Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So, this thread is for us to work as a team to adapt the Attack Wing ships and various upgrades to the Fantasy Flight Games Star Wars Armada rule set.

I propose we start either Chronologically, or with the Release dates of the ships. The poll is below.

I also recommend that we use the pol option to help gather votes on various design choices. Suggestions and submissions are entered as comments.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also: What source should we use? I don't know of any definitive guide, so I was going to recommend that we use Memory Alpha, but I am open to suggestions.

Memory Alpha/Beta works although you have to remember not everything gets translated exactly to a game (i.e. the exact number of disruptors on a klingon ship isn't a guide to their individual or cummulative power necessarily). I voted for chronological progression but I suspect I'll be the only one.

In regards to Armada, how important/powerful is the fighter/bomber phase compared with ships? Obviously, squadrons are incredibly important to Star Wars in general but I was curious to their effect in the actual armada game. For instance, in Full Thrust they're ridiculously powerful (but appropriately priced on the carrier ship) whereas in Halo Fleet Battles they're pretty much useless except in niche circumstances. With fighters for all intents and purposes not being a thing in Star Trek except for a few seconds here and there on DS9, we'd likely be ignoring them and their phase.

Honestly, after playing Armada for about 4 months, Fighters are about as important as they SHOULD be in Attack Wing. Fighters can HELP win a battle, but unlike ST:AW, they are rarely the difference between life and death.

The fighters are a fun side note, but a lot of competitive players don't bring them. The only time they can be dangerous is if your opponent has fighters and you don't, but that's only because of the Bombers.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And I agree, chronologically seems best to me. That's where I voted in the Poll.

Do ships automatically come with fighters/bombers in Armada? Or do you have to buy them on top of the cost of the ship? i.e. if you use an ISD, do you get the fighters listed on the stats for free?

 warboss wrote:
Do ships automatically come with fighters/bombers in Armada? Or do you have to buy them on top of the cost of the ship? i.e. if you use an ISD, do you get the fighters listed on the stats for free?

Not quite how it works. Sorry for crossposting and coming to a new neighborhood like this but I couldn't help but notice the Armada tag

Squadrons have to be bought separately for a list building cost. Generic fighters and bombers (actually a group of a few of them) cause 1/4 to 1/10 ish as much as a Capital ship, while unique pilots leading a squadron with special abilities cost more. Squadrons are very unique in Armada and actually quite strong if taken in spades. They have their own phase after all the capital ships have activated, to move into attack position or to roll to hurt a capital ship. They can also be activated in the regular phase by using squadron commands (You can activate as many as you have squadron value on the Capital ship card, and this value can be increased with upgrades) and in this instance you can move AND attack. Most squadrons can be "locked" in a dogfight combat, keeping them from moving or engaging capital ships with their weapons, in this case, they can only shoot other squadrons when activated, but there are many ways around this, namely having to do with unique pilots. There is also, to consider, abilities that move the activation slider (in effect, "resetting" the squadron and allowing it to activate again) back to its previous position.

lol, I already started a excel file trying to do this....


start TNG/VOY/DS9

then where ever

I could submit Klingons in a day or two

Here is the Excel file for Klingons, Honestly I was finding it had to figure out point values and how to handle dice

Rune, that was what I was going to suggest - start with Next Gen, D9 + Voyager and work backwards to do TOS then Enterprise.

But have a framework in mind to accommodate both ends of the scale in tech and size.

I also agree with Corpsman on squadrons; they don't have a real impact on the game unless the bomber count is dramatically lopsided. And Star Trek really doesn't have much use for fighters (though Wesley's wing back in Next Gen first introduced one-man craft other than shuttles). If you REALLY want to go off-canon, there are the shuttle/fighters from the Shattered Universe game, but I wouldn't recommend it.

I kinda think squadron commands should do something totally different for a Star Trek Armada, but not be entirely removed in case we want to put in something like the scorpion fighters from the Scimitar. And things like Runabouts would likely be squadron scale. Its just that *most* ships won't have regular use for squadrons, unless we do something strange.

The only argument I have for fighters and bombers, is that the scope of Star trek wasn't about war so you never knew about that until DS9 intro a War time scenario to the universe. I don't think they take anything away from the game.

No offence to Corpsman and you but, in Armada carrier fleets can be devastating. They do not need to be lopsided in any fashion, you just need the right equipment and objectives.

I know what you mean Rune. Its just harder for the fighters to be effective if you focus on the capital ships. a Focused carrier build is indeed viscious, but the rules of 1/3 your points kills it in my opinion.

Did we ever agree on a source?

 Corpsman913 wrote:
Its just harder for the fighters to be effective if you focus on the capital ships.

With Imperial Ties your not hoping to get a hit you want the accuracy Icon to start disrupting defense tokens and force your opponent to start spending them instead of just exhausting them.

Nice start Rune. The ships stats and points look good to me.

I was going to suggest we keep the basic format for upgrades as with Attack Wing:

-Admirals (optional, max 1 per fleet)
-Captains (one per ship)
-Elite Talents
-Crew
-Weapons
-Tech
-Ship Title Card (new, to grant us the Unique ships)

It stream-lines the conversion, meaning less time on design, more time on testing.


Another thing I can look into is Phaser dispersion rates: I remember that a lot of games (computer/console) talk about how Phasers are best in sustained, close range shots, while weaker at longer ranges. I also remember that those same sources state that disruptors have shorter ranges, and that the Federation has the best range in the quadrant.

This can translate into the various dice colors being represented differently for each faction.

I also think that maybe the Anti-Squadron values are un-needed. A huge difference between Star Trek and Star Wars is fighter combat. Star Wars fighters are fast, nimble, and hard to target with the point defense weapons of the capital ships. Star Trek, Fighters are just smaller versions of capital ships, with similar but weaker armament, and the targeting sensors are capable of locking onto fighters just as easily as big ships.

We can address this in one of two ways: 1) We eliminate the fighter mechanic from our version completely, and reduce the commands from 4 choices to 3 (Concentrated Fire, Engineering, and Navigate), and we make fighters small based ship-swarm hybrids. OR 2) We make fighters more robust than their star wars counterparts, give them slightly lower attack, and allow squadrons to be targeted by primary attacks the same as ships, eliminating the Anti-squadron aspect of each ship (since star trek ships don't have point defense weapons). Option 1 has the added benefit of not having to come up with squadron values.

What do you guys think about using set size limitations for each base?

Example: anything less than 300 meters long is considered a Small base ship, down to a Minimum of 50 meters. Anything over 1000 meters is a large? I could even see an argument for 600 being the cut off, though Large base ships are not extremely common in Armada as of yet (2 total).

Some general design Ideas I had for each faction, let me know if you guys agree:

Feds: Modest firepower, evenly distributed through fore, starboard, and port arcs, mostly red and blue dice, with little to no black dice. Shields evenly distributed between fore, starboard, and port arcs as well. Basically all around balanced, but not excellent in any particular category.

Klingons: High firepower, few red dice, but more black dice. Firepower is mostly focused on forward arcs, which are slightly wider (think star destroyers). Shields are weak to the Aft arc, modest to the sides, and strong to the front.

Romulan: Modest Firepower, Mostly blue with some red, some black. Focused mostly on fore and aft arcs, with most shields there as well, and weaker side arcs. Higher hull, but not by a lot. more maneuverable.

Dominion: I am thinking red and blue dice like the Feds, shields like the Klingons. Not very maneuverable, but still fast.

As of right now, I am more interested in Federation, Klingons, and Romulans than the other factions. If you guys have thoughts on everyone else, please share, because I am not overly certain where to go with that.

Some thought also needs to go into cloaking; perhaps that can replace the squadron order on Romulan and Klingon ships.

I agree with removing the Anti-squadron values and just using the normal attacks against shuttles and the few fighters that exist.

I do think we need to keep some of the squadron rules - runabouts, shuttles, scorpion attack fighters and a few other ships in the Star Trek universe should probably fit on the round squadron bases (paralleling the Falcon, Slave I and such). However, I would like to really ditch the "move or shoot" aspect of squadrons - I think some of the larger ships like the Falcon can already do that in Armada.

Yes, its the "Rogue" ability.

For cloaking, I was thinking that when clocked, ships gain the Scatter Defense token: it allows them to completely negate an attack made against them. making it a Command on the dial might not be a bad way to go. I had originally thought about using it as a 2 point engineering ability.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
http://st-intelligence.com/begin.php

This is where I am starting with my stats. Please feel free to dispute and correct if you see a need to.

Out of curiosity (and not to detract from any Armada conversion), what do you guys feel about incorporating older style "crunchier" game mechanics like ship energy points and limited F/A/P/S based stats? I fully realize that some (likely younger gamers not used to 80's game mechanics) would justifiably see it as clunky compared with the more streamlined base flight path rules but figured I'd ask. With my recently renewed interest in full starship combat games (as opposed to x-wing fighter combat), I found myself exploring both the current offerings (Halo and Attack Wing to be specific) as well as oldies in my collection (specifically Fasa Starship Combat). I even picked up the final book I needed to complete my collection of the old Fasa game!

While I have fond memories of the old Fasa game, decades of game design have literally passed and the system does seem likes it's lacking a bit in terms of variety (everything is the same... just slightly better or worse) with very little real uniqueness to factions and ships. I find the extended upgrade mechanics in Attack Wing (compared with X-wing) to be refreshing but I still find myself looking for a bit more "crunch" as well. "Forward shields to maximum!" means nothing in Attack Wing and I miss a bit of that intra-ship management. I was curious is anyone else feels the same. I'm not talking about going full on FASA crunch at all or god forbid even further to Star Fleet Battles levels of crunch but just incorporating some of those mechanics over the template of flight path.

I think it could be doable, and by "it" I mean incorporating shield arcs, additional firing arcs (Port and Starboard), and assigning energy to the various upgrades.

The way X-Wing uses Huge ships seems perfect to how capital ships would handle in star trek: this whole "Auxiliary Power" shenanigans seems stupid at worst, and pedantic at best.

For a simple modification, Add in a few features:
Green maneuvers add 2 energy, White maneuvers add 1 energy, red maneuvers cost 1 energy. ships may store up to their hull value in energy.
Energy is spend to activate tech and weapon upgrades, as well as perform actions (such as the activate Sulu and Scotty or perform an Evade). Shields may be spread throughout your four arcs: Forward, Aft, Port, and Starboard (Port and Starboard being the area between your forward and aft firing arcs). This is done during the activation phase, after you move but before you do your action.

If a ship reaches 0 Energy, the ship takes an Auxiliary power token, which automatically lowers the energy gained by a maneuver by 1, and if a ship loses energy, they gain an additional Auxiliary power token. (So a ship spends all energy, reaching 0. It takes an Auxiliary power token. the token is removed by the green maneuver, but the maneuver still only gains +1 energy, versus the normal +2 energy).

This is just off the top of my head, so it would obviously need play-testing and trouble shooting the resulting hick-ups.

On the topic of the Armada conversion: I drafted the base ship stats for the Feds and am working on the Romulans as we speak. I can post both by this afternoon. I will address the various upgrades later.

Yeah, there are definitely different ways of doing it (including your way which is similar but different to what I was thinking). I'd probably keep the firing arcs the same (they're already differentiated between front 90, front 180, full, and rear) but directional shields is definitely something I'd want. Aux power and action economy would have to be completely overhauled though and that would certainly warrant an eventual change in points costs per ship as well.

As Promised!

On the energy allocation, I think the command dial helps to replicate some of that - Maneuver is throwing extra energy to engines/movement, Engineering is more power to shields/moving shields and Firepower is throwing more energy at weapons. I don't think with the command dial we really need to also track energy; it's informally already done in my mind.

However, I wouldn't be adverse to upgrades or abilities that let you take these things even further - dropping firepower for more shields, "overloading" shields above their maximum value and other such shenanigans.

I think the energy idea is for the current flight path system, while the Armada conversion is more about the command dials, like you pointed out.

I can begin tackling the Upgrades over the next few weeks. I have a really busy day at work for the next two days (half our staffing is out for various training), and then I am moving (bigger place space in the Casa), so it will be a slow start.

 Corpsman913 wrote:
I think the energy idea is for the current flight path system, while the Armada conversion is more about the command dials, like you pointed out.

Yup, the energy is for an old school (con)version of STAW rather than the Armada conversion. The confusion is completely my fault; I just felt guilty about starting a whole thread to ask a question about a half baked idea. Sorry about that.

 warboss wrote:

 Corpsman913 wrote:
I think the energy idea is for the current flight path system, while the Armada conversion is more about the command dials, like you pointed out.

Yup, the energy is for an old school (con)version of STAW rather than the Armada conversion. The confusion is completely my fault; I just felt guilty about starting a whole thread to ask a question about a half baked idea. Sorry about that.

Sorry, I somehow missed ya'll were talking about the Attack Wing version.

Warboss, seems like I saw a simplified version of Star Fleet battles a couple years back that might fit what you were looking for. I think it's called Starmada, by Majestic Games (in league with ADB, the folks behind Star Fleet Battles).

 Corpsman913 wrote:
As Promised!

why not a Large base for Galaxy and Sovereign? also very both have no contain, why not?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Corpsman913 wrote:
Nice start Rune. The ships stats and points look good to me.

I was going to suggest we keep the basic format for upgrades as with Attack Wing:

Some general design Ideas I had for each faction, let me know if you guys agree:

I would at least keep the Modification part of the upgrades meaning some upgrades are thus and a ship may only have one. However generalizing Crew Officer, Support Teams into one or multiple slots could very well unbalance things

Your thoughts on how to handle attack dice are you still using the Armada Ranges? If you are then, elimination of colors for some ships or weighted towards another creates problems. all these ships had the ability to attack at long range.

For the base sizes, I was going with ship size from the source I listed. Anything over 1000 meters is Large, But I can adjust it down to 600, which would give both the Sovereign and the Galaxy Large bases, and thus Contain, a defense token limited to the Large base ships only.

As for the Dice, the current armada game has very few black dice-throwing ships. As for the other colors, I am attempting to address the fact that the Federation phasers have longer range then the disruptors of the Romulans and Klingons.

All of this is subject to change after play-testing.

I am attempting to stick with converting the upgrades over, rather than creating whole new ones. I want to get the conversion finished and play tested before I start creating new stuff.

I am not sure I understand the Crew to Officers and teams unbalancing, any chance you can elaborate on that Rune?

So, your considering just Crew, Tech, Weapon as ship upgrade slots.

So a ship like the Enterprise E would have Crew, Crew, Tech, Tech, and Weapon or something similar.

Many of the SW Armada cards are in very different catorgories =: weapons team, Support Teams, Officers, which you may only have one of each. Also Offensive retrofit, defensive retrofit......

Having a generalized slot such a crew covering all 3 "crew" types and allowing multiple of a generic may not be the way to go. There is no action phase in armada and your free to exhaust as many cards at the appropriate time as you have on available slots. You may need to have a universal "Rule of One" if you used generalized slots.

Example: Engine tech: make an additional speed-1 move when revealing a navigate command dial

What if you have 3 crew slots and someone took 3 engine techs, things start to unravel quickly.

I agree you should use the SW armada cards but you may want to keep some of the upgrade classifications for balance. I also suggest adding one called Away Team for boarding parties. It has that Trek feel. it seem just about every other episode the ship was boarded by some one


Automatically Appended Next Post:
DICE

I guess in some article some where or fan based book of the technology of the star trek universe, the Federation have longer range phasers, but in the show I never got that impression. It always felt that all beam energy weapons phaser or disruptor was basically similar in range.

All I'm saying is that the range restrictions for different color dice make it difficult to translate strength of fire power. Klingons have more black dice to represent higher yield weaponry drastically reduces their effective range and the tactics behind the blue die.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Lastly

Cloaking Device, I felt that making it a upgrade was best, if your ship is priced for a cloaking device and you never use it, well.....

With a purchasable device there is still balance in that you pay for what you get. Its just not auto included in a ship. In DS9 during large operations the cloaking device was never used.

How did you feel about the ability of the cloaking device? Price?

If we go with Cloaking device as an upgrade, I think the cost is good. I am not a big fan of the way it works mechanically, just because it feels underpowered.

I was thinking of either adding or replacing one of the original defense tokens with the Scatter token (exhaust the token to cancel an attack), but you cannot attack while cloaked, and you drop all shields to 0. Powerful, but risky.

The biggest concern I have with the changes in the upgrades is that it is not something that can be easily done. The nature of the technology of star trek vs star wars is such that things like weapons teams don't exist in Star trek. Star Wars ships are battleships, with individual cannons be coordinated from the bridge. A weapons team in star trek is simply a tactical officer. A sensor team in star wars is a communications or operations officer. If we maintain the original Attack Wing categories, its still in keeping with the Star Trek theme: you don't need a full crew to run a starship, just a bridge crew. If we keep with the upgrades that already exsist, but modify them to not be unbalanced, it fixes most of the issues. I think we can work it in such a manner that the game does not break down in seconds.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
We aren't Wizkids.

 Corpsman913 wrote:
We aren't Wizkids.

We are after all concerned with balance issues....

I will work on re-distributing the dice to be a little more balanced color wise, but I like the Arc balance among the three factions.

Ok, here are a few things that I have been mulling about as I worked on the Romulan upgrades:

Cloaking: I think Rune's idea of making it an upgrade to be purchased is a good idea. We can take Cloaking Device and a few other upgrades and make them "Modifications", a special upgrade that each ship may only have *1* of.

Captain Skill: I think this mechanic is great, and I would like to keep it during our conversion. We can use it as a rule for activating ships. Since we don't have the standard flight path phases of each round, Ships will simply activate in the order of the captains skill, starting with the highest and ending with the lowest.

Attack Dice and Faction: I looked back over the Armada stuff I have, and Rune is (once again) right: limiting the factions to only through certain colored dice hampers certain factions by ALOT. I think that the Firing arcs are still in line with the factions: Federation has a Weak aft arc, but is equal through the other three, Romulans are stronger on front and Aft, but weak to the sides, and Klingons have wider forward arcs, but significantly weaker aft and side arcs.

Introducing the "Limited" attribute on cards and Generic Upgrades: Something that both X-wing and Armada have done is limiting certain upgrades, so that you can't take six of the same upgrade and this bulk up on specific attributes. I like the way it has been handled, and I think it will apply great here. I also think that the more generic upgrades should be made just that- non-faction specific upgrades available to everyone. Things like Photon torpedoes, additional weapons array or type 8 phasers, etc.

Any additional thoughts?