Mike, you ever going to actually post, or just go around adding placemakers to all these threads?

LOL!!  They're both me.  That explains why I didn't get them earlier. . . I must have been logged into my old email account.

The dreadnought account is my current account, you can delete the other one.  I'll check to verify that I got them at lunch.

Mike forget about something? NEVER! He just bides his time plotting...that's it! 

Got the files finally at my old address.  Forwarded them to my new one.

I'm on vacation starting now, and heading out of state.  Taking the computer with me so I might have a chance to read through them while I'm gone.

Back Wednesday, so if I'm going to get anything to you next week, that's when it will be.

After that is GenCon and I will be lost to the world until Tues the 19th.

Heya, thanks for the feedback so far.
It's definitely a skeleton set of ideas so far.

I'd agree with this, although the light gun issue really only occurs in those ships prior to WW I. Once we get to WW I, most of the light guns go away, and are replaced by AA only guns.
But in looking at the ship for the Russo-Japanese War, it looks like the light gun values are typically at 4 or less in the first column. By the time you apply the armor shift, there are going to be very few light gun factors available. So I'm not sure (yet anyway) there's a problem in this game.
Now in GF, what I've done to tone them down is to cut the ranges to 0/1/2, and not allow them to plunge fire. For the guys I game with, at least, that seems to have solved the problem. I'm not sure how this'll shake out in GF II yet.

Yeah, I was looking at this just this morning, and thinking that the definition might not be making the most sense. Keep in mind that you'll probably only see it on unprotected cruisers (armor 0), which had no belt armor, but did have some deck protection. If we simply allow it to negate the plunging effect, then it's really not doing anything at all, since the armor basically can't go below 0.
I guess we could allow armor values to theoretically get to -1 (plunging fire against a 0 armor value), for purpose of determining the column shift.
But an armored deck negates the plunge fire bonus.
Example:
A gun with a pen of 1 and that can plunge fire fires at a ship with an armor of 0. Because of the plunging fire benefit, the armor is actually a
-1, which entitles the gun to a two column shift.
Now that same gun is fired against a ship with an armor value of 0, but which also has an armored deck. The gun will now only get a one column shift.
Makes sense to me.

At the fleet level, the die type doesn't make too much difference to me, because we're already building in a lot of abstraction anyway. In GF, Dan can attest that I'm very vocally FOR a d10. To be honest, the main reason for me going initially with a d6 was to attract a crowd that might not want the game strictly because of it using d10s. Some people just like rolling d6s, and not any other die type.

The criticals were kind of an afterthought, and I realize that they need a lot of work. At a fleet level, they may not even need to be included. But I agree, the basic crit table is very... basic and extreme.

Keep in mind that the superscripts are intended as optional.
That being said, I feel there needs to be a difference between the Tiger firing its mains, and the Moltke firing its mains. Both ships had all turrets available to the broadside, while the Tiger had 50% of it's turrets available fore and aft, and the Moltke only 40% of its turrets available to fore.
And the New Zealand, had offset turrets, which meant that 3 of it's 4 turrets were available both fore and aft.
Right now I can't think of a better way to do this.
If you're not liking the superscripts, just assume all ships have the same basic main turret layout, and use the same column shift for fore and aft firing.

Torpedoes...
Ugh...
As Dan will attest, I can't stand them.
I've yet to see a rules system where I really liked the way they work.,
GF included.
And my playtester and I are the ones who came up with them in the first place.  :wink:
In this set, the basic to hit number is a 5+, with the mods applying to the *to hit* number, instead of them meaning a column shift.
I realize there's got to be a better way though.
I'm all ears.

Definitely, and keep it coming.
Kevin</r>

just a couple of pennies for your thought.

I can't say that Starmada has suffered for only having a d6, in fact very early in the starmada X playtesting we toyed with the d10 idea, in fact I was extremely vocal about having d10s.

Turns out d10s took some of the fun out of the game.  I don't know why, but it just didn't work.

Maybe Dan could articulate more clearly why, but I know we discussed it after some playtesting and both pretty much came to the same conclusion... keep d6.

Remember I was extremely FOR d10s in Starmada, but changed my mind.

My reasons for preferring the d6 are decidedly non-technical:

1) They are more aesthetically pleasing to my eyes.

2) Most players have an excess of d6s... not so with d10s, d12s, etc.

3) Six-siders lend themselves to nicely-distributed results: for example, you can have a 1/1 split, a 2/1 split, or a 3/2/1 split. On a ten-sider, you can do 1/1 and 3/2, but then you jump to 4/1. About the only thing the ten-sider can do that a six-sider can't is 4/3/2/1, but that's not as useful, IMHO.

On the other hand, there is more granularity with a ten-sider (but not as much as you might think), and 10% increments are easier to work with than 16%.

But six-siders rule.

Ah, but the d12 is also lovely.

Of course, providing dice with the game is also an option....I have never met anyone outside of the indie RPG community who refused to buy a game because it used different dice types.

Every argument you make about d6s applies to d12s, with the added benefit of being able to go to a 3:1 split. and less granularity.

And 12 siders are thematic with your company name.   What die could possibly be more majestic than the 12?

More seriously, because you're doing roll and compare as your base mechanic, d10s or d12s would about double the time needed to use your mechanic, which already invokes a lot of sequential processing rather than parallel.

I put a lot of thought into die rolling mechanics in SS over the last year and a half, and wasn't afraid to rip the damage allocation engine apart to get what I wanted, and I spent a lot of time going "OK, this needs to go - too slow."  I iteratively tested a lot of things, including a Starmada style "roll to hit, roll for armor save, roll hot location" with different weapons doing different amounts of damage going deep into a hit location table.

(Then we got rid of the separate hit location table and damage tracks.)