Hey, this is a very good discussion on creating good and exciting games through limiting ship types. I whole heatedly support that.

I was just mentioning before about how the modern world, and even relatively recent European history is not the only example for how governments and navies would organize themselves. I also think that stellar powers would look on their navies more as traditional states have looked on their armies; Which is to say not as a luxury for protecting distant interests but as the bedrock of survival. Of course that all depends on how dangerous the setting is.

Personally, I'm always drawn to the settings that are more modeled on feudalism or a fading/broken empire myself with an endless shroud of threat overhanging all governments and the idea of disarmament being fodder for the court jester

Anyway, all that is peripheral to the main point of this thread, so don't mind any of it and the last thing I want to do is get this side tracked. It's not a matter of debate or being 'right', it's just about what kind of source material we like to draw from.

Ok, next time I'll try and work in a coherent post that deals with the main issue of this thread.

Well fair enough, that was what I had originally planned actually with the screens. The screens were a bit expensive though and my ship designs seemed to be coming up short defensively unless I threw in some 'bonus/free' screens.

Having not opened a spreadsheet in front of me now, I'm thinking maybe 12 screens is comparable in cost to a shield level of '3' (I'm going off memory here, the likelihood is that this is wrong), but with six sides, that would be 18 versus 12. My feeling is that most ships I have worked out are rather heavy on the offense already.

But I figured we wouldn't need to adjust point values if all ships were affected the same. Although maybe I am overlooking something in regards to this that more math savvy individuals might be perceiving (is it going to throw things off in regards to big and small ships for example?)

Well, as long as I'm not overlooking something it seems the end results are pretty similar.

Anyway, the basic hypothesis is weaker shields in the rear and relatively limited ranges on weapons (and throw in limited fire arcs too) should make for a more interesting game of maneuver. Some very minor house rules and then self imposed limitations on ship design should do the trick nicely I think.

Well, either that or muck things up

But I'm open to any suggestions on how to achieve that 

As an inexperienced stadamaian'ian, I was definitely planning on using those exact mechanisms for my games: no weapons over range 18 (in fact none of my ship designs are over 15 as yet) and then weak shields to the rear.

Though the idea of weakening the rear without strengthening the front is better, I hadn't yet put that one together just yet :roll:

This way there would still be a reason for ships to get shields at level 5. Hmmm, yes, better plan.

This is probably the kind of thing that should just be house ruled, certainly in regards to the weapons. With the shields, there might be said for something to an official blanket optional rule for all ships on the board.

Yeah, hearing about those range 30 weapons on this board makes me wince too.

I can see that extra range on fighters is dangerous.

But having sixteen separate printouts for minuscule escorts with CRAT's of about 15-20 (per side!), and then issuing independent orders to each of these, would have been much worse as it would have sucked all the fun from the game in record keeping tedium.

I was of course counting on my own fleet/scenario design to keep things balanced.

Anyway, that's all moot as the flotilla rules are a better solution. I may well tweak it a bit though (like that suggestion that ROF establishes the maximum number of hits listed under that dread Bat-Rep)

Oh, for cryin' out loud, I broke down and bought the Dreadnought rules thanks to your 'hard sell' tactics! :wink:

I hope your happy now!