Topic: What's missing?

Okay, so rather than wade through the various posts looking for things y'all think need to be added to Starmada, I thought I'd just start a topic specifically to collect wish lists.

So, think big. What's missing from the Universal Game of Starship Combat?

Daniel Kast
Majestic Twelve Games
cricket@mj12games.com

Re: What's missing?

cricket wrote:

Okay, so rather than wade through the various posts looking for things y'all think need to be added to Starmada, I thought I'd just start a topic specifically to collect wish lists.

So, think big. What's missing from the Universal Game of Starship Combat?


And thus we rip open another can of worms (yummy!)....

Space monsters? big_smile

Re: What's missing?

cricket wrote:

Okay, so rather than wade through the various posts looking for things y'all think need to be added to Starmada, I thought I'd just start a topic specifically to collect wish lists.
So, think big. What's missing from the Universal Game of Starship Combat?

Nothing's missing, but for starters you could get rid of fighters.
tongue
Thanks, I'll be here all week.

Re: What's missing?

I'm pretty much happy with the game system and all the optional rules. Really. I find that nothing is missing. Yap. :roll:

Except maybe... neutral

Continuity?!
MJ12games made 3 books. Vey good and all from different universes, but I would like to have a continuing saga. With ship models having 3 and 4 or 10 versions. Where the story evolved a lot. Star empires, revenge, obliteration of races, alien artifacts buried in lost worlds. The thing. Maybe in a co-production with FFG, with all the empires of Twilight Empires, where MJ12 would do the rules and FFG would make the minis... Just a thought, don't shoot at me.  :oops:

That's all I guess...  :roll:

thedugan wrote:

And thus we rip open another can of worms (yummy!)....

Space monsters?

Yes...  pliiise... :oops:

And just to finalize... errr...

Fluff. A tech readout of ships. Admiral Dugan made the 3D models of the ships. Why not make a tech readout with side/front/upper view of the ships and fluff? I know why not! A lot of work and few hands...  sad

And do not, ever, but ever, get rid of fighters!!  8-) I'll be here all week and some.  8-)  8-)  8-)

Re: What's missing?

I'd like to see the various optional rules bandied about normalized in cost and published in an 'offical' product.  Redundant Sheilds, Odd-Ranged Weapons, 'fixed' screens, Three-Turn Weapons.

Dual-Mode weapons with ammo for one mode.

Some provision for stowage/carriage of craft larger than fighters.  FTL Tugs, if you will.

A look at how speed and weapon range interact.  Not really an 'add something', but are we sure that Engines 12 and Range 4 is as good as Engines 4 and Range 12?

Some way to shoot down seekers and strikers before they hit your ship, on the turn they hit your ship.  CIWS.

(I shudder to say this) Counter-based weapons that do not rely on seekers/strikers/fighters/mines/etc.  Some way to build something that works like the Romulan Plasma from "Balance of Terror"


Some way to add more decision points, and encourage use of those decision points.  Limited Arc Weapons, Ammunition, and Slow-Firing helps inform fire decisions... but more of this is always good.

Re: What's missing?

Ablative shields.

That's about it, really.

Re: What's missing?

Most of things I'd like to see have been related to the questions I've asked:

Armored Gun Batteries
Redundant Shielding
Interceptor
Bomber
Ranges 21 and 27

The first two I think would work fine using the Armor Plating mechanic from AE. The fighter options you said would be in the new compilation because they were in dreadnoughts. As to the Ranges, I'd only like them for completeness.

As to what else I'd like to see? Maybe rules for planetary assault and defense, more terrain options, and customizable marines with variable attack and defense values.

Oh, and boarding pods that aren't destroyed when they fail to penetrate the shields.

Re: What's missing?

Ditto on Ablative Shields.  Either by the ablative armor mechanic, or a 'reduced whenever penetrated' mechanic, or what you will.

Actually:  Take whatever mechanic is used for Screens vs. Shields

Apply that for 'Ablative Screens'.

Whatever multiplyer you end up using for fixed screens could also be used for 'fixed' ablative screens...

So we could have customizable, set-at-construction, facing dependent shield ratings, and ratings for the amount of 'hull plating' on each facing!

Re: What's missing?

cricket wrote:

So, think big. What's missing from the Universal Game of Starship Combat?


Super computer/A.I. run ships.     big_smile   

Deckplans for boarding actions, with new 15mm miniatures to go with it.  (hey, I'm just trying to get more of those for my Traveller RPG games  wink ).

Cone-shaped AOE ability for weapons. (that will be expensive!)

Grappling hooks  (I kid.. I still think that was quite a silly thing on Enterprise)

Re: What's missing?

Crew and command options.

One of the basics of life is good crew and good command outweights better tech. At least I hope that it still counts. You can see the example of the "Flying Tigers" in china. Rommel in north Africa. Etc.

I think that maybe re-rolls or better marines would be a good way to portrate better crew and command.

Re: What's missing?

Maybe not Grappling hooks for the Trek universe, but for those of us with Noble Armada ships that would be cool.

Re: What's missing?

Second on the crew options. Would be nice to have cinematic "hero" rules (maybe even making it customizable, so that Starbuck's fighter flight plays different than Luke Skywalker's, for example.)

Re: What's missing?

I did some very loose 'crew options' in my sailing orders stuff a while back...
What sort of crew options did you have in mind?

Re: What's missing?

Crew: Green to Elite; alien vs. human; crew morale to maintain ground; heroic crews or berserk crews.

Captains and Admirals: fire support; tactic masters; strategist; out-maneover the enemy.

Re: What's missing?

A lot of these sound oddly familiar....
:ugeek:

Re: What's missing?

The Fighter Defense roll always struck me as going against the game's trends. Rolling lower for this is better, where with other rolls rolling higher is better. Assigning a Defense Divisor to various saves (like with the Attack Divisor) would be an easy fix:

Save :: Defense Divisor
- :: 6
6+ :: 5
5+ :: 4
4+ :: 3
3+ :: 2
2+ :: 1

Also, any reason for no Attack 2+ Fighters? Too powerful?

Re: What's missing?

Dave wrote:

The Fighter Defense roll always struck me as going against the game's trends. Rolling lower for this is better, where with other rolls rolling higher is better.

The fighter Defense value is based on the shield rating, where higher IS better (for the attacker, who is making the rolls).

Also, any reason for no Attack 2+ Fighters? Too powerful?

Just didn't think anyone would need 'em. Silly me... smile

Daniel Kast
Majestic Twelve Games
cricket@mj12games.com

Re: What's missing?

I preface my comment by saying that I like the Admiralty Edition...That said I really miss the flavor of losing special equipment through damage from earlier versions of the game. It is a constant and re-occuring theme in every sci-fi space battle-oriented series. "sir, we've lost the warp/hyper/slip/jump drive", "Sir, sensors are down, we can't get a lock on the enemy", "Sir, that last hit knocked out our cloaking device, we'll never be able to escape", etcetera ad nauseum  smile  This kind of thing is really just a "flavor" thing then a gameplay thing, but it can make things interesting, especially in campaigns.

If speaking in general terms about a universal starship combat game rather than Starmada as it is currently constituted, I would have to say that I can't think of anything that can't be approximated within the current rules. About the only thing I can think of are Super-Shields which don't ever allow damage to pass through until the shields are weakened or totally disrupted (Langston Fields?) Not sure the game needs them though.
Cheers,
Erik

Re: What's missing?

After sleeping on it I had another thought...a rule for constructing tender/battlerider type combinations. It could be as simple as Tender=+20% the SU of the battlerider or such. Tender would not add as much to the CR of a ship as Carrier I would think.  This would allow large jump capable ships that transport warships greater than hull 1, something that occurs quite often in sci-fi literature and shows.
Cheers.
Erik

Re: What's missing?

Blacklancer99 wrote:

After sleeping on it I had another thought...a rule for constructing tender/battlerider type combinations. It could be as simple as Tender=+20% the SU of the battlerider or such. Tender would not add as much to the CR of a ship as Carrier I would think.  This would allow large jump capable ships that transport warships greater than hull 1, something that occurs quite often in sci-fi literature and shows.
Cheers.
Erik

From Unofficially Unmissing.
[Use the Tender option (VBAM campaign ability) 150SU, OCR=25, DCR=25.
Option allows the docking of one Hull 1 craft or two super Heavy Fighters.
Choose option more than once.]

Been in Starmada/VBAM conversion for a while.
Paul

Re: What's missing?

Paul, I think you kind of missed the meat of the Tender idea above. I was specifically thinking of rules that would account for ships on a a per su basis and not set at 150 for SHF and Attack Boats. I know that has been around a while. I was talking about someting like large size motherships carrying parasite warships of varying hull sizes (including a couple big ones if you want!) for a Base SU cost. Again, I'm not talking about cutters/attack boats/gunboats, etc...I'm talking about cruiser sized ships (or larger) carried by a potentially HUGEMUNGOUS jumpship. If you want an example take for instance the Mothership & City Killers from Independence Day. I'm pretty sure no one would accuse the CKs of being 1 Hull, and I don't really like the idea of using 150 SU for every 1 Hull either, any more than I would say 50 SU for every fighter flight  wink
I know it is simple enough to just take 150 SU per Hull, but I would prefer a BSU %. To me it adds more variation/variety without being a complex. But then again, I have a lot of ships with odd numbered cargo and carrier and so forth...I don't like to round to the nearest 10  smile When I converted over the 2300 AD fighters into Starmada X, I originally used the Tender ability to model carriers (as the fighters we designed as Hull 1 ships), but it just didn't make sense that 6 Martels would use the same space as 6 of the much lighter Mistral fighters, and the it didn't jive with the fluff either, with the swap being something like 6 Martels=9 Mistrals. That to me pointed to using a % based system, and It's one of the the things I "mod" into the shipyard sheet using one of the spaces for the Aux abilities rather than the Carrier space. I use it to model the multiple-sized drop ships in the Full Thrust designs as well. First Design the Parasite to get the hull size, then add the % and you get the SU required to carry. I have designed a race of antagonists for a homemade campaign that uses jump capable scouts and motherships, but uses parasite warships of all different sizes as warships.
Anyway, I'm rambling.
To Sum Up: I would prefer a % of the Parasite's hull size to determine the Tender SUs required, rather than a fixed amount.
Cheers,
Erik
Erik

Re: What's missing?

cricket wrote:

The fighter Defense value is based on the shield rating, where higher IS better (for the attacker, who is making the rolls).

Well that makes more sense. Silly me.

Re: What's missing?

I'm happy so far with Starmada.

Some things which might be added:

- AFB hitting Fighters on 4+ and ships on 5+ & shooting them before fighters may attack.
- some kind of escort trait to grant other ships the afb-dice the ship has

Re: What's missing?

I've been working towards using Starmada to simulate the Homeworld computer games. While I've figured out the combat classes, some of the special ship abilities are missing. It might be helpful to have:

- Defense field (ability wrap shields around 1 or more targets)
- Gravwell generator (area effect that prevents fighter movement)
- Cloak generator (cloaks all ships within a certain radius, but they must decloak to fire)
- Repair beam (combination of regen and damage control (must be used from 1 hex range?))
- Cloaked fighters
- A way to simulate Defense Fighters (area effect point defence for ship to ship munitions)
- A networked fire control/C&C system (gives fire control benefit to allied ships - area of effect?)
- Repulsor wave (acts like inverted blackhole for 1 turn? Pushes close targets away. more effective against fighters than ships. Used in combination with min-range weapons)
- Hyperspace inhibitor (stop those pesky damaged ships from escaping! Would make for interesting "destroy the target and (try to) escape missions)

(- Infection beam - Destroy or Capture an entire fighter flight at once!)

When I was converting the Brigade ships to AE, one noticeably absent system (or one to replace it) was the shockwave. On paper it sounded useful, but I've never used one in a game.

Re: What's missing?

Shieldbreaker - a weapon ability that does Shield Damage whether it makes the IMP roll or not.

The recent AFB suggestion might be more of an Improved AFB, for those of us who rather fight fighters/strikers with some ship-based weapon system rather than other fighters/strikers.