Hi! And welcome to the world of MJ12 Games! My name is David. Although I do not work for MJ12 or represent them in any way, I am a huge fan of Daniel Kast's work (he is the guy that wrote Starmada). So, let's see if we can answer your questions about Starmada.

You Wrote: So I read the sample rules. The game seems okay. Yes, that was pretty much my reaction when I first read the sample rules from the old Starmada (pre Starmada X). Starmada is a game with some beautiful subtlety built into it -- in other words, you really have to play a few games to truly appreciate the amazine engine that Dan has created here. Give it shot -- I think you will see the wonder that I saw after only a few short games.

You wrote: How complex is the construction system? How complext is it? Not very complex at all. But the more important question is this one: How robust is the construction system? And the answer to that one is: Very, very robust. Virtually anything you can think of can be simulated with the rules as presented. Using some very simple guidelines (and the resources on these pages -- namely the people who frequent these pages) you can easilly find yourself able to simulate any sort of universe you want to.

You wrote: The rules kind of remind me of Full Thrust. Although the simplicity of the rules can be very reminicent of Full Thrust, the depth of the rules far surpasses those of Full Thrust. In other words, Starmada is (as the back cover text explains) a simple but not simplistic game. Full Thrust is, in my opinion, a simple and simplistic game.

Let me explain:

Starmada, on the other hand, offers you a deep, and (nearly) comprehensive weapon design system allowing any weapon to accurately pointed out against any other weapon. This system allows you to set the weapon's range, accuracy, rate of fire, shield penetration, damage, and special characteristics -- such as having inverted range modifiers, or perhaps ignoring shields, or even dealing damage turn after turn, after turn -- all without becoming overwhelmingly complex! The system is consitant in its application, so that when you see the various values, it quickly becomes intuitive as to how this all works together. In the end, you have the ability to create weapons that all use the same systems of rules, but all feel very, very different from one another.

The same is also true with the rest of ship design. You can make the ship as large as you like; you can set the engine speed, and shield rating -- and you have a wide array of special equipment and ship upgrades (from Anti-Fighter Batteries to Stealth Generators) to make your ship feel different from all other ships on the playing field.

You wrote: How many figures are in an average game? How does the game compare to ther starship games? An average game of Starmada is hard to pin down. I know that in my games, I have had about a 6-12 ships on each side (not including fighter flights). A couple of friends of mine and I are about to test out some ships from my ACE fleet (part of a project I am working on), and the NEST carrier for that fleet carries some 50 flights of fighters... should be fun!

How does Starmada compare? Quite simply, Starmada is, by far, the best starship combat game on the market. It beats out any starship game I have ever played (see below); and I find it hard to believe that anything will ever top it. It is, and I do not want to sound like a broken record here, an amazing engine.

[size=59]Starship Combat Games I have played include: Aerotech, Babylon 5 Wars, Battle Rider, Fleet Action, Fleet Action 2, Full Thrust, Star Cruiser, Star Fleet Battles, Starfire, Star Trek Tactical Starship Combat Simulator... and whole slew of them I have forgotten the names to, as they were so badly written...[/size]

Well, you can count me in that group too... I wasn't aware changes had been made to FT...

But then, I've been busy...

Been playing FT for nearly 13 years now...and while it has some definite attraction still,  Starmada is definitely a much more flexible and easily campaign adaptable game system.

If you want something with a slightly different flavor and still quite easily playable I'd recommend checking out Iron Stars also.

I started playing Starmada X after we (VBAM Games) finished the campaign tie-in book. I had played a few games of Starmada X before that and tinkered with the ship construction system, but not enough to get a feel for how the game worked.

Before SX, my tabletop play was pretty much restricted to Babylon 5 Wars. Coming off of B5W, SX did several things that I really liked. First, I have to play solo most of the time, or with players that really don't want a game to last more than two hours. With SX, you can get a fair number of ships on the board and play through fast. Fighters seem to slow things down a bit, but not too bad -- no worse than in B5W.

Now, the SX construction system has a lot going for it. I can get most ships modeled using the combination of pre-existing equipment and weapon modifiers. It isn't as detailed as with some systems, but for me this lets me get creative -- which is what I like to do when I'm gaming. If you know or learn a bit of Excel, you can also cludge the sheet to make it do what you want to, add new abilities, etc.

The Excel construction sheet is, to me, one of the biggest selling points of SX. I can load up the sheet, create a new ship, print it out and start playing without much work. For B5W, you are looking at a few hours of Illustrator layout work to get a workable sheet. Being able to create and print SX sheets that fast is just really cool, at least in my opinion

Now, if you are looking for lots and lots of detail, SX probably isn't the way to go. Ships blow up pretty fast in a lot of cases, so if you are looking more for a ship vs. ship duel, there are better games out there. But SX is fairly scalable and fun to play around with. It is relatively simple, yet elegant in its design.

So I like it. It has a little more detail than Starfire (which is part of the reason I never could force myself to play that game, mainly because of its linear damage resolution system), but is less detailed than Babylon 5 Wars. To me that is a pretty good median.

-Tyrel

Hi Tyrel!

I agree with you about Starfire. I never could get into that game. Ever. I had friends that played it and tried to get me into it -- but it was not for me.

As for Babylon 5 Wars... I really like the game. But it has so many faults that it is a good game despite the rules, not because of them. My opinions on it (and the recent Mongoose game) are well known and documented on the net, so I will not get into any details on that here.

But I did want to state that I would disagree with you in one respect: Babylon 5 Wars is not really all that much more detailed than Starmada. It is vastly more complicated, but that complexity (as well as the relative number of hits the ships can take) can often give rise to the illusion that additional detail is present.

With the exception of the fact that their are a few tactical options (shifting power from one set of systems to another; multiple turn weapon readying, etc.) the game has few real details that add to the game. And those that it does have effect the game in such minor ways, or so infrequently, that one can become hard-pressed to say that those details were worth the effort.

If you want detail (and complexity, for that matter): Star Fleet Battles.

Again, I am not saying that Babylong 5 Wars is a bad game. I have spent far too much on that game, and still play it far too often to feel that way. I actually like the game *a lot*.

I am not saying that Babylon 5 Wars does not have any more detail that Starmada -- I am saying it is not as much as many believe, due to the illusion created by overly complex rules and number-inflation in the various values in the game.

Simply.

Standard electronic warfare suites come in two types--ECM and EWS. ECM makes targetting by other ships harder, while EWS makes targetting by your own ship easier. There are some advanced items as well (cloak, anyone?)

Fair enough.  The changes to FT in the Fleet Books have helped a bit in terms of weapon variety, but overall the design system is still much more restricted than Starmada's.  About the only spot where they're (IMO) clearly ahead of Starmada is the way their design system decouples structural integrity from ship size...a large ship can certainly be tougher than a small one, but it isn't automatically.  You can decide to allocate capacity to increase your hull strength, or pack in more weapons, or better engines, but just being large doesn't make you durable.  Starmada makes it relatively difficult to build a large-but-fragile ship, or a small-but-tough one, in part because engine and screen mass are tied to hull size (and therefore hull integrity).

If you're curious, both Fleet Books are available as free downloads off the GZG site these days, so taking a look at what has and hasn't been altered is a no-cost option.

Rich

Actually, jack up your tech levels to +2 across the board, and you'll have a bunch of 'stuff' in a not-so-durable frame...

You can sort of achieve the same effect by just wasting space as well (nothing says you have to fill your hull) but the resulting ships tend to be kind of slow, and they get their shields cheaper.  Small-but-tough is a little harder...although you can play games with tech levels there as well, you can't just buy extra hull damage points.

It's a minor problem, really.

Rich

A ship with a "Tough" hull would multiply its hull size by 3, instead of 2 as stated in rule A.2.2.

A ship with a "Weak" hull uses a 1.5 multiplier.