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Hey everyone. I picked up VBAM a few weeks ago along with the Campaign and Moderator's Guides, the Menagerie and Stars Divided. It looks pretty interesting, and I'm looking at setting up a solo campaign. Anyway I already have some questions and some ideas. Here goes...

Section 3.6.3.12 of the Campaign Guide (Dedicated Missions) states that ships in combat can choose to forfeit firing in anti-ship fire phases in order to use its AF ratin to stack with another squadron's,It also states that flights canc hoose to forfeit anti-ship fire to gain a +1AF score, or can forfeit its anti-fighter fire to gain +1 AS score. Does this choice have to be made for the entire battle or can it change from round to round? Also, does it mean that a flight which doesn't choose a dedicated mission can fire in both the anti-ship and anti-fighter phases?

I found the rules for Military Institutes in the Moderator's Guide and in Stars Divided, and I'll probably go with the Stars Divided rules (Census/3 d6 XP at end of year rather than Census/3 per month). However I was wondering if having Military Institutes that could only generate experience for one type of unit or officer could be an option. A lot of countries in the world today have military academies dedicated to one military service for a more specialised curriculum - West Point doesn't teach naval tactics, and the USAF Academy at Colorado Springs doesn't teach ground warfare. Does the idea of a Military Institute that generated more XP per year (maybe Census/2 d6 per year) but only for, say, ground officers sound reasonable?

I'm a Macross fanboy from way back and was quite happy to see the rules for Transformative fighters in the Moderator's Guide. Now, I'm going to use the fighter costing rules in VBAM 2.2.3 and Stars Divided 2.5.1 to calculate production and maintenance costs. I'm just curious as to what the cost and maintenance adjustment for Transformative should be - maybe +1 to Cost and +1 Maintenance bracket?

Scarpper349 wrote:Hey everyone. I picked up VBAM a few weeks ago along with the Campaign and Moderator's Guides, the Menagerie and Stars Divided. It looks pretty interesting, and I'm looking at setting up a solo campaign. Anyway I already have some questions and some ideas. Here goes...

Welcome to the club!

I will take a stab at what I can.

Scarpper349 wrote: I found the rules for Military Institutes in the Moderator's Guide and in Stars Divided, and I'll probably go with the Stars Divided rules (Census/3 d6 XP at end of year rather than Census/3 per month). However I was wondering if having Military Institutes that could only generate experience for one type of unit or officer could be an option. A lot of countries in the world today have military academies dedicated to one military service for a more specialised curriculum - West Point doesn't teach naval tactics, and the USAF Academy at Colorado Springs doesn't teach ground warfare. Does the idea of a Military Institute that generated more XP per year (maybe Census/2 d6 per year) but only for, say, ground officers sound reasonable?

I actually considered splitting the academies within Stars Divided for the very reason you outline early on. I can't remember what my final rational was for leaving it combined. Probably simplicity. I would say that your suggestion is worth a try. And it proves you've found a home, you are already tinkering. You will quickly see that a lot of that goes on around here.

Scarpper349 wrote: I'm a Macross fanboy from way back and was quite happy to see the rules for Transformative fighters in the Moderator's Guide. Now, I'm going to use the fighter costing rules in VBAM 2.2.3 and Stars Divided 2.5.1 to calculate production and maintenance costs. I'm just curious as to what the cost and maintenance adjustment for Transformative should be - maybe +1 to Cost and +1 Maintenance bracket?

The cost suggested is probably right.

My gut says that transformative would require a lot of maintenance and need a +2 bracket shift - but I'll qualify that by saying it isn't my favorite 'tech' so my bias may be messing that up. You'll need another opinion.

Scarpper349 wrote:Section 3.6.3.12 of the Campaign Guide (Dedicated Missions) states that ships in combat can choose to forfeit firing in anti-ship fire phases in order to use its AF ratin to stack with another squadron's,It also states that flights canc hoose to forfeit anti-ship fire to gain a +1AF score, or can forfeit its anti-fighter fire to gain +1 AS score. Does this choice have to be made for the entire battle or can it change from round to round? Also, does it mean that a flight which doesn't choose a dedicated mission can fire in both the anti-ship and anti-fighter phases?

The choice to perform a Dedicated mission (Anti-Ship or Anti-Fighter) is made each combat round, so you could have a unit go Dedicated Anti-Ship on one round and then Dedicated Anti-Fighter on the next.

With flight units, the one caveat is that units that have an asterisk (*) after a statistic cannot perform a Dedicated mission of that type. This limitation was implemented in order to provide a more gradual stair-stepping of abilities for flights, and allow for technological progression to be more noticeable in historical force lists.

Scarpper349 wrote:Does the idea of a Military Institute that generated more XP per year (maybe Census/2 d6 per year) but only for, say, ground officers sound reasonable?

There shouldn't be a problem with doing that. You could easily create Fleet, Flight and Ground Institutes along the lines you delineate above that have a special emphasis on one unit type.

Scarpper349 wrote:I'm a Macross fanboy from way back and was quite happy to see the rules for Transformative fighters in the Moderator's Guide. Now, I'm going to use the fighter costing rules in VBAM 2.2.3 and Stars Divided 2.5.1 to calculate production and maintenance costs. I'm just curious as to what the cost and maintenance adjustment for Transformative should be - maybe +1 to Cost and +1 Maintenance bracket?

I have never personally used the Transformative ability, but I do think that the Maintenance bracket modifier might need to be moved up a bit, or else ground units made a bit easier to maintain in your campaign. The one criticism I remember reading about Transformative is that in certain circumstances the Transformative flights become a better deal (and far more numerous) than traditional ground units, which can cause problems.

-Tyrel

Thanks for the help, guys! Okay, I think I'll include the rules for the specialised Military Institutes, which will produce Census/3 d6 at the end of each year for their speciality, and still keep the general Military Institutes, which produce Census/3 d6 for the general military.

As for the Transformative option, I'll probably say that it jacks the cost of fighters up by +1 bracket and the maintenance by +2 brackets. If a second micro tech research is spent on Transformative, that will knock it down to +1/+1.

I'm constructing ships for my game using the Starmada X system, and was wondering how many SUs would be needed for the Mass Driver and Tender qualities outlined in the Moderator's COmpanion?

Scarpper349 wrote:I'm constructing ships for my game using the Starmada X system, and was wondering how many SUs would be needed for the Mass Driver and Tender qualities outlined in the Moderator's COmpanion?

Murtalianconfederacy has some numbers for the Mass Driver that he has been using, and for Tender, too. He has probably has the best tested numbers, given the number of ships he has generated.

On the sheet that I used last in SX, I had Mass Driver as a flat 250 SUs and Tender at 75 SUs.

I say 500 for mass drivers. Reason being, in the CC it states that nothing short of a fully-fledged cruiser should be capable of carrying them, and in SX you have to go up to a hull 5 vessel before you can put anything else on besides a mass driver. I say that MDs don't add anything to either the ORat or DRat, and don't constitute a equipment hit. Maybe it should, but in a purely tactical game a player might decide to sacrifice his MD to preserve his hyperdrive or ECM or something, a reason why troops and suchlike in SX do not count as equipment hits.

Tenders are in SD, IIRC. 150 SUs, add 25 to ORat and DRat. When calculating the AS and DV I remove their contributions much as fighter bays.

EDIT: if you want a full list of my work, look for the thread in this section of the forums entitled "You wanted them..." Its around three, four down from this thread...

Can someone tell me hgow the tech levels in Moderator's Companion section 8.2 relate to the tech levels in Starmada X? According to the MC a starting race begins with tech level 6 / INT-1, but what does that equate to in the Starmada X tech levels for Engines, Shields, Weapons, Equipment and Ground Forces? (I'm using the ground forces rules out of Stars Divided)