalrly agile ships (i.e. klingon ships) or particularly lumbering ones (older federation hulls or the poor Gorns.) Again, just an idea...
You're absolutely right Dan. And, like I said, for the most part SFB/FC players could argue forever over whether a partticular hull should have a particular Starmada engine rating. For example, my personal opinion is that the klingon hulls, with their significantly better turn modes and better power curves, should have an edge on their feddie counterparts, but that's an opinion and could be argued infinitum and that would fall more into house rules than errata.
But the Eagle series Rom ships (and I say this as a longtime Rom player all the way back to the old Commandr's edition of SFB) can do things in. Starmada they are incapable of in the original game or in FC and that may rate being looked into when errata for RA is put out. It wouldn't be unreasonable to cut those ratings nearly in half IMHO.
Again, kudos Dan on a great idea. All fussing aside, I look forward to more of y'alls stuff set in the StarFleet universe...
Good points, but it doesn't really address the heart of my question. In SFB the ABSOLTUE top speed of a Rom WE is 21 hexes per turn. It literally is incapable of travelling any farther. It's effective comabt speed (after paying for housekeeping and charging weapons) is down around 15 hexes a turn or so. Yet the WE has an 8 engine rating, where an unrefitted Klink d7 with a far superior turn mode and 50% more power only has an engine rating of 5 or 6 (I don't have my copy of KA in front of me.)
That is the part that has me a little confused. Folks can argue into perpetuity whether a klink D5 should have an engine rating of X or Y. But in absolute terms, when a slower and less agile ship has a significantly higher rating it just seems unusual. Same thing for the fast cruisers and more efficient war cruisers - while their Max speeds and total power aren't any greater than the older ships, their power left over for movement tends to be much higher. Again just my two cents....
First off, kudos to the folks at Majestic for a great idea and nifty system. However, I do have a question/comment for the community regarding ship speeds/ratings in KA and particularly RA. "Engine" ratings in the Starmada system encompass both speed and maneuverability - something that is split in classic SFB and FC. But using total power to calculate engine ratings (and seemingly ignoring the SFB turn modes) leads to some odd values. Some of the Klink ships seem to lack their speed/manuverability advantages over their Feddie counterparts since the values used don't seem to take into account the higher energy cost of the photons and better turn modes of the Klink hulls.
But the oddest examples are the classic Rom Eagle hulls. The War Eagle, with its 8 engine rating, is the fastest (and most agile) warship in the game - something that would come as a shock to most players coming to RA from SFB/FC. I realize that the values are meant to be balanced within the game but using raw total power and seemingly leaving aside turn modes and the need to power weapons seems to lead to some odd results. Being new to the Starmada system, is there an element of the movement system that I am overlooking?
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