I was thinking of the comments that I should have two hull sizes per "class" (where I'm thinking of "class" by size, even if I'm using role names) to give more room for variation.  It doesn't seem necessary to me, since I don't have to fill the whole thing.

For combat rating, I think it seemed to only add to the defensive rating, and thus to combat rating.  That seems OK, since you do get another hull point, and maybe another level for shields or engines.

Yeah, I was thinking about that, too.  I think I'm more likely to try going the other way with this fleet--adding a hull point without needing to fill the size.

Do you think that costs more than its worth in defense?

thanks,

andy

I've increased the hull size of several ships without using the space.  You could call it "redundant hull".     I had even modified my version of the S:X shipbuilder to show the smallest hull size that could hold the current selections of equipment.

Especially in S:X with ships equipped with spinal mounts, extra hull is about as good as having armor plating or any other hull protection as it adds to your offensive potential as well as survivability.

You can also fill in that extra SU with medical facilities, science labs, and   :wink:  bowling alleys.

I am necroing this thread because it is important to a discussion we are having in our gaming group. I ran the first play test of our ships (which basically run from 7 to 20 Hull) over the weekend and was SHOCKED at how annoying the big ships were. I have proposed we "micronize" our fleets by halving the ship sized (by SU so a 20 becomes a 12) and scaling down our weapons ranges significantly so we can fit on a standard hotzmat/starmada game board and use the standard scenarios. If anyone has any further comments on why high or low hull scale ships are better I would love to hear them.

My points from our game this weekend were:

1) Big ships are very complicated to run. Our game took almost 5 hours and we got through only 5 turns. The fact that there were 39 fighter flights and 14 capital ships on the table hurt as well.

2) When we hit things damage rarely had an effect. Since there are so many damage boxes before your ship starts to degrade in Engine or Shields, shots felt like they had virtually no effect. Even weapons were so spread out that you would be lucky to tag one battery, we had several instances where a shot would score a 5 or a 6 where those would be blank boxes so have no effect.

3) The board felt really crowded. I personally like the regular sized board as it fits on a kitchen table instead of needing to go down to a games store to play on a big table. But with that many fighters and ships there was barely room to move with out running in to someone else. I think we should micronize and then use the scenarios in the main book and/or write our own.

Basically the big ships took away from the fun factor of the game, there were no dramatic "YOU SUNK MY BATTLESHIP" moments and game play was agonizingly slow.

The others in my group have yet to play test so I am trying not to be too forceful with this until they experience the pain themsleves, but from my point of view Dan is correct, ships should be smaller and more purposeful. Go figure, he designed the game and he knows how it plays.

one fleet had a big carrier, a heavy cruiser, a light cruiser, a destroyer, frigate, and 20 fighters

The other had a battleship, 2 battle cruisers, 2 cruisers, 2 destroyers, 2 frigates and 19 fighters

I was trying to test out as wide an array of the ships as possible so it was weighted toward the high end, but not super heavily. It is not like it was just three battleships going and another three battleships.

we had 5000 per side

What do you like about playing larger scale games. How many points are those destroyers? I don't see how you are getting to 9000 points a side with that mix of ships. Any info appreciated.

That too is interesting that you play a slightly smaller game with 2 players per side. Probably makes it easier to manage. We were doing 5K a side with one player each. It was overwhelming. What size mat do you play on? I just ordered a pair of the hotzmats Dan suggested in the book. We played our test game on a single chessex mat which was way too crowded.

I came across this topic and thought I'd put in some words... The following I took from a data file from Space Empires IV, and am using it as a basis for a plethora of ships I'm designing. (I took the Kilotonnage from the file, divided by 100, and rounded up to the next whole number to get the hull size.)

Scout            Flotilla
Escort            1
Corvette            2
Frigate            3
Destroyer            4
Heavy Destroyer    5
Light Cruiser        6
Cruiser            8
Heavy Cruiser        10
Battle Cruiser        12
Battleship            14
Dreadnought        17
Heavy Dreadnought    20
Baseship            23
Heavy Baseship        26
           
Tiny Carrier        2
Pocket Carrier        5
Light Carrier        8
Carrier            10
Strike Carrier        12
Heavy Carrier        14
Fleet Carrier        22
Super Carrier        27
           
Space Platform        3
Space Station        5
Space Fortress        10
Battle Station        15
War Station        20
Starbase            30

-Christopher

I am in the process of starting a solo VBAM/Starmada AE campaign (lot of rules to sort through, though) and have considered using a system/convention like this:

CT- 1
FG- 2
DD- 3-5
CL- 6-8
CM- 9-11
CA- 12-14
BC- 15-17
BCH- 18-20
BB 21-25
DN 26-30
DNH 31-35
JG 36-40
LN 41-45
BS 46-50
WS 51+

Carriers: Just a classification, a size class 12 ship is still a CA, just with carrier functionality
CVE 3-11
CVS 12-20
CVL 21-30
CVA 31-40
CVF 41-50
*A ship bigger than 50 is still just called a World Ship, even with Carrier functionality. Also note, the convention of just adding a "V" could be used: DDV, CLV, BBV, DNV, etc.

Bases
DEFSat 1-2
CP 3-5
SAMS 6-8
Operations Base 9-11
Mobile Base 12-14
Base Station 15-20
Battle Station 21-30
Sector Base 31-40
Star Base 41-50
Star Fortress 51+

Access to each range for ships and bases would be dependent upon starting tech level. For instance: Interstellar-1 (just achieved FTL capability and can expand from home system) would start out with ship size classes 1,2,3 and 6. They would have the option to further research the DD and CL range (4 and/or 7) as well as the Medium Cruiser range (9)- the ranges (or first size class) must be researched in order but different factions could have, say, a larger CA class capability than others who haven't researched further into it. So their research orders for the period (Per VBAM/Starmada X) might look something like this:
1- DD size class 4
2- CL size class 7
3- CM size class 9 (the largest a faction currently possessing CL's could research)
4- Anti-fighter batteries
5- Scout function (2)

Each range for ships (and bases) has the same maintenance costs. I'm also looking at the possibility of being able to refit ships/bases in the same range. So that a faction that successfully researches, say, BC size class 17 could refit its remaining size class 15 and 16 BC's to a new Size class 17 BC it designs. If it wanted to.

I too have been thinking smaller might be better, but I was thinking of taking it to the extreme.

1 hull Destroyer or frigate
2 hull Cruisers
3 hull Battleships
4 hull the super ships Carriers Dreadnaughts/Super dreadnaughts.

Some of the advantages, your fleets can be cheaper to buy if you buy the 4 smallest ships from GZG or Brigade games.

You can have more ships on the board.

Your weapon ranges will be more limited and you will have to really think about what arcs to have.

The players will really have to think about what they want to put on a ship.

Just thinking........