I played Starfire for a long tine when I attended the University of Florida.  The earliest games with the basic weapons was a lot of fun.  It eventually got very complex...  The same thing happened to Star Fleet Battles.

That is one of the reasons I am addicted to Starmada.

There are three or so books set in the Starfire universe by David(?) Webber.  They are excellent and it is fun to know the mechanics of how the weapons being fired in the books work.

cricket wrote:

Well, even it was not intended that is what happened. The conversion of the SFB ships to the Star Fleet Armada series it was pretty much a direct conversion. That is a Federation Heavy Cruiser in SFB would have 4 Photons and the Federation Heavy Cruiser had 4 Photons.

SFB is definitely a ship-vs-ship kinda of game. (Large fleet battles are hard to play and take a long time) And doing a direct conversion communicated to the SFB community that it was a ship-vs-ship kind of game.

So the way I see happening in the future is a split like what happened in StarFire, where some people like the 3rd edition and some people glommed onto the 4th edition. That is some people will stick with the older version and will be happy and some people will be thrilled with the new version.

For me, I will probably use the old version to do ship-vs-ship kind of game and use the new version as a fleet version (i.e. instead of the Fleet Ops).

I can't agree with the ship vs. ship because of sfb.  In sfb you have to do energy allocation which needs your full intention when you start changing speed and juggling reserve power or playing around with ECM or tractor beams.  Starmada handles (or ignores) those in much simpler ways. 

For me Starmada doesn't feel right unless I have at least 6 ships.  If its going to still do that AND add more fleet support options (command etc) at the expense of weapon detail fine by me.

-Tim

Having seen some ship display samples, I would like to present what I'd like to see pertaining to fire arcs. It can be improved, though. Stats are prurely conjectural.
Of course, I would do it myself as I feel it will take some work just for SFU ships.

Marc

In fact, that was what I did after uploading that sample here.
I will do it tomorrow.

Marc

Here is a new version. As can be seen, you can easily accomodate three diagram. in the event a ship has more than 3 weapons, some diagrams should have 2 weapons.
BTW, Daniel said he didn't want to indicate the number of real weapon for each bank, useful only for fluff. I could remove them, of course.

Marc

I never used seekers; they are too inflexible.  I prefer the slightly more expensive Strikers.  The ability to move them as you want is very useful/ They ae similiar to the predator drones the US Military uses in Afghanastan.  Make them speed 15, accuracy 3+, give it halves shields and damage 3.  These strikers will be brutal and devestating...
Strikers are more effective than seekers or even fighters... 8-)

Urgh, yeah...  Strikers are very, very good in AE.  They came to dominate the game in our group (on super-high engines carriers, since engines and carrier capacity don't interact cost-wise...) until we banned them but kept seekers legal.  People tried switching to seekers, but found them ineffective (too easy to predict location and thereby put in AF killzones), and so we saw the rise of big-gun fleets again.  It was interesting, and our gradual initial development (from big-gun fleets to fighters and guns to just strikers) was eerily similar to history.  I don't see people banning strikers IRL any time soon, though...

Personnaly, I do not have that problem as I play with friends that are usually noobies, playing with my minis, and I keep the rules at a minimum. We use existing universes, especially SFU (even if I reworked the ship display sheets). Strikers IMHO should be reserved to bombers or fighter-bombers, ie those fighters with part or all of their weapons expendables. For example, they have missiles and an autocannon. The first time they shoot with missiles, as strikers, then revert to fighters and shoot with the cannon.
I feel it's sad to ban things just because you exploited something to the max, but I understand, that's life.

Marc

I'd give you an update, but I was told to stop spending so much time on the forums and to get back to work...

Darn right! 
Though I expect everyone to throw rotten fruit at me for saying it   
Erik