From the old 'Commanders Rulebook', Volume 2, excerpts from Rule G23.0.......

Frigates and larger may carry them, they ain't fighter gear, and can't be fitted to a missile.

Range is 0, 1, 2, or 3 hexes.

It does physical damage to objects that hit it, either the damage points of the object, or the strength of the field - whichever is less.

Field strength is equal to:
'Strength Factor' X the energy allocated to the ESG.

ESG Radius vs Strength Factor
.....0.....................4
.....1.....................3.67
.....2.....................3.33
.....3.....................3

Energy allocated may not be more than 5 points (on pre"X" ships, anyway)

An ESG will hit anything in it's radius automatically, including ships, bases, shuttles, fighters, PF's (ie gunboats), asteroids, monsters, or drones.

An ESG wil detonate any mine it hits. The mine's damage is applied automatically to the sphere, and any in excess of the ESG field is applied to the ESG-using ship (on the shield facing of the sihp facing the mine).
Mine damage is completely absorbed by the ESg and the ship using it, no damage is applied to nearby units.

Cloaked ships (obviously) are hit by ESG's.

Transporters, Tractor beams, blast effects, and beam weapons ignore ESG's.

An ESG will damage (and be damaged by) another ESG that it hits.

Plasma ignores ESG's.

Drones and Antidrones are hit (and can be destroyed by) ESG's.

Hellbores automatically hit the ESG of a ESG-using ship, the ESG is reduced by the damage of the Hellbore, any remaining Hellbore damage is automaticaly applied to the ESG-using ship.

ESG's cannot be projected into or through Web hexes.

Damage, in the case of several things happening in an impulse is applied in this order:
- Units which move completely through an ESG-filled area.
- Other ESG fields
- Asteroids and other solid objects.
- Mines
- Other uints in order of largest to smallest.

I think that pretty much sums it up. That summary was of about 1.5 pages of small double columned print - which is why I no longer PLAY SFB....

A quick update... After a couple playtests I think the stats need to be re-done. The weapons are WAY too powerful at present. In one playtest a Fed CA fired a salvo of photons at a D-7 and blew it to smithereens in one shot. That's not the effect I was looking for.

In Star Trek shields have much more defensive power than Starmada shields do. To compensate for this I'm thinking of reducing weapon power.

I may reduce the number of weapons on ships as well. The SFB weapons were less capable of penetrating shields in that game than they are in Starmada. I'll probably cut the numbers in halves.

Also.. after some headaches trying to come up with a new movement system I've given up and decided to use the Full Thrust cinematic movement system.

This, together with the reduced weapons effects, hopefully will give the game the feel of the "warp speed dogfights" that SFB had (but without the rules headaches).

Well, I can only recall one TOS episode in which the Enterprise actually fights a D-7... "Elaan of Troyius". In that episode, the Enterprise fires a photon salvo and at least one hit is definately scored. If I recall correctly, Spock says that the D-7 has damaged shields, severe engine damage, and is retreating at a reduced speed. So it wasn't exactly blown to bits.

However.. I do see your point. But in the interests of making an enjoyable game I'd prefer it if ships can't be blasted out of existence in one shot.

Yes, thats true. But it's also true in the show. The Enterprise routinely takes massive hits and has nothing but "reduced shield strength" as a result.

I may go that route. I think by using the FT movement system there will be fewer opportunities for close-range mass salvoes, which will also reduce the chances of one-shot kills.

I don't know if I will ever get that far into an SFB conversion or not. The main reason I started it was because I wanted to do a TOS Star Trek variant, and my son (my main opponent ) is familiar with the Starfleet Command computer games, which in turn are based on SFB. So it keeps things familiar for him (He's also watching TOS episodes on G4TV).

Anyway, I'll do some more tinkering over the next couple days.

As someone has already said, I would also recommend screens (take shields x 4 for the number of shield factors), but I would fudge the damage system to state that ALL damage is done to the shield rating on that hexside before anything is rolled on the damage chart (most SFB games, the shields had to be completely 'down' before damage was assigned to systems).  At that point any 'shield hits' destroy a shield generator.  At the end of the turn, all ships recover a number of shield factors equal to 1/2 their current shield rating (round up). 

For example, the D7 Battlecruiser would start with 12 shield factors to place in any hexside the player wishes.  Lets say, the hexside that a Federation Heavy Cruiser is attacking has 4 shield factors assigned and 8 damage points get through the shields.  The first 4 damage points automatically take out the 4 shield factors assigned to that hexside (lowering the D7's total to 8 ).  The next 4 damage points are rolled on the chart as normal and the dice come up: 1,3,4,6 which results in 2 hull, 1 special equipment, 1 engine, 2 phasers and a shield.  At the end of the turn, the D7 regenerates 1 shield factor bringing it up to 9 shield factors (1/2 of 2 is one).

Not sure how that works for the VP points or the game, but definitely something to try.

-Bren

That's a tough one to quantify, since the effect would be to square the effectiveness of the shield rating--i.e.:

Shields   Normal   Must Re-Roll
0         x1.0     x1.0
1         x1.2     x1.4
2         x1.5     x2.3
3         x2.0     x4.0
4         x3.0     x9.0
5         x6.0     x36.0

You could get away with a x3 modifier, perhaps...

Some snippage...

That would eliminate ADD racks, Plasma D, some others that for some reason don't come to mind right now. Plasma Shotgun?

Romulans would use armor. They do in the "old" ships in SFB, and I certainly got the impression from TOS.

You might take a look at this:
http://www.starfleet-museum.org

Not only am I jealous of this guy's "LEET MoDeLliNg sKiLLzz", but it's a fairly well thought-out justification of the Romulan War.

I *highly* suggest taking a look at this site - not that you need to duplicate the ships, but that it's just so gosh-darned COOL!

I've been to that site.... when I was thinking armor, I was more thinking of the Movie, Nemesis..... Once the shields went down on the Romulan warship.... they didn't last too long........

If and when I get some more time... I plan on doing some in-depth reading of a number of the websites out there... as I have only skimmed a lot of them at this point... I'll make the Starfleet Museum a priority....

Dan, can we add a Links section? I'd like to have a location where we could all go to look up information, or just maybe ship images towards the idea of adding ships from all the genres to the game.

John

Hello everyone!

    Great designs on these StarTrek-to-StarmadsX ships.  Here are some ideas I thought of to make great designs even greater!

1:  The subject of armor came up.  Perhaps all ships should have armor; it makes 'em last longer!  <LOL> 
Then, to accomodate the "armor" on older Romulon ships, older Gorn ships, and Fed older CL in SFB, give those ships Armored Batteries.  This makes them different & better protected from the others, but all ships get to survive longer by having armor.

2:  The Federation ships could also be given Reinforced Shields to attempt to acount for their stronger and more resilient shields as demonstrated by the amount of firepower the USS Enterprise survived from the "Nomad" probe and the pounding its shields survived when the "Dolman of Eloias"  (hope I am close) was onboard.   The fully intact  D7 or D6 that attacked was eventually badly damaged by a photon torp that penetrated its shields...

3:   I was wondering why these Star Trek ships seem  so slow...?  Perhaps faster speeds would enable more knife-fighting.

4:   I use Screens for my ships now.  giving these StarTrek/SFB ships level 4 or 5 Screens simulates somewhat having to alocate shield reinforcement.  The PDS would be the equivilant of the regular shields...  This would simulate SFB somewhat. 

5:   I note the shorter ranges on the weapons.  Have phaser ones fire out to 18, and torps&distuptors fire to 15.  0therwise faster ships with range 18 weapons may try to stay @ range and have target practise.  For Long range range weapons (sort of PhaserIVs) for Battlestations, etc, use Spinal mounts and LongRangeSensors.  Give the base overthrusters(!);  it is a wicked combination...

6:  Please do Not take these ideas and suggestions as a criticism of your excellent and creative designs.  I have downloaded and saved all of 'em 

Sincerely,
Steven Gilchrist; Math Teacher, Jacksonville, Fla, USA, Earth, ... , <LOL>

We did a playtest tonight... The Feds had a Constitution Class Cruiser and a Saladin Class Destroyer. The Klingons had a D-7 and an F-5.

The game ran very well using the 2.0 modifications. The Feds (played by my son) won (I was the Klingons). The F-5 was destroyed on turn 8 by a photon salvo from the Saladin (it had been partially damaged before). The D-7 disengaged by turn 10.

All the ships took a reasonable amount of damage, so I think the weapons in 2.0 are working well. However, several minor things came up which need tweaking;

1) Damage control. As written in the rules, it's too effective. We stopped using it after turn 5 or 6 as it became apparent that the game would last indefinately with it. A possible alternate rule; Divide the ships current hull points by 3 (round down, minimum of 1). This is the number of damage control rolls allowed per turn. So... a Constitution class starts with 3 rolls (11/3=3.67, rounded down=3) instead of 11.

2) Tractor Beams. I hadn't planned on tractor beams being used multiple times in the same turn, but my son needed them to fend off the Klingon drones. So we made an on-the-spot rule; Tractors work on 4+ the first time, 5+ the second and on a 6 the third time in a single turn.

3) Drones. The rules state that a drone must roll 4+ to hit. My son couldn't understand how a drone could miss, and I kind of agree. I would assume that even if they didn't score a direct hit, they would explode when in proximity to the target and still potentially cause damage. So, as an alternate rule; Drones do not need to roll to hit. They automatically explode when they come into contact with the target. They still must roll for shield penetration though (at shield rating/2, as per the fighter rules).

4) Maximum Speed. As written, the Warp Speed rules do not account for reduced maximum speed due to engine damage, only reduced thrust. since most ships have a significantly higher maximum warp speed than they have thrust, I propose this; For each engine hit scored, reduce the maximum warp speed and emergency warp speed by one. If the ships current velocity (after being damaged) exceeds the new emergency warp speed, immediately reduce its current velocity to the new maximum emergency warp speed.

5) Turning. The basic FT rules limit the amount of thrust used to turn to half of the total available. I propose allowing ships to use ALL their thrust for course changes.

I'll be updating the file to include these changes, as well as adding a few more clarifications.

Well, I may have been exaggerating a bit by saying 'indefinately'. But since I already downgraded the weapons so they cause less damage (to avoid one-shot kills), the rapid pace of damage control is just too fast. I'm sure it's just right when you use more potent weapons, but in the Star Trek version I'm doing, its too effective. I think your solution should work though.

I think it's a matter of what you interpret drones to be in your universe. In my case, I'm thinking more along the lines of a homing torpedo. If it misses, it's either goingto explode close enough to cause a penetration roll anyway, or its going to swing around and come back. I think maybe your model os more along the lines of an air-to-air missile, which goes ballistic if it misses because it doesn't have the fuel to turn around and   try again.

I have kept them at speed 10. This is not that fast when using the FT movement system, so, like in SFB, ships CAN outrun them.

Any weapon can fire at a drone, at a -1 to-hit. Also, I allow tractor beams to be used to 'catch' drones before they hit.

So... Like in SFB, they aren't very effective except in large numbers, but they can be very annoying and make good 'harassment' weapons.

Very true. I have only been using them for the Klingons so far, but I can imagine what effect a task force of Kzinti ships would have....

This is my only real complaint about Starmada. There is little or no depth in seeking weapons (by which I mean weapons that are represented on the table as seperate entities). It would be fun to create the weapon types you describe, but at present there is no way to cost them.