VBAM Games Forums

Having read the 6.2 Submission Guidelines, I'm a little curious (and/or worried) if we can post home-made lists based on other works here. For example, I'm thinking of re-tackling a B5 conversion and would like to share it, but after reading 6.2 I don't know if I can post it here or not.

If I can, great, I'll get to work on it. If not, I still might do it as a personal interest thing but won't post it. Don't wanna run afoul of any legal issues for anyone.

Mahalo.

Please do! The submission guidelines are for those players who wish to submit something as a future product, which is an entirely different process than fans posting their own work for other players to use.

Thank you,
Jay

Well then, I will definitely get started on it. I did a B5 one for 1ed a long while back and still have the spreadsheets for it. My plan for a 2ed conversion, right now, (will probably change as more rules arrive) is as follows:

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

Problems I'm already encountering in the conversion process:

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.
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).
3) Assigning "Unit Classes" to ships. The EA Omega Destroyer is not a 'DD'.
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.
5) Ground Units. I got nothing. Nadda. No source material here.
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Now, having hammered all this out into a post, I realize what kind of mess I'm wading into.

Rather than delete all the work I did on this post, I shall leave it as a warning to others that some projects should not be waded into lightly. And that my B5 conversion might take a while pending more rules.

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

You know of Gropos? OOP game from Agents of Gaming?
http://agentsofgaming.com/gropos.htm
http://agentsofgaming.com/groposmain.html
http://agentsofgaming.com/b5wstock.htm

Some names and ideas at least to check out if that interests you.

Haukea wrote:Well then, I will definitely get started on it. I did a B5 one for 1ed a long while back and still have the spreadsheets for it. My plan for a 2ed conversion, right now, (will probably change as more rules arrive) is as follows:

Please do. With our recent Dilgar playtests I have had a chance myself to brush off the dust on some of this old material. B5 Wars was really a lot of fun.

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

There were some real problems with the ISD and I ended up having to just ignore some of them and fill in the games in others. Variants, for one, were always problematic. AoG released a lot of variants that were often better than the original design. Fortunately we can build in campaign costs to these units, and push them in a separate or higher cost maintenance bracket to show that it may be good, but expensive to refit and maintain.

Haukea wrote: 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.
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).
3) Assigning "Unit Classes" to ships. The EA Omega Destroyer is not a 'DD'.
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.
5) Ground Units. I got nothing. Nadda. No source material here.
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Now, having hammered all this out into a post, I realize what kind of mess I'm wading into.

Hey, it will be fun . We have lots of players here who would use it too.

The SHF might be a good candidate for a gunboat too, then you can look at the Tender rules and not actually Base it. I have toyed with alternate basing costs for some ridiculous fighters and the Drazi certainly have one.

The Omega, for sure, is not a DD. I would stick to classifications that make sense for the game.

We can work around the jump gate situation, but it may need some rule tinkering. We could simply say any lane with a Jump Gate is a major jump lane and just restrict non-jump drive ships to only use major lanes or require a jump capable ship to be with them.

-Jay

Regarding the Omega Destroyer. Actually in a 2nd season episode with the re-programmed free mars guy, Garibaldi describes the Omega as an "Earth Force Cruiser". So calling it a cruiser in VBAM is I think not only justifiable but supported somewhat by the show

Well, with the interest piqued, I guess I shall tackle this project in waves.

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.

Should have the first wave ready on the weekend here.

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

I've listed Name, ISD, what I chose as a Class/Designation (based largely on the Ramming Factor stat), CV, and Jump and Atmos capabilities.

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.

All input is welcome.

For ISD that works with the VBAM rules and is roughly balanced between factions, it's probably more important to get the relative order of appearance right rather than directly translating the years. So what I'd do is sort each faction ship list by ISD, and start assigning ships to 3xxx years starting from the the oldest. That would be a start.

-Will

Looks pretty good so far. I felt a lot of the ISD's from AoG were fairly arbitrary, especially when we got in to the variants. So pegging them to something more sensible works for me.

Interesting that you pegged the G'Quan, Omega, and Octurion as BC's, but I could see that working. If you want to PM me your address I send you what we have worked up on our end so far.

-Jay

I used the Ramming Factor (and to a lesser extent Class) as the basis for my initial class designations.

To summarize:
LCV (RF 20-40) = GB
MCV (40-60) = CT
MCV (70-110) = FF
HCV (120-180) = DD
HCV (190-200) = CL
CAP (190-250) = CL
CAP (260-320) = CA
CAP (330-390) = BC
CAP (400-450) = BB
CAP (460+) = DN

The EA Explorer came in as an EU with a RF of 720, and was the only 'core' EU class (outside of bases, which are kinda huge to start with in the B5 materials) so for me that was enough to elevate it to SD. Or worse, I was going to make a MT class with a cost of 18 (with associated stats).

My list isn't close to final or hardwired into my above table. As an example, right now the White Star is a FF, when really I think it's more of a solid DD. I felt that some of the ships (like the Omega) needed to be 'bigger' (partly due to the amount of flights they carried). There's planned tweaking yet.

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.

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'.

A thought I've been tossing around over the weekend is to create a 'base list' of Year 0 (3000) ships, build a list up from there (along the lines of what Jay is thinking); keep some common variants, but get rid of some redundant ones and put in 'upgrades' such as, say an "Omega-II" or "Omega (R2)" say 6 years in or something.

Haukea wrote:I used the Ramming Factor (and to a lesser extent Class) as the basis for my initial class designations.

That would probably work well enough for the most part. It may be an issue when you get to some of those dedicated ramming ships, like the Dilgar or Oreini had. Those are probably easy enough to adjust though.

Haukea wrote:My list isn't close to final or hardwired into my above table. As an example, right now the White Star is a FF, when really I think it's more of a solid DD. I felt that some of the ships (like the Omega) needed to be 'bigger' (partly due to the amount of flights they carried). There's planned tweaking yet.

I found that once I started add the "right" gear to ships like the Omega in any conversion it got much better than it should be. It has a massive load of fighters, lots of interceptors and anti-fighter guns, and a serious AS package with the heavy pulse and laser on the front and back.

Ships like the White Star were classic in some old debates. If you take the tech level and compare it to a lower level empire the White Star has tremendous amount of ship killing weapons and speed for a DD. I remember someone showing that a White Star alone could wipe out the Alacan navy with no damage (thanks to the jammer) IIRC. When we do tactical system conversion that is tough to model fairly. In Starmada Edition we ended up pegging build cost to ship ability and maintenance cost to ship class.

Haukea wrote: 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'.

And there are few enough of them too that you could just eyeball it. You could also just take the ones from the core book and modify them to fit the B5 setting.

-Jay

A thought I've been tossing around over the weekend is to create a 'base list' of Year 0 (3000) ships, build a list up from there (along the lines of what Jay is thinking); keep some common variants, but get rid of some redundant ones and put in 'upgrades' such as, say an "Omega-II" or "Omega (R2)" say 6 years in or something.

Yes, I think a lot of the variants will 'come out in the wash' when converted to VBAM stats; B5Wars had a LOT of 'weapon swap' variants that played differently on the tactical level but in the CSCR are basically going to operate exactly the same way. You'll probably want to focus on variants where the ship's role changed (ELINT variants, carrier variants, etc) or the weapons fit is different enough you could justify changing the ship's AS/AF values or changing the ship's abilities (some ships might pick up Missile, for example).

Another thing you'll probably want to do early on is determine how you want to map the meta-weapon abilities in B5Wars to VBAM abilities. How many interceptor weapons give a level in Guardian, for example?

-Will

I think there's room to get creative with all the different variants. Command Hyperion for example might have less AS but higher CR. Maybe the Railgun version has Gunship for example depending upon how that trait works.

At some point being true to the game takes second seat to creating a fun fleet to field.

I think there's room to get creative with all the different variants. Command Hyperion for example might have less AS but higher CR. Maybe the Railgun version has Gunship for example depending upon how that trait works.

Yea, the command variants would be another clear-cut case for a different variant (higher CR), there's also escort versions of some vessels (gets a level or two of Guardian), a lot of races have variants that would qualify for the Missile trait, etc. 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. So I'd pick out the key variants that have traits that would show up (and be interesting) at the VBAM level and stat those out before worrying about the 'this is the same ship but with particle cannons instead of lasers' variants. You'd definitely need those statted out only if you were planning to run the battles in B5Wars and wanted to have every ship available, but even then at the CSCR level they'd look the same, you'd just need to track which variant they actually were.

Another option would be to introduce new traits to cover some of the B5-specific flavor. Railguns aren't better at bombardment in B5Wars (at least IIRC) BUT they *ignore armor* which is hugely useful in the tactical game, while not really having a corresponding VBAM trait at the moment that models it.

-Will