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mj12games.com/forum → Posts by terryoc
From what I saw of draft rules earlier, the Starmada: AE write-your-moves-down-and-move-simultaneously system will be an option.
Starmada: The Somewhat Premature 20th Anniversary Edition
If that's too long, drop the "Somewhat Premature" bit.
Comments apply to the 23-Nov-11 review copy that I have...
As an SFU player, I very much prefer the new ablative "shields" (actually armour in game terms) the ships have. Works more like the base games. The opponent knocks down a shield and damages your ship a bit, but then you maneuver and turn a fresh shield... So it feels very like how it works in SFB/FC, even if far more abstract.
And it's not faceted any more either, which was a fiddly bit when controlling large numbers of ships. Yes, there is a chance that an unlucky die roll will knock out your ship's main armament. However, if you're running a reasonable number of ships (3 or more), it's not going to be a real problem, because an unlucky damage roll on a single ship will have less effect.*
The copies of the Fed CA and Klingon D7 ship sheets that I have (the revised kind with the illustrations on them) lack weapons damage check boxes.
I don't know if you're rolling less dice. You're rolling a bucket of dice once per attack, rather than one-third of a bucket three times. It's still faster.
*I prefer the simple method of just apply degradation to all ship's weapons myself.
The SFU does have electronic warfare (ECM). Star Fleet Battles has extensive ECM rules. Federation Commander does not. I would not expect Star Fleet Armada to have "official" electronic warfare rules. The lack of power allocation in Starmada makes it difficult to model, because when you use ECM in SFB you have to give up something else, either movement or weapons fire, or less of any of the bajillion other things you need power to do. I think the proposed system models the Star Fleet Universe pretty well. Armour in the new system works pretty much the same way as shields do in SFB/FC/ACTA.
Marc, I've had a quick look at a draft of the new edition and I think it will address many of your concerns.
Space Stations are B.17, and are in Klingon Armada and Romulan Armada. Basically, you build a ship with no engines, and it gets a bonus to its total SU allowance. It may rotate in place, changing facing by one hexside per turn, but if it does not it may re-roll any to-hit dice it rolls.
Blacklancer's got a point. Will the new movement rules allow pillbugs to wheel?
Saw some ship cards for Klingon D7 & Federation CA in new format today. Without having seen the rules, none of it made any sense... but it all looked really cool, in a totally-baffling-but-cool kind of way. :mrgreen:
Phaser-4s have Range-Based ROF as well, a Range of 24(!) and ROF 3(!!). So by sitting at Range 12, you're at Medium range for the Ph-4s, so they double their ROF to 6. 5 Ph-4s should be able to fire in any arc, so that's around 30 shots per turn with re-rolls at 5+... Should be doing some damage, I should think...
Star Trek troops? No idea. Star Fleet Universe troops? A fair bit of information available. If there was sufficient interest from fans, and ADB & MJ12 were convinced that it would sell enough to make it worth the effort, then an official supplement could be done.
I recall Steve Cole giving this an oblique mention somewhere - he said DK was concerned that ADB might have stock left over if there was a new edition - but ADB does print on demand, so they would not have significant stock.
Got a name for the new edition yet? Like the current edition is the Admiralty edition?
For those of us who play the SFU version, will the SFU stuff be upgraded for the new ed?
I haven't actually read EoA, but just reading the blurb made me think that it would be great for doing Star Fleet Universe boarding actions, especially the kind shown in the story Mutiny on the Demonslayer where you have a small group of commandoes fighting in the corridors of a ship. The story featured things like deck-breaker charges which are not represented in current SFU rulesets but which seem to be covered in EoA (destructible terrain). Is there any chance that, in the future, we'll see a Defiance supplement with stats for Klingons, Romulans, etc?
I have not seen any announcements either way. I am pretty sure that's not the end of the line for Star Fleet Armada, however. There are still more empires (ISC, Andromedans, Vudar) to do. Andromedans are weird and their systems may need some extra design and test time, so that may be part of the delay (I am just speculating here).
Yes, it probably should have been put on the Mobile Base card I think.
Can't answer the questions on ORAT and DRAT.
As far as I know, any material made "for use with" Star Fleet Battles and not published either by Task Force Games (TFG) or Amarillo Design Bureau (ADB) violates TFG's/ADB's copyrights and is illegal. So those will never be part of the SFU.
I do remember the Galactic Empires card game. I never bought or played it though.
Erik,
The plasma that hit the Big E in Balance of Terror was a torpedo, not a bolt - the Big E had time (barely) to fire phasers into it. A plasma launched at short range will hit very soon and at full strength, which is reflected in the SFB/FC rules. And remember that the Warbird in the show was packing a Type-R torpedo, the biggest that a ship can carry.
plasma bolts in Starmada are definitely more powerful than seeking plasma, and they may even be relatively more powerful than plasma in SFB/FC.
With extended range, the fighter can hit with an ACC one point better. Thus, the stinger will have an ACC 4+.
Really? I assumed the range bands rule did not apply to fighters with extended range. I read it as meaning that the fighters could shoot out to three hexes rather than only the adjacent hex, not that it conferred any other benefits/penalties. I'm going to ask about this in the rules questions thread (if there is one).
EDITED TO ADD: Just re-read the fighter extended range rule. Totally missed that, it does make them better than a fighter with an ACC of 4+!
Even so, the number of Stingers a ship can launch each turn is limited, getting your full complement launched will be difficult for Rangers and other fusion ships. If they loiter while waiting for the rest of the squadron to launch they'll get picked off, if they charge in small numbers they'll be less effective.
Yes, that's true. Especially on capital ships which have two, or sometimes four, ESGs.
On the other hand, Klingons don't like Hellbores at all, with their front-starboard and front-port shields rated at only "2" on many ships.
Presumably, 50% more hits are better than extended range. 
Even with extended range, phasers will slaughter Stingers by the bucketload.
Marc, there is an error in the Hellbore/ESG rules. I'm pretty sure the rule is correct and the example is wrong (it came up during proofreading - early copies of Distant Armada had errors). The in-universe explanation is that the ESG soaks up some of the damage from the Hellbore before it hits the shields, so the lowest shield rating of the target is used, with 1 added per ESG.
Supply is good, but I'd like to see it more abstracted. For example, if a fleet can trace an unobstructed (by enemy units) line no longer than 6 hexes (or whatever) to a friendly supply point, it's in supply. If not, it's out of supply. A friendly supply point could be a friendly planet, base, or supply fleet.
Basically, your dedicated staff officers are ensuring that your beans & bullets are getting where they need to be.
I also like node-based systems, like the VBAM default. If your universe has travel by jump points/gates (e.g. Vorkosigan universe, Niven/Pournelle CoDominium universe) it works well.
Fighter extended range is on page 9, top of left column, under Appendix F: Fighter Options.
To me, Stingers seem about right. A Stinger in SFB has a Gatling phaser-3 (four shots per turn, capable of doing as much damage as an overloaded photon at Range 0), and two fusion beams each with two charges, so it can fire each twice before needing to reload. A point-blank fusion beam is pretty deadly in SFB. Not quite as deadly as a photon, but guaranteed to hit and inflict significant damage. Three Stingers are capable of wrecking a Klingon D7 in SFB.
If anything, Stingers are less heavily gunned in Star Fleet Mada than in SFB/FC.
Fair enough.
I've just bought a copy of the Imperial Starmada Sourcebook. That's partly to get a feel for how Starmada "should" play, partly to get a look at some alternate ship designs.
I do notice that most Starmada designs seem to have far fewer weapons than the SFU ships do.
mj12games.com/forum → Posts by terryoc
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