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mj12games.com/forum → Starmada → The future?
let's not make this a geek-sfb flame war shall we 
I would never claim to be Geekier than anyone....
I'll try to respond to the breakdown of weapons later - but I will note that you're likely right about a lot of that.
...and yeah, Steve would likely have a heart attack if we tried to bring in non-published stuff....
Thinking about the adaptation:
Federation and Klingons will be fairly easy....special rule for 2 turn weapons?
Multi-turn weapons are pretty much mandatory for any SFB simulation. Easy enough to do, though.
Yeah, easy enough - though I think that some allowance for the different shield facings might have to be made for some of the later stuff.
Orions - Option Mounts...otherwise easy
There's also engine doubling (which should boost speed, offense, and defense at the cost of some permanent damage) and many Orions have cloaks as well. They use pretty much every Galactic weapon in those option mounts, which makes them one of the last races to get tackled, since you'll need so much else defined first.
Much the same could be said of the boys from the WYN cluster, I might add.
Yep, forgot the WYN Cluster guys.
..and yeah, since I can pack a PPD on options mounts, they'll likely be last. Though....(runs to check).......they are in Volume I of the Commanders Rulebook.
Tholian Web will be interesting to address...
Deciding how much the ability to make blocking terrain is worth is likely to be a chore. Even more so when it can be placed at a distance via Web Casters.
Heh...yeah, never played with web, as it was such a pain in SFB.
Kzinti will need a "shortcut" for all those drones...
Tricky. Seeking weapons are just as important to the SFB "feel" as multi-turn arming weapons, but Starmada doesn't want the level of clutter SFB sometimes (often?) achieves.
Often....
The more I think of it, the more this is going to be a real challenge to get right and still feel right.
Romulans - well, if you've got multi-turn rules in place for the Photon Torpedo, then all you need to cover is the Cloak.
The plasmas are both multi-turn and seeking. They've also got about a bajillion different arming options these days, which might or might not be vital enough to include in the port. Should be interesting to see how that gets handled.
Yeah...
Shotguns - easy enough to simply give an area effect.
Enveloping - allow for shield splash
That's all I got - what other options does Plasma have?
Gorns - Basically, Ugly lizardman-Romulans without the Cloak.
They also turn like loaded cement trucks driving on greased ice. Makes me wonder if varying turn modes are also a mandatory part of an SFB-Starmada translation.
Such a lovely thought-picture....
Ummm...maybe.
Hydrans...not too hard (Hellbores - special rule), Fusion beams are going to be nasty, but I've already mulled those over - REAL easily covered in the basic rules.
Hellbores (and enveloping plasma, if used) make directional shielding/screens pretty much mandatory, although probably with fixed values rather than allowing free reassignment each round.
Yep....
Lyrans - eh, special rule for the ESG....
Assuming speeds aren't going to be in the up-to-32 range like real SFB, the ESGs probably need to affect a much smaller area, perhaps as small as just a single hex. Similarly, web areas (particularly cast web) need to be reduced considerably to compensate for average speeds being much lower.
I'd argue for:
- ship only
- one hex
- two hex
..and leave it at that.
Andromedans - Tractor Repulsor, Displacement Device, Power Absorbers...NOT gonna be much fun - but then, they never were - they're all dead anyway..
TR beams are just another two-turn direct-fire weapon, albeit a nasty one. Displacement Device is a slightly unreliable teleporter gadget that can be used on both friendlies and enemies, and it needs to be "scaled" like the ESG and webs so that the distances moved aren't absurdly out of proportion to normal speeds. Unless we're doing some kind of actual power allocation (which I'd argue against, personally) Power Absorbers could just be treated as quirky shields. Maybe have them give the ship a bonus to movement if they took fire the turn before (representing the use of stored power) but also have them cause extra damage if the ship in question takes a shield hit.
Hmm... movement or allow a weapon to be fired a second time?
DD's - THAT is going to be fun...
ISC - Another Romulan without Cloak - pretty easy once you've got the 3+ turn weapons. Oh, and the Fearsome PPD - another mulit-turn weapon...
The PPD is another "splash" weapon like Hellbores and enveloper plasma, but the effect is a fairly small one and might be ignorable. Going to be tricky to retain the flavor of the weapon without impulse-by-impulse fire though. Perhaps give it a fairly high damage (like, say, 4) and let it reroll missed shots up to three times, with each reroll costing it 25% of the damage?
Needs to be played, but that sounds good.
I'm not sure that's everyone - Oh, and the Carnivons....Paravians, Mechad, et al....
Holy cats, don't let Steve Cole hear you mention the Mechad, or any of the other stuff from those Galactic Empires IP-pirates. That's an era best forgotten. The horrors of the Indirigan boomerang weapon will haunt me for all eternity...a seeking weapon whose warhead strength, speed, and turn mode change every few impulses? Shudder...
And you didn't even mention Omega Sector, or the Lesser Magellanic Cloud races, or the Juggernaut, or space monsters...
Heh, never knew exactly what the state of those guys. I know Paravians are 'real'. And that Steve never wants to hear about the Carnivons.
I read the (Tri-Tritium Torpedo?) rules and sorta went "Hell, I ain't ever playing THAT in a game"...
The ESG should be tied to shield strength...unless you're using screens. And any actually offensive weapon system with a range less than 3 is pretty useless. (I'm not even thrilled with 3 truthfully) Ranges 3 and under are pretty much nothing more than fighter/drone defense.
The ESG should be tied to shield strength...unless you're using screens. And any actually offensive weapon system with a range less than 3 is pretty useless. (I'm not even thrilled with 3 truthfully) Ranges 3 and under are pretty much nothing more than fighter/drone defense.
Hmmm.. with that thinking, you could eliminate some of the systems from SFB - like ADD's, maybe P-III's and PG's....
I'm thinking that directional shields and Screens are pretty much a required item, but 'm willing to be talked out of that....
Gotta go visit the Doc and get my meds updated...
Shields are always going to be tricky in this conversion... more so than weapons, at least in my opinion.....
For example, the standard Federation tactic that I have seen has been to slow the initial advance, put extra power into your shields, and overload your torpedoes... and then do an alpha strike and hope to breach the enemy shield and do damage. The mass volley was superior to a steady rate of fire over time, as the shields tend to regenerate.... in addition, as a shield facing is weakened, part of the tactic is to continue turning your strongest shields towards the enemy.... with Starmada's more fixed shield structure, that part of the game is not as important......
Are there ideas for regenerating shields and a means to damage specific facings while not losing the entire shield, ect.?
Maybe we should start a thread highlighting the tactics of each race, and look at the flavor of the game from there... it might help with ideas on making the conversion work.
John
3/5/2008 - Steve Cole has announced on the ADB forums that they have almost completed deals for 3 existing game systems to release versions in ADB's version of the Star Fleet Universe. Each product will be designed by the games original designers but will be published by ADB.
A Starmada product will be designed by Majestic 12 and is tentatively called Klingon Armada with more supplements possible in the future.
.
Sorry... I'm being dim :oops: So is that the 3rd of May release date (being in Blighty thats how I read the date there) or is it just thate on the 5th March there was a press release and there's no release date yet?
rob wrote:3/5/2008 - Steve Cole has announced on the ADB forums that they have almost completed deals for 3 existing game systems to release versions in ADB's version of the Star Fleet Universe. Each product will be designed by the games original designers but will be published by ADB.
A Starmada product will be designed by Majestic 12 and is tentatively called Klingon Armada with more supplements possible in the future.
.
Sorry... I'm being dim :oops: So is that the 3rd of May release date (being in Blighty thats how I read the date there) or is it just thate on the 5th March there was a press release and there's no release date yet?
That day is 5 March - the day that Steve Cole made that post on the ADB forums. I don't think that the contract has been laid out completely on the agreement - last I heard, they were still working out details.
Seems like the first thing we need to settle on is movement, and then work back from there. Speeds in SFB range from 0 to 32 (ships max at 31) with most undamaged ships mantaining "combat" speeds somewhere in the 20's, maybe slower if they're arming a lot of overloaded weapons (that's another issue, those).
Based on the Starmada ship construction rules, we need to decide what "average" speeds are before we can really talk about weapon ranges, areas of effect for ESGs, and other stuff that involves map scale. If we say Starmada fighting speed is, say, ten, then each Starmada hex is (very roughly) about two or two and a half times the size of a SFB one. If we set it lower, the scale increases even further, which might be a good thing if we want to minimize AOE weapons. OTOH, if we fiddle the build rules to make average speeds something up in the 20's, we can maintain a one-to-one parity and feel okay about things...I think.
Shotguns - easy enough to simply give an area effect.
Enveloping - allow for shield splash
That's all I got - what other options does Plasma have?
Shotguns spit out a bunch of small plasmas at multiple targets, not so sure about an AoE...more like a rate of fire increase.
They've also got some kind of "sabot" mode now that allows them to move faster than super-fast briefly, and there are also the pseudo-plasma decoys to think about. Both of those might be skippable in Starmada terms, but the tactics wil wind up very, very different without PPTs.
The ESG should be tied to shield strength...unless you're using screens. And any actually offensive weapon system with a range less than 3 is pretty useless. (I'm not even thrilled with 3 truthfully) Ranges 3 and under are pretty much nothing more than fighter/drone defense.
That's one of the big differences between SFB and Starmada, and it may require a rules change to adapt properly. Ships in SFB can fire at any point in their movement, and they move simultaneously and proportionately with one another, so short-range weapons can still get off shots (often very painful shots) in a flyby situation, even when both ships end up far apart at the end of the turn. If Starmada is going to port *anything* from SFB, that probably needs to be part of it.
Maybe we should start a thread highlighting the tactics of each race, and look at the flavor of the game from there... it might help with ideas on making the conversion work.
John
Why bother? SFB has used whole forests printing tactics by and for players. Every uber weapon has been studied, picked over and then been out done.
I wonder why nobody has even questioned if such a conversion is needed. Starmada in it's various forms has already given rise to Star Trek games and conversions both SFB and FASA. OK not "official" but are they any the worse for that.
Change the way Starmada works and it is just SFB by another name.
Even in this thread it seems that SFB thinking has started. Should it be change Starmada to SFB or change SFB to fit in with Starmada?
Just playing devils advocate. But stop to think, Starmada X was pared down to make Starmada AE more playable. There are plenty of choices already which seem to cover any type of weapon. Maybe just another couple of traits and strikers?
Do we really want more complexity and book keeping?
Paul
My impression is that it's adapting SFB to the S:AE rules with modification/addition only where needed. So what if the SFB ships do 32 speed...S:AE doesn't support that, so the speed gets cut. To do otherwise would require a complete re-write of the construction system...SU costs.
Same with weapon systems...they'll be adapted over.
To do otherwise leads to madness... :twisted:
A lot of the posts here seem to focus on SFB and the impending conversion as being all about the rules, not the setting.
My preference would be for a rules-light version that ports over the races, ships, etc. without worrying about every little nuance. (Isn't that what Starmada is all about?)
If you want to play SFB, go play SFB. Me, I bought Starmada because it was quick and easy to learn. Don't over-complicated this one.
I was trying to imply that having a thread for the races might help us keep the flavor while using Starmada Rules.
There's a reason that I don't play SFB any more.
John
This sounds like a large enough topic that a separate forum might be a good idea.
This sounds like a large enough topic that a separate forum might be a good idea.
Agreed.
Consensus on the degree of conformation between SFB and Starmada also sounds like a good idea. If the intent here is to "sell" Starmada players on the SFB universe (and minis, which is where the money probably is from ADB's point of view) then sure, keep it simple and fudge the conversions as much as you can. OTOH, if the intent is to draw SFB/FedCom players into playing a Starmada product, perhaps by offering the ship construction rules they'll never get from ADB in a familiar setting, then some degree of rules complexity is needed just to vaguely parallel SFB tactics.
Rich
I agree with the other poster. . .
You guys are trying to turn Starmada into SFB. There is absolutely no reason to layer on all those extra rules, or have things move at SFB speeds, or run in phases or any of it.
If you want to play SFB, play SFB. The Starmada version should be very rules light pretty much using the existing rules as they stand today, just with some new ship designs.
I agree with the other poster. . .
You guys are trying to turn Starmada into SFB. There is absolutely no reason to layer on all those extra rules, or have things move at SFB speeds, or run in phases or any of it.
If you want to play SFB, play SFB. The Starmada version should be very rules light pretty much using the existing rules as they stand today, just with some new ship designs.
I wouldn't want to turn it into SFB. The rulebook alone makes my head hurt.
I like the Star Trek setting, but not the complexity of SFB. The same setting with Starmada's rules would be Grrrrrreat! to quote that Tiger guy.
Yeah, sounds like the one thing that we all agree on is that having an "official" Star Trek universe for Starmada fans to play in is a good thing.
Kudos to the suits--you made more sales (I know *I'll* be investing in minis) and the fans happy at the same time.
Oh, and just in time for the new JJ Abrams Trek movie.
Shrewd.
I just refuse to play SFB because I won't to play any game where the rulebook's a lethal weapon. A friend of mine who's been playing SFB since the dawn of time has several three-ring binders full of SFB rules, SSDs, etc.
Yeah, sounds like the one thing that we all agree on is that having an "official" Star Trek universe for Starmada fans to play in is a good thing.
Kudos to the suits--you made more sales (I know *I'll* be investing in minis) and the fans happy at the same time.
Oh, and just in time for the new JJ Abrams Trek movie.
Shrewd.
Whah what suits:)
You guys are trying to turn Starmada into SFB. There is absolutely no reason to layer on all those extra rules, or have things move at SFB speeds, or run in phases or any of it.
If you want to play SFB, play SFB. The Starmada version should be very rules light pretty much using the existing rules as they stand today, just with some new ship designs.
Totally agree. The aim here should be to port SFB into Starmada without radically changing Starmada along the way.
Couple things:
1) Nothing has been finalized... while talks have been underway for several months, the contract has not been signed. I consider this to be a mere formality, as terms have been agreed to in principle, but just the same, I believe any discussion of specifics at this point would be premature.
2) Where's the trust? I've managed to shepherd Starmada through a decade and a half, and it's only gotten better with time. I would hope nobody thinks I would agree to anything that jeopardizes that.
3) Even if some people are disappointed with the final product (which is, I fear, inevitable, considering the baggage -- good and bad -- that comes with Trek/SFB) remember that Starmada is not a single game that can be "ruined" with a particular setting or sourcebook.
I happen to be thrilled with this development and am VERY excited about the potential in the product/products.
Couple things:
2) Where's the trust?
3) Even if some people are disappointed with the final product (which is, I fear, inevitable, considering the baggage -- good and bad -- that comes with Trek/SFB) remember that Starmada is not a single game that can be "ruined" with a particular setting or sourcebook.
I happen to be thrilled with this development and am VERY excited about the potential in the product/products.
Two very good points. Please forgive us if in our enthuiasm for this we have jumped the gun a bit.
Couple things:
1) Nothing has been finalized... while talks have been underway for several months, the contract has not been signed. I consider this to be a mere formality, as terms have been agreed to in principle, but just the same, I believe any discussion of specifics at this point would be premature.
2) Where's the trust?
3) Even if some people are disappointed with the final product (which is, I fear, inevitable, considering the baggage -- good and bad -- that comes with Trek/SFB) remember that Starmada is not a single game that can be "ruined" with a particular setting or sourcebook.
I happen to be thrilled with this development and am VERY excited about the potential in the product/products.
I too am looking forward to this.
I believe that the people who will be disappointed with the final product will be of three types:
1] The people who don't understand what the ADB's license covers (they'll be crying because there is no nextgen/DS9/Voyager stuff)
2] The people who have been making up their stats for SFB and aren't happy with the way you did it.
3] The people who want everything for free.
Congradulations on the project, hope you guys get more exposure and cash because of it.
Hey guys... I'm an avid Star Fleet Battles (SFB) player who thinks the Star Fleet Universe (SFU) is pretty darned cool (more so than the TOS universe).
I read this thread with interest. I recently purchased Starmada solely on the news that this conversion would take place, but after reading the demo rules, am glad to have the game for what it is too. Looks like a great set of rules.
Just a thought here, and in no way shape or form am I thinking that the designer of Starmada won't be able to do a great job of the conversion:
In spite of loving the features of Star Fleet Battles, I may be in the minority of SFB fans who are interested in this project. I would prefer the game to utilize as FEW of the SFB specific rules as possible. For instance, directional shielding. People have pointed out things like the Enveloping Plasma Torpedo and the Hellbore (and to a lesser degree the ISC PPD) as reasons why you need directional shielding. I don't agree. How about something like this instead:
1. An EPT or a Hellbore has a + 1 to the Impact roll for every shield point lower than the original rating on the target ship (to a maximum of +2 to the Impact Roll).
2. An EPT or Hellbore reverses the position of Shield Hit and Hull hit in "The Damage Roll Table". Additionally, any one hull hit may be converted into an engine or weapon hit (1, 2, 3 it's an engine; 4, 5, 6 it's a weapon).
Point #1 shows the usefulness of these weapons against ships with reduced shields.
Point #2 shows how these weapons tend to both reduce all around shielding, and to cause more damage to important systems due to "The Mizia Effect". (Mind you, the latter part - conversion of hull hit to other system could be left out, as I don't think this occurs in other games in the Universe - Fed Commander or Star Fleet Battle Force, so it's definitely a Game System, not Universe item).
Of course, those could be traits, to make it less specific, and a Hellbore or EPT would have those traits.
(Please note I'm not suggesting this idea is in any way balanced or the way to go, just that for those SFB players who want to bring system specific concepts to Starmada, that there might be other ways of showing them while keeping Starmada's flavor intact).
Heck, even Federation Commander changes how the shields work to no small degree (easier to regenerate, and the ability to shift a few boxes to an adjacent shield once a turn). And then there's Star Fleet Battle Force which uses wholly different mechanics (being a card game) and still manages to keep the flavor of the Universe, if not exactly the flagship game. So my long winded point is, make the Universe fit the System, not the other way around.. otherwise you just have a different version of 'SFB lite'.
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