Crossover Works

[mwaschak]

There were a lot of fun variants that AoG introduced, especially in variants 1 and 2, that made sense in the context of the universe. Like taking a stable hull, such as the Hyperion, and trying to make it work with railguns or attempting to make a command variant. Some of that was experimentation with new weapons and the other trying to fill a perceived niche in the battle line like a mid-level command ship.

Some of those later ones though, man, they squarely outclassed the original ship in nearly every way. So much so you wonder why the government even bothered making the original any more if they could make this excellent variant. I would like to think we could explain it with increased maintenance cost or something that made the original still the main build model, and this exception the variant instead of a new revision of the original.

-Jay

[wminsing]

Well, I'm pretty sure in some cases the variant did actually become the base class; wasn't the base Hyperion class by the 'show era' the Theta-variant? And there was the whole common/uncommon/rare aspect to variants which I think was supposed to show that some variants were just harder to construct than others.

-Will

[mwaschak]

Right! The Dilgar War era model had particle beams and plasma IIRC, instead of lasers and pulse cannons.

-Jay

[PaulB]

I'm thinking more about stuff like the Drazi tendency to have eleventy-billion Sunhawk variants that swap weapons around but all end with about the same level of firepower, or the Alpha/Beta variants of the Omega Destroyer (The Beta just swaps out the Heavy Lasers for Heavy Pulse Cannons, nearly the same damage curve, otherwise identical). None of these are really going to have differences at the CSCR level that I think are worth accounting for.

Sure the Omega Beta would have differences. The Beta drops 4 Heavy Lasers for 2 Heavy Pulse and 4 Medium Pulse. Pulse weapons are much more accurate against fighter craft. So an Omega Beta would have better AF defences. If one wants to game it they could even drop the Beta's AS a point or so and increase the AF by 1 or 2.

Maybe an Omega DD (Alpha) would be 6/5
And a Beta would be 5/6
And the Gamma, command model would be say 6/6 because it can fire either lasers or pulse.

These are just numbers I'm pulling out of the air to illustrate the differences, don't know how powerful it would be (could be 8/7 and 7/8 for example).

Remember the Omega is a replacement for the Hyperion. The Hyperion and Nova are Earth-Minbari war era ships and post-war very few if any of them are being built. So if the Omega does what the Hyperion does only better it's no problem.

It also makes more sense in that context when you have something like the Hyperion Aegis, which basically turns the Hyperion into an auxilliary warship. Reminds me of British Tanks in WW2 where a tank like the Crusader, in latewar was so out-classed that they were retrofitted instead to be AA escorts.

[wminsing]

Sure the Omega Beta would have differences. The Beta drops 4 Heavy Lasers for 2 Heavy Pulse and 4 Medium Pulse. Pulse weapons are much more accurate against fighter craft. So an Omega Beta would have better AF defences. If one wants to game it they could even drop the Beta's AS a point or so and increase the AF by 1 or 2.

Maybe an Omega DD (Alpha) would be 6/5
And a Beta would be 5/6
And the Gamma, command model would be say 6/6 because it can fire either lasers or pulse.

These are just numbers I'm pulling out of the air to illustrate the differences, don't know how powerful it would be (could be 8/7 and 7/8 for example).

Ah, good point on it better at fighter defense, you've convinced me on that case, and I had totally forgotten it wasn't a 1:1 swap on the heavy weapons, thanks for setting me straight. That also mirrors the Nova Alpha(? The one that was all lasers) to the Nova Beta (all laser/pulse arrays); AS stays the same in this case, AF increases.

The Aegis version of the Hyperion is a good candidate for Guardian, and there's also a Missile variant that would probably qualify for the Missile trait (surprise!). I expect the main differences between the main combat variants would be gradually increasing AF/AS values, thinking more on it I'd just model the Rail Gun 'ignore armor' effect as increased AS so that works pretty well.

Anyway, at some point you'll find some variants that are probably too close to really be noticeable (Drazi 'we'll try out any weapon you can name on at least one ship' being the primary suspects) but there's still plenty of fodder even here- There's definitely Command, Missile, Carrier, etc variants of the Sunhawk as well.

-Will

[PaulB]

I don't recall all the variants of the Nova but I do know that one has all Medium Lasers and the latter has Laser/Pulse arrays so maybe the AS/AF would be say 6/1 and then 6/6 or whatnot. The ML variant is also technically more vulnerable in some ways because for example the weapons have less structure (6 vs 8 I believe).

For the Drazi. Not sure.
One benefit of the Drazi I know is that there was some work done on their older ships by the HRT (Historical Repair Team), the same guys who brought the Centauri-Orieni book. I don't recall seeing ships but I did see stats though not sure I still have them.

I recall one Warbird has Particle Cannons, and a strikebird has a SHF, and uh . . There might be a missile-bearing Sunhawk or Warbird?

For the Sunhawk I know there's the Sunhawk and the Solar Hawk (a variant based on one of my submissions as it happens), the Solar Hawk I know has good AS but poor AF because it loses SPBs. (And the solar cannons are deadly against ships). So the sunhawk might be 4/2 or something and the solarhawk becomes 5/1.

I don't recall offhand though a huge amount of Drazi ships. I know another is the guardhawk which is Anti Fighter orientated.

One good source for the guy doing the conversion might also be Fleet Action, a game which has already created a bit of a fleet dynamic with more simplified structure and weapons. Not sure but the sheets might be avaialable on the b5wars vault.

[wminsing]

For the Drazi. Not sure.
One benefit of the Drazi I know is that there was some work done on their older ships by the HRT (Historical Repair Team), the same guys who brought the Centauri-Orieni book. I don't recall seeing ships but I did see stats though not sure I still have them.

I believe a lot of the HRT work made it some of the fun-published Showdowns and Variants stuff that made it out the door right after B5Wars folded. Looks like there's plenty of Drazi ships for playing in that era.

I don't recall offhand though a huge amount of Drazi ships

So I decided to double check myself and it appears I've conflated some fluff statements with the ships that actually appear in the published material. Several of the older sources mention that the Drazi have created quite a few variants that are essentially experiments with different weapon fits, and some of the Drazi factions favor certain weapons over others. However, only a couple of these ships appear to have been published; there's a Warhawk with Dilgar weapons, for example, published in one of the Variants book, and it's implied similar refits were applied to different ships but none were published.

-Will

[Haukea]

Wow. Stick my head in spreadsheets for a few days and all this conversation happens.

Here's my thoughts on variants an such, and how I plan on handling things as of right now.

There's too many ships over too large of a time frame to make using historical ISDs practical. Then there's the amount of ships too. While I can easily fill out some ship lists from just the official source materials, a lot of the smaller races (Leauge of Non-Aligned Worlds) don't have enough to fill a proper, 25 year list.

What I want to do is make a list of ships that are balanced against each other (ie: made using the current construction rules). Otherwise you get someone taking the Minbari with all their high tech ships, playing them as expansionists, and conquering the entire galaxy like a steamroller. At the same time I want to preserve the 'flavour' of the B5 universe and keep things interesting.

So, here's my plan:
I'm going to go through my lists and break out the major classes. For example, for the EA it would be the Artemis, Avenger, Hyperion, Nova, Olympus, Omega, Oracle, Orestes, Sagittarius, Tethys, Starfury HF, and Orion Base. Add in some variants, plus the more powerful ships that naturally appear later (Warlock, Posideon, Apollo, etc) or, for races like the Minbari, simply create upgraded versions of ships. From there I'm going to throw in some DefSats and Mines from the lists.

What I need, and I'm not good at coming up with, are infantry units. Hoping someone more familiar with the B5 universe could throw together some units for each race for the lists.

What do I see as limitations/problems? Some races, like the EA and the Centauri, are probably going to have much larger fleet lists than other races (I'm almost thinking double the normal amount). Other races with smaller lists are probably going to have more variants and upgrades and not quite as diverse of a unit list. (Inlcuding shuttles, fighters, and variants the Minbari only have 33 units total.)

Can't decide what I want to do for the Minbari - Stealth or Jammer. Think Stealth works better for the setting. Think I'm going to use a "Matter" trait (thanks Jay), basically an anti-Armor trait, same cost as Armor, for matter weapon heavy ships. Going to give EA ships Armor, better reflects Interceptors I feel. Missile ships are obvious, thinking of adding Missile (E) trait for races (like the Narn) that use energy torpedoes.

[Tyrel Lohr]

I saw your original post on my phone while I was gone, but didn't have my forum password so couldn't respond until now

1) Returning to my trove of B5 Wars source material. I'd cobbled together pieces of spreadsheets from the old Yahoo Group, not even sure if I have the originals anymore to tell who I got what aspects from.

I suspect those are either Charlie's or my own. It's been awhile, but I checked back on both of those during the 2e development as a sanity check to see how the direction the game was heading matched up with the reality of where it had been.

2) Building ships using the existing ship building rules. This allows all races to be viable against each other.

I think most people are going to prefer this route, and it's part of the reason I'm redoing the stats for the Escalation Wars ships to match up, too. I'm going to be using the Tech Bonuses there, but with a 48 year advancement rate instead of the 24 from the core book. That way, players can just get +2 Tech Years per advance. It gives them more units compared to the sample empires in the core rules, but it's not going to be an overpowering advantage.

3) Not use 5.4.3.3 Tech Bonus in my fleet lists. While I'll leave the ISD in, my vision right now is for folks to, essentially, build their own fleet lists (my basic list for the Earth Alliance is 51 ships, running ISD from 2168 to 2268). They can then apply Tech Bonuses and tweak their ships accordingly.

Best of both worlds would be have both a "B5 ISD" and "VBAM ISD" shown for each class. Then they could see the actual year in universe they became available, but then also be able to see how that aligns with the VBAM sample empires. For example, an Omega might be 2250 for B5 and 3015 for VBAM.

1) The Minbari. As I'm trying to build everyone equally, and not leave them an advanced power that can run roughshod over everyone, they're going to get hurt from a tech standpoint.

This I gave the most thought to this last week. I would still be tempted to have them start out with a slight tech advantage (along with giving similar tech boosts to other more advanced empires), even if you just had it be static and didn't adjust it over time. For example, the EA could have Tech Year 3000 base, Narn could be 3006, Centauri could be 3009, and Minbari 3012. That would give each of them a very slight tech advantage, but not enough to skew things too badly one way or another.

After looking through the B5W ships again, too, I think you could compact the Minbari tech timeline in such a way that they start out with Tigaras and Sharaals and then slowly develop other military units. This would leave them with really good big ships at the start of the game, and a predilection towards big ships across their force list, but then they would be a bit more fairly balanced against the other empire's starting forces.

2) Super-Heavy Fighters. Under 1ed guidelines they were like mini-battleships. None of the Core 4 use them, but the Drazi do, and eventually I'll have to tackle that one. Do I make them a SFH (too weak?), or maybe a CT (no longer a fighter).

I think you could still have them be Super-Heavy Fighters, but give the Drazi a "Catapult" special ability that costs 1 CP and has a +1 Maint modifier. It would act like a combined CV + Carrier ability for SHF, except that the combat bonus would be greater -- either +2 DV or +1 DV, AS, AF. That would give the Drazi an individual character and make the Sky Serpents pretty meaty fighters.

4) Jump Drives/Jump Gates. This is a core function of the setting. Going to have to see what Tyrel comes up with and work around it I suppose. I thought about making all non-jump drive equipped ships "Slow", but with most fleets that would be some 80+% and really slow down expansion.

I'm reworking elements of our old movement rules (and optional movement rules) into a set of Jump Drive rules for the Companion. The gist of it is that Jump becomes an ability that is +1 Cost. At least one ship per squadron needs a Jump drive to cross a restricted lane. It's then assumed that major/minor lanes all have jump gates that allow for normal jump lane movement. I'm also thinking about giving all-Jump squadrons another major lane movement per turn, to help give them a bit more of an edge.

5) Ground Units. I got nothing. Nadda. No source material here.

I'd almost be tempted to give them all very similar ground units, maybe with stats adjusted a bit as desired for variety. Make sure they have an Infantry, Marines, and maybe some sort of "Armor" or support units. Paul's recommendation of using the GROPOS books as a guide is a decent one, too.

Now, having hammered all this out into a post, I realize what kind of mess I'm wading into.

Welcome to the wonderful world of VBAM conversions! Or, welcome back as the case is

More in the next post!

[Tyrel Lohr]

My first one will be the Big 4 then: EA, Minbari, Centauri, and Narn; Ships of the Fleet ships for now. (Starting small and all that). Won't be relying on any fancy formulas, going to be looking at the ship sheets and making good guesses. Always open to suggestions.

This is a good way to approach any conversion. My only extra piece of advise would be to also convert the key ship from each of the League navies to use as reference points so that you can make sure that your conversion approach still works for those empires, too. Those would be: Abbai (Lakara), Brakiri (Avioki), Drazi (Sunhawk), Pak'ma'ra (Sim'sall'e maybe?), Vree (Xorr or Xill).

Okay, here's my basic list. All ships are from the B5Wars Ships of the Fleet source materials.

I thought about this the last week, too, and I think the approach you took here is interesting, and you could almost "accordion" the upper unit class sizes out another level if you wanted to so that all of the "cruisers" in your conversion were CB and then adjust upwards from there. For example, the Hyperion could be a cB, the Omega a BB, and then the Nova or Warlock a DN. That might give you more CP to work with, too. Alternatively, you could leave the Hyperion as a CA and then have the Omega, G'Quan, and Primus all be CB.

Where I'm stuck right now is what I'd call a simplified ISD (In Service Date) that works with the 2nd Ed rules. If I could get a handle on that, I could start statting out ships. Figured I'd put my work so far out there and get some input on it.

The easiest approach I can think of is to convert the ships that you want to use, then sort them by B5 ISD and then just apply a VBAM ISD that goes 3000+ from there. Then you don't have to worry about those large, awkward gaps between ships in some B5 fleets. In cases where multiple ships are available in the same year in the B5 list you just have to decide which should be Year X, the next X+1, and so on.

Or, in other words, what Will said

I did that for my FASA Trek conversion I did a few weeks ago. I converted the stardates to Star Trek in-universe years, and then apportioned them as needed to build the timeline.

I've so far avoided using formulas - the last spreadsheet I saw and modified used them heavily, and the formulas I added just made it more complex. Just wish I could remember who it was that made that sheet though.

I've found that the 2e construction system's shift AWAY from formulas was a very important one, and it seems to have made actually using it much simpler. I find that I can typically eye ball about what kinds of stats two units should have relative to each other, and then I calculate the CP used and manually adjust from there to make it fit.

For my own stab at a B5 conversion, I also found myself not using the Tech Bonus rules, per se, but instead slowly adjusting stats upwards as one cruiser replaced another or as a new tech came online that needed to be worked in. Like the Avioki might have AF 2 when it is first introduced with those Gravitic Bolts, but the Gravitic Pulsar bumps it up to AF 3. Those slow upgrades eventually fall in line with the Tech Bonus rules, at least in spirit.

Onto real thoughts though. Bases in B5 Wars tend to be large, and are probably not nearly as common as minefields and DefSats. At the same time, everyone in the B5 universe had pretty established navies at the time too and those bases had probably been around for a good while. Base construction rules have changed as well (built at the same rate as everything else now). Think I'm going to make a separate table for determining actual base 'classes'.

That's probably for the best. I'd almost be tempted to make a table of the starbases and their ramming factors and then adjusting them down by a uniform multiplier to find approximations on your other table. Or you could eye ball it and say that this base should be as strong as this ship and run with it. Bases are such strange things because they CAN be powerful, but most people don't seem to use them.

On the subject of variants, for the type of force lists it sounds like you're trying to build I'm almost thinking you could ignore most of the major variants and just include the "iconic" version of each ship, especially if you're not applying any kind of Tech Bonus over time. That way you'd have a single Hyperion instead of a half dozen versions of it. Exception can then be made in cases where a variant is actually important (like the Hyperion Assault variant, but you could always use the Tantalus instead -- did that ship ever make it into B5W? I might be remembering a fan conversion).

I do have to say that a welcome byproduct of the 2e construction rules is that the unit availability rules from 1e are almost superfluous because variants tend to have more special abilities, and that inherently increases the costs of the ships to the point that you're not going to be building a lot of them.

Can't decide what I want to do for the Minbari - Stealth or Jammer. Think Stealth works better for the setting. Think I'm going to use a "Matter" trait (thanks Jay), basically an anti-Armor trait, same cost as Armor, for matter weapon heavy ships. Going to give EA ships Armor, better reflects Interceptors I feel. Missile ships are obvious, thinking of adding Missile (E) trait for races (like the Narn) that use energy torpedoes.

I would go with Jammer for the Minbari over Stealth, if only because the Minbari weren't cloaked the enemy just had a hard time locking on and their sensors tended to overload the EA's systems. Jammer also means that the Minbari will be able to lock down enemy Scouts to the point that they don't have any scout functions available during combat, which seems a decent approximation of that in VBAM.

Giving EA ships Armor seems like a good solution for the Interceptors!

For the Narn energy mines, another option would be to use Disruptor, as most of the tactical use of the energy mines in the game seemed to be as an area denial weapon that would force an enemy to evade them. Giving the Narns a weapon that reduces enemy formations seems to cover that, but doing it as a Missile would also work.

[wminsing]

For the Narn energy mines, another option would be to use Disruptor, as most of the tactical use of the energy mines in the game seemed to be as an area denial weapon that would force an enemy to evade them. Giving the Narns a weapon that reduces enemy formations seems to cover that, but doing it as a Missile would also work.

Definitely agree with Disruptor for Energy Mines. IIRC Energy Mines are area-of-effect bombardment weapons which encourage the targeted units to spread out, which is basically exactly the sort of thing Disruptor is supposed to represent; breaking up enemy formations. This distinguishes them from the other ballistic-support type units which would just have Missile. Another option would be to use Missile and give the Narn a unique ordinance package that granted Disruptor. Either way it seems like a good trait for the Narn 'schtick'.

-Will

[Haukea]

Well, been looking at the fleet list some more. Think I'm going to pare it down to base hulls and look at what specific variants there are (assault, minesweeper, scout, etc). Probably going to do a base list of 10 to 15 ships, and have the 2 tech advancements per year rule as a standard. Also dropping Captor mines from my lists, as they're basically suicide mines and mines can't have the suicide trait.

Tyrel - I like the idea of having different empires start at different tech years. I'm still going to build my lists from a Y0 standpoint, more because it's easier for the brain to work with. Also makes a strait 'from the ground up' non-historical campaign equal.

Also, my suggestion for an E-Missile trait may have been lost in interpretation. In B5Wars there are two types of ballistic weapons - traditional warheads with a variety of payloads (EA and Dilgar for example), and energy based ones that don't have an option to change payloads (Narn, Centauri). I'm thinking a 1-2 CP, 0 cost or maintenance trait.

I like the Catapult and Jump traits, adding them to my makeshift list. Same with giving Disruptor to the Narn for E-Mines. Here's my thoughts on other non-as-obvious traits to convert:

Armor - EA ships with interceptors, and other heavy-armor ships.
Disruptor - Narn E-Mines, laser or other beam heavy ships. Maybe some Minbari in place (or in addition to) of Jammer, other fast/maneuverable craft.
Guardian - Primarily Centauri escort ships (Guardian Array).

Some weapons or traits I'm having trouble placing:
Trait:
Gunship - How much anti-ship weapons makes it a gunship. Dilgar and Narn might fit this, maybe the Drazi?

Weapons:
Particle Impeder (higher DV?)
Burst Beams (Disruptor?)
Comm Jammers et al

I'm also going to do sort of a "universal" list to cover some types of craft not covered in the host of variants (hospital, minesweeper/layer), and some basic shuttles and variants that everyone has to free up space on the fleet lists (boarding pods, assault shuttles).

And yes, I did do a rather comprehensive B5 conversion years ago and posted to the old Yahoo Groups years ago. Don't know what I was thinking back then.

[Tyrel Lohr]

Well, been looking at the fleet list some more. Think I'm going to pare it down to base hulls and look at what specific variants there are (assault, minesweeper, scout, etc). Probably going to do a base list of 10 to 15 ships, and have the 2 tech advancements per year rule as a standard. Also dropping Captor mines from my lists, as they're basically suicide mines and mines can't have the suicide trait.

I could never find a good way to translate captor mines into VBAM, even back in the day. The proximity (all DV) and DEW (mix of stats) were easy, but captors just didn't seem to work well. I guess they could have some sort of special abilities that give them a unique flavor, but I'm not sure what that would be.

Tyrel - I like the idea of having different empires start at different tech years. I'm still going to build my lists from a Y0 standpoint, more because it's easier for the brain to work with. Also makes a strait 'from the ground up' non-historical campaign equal.

The "easy on the brain" situation is why I ended up deciding on the Year 3000 starting point for the sample empires and then progressing up from there. Just prior to release I had played around with having some of the units go pre-3000 to maintain the 1 unit per Tech Year mode, but that ended up confusing things enough I decided against it.

Also, my suggestion for an E-Missile trait may have been lost in interpretation. In B5Wars there are two types of ballistic weapons - traditional warheads with a variety of payloads (EA and Dilgar for example), and energy based ones that don't have an option to change payloads (Narn, Centauri). I'm thinking a 1-2 CP, 0 cost or maintenance trait.

Okay, gottcha, so it was just about giving the energy torpedo set Missile without the ability to have variable ordnance packages. The Mongoose game ended up breaking that trend and gave the Narns a variety of different energy mine packages, IIRC.

I like the Catapult and Jump traits, adding them to my makeshift list. Same with giving Disruptor to the Narn for E-Mines.

Creating new abilities is the most difficult element of game balance for VBAM, but it's also where you get some of the cool wrinkles that change game play

Disruptor - Narn E-Mines, laser or other beam heavy ships. Maybe some Minbari in place (or in addition to) of Jammer, other fast/maneuverable craft.

Disruptor or Guardian would work good for Minbari gravity nets. Alternatively, you could create a Gravity Net special ability with a +2 Cost / 1 CP ability that can do either Disruptor or Guardian at the player's discretion.

Guardian - Primarily Centauri escort ships (Guardian Array).

Agreed. I'd also consider giving this to some ships that are supposed to be fleet escorts, but don't otherwise have weapons that neatly translate into the Centauri Guardian/Sentinel Array weapons. Like maybe that weird Hyperion Aegis cruiser.

Gunship - How much anti-ship weapons makes it a gunship. Dilgar and Narn might fit this, maybe the Drazi?

I'd give this to ships that are notoriously over-armed for their own good (EA Nova, Dilgar Tratharti). I also tended to give this to ships that have lots of Matter weapons as a way of differentiating them (like that Hyperion Rail cruiser, or the later Artemis).

Weapons:
Particle Impeder (higher DV?)
Burst Beams (Disruptor?)
Comm Jammers et al

Particle Impeder I'd be tempted to just roll into the modified Shield ability (+1 DV & +1 Formation per point) and call it a day.

Burst Beams: I'd almost just make this extra AF. I have an Immobilizer ability in the Companion that reduces enemy AS/AF that would fit, but that would be more appropriate on something like the Streib raiding ship.

Comm Jammers can be Disruptors or Jammers, and I'd probably lean towards Jammers.

I'm also going to do sort of a "universal" list to cover some types of craft not covered in the host of variants (hospital, minesweeper/layer), and some basic shuttles and variants that everyone has to free up space on the fleet lists (boarding pods, assault shuttles).

That's a good idea. It also gives you the chance to convert over any or all civilian ships that you might want them to have. You're right that most of the shuttles are generic enough that you can have stock models and not worry about losing much flavor. That's why I think you could also do the same with the ground forces.

And yes, I did do a rather comprehensive B5 conversion years ago and posted to the old Yahoo Groups years ago. Don't know what I was thinking back then.

Everyone seems to have had more time back then

[Charles Lewis]

I finished that humongous conversation project for 1E then promptly let most of the materials go so I no longer have the source materials.

However, I do still have (I think) my original conversion spreadsheet.

Of course, for that matter, I would be tempted to go back through and just rebuild the ships based on their 1E stats in the 2E engine to get appropriate tweaks.

Regardless, have fun with the conversion project!

[Haukea]

Okay, so I lost all my B5 work and am going to have to start over. So I thought I'd figure out what folks would prefer:

1) A standard, 24 year fleet list for each race (34 units)? Standard VBAM
2) A 24 year fleet list with 2 units per year (58 units)? Allows for more variants, bit more of a B5W feel.
3) A listing of basic classes, all Year 0 (aka 3000) with notes/thoughs on fleshing them out. (variants, projected growth, etc.) Sort of a build your own list idea. eg. Here's the Hyperion at Y0, 6, 12, 18, 24.