Nonetheless, it's a fair point. I've had a couple of games and seen a couple more.
Earthforce Source Book. It's a nice rules set, if you can get past the typos on the ship diagrams and the fact that the Narn and Centauri ships get slaughtered in droves by equivalent Earthforce ships (the clue's in the title, kids) - whilst the Minbari just point, then laugh, then kill everyone.
My opinions are sort of thusly:
B5Wars
Likes:
1) Damage model. As noted, it works well. Rather than having a random 'critical hit' table, every shot may hit a specific weapon. This stops a lot of stupid effects of a BFG/ACTA style critical table where one pea-shooter blows out the entire port weapons despite being fired from the starboard side - and taking out one cannon at a time makes a dreadnought's port weapons less critical-able than a patrol boat's to the same hit.
2) Initiative - faster, more agile ships get a better initiative bonus to move last. Ship destruction also gets applied at the end of the turn, so everyone who gets into range, and into arc with functioning weapons gets to shoot at least once before dying, rather than someone moving from out of range to point blank then blowing you to bits because 'it's not your go yet'.
Dislikes:
1) 'Turn Setup' - from initiative to ECM to bloody power distribution - takes forever.
2) Weapon firing rate. There is no need for virtually very weapon system in the game to take 2-3 turns to come back on line. Make a game turn twice the 'time period' and save yourself a hell of a lot of record keeping!
3) Weapon lethality. Given that a single volley usually shatters the whole bloody thing, the nice damage model seems a trial of record-keeping for no value since the target rarely ever survives...
4) Multiple dice-type games (D6, D10, D20). Just because.
BFG
Likes:
1) Limited bookkeeping
2) Very simple rules including range & bearing dependant gunnery & defence
3) Blast markers in concept - the idea of explosions and concentrated gunfire actually affecting the battle other than by damage makes sense
Dislikes
1) Extreme scissors-paper-stone to balance of many fleets (necrons & eldar, anyone?)
2) Lack of actual damage - it's easy to spend shooting phases achieving nothing whatsoever
3) Ordnance - admittedly it's stylised due to the scale but it feels a bit too abstract
4) Blast markers in practice - the table ends up littered in the things.
5) I-go-you-go means it's very hard to respond to the enemy.
6) The **&^$%^^!!!@~#!!!?!!!ing gunnery table...... Victory at Sea does profile-based accuracy variation much better.
Full Thrust (actually B5 EFSB)
Likes:
1) Newtonian movement without hex grid - and difference between newtonian and cinematic for Minbari, Vorlons and Shadows.
3) Simple damage and critical damage model
4) Clear system prices as well as fleet books makes designing variants a doddle.
Dislikes:
1) Pre-written orders (slows the game down)
2) Thresholds - why is an omega absolutely fine for the first 14 hits then suddenly lose 1/6th of its systems on the 15th? Shows up most on particularly big ships.
ACTA V2
Likes:
1) limited bookkeeping (again) - whilst there's a fraction more it doesn't stress it too much. I'm not a fan of the crew stat as is - where you have 1 damage, 1 crew per hit - as you get the lower stat deciding things most of the time. I'd prefer to see crew be much lower, and only criticals to affect it - then it 'feels' different.
2) Weapon/Ship traits - a set of a dozen universal special rules combined in intelligent ways is better if done right than "everyone gets their own way of doing the same thing". There are plenty of unexplored options, too. Quick example off the top of my head - weak + quad damage, a 'frag cannon' that's poor at piercing armour but good at causing massive damage if it does.
3) Troops/Scout/Fleet Carrier/Command - because it's nice when 'specialist' ships are actually worth taking for that reason rather than just a.n.other ship who's fluff talks about it being used as a fleet flagship.
4) Priority points - it doesn't half make fleets faster to pick.
Dislikes:
1) Boresight
2) Priority levels
3) Criticals
4) Beam weapons
5) Initiative
6) Priority level balance
No need to go into the whys and wherefores. You know them.
I suppose the question is, how do you steal the best bits of each?
Single initiative roll but modifier per ship
Full thrust style simple newtonian movement for ships
VAS/ACTA style shooting
Something with a b5 wars-based damage system (systems/facings/core), but only d6 based.
Simple ship and weapon traits
Priority level but with scope for small refits and value change (hell if I know how that works - possibly able to spend 1 FAP on taking upgrades or class improvements or something?)
