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So, I was messing around, and I came up with this idea of using caps on certain hull sizes to prevent things like, idk, Reman Spam.

• Escort: Any ship with a Hull of 2 or less. Escorts are not limited in number, but may only be valued at 30 points max, or 15 points of upgrades total, whichever is higher.
• Destroyer: Any ship with a Hull of 3. Destroyers are capped at nor more than 4 per 100 points. They have a max of 40 points or 20 points of upgrades, whichever is higher.
• Cruiser: Any ship with a Hull of 4. Cruisers are capped at no more than 3 per 100 points. They have a max of 45 points per ship or 22 Points of upgrades, whichever is higher.
• Heavy Cruiser: Any ship with a Hull of 5. Heavy Cruisers are capped at no more than 2 per 100 points. They have a max of 50 points or 24 points of upgrades, whichever is higher.
• Battleship: Any ship with a Hull of 6. Battleships are capped at no more than 1 per 100 points. The have a max of 55 points or 26 points, whichever is more.
• Dreadnought: Any ship with a Hull of 7 or More. Dreadnoughts are limited to no more than one per 200 points. They have a max of 60 points or 28 points of upgrades, whichever is more.

The idea is to play with these rules in a 200 point game, with the following bonus rules as well:

Each fleet is allowed 1 resource per 100 points, but nor more than 1 of a given resource. A flagship MUST be included in each fleet. Flagships may grant ONE of the following abilities (chosen during the gathering forces step) for the duration of the game. These abilities are triggered once a round unless otherwise specified. Each ability also has a drawback, listed as well.
• When attacking, during the modify defense step, a friendly ship within range 1-2 to force the defending ship to re-roll 1 defense die of the attackers choice. If you are destroyed, all friendly ships within range 1-2 roll -1 defense die for the remainder of the round.
• During the combat phase, if you have a target lock on an enemy ship, all friendly ships within range 1-2 may re-roll their blank results if they are attacking the same target. If you are destroyed, all friendly ships within range 1-3 roll 1 less attack die, to a minimum of 2 for the remainder of this round.
• During the combat phase, designate a friendly ship at range 1. That ship may attack at the same skill as you this round. If you are destroyed, reduce all friendly ships with range 1 captain skill by 2, to a minimum of 0 for the remainder of the round.
• During the activation Phase, you may target a friendly ship within range 1-2. That captain may use your ability instead of their own. If you are destroyed, all friendly captains within range 1 cannot use their card text. If they have already used it this round, they cannot use their ability next round.

Bonus Rule #1: In addition, the Destruction of a Flagship causes your fleet to fall into disarray. When your flagship is destroyed, you roll a number of defense dice for each ship in your fleet equal to that ship’s captain skill (Picard rolls 9 defense dice, Janeway rolls 8, Rudolph Ransom rolls 4, etc). If you fail to roll at least 1 battle stations result, the ship flees the battle, counting as “destroyed” for points totaling.

Bonus Rule #2: When a ship is destroyed, roll 1 attack die against every ship at range 1 of the destroyed ship: that ship suffers the damaged rolled as normal.

If you gents are feeling adventurous, let me know how it turns out! I have only done a partial test run, primarily with the Bonus Rule #1, which was really cool; We had two fleets of 200 on each side, and both sides lost a flagship, resulting in the lost of close to 5 ships each side. The game remained fairly balanced because of it.


Let me know if you guys have any suggestions as well!

I haven't been able to actually play the game (except once), but the rules above sound a bit wonky, IMHO.

For the ship point limits, I think you should reword to "X points total, of which Y points can be upgrades" and drop the "whichever is higher" - it just sounds wrong.

Not a fan of the requirement for a flagship and the downsides to the Resource action when the flagship is destroyed is too punishing. I'd probably change it to bonus points (say the base ship sans upgrade) for destruction of the flagship (10 pts maybe?).

The Disarray rule is just bad and makes flagships too much of a target for focus fire. Its punishment enough to loose the fleet action/resource advantage.

The Explosion rule should only effect ships in base to base (considering the size of the planet marker, Range 1 is a pretty good distance overall), otherwise it just makes Range 1 a liability.

The idea for the Disarray is that larger fleet battles can quickly be whittled down. We introduced it in a 250 point game between 4 players, for a total of about 1000 points on the table. The funny thing is that even with everything, both sides of the battle ended up balancing out. It is a bonus, variant rule that doesn't need to be included, same as the Explosion rule.

The explosion rule is minor enough damage that it doesn't discourage any ships being within range, and usually you know when your ships are doomed in advance. I felt their needed to be some drawback to staying in formation with doomed ships, since we see repeatedly that exploding ships are dangerous to each other as well as themselves.

The Flagships are not counted as part of your resources, they are a free bonus on top of your fleet.

And as for the whichever is higher clause, I added it in because not all Hull 3 ships are created equal. The IRW Praetus is only 14 points, while the Defiant is 24. The Miranda class is 18 points, while a B'Rel is 20. The differences are significant enough that I thought they warranted a clause to try and balance them all out.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I don't mean to argue, I just want to elaborate and address the concerns. If your concerns are still the same, I can try and make some adjustments to the rules to balance them out a bit more.