Unexpectedly it was only about twenty minutes after I made the first post that my Starmada: AE rulebook dropped through my letter box. Hopefully the Annex will be following in a day or two.

I don't but the "first blood" argument. What you're neglecting to mention is that the low ROF/High DMG design does on average more damage when it gets its (less frequent) hits. If you were going for a prolonged sniping action it's a subjective matter whether you would want to hit infrequently with low DMG or (more) infrequently with (not so) low DMG.

But realistically the issue is about the design of weapons for a Starmada game and, as such, it is never going to be about designs that are expected to pick away one-on-one with single weapons for several turns like that example. Designs are going to be based on an assumption that each side will be aiming bring enough firepower to bear simultaneously to cripple or destroy some of its enemies and gain a firepower advantage in as short a time as possible (a turn or two) and implicitly large scale averaging is going to dominate over small scale perturbations.

The key to this problem is that the steps in the combat resolution:

ROF -> ACC -> IMP -> SHIELDS -> DMG

are all multiplicative and therefore all commutative (and associative), you can do them in any order with no overall statistical effect and in sufficient number tending towards identical results. So we can combine the whole thing into

(ROF x IMP x DMG) -> ACC -> SHIELDS

in other words simply multiply the weapon factors intially to get a single uniform weapon stat (dice number) and then, in combat, roll these dice against accuracy and shields.

(Weapon Dice) -> ACC -> SHIELDS

I acknowldege that outside of pure competitive play there is narrative justification for choosing high ROF/low DMG weapons (gattling guns) over low ROF/high DMG (death star cannons) even though the latter will always be more cost effective against ships.

But that bring me back to my main beef. I could probably turn a blind eye to the lack of statistical distinction between the contributions of ROF and DMG, I suspect there are a lot of games out there which do the same anyway purely for narrative effect. The real problem is that the IMP stat specifically is basically worthless: a sensible design decision is to either sink all the points into ROF if you want anti -fighter capability or (narrative) an X-Wing fighter, or sink all the points into DMG if you want value for money or (narrative) a death star. IMP doesn't contribute anything, it's just an arbitrary multiplying factor for the number of dice used, along with the other two slightly more meaningful multipliers. At best it's where you would dump additional points if you had maxed out the DMG statistic, But only if you were abiding by the arbitary (maximum 5) limits in the first place. If you wanted simpify thing without having any effect on the game you could simply drop the IMP stat and allow higher limits on the other two characteristics.

This is disappointing because from initially skimming the manual. I had first assumed that weapon Impact (as stated in 4.3) was a specific counter to shield strength, i.e. in classic terms you would see warhips with big high impact guns focussing on tough targets while auxillaries and escorts picked off the weaker ones. However, looking now at the mechanisms, I've realised that the exposition in that section is factually rubbish (maybe it's just intended as narrative). The problem is that the "Impact Step" really comprises two unrelated substeps, first the existing dice from the accuracy step are multipled by the IMP stat and then second, the dice that are now on the table are rolled against the Shield stat. There is no more direct  interraction between the IMP value and the Shield value than there is with the ROF and DMG factors which multiply the dice before and after.

For example, if we took three fleets which were identical except in the weapon stats the first having all weapons (ROF/IMP/DMG) of (3/1/1) a second with all weapons (1/3/1) and the third with all weapons (1/1/3) and played them move for move and roll for roll against a mixed fleet they would all do exactly the same except for a few minor perturbations each way due to the sequencing. You would not see that any of the fleets showed any specific advantage or disadvantage against any other type of ship regardless of the enemies size or shields.

In other words if you expect that a high ROF does better against small ships, high DMG does better against large ships or high IMP does better against tough ships, your wrong... dead wrong... seriously, they're all exactly the same.

I have to say at this point that I think the basic combat mechanism is actually broken, going by the text of the rulebook I don't think it actually does what the designers seem to think it does. We could quibble about the fine detailed effects of specific dice roll sequences on a limited scale, but all of this is overshadowed by the general fact that the independent weapon stats don't have any clear distinct meaning beyond narrative and hair splitting and the game doesn't seem to actually work in the way that it is stated (or believed) to.

I think for my own peace of mind I'm going to try replacing the Impact step with a direct challenge (d6 + IMP - 1 > Shield) and see if that works reasonably well with some of the other rules. It may also have beneficial effect of decoupling the ROF and the DMG dice factors.

Does anyone else use alternate combat resolution mechanics?

No, as I stated Dan's rebuttal was incomplete and as I pointed out the extra damage compensates for the less common hits. As Dan acknowledged the statistical results are the same, what's at variance are short term perturbations and there isn't a strong case for saying that a bias towards more hits with less damage is more important than less hits with more damage.

I have a wargaming friend  who is also has a Phd in Statistics (he did it on gambling statistics), he always says there are two types of statistics; real world statistics and wargaming statistics. In wargaming statistics the one in a million chance happens 50% of the time  , and he has seen it in almost every game . His main point was that most people, including himself, don't put in the required analyses to give an accurate statistical basis for conclusions and unless you play a situation far more times that actually happens almost each 'event' is an anomaly and simple maths are not capable of truly describing the event.   

So perhaps Bill if you play a few more games before challenging the game designer over his stats and Dan relents from making his point a 100,001 times   we could have a little peace in the galaxy (but then what would be the point of a space based wargame!)

In short Bill, the game works and we do not all ' just play weapons stats for the fluff value' but they are only part of a quite complex interrelationship between weapon stats, weapon traits, and ships traits. But always remember its is a game not reality (Oh dear I think I have just gone too far and spoken a heresy :? ).

One interesting thing that comes up from this discussion, which I never really considered before, is that the value of ACC is not linear... just as high ROF is more valuable than high DMG because it makes it more likely that some hits will be scored earlier, so too is ACC 3+ more than twice as valuable as ACC 5+.

Specifically, a fleet with ACC 3+/DMG 2 is 15% more likely to win than a fleet with ACC 5+/DMG 4 (100,000 battles, Side A wins 53,479).

Just to back up what Dan is saying, in my (less statistical) experience playing various designs and factions the side with the better ACC weapons pretty much always beats a fleet with poorer ACC, no matter how much "crunch" the less accurate weapons have. A fleet with 5+ ACC needs to get close to its targets before it can have a hope of landing its punches. Meanwhile the 3+ fleet has been peppering them with shots and usually hitting at least a few, maybe knocking out a couple of the weapons you were counting on once you got into range to be effective. Then at close range the 5+ weapon is (obviously) still far less likely to hit than the 3+ one. This has led to rarely using ACC 4+ and NEVER using 5+ in "home-brew" designs.
Cheers,
Erik

Thanks for the simulation results Dan. UNfortunately you completely failed to address my concerns and I have actually to confirm them somewhat. Although there was an immediately obvious problem with your results, I felt it best to put in the time to do my own simulations and recompose my argument since it's clear that it really wasn't understood first time round. Please read this time.

First though I need to address the simulation because the numbers you've give an immediately bias against low-accuracy/high-DMG weapons.

The problem is that the damage of these weapons is only inflicted in multiples of three and therefore to destroy your ideal 10 hull ships the high damage weapons need to do 12 points (3 x 4 hits) of damage. 2 out of the 12 points of damage (16.7%) is wasted helping debris clouds expand. For a best case scenario with the hull being a multiple of the damage value (as they are in the high accuracy case where DMG is 1) there is zero wasted damage.

Reproducing this myself this time varying the hull across a range of values (with the weapon number equalling the hull size for simplicity) I get:

1 hull/weapons each: A wins: 70495 (70.50%), B wins: 11680 (11.68%), draws 17825 (17.82%), advantage: 58.81%
2 hull/weapons each: A wins: 52144 (52.14%), B wins: 26830 (26.83%), draws 21026 (21.03%), advantage: 25.31%
4 hull/weapons each: A wins: 38380 (38.38%), B wins: 41883 (41.88%), draws 19737 (19.74%), advantage: -3.50%
4 hull/weapons each: A wins: 59812 (59.81%), B wins: 32533 (32.53%), draws 7655 (7.66%), advantage: 27.28%
5 hull/weapons each: A wins: 52256 (52.26%), B wins: 38031 (38.03%), draws 9713 (9.71%), advantage: 14.23%
6 hull/weapons each: A wins: 44154 (44.15%), B wins: 44903 (44.90%), draws 10943 (10.94%), advantage: -0.75%
7 hull/weapons each: A wins: 56495 (56.49%), B wins: 39168 (39.17%), draws 4337 (4.34%), advantage: 17.33%
8 hull/weapons each: A wins: 51927 (51.93%), B wins: 41608 (41.61%), draws 6465 (6.46%), advantage: 10.32%
9 hull/weapons each: A wins: 46134 (46.13%), B wins: 45779 (45.78%), draws 8087 (8.09%), advantage: 0.35%
10 hull/weapons each: A wins: 54921 (54.92%), B wins: 42041 (42.04%), draws 3038 (3.04%), advantage: 12.88%
11 hull/weapons each: A wins: 51754 (51.75%), B wins: 43401 (43.40%), draws 4845 (4.84%), advantage: 8.35%
12 hull/weapons each: A wins: 47456 (47.46%), B wins: 46190 (46.19%), draws 6354 (6.35%), advantage: 1.27%
13 hull/weapons each: A wins: 54365 (54.37%), B wins: 43218 (43.22%), draws 2417 (2.42%), advantage: 11.15%
14 hull/weapons each: A wins: 51521 (51.52%), B wins: 44560 (44.56%), draws 3919 (3.92%), advantage: 6.96%
15 hull/weapons each: A wins: 48275 (48.27%), B wins: 46596 (46.60%), draws 5129 (5.13%), advantage: 1.68%
16 hull/weapons each: A wins: 53897 (53.90%), B wins: 44156 (44.16%), draws 1947 (1.95%), advantage: 9.74%
17 hull/weapons each: A wins: 51839 (51.84%), B wins: 44969 (44.97%), draws 3192 (3.19%), advantage: 6.87%
18 hull/weapons each: A wins: 48911 (48.91%), B wins: 46653 (46.65%), draws 4436 (4.44%), advantage: 2.26%
19 hull/weapons each: A wins: 53235 (53.23%), B wins: 45000 (45.00%), draws 1765 (1.76%), advantage: 8.23%
20 hull/weapons each: A wins: 51466 (51.47%), B wins: 45709 (45.71%), draws 2825 (2.83%), advantage: 5.76%
21 hull/weapons each: A wins: 49080 (49.08%), B wins: 47141 (47.14%), draws 3779 (3.78%), advantage: 1.94%
22 hull/weapons each: A wins: 52986 (52.99%), B wins: 45523 (45.52%), draws 1491 (1.49%), advantage: 7.46%
23 hull/weapons each: A wins: 51459 (51.46%), B wins: 46031 (46.03%), draws 2510 (2.51%), advantage: 5.43%
24 hull/weapons each: A wins: 49543 (49.54%), B wins: 47012 (47.01%), draws 3445 (3.44%), advantage: 2.53%

These results are consistent with all the other variations on the simulation, such as fixed weapon numbers and reduced degredation.

By these figures its obvious that waste damage and not the "early weapon damage" distribution is what accounts for the cast majority of the advantage of the high-accuracy weapons in this simulation. Furthermore, in cases where there is no waste damage (hulls values of 3, 6, 9...) at the lower end of the scale (where your "early damage" effect should be most pronounced) the high damage configurations are actually slightly more effective. When I simulate high ROF instead of high accuracy (which you were actually doing), the difference between the high-ROF and the high-DMG configurations is less than 1% across the entire range  when the shot wastage is eliminated.

In other words the "early weapon damage" effect is simply undetectable, if it exists at all.

Waste damage is a real effect but the damage needed to kill a hull would probably be spread randomly across a largish range of values and we would expect the waste damage typically to be about half between the maximum and the minimum. And, as I pointed out in the earlier post, when the sample size increases (more hull hits in this case) the error due to the distribution reduces (in this case the wasted damage becomes a smaller portion of the increasing hull damage requirements).

Altogether the simulation results are really just confirming my point that the Starmada combat however is purely a matter of statistical distribution in a fairly narrow range (more likely about 10%) of effect between best weapon configuration and the worst. Other game related factors such as limited choice through weapon bearing or ability to selectively focus enough weapon fire to cripple an enemy are for the most part going to further flatten the advantage.

What you are actually observing is that in the Combat resolution equation (ROFxACCxIMPxSHLDxDMG) factors at the start are slightly more valuable than those at the end. Why? Predominantly because they allow finer grain resolution in the final product and therefore less waste damage and a flatter distribution. If we swap the damage dice multiplication step and the ROF steps at the start and the end of the equation (we'll call it virtual projected future damage) then damage becomes the "best" factor instead for no reason thatn because it's at the start of the calculation.

----------------------------

And that brings me (finally) back to my original point:- none of the core weapon factors have any meaning beyond the minor effects due to their position in a lossy statistical process. Specifically they don't interract with the target stats except in the most trivial way.

When state "RoF is the best stat" there was a chorus of agreement from almost everyone else. If you pointed out that DMG is actually more cost effective due to the cost bias then everyone would probably agree with that as well. Either way, though, the concensus is that there's only one optimal way of selecting weapon stats, anyone who takes anything differently is playing a (marginally) suboptimal configuration.

But it would be the same even if you succeeded in finding a perfect cost/benefit balance between the stats. There's still no good reason for anyone to select more than a single stat to use.

What's lacking from the strategic mix is the concept of weapons that are better in certain circumstances but not others. For example nobody in this thread has said anything like "ROF is good against small craft, but DMG is better against large ones".

Compare this with Full Thrust. In that game basic beam weapons are defined with accuracy and dice number matched against shields. The system is generally simpler because there are only two or three basic steps in combat resolution - takea handful of dice at the outset and resolve them against accuracy and shields, but it's no less stategically deep that Starmada because even though Starmada has more combat steps to handle each of 3 (ROF, IMP, DMG) weapon statistics they don't contribute anything. There's no reason to utilise more than one stat. Combine them into a since weapon dice product and you don't lose any strategic options or subtleties.

For example:

actually makes this argument. I'm not arguing against the special rules but where they are actually recognised as doing the "job" of a core mechanic (IMP) which itself is not used by "many people" then there's obviously something amiss.

Going on to my main argument against the IMP stat (which is a specific example of the general problem of wepaon stats) I ran another series of simulations to test the relative effectiveness of IMP over ROF and DMG against low an high shields, this time using the full core Starmada rules (including the extended dice rules and misses on a '1'):

Low Shield: high-ROF vs high-IMP:
Fully simulating 100000 battles:
Ship A    hull: 10, shield: 1, weapons 10 [accuracy: 4+, ROF: 5, IMP: 1, DMG: 1]
Ship B    hull: 10, shield: 1, weapons 10 [accuracy: 4+, ROF: 1, IMP: 5, DMG: 1]

A wins: 5082 (5.08%), B wins: 29 (0.03%), draws 94889 (94.89%), advantage: 5.05%
A: 2.08 damage per round, B: 2.09 damage per round

Low Shield: high-IMP vs high-DMG:
Fully simulating 100000 battles:
Ship A    hull: 10, shield: 1, weapons 10 [accuracy: 4+, ROF: 1, IMP: 5, DMG: 1]
Ship B    hull: 10, shield: 1, weapons 10 [accuracy: 4+, ROF: 1, IMP: 1, DMG: 5]

A wins: 3601 (3.60%), B wins: 4945 (4.95%), draws 91454 (91.45%), advantage: -1.34%
A: 2.08 damage per round, B: 2.08 damage per round

High Shield: high-ROF vs high-IMP:
Fully simulating 100000 battles:
Ship A    hull: 10, shield: 5, weapons 10 [accuracy: 4+, ROF: 5, IMP: 1, DMG: 1]
Ship B    hull: 10, shield: 5, weapons 10 [accuracy: 4+, ROF: 1, IMP: 5, DMG: 1]

A wins: 49639 (49.64%), B wins: 48148 (48.15%), draws 2213 (2.21%), advantage: 1.49%
A: 0.26 damage per round, B: 0.25 damage per round

High Shield: high-IMP vs high-DMG:
Fully simulating 100000 battles:
Ship A    hull: 10, shield: 5, weapons 10 [accuracy: 4+, ROF: 1, IMP: 5, DMG: 1]
Ship B    hull: 10, shield: 5, weapons 10 [accuracy: 4+, ROF: 1, IMP: 1, DMG: 5]

A wins: 47748 (47.75%), B wins: 46961 (46.96%), draws 5291 (5.29%), advantage: 0.79%
A: 0.34 damage per round, B: 0.29 damage per round

So across the entire range of shield values (1-5) the differential between the performance of a weapon configuration that favours high-ROF, high_IMP or high DMG is barely in a 3.5% range. with ROF being the best in all cases and barely a 1% difference between DMG and IMP regardless of the target shielding. All this, of course ignoring, the waste damage effect which uniformly favours ROF and accuracy.

Starmada doesn't exist in isolation. There's been a 30 year history of starship construction/combat games (TCS was published in 1981) and plenty of other genre wargames in the last half century. A lot of them include some rules for weapon penetration and armour as a general mechanism and, across the board, they all have a major effect on the relative effectiveness of different weapons on different targets.

For example Brilliant Lances used two basic varieties of of beam weapons, particle accelerators and lasers. The PAs did a lot of damage compared with lasers but it was fully reduced by armour whereas lasers had a penetration modifier that reduced the effectiveness of the armour for reducing damage. The penetraction factor typicall about 1/10, in other words (after cost balancing) there was approximately a 300% differential each way between high penetration weapons and low penetration weapons in their effectiveness against high and low armoured targets. Predecessors costed armour on an exponential scale or made penetration rolls on multiple dice for a bell curve but always with a major differential in the circumstantial performance.

Modern dice bucket games need to rely more on linear effects. 40K has a step threshold system simply adding a strength value to a dice roll and matching it against and armour value. As a consequence some weapons cannot damage some targets (which is a major design issue but not an absolute limitation); selecting a mix of weapons (or even ignoring high strength weapons to focus on victory conditions) does therefore become an important factor in the core game strategy. Plenty of wargames over the decades have implemented similar mechanisms but always with a clear effect.

My own current Starmada variant is to replace the existing "IMP multplies dice" mechanic with an alternative: IMP + d6(extended) >= (shield x 2). The numbers have selected so there's a reasonable range of values using the (non-linear) extended dice mechanism, but a IMP 1 weapon can still damage a shield 5 (doubled to 10) ship on rare occasions. Simulating this I get the following results:

Shield 0: high-ROF vs high-IMP (alternative impact rule):
Fully simulating 100000 battles:
Ship A    hull: 10, shield: 0, weapons 10 [accuracy: 4+, ROF: 5, IMP: 1, DMG: 1]
Ship B    hull: 10, shield: 0, weapons 10 [accuracy: 4+, ROF: 1, IMP: 5, DMG: 1]

A wins: 99902 (99.90%), B wins: 0 (0.00%), draws 98 (0.10%), advantage: 99.90%
A: 2.50 damage per round, B: 0.50 damage per round

Shield 0: high-IMP vs high-DMG (alternative impact rule):
Fully simulating 100000 battles:
Ship A    hull: 10, shield: 0, weapons 10 [accuracy: 4+, ROF: 1, IMP: 5, DMG: 1]
Ship B    hull: 10, shield: 0, weapons 10 [accuracy: 4+, ROF: 1, IMP: 1, DMG: 5]

A wins: 63 (0.06%), B wins: 99675 (99.67%), draws 262 (0.26%), advantage: -99.61%
A: 0.50 damage per round, B: 2.48 damage per round

...

Shield 5: high-ROF vs high-IMP (alternative impact rule):
Fully simulating 100000 battles:
Ship A    hull: 10, shield: 5, weapons 10 [accuracy: 4+, ROF: 5, IMP: 1, DMG: 1]
Ship B    hull: 10, shield: 5, weapons 10 [accuracy: 4+, ROF: 1, IMP: 5, DMG: 1]

A wins: 3532 (3.53%), B wins: 96421 (96.42%), draws 47 (0.05%), advantage: -92.89%
A: 0.04 damage per round, B: 0.13 damage per round

Shield 5: high-IMP vs high-DMG (alternative impact rule):
Fully simulating 100000 battles:
Ship A    hull: 10, shield: 5, weapons 10 [accuracy: 4+, ROF: 1, IMP: 5, DMG: 1]
Ship B    hull: 10, shield: 5, weapons 10 [accuracy: 4+, ROF: 1, IMP: 1, DMG: 5]

A wins: 85507 (85.51%), B wins: 14018 (14.02%), draws 475 (0.47%), advantage: 71.49%
A: 0.14 damage per round, B: 0.04 damage per round

the damage values vary by orders of magnitude, high-RoF and high-DMG have a 5:1 advantage over high-IMP weapons when used against low shield targets, but against targets with high shield ratings the high_IMP weapons have a 3:1 advantage over the alternatives.

The core rules of Starmada's weapon combat mechanics are the worst of both worlds, they simply lack that strategic dimension of many systems without benefitting from the streamlined simplicity of others. Applying parsimony to game design means that mechanics that have little or no effect should probably be dropped. Starmada is either intended as a game where design, deployment, skill and often luck make a difference over a short number of turns, in which case the effects of single volley need to make a significant difference, or it's a game where ships line up on opposite sides and the players roll buckets of dice until the "marginal percentages accumulate over the course of a game". You cannot have it both ways. I don't seriously believe that the argument from percentages is anything other than an excuse. Anyone who has played any reasonable amount of wargames will recognise Section 4.3 as being fairly typical in describing a mechanism in which IMP is intended to be used to counter shields, and it's my belief that this is the mechanism that was actually intended as well as likely what many players actually believe happens. Your own argument:

basicaly confirms your own mistaken belief that a mechanic relating IMP and shields exists and IMP is "more effective" (your words) whereas in fact it gives less than a one percent advantage. After saying that (as the designer) I don't think that you can reasonably argue that the absence of any such relationship is not a design flaw.

The problem I suspect is that the baby's been thrown out with the bathwater. In adopting the universal dice multiplying mechanism the numerical interaction between IMP (formerly PEN) and shields familiar in other games was dropped. At first it looked to me like an elegant game mechanic without any need for an arithmetical comparison or table lookup step but it was self-defeating, by removing the connection you removed the actual interraction and therefore any value for having a seperate IMP parameter.

As has been demonstrated by some of the previous posts, the mechanisms are not actually well enough understood by the designers and, on the tabletop, they are buried too deeply in the die rolling sequence and behind special rules for the players to have noticed either. For this reason you can ignore the problem and keep the game as it currently exists, but it doesn't alter the fact that there's a major block of the rule system that doesn't make any positive contribution to the game in the manner that was intended. At the least it offers an opportunity for game improvement even if everyone is currently happy in their blissful ignorance.</r>

Don't feel bad about me, but I've got a headache, now...
Frankly, I feel all of this is, well, outside the scope of the game.
The game exists to allow us to have some fun with good rules (simple, versatile, fun), not to try to mimic a Cray one.
Full ahead, roll dice, and damn the torpedoes!

Marc

You know, even if I have deluded myself into thinking that the Starmada combat mechanics work on some level...I have enjoyed the playing of the games. I personally raise questions all the time about game mechanics, and have come up with some house rules that have worked for me, and others that I have found that don't work. I chirp as much as anyone when I feel that I have something to add. I just can't understand how someone can read a set of rules, and particularly a major component of the combat system, and decide that somehow the game designer screwed up what he intended to release to the public. Like it was somehow an early edit, or maybe a variant that made it into the final product like some kind of typo. Jeez.

Even if you show there is no difference in the value of ROF v. IMP v. DMG where ship-ship combat is concerned (and frankly, I don't have ANY simulations or math to back them up...I honestly don't want to hear about simulations...any sim as only as good as the data and parameters being fed into it by the programmer, and frankly ignores that fact that any player will tell you he always rolls a 1 when it can do the most harm to his chances of winning!) the whole argument disintegrates when you add fighters/small craft to the mix. As the rules are written not only is high IMP & DMG of absolutely zero value versus fighters, it can even be argued that it hurts you as it eats up space that might otherwise be used for more ROF or even whole weapons that would be able to kill more fighters. That's got to be worth something unless you ban fighters altogether.

So basically why am I chiming in? Basically, for whatever warts Starmada has it has proven itself to me as a fun and playable game that doesn't require a PhD in gamology to play. I have played games that have manuals larger that the big dictionary in my office...and guess what, those games weren't perfect. The rules of Starmada are incredibly streamline when compared to things like Starfire, B5Wars, Star Fleet Battles, so it stands to reason that people can find imperfections lurking in them. Did I mention that I have often and perhaps obnoxiously fired off ideas for house rules on this forum? Do I think everyone here (this forum) has a right to point out things that might make the game better? Yup. I think that all of us flinging stuff against the wall helps Cricket make his game better over time, which benefits us as players. I sat back, reading the posts on this topic, to see if there was going to be a reason why the system was broken, hoping that if it was then it could be fixed. So far I have not sen any evidence that it is the case. It may not do what one person thinks it should, but is that broken? I am an utter total loser geek (ok, so I own my own home and don't live in my parent's basement...and yes, I have kissed a girl...wow, I guess I have lost my edge over the years) so I guess at some level I don't care if ROF IMP and DMG are all statistically, exactly the same. When my imagination shows me a rapid-fire pulse laser ripping away at the enemy's hull, I want high ROF, but if I fire my spinal Blast Destructor, I want high DMG.
To sum up: Nothing's perfect, and until you put your game on the market and it turns out to be better than Dan's, I'll be playing his.

Erik

Starmada's strength is definitely the design system.  You can imagine almost any space faring race and make it come to life.  This is what I love about it and why we picked it as our game of choice.  This of course is all possible because of the design system which is 100% transparent.  Many other games don't fully reveal how everything is costed, and in most cases are not as well balanced as Starmada - yet starmada has it all out in the open for people to pick apart.

To the OP I gotta tell you, when you play the game, there is just no way the outcome of the game is going to be that heavily influenced by the ROF/IMP/DMG issues.  Its going to come down to tactics, the outcomes of the relatively small number of dice you roll in a game and of course, a couple of very nasty combinations of weapon traits.

Regardless of simulation, ROF is the top because it is "never wasted" against any type of craft.  DMG is at the bottom because it is wasted against fighters AND flotillas.  IMP still works against flotillas - so its better.

If you want a game that has a "strength" type component - go check out colonial battlefleet.  It has shields that are ablative but then an armour rating that must be penetrated for full damage (plus a critical).  Of course in that game you can't design your own weapons, you have a limited number of hardpoints, only 2 types of fighters and "accuracy" is proportional to the range of the weapon.

-Tim

This is true.

ROF is weighted most heavily due to the existence of fighters. IMP and DMG have different weights for a number of reasons, not least because I thought it was rather elegant -- for a 1/1/1 weapon, the factors are 2^(0/3) * 2^(1/3) * 2^(2/3).

Frankly, I must apologize for getting wrapped up in the numbers; that's what happens when I'm presented with an absolute claim like "there is no difference..." There is a difference; we can argue whether it is due to "getting your licks in first", "wasted damage", or some other artifact of "position[ing] in a lossy statistical process". However, the issue is really not worth the text and forum space already devoted to it.

Consider: if it were to be determined there is no basis for weighting IMP and DMG differently, the formula would become ROF x (IMP + 0.414) x (DMG + 0.414). Doing so would increase the CRAT of a ship with nothing but 1/1/5 weapons by a whopping 4.6%. Meanwhile, the CRAT of a ship with nothing but 1/5/1 weapons would decrease by 4.5%.

In other words, all the hulabaloo is about, in the most extreme and unlikely case, one fighter flight out of a 1000-point fleet.

More importantly, this focus on thousands (millions?) of battles completely ignores the short-term effects of various weapon configurations. Berserker said, "Starmada is either intended as a game where design, deployment, skill and often luck make a difference over a short number of turns, in which case the effects of single volley need to make a significant difference, or it's a game where ships line up on opposite sides and the players roll buckets of dice until the 'marginal percentages accumulate over the course of a game'. You cannot have it both ways."

Actually, I would argue you MUST have it both ways. The results of buckets of dice accumulated over several turns or even games are important when determining the relative value of particular weapons, traits, and equipment. That's what all the numbers have been about in this thread. But the short-term effects are also important, because that's what makes the course of each individual game unpredictable, and therefore fun.

Against a target with shields 3, a 5/1/1 ACC 4+ weapon has the following damage probabilities (for simplicity, we're ignoring the 50/50 split between hull and systems-only damage):

DAMAGE 0: 23.7%
DAMAGE 1: 39.6%
DAMAGE 2: 26.4%
DAMAGE 3: 8.8%
DAMAGE 4: 1.5%
DAMAGE 5: 0.1%

For a 1/5/1 weapon:

DAMAGE 0: 51.6%
DAMAGE 1: 7.8%
DAMAGE 2: 15.6%
DAMAGE 3: 15.6%
DAMAGE 4: 7.8%
DAMAGE 5: 1.6%

For a 1/1/5 weapon:

DAMAGE 0: 75.0%
DAMAGE 5: 25.0%

Admittedly, there is no difference in the POTENTIAL number of hits -- in each case, the average is 1.25 -- but there are clear differences in the distribution of ACTUAL hits. One could write this off as mere "narrative" effect, but most players would probably agree there's a big difference between inflicting no damage and rolling 5 damage dice.

Which brings up an interesting observation: even if we stipulate that little is lost by throwing all of your potential dice into ROF stat, little is gained, either. There will still need to be three steps -- to-hit, impact, damage -- all you're shedding is the possible need to pick up additional dice at each step.

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On the question of whether IMP should have a direct interaction with the target's shields; I would say "no", but that's merely because I'd like to keep the basic rules as vanilla as possible. I'd rather leave IMP as it is for players who want the existing effect (even if just for "narrative" purposes) and rely on the piercing/non-piercing traits to fill the role of specialized weapons.

However, for those who do want to model such an interaction, Berserker's suggestion is not a bad one. A quick run-through of the numbers shows the following relative values:

IMP 1: 1.0
IMP 2: 1.9
IMP 3: 2.7
IMP 4: 4.3
IMP 5: 6.0

For my money, that's close enough you could probably use this as an optional rule without making any changes to the point value... But I'd prefer to wait to say for certain until some playtesting reports come in.

Good point - but be that as it may, currently there are flotillas and they do make impact more valuable.  I suspect flotillas are under used, but they are a good counter to someone who loads up on high DMG weapons.