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Post by captainquirk on Jul 21, 2014 14:06:52 GMT -5
If we are going to have a rules set, then it would be good to have a CBF supplement which provides some degree of customisation.
It's OK building TOS style ships and early movie-era without too much trouble, albeit with some probable differences of opinion regarding longer range or seeking photons, plasma torps and suchlike.
But...it would be good to have a new weapons mount for collimated phaser arrays - not sure when these were introduced, but I presume they were later movie era or between the movie era and TNG? Not sure how we would set up a collimated array using basic CBF.
Also the basic CBF system doesn't really have cloaks as per TOS or TNG.
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Post by captainquirk on Jul 10, 2014 15:27:48 GMT -5
Only that if it was the one that was mentioned on a much earlier thread, then I already playtested it for a different tactical rules set.
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Post by captainquirk on Jul 10, 2014 13:00:47 GMT -5
Is the "other company" still the one you were involved with before?
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Post by captainquirk on Jun 10, 2014 9:30:29 GMT -5
Not sure that speed is the only factor. Agility/nimbleness could play a part too.
For example, if a ship is only armed with a spinal weapon or front arc only weapons, then it may be going fast. But initiative could go to a slower ship with broadside weapons which has the agility to barrel roll and bring weapons to bear.
Just as a very rough idea, could ships perhaps have a combat initiative bonus which might be an amalgamation of both speed and agility/responsiveness?
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Post by captainquirk on May 23, 2014 17:27:58 GMT -5
Years ago we tried a home rule variant of SFB (back in the days when it was still the original game and just a couple of the early expansions) where the shields actually deflected rather than absorbed as their primary function. We didn't use the house rule for long because it was very random - after every attack, a target ship with a shield that was still up at the start of the attack simply rolled a d10 and whatever came up was the percentage that was deflected.... so anything from 0 to 90% was radiated away.
Mostly luck rather than skill.
However, it did have the effect that people put a lot more effort into moving around seeking the least opposed shot - instead of just reinforcing front shields and making overrun attacks. Few people wanted to just go head to head if there was a risk that their alpha strike might get deflected while the opposing ship's strike wasn't.
There WAS leaky shielding in the original source. But there were also plenty of times when tactical reported incoming fire as "deflected, keptin". So shields should also deflect rather than just absorb damage and collapse as they do in CBF and SFB.
So, I think shots probably hit often. But don't always penetrate.
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Post by captainquirk on May 22, 2014 14:30:44 GMT -5
Precedent with the plasma torps.
And if you include the movies with the original crew, then photons are also seeking weapons. And by the movie era, Klingons are using photons as well as the Federation.
Not sure how other people feel on the subject. I'm not really fussed either way on drones. We didn't actually see them in any of the original series or the movies. Please let's not get into the whole SFB thing of Fed ships carrying Phalanx/Goalkeeper style CIWS gatling phasers and anti-drone drones though!
One of the big turn-offs with SFB as far as I'm concerned (apart from it suffering from the mother of all rules bloating) is the way it turned into an ego trip fantasy based around USN carrier groups - even down to calling the Federation fighter shuttles "F14" and "F18". SFB largely turned into a monster which had hardly anything to do with the original pocket game or the original TV series.
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Post by captainquirk on May 22, 2014 12:09:41 GMT -5
Yes.
The justification for them was that there were some drones shown on the first set of blueprints for the Klingon D7. They were extrapolated into SFB as being seeking weapons. However it was never particularly clear in the original source material whether the drones were actually intended to be target practice drones or a real weapon. After 35 years of SFB though, they are pretty firmly fixed as part of that particular iteration of the universe.
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Post by captainquirk on May 22, 2014 1:28:14 GMT -5
Interesting. What was included in the old pocket edition? Did it have all the drones and fighters and whatnot. . . or was it just ship to ship? I'm really thinking a WWI feel is appropriate for the setting. Long long ago now... I think the ships were the Franz Josef Fed dreadnought and destroyer to go with the cruiser. The Romulan warbird, Klingon and Romulan D7. And a few extrapolated ships - the Gorn ships were never seen on TV, and the Kzinti ship was an invention based on one cartoon episode written by Larry Niven. That introduced the drones. I'm not sure about the fighters. The ship that started those off was a Kzinti ship which carried a dozen attack shuttles. Just can't remember if it was in this game or the next. It was another supplement in the same series which introduced the full plague of fighters into SFB. www.wargamevault.com/product/122714/Star-Fleet-Battles-Pocket-Edition
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Post by captainquirk on May 17, 2014 9:06:18 GMT -5
I'm wary of the whole ECM thing too. Plus, as kjncindy says, it wasn't mentioned in any source material.
I always interpreted those weapon locks as more like establishing a good firm firing solution versus something akin to a "bearing only launch". So with a weapon lock, you'd be firing upon a target whose exact location and vector is established and tracked. But without weapon lock you'd be firing into the vicinity.
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Post by captainquirk on May 14, 2014 15:49:42 GMT -5
And bought too. Excellent stuff :-)
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Post by captainquirk on Apr 17, 2014 12:45:15 GMT -5
Thanks for the update :-)
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Post by captainquirk on Apr 17, 2014 5:49:24 GMT -5
Any further news on Star's Reach?
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Post by captainquirk on Mar 13, 2014 14:33:48 GMT -5
Yay! Look forward to buying :-)
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Post by captainquirk on Feb 17, 2014 2:48:24 GMT -5
The only production range that I can think of covering the ships you wanted was Romando, and they are really hard to find these days. I can't recall any gaming manufacturer specifically selling Feds right now. There's an SCN thread here www.star-ranger.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=6432 Check out page four, as the Sovereign was on offer and may still be by private message. Shapeways stuff can be a bit variable. Almost everything I've had from them has been fine. I've seen reports of problems, but Shapeways seem to sort them out. I've certainly got some miniatures in my collection now that wouldn't be there if someone on Shapeways hadn't offered them.
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Post by captainquirk on Feb 16, 2014 4:35:29 GMT -5
If you are looking for miniatures, you could try Shapeways. Check out Starship Combat News for a list of some of the stores there doing scifi minis.
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Post by captainquirk on Nov 7, 2013 18:00:11 GMT -5
I'd forgotten all about those!
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Post by captainquirk on Oct 27, 2013 3:12:18 GMT -5
I feel your pain! I only have one person who plays CBF against me, and he hasn't been able to play a game for ages and ages... There are actually some nice aspects to VBAM's detail. Stuff that goes well beyond anything I've seen elsewhere. For instance, the version I was looking at had a planetary's population loyalty and stability affecting production and so on. The battle simulator seemed to produce Ok results for encounters I didn't game out as a tabletop battle. My own leanings for a campaign background for CBF is now more towards using a map similar to the ones used in Traveller. Or more specifically like the old Traveller board games such as Imperium. Or like the map Mongoose had produced for their Babylon 5 game...unable to find it in full now, but here is a taster of it: www.dispari.net/wp/mapmaking/image_069/Basically I would be going with a map which has defined jump routes - some fo these will always be natural points of conflict. Who wouldn't want to control the star system which has five or six jump points? Friendly or conquered worlds will yield resources. I think I'd use a tonnage base and a maximum hulls of a certain size restriction for new construction - not every shipyard will be capable of building capital ships. To be honest, haven't really developed my ideas very far. Maybe there is room for the forum to develop some campaign system ideas?
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Post by captainquirk on Oct 22, 2013 11:56:37 GMT -5
I looked at - and playtested - on one of their partnership projects. They cover pretty much everything. However, I found them to have more complexity than I want to game. CBF is about perfect for the level of complexity I prefer these days, and VBAM has a LOT more detail. There are some nice ideas in there. But too much to fit in to the amount of gaming time I have available. And some of the detail just feels too much like my day job to actually be fun.
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Post by captainquirk on Jul 23, 2013 18:04:11 GMT -5
Not sure if people are aware but Hanger 18 has said he is shutting down. End of 2013, I think. Details are over on the Star Ranger/SCN site. So if you want Hanger 18 stuff, better buy it fairly soon.
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Post by captainquirk on Mar 20, 2013 16:47:39 GMT -5
Still there, and the SCN forums have postings for today's date.
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