Photos & Changes

[James Eggleston]

Hey dudes -

I just uploaded photos from our battles yesterday as well as our meeting back in September with Jaron to my flickr - enjoy!  Sorry I was so long in getting those up.

We made some changes to armor (and shields) which seemed pretty workable - You can now only spend power on shields or armor equal or lower to your class.  That means a class 2 could only spend a maximum of 2 power in shields and another 2 in armor.  We also changed armor so that a small ship only absorbs 2 points of damage for each power spent on armor; a medium ship gets 3 and a large ship gets 4.  This was intended to mitigate the perceived uselessness of shields following the removal of criticals and also to speed up game play - I would say that both it seems to have met both those goals.  We still need to probably tweak a bit around the split between Small-Medium and Medium-Large to make sure things stay balanced, but that's fairly minor and should be done by our next meeting.

Squadrons seemed to work pretty well and kept the game moving fast enough, though an unresolved question remains about using different types of weapons (such as ones that have damage modified against shields, armor, etc) against a squadron with the way we're dealing damage to each ship in order.  Another question was how many turns do missiles last once fired - there's currently no limit, but it seems like large missiles should last longer than smalls.  We found a potential exploit with ships full of small missiles doing kamikaze runs, so that's something to explore in the future, but all in all, things are shaping up!  This is turning into a game I'd be willing to take on the road, and just in time, too!

See you guys in January!

-James

[Rich Schoonover]

James

Thanks again for hosting.  Sorry I couldn't stay longer, but it was a lot of fun.  I think for defending squadrons who are attacked with weapons that have modifiers for damage on particular defenses we could allow that type of damage to be allocated over the ships individually in the squadron.  For instance an attack that does a total damage of 20 and half goes to shields and half goes to armor.  Let us also assume that the fighter has the maximum shields and armor.  The first fighter would assume 6 points of damage to its shields and the second fighter would assume 4 points of damage to its shields.  The rest of the damage would be inflicted on the first fighters armor and hull for 9 points killing it and one point would be allocated to the second fighters armor.  This solves the reason we started squadron attacks and also satisfies the special weapons we have created and the need for some to use those who like to play that way.  For ships that do not have shields or armor it would default to the next level of defense.  The order of defense being sheilds, armor, and then hull.  I think squadrons worked pretty well the other day.  Even with the weapons concerns I think it is still worth doing just for the benefit of speeding up the game.  Besides fighters should be swatted and ship to ship between mediums and larges is where special weapons are really effective.  Sorry to ramble, but another point about special weapons and squadrons.  If a weapon that ignores shields and attacks armor first it is likely armor will be used up fast and the hull points will go quickly destroying a fighter even if it had shields up.

Does that sound good to you James?

We can get together sometime and play test that a bit.

Rich

[Tervlon]

I am totally in favor of the class caps on armor/shields. This would have really hurt my fighters last time we played (those things were beefy!) but I think its a good call. 

Speeding up the game is necessary to bring in more players and for helping some of us noobs (like me) to know how to build a fleet.

[SteveV]

I think the changes made were definite improvements, and look forward to testing them out with more variety of ship classes.  The fighter squadron setup and play are both more effective and simple. The outcome is a lot more volatile fighting, with lots of rapid damage and quick paced action. I like your suggestion for cascading the damage through the squadron Rich.  Seems like a logical solution.

Rich's nuclear option of a full load out of missiles dealt a terrifying amount of damage; would have easily taken out a small-to-low-end medium ship.  

I think a set duration on smaller missiles, with a round bonus for larger ones, would be a good idea.  Kurt's ships were loaded out with engines and should have been able to outpace smaller missiles, given time and table space.

You'll like the new play pace Jaron. 

Steve

[Rich Schoonover]

I felt the pace was good and really would like to see how it goes with fleets with larger ships.  I think my nuclear option which I started calling "Cowboy" the other day is dangerous, but it is a weak build.  The ship has no armor or shields.  Those fighters are suicide machines.  Can't wait to play again with some new ships and some medium ships as well.

I agree with Steve you are going to like how fast it goes now Jaron.  We must have played 3 games in a matter of about 4 hours.  I assume they played another game after I left.

See you soon..

Rich

[Tervlon]

You guys are talking this up, it sounds great. Faster is probably better. Can't wait to see what you have been up to.

[James Eggleston]

Copypasta from the flickr group:

Okay, that spreadsheet *should* be a pretty effective ship-building tool. Anyone should be able to view it and then go to something like File-> Make a Copy. The copy should be editable by you so you can:

Option A: duplicate that template sheet and edit these duplicates to keep records for each new ship (which I recommend) or

Option B: just keep changing values on that if you like (which I don't recommend - if you overwrite formulae, your maths may end up wrong and you might cheat even worse than I usually do.)

Rich and Steve - you guys are the most familiar with rules, can you help me see if the math seems right on that? It includes new rules on armor working different for each size, but doesn't limit the armor/shields you can put on automatically.

There's a sample fighter on there right now and some sample default weapons which can be copy/pasted to make sure we're all on the same page as to what costs how much, how much damage it would do, etc.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Au0RXtO6hFPzdHhjalBnWm1UcEN4a3Z0YmtNbTBPLWc

[Rich Schoonover]

Yep, I will take a look at it.  I have also created a folder for ship record sheets and moved the sheets there and have uploaded some new ones.

Rich

Sent from my iPad

[SteveV]

I've downloaded it and will play around with numbers later tonight.

[Tervlon]

Looks great, very straight forward. Can't wait to use it. I'll try to have my fleet built out this week. 

[Tervlon]

I have been messing around with the form and had a few questions:

1. I have several ships that have a volume of exactly 4, the reference sheet says they should be Class 1, but the calculations on the ship creation form have it come out to Class 2. Which one is correct?  This also happens with a ship of Volume 104 coming out as Class 5 instead of Class 4 and a Volume of 270 coming out to 7 instead of 6. 

2. Where do the Hull points come from? Is that from the Power like Shields and Armor? The Hull cell doesn't calculate from anything, so I'm not sure I get it. 

3. Are there rules for how much armor/shields can be added to each ship? Or a particular class? I believe fighters have a limit now right? 

[James Eggleston]

1 - Ah, you caught a pretty good bug.  I think I'm checking "less than" where I should be checking "less than or equal to."  It should be class 1, but borderline things like that can go either way.  I've updated the template - copying & pasting cell B2 should be the only change you'd need to make.

2 - Hull points is your vital structural integrity; it would be your health points if your ship was a flesh-and-blood units.  So it doesn't really come from anywhere; it's inherent to your ship's class.  (I'm not married to this idea now that I think about it, but that's maybe something to discuss after we meet later this month.)

I think that might've been more of a formatting problem as I rearranged the sheet - C8 calculates what this value should be (it's equal to baseline power) and B8 is just a free space to write in a current value (assuming you would be using this sheet during actual play.)

3 - The rule we tested out last we met late December was "you can only spend X power on shields and armor" where X = your class.  So a class 6 could spend 6 power on shields and 6 on armor at maximum.  The other rule we added was that armor was more effective on larger ships - Small ships get 2 armor points per power, mediums get 3, and larges get 4.  I'll write those up in the official rules shortly; hopefully I'll also manage to get together a quick reference sheet/sheets for actual gametime organized as well so we don't have to have the site up while we play.