Federation Commander

[Aabh]

Okay, this may end with "No, because then you wouldn't need to buy books" which would be very okay

A friend of mine is interested in playing, but he wants to play the "We take parts of all kinds of ships and make our own" race (Which sounds like WYN, but he thinks the fun will be in building his own ships, not using already built conglamorations).

Is there something out there that turns things into point values? Like a Phaser 1 is worth 3 BPV points or like every 2 blocks of shield is worth 1 BPV point or something like that so that you can build your own ships?
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Guy Davis

[djdood]

If you "go off the reservation" like that, you are blazing your own trail and out there on your own. The point values are set by a secret formula in SFB and then tested, and adjusted by playtesting. The point values in FC come from SFB but then are again adjusted by lots of playtesting.

There is certainly nothing wrong with creativity or generating your own stuff, for your own gaming table (posting any of it online has to follow the rules for that to abide by ADB's copyrights and licenses).

Just know that since ADB didn't have anything to do with it, there is no guarantee of point-value or balance.

In my own personal experience, every time I've played with folks that do this they show up with some grossly under-pointed munchkin of a ship that is unbeatable, regardless of tactics. That kind of thing stops being fun for their opponent real quick.

I played one of those guys two sessions, with stock FC ships, with good games each time. He then showed up with the "USS Stargazer" a TNG-inspired four-engine monster that had the power and weapons load of a battleship on the hull of a cruiser ("because you don't need labs or hull").

He set the point-value at around 160 and it (of course) absolutely crushed my puny Fed CC at 151 points.

I played two games in that session, then asked him nicely if we could go back to the "real game". When he didn't want to use anything but "his" ships that was the end of our sessions. Shame that.

I could design my own ships too (and have) but I'm more interested in playing on as level a playing field as possible than I am in having my creativity on-display. I found other (published/produced) outlets for the creativity.
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[Jack Bohn]

Shipbuilding rules were in an early edition of Star Fleet Battles, and were found to be a major cause of hatred and discontent...to be more polite, were prone to abuse... well, to be charitable, had complex interactions, and were never made rigorous enough to prevent building unbalanced ships of the same point value.

Warning given, if you still want to try, Orion option mount give point values for many systems.

Anybody know which Captain's Log would have the most complete addenda for the old rules? It's sure to be on e23.
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-Jack

[Klingon of Gor]

A lot of games have ship design rules, but no matter how much thought the designer puts into them they always seem to end up being highly susceptible to abuse, a fact of which Mr Cole is doubtless well aware. The only exception to this rule I ever saw is some of the later iterations of Traveller, which had design rules so complex that they could never be abused, because no one could ever figure out how to use them in the first place, but that is neither here nor there.
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"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away" - Philip K Dick

[Aabh]

Warning accepted! I appreciate the sentiment. Actually, I'm blessed with a very rare group whom doesn't find any entertainment at all at making "Juggernauts" and tromping about the field. We have even had the occasional "Wait! No, I think YOU won! Let's recalculate that last volley!" moment.

We would have no interest in playing these mods outside our personal table, and we have even less interest in posting it online (Especially if we get mauled on said table )

However, I can also appreciate that this is sort of the "Secret Sauce" of ADB. That was kinda what I was telling our group, but as with all of my other off-the-wall questions, I had to ask. Thanks guys!
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Guy Davis

[Dal Downing]

Aahb my advice would be don't reinvent the wheel to much. Like you said you can use the Orion Pirate Option Mount System to work out different weapon combinations. As long as your playing with just you buddies. Why not do something like take a exsisting Heavy Cruiser and rearrange the boxes into any shape you want. if you want to swap a little stuff arround like change 10% of the Hulls, Labs, and Shuttles to a free swap system go ahead. Same thing thing can be used in you want to change total internal volume up or down a little bit it might give you just enough freedom to design what you want and still have a rough ideal of what its point value should be. Just be careful when you start changing things like Control Boxes or Power Boxes.

Just be aware that Orions are not the best Empire to do this to as they tend to run a little light on internal hits to compensate fr thier advantages.
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-Dal

"Which one of you is the Biggest, Baddest, Bootlicker of the bunch?"
"I am."
"ARCHERS!!! THAT ONE!!!!"

[Sneaky Scot]

In my limited SFB experience of SFB ship design all I can say is...

NNNOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!



Once you've had a brief game with someone who has designed an apparently 4X warship with phasers that do 40 points of damage for a single point of power and have regenerating shields, it's not an experience I'll be repeating!

However, if you and your group are all happy with that, knock yourself out and have a blast!
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Nothing is quite as persuasive as a disruptor pistol on slow burn and a rotisserie......

[Bolo_MK_XL]

Was always of the mind, if you want to play with one shot one kill vehicles,
go back to Armor miniature games ---

[kirbykibble]

i do believe there was a topic that had asked the same.
I can't seem to find it, but i do remember that some players had said it was a rough estimate but could not be entirely true
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We are the ISC! NO ONE CAN FIGURE OUT WHAT IT STANDS FOR!!

[Spacecowboy87]

If you play "Trek" games long enough (and shop for stuff on eBay), you'll inevitably come across the term "FASA" (uh-oh, I just used the F-word).
They published a game system that encouraged fan-designed ships, and published construction manuals. They're long out of print, but you can still find their materials and they've got an extensive fan base who keep the thing alive. Since I hope to make Lord Admiral someday, I don't want to alienate myself from ADB by actually recommending a rival product, so I won't. But it's there. It's different. Now please don't shoot me.
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Damn, these dice are cold!

[mjwest]

Just for the record, there is no problem mentioning "FASA" here. They were a legitimate company that produced well-liked, licensed material.

The only companies that are not to be mentioned are those that take someone else's copyrighted material and creates direct or derived material from it without permission or license. That, in no way, describes FASA.
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Federation Commander Answer Guy

[pinecone]

If you want ease in making your own SFU (not neccesarily FC) ships, STARMADA would be a good route

[Aabh]

Excellent recommendations! Thank you!
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Guy Davis

[Steve Cole]

FASA were nice people and there's no reason you cannot mention them. I'd have to say we did better games, but what did you think I would say?
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The Guy Who Designed Fed Commander

[djdood]

I'd have to agree with you. FASA's starship combat game had some interesting concepts, but was lacking in a bunch of places. The one place they really fell down was in the "engineering" aspects of things; a *lot* of their ship designs were truly awful kitbashes with no attention to scale or volume at all.
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