VBAM Games Forums

It's only been three months in the making, but the next Design Journal - Technology and Ship Construction is now available over on the blog.

http://blog.vbamgames.com/?p=168

Enjoy and please share your thoughts and comments.

I have updated the shipyard to take account of the stats in the blog, I did notice that a couple had changed.

Have you any thoughts in converting Starmada fighters?
The standard Starmada flight = 1E standard (50su)
This puts all fighter flights in the lightest SIZ ranges.
Even though Starmada TL would be 5? in 2E it only allows one AS or AF using the same calculations as those for a starship.

I was thinking that for 2E, the Starmada sizes could be moved up so that the Ultralight class becomes SIZ1?

Paul

Fighters are proving to be a fickle beast, and we've gotten some good ideas going, but nothing has been finalized.

I think the proposed tech and build systems look great. The tech system will really give a feel of an empire specializing in certain tech fields. I like how the build system along with the tech advancements result in a very realistic felling sytem where tech advances result in miniturization, leading to more complex systems being fitted with the space.

Are there going to be some sort of prototyping costs associated with creating and building new designs?

DrakenFyre wrote:Are there going to be some sort of prototyping costs associated with creating and building new designs?

The current idea is that when prototyping a new unit you will make a "prototyping check" at the end of the construction process and, based on the results of the roll, you will determine if additional turns of construction are necessary and if so what the extra cost will be. While this isn't set in stone yet, I would imagine it would look something like this:

Major Success: Class Prototyped Successfully
Minor Success: +1 Turn of construction, +1 cumulative bonus to future prototyping checks for this class
Minor Failure: +1 EP, +1 Turn of construction
Major Failure: +1 EP, +1 Turns of construction, -1 cumulative bonus to future prototying checks for this class

Jay has also been working on some concepts of how to add "quirks" or "traits" to the results which would increase the effectiveness of a class, so that you could prototype a ship and have it turn out better or worse than expected. I haven't seen those rules yet, but they sound like a promising addition to the Companion or Engineering Manual.

-Tyrel