World Building

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Takhisis
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World Building

Post by Takhisis »

I was creating ships under starmada rules using a spreadsheet from their forum that also generate the stats for 1st edition vbam. It generated enough interest to buy the 2nd edition rules online. One issue I have is for example a frigate has a DV of 8 yet in 2nd edition rules it would be alot lower. Would this break the combat system for example?
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Tyrel Lohr
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Re: World Building

Post by Tyrel Lohr »

As long as you're only using ships created using the Starmada ship spreadsheet, all of the 1e VBAM stats that is produces should be balanced against each other well enough to not give you a lot of problems. For example, the ships from Noel Weer's Stars Divided setting are still roughly comparable with what you could build using the 2e rules. The smaller ships are the biggest outlier there by virtue of VBAM 2e weakening those units to make up for their low Command Cost values.

If we look at the Stirling A, for example, it has the following 1e stats:

Cost 8, Maint 2/2, DV 8, AS 7, AF 1, CR 6, CC 2, CV 0, Jump, Direct Assault (1)

Now, the Direct Assault (1) becomes the Boarding (1) in 2e, but serves the same purpose. Jump isn't used in the base 2e rules, but will be reintroduced in the Companion to cover universes like Babylon 5 that have a combination of jump engines and jump gates. Both special abilities have +1 Cost modifiers.

Okay, let's say that the Stirling is a Heavy Cruiser (CA). This gives it a base Cost 6, Maint 2/3, CC 3, and 21 CP to spend on abilities. The 1e Stirling has 23 CP of abilities (including the point in Direct Assault). That puts it pretty in line with the 2e stats; it just means it's a little more advanced than the baseline Year 3000. You could build that ship at Year 3006.

With the +2 from the special abilities, you actually end up with the same Cost, but the Maint is a bit better in 2e, at 2/3 (instead of 2/2). The Command Cost is higher, at 3 vs. 2, which is the most significant difference between the two.

That all said, as long as you're using the Starmada spreadsheet to design all of your ships I wouldn't worry about trying to convert the stats to be in line with the 2e construction rules. You can manually tweak values if you think they are way out of line, but for the most part things should be reasonably close.

The frigate with a DV of 8 could be a problem depending on what other characteristics it has, but if it has that stat because it is weak in other areas it could end up balancing itself out -- especially if your cruisers are close to DV 16.

Can you attach a copy of some of the ships that you're having issues with? We might be able to find a good solution or find out the best way to deal with those kinds of outliers.
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Takhisis
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Re: World Building

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The only traits I am using are Fast and Slow to represent units that move a significance different rate than rest of the fleet.

Flame Frigate Cost:7 Maint:3/4 DV:8 AS:11 AF:12 CR:5 CC:3 Fast
Hurricane Destroyer Cost:8 Maint:2/2 DV:12 AS:12 AF:5 CR:6 CC:3
Archer Cruiser Cost:10 Maint:4/2 DV:17 AS:13 AF:6 CR:7 CC:3
Banshee Battleship Cost:12 Maint:6/2 DV:21 AS:16 AF:15 CR:8 CC:4

I was planning to use a map fully explored at the start and no tech advances. Have designed 15 ships a side so it is only a selection to start with.
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Tyrel Lohr
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Re: World Building

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Looking at those conversion stats, while they are significantly higher than what you see in 2e, I don't think you'd have that much of a problem using them in the game. The fact that even the Flame Frigate is a CC 3 means that you're not going to have very many of these per squadron, and the DV/AS/AF numbers are in general parity (as long as the flights also have higher DV to compensate).

If you were trying to match these up closer to 2e for combat stats, you could generally halve DV, AS, and AF and be fine. The high CC value on the Frigate is a bit surprising, but I'm thinking that you might be at a high enough Starmada Tech Level that this was a game balance mechanism that Jay built in as a safety when he wrote those rules.

If you have some other smaller ships at the CC 2 or less range, then even the CC wouldn't be a problem because then you will have some light warships to fill in your squadrons.

Yeah, as long as the flights have DV values in the ~6 range, I think you're fine there. I guess the only other 2e rule you might want to modify are the unit build times, in case you wanted to make the ships build faster. Having construction times equal to 1/2 Construction Cost (round down, minimum 1 turn) would not be out of line for most of those ships. It makes the BB build faster, but the rest would be closer to where they would be in 2e.
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Takhisis
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Re: World Building

Post by Takhisis »

There is corvette I designed previously that would fill the gap of a light warship.

Wasp Corvette Cost:5 Maint:1/2 DV:5 AS:7 AF:2 CR:4 CC:2

The construction time suggestion is a good idea as well.

I was going to have things simple and have no flights, just ships battling it out.
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Tyrel Lohr
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Re: World Building

Post by Tyrel Lohr »

The construction time change makes that Corvette take as long as you'd expect in 2e, so that's a good fit. And the lower CC cost lets it pad out the squadrons. Having the CC be higher on these ships is kind of beneficial for you, as it means that you won't have huge fleets in the Starmada battles when you play them out on the table.

If you don't have carriers and fighters then you won't have to worry about the AF equivalency. That works out in your favor :)

If you did decide to use fighters, I would say use the number of fighters in the Starmada flight as the DV / AS / AF. That would give you a 6/6/6 starting point that you could then manipulate as needed. Maybe a little tough, but your AF values are high enough that you're going to be sweeping these things out of the sky with relative ease. Alternate option is to have the fighters be tracked individually in the VBAM battles with 1/1/1 stats instead, but that would require some tweaking to get right.
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