To...
be...
determined.

Anytime a shield arc gets first 'damaged' by an attack in a turn, you add a tick mark to that shield arc.  You add bonus dice equal to the number of tick marks times 2 (additive would be awesome).

For Example: A battleship take damage to the front shield facing doing damage and a single tick mark is add to the Forward facing.  On the next turn, the same shield arc is hit and the attacker gets to add two dice.  That also adds a second tick mark.  In the third turn, the same ship is hit in the same arc (my advice is to turn). Since there are two tick marks, you add 4 dice to the attack (and a third tick mark). In the fourth turn, the ship is attack in the forward arc again, three tick marks add 6 dice for the attack to a maximum of 5 tick marks (or 10 dice!)

If you go the additive way, the bonus dice are below:

Number of tick marks:1  2  3  4  5
Number of extra dice: 1  3  6 10 15
Or don't get hit a 6th time is the same arc (tick marks could be per attack and not per turn if you wanted some quick battles)

-Bren

Maybe the maximum number of  bonus dice is equal to the half the starting number of attack dice rounded up.

So your examples become:
11 +4 = 15
but only 1 + 1 = 2 dice.

Thoughts?
-Bren

I have played a couple of fights with the faceted shields converted to the new system keeping the six arcs.
Instead of the "hit" shield taking damage, when a damage check takes place and the shields are damaged one or more "layers" are lost (The first across all arcs). Likewise any repair appllies to all. Simple, keeps with new rules. Some have said why bother with different types of the same ship if the stats are almost if not the same?
There is the chance here to add armor so that the Heavy Cruiser can be an Armored Cruiser, thoughts?
Paul
Faceted example:
[attachment=1]FAC1.png[/attachment]
Becomes
[attachment=0]FAC2.png[/attachment]

I actually do not hate this idea... although it does mess with the separation of effects between ECM and Shields.

One possible modification would be to do this: SHIELDS (FH+1)(AH-1), which indicates the ship receives a +1 bonus to all shield saves against shots from the front, but a -1 penalty to all shield saves against shots from the rear. (The assumption would be any arc not specified would simply be zero -- thus, no need for (TT0).

Do you mean that the ship would have 4 shield zones (front, rear, port, starboard)?
Because  this way, with only two zone (front half and rear half) there would be two points of difference between them, and it seems too much.
Otherwise, I like Mike idea, too.

Marc

Dan wrote:

Now I'm a happy man .

I think the idea, which did occur to me as I wrote the response to OldnGrey, needs some tweaking but it is flexible and would allow some very detailed arcs if your universe required them. How Dan chooses to represent 'standard' background ships is of course his design decision but I think we could look at this idea as a way of representing shields from homogenous ones right up to six or even more facings, rather than having just a set number.  Before anyone else says it, I think more than 6 shields would far too detailed, I would be happy with forward and rear shields but others might, just might, want more ...., and this system could support all those options.

My original response, by the way, was I liked the idea of crossing of an entire row on a single shield lose but to suggest using plain old numbers as they can be still read when somewhat smaller than the dice icons, cool as the icons are. But if you are the only ship in the quadrant ....
I of course want to play "you're the only Armada in the quadrant" and therefore always looking to reduce the amount of paper shuffling.

Thanks for the christmas prezzy Paul I will have a look at doing some nice ships over this weekend (nothing special happening on Sunday is there????).

Only 9 days to go until January      (bet he meant January 32nd... :roll: )

Currently, I believe the only weapon ability that bypasses shields (to some degree) is Piercing, and that merely reduces the effectiveness of shields. I don't think there's any ability (currently) that bypasses, or even reduces the effectiveness, of armor.
Kevin

I have been reading the Design Notes and from my understanding of the rules and how the play will be going. It seems that the new edition abstracts out the ships more. That seems to be making the new edition basically a fleet edition. The ships are no longer ships in that there is a narrative of what happened on the ship. (e.g. My port phaser was knocked out allow the missiles to slam into my port-aft shield) So it is less a tactical game and more just a conflict of a set of ships.

The new rules will be interesting to play larger fleet battles (i.e. 5 to 20 ships or each side). But smaller squadron battles will be less interesting. So even though I think it will be interesting to play. I am not as excited about the new rules than I am about the current rules.

Paul Franz

I am glad that the Starmada 2012 edition will Not have weapon traits that ignore shields or armor; Excellent!!!!!

I agree that Piercing +3 was a bit excessive.  Considering the high cost of Level 5 shields and the relatively low cost of Piercing +3, it made shields much less useful.  My friends and I have banned Piercing +3 and Ignores Shields.  Deleting these two along with Repeating and Strikers & Seekers has made for better games of SAE for us. 

For those who like the SAE version, and want to use it for ships in one-on-one or other small battles, keep on using it!  For those who like a smoother system for larger battles, use this New one (Starmada Task Force Edition).

:idea: I wonder if the ship designer program could allow for the design of ships of both editions in the same program.  The ship design program could have, in addition to the ship designing section, a part that translated the ship design into Starmada SAE ships and another part that shows the design in the newer Starmada STFE version.  That way the same ships can be used for a small battle, and as part of a larger task force.  Would this be practictal?

I may be wrong, but I believe I have addressed each individual concern about "overly abstract" changes in the new edition, and demonstrated that they don't represent nearly as significant a change as some seem to fear. That being said, Starmada has never really been intended to simulate ship-vs-ship duels.

I'm aware there will be some who are disappointed in the direction being taken -- that's inevitable. All I can do is continue to develop the game that I want to play, and hope that others come along for the ride. On the other hand, I would hope people will give the benefit of the doubt; and if you don't like the new rules, dislike them for what they are, not what you fear they might be.

For my part, I can bless a bit less of dice rolling. The annoying part will be surely that the weapon description as we saw it is much too abstract, but maybe it's what has to be given to have a quicker game.
I don't know what could be the solution, aside a graphic sample of that ship. Maybe something could be worked out.

Marc