look up the commander rules from VBAM Terran Civil War, it works well

A simple way to simulate better trained crews is to vary the to hit number of a ship's weapons.  Those ships with weapons that hit on 2+ could be considered to be Very Well Trained crews.  Well trained crews have ships with +3 to hit, average could be 4+ to hit and for poor or green crew, 5+ and 6+  :shock: .
The benifit of this would be that the existing shipyard programs can give correct CPV for this. 8-)

Neither case is particularly appealing since they do not really simulate the crew or commander's quality, merely supplying an excuse to munchkinize more to hit bonuses out of things.  :evil:

Better trained crews will act faster than their opponents, better commanders will be able to anticipate their opponent's maneuvers... :geek:

Hence better trained crews should shoot first and have their damage applied prior to their opponents. Green crews shoot last.  Better commanders may re-issue written movement orders for any one ship (per rating) that hasn't yet moved for the turn in reaction (predicting the enemy) to their opponent.

Granted, this would be a pain in the butt to points cost, but it does more accurately reflect the benefits respectively without turning it into a broken system like several other games I will not mention.  :roll:

The Reason I like re-rolls is that it represents the captain (Or Crew) pulling off the daring and unexpected. It also has the attractiveness of not substantially bogging down the gameplay.

If we were modelling "Real Life" I might agree with your thinking, but what we are largely doing is playing out sci-fi TV show and Movie-Style space conflicts.  Forcing an attacker to reroll the nasty Impact:5  Damage:5 Hits on 2+ weapon might be the difference between victory and death.

It creates much more Drama than simply improving attacker's "to Hit" rolls or their defenses or their Maneuverability..

Or a movement plotting system similar to the WW II air game called Check Your 6.
It does an absofrigginlutely great job of simulating differences in air crew quality.
Kevin

Which is the very nature of Legendary anything.

It can also be said that even the re-roll mechanic will encourage munchkinism since I get to re-roll things I don't like if desired by virtue of having legendary button pushers.  There again, we have a game bogging mechanic in that now we're adding more rolls to the turn, which in many discussions has been received less than enthusiastically.

Don't get me wrong, there may be a place for having this and while I'm not after a realistic result, I do like to see the proper effects/results applied to the problem. 

I'm not gonna say anything more...mainly because not having had more than a few hours sleep each night for a week, it's liable to come out more acerbic than I've already been.

<sigh> lol I didn't mean my earlier response to sound snippy. Grr.

I think the notion of legendary crew/captains are an important idea tactically because a) most people do not play at the strategic level and b) it's a way to humanize a game about blowing up big metal (Or ceramic or organic) spaceships.

Looking at the Homeworld series of games by Relic as an example, the reason you actually care about what happens to the Hiigarans in the game was their humanization through non-visual means. You heard the commanders of the ships giving orders and there were cutscenes with wonderful humanizing narration.

Tabletop games lack that luxury in storytelling. One way to bring it "on table" is to have a simple dynamic system that encourages risk and calculation. If it just makes the ship shoot or maneuver better it does not add any real "humanity" to it. By forcing the player to make judicious USE of his legendary commander, you inject Human decision-making at a tactical level and add another level of "Characterization" to the ship.

My 2 cents worth anyway.

I see, so in the original rules they effected the Initiative rolls of the ships and/or fleet.

You're right, with pre-plotted movement that's no longer an option in AE.

I like the idea of the Legendary Crew, ect.... but I also agree that it has a strong potential to be munchkinized seriously.

How about a list of specific options via a point cost per option?

I.E. for 50 points (arbitrary) you can add "Scotty" the legendary engineer to a ship in the fleet - he grants the ship 1 additional thrust point do to his knowledge of redirecting energy from the engines, ect.

Or for 50 points, you get an expert gunner -- the ship he is on gets to ignore the +1 range modifier to long range with one of it's weapon types (+1 short range mod if the weapon has inverted range modifiers) - due to his expert calculations and knowledge of that weapon's characteristics.

The nice thing with leaving it as a list that can be added to a ship, is that you can also add it to fighter wings....ect.

For an additional 25 points, you can upgrade a wing of fighters to elite dogfighters... they get to re-roll any result of 1 on their own dice when in a dogfight.

Not only would this add a human factor, but also would grant some unique actions on the tabletop. And it would be easy for each side to have a mix of counters for different tactics, without a bunch of "this power counters that power" game plays ---  and each game can decide on a cap of points for special abilities before the battle.

Finally, some powers would not lend themselves to use with Uber-ships -- imagine an engineer with enhanced shield knowledge - he adds a +1 level of shield to one hexside, within normal limits of the rules... as in no shield rating over 5.... but, has to roll a 5+ in order to change the hexside during a battle. First, he would be useless on a ship that already has a shield of 5 -- at least until I took shield damage -- until then, he is wasted points. Two, I start the game with the +1 shield on the front hex of my light cruiser --- but my opponent gets a ship on my aft - I want to change the facing on that enhanced shield... my engineer needs a 5+ (or 4+ or whatever) on a D6 to transfer the power.  This engineer adds to my fleet, but it isn't Uber....  Even the enhanced gunner I mentioned above wouldn't be that uber - yes, we could put him on a ship with long range heavy guns, and then take the mod to get rid of the +1 on those guns for long range.... except that those same guns would still be counted as at medium range, fast ships can get in on it, and is not as powerful as the inverted range weapon add would be in that same situation.

I think that with good oversight, we could really make this idea work.

Nahuris

Most excellent! I like where this is headed. I'm really an rpg-er, so any excuse to add in a little story/drama is a good thing. (The best space battles have a really good story and memorable characters.)

The only thing I'd add to the discussion is allowing a range of flexibility for our "heroes," with the limitation that it increases the cost. Heroes with "dedicated" bonuses should be cheaper, while more expensive "heroes" could have a number of bonuses that they can allot more flexibly.

Examples:
  Cheapest: A "Scotty" who only provides a +1 bonus to shields
  One who provides a floating +1 to use on general shipboard systems
  A Scotty who has 3 bonus points per round
  Most Expensive: a Jedi-level hero who would have all kinds of crazy bonuses that can be moved around on the fly

Players would have to be in agreement on whether they're using "heroes" or not. (And how they're implemented, since these rules could/should range from realistic to cinematic.)

You'd also need a mechanic that allows one player to kill, kidnap or disable the hero. (Thus, the "mega Scotty" wouldn't quite be equal to three ordinary "Scotties.")

Well, I think it's "to each their own." Some settings (Star Wars) cry out for heroes, while in others (Honor Harrington?) it would matter much less. So, what's right? Answer: whatever you and your friends want to play.

I think it's a good thing for a generic starship system to present the full spectrum of possibilities (like cinematic and realistic movement rules,) and let the players decide. (At least, so far as it's practical to do so.)

For a solo VBAM campaign that I was playing about a year ago, I was using the following for crew quality.  It used the multiple die types and it was 'interesting', but not sure if it was fair or anything (but I determined the modifiers based on the chance to roll a 4+ and divided by 0.5).  Now technically the modifier below should have only added to the ORAT, but I used the total CR (to be on the safe side). In this system, if the To-hit was over the possible roll value, it was an automatic miss (yep, green crews truly sucked) unless you had some really accurate weaponry.

Quality : Die Type/Modifier
Green: d4/x0.5
Regular: d6/x1.0
Veteran: d8/x1.25
Elite: d10/x1.4
Legendary: d12/x1.5

Just something to stir the pot a bit (and I like making Dan cringe when talking about using multiple die types in Starmada),
-Bren