Re: Yet another B5 Thread

bekosh wrote:

Those numbers seem pretty reasonable to me. The Sharlin really is a beast compared to the ships of the younger races and the EA Omega, even though called a "Destroyer" is really the EA's dreadnought class ship and should be comparable to the Octurion and the Bin'Tak.

This.

Re: Yet another B5 Thread

JMS openly admitted that he did not completely understand (or even care) about military classifications.  This led to a confusion of B5 ship classes and military ranks in the show, and it also affects when folks like us want to create something representing the show we love. 

The Hyperion "cruiser" is more like a destroyer class, the Omega "destroyer" is equivalent to a heavy cruiser/light carrier (trades weapons for some fighters), and the Nova is truly a dreadnought.  Some may disagree, but that is how I see it with weapon and defense loadouts and compared to the general principles of US Navy ships.

Re: Yet another B5 Thread

@MRCAcct: I was looking through the EA ships (a cursory look, nothing more) and noticed the Olympus Gunship has a phantom Class-S Missile Rack battery (i.e., the stats listed but no batteries). I'm guessing its a simple copy-paste error, given that it doesn't have missile racks in B5W.

Re: Yet another B5 Thread

murtalianconfederacy wrote:

noticed the Olympus Gunship has a phantom Class-S Missile Rack battery

D'oh! Yeah, it was a mistake (that I usually catch). I do multiple ships of the same 'class'; start with one, copy Drake notation, go back, modify to next one ('cause most ships have same arcs, different weapons).

Re: Yet another B5 Thread

KDLadage wrote:

As compared to... what?

I was hoping that the four "popular" ships would come out roughly even in terms of point values (I blame it on too much SFB, where the Fed CA and the Klingon D7 were designed to be pretty evenly matched).

I'm also looking at making some major changes to my conversion "formulas". Part of this has come from my finally tracking down some stats for B5 ACTA ships (and older Starmada AE conversions) and realizing that some of my weapons may need some tweaking.

The Narn Mag Gun for example. Decent weapon (point wise), but by my B5Wars conversion is terribly short ranged (6 hexes, on par with most light weapons)*. Most other conversions give it a much better range. Piercing-mode weapons I'm thinking of changing as well, halving DMG and adding Catastrophic. There's still a few weapons I don't know what to do with yet either (largely anything that targets fighters only). Have been thinking of a Fighter-Only trait (FtO), cost x0.75, weapon can only target fighters, seeking weapons, and mines, and counts as Pinpoint; and a Ship-Only (ShO) trait, cost x.70, weapon cannot target fighters, seeking weapons, and mines.

Hull and Defenses are the other thing I'm still not 100% satisfied with. Hull right now is a 'plug number', sort of backwards ship design - add everything, then adjust hull to fit. This has lead to some ships of the same class having different Hull values (higher and lower). And while I'm quite in love with the directional defenses (both of them), I'm not finding a fit/formula that makes me happy.


*For my conversion I take the "-1 per xx hex(es)" range modifier and multiply xx by 6 to get the Starmada range; -2 per hex instead become range 3 and Diffuse at the moment; might go and drop the diffuse. A bit simplistic, but very consistent.

Re: Yet another B5 Thread

MRCAcct wrote:

I was hoping that the four "popular" ships would come out roughly even in terms of point values (I blame it on too much SFB, where the Fed CA and the Klingon D7 were designed to be pretty evenly matched).

Gotcha. Bab5 is not that kind of universe, however. smile

MRCAcct wrote:

I'm also looking at making some major changes to my conversion "formulas". Part of this has come from my finally tracking down some stats for B5 ACTA ships (and older Starmada AE conversions) and realizing that some of my weapons may need some tweaking.
...

Talk with Dan... I am sure he has a mathematical value for each of those. I would not, however, have a trait that includes another trait. Have the trait... and allow the other trait to be added in as well.

MRCAcct wrote:

Hull and Defenses are the other thing I'm still not 100% satisfied with. Hull right now is a 'plug number', sort of backwards ship design - add everything, then adjust hull to fit. This has lead to some ships of the same class having different Hull values (higher and lower). And while I'm quite in love with the directional defenses (both of them), I'm not finding a fit/formula that makes me happy.

Just a thought and a comment from the peanut gallery...

For Hull... take the number of total hull boxes and divide by a constant to get the Hull value in Starmada. Then, do not worry if everything does not fit in a Starmada-ruled hull. This is a conversion and so it does not need to meet the Starmada ship design standard. Know that the battle point value will calculate correctly regardless.

Just find one ship and decide about what you think the hull should be. This will give you the divisor you need and go from there. I would suggest that you select the largest ship you plan to convert... set it at the largest Hull value you plan to use... viola!

Re: Yet another B5 Thread

MRCAcct wrote:
murtalianconfederacy wrote:

noticed the Olympus Gunship has a phantom Class-S Missile Rack battery

D'oh! Yeah, it was a mistake (that I usually catch). I do multiple ships of the same 'class'; start with one, copy Drake notation, go back, modify to next one ('cause most ships have same arcs, different weapons).

Fair enough. I always tend to find little bits of errata myself after I release things to the wild, so to speak. Unfortunately, I tend to only find them piecemeal, such as the fact that I looked again at the Centauri and Narn and saw a couple things wrong:

Centauri
Altarian Magnus--Battle Laser should be ABCD.

Narn
G'Lan--Should be medium lasers not heavy (I remember this b/c the fluff for the G'Lan said they had to downgrade the heavies for mediums to make space for the mag cannons)

Re: Yet another B5 Thread

I've re-uploaded my first four B5 ship lists. Cleaned them up a touch, redid some of my conversion formulas, brought the lists down to base ships only, and added my Ship Only/Fighter Only traits. Next up will likely be the main Leauge of Non-Aligned Worlds (6 races), Dilgar, or Raiders and Civilians (first one, then the other).

Re: Yet another B5 Thread

Okay, so I finally settled on designs and been cranking out ships like a madman. Will have some posted soon, just hoping for a bit of input on formatting first.

The trick with the B5 Wars universe is that there's a lot of 'In Service Dates' to manage. I'm curious as to how people would prefer the formatting. The major factors are:

Ship 'classes'; currently broken down as (for the majority): Capital, Heavy Combat Vessel, Medium Ship (thinking of combining with HCV), Light Combat Vessel, Bases and OSATs, Super Heavy Fighters (thinking of combining with LCV), and Other.

With in each of these 'classes' I've inserted markers for the year in service. When multiple ships share the same in service dates, I arrange them by cost, lowest to highest.

Other notes: Only Capital ships (and bases) have directional defenses, the others have single values.

So, any preferences?