Federation Commander

Just bought a Rom Armada download from e23. Me likey. Cloak rules are good. I like the plasma rules. While plasma seems to be better as a direct-fire weapon than a seeker, as a seeker it has longer range and some keep-away power. Which could make a difference if you are facing ships that fire faster (pretty much everyone). I can see plasma seekers being highly effective at shooting down drones. I wonder if the "launch seekers and follow it in" tactic so beloved of the Kzintis would work with plasma.

I bought RA from e23 this morning.

Puzzled as to why the KR has a higher engine rating than a D6 (and any of the 'Fast' cruisers), and the KC9R has a higher engine rating than a C9.

As commented on the MJ12 site, the engines on the Eagle ships look out of line too.

Am I right in thinking that if a ship cloaks, all seeking weapons in flight towards it at that moment automatically miss? If so, cloak may be a good deal more useful than in SFB/FC.

Altogether, the Romulans appear a lot more dangerous than the Klinks. Looking forward to trying them out.

Dan Ibekwe wrote:Am I right in thinking that if a ship cloaks, all seeking weapons in flight towards it at that moment automatically miss? If so, cloak may be a good deal more useful than in SFB/FC..

That's the way I played it, but the rules were not clear to me. If a ship cloaks, I simply remove all seekers targeted on that ship.

I was kicking around an idea with Daniel Kast a while back.

Basically, we do a "reinforcements" pack with SFB ships not in FC (since those ships are scheduled for new products already).

Players would be able to "vote" on what ships they want.

The pack would then be sold on e23, and hard copies would be available through the cart (and even special ordered through stores).

Would anybody be interested in that?

Would this be mostly BoM ships - carriers, PFs, scouts?

I'd be up for those, certainly.

I want fighters, carriers, and pf's in Romulan Armada.

Dan Ibekwe wrote:Puzzled as to why the KR has a higher engine rating than a D6 (and any of the 'Fast' cruisers), and the KC9R has a higher engine rating than a C9.

As commented on the MJ12 site, the engines on the Eagle ships look out of line too.

Speed ratings in Starmada are based on "space" allocated to engines; for KA/RA conversions, I used the ratio of engine boxes to total boxes as the basis for speed. As discussed on mj12games.com/forum, this may not take into account everything SFB/FC players are used to considering when thinking of "fast" and "slow" ships. I am open to suggestions on how to tweak this approach.

Am I right in thinking that if a ship cloaks, all seeking weapons in flight towards it at that moment automatically miss? If so, cloak may be a good deal more useful than in SFB/FC.

This is correct.

Hi Daniel

With respect to the Romulan War Eagle, would it be possible to use the B.12 Tech Level rules from Starmada Admiralty Edition to simulate that these are bulky, inefficient early-tech warp engines?

The engines on the Hawk and Snipe class ships have a similar drawback; on the King Eagle command cruiser the situation is less severe due to the use of more advanced Klingon tech, and in SFB/FC it is as fast as other mainline cruisers.

Could B.12 also be used to give the 'Fast' cruisers more efficient engines to make them, well, fast? Say about Engines 8?

A few ships, such as the Rom Eagles and the Federation Light Cruiser have armour. SAE rule B.1?

Not being familiar with the ship design system, I'm at a loss to account for the KR/D6 and KC9R/C8 issues...I mean, it's the same ship! Possibly include some unallocated 'ballast' in the Romulan versions, with handwavium that this is radiation shielding added to protect the crews from the addition of Plasma Torpedo launchers (or simply left out of the Klingon versions since they regard their crews as expendable in any case).

The other thing that came up in Monday's game was the superiority of the Fed DN over the Klingon C8. An extra point of engine thrust isn't too critical, but 5 (rather than 4) forward shield makes a big difference, and came as a bit of a surprise. In SFB the various ship types are usually balanced against each other quite closely (oddballs such as the Tholians and the WYN aside).

Agility. Klingon ships (particularly the D5/6/7 classes) tend to be able to out-turn their opponents, while Federation, Gorn and Romulan Eagle series ships are less maneuverable than others. How about giving ships with FC turn modes A and B (that is those Klingon cruisers and most destroyers and frigates) a 'free' pivot at the end of the movement phase, and restricting ships with turn mode D or worse (Fed and Gorn cruisers, Eagles, everybody's DNs) to no more than one 60 degree heading change per turn?

Just a few ideas off the top of my head. Although I do appreciate that KA and RA are not about re-inventing the SFU wheel, if there's ever a Second Edition..?

Thanks for all your hard work on this

Dan Ibekwe

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Deleted by author; all friends now.

Dan Ibekwe wrote:With respect to the Romulan War Eagle, would it be possible to use the B.12 Tech Level rules from Starmada Admiralty Edition to simulate that these are bulky, inefficient early-tech warp engines?

A good thought... and one I may use in the future. However, my question to the SFB/FC players is this: what, if not "total power", is the determining factor for you when evaluating how "fast" a ship is?

A few ships, such as the Rom Eagles and the Federation Light Cruiser have armour. SAE rule B.1?

Again, a possibility -- but from my recollection (I don't have the cards here in front of me) none of the ships in SFB/FC have enough armor to match the effectiveness of Armor Plating in Starmada (1/3 of hull hits are ignored).

Not being familiar with the ship design system, I'm at a loss to account for the KR/D6 and KC9R/C8 issues...I mean, it's the same ship!

The Romulan KR has 46 engine boxes and 87 total. The Klingon D6 has 40 and 89, respectively.

The Romulan K9R has 65 engine boxes and 158 total. The Klingon C8 has 65 and 165, respectively.

The other thing that came up in Monday's game was the superiority of the Fed DN over the Klingon C8. An extra point of engine thrust isn't too critical, but 5 (rather than 4) forward shield makes a big difference, and came as a bit of a surprise.

This is a rounding issue: in FC the Fed DN has 45 forward shields, while the C8 has 44. 45/10 rounds up to 5; 44/10 rounds down to 4.

In SFB the various ship types are usually balanced against each other quite closely (oddballs such as the Tholians and the WYN aside).

I made the decision not to try to match SFB/FC point values when converting; more important was to ensure each weapon/system did something comparable to its SFU incarnation, and hopefully the points would work out closely. As it is, they are nearly perfect, but there are some anomalies.

Fair enough!

However, my question to the SFB/FC players is this: what, if not "total power", is the determining factor for you when evaluating how "fast" a ship is?

In SFB/FC all ships have a 'move cost', how much energy they pay to move one hex on the game board. This is determined by various factors, but is *not* directly related to the number of boxes on the ship diagram.

It is probably best to think of each system box as 'the capability to do something' rather than an actual physical piece of machinery - a much more vague relationship than in Starmada!

The ship's top speed in the game is (in FC) the number of power-generating boxes divided by the move cost. On the other hand in SFB, only the warp engine boxes can move the ship (plus a flat one hex per turn from one impulse engine box). As a result, ships tend to be a bit faster in FC. There is an in-game speed limit of 31 hexes per turn in SFB, and 32 in FC.

So for an undamaged Klingon D6 (or it's Romulan KR equivalent) their top speed in SFB would be (30 warp boxes) divided by the ship's move cost (1), plus one point of impulse power, for 31.

A War Eagle only has 20 warp boxes, but also has a move cost of 1, so goes at 21 flat out, including impulse power.

During a game, the ships will seldom move at anything like that speed, as power has to be diverted to weapons, shields, tractor beams, transporters, electronic warfare et.c et.c.

The 'Fast' cruisers mostly (IIRC) have 36 warp/move cost 1. While they still can't exceed speed 31 in an SFB game, in practise they do run at a higher operating speed, as they have more power in total, and fewer weapons to *use* that power.

In FC, non-warp boxes can be used for movement, giving the War Eagle a top baseline speed of 24 with a couple of hexes of accelleration during the turn giving an effective speed of 26, leaving no power at all for weapons, cloak, et.c.

In contrast, a D6/KR could set baseline speed 24, accellerate every impulse for an effective speed of 32, and still have five points of power left over to pop off a few phaser shots or whatever. (That's ignoring any energy in batteries at the start of the turn).

Hope that clarifies it. Apologies for being so long winded.

mj12games wrote:A good thought... and one I may use in the future. However, my question to the SFB/FC players is this: what, if not "total power", is the determining factor for you when evaluating how "fast" a ship is?

Just my two cents: A combination of power, maneuvrability, and the power needed for weapons. As I've heard for fast ships, as they don't have as many weapons as ships the same size (ie heavy cruisers), they can use more power to speed than those heavy cruisers.

As it is, they are nearly perfect, but there are some anomalies.

Which ones?

Marc

Dan Ibekwe wrote:Could B.12 also be used to give the 'Fast' cruisers more efficient engines to make them, well, fast? Say about Engines 8?

I second this.

What happens to the point cost of the Gorn Fast BC if everything stays the same, except that engines change from 6-6-5-5-4-3-3-2-2-1 to 8-8-7-6-5-4-4-3-2-1?

(Or something like that.)

The design system doesn't mean anything to me-- I just want this ship to fly differently in this one way.