Questions from possible VBAM player

[brennanhawkwood]

Hello,

I've been looking around at the VBAM Campaign stuff and it looks pretty interesting. As such I am seriously considering picking up that nice package deal of the core books in PDF, but I wanted to ask a couple questions first.

(1) Has anyone here also played with the Starfire Ultra rules for 4X style play? If so, how do they compare? Is VBAM easier or harder to learn? I have Starfire Ultra and though I have not had an opportunity to actually use the rules reading through them, they struck me as having a fairly steep learning curve and kind of over complicated, especially at the strategic level.

(2) Is there a built in system for resolving ship/ground conflict or do you have to have a separate tactical system to handle that.

(2a) If you are going to use a tactical system that is not officially supported (such as Starmada) how much tweaking of the campaign game generally has to be done?

(3) I do not currently own Starmada. Given that, how much of the Terran Civil War book would still be useful to me? I like the idea of running this sort of game in a civil war style setting and rules to specifically support that could be interesting, but I do not currently have starmada and even if I decide to get it, it may be a while since I've got to spread my gaming budget across time and games.

[duxdarius]

Very good in depth game with some balance problems but I would say 7-10 times as complicated in learning curve over Vbam.
Other tactical systems do not dovetail into starfire at all. the whole strategic system is built around the tactical system.

Ground combat is about the worst I have seen in a Space game and there is no way to do large battles strategically.

Very detailed tech advancement which is handled well. Does not have a viable intel system or long range communication system.

[Charles Lewis]

Hello,

I've been looking around at the VBAM Campaign stuff and it looks pretty interesting. As such I am seriously considering picking up that nice package deal of the core books in PDF, but I wanted to ask a couple questions first.

Welcome to the VBAM community!

(1) Has anyone here also played with the Starfire Ultra rules for 4X style play? If so, how do they compare? Is VBAM easier or harder to learn? I have Starfire Ultra and though I have not had an opportunity to actually use the rules reading through them, they struck me as having a fairly steep learning curve and kind of over complicated, especially at the strategic level.

I think pretty much anyone who has some familiarity with Starfire and VBAM will tell you that VBAM is much easier to learn. That said, VBAM is designed to be modular in its rules structure, so it is possible add enough chrome to VBAM that it approaches Starfire. The core rules, though, are pretty straightforward and still provide a pretty darn good game, IMO.

(2) Is there a built in system for resolving ship/ground conflict or do you have to have a separate tactical system to handle that.

1st Edition's interface between space/ground was very abstract and generally considered to not be very satisfactory. We are on the tail end of the development of the 2nd Edition of the VBAM rules and ground combat and its interaction with space combat should prove to be much more robust.

(2a) If you are going to use a tactical system that is not officially supported (such as Starmada) how much tweaking of the campaign game generally has to be done?

VBAM was designed to be modular and adaptable to work with pretty much any tactical rules out there. Generally, the only tweaking required is the conversion between the tactical system's stats and some comparable strategic-level stats for use in VBAM. Many players have used a tactical system with design rules, such as Starmada, simply as a ship design tool for VBAM and never, or rarely actually use the tactical system itself to resolve combat. On our Yahoo group you can find conversion files for a number of settings and systems so it's possible the heavy lifting may already be done for you.

I do not currently own Starmada. Given that, how much of the Terran Civil War book would still be useful to me? I like the idea of running this sort of game in a civil war style setting and rules to specifically support that could be interesting, but I do not currently have starmada and even if I decide to get it, it may be a while since I've got to spread my gaming budget across time and games.

The Terran Civil War book was developed with Starmada in mind; however, all ships in the book have VBAM stats as well, and you can use VBAM's CSCR (Campaign Strategic Combat Resolution) system to resolve combat. Ownership of Starmada is not required to play the TCW scenario.

[Chyll]

Hello,

I've been looking around at the VBAM Campaign stuff and it looks pretty interesting. As such I am seriously considering picking up that nice package deal of the core books in PDF, but I wanted to ask a couple questions first.

Welcome to the VBAM community!

[/quote]

I'll echo that. Fun game. Nice community here.

I do not currently own Starmada. Given that, how much of the Terran Civil War book would still be useful to me? I like the idea of running this sort of game in a civil war style setting and rules to specifically support that could be interesting, but I do not currently have starmada and even if I decide to get it, it may be a while since I've got to spread my gaming budget across time and games.

The Terran Civil War book was developed with Starmada in mind; however, all ships in the book have VBAM stats as well, and you can use VBAM's CSCR (Campaign Strategic Combat Resolution) system to resolve combat. Ownership of Starmada is not required to play the TCW scenario.

The book was put together with an eye on playing pure VBAM or mixing in Starmada. I know folks have played both ways successfully.

[brennanhawkwood]

Thanks for the replies!

At this point I have purchased the core book PDF package and am working my way through a first reading of the rules.

I am planning on starting with a small scale solo game, probably using just the rules in the main book. Are there any specific optional rules that people would recommend I include on a first try with the game?

[Charles Lewis]

None. You can get a perfectly enjoyable game using none of the options.

That said, almost every game I've played in or heard of used the extended build times rule.

[Tyrel Lohr]

I am exceedingly late to the party here (damn you, VBAM 2E development!), but I thought I would chime in with my own comments.

(1) Has anyone here also played with the Starfire Ultra rules for 4X style play? If so, how do they compare? Is VBAM easier or harder to learn? I have Starfire Ultra and though I have not had an opportunity to actually use the rules reading through them, they struck me as having a fairly steep learning curve and kind of over complicated, especially at the strategic level.

I've never played Starfire Ultra, but I own copies of Imperial Starfire and Starfire 3rdR. Sadly have never actually played either to any real degree, though I have read over them multiple times and made a few abortive attempts at starting a same using the old Starfire Assistant utility.

From what I heard, Marvin and SDS tried to patch some of the balance issues from 3rdR in Starfire Elite and Ultra, but I haven't seen the rules so I don't know that for sure (I've been sorely tempted to see what I've been missing, though). From what I gather of the detail level, however, Starfire is still several times more bookkeeping intensive than VBAM is. 1E, at its simplest, as you tracking a handful of stats per star system, and everything is designed to keep campaign administration to a minimum. You have to calculate income and maintenance each turn, but you never get into anything as esoteric as missile pools and the like.

(2) Is there a built in system for resolving ship/ground conflict or do you have to have a separate tactical system to handle that.

Yes, there is a strategic resolver built in that allows you to resolve both types of combat. Most combat scenarios are resolved in 5-10 minutes, though larger battles can take more time to setup and resolve.

The longest CSCR space battle that I ever played out was a Klingon/Tholian battle that took about 2 hours to resolve, but there were ~10 squadrons per side and about 300 ships total in the battle, and I was using an optional rule where each squadron rolled for damage individually (instead of a single roll for each task force, which is the normal way of doing things). Very few battles are that large, however.

(2a) If you are going to use a tactical system that is not officially supported (such as Starmada) how much tweaking of the campaign game generally has to be done?

You really just have to transfer across linkages for the ship stats and/or research/tech systems in your game to make it work. If you don't want to use the VBAM strategic combat rules, all you really need are Construction Cost and Maintenance Cost values and you're done. If you want to use the CSCR, then you need to convert the tactical ship stats over. For 1E, that is Defense Rating, Command Rating, Anti-Ship, Anti-Fighter, etc.

If you are looking to use Starfire with VBAM, I think the easiest way to do the conversion would to be create a spreadsheet where you could input the number of each type of equipment you have onboard and then create some formulas to quantify the effects. For example, how much Anti-Ship rating does each Laser provide? How much Defense Rating does X Shields or Y Armor provide? Other techs would be easier to convert, I bet, as ships with "X" sensor equipment would convert over as a Scout. Get those conversions worked out, and you should be golden.

Using the Starfire tech system should also be pretty easy, so long as you can determine how many economic points in VBAM are required to purchase the technologies and ETLs on the Starfire side.

(3) I do not currently own Starmada. Given that, how much of the Terran Civil War book would still be useful to me? I like the idea of running this sort of game in a civil war style setting and rules to specifically support that could be interesting, but I do not currently have starmada and even if I decide to get it, it may be a while since I've got to spread my gaming budget across time and games.

TCW provides a good context for ways that you can handle scenario-specific rules concerning civil wars, but nearly everything in the book is very tied to either that specific scenario or Starmada. The Political Faction rules that Noel created I really like and there are some other interesting concepts added in, but the rules there aren't quite as generalized as they could be.

-Tyrel