Could B5 be played on a Hex Map?

[Chernobyl]

you can recreate 90 arcs on a hex map if you use hexpoint facing and movement as well. FASA's Tactical Starship Combat Simulator game had a variation for this.


Chern

 

[friendlyfire]

Didn't the 1st Ed. ACTA have hex map optional rules to begin with? I could be wrong but I remember my friend offering this to us when we first demoed the game.

Hex maps is a little more exact than free movement based games- helps with people with shaky hands or prevents cheaters from 'nudging' minis a tad further than usual. Just making an observation... I'm neither pro or con... just throwing it out there...

 

[Chernobyl]

no, I have the 1st ed (pre-revised) box, there's no references to hex maps I'm aware of.

Chern

 

[lastbesthope]

No version of ACTA I've ever seen has had rules for using hexes, and I have every single retail version and more besides.

LBH

 

[Gregor]

Squares rather than hexes gives you your 45 degree turns, boresight can be worked out of you've passed through the position of an adrift ship or a ship that has already moved. Arcs and ranges are easily worked out as is movement (some rounding likely depending on square size)- the diagonal question I would take a leaf out of Peter Pigs rulesets and say the first costs normal, thereafter double. Hotz Mats do a 2" square grid which I was hoping to pick up - been a bit slow tho :-(.

Measuring can be an issue, and these models have a habit of falling over or getting otherwise knocked - a grid of some kind reduces replacement imperfections and removes the need for a ruler to hover over someone's beautifully painted ships.

 

[MustEatBrains]

Didn't the 1st Ed. ACTA have hex map optional rules to begin with? I could be wrong but I remember my friend offering this to us when we first demoed the game.

ACTA never had Hexes, although its predecessor, Babylon5 Wars, used them - if you want to convert a hex-based acta, it might be worth looking at how facing and firing arcs had been handeled in B5W if you can get a copy of the rules (ebay?).

Note though that the two games are very different, so I wouldn´t expect more than some inspiration...

 

[MustEatBrains]

Measuring can be an issue, and these models have a habit of falling over or getting otherwise knocked - a grid of some kind reduces replacement imperfections and removes the need for a ruler to hover over someone's beautifully painted ships.

While these are valid points, in my experience such "imperfections" normally just don´t have any real influence on the game - a few millimeters or some little deviation of a few degrees shouldn´t make a difference as long as you don´t take gaming 150% seriously .

Besides, I personally find a grid both ugly and unatmospheric, but that might be just me...

But as this is not a dicussion thread of whether a hexgrid makes sense or not, I won´t get deeper into this. If you really want a grid, It would be easier to use squares (or octagons, although those might be hard to get hold of) to convert CTA from measurement to grid.

 

[Kaizen Zanshin]

I had thought about squares as well - the problem with them are that moving from the flats of the squares as opposed to the points you would move faster overall.

I agree that a grid does ruin the atmosphere as well.

Thanks!

 

[Gregor]

The grid can be viewed as a tactical overlay - like what you get in most sci fi films.