Yes.

I had the opportunity to play this afternoon.
Although I played with SAE combat rules (I don't enough about S NE to play with anything than movement rules as exposed here), AFAIK, it should look like the S NE movement rules.
Before saying anything else, THEY ARE FINE!
A bit arduous to explain to my friend; she has already played wargames, mainly with ancien/fantaisy armies, but never space battle so was a bit wondering what to do with ships, rules, sheets.. but she just needed to play to understand how it worked.
For the information, We used my personnal SFU ship sheets, and it looked very fine. 1500 points of ships each (the price are different from Klingon Armada), meaning 1 fed DN, BC, CA, CC, CF, DD and a kzinti FF for her, 1 klingon BC, D7C, 2 D7, 2 F5 (renamed E5), 2 rom Sparrowhawk, one skyhawk and one seahawk.
We didn't track the number of turns played, ended with both our fleets retraiting (more than 750 points of ships dead at the end of the same turn). We played on a hex-less map and not having to write order was a plus. Movements were done easily and fast.

I supose that we could save a lot of play time with the  S NE combat rules.

Just for the info (especially for the problem for moving invisible units), as we played on a hex-less map without writing orders, I played cloaked ships like this:
- They always move last.
- They may not fire nor may they be fired upon.
Of course, the opponent can track their move, but romulan ships need to cloak only during the turn they may not fire their plasma. Of course, they could cloak just to move closer to the enemy, but they usually have longer ranged weapons and shouldn't need to do that.

I didn't take photos, but I will try to do that whenever there will be sun.

Marc

(Some of this is restated from a previous email conversation with Dan.)

I REALLY like this system.

I will argue for a slight modification: allow 2 OR MORE turns in the third category (what you've called "reverse course"). This would give a ship with plenty of engines a much wider range of ending hexes and allow for fancy weaving around any terrain.

Is it realistic? Hard to say -- this system doesn't really model what happens within a turn.

Also, I have concerns about the term "come about". It's not really accurate either the way it was used before (which is common in sci fi) or the new way; it has to do with the direction of the wind. Changing it from the old meaning could confuse some players. If you're going to use it incorrectly, you should at least be consistent. Alternately, you could simply not introduce any terminology.

So I'd argue for:

TURNS     MIN     MAX
0         s-t     t+s
1         0       t
2+        0       t-s

where s is speed and t is thrust. A ship may not turn if s > t.

True, but such a wide turn is impossible to (simply) model on a hexgrid. See below.

The problem is the hexgrid, which sets the minimum course adjustment at 60*. If a ship is traveling 500m/s, and wants to alter its course by 60*, it must expend enough thrust to accelerate to 500m/s in a direction 120* off of its current course. Thus, if a ship's speed exceeds its current thrust, it cannot accelerate fast enough to complete a 60* turn in a single movement phase.

This is the same principle that underlies the existing movement system, and can be offset with the Delayed Turns option (D.2).

Hmm I see the problem.

How's about this for an alternative: ship would move forward equal to its velocity, and then could use its thrust to move itself  anywhere within its thrust rating of that end point. This wouldn't have to change its facing if you're set on ships facing their direction of travel. The current velocity would be equal to the distance from the final end point to the start point, and the facing could snap to the nearest hex facing along the vector between origin and end point.

This would let us perform those wide sweeping turns at high velocity and sounds almost as simple?

I really like it also, and based on our playtesting, we've found that needing more than three turns in any given movement phase is fairly rare.
Mostly becuse you're (usually) not wanting to do a lot of maneuvering above a ship's thrust rating.
It's just not very efficient.
Kevin

I'm pretty sure he expects comments, criticism and concerns about these new changes, as there are many in all of these threads. Obviously 90% of the people commenting haven't played with them, as they are not out yet.

All I can do is compare the rules as described to the many movement rules I've used in the past and point out things that seem problematic to me.

There isn't anything "broken" about the movement system as proposed, but all vector movement rules lie somewhere on the spectrum between ease of play and realism. I happen to not like where on the line being completely unable to turn at even relatively low speeds lands on that line.

Just as an example, in a recent game of full thrust I played I had thrust 4 ships going at 14 velocity. In these rules as I understand them (from what's written in OP) I'd have to spend 3 entire turns decelerating before I could deviate from a straight line a single hex.

Based on conversations I've had, I believe the new movement system duplicates the system currently used in S:AE.
So nothing is really changing.

I typically have always prefered cinematic movement systems over vector-based systems, as they're simply easier and less cumbersome to use. I've found this new one to be really easy. I guess we can debate just how fast a ship needs to be going before it can't turn, based on the time scale of a game turn, but that probably won't matter. As again, I believe the new system is trying to model the existing system.

Your observations about not being able to turn in the Full Thrust game are true, if the ships would have had a thrust of four or less. I use the basic cinematic movement in my Full Thrust games, so I can't vouch for how the vector system in More Thrust works. But the bottom line is that, in the new Starmada system, any kind of effective maneuvering is going to need to be done at speeds of thrust rating or slower.
I think this is a neat effect, and introduces a certain amount of maneuvering tactics, but may be a little too slow for some people.
Kevin

I rather like this.

Actually did toy with this for a bit before drifting back to a modification of the existing AE movement rules.

Perhaps this is an easier solution than the optional "pivot" and "delayed turn" rules.

Taking a lunch break from our first game using these movement rules bolted on to SAE. The kids have taken to them quickly and not writing move orders has sped things up well. Has made sabre dancing with the Klingons easier to do. (Keep in mind that when playing with the kids  we had been using the simplified movement optional rule)

My oldest son has just learned, rather painfully, that just because his frigates can move most of the way across the board it doesn't mean it is a good idea. My dreadnought just took one out with less than it full complement of weapons and the heavy cruisers will at a minimum put a hurt on the second one.