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mj12games.com/forum → Starmada → SFB / FC - style SSDs for Starmada ?
Dear Friends,
Starmada is a wonderful game, but I miss the SFB / FC - style of SSDs. Has anyone tried their hand at making SFU style SSDs for Starmada ?
Thanks,
Gary
Nope, but I tried that today:
Not perfect, though, I feel it needs some adjustments.
But it's a good start.
Marc
Dear Madpax,
Great start ! Reminds me a bit of the Babylon 5 Wars format, one of my favorite styles of SSDs.
Cheers,
Gary
You are right, I used a Bab 5 wars SSD to draw the ship and its systems.
Marc
Cool ! Maybe we could post a library of icons to facilitate SSD-making.
Using which software?
Marc
Dear Marc,
Just something simple, like MS Paint. So it would be great to have a page of icons in bmp, gif or jpg format.
Gary
Here is another one, more to your wish.
But I wonder if there is not some copyright as its stats are taken from SFA...?
Marc
Dear Marc,
Superb work ! But I don't think there should be any legal issues, as this is a fan-based project and not a commercial enterprise (pardon the pun), and we do have leeway given that there is the Starmada tie-up with the Starfleet Universe via KA/RA/AA.
Um, when you say SFA what are you referring to ?
Looking forward to more SSDs !
Thanks,
Gary
Looks really good guys. My only comment would be that the hex diagram for firing arc looks a bit busy right there on the ship. I'd be more tempted to list the arcs as per Starmada letter codes (e.g. AB for photons) and then have the firing arcs illustrated to the side (not unlike SFB SSDs).
Um, when you say SFA what are you referring to ?
Star Fleet Armada AKA KA RA AA 
Marc
Here is another one, more to your wish.
But I wonder if there is not some copyright as its stats are taken from SFA...?
I don't think you can copyright numbers.
You can always drop Daniel a PM to see what his opinion is though.
Looks really good guys. My only comment would be that the hex diagram for firing arc looks a bit busy right there on the ship. I'd be more tempted to list the arcs as per Starmada letter codes (e.g. AB for photons) and then have the firing arcs illustrated to the side (not unlike SFB SSDs).
What is interestering with those SSD is that they show graphically things instead of using letters. As in the B5Wars SSD. I just need to adjust size and colours.
Marc
I really like the sample Fed CA. It is a lot easier to use. I like the design in general and I would suggest that Daniel have a look at them to perhaps take some ideas from the layout for the official Starmada ship displays
Thanks to all, it gives me some incentive to continue this way. 
I will continue on making SSD for Bab 5, but can work for SFA if I have the permission to do that.
Marc
Unfortunately my PC doesn't recognise the .rar extension.
Could you post the Fed CA as a .jpg or even .pdf as I am interest in seeing what everyong is talking about.
Thanks
Here is a .pdf
Marc
Thank you.
I like these and I think I prefer having the graphic arcs next to the weapon mounts rather than just having firing arc letters and a separate arc diagram.
Would it be possible to add information on the Drones to the sheet as well, at least their striker mode details?
Also, I seem to remember the FC ship displays are colour coded. Would it be possible to do the same with these without too much trouble or the file size getting too big? Maybe the main shield track and the faceted bits one colour, the hull another, a third for the engines, and then one colour per weapon battery (e.g. all X weapons are blue).
My only concern is how well this style will hold up for ships from other settings which have lots of small weapons. I can see it getting a bit crowded on an A5 sheet.
Would it be possible to add information on the Drones to the sheet as well, at least their striker mode details?
Also, I seem to remember the FC ship displays are colour coded. Would it be possible to do the same with these without too much trouble or the file size getting too big? Maybe the main shield track and the faceted bits one colour, the hull another, a third for the engines, and then one colour per weapon battery (e.g. all X weapons are blue).
My only concern is how well this style will hold up for ships from other settings which have lots of small weapons. I can see it getting a bit crowded on an A5 sheet.
Everything is possible as long as their si room. And yes, I intended to add colours, as in FC SSDs.
More next week.
Marc
madpax wrote:You can always drop Daniel a PM to see what his opinion is though.
I suppose he will see this topic, but if not, Willco. 
Marc
Okay, well I was soundly out-numbered on that fire arc thing 
One more thought - is there really a need to have 2 ships on the same page? I know its nice if you are running two ships of the same class, but its forcing you to squish things in a bit. I know most printers these days can easily print 2 pages on 1 if you wanted to double up anyways.
Other than that they look pretty fantastic. I swear half the fun of SFB was the SSDs. You could go over them for hours. Well anyway, I did.
-Tim
I would suggest that Daniel have a look at them to perhaps take some ideas from the layout for the official Starmada ship displays
FWIW, I really don't like this style of ship display. *shrug*
I think the sample looks good, but there is now way in creation that I would ever bother with the amount of time it would take to make when I can crank out drake notation or even regular sheets as fast as I can (especially if you are tinkering with designs).
Erik
pixelgeek wrote:I would suggest that Daniel have a look at them to perhaps take some ideas from the layout for the official Starmada ship displays
FWIW, I really don't like this style of ship display. *shrug*
The visual display of the weapon arcs is very handy though. Even if the spatial placement of them isn't useful its very nice in a game to look at a hexgrid and see the arcs as opposed to [ACE]
You could always create a custom font to put the hex grids into ship displays
cricket wrote:pixelgeek wrote:I would suggest that Daniel have a look at them to perhaps take some ideas from the layout for the official Starmada ship displays
FWIW, I really don't like this style of ship display. *shrug*
The visual display of the weapon arcs is very handy though. Even if the spatial placement of them isn't useful its very nice in a game to look at a hexgrid and see the arcs as opposed to [ACE]
You could always create a custom font to put the hex grids into ship displays
For a while I missed the arc diagrams that were used in B5Wars, but after playing enough with designs and actually playing the game I soon discovered that when I saw [ACE] I knew what that was visually and I didn't need the diagram anymore. I do remember downloading a font a few years back that had every conceivable arc combination in it, and I did play around with adding them to standard Starmada displays where the regular arc letters go. It just didn't improve things for me at least, and more importantly was a more time consuming process. On one of the other forums I frequent somebody did arcs for a different game system by using "donut" graphs in excel, and I played around with porting that to Starmada. Personally I liked that a whole lot better as it worked with the design spreadsheet better, but in the end I dropped that too as it wasn't really "better" than the alphabetical designations (and required modification of the shipyard spreadsheet).
Personally if there is going to be a picture of the ship on the SSD, I would prefer it to be out of the way of the data. I think that some of the official B5Warss SCSs were so jumbled up with information they were an eyesore, to the point where I started using Illustrator to remove the silhouettes so "clean up" the displays. I know Starmada displays would be a lot less busy than those, but I've seen plenty of designs that would be covered by arc diagrams, and leave very little room for anything else, which kind of ruins the point of having a nice graphic.
edit: and one other thing to consider is that I can put all the designs from a given Empire into Drake notation and be able to have the designs on just a few pieces of paper when printed. I vastly prefer that to printing one ship (or at best 2) per sheet of paper and having to manage pages and pages of ships when playing with a squadron of 5-10 ships. In most of the tabletop games of Starmada I have played I have needed just one piece of paper for ships and another for fighter flight tracking.
Cheers,
Erik
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