I like the designs, on the whole...  They look not dissimilar to alot of other conversions I recall.

Speed is solid, but nothing over the top.  Decent shields and firepower, relatively balanced.

Im not sure I'd make the Omega, Primus, and G'Quan all the exact same hull size, but then I dont have the B5Wars/etc. source material.

As for Beowulf... dont let him scare you.  Most fleets aren't nearly as scary as his.

I say build to balance with book fleets, as their the 'authors intent' version of Starmada.    Once youve got a local group of players, you can figure out collectively what sort of balance point you want to aim at.

PS:  Welcome to Starmada, and have a wonderful stay!  Cant wait to see all your ships converted up and posted!

the yahoo group is a good place to put the stuff you can't put here

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/mj12games/

Not only nicely done so far. I very much like the fact that you are also keeping the Hull values within reasonable limits..... I have a control sheet around somewhere from SM-X where the Omega was a Hull 20, the Hyperion was a Hull 15.... ect. They were created by a friend with a huge selection of B5 figs... and they were hugely fun to play, but most of our battles involved 4 or less ships on a side due to the heavy point costs for those huge ships......

Then again, I am trying to get some of my friends to agree to a serious battle..... I'd love to see at least 20 ships per side. 

Nahuris

Contrarily, what's wrong with more but smaller ships? Point costs come out the same, don't they?

I happen to LIKE smaller ships...

Not necessarily that fewer ships are not a serious game.... but I've been wanting a large fleet on fleet battle..... I want to have multiple tactics running in a big general free for all....

I truly enjoy small skirmishes... but have been wanting to just have a big bash using the Starmada rules rather than something like G.O.B.S. or similar....

I've played a number of games..... and most of the ones that have larger fleet actions, tend to turn the smaller ships into one hit wonders, or missile catchers.... Starmada runs fast enough that it works for a larger number of ships, and yet each ship is it's own entity, and is a viable combatant versus other ships on the table.

Nahuris

It sounds like range 24 and 30 might be underpriced, particularly when combined with "break off" speed.

<LOL>  That is what I end up doing; keeping my ships adequately spaced apart.
I think that the range 24 and range 30 are not underpriced. 
When I add in range 30 for the heavy weapons on my BBs, their CR goes way up.  For me, it is Definitely worth it. 8)

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/mj1 … dition/B5/

So,part of my conversion is ready. Enjoy and please comment.  :wink:

Hello;
Great Babylon-5 designs.  I especially like the idea of some the Minbari Ships having Stealth.  I still note that no ships can fire past 18.  :shock: 
This definitely would make them vulnerable to most the ships my friends and I play, which have many weapons firing out to 30 hx.  However these ships are more formitable than most of the ships presented in the SAE-ISS book.

I find when fighting other Starmada Players it's a good Idea to max out on the range of your primary weapons. When playing your ships vs. your ships it does not matter what the weapon ranges are if your two fleets are balanced against each other.

For example when fighting my Federation cruisers against my Klingon's I have gave the Klingon's a slight advantage in weapon range: 15 for the few disrupters I have on my Klingon ships while the more abundant Phaser I's on the Federation ships have a range of 12. These weapons are fine and dandy when fighting against each other, but when fighting against Beowulf/Steven his ships decimated my ships with his primary weapon range of 30. Just like in WWII when the Japanese tanks went into China they were great, but when they came against U.S. or Soviet tanks there was no contest.

So Lone Gunman as long as you play your B5 ships against your B5 ships an average weapon range of 6 would be OK as long as all your ships had that same average weapon range.

Good idea, Bren.

When I see conversations like this I wonder if there isn't something wrong with Starmada that there is no tradeoff* for having longer ranges. Having very long ranges actually is rewarded to the extent that with longer ranges, there is no hit penalty at mid-ranges that might be your opponents' long range (i.e., a weapon with range 30 has no penalty firing out to 20 hexes while a weapon with range 21 has a penalty from range 15).

But I don't have enough experience with Starmada to truly judge. Is there anyone willing to stand up and say their designs, with more moderate weapon ranges, can defeat a fleet designed around range 30 weapons? Everyone seems to assert simply that range 30 is the way to go.

* Rather, the tradeoff is not great enough in terms of SUs, I guess.