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mj12games.com/forum → Posts by diddimus
Just a quick update... My understanding is that Nova Rulebooks start printing TODAY (yaay!) and they should be shipped to pre-order customers by the end of the week.
Does this mean that the pdf available from the pre-order download link is now the final edition?
Brilliant! Glad it works that way. Thanks.
Erm, does no one know how to target seekers with proximity weapons?
I played with seekers for the first time the other day and thought they worked really well. They gave a really good impression of missiles.
A question came up though....How does a Proximity weapon target seekers? Do you hit yourself if the target is you and the marker is face up?
I played with a few fighters in my recent game and I found another issue. Their weapon display is so short that ships with ECM and stealth mean they suddenly become useless. Everything else in the game can scale. If in my universe I want high ECM and use EPM and scouts then I can also increase weapons to compensate for the column shifts. With fighters they are fixed and so get left behind.
We are house ruling that fighters always have 1 dice to represent the fact that in the end there's someone looking out of the cockpit firing on manual. This works for B5 and how stealth works.
If everyone will recall, in S:AE, ships with shields Level One could Not have these reduced by Piercing +1,+2, or +3.
In this new Nova edition, shields "6" is like those S:AE level 1 shields, and is also not removable either.
This should not come as a shock, because it is exactly how the earlier versons worked...
Officially yes. But I'm ignoring this. Piercing +2 costs more than the Nova version of Piercing. As I'm using fixed ships from B5 I know virtually no ships will have higher (lower?) than 5 shields and most ships have 6 shields, so Nova piercing isn't worth it.
I'm happy with the fact that in my version there's only piercing +2 available, on only a selection of weapons; most ships have 6 shields and it costs more than piercing does now. I think that's pretty balanced.
If you really want them, the "old" versions of piercing could be reintroduced:
Piercing +1 [P+1] = 1.54
Piercing +2 [P+2] = 1.93
Piercing +3 [P+3] = 2.17
Piercing +4 [P+4] = 2.28
I had my first "beta" game last night with a few B5 ships and it annoyed me that shields could not be negated completely by piercing because I'm using shields as interceptors. I was coming on here to ask what the multipliers would be if I were to use a piercing +2 trait (the only one I need) and you'd already posted it!
Other than this the game was great and my players found it far smoother than SAE. I just need the final rules to be out and the final spreadsheet so I can go crazy with ship designs!
Ok so officially you can't but the ship builders allow it (in excel). So for a house rule, if I wanted to allow this, including the fact that these ships won't block friendly fire what would the balance implication be?
I'm thinking that if there's a balance to maintain then you could say that only one trait could be used at a time. A bit like when you decide to use scout for either breaking escort or reducing ECM?
I presume that if a ship has both scout and escort then it doesn't block the line of sight for you?
Marauder wrote:I like armor the way it is now.
I like it too. I just regret there is no anti-armor ability the way other defenses have their counters. But i can live with that.
And I was wondering if using hull to have armor was a good proposition. Whatever, I will use armor in my designs as it is.Marc
This is pretty much my stance. I'm not actually that bothered if armour stays as it is. An anti-armour trait would just make it a bit different to hull. Also gives a few of my B5 weapons something that they currently lack 
What you (and others) are identifying as a "bug", I see as a "feature".
* If you want a ship that has a 50/50 chance of deflecting each point of damage as it comes in, take shields 4+.
* If you want a ship that reduces all incoming firepower by 50%, take ECM 2.
* If you want a ship that has twice the survivability, add armor points equal to your hull size.
I'm ok with this in principle, but...
Shields 4+ gets reduced by piercing.
ECM can be reduced by scout or EPM.
Armour cannot be affected.
Also, why not just buy 2x Hull?
For both fluff and balance I think a penetrating trait would be good.
If you had a weapon trait (or rule like for ECM) to slightly counter each defence then it would make sense that all the traits are basically the same.
The point of armour/shields/ECM is to make the game more interesting. Those with maths degrees might see the world in a simpler way but us mundanes like to see ships with different styles. I like to think that one race with shields is different to a race with armour and the same with ECM, even if the numbers disagree.
For those who create ships competitively, you are never going to be 100% happy as it's impossible to catch every flaw. Just create ships with hull and have done with it. But for those who want to create interesting ships/nations/races, read on......
I think the "armour is pointless" gang (myself included) feels as though armour has been left behind in the rules. Shields has piercing, ECM has EPM, Armour has.....nothing. Neither does hull for that matter.
I think there should be an "penetrating" trait. I also think there should be an "extra hull damage" trait. Make these the same percentage damage increase as piercing. It avoids total negation (which is bad) but gives options to reduce the effectiveness of each defence.
I think this matters more for those who aren't using a setting or strict hull size rules but it would be nice if armour had a proper game effect.
Probably too late in the day for a radical change but you could also have armour "resist" it's value per turn. Basically it regenerates each turn.
Say you had 3 points of armour in each section, you can take 3 damage per turn with no effect.
Obviously this would change the cost.
While this is a good point, the same could have been said of "Doubled Range Mods" in Admiralty vs. fighter flights. In essence, you had the same effect as "Anti-Fighter" for no cost.
Rather than change the cost of the trait, I would deal with this legislatively: Diffuse weapons have an additional -1 vs. seekers and fighters.
Makes sense. I use diffuse for plasma weapons which degrade over time, but are certainly no good against fighters. This would work perfectly for me 
I am uncomfortable with the amount of rules data reproduced on the QRS.
I also agree from a player perspective. I think a small hint at the rules makes it brief and possibly fitting all on 2 pages.
Once you've played even one game you know the mods for range for example. Play a few more time and you know most of the rules you use all the time.
I know I'm the only one who cares about this, but: how would you model Traveller meson weapons? They are stopped by shields, could be avoided by ECM, but ignores armor (and hull?) entirely, causing system damage, internal explosions and radiation damage. Riddle me this: I want a weapon that causes no end of havoc, but leaves a ship's armor and possibly hull entirely untouched.
I used to use a trait in SAE for "Flash" weapons, that continued to do system damage until you rolled a hull (was it continuous damage?).
Unfortunately there isn't a trait in Nova and I don't think there will be. It's sad that there's no EMP style weapons, but damaging the few boxes of systems would be crazy.
I asked this when i saw a pre-release version. As far as I'm aware a 10 hull ship would have to spend more on thrust than a 5 hull 5 armour ship. Both can take 10 damage, but one is smaller and potentially faster where as the other is larger, able to carry more but slower.
Don't know if this works in practice though.
BTW, I feel there is a problem with rule references as fighters are treated as ships. The movement rules say that ships (thus including fighters) are moved alternatively. And if a player has X times ships (including fighters AFAIK, but that would be incoherent) more than its opponent, then he moves etc.
Then the carrier rules say that fighters move after all ships (but then, not fighters of course).
Something should be sorted out, here, no?
Marc
This happened in A Call to Arms too. You just end up with loads of errata for exceptions. I always think there should be a collective term for ships/fighters so you are not always referencing both, but can also keep them separate if possible. "Craft" or "Vessels" sound a bit rubbish, but you get the idea?
...
I can't speak for Dan, but having as few dice rolls as possible was extremely high on my list of design wish list.Kevin
Agreed.
...
Anyway, I guess it's the way I want to use shields is making me bias, but I always feel it's weird that shields 6 is always 6. In my mind piercing should reduce shields, so you need more powerful ones to resist piercing.
My bias aside I was just interested in why the Piercing +1 idea was changed.
I've been wondering why Piercing now works the way it does? It seems odd that Piercing now has a better effect against shields 3 than 4, or 2 than 1.
I'm also finding it more difficult to design weapons with piercing as it seems counter intuitive the way they work now.
I've had my password reset now. I'm guessing the original email was there somewhere. Thanks for the advice though.
Pre-order customers, please take note... The ZIP file has been updated to version 1.0.
It can be downloaded here, with the username/password provided when you placed your order: http://zips.mj12games.com/mjg0130.zip
Erm, I've tried various usernames/passwords, but I can't remember entering one at the time of order. I paid by paypal, where abouts would I have entered a new username/password?
Is is possible to get the account reset?
I've never paid attention to SUs before because I'm converting ship "as is" from B5 Wars as much as I can. However a few posts about Nova has got me wondering. Does the SU matter to someone who's creating their own universe?
If you exceed the SU limit on a ship what does it actually do?
diddimus wrote:Yeah I think x2/x3 should be slightly cheaper. It's kind of a way of having starship exclusive but not black and white. To make a large starship killing weapon you reduce the BAS and give it x2/x3, meaning it's poor vs fighters. This should come with a discount though.
Otherwise what's the point of x2/x3. Currently they are pointless except to cut down on the number of dice you roll like the ships with over 100 dice like in the other thread! :roll:
Yes, if there was a rule stating: "have to roll all the dice at once and if you don't have enough too bad" - then x2 and x3 would make a lot of sense!!!
-Tim
Erm, if I have a weapon that's 30 dice I need to roll 30 dice, even if it's 10 dice 3 times, which takes time. If I reduce this down to 10 dice and give it x3 then I only roll 10 dice once.
Yeah I think x2/x3 should be slightly cheaper. It's kind of a way of having starship exclusive but not black and white. To make a large starship killing weapon you reduce the BAS and give it x2/x3, meaning it's poor vs fighters. This should come with a discount though.
Otherwise what's the point of x2/x3. Currently they are pointless except to cut down on the number of dice you roll like the ships with over 100 dice like in the other thread! :roll:
mj12games.com/forum → Posts by diddimus
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