Sam wrote:Starmada: Expanded or something like that, including things like exposed engines, weak hull plating, ballistics packages from VBAM, strike and advanced and stealth fighters, teleporters a la Star Trek, etc, etc.
I think that a book comprised of all of those extra options would probably be a nice addition to the game. Right now it is those kinds of extra or generational technology steps that would be nice to have formalized, even if it wouldn't have much utility outside of a campaign environment. For example, few people would probably waste the space on a first-generation PDS that only blocks on a PEN roll of '1' when they can just buy the full PDS instead. In a campaign though, it could be interesting if you had to develop *levels* in said technology, and couldn't just jump to full effect. Or if there were more options that became available once the core technology was researched.
Ballistic packages I have put some thought into, but so far I haven't decided what would work best. For a few of them, the results are fairly obvious:
Heavy: +1 DMG
Long-Range: +3 range
Piercing: +1 PEN
MIRV: +1 ROF
And so on. It wouldn't be too hard to tie all of them into a specific statistic, but tying it into the SX combat rating system might be difficult from the standpoint of having to modify the sheet to figure the increase in capabilities.
Teleporters/Transporters -- I started converting a few of my old Babylon 5 Wars Star Trek ships over this last weekend and in theory have the Transporters acting as Range 10 marine delivery engines. I haven't completely fleshed out my concept, but the level of shields would likely determine what number would have to be rolled to deposit the marines, or simply a lack of shields completely. Of course, the Starmada Compendium had rules for those I believe -- I just haven't gotten around to looking at them yet to check 
But I think there would be a market for an expanded equipment book and updated XLS sheet that incorporated them all into it. As for an application that was more friendly to add things to, that would be nice but it would require some development funds to do, and though nice probably wouldn't be entirely worth the cost. That being said, it would be nice to have such a program that loaded its equipment list from a tab or comma delimited text file and would then allow for a greater range of options. However, on the flipside, the XLS currently let's us make all of the modifications we could like, whereas a stand-alone app would have limited modability for those of us that could barely get C++ to display a DOS box in Windows.
-Tyrel
