I've been asked by Steve Cole at ADB to provide some tournament guidelines for Starmada. Here's my first attempt... let me know what you think.

Starmada Tournament Rules

This document provides the rules for conducting a Starmada tournament. All page references correspond to the Nova Rulebook—Version 1.1 (April 2011).

What You'll Need

To conduct a tournament, the organizers will need to have the following on hand:

[*]At least four participants.
[*]A place to play. Usually, tournaments will be held during game conventions or at a local retail establishment with several tables available so that a number of games can be conducted at once.
[*]At least one copy of the current Starmada rulebook.
[*]The game components listed on pp.4-6. The organizers should make sure there is an appropriately-sized game board, ship models, markers, and enough blank ship displays (or copies of pre-completed displays), pencils, and dice for each gaming table. The organizer can ask players to bring their own materials, but there should be some spares on hand in case someone forgets.
[*]Soda, chips, snacks, etc. Starship captains cannot survive on dice alone!

Ship Selection

Unless playing a genre-specific tournament (such as in the Star Fleet Universe) players should be encouraged to bring their own ship designs, using the rules on pp.44-49. If there is any question about space unit requirements or combat rating computations, designs should be confirmed using the online Starmada Drydock: http://www.mj12games.com/starmada/drydock.

Each fleet should consist of no more than 2000 points' worth of ships. No ship should have a combat rating greater than 1000.

Opening Rounds

A series of three opening rounds should be conducted to determine the seeding for the knock-out round. To start each opening round, the tournament organizer should randomly determine pairings. If there are an odd number of participants, one player will need to sit out in each round.

Once pairings have been determined, each player selects up to 1000 points' worth of the ships in his/her fleet with which to fight in the round. Players are not required to use the same ships from round to round. Tournament games are considered “medium”-sized battles (p.8).

The following advanced rules are in effect for tournament games:

[*]Combining/Splitting Attacks (p.26)
[*]Customized Firing Arcs (p.27)
[*]Electronic Protection Measures (p.28)
[*]Emergency Thrust (p.28)
[*]Evasive Action (p.28)
[*]Long Shots (p.29)
[*]Pivots (p.30)
[*]Rolls (p.30)
[*]Sideslips (p.31)
[*]Simultaneous Play (p.31)

Any advanced rules not listed above should not be used in tournament play.

Games should be given a three-hour time limit. Once this limit is reached, the player with more victory points (VPs) at the conclusion of the current game turn is considered the winner.

Scoring

A player's tournament score is simply a running total of the victory points (VPs) he/she has scored in each opening round. A player who sits out a round is awarded 500 points.

After each game, all ships are restored to their starting capabilities: i.e. all damage is repaired, expendable weapons and munitions are restocked, etc.

The Knock-Out Round

After three opening rounds have been conducted, the four players with the highest aggregate totals are sent to the “knock-out” round. Two semi-final games are conducted: the top scorer plays the fourth-highest scorer, while the second- and third-highest scorers play each other.

The winners of these two semi-final games play each other; the winner of this game wins the tournament. The losers of the semi-finals play each other for third place.

If there are at least 16 participants in the tournament, a quarter-final stage can be added to the knock-out round. The top eight scorers are sent to the quarter-finals, and seeded as follows:

Quarterfinal A: #1 vs. #8
Quarterfinal B: #2 vs. #7
Quarterfinal C: #3 vs. #6
Quarterfinal D: #4 vs. #5

The semi-finals are then seeded as follows:

Winner A vs. Winner D
Winner B vs. Winner C