Disobey every scientific law known to man?   :wink:

(I hate them)

Sounds like you made expensive ships with very high survivability.  Go to the other extreme.

Make lots of fast, cheap and expendable ships.  Respectable but not too powerful guns, and just a few hull boxes, maybe even no shields at all.  That'll make all his points on Pen+3 effectively wasted.

On of my friends favors powerful ships and fighters... I did the approach I mentioned above and the game was a draw.  We called the game when it became apparent that he was going to lose all of his ships before his fighters would be able to eliminate my ships.

Sure, the fighters were left... but with no carrier to take 'em home...

Throw in some limited ammo weapons if you're using that option for some extra punch if you want.

--Flak

I look forward to seeing you again Uncle Steve.
I dropped the Inv ROF ridiculous fire power ships, they kinda took all the fun out since the game never lasted more than 3-4 turns 
Though the whole Piercing +3 thing is still just ಠ_ಠ

Unfortunately any game with a built in construction mechanic is AUTOMATICALLY subject to munchinization. After a few "Maximized Ship" games, it usually wears pretty thin. For that reason I find it far more interesting to either do conversions from settings/systems like B5 and 2300AD and play those, with the limitations inherent to the settings. Keeping the tech level lower also seems to help keep the ships from getting too uber-powered. Typically, I'll set the current tech level of the most dominant/prominent power at 0 across the board, and adjust others relative. At lower tech levels, it's just too difficult to jam all kinds of extras into a hull. The other advantage to using a fixed setting is that the size of the ships can be maintained relative to each other. For example, if building a Kennedy from the 2300ad setting, it doesn't make sense to make it 20 Hull! We never play "tournament style" games as we have found it much more interesting to play scenarios where there is more at stake than kill or be killed. I hate min/maxing in any and every game I have ever played as it sucks the fun right out of everything, so I felt I had to add my 2 cents.
Cheers & Happy Holidays!
Erik

As I thought about the games we played in S. Fla. last month, I realized that there were many things that I did wrong.  I was caught by suprise by the weapons on my nephew's ships, but I did not then play well.  Given their inverted ROF, I should have rushed my ships to get close to his.   As it turns out, his inverted ROF ships had minimum range.  I stayed at long range and was decimated.  Bad play on my part contribuded more to the trouncing my ships experienced.  I have since revised how I will manuver... 8)

Oh, I agree with that actually. I don't think things are unbalanced when everybody on the table is at a set point level. I was just saying that it's just more fun for me when you have to make trade-offs and your not just trying to "Min/Max". There is a seemingly endless list of settings which, when turned into playable games, players/designers have looked at and said,"Gee, why didn't the designers of the X-class dreadnaught just add one more hull and add point defense?" Full Thrust is a perfect example of how players looked at the canon ships and wondered why everything over the size of a destroyer doesn't have ADFC! Same thing goes for Starcruiser from the 2300ad setting (made worse by the NAM) where every designer has "improved" on the canonical ships, to the point that the ones in the rules generally cannot compete with the player designed ones, so the canonical ships are all "broken".
So I'm not ranting against Starmada Dan. It's just that I don't very much like the Min/Max thing. Call it personal taste. I experienced it in D&D games a million years ago, Magic the Gathering at it's height, and seen it in plenty of other games. I don't care what others do, so don't think that I am ranting at anyone in particular, the whole point of any game is to have fun. If somebody enjoys the challenge of max'd fleets meeting head to head in a free for all, that's great. It's just my opinion and I hope it doesn't offend anyone. Sorry to hijack the thread a bit.
I would engage my cloak and return to Lurk-mode...but I couldn't squeeze it into my design at TL 0, so I had to settle for Countermeasures. Wish me luck.
Erik

Whoa! Did I just witness a drive by product plug?

Erik

I do not think that everyone would agree, I have been accused of making people spend hours making up new ships just for the fun of it. :twisted:

I was going to suggest having everyone at an event use the core rules only, but even then super weapons could prevail, which has to be off-putting for new gamers.

Paul

I know all too well the Shipyard, I was being silly. I download every version as Paul puts them out, and mod them to my needs...and do it all over again when he puts out another version  :evil:  I'm not new to this game, just to the forum having migrated here from the (dying?) yahoo group. I waste most of my free time building ships in said shipyard. I had about, oh, 1 million (mostly crossover/conversions) done in Starmada X which I have have been reworking in AE. The process is slowed by the fact that I do most of the grunt work on 3x5 cards since I simply can't sit in front a a computer screen for the hours and hours required, but apparently I was a scrivner in a former life.
Cheers,
Erik

Looking forward to see how this turns out.  :twisted:

The 'fun ships' were fun in SFB, they'll be just as fun in Starmada:

http://www.smileylich.com/sfb/index.html

"Easter Bunny Battleship"? heh....maybe we need a new section just for 'Bizarro Ships'...