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Hey guys and gals, I was just wondering if there is much interest in a set of house rules to make STAW a bit more gritty and old school. I've been working on some old FASA ship stats for a while but I don't harbor any misconceptions about the dead in the ground turning to dust status of that particular ruleset regardless of my own nostalgia. I was wondering if any folks here would prefer a more old school power allocation system to govern ship activity as opposed to the xwing style. It wouldn't be FASA or SFB nitty gritty by any means as the range would be from 3 for a tiny generic shuttle to iirc 12 for a named borg cube with an overall complexity similar to the old lucasarts X-wing and TIE fighter pc games power allocation. The power would be allocated to shields (they'd have to be kept active each turn with power or disable), weapons, movement, and actions. The system would also replace the current damage card system as well with lower amounts of energy as your ship takes damage. I'm still working out the final details (like whether to incorporate directional shields). I really liked the flight path system for xwing (before it got too bloated) but I feel like its a little too streamlined (even with the card disable/discard mechanics) for a large spaceship game. In my limited tests it slows down the planning phase as you have to allocate power to each system but it shouldn't be any slower outside of that. My goal is to make things like "full power to shields" actually mean something in the game. The ship stats would stay the same as would upgrade cards for the most part (still working on ones that do damage as the damage system will be overhauled).

To me part of the appeal is that a fun game of 100-250 points can still be played an hour. I think the feeling is the same among the X-Wing players. I would like to see some cards that add shields for other factions and have that not be just a federation only thing. The idea of a power distribution sounds interesting, but that and directional shields just seem like it would slow the game down tremendously. Every attempt I have seen at it makes things too long.

 Mr. S Baldrick wrote:
To me part of the appeal is that a fun game of 100-250 points can still be played an hour. I think the feeling is the same among the X-Wing players. I would like to see some cards that add shields for other factions and have that not be just a federation only thing. The idea of a power distribution sounds interesting, but that and directional shields just seem like it would slow the game down tremendously. Every attempt I have seen at it makes things too long.

While I'm not sure about the directional shields as frankly that is still very much in flux, I don't think the power distribution should take more than 30 seconds per ship in the planning phase (although I'm solo testing how it would work in the activation phase when you reveal your dial instead). Your ship has a flat amount of energy points based on its existing stats from which you subtract an amount based on your damage and then allocate. You're already deciding what to put on the movement dial so you you just put the appropriate amount into engines. If you expect to fire that turn, you put an approriate amount into weapons. If you don't expect to get return fire, you skip putting any into shields (or if you do expect it, you put some in). It will slow down the game as it is adding a layer of complexity but there isn't any way to do the latter without some of the former but I don't think it will be significant amounts of slow down.

The system basically gives you starting energy enough to fully move any speed you have and fully power shields and weapons plus use an action so there basically is no slowdown there as you can the same things as with normal STAW (barring some unique card interations). Once you start taking hull damage, you start losing energy and have to decide what to prioritize as you won't be able to do everything every turn any more. I toyed around with an idea for "overpowering" certain systems like adding extra energy into weapons at a worsening ratio to give you an extra attack die but decided against it at least for the initial rollout since that would definitely change the balance in game (and therefore what points the ship should cost).

I fully realize I'm being vague and you're commenting without the full details though. Hopefully it won't be the case when you see the rules (probably put up this weekend).

If you could do the power allocation as a multi-dial, that might be workable system. Say a dial that tracks Engine (Speed), Weapons & Shields. It would likely end looking something like the energy dial for the Epic Star Wars dials.

Each ship card would have an energy allocation value; the cost on all three dials needs to be equal or less the energy allocation value.

Say:

Engine - each maneuver has a numeric energy cost below it. For example, a 2 straight might cost 2 energy; a 2 bank might cost 3 energy, but a 2 turn might cost 5 energy.

Shields - this could be done several ways - 1) a straight up total shield value like STAW does; 2) shield "points" you then allocate to ship faces; 3) a visual representation of set shield values for each face. Version 3 would be a nightmare to diagram possibly, I think #2 would be the best balance - usually once folks set their shield values they're only likely to change it due to damage or a high change in risk of damage to one particular face.

Weapons - this would mostly be straightforward, energy to dice to power firing phasers or arming torps and such. Maybe one point to arm a torpedo (but it remains armed until used); the remainder being a 1:1 or 2:1 ratio for firing phasers/disruptors.


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Also, the idea behind the FASA version was that you *couldn't* give full power to everything all the time. Want to go fast? You have to sacrifice firepower or shielding. Want to turtle? You'll have to suffer on manueverability.

If there isn't any give and take in this are, all you are doing is creating a fancy damage system, wherein you are building in a death spiral as the ship is more and more damaged.

I'll admit that I didn't think of using a dial but it would have to be one of the clix style dials and not a flight path one as it would have to display how much energy is going to multiple different systems at once.. and it only gets more complicated as the total energy available varies depending with the damage.. and they'd have to be specific to each ship due to the varying energy ranges. It sounds easier (both for players and me as an amateur noob designer) to calculate the total current energy and then spend the energy as you go for your ship's activation instead. You only keep track of a ships energy when it is active (barring the occasional reserved point or two to perform an action out of your activation due to an upgrade card ability).

Yeah, I want ships to have to chose between aspects of activity. At full health, they'll be able to do pretty much everything as per normal STAW (except for red manuevers obviously) but then have to prioritize as they take damage. I suspect it'll lead to more banzai charges (full power to weapons!) and turtling (full power to shields) depending on the ship and the related mission objectives.

I'm not sure what you mean with the last part though about give and take/death spiral. Could you elaborate? There is a bit of a death spiral in the sense that it is easier/smarter to pick of ships as they're damaged since they're less able to defend themselves. I do have some concerns about groups of zombie almost dead ships unable to do much to each other but in my (albeit *VERY* limited) testing that doesn't happen much as they tend to get focused fired by healthier ships until destroyed (0 hull) or very occasionally a drifting lifeless hulk (some hull but no energy due to crits).

Well, if the ship has enough power to work as normal under its STAW stat card and can't reroute power from one area to boost another area above STAW normal, what's really the point? In that case, all you're doing is replicating what's available in STAW now, but as the ship loses power points to damage, it also becomes less effective - less overall power to move, attack or defend itself. All you're really doing is complicating tracking damage by adding another resource to track.

If a ship can't put power to weapons anymore, it's a flying target. Can't put power to movement, it's a sitting duck. That's something that doesn't happen in STAW now, ships are (fully) effective to the bitter end. With slowly degrading power loss from damage it could be very easy to make a ship ineffective long before it would normally be destroyed (and thus worth less points overall), which might take away from some player's fun as they become frustrated with a ship that is increasingly unable to do anything except absorb more damage.

I can see the allure in representing the degrading effectiveness of a ship, and to a degree I'd like to see it too - but the effect needs to add something positive to the game; the energy dial should add a layer of strategy in resource management to the game. If it's just "your ship gets worse", that's work and desperation, not fun.

I'm somewhat fearful a coy player may figure out that an easy win can be had if he damages a ship and then just puts some distance between himself and moves on to the next target, and finishes off the crippled ship later. If the damaged ship wants to stay in range, it has to burn its energy on movement, making its attacks weak. If it focuses on having good firepower, it won't have the energy to engines to follow the opposing ship.

You'd also have to change how shields work in some way, or once shields are gone (and if they can't be recovered), its useless to assign power to them and you can use it elsewhere - and I'll bet most folks would lean towards going kamikaze and rerouting that power to weapons for one last alpha strike...

If you think about it in an abstract way STAW already has power distribution built in. We know there are cards like Projected Stasis Field and Scotty but think about the basic actions themselves. The ships Action is its available power. Evade is really "increase power to shields", BS & TL are "increase power to weapons", Scan is "power to sensors", Cloak and SE obviously move power to the cloaking device. Regeneration is a great example it takes so much power to repair that it has to take it away from weapons.

There may not be directional shields but the concept that you are looking for already exists in the game, you just have to think about it more.

 Stormonu wrote:
Well, if the ship has enough power to work as normal under its STAW stat card and can't reroute power from one area to boost another area above STAW normal, what's really the point? In that case, all you're doing is replicating what's available in STAW now, but as the ship loses power points to damage, it also becomes less effective - less overall power to move, attack or defend itself. All you're really doing is complicating tracking damage by adding another resource to track.

If a ship can't put power to weapons anymore, it's a flying target. Can't put power to movement, it's a sitting duck. That's something that doesn't happen in STAW now, ships are (fully) effective to the bitter end. With slowly degrading power loss from damage it could be very easy to make a ship ineffective long before it would normally be destroyed (and thus worth less points overall), which might take away from some player's fun as they become frustrated with a ship that is increasingly unable to do anything except absorb more damage.

I can see the allure in representing the degrading effectiveness of a ship, and to a degree I'd like to see it too - but the effect needs to add something positive to the game; the energy dial should add a layer of strategy in resource management to the game. If it's just "your ship gets worse", that's work and desperation, not fun.

You bring up some interesting points but part of the "problems" you are mentioning are actually not bugs but features to borrow a programming meme. Part of the nitty gritty that I want to add is degrading effectiveness. While it makes for a quicker game to not have it, it just doesn't seem right for a capital ship game to me (unlike space fighters ala x-wing). It just doesn't seem right to me that a ship with 6 hull and 5 shields originally that is down to only 1 hull has (barring any lingering crit effects not cancelled) zero negative side effects of all that damage. It can still move and fire as if nothing happened and the crew and systems represented by the lost shields and hull were just ablative armor velcroed to the side of the ship. That's a game mechanic abstraction that is a bit too far for me personally. YMMV. I do see merit in your position though that the degrading effects should be balanced with some sort of positive option as well and my intial scribblings had boosts for things like attack, shields, and movement as well. The reason I haven't mentioned them much is because I was hesitant to mimic for free the effects of various upgrade cards that give permanent or condition shield/attack boosts. If you want a +1 to primary attack, why spend points on a card that might additionally require a disable when you can just shimmy 1 forward on a turn when you need it and overpower the phasers by 1 instead? It is reasonable though that the energy system should give some sort of upside though and not exclusively come into play when ships are damaged.

I'm somewhat fearful a coy player may figure out that an easy win can be had if he damages a ship and then just puts some distance between himself and moves on to the next target, and finishes off the crippled ship later. If the damaged ship wants to stay in range, it has to burn its energy on movement, making its attacks weak. If it focuses on having good firepower, it won't have the energy to engines to follow the opposing ship.

While I don't dispute that can happen, I'd point out that your example occurs in a vacuum of basically three ships (two enemy ships with one crippled and one of your ships). I think it would be more common to see ships from both sides getting damaged and focusing fire on completely destroying enemy ships to prevent the desparate "full power to weapons" hail mary tactic that we see in Star Trek.

You'd also have to change how shields work in some way, or once shields are gone (and if they can't be recovered), its useless to assign power to them and you can use it elsewhere - and I'll bet most folks would lean towards going kamikaze and rerouting that power to weapons for one last alpha strike...

Agreed. I've got a mechanic for regenerating one lost shield for extra power cost a turn. Again, I'm a little wary with that as it somewhat steps on the toes of cards that do so at the cost of build points and disables. I may just have to say "feth it" regarding stepping on those cards' toes and put it in anyways to get a positive side to the power system mechanic.


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 Mr. S Baldrick wrote:
If you think about it in an abstract way STAW already has power distribution built in. We know there are cards like Projected Stasis Field and Scotty but think about the basic actions themselves. The ships Action is its available power. Evade is really "increase power to shields", BS & TL are "increase power to weapons", Scan is "power to sensors", Cloak and SE obviously move power to the cloaking device. Regeneration is a great example it takes so much power to repair that it has to take it away from weapons.

There may not be directional shields but the concept that you are looking for already exists in the game, you just have to think about it more.

I've always seen that more of as a focus towards what the pilot (or bridge crew in STAW) is concentrating on rather than actual power distribution coming from a primarily x-wing experience with Flight Path. You get an evade for instance not because you've dumped extra power into thrusters but rather because the captains cinematic bridge order during that 10 second clip is to shout at the helmsman "Evasive pattern delta!". I do see in a very abstract sort of way what you mean though.

BTW, have you looked at Star Wars armada? It has a form of energy allotment built in with the command dials, without the number crunching. The commands you give in armada are akin to "focus energy here" or "more power to the ...". Several of the critical effects would mimic loss of power to certain systems, like a degrading overall loss of power to the ship.

If anything, I think STAW should have been based on the Armada rules, not the Flightpath rules.

I have taken a look at it. I think it's a bit better for big ships, small guns type spacebattles like in Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica but that isn't my real issue with using the ideas there.

1) It's not easily compatible with Flight Path. That makes it less likely to be adopted or incorporated while still using the majority of the rules already in STAW. The rules and even dice are different.

2) The "bits" intensive nature (special flight stands and dials) means folks would have to make dials or buy a completely different game in order to use any of the house rules.

While I harbor no delusions about some sort of wide spread adoption of my house rules, incorporating one or both of the above (in addition to the actual rules I'm changing already) would put a big burden on any player trying to actually use them. My goal is to add an additional layer to the existing game that doesn't require the player to print out or scratchbuild lots of new game components (other than just some sort of generic energy token) or make useless many of the existing game components.

Fair enough, I was suggesting in the hopes it might either spur ideas or reduce some of the workload.

I hope I am not being too aggravating; Personally I think STAW is a bit too "lite" for properly simulating Star Trek style battles, but on the other end FASA's a bit more tracking than I enjoy (I can't even attempt to wrap my head around Star Fleet Battles).

 Stormonu wrote:
Fair enough, I was suggesting in the hopes it might either spur ideas or reduce some of the workload.

I hope I am not being too aggravating; Personally I think STAW is a bit too "lite" for properly simulating Star Trek style battles, but on the other end FASA's a bit more tracking than I enjoy (I can't even attempt to wrap my head around Star Fleet Battles).

No worries; I appreciate the feedback. It's much more helpful than apathy and/or silence. When I started putzing around with the idea of the house rules months ago, I made those completely voluntary restrictions both to limit the scope of the house rules as well as make it easier to use for potential players. My goal is to add some complexity (specifically with regards to a system) into STAW as opposed to a total conversion of STAW into another game or a new game of my own.

I have alot of nostalgia for the old FASA game but I'm fully publicly aware of the limitations and problems of that old ruleset and don't want to go back to something of that (largely unnecessary) complexity for a newer game. As for SFB, while I like some parts of some fo the ship designs, the rules never appealed to me. It's basically the Classic Battletech of space battles. Even the "slimmed down" Federation Commander version of SFB is more complex than the FASA game so not under consideration either. That's why I was aiming for something more akin in complexity to the power management system on the old Star Wars PC starfighter games.

I apologize about the delay in getting these out but I've gotten a bit busy as of late on top of hitting a bit of a hurdle for the time being.

The issue that I've run into is the timing of allocating energy. Initially, I had it in the planning phase but that made the planning phase too boring and long (especially with chronic second guessers like myself) and gave away too much of your turn tactics... so I changed it to the activation of the model in question with the caveat that the ship must reserve/have enough energy to perform the maneuver on the movement dial.

That brought up an interesting problem in a test game in that ships who go last or near last get a big advantage in that they already know who can fire/has fired and can tailor their energy output accordingly. Everyone who can fire at you already fired at other targets? Zero energy to shields then and full power to weapons instead! Ships in star trek can, with passive sensors, detect whether or not another ship is powering its weapons and/or shields without spending an action like on scan.

I've come up with a couple of possible solutions but am open to more:

1) Return the power allocation back to the planning phase but have it done face down. Instead of generic power tokens spent as needed during the activation (movement, shields, and firing generally in that order), I'd have three identical shaped one sided tokens (power to shields, movement, and weapons) that you place *face down* next to your ship. It'll extend the planning phase but get rid of the paradoxical bad captain advantage as well as not give away your strategy.

2) Place a symbolic generic token for each one of the systems you'll be powering up that turn. If you place three, you'll have to spend at least one power on each of the main systems during your activation but the exact power distribution beyond one each will still be up to you during that activation. If you place two, you don't have to declare which systems you'll be powering up (obviouly movement sucks up one but the second is up in the air) but one system must be unpowered during your activation. This system is quicker but still gives a bit of an advantage to late activating ships.

Ideas? The old school gamer in me prefers #1 but that may not be a popular choice with others who prefer quicker games.

Require power allocation to be determined secretly by all players before the new turn. Nobody has advantage that way. Add a timer if analysis paralysis is a problem.

That sounds like a vote for option 1 to me!

Yeah, I like option 1 as well.

Just thinking aloud...

A multidial (one ring for shield power, one for weapon, one for movement) might be an idea to investigate. Might also could consider a "control panel", with sliders or pegs to track allocation, with some sort of screen to block the opposing player from viewing what your selecting.

Using tokens that are the same shape kinda seems like a bad idea - I would suggest different shapes for the different systems - maybe triangles with the weapon power, circles with shield power and squares or arrows with movement (or just the movement dial itself). Of course, using tokens, you're now having to keep track of a bunch of numbered tokens. I don't know about you, but I have trouble keeping up with my "2 Bank" template, and I'd hate to try and keep track of a bunch of numbered tokens (much less 3 distinct sets).

 Stormonu wrote:
Yeah, I like option 1 as well.

Just thinking aloud...

A multidial (one ring for shield power, one for weapon, one for movement) might be an idea to investigate. Might also could consider a "control panel", with sliders or pegs to track allocation, with some sort of screen to block the opposing player from viewing what your selecting.

Using tokens that are the same shape kinda seems like a bad idea - I would suggest different shapes for the different systems - maybe triangles with the weapon power, circles with shield power and squares or arrows with movement (or just the movement dial itself). Of course, using tokens, you're now having to keep track of a bunch of numbered tokens. I don't know about you, but I have trouble keeping up with my "2 Bank" template, and I'd hate to try and keep track of a bunch of numbered tokens (much less 3 distinct sets).

Using a separate power multidial customized to each individual ship would be ideal but a bit beyond the scope of what I can do personally as a fan in terms of design and from the players' perspective in terms of production for use on the tabletop. If I won the mega millions lottery and bought out the STAW license from wizkids, that'd be my first choice though in a STAW 2nd ed redesign. It would however be the cleanest solution to the problem given unlimited resources. A dry erase laminated generic panel would work though and is a good idea/alternative that avoids token clutter. Thanks, I hadn't considered that. It's suitably old school feeling ala SFB as well. Folks who want to keep the current look/feel could used tokens instead. Interesting....

Using different shaped tokens though defeats the purpose of putting them face down as you can discern what your opponent will be doing by looking at their power distribution tokens even if face down. Was your suggestion instead to not bother hiding the power distribution in the planning phase? Perhaps I wasn't clear in my description as there will be no "numbered" tokens. I meant that you'd have one power token shape that is blank on one side and have for example a lightning bolt icon on the other side. I'd make up a sheet in MSPaint full of those tokens; one third of the total number of tokens would be blue for shields, one third red for weapons, and one third white for engines. You then cut out the individual tokens for use and place the number of appopriate tokens you want for each system face down (blank side up) next to your ship card.

Here's an example with a sample ship with say 5 power due to damage so it can't power everything. You decide to put a 1 powers-worth manuever on your dial so put 1 face down white engine power token next to your card. You'll fully power your weapons (gung ho, baby!) with 2 power so put 2 red weapons power tokens face down next. The remaining one power will go to shields (only half strength though) so you place 1 face down blue shields power token. You then move onto the next ship in your planning phase. When the ship activates you reveal all your power tokens or, if you're attacked before your activation, you reveal your shield tokens only.

I was thinking like if you had 10 power to distribute, you might put (face down), a triangle(weapon power) with a 3 on it, a circle (shields) with a 5 on it and a square/arrow (manuever) with a 2 on it. Just 3 tokens. From the sound of your method, you'd put down 10 tokens (say, all circular), but 3 of them have a weapon symbol, 5 a shield symbol and 2 a manuever symbol.

A generic multidial might work if power does a 1:1 conversion, say numbered 1-10 for each of the three wheels. Ship's card would have the max total energy indicated. The only thing going on the table would be the (face down) power dial and manuever dial (set according to how much power you allocated to manuever).

Then, you could do each point of manuever is 1 distance, bank is +1, turn is +2. Shield power would be a straight 1:1 conversion, Weapon power would be 1:1 on dice (could get a little advanced and do like the FASA game did, 1 or 2 points to arm a secondary weapon - might make them more attractive). Or you could create an addendum card that has all the power conversion ratios on it for maneuvers, if you wanted to get that advanced.

 Stormonu wrote:
I was thinking like if you had 10 power to distribute, you might put (face down), a triangle(weapon power) with a 3 on it, a circle (shields) with a 5 on it and a square/arrow (manuever) with a 2 on it. Just 3 tokens. From the sound of your method, you'd put down 10 tokens (say, all circular), but 3 of them have a weapon symbol, 5 a shield symbol and 2 a manuever symbol.

A generic multidial might work if power does a 1:1 conversion, say numbered 1-10 for each of the three wheels. Ship's card would have the max total energy indicated. The only thing going on the table would be the (face down) power dial and manuever dial (set according to how much power you allocated to manuever).

Then, you could do each point of manuever is 1 distance, bank is +1, turn is +2. Shield power would be a straight 1:1 conversion, Weapon power would be 1:1 on dice (could get a little advanced and do like the FASA game did, 1 or 2 points to arm a secondary weapon - might make them more attractive). Or you could create an addendum card that has all the power conversion ratios on it for maneuvers, if you wanted to get that advanced.

Ah, thanks for clarifying. Yeah, that token style would work as long as there is a "zero" token and leave you with a max of three on each ship, which I like. Consider the idea stolen! The generic multidial would have to be quite big though as it would have to account for everything from the named borg cube (12 power iirc) to the generic shuttle (3 power) with every combination for every ship. I suspect even with small fonts it would end up like an old 1980s computer game code wheel at small dessert plate size. Just from memory, the Enterprise E would need 48 different wheel options to account for every power combination... and it gets even worse with more powerful ships like the borg cube.

As it stands right now, I've got movement costed at 1 per 2 on the dial rounded up... so a three green straight is 2 power as is a 4 white straight. I only use the number right now so it doesn't matter if you soft or hard turn or even come about. The number of power units isn't granular enough to account for straight vs hard vs soft turns but rather only simple total length of movement which corresponds to the number on the movement dial. Initially, though, I had power mods for green/red maneuvers but that was in conjunction with a system that integrated the power system with the action economy as well. For now, I'm keeping the two separate although they'll be compatible when eventually released. My goal is to have a staggered series of house rules modules that you can use starting with the power system and optionally graduating up from there for increased complexity.

I think I'm not explaining the multidial well - it would look something like below, and I think Litko already makes one:

Thx for clarifying again. I was thinking more along the lines of a click dial with a single window showing multiple stats. Your multidial idea would indeed work. I took a look at the Litko site and found this.

http://www.litko.net/products/Circle-Combat-Dials%2C-numbered-0%252d100-%281%29.html



It shows two numbers but the third is defacto subtracted equal to what is left from the total as well as indicated by the movement dial. At $7 per dial, that would add up for players. I suppose a three or four layered cardstock cutout to print at home would work as well.