I love the color scheme as well, reminds me of the ship colors from Homeworld 1 & 2.

One thing I did to help Klingon Armada with duels, was take a stock ships and half their weapons. This seemed to work pretty well. It emulates the Fleet Scale in Federation Commander, without the headaches.

I play both Starmada and Federation Commander.

If I had to chose one, I would go with Starmada for Trek combat.

Don't get me wrong, FedCom is great, and I will always have a place on my bookshelf for it. My biggest problem was time and players. Even a standard duel between two people who knew what they were doing could still easily run 3 hours, and prepare to take a weekend for anything larger than 2-3 ships per side. As for players, I have a really hard time keeping players interested in the game when it takes so long to explain/play.

Starmada/Klingon Armada allow players to run a 1v1 duel against each other in under an hour. Once you get used to the rules you can run a 1v1 in under 15 minutes depending on optional rules.

Blacklancer99 is right on the fragility of the ships in a duel however, and that might need to be adjusted to suit your needs.

The biggest difference between the two game systems is Starmada allows you to change the game to your liking without breaking any mechanics, while FedCom has no allowances for changing ships or rules.

Good luck and Good hunting!

I saw that earlier today as well. I'm excited. I look forward to them being in resin as well. As much as a love the original pewter, I'm ready for the accuracy of more modern methods.

Are they only going to do the big three or are they going to try to do a general phase out of the 2400's for these?

I like the idea of having fleet management play a role, but I'm not sure if "forcing" good tactics is the way to go.

I think anti fighter batteries are perhaps the easiest (and most realistic) change you can do without creating a load of new conditionals to remember. I like using combat interception for AFB's, like was mentioned somewhere on the forums a while back.

The lending options are cool, but I think it would warrant separate equipment and a dedicated ship to handle it as to not complicate the rules for all ships. (Yay Scouts!)

I think the inherent penalty to firing at a fleet of ships, is target selection. I could target the giant capital ship to try to disable her by turn 3, but in doing so her lighter units have been freed up to maneuver and attack nearly unmolested.

Realistically two fleets engaging each other without fighter flights on either side really don't need a fleet setup to protect each other. As is the case in our modern wet navy. Cruisers and Destroyers tagging along with an Aircraft Carrier are there to protect the carrier from aircraft and missiles, without those threats they lose their some of their effectiveness as the carrier can engage other ships as well if not better than any of our cruiser/DDG's can. There are countermeasure systems built into ships that can help other vessels, but for the most part the are built and deployed for self protection versus aircraft/missile threats. Phalanxs and Sea Sparrows being the exception to that, which in this case represents AFB's.

Very nice! I those would go together very well with a basic campaign system. I would love to see some peoples ideas for events in game that would provide modifiers to that roll (ie Death Star blew up homeworld last turn, now every one in the fleet is sad).

Would love to see this in a product some day. *cough* Sovereign Stars *cough*

I've had similar experiences with it.

My gaming group and I built several ships and fought them against each other, only one of us had fighters in our design.

Two of the other players built using Starship Exclusive, one of which built a Super Anti-Ship Go Boom gun. He was only able to fit it on his ship because of the reduction granted.

When he went up again't the ship with fighters he was screwed, but when he went up against ships without, he was nearly unsinkable.

I like the idea of the trait, but I think maybe the reduction is too severe, and of little purpose against non fighter wielding ships.

I've played with the Juggy in FC several times, and have seen the Jug played in Starmada once.

I believe the Starmada Juggernaut is quite a bit more potent than it is in SFB/FC.

The rotating shield was more of a curse than a boon in my opinion, and removing it made the ship a far tougher cookie to crack. Also taking note the difference in phaser fire power in Starmada, the already ample phaser suite the Jug had is pushed strongly into the ohmygod territory. The phaser 4's in SFB/FC were awesome, but difficult to maximize their usage throughout the impulses while also keeping power for movement and the rotating shield. In Starmada, these considerations are minimized with only one firing and movement segment giving a Juggy captain a lot more room to err.

In fighting one in Armada, I think with equal ship values, you would have to maximize it's truly horrible mobility.

It's firing arcs are good, but I think getting a ship into the EF area would be of prime importance. Getting into close range will be suicide for most ships Battlecruiser and below. The Juggernaut will be able to bring round abouts 48 dice for concentrated phaser fire into her forward arc.

With her low speed, suicide shuttles gain some importance here. I'd think about launching a compliment and following them in 4-5 hexes back to at least draw some fire. Drone armed ships should do the same, if anything hoping he'll use some of his phasers to take them down, or maybe getting some lucky weapon hits.

I've got a player wanting to fly one in an upcoming game, I'll let you know how it goes.

DOH! Thank you

Now I feel a bit stupid.

Very nice, I like your ideas. I'm playing this weekend with a couple of friends, and one of them is a huge Motie fan so I'm sure he'll want to try it out. I'll play it against some normal shield ships to get a feel for it.

Thanks for the advice!

I'm into almost any type of space combat based game and have tried many. I've played everything from Starfleet Battles, Federation Commander, Full Thrust, Battlestations, Attack Vector: Tactical and several others.

Starmada is my go to game that lets me play a deep system, while getting friends to actually play with me because of it's ease to learn. I recommend it. I'd put the learning curve at a 3 out of 10, with SFB sitting at a 9 for comparison.

Hope it helps!

It is a bit. His main beef with pivoting is that he has to do it every turn and that it lowers his maneuverability by a lot. Which I think is the point. I offered him Overthrusters to help counter that, but he's pretty dead set and stubborn about he should move backwards without consequences.

I'm just going to him the designer said it was a dumb idea and move on j/k

I guess I could switch to Naval style movement for him, that would replicate Star Trek a bit more (which he is an epic fanboy), but I love the standard set.