• Registered: 2010-11-15
  • Posts: 298

Topic: Starmada stats for BFG Torps

Hi All,

Our group is just getting into Starmada and we're quite excited!  Our first project is to convert our BFG fleets to Starmada stats.  Overall is pretty straight forward - except for how to deal with Torps.

For those familiar with Gothic you'll know that going either direct fire or seekers both have their pros and cons.

Direct fire Pros: Fire arc, ROF correct
Direct fire con: no missiles on the board!

Seeker pros: missiles on the board (i.e. can interact with fighters)
Seeker con: very difficult to simulate ROF correctly and no restriction on fire arcs

First I'm interested on what others have done for their BFG ships.  The ultimate goal is to have fun with a 40k feel, not to utterly simulate Gothic (otherwise we'd just play gothic) - so I'd love it if you could relate your experiences.

Second, I think hybrid solution would be useful for both Gothic and for other genres.  I'd like to come up with some rules for "Striker/Seeker Launchers".  This would just expand on what is already in Romulan Armada for the plasma torp lauchers in seeker mode.  Basically instead of taking carrier space on your ship, you'd purchase a weapon with a fire arc and an ammo rating.  This weapon would be able to launch 1 flight of seekers per turn (completely separate from any carrier rating) in the end phase targeting an element in the appropriate fire arc.  Any suggestions on how to calculate SU and OR/DR?  What was done for Plasma Torps?

Third, it would be great to be able to have flights of 2, 3 and 9 too.  Any reason why the standard equation couldn't be used for these numbers?

Thanks!
-Tim

  • Registered: 2010-03-09
  • Posts: 630

Re: Starmada stats for BFG Torps

Marauder wrote:

First I'm interested on what others have done for their BFG ships.

Someone already worked on that: http://www.mj12games.com/forum/viewtopi … amp;t=2531

Otherwise, could you tell us how BFG torps behave?

Marc

  • Registered: 2010-11-15
  • Posts: 298

Re: Starmada stats for BFG Torps

Yes, I saw those.  They are pretty good.  We're going with slightly larger ships so our average imperial cruiser will be weighing in at about 250pts with a size class of 12 (50% more than the BFG hull points).

In BFG the torps are launched from a specific hardpoint.  They are placed on the base of the mini and must be pointed in a direction limited by the weapon arc of the launcher.  The number of torps is based on the rating of the launcher (which in no way interacts with any of the carrier functions of the ship). They then (in the appropriate phase) move in a straight line at their speed.  If they cross over the base of another ship they attack it.  As they are actually on the table they can be fired at by the appropriate ship board weapons as well as engaged by fighters.  If they don't hit anything on the first turn they keep moving until they hit something or go off the table.

I'm not obsessed with trying to model that behaviour exactly.  Seekers definitely are the better fit than direct fire, its just there is a little problem with being able to launch 3 flights a turn off of a cruiser sized ship using the seeker rules as is.  Limiting the arch of fire would be great too.

Really what I want is very similar to plasma torps as in Romulan Armada.  Just add in an ammo component and remove the direct fire mode and tah-dah, missile launcher.

  • Registered: 2010-03-09
  • Posts: 630

Re: Starmada stats for BFG Torps

Yes, I feel that using romulan plasma could do the trick. But do you really have to add an ammo parameter?
Starmada battles lasts usually between 5 to 10 turns. Unless your vessels load a very low number of torps, ammo shouldn't be a problem.

Marc

  • Registered: 2009-08-03
  • Posts: 245

Re: Starmada stats for BFG Torps

An older BFG conversion is also present at http://www.mj12games.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=2275 .  However, we got kind of simulationist...

Also, any thoughts on Holofields?  We never found a particularly satisfying conversion of those.

Note to self: acquire Romulan Armada for plasma rules.

  • Registered: 2010-11-15
  • Posts: 298

Re: Starmada stats for BFG Torps

@ madpax

No I guess ammo isn't 100% necessary.  It makes it feel more like missiles.  In BFG you had to use a special "reload" order to launch more fighters or more torps.  Since fighters are finite in Starmada it only felt fitting to limit the number of torps.

Anyway, do you know how plasma torps were costed?  I'd love to see how that was done.
EDIT: Ah, I see that in Romulan Armada the cost is equal to the direct fire portion of the weapon.  So I guess the idea is to come up with an "equivalent" direct fire weapon for costing - which means I guess ammo probably isn't a problem.

@ Nomad

Those are pretty good conversions.  We're wanting to bring the scale up a big since BFG miniatures are on the rather large end of things.  Also we want to make sure they're competative, as some people may be using these as their main fleets.  So we'll likely up their firepower a bit (after all each hit in BFG was 1 hull damage - here 1 hit is only 0.5 hull damage) and make sure the fire arcs overlap a bit better.  Most of the ships in Gothic had similar limitations with fire arcs, but against custom Starmada fleets it will be quite the handicap.  We're gonna go with the ships in spirit and use the BFG stats as a starting point, but we'll break from there to make the ship designs a bit more useful cross genre.

We are going to try Holofields as a combination of countermeasures and stealth.  We'll make sure other "gothic" factions don't have firecontrol - but firecontrol is something the eldar will have to deal with when fighting non-gothic factions.

  • Registered: 2006-05-17
  • Posts: 18

Re: Starmada stats for BFG Torps

Marauder wrote:

Yes, I saw those.  They are pretty good.  We're going with slightly larger ships so our average imperial cruiser will be weighing in at about 250pts with a size class of 12 (50% more than the BFG hull points).

In BFG the torps are launched from a specific hardpoint.  They are placed on the base of the mini and must be pointed in a direction limited by the weapon arc of the launcher.  The number of torps is based on the rating of the launcher (which in no way interacts with any of the carrier functions of the ship). They then (in the appropriate phase) move in a straight line at their speed.  If they cross over the base of another ship they attack it.  As they are actually on the table they can be fired at by the appropriate ship board weapons as well as engaged by fighters.  If they don't hit anything on the first turn they keep moving until they hit something or go off the table.

I'm not obsessed with trying to model that behaviour exactly.  Seekers definitely are the better fit than direct fire, its just there is a little problem with being able to launch 3 flights a turn off of a cruiser sized ship using the seeker rules as is.  Limiting the arch of fire would be great too.

Really what I want is very similar to plasma torps as in Romulan Armada.  Just add in an ammo component and remove the direct fire mode and tah-dah, missile launcher.

These are exactly the reasons I made torps direct fire in my conversion. It also keeps book-keeping down and the playing field less cluttered.

If I would model them as seekers I would probably design them with the starmada rules but limit them to an arc, launch limit and only forward and sidestep movement and reduce their costs by 1/2, 3/5 or 2/3. This will need some playtesting. Now that I'm thinking about it I like the idea.

  • Registered: 2009-12-10
  • Posts: 30

Re: Starmada stats for BFG Torps

Do you plan to convert Tau guided missiles, too?

  • Registered: 2010-11-15
  • Posts: 298

Re: Starmada stats for BFG Torps

Nerroth wrote:

Do you plan to convert Tau guided missiles, too?

If we do they will be strikers for sure.