New Star Wars Mod thread

[demiurge]

Back to the original topic, anybody try the mod for SW for ACTA that Matt so kindly provided?

I have one caveat on it - not entirely sure about the anti-fighter rules - to my take the SW ships have always been vulnerable to fighters, not defined fighter killers.

For example, the existence of the Lancer was predicated on the fact that Imperial ships were vulnerable to attack by starfighters. If every SW ship has substantial anti-fighter defenses then doesn't that negate it's very reason for existence?

And then of course we simply don't see that huge swarms of point defense laser fire from the capital ships in the movies. You rarely if ever see a starfighter shot down by cap ships - I can think of precisely one, a fighter you see go down in the battle over coruscant. I don't think there are ANY in the battle of Endor.

I'll probably come up with my own stats at one point, tweaking them for my own private version of Star Wars. Need some more experience with the base ACTA system first though.

Ran a crossover using B5 Wars the other day - a Rebel MC-80 Cruiser and accompanying X-Wings, Y-Wings and Z-95s vs a Dune House Harkonnen task force. Good times.

 

[Court Jester]

Well Lando certainly feels attacking Star Destroyers with the Rebel fighters to be futile...

 

[demiurge]

Well, the quote"
Lando Calrissian: Yes, I said closer. Move as close as you can and engage those Star Destroyers at point blank range.
Admiral Ackbar: At that close range we won't last long against those Star Destroyers.
Lando Calrissian: We'll last longer than they will against that Death Star, and we might just take a few of them with us.

The implication I took was that Ackbar thought 50 plus Star Destroyers and the Executor were more than the Rebel fleet could handle. Though that appears not to be the case from the rest of the battle...

We don't see a single Rebel cap ship go down - whereas the fighters take down the Executor and we see another ISD explode in the background. The only Rebel capships that we see destroyed are by the death star's Superlaser.

Now obviously there are likely more than that, but the outmanned, outgunned Rebel fleet does definitely beat a huge Imperial fleet. Heck, the EU even points out that the Rebels end up capturing two ISDs.... The EU in the Zahn books points to the death of the Emperor as being the real cause of the fleet's loss, as he was guiding them though the Force to be more efficient. Though the Executor goes down before the Emperor dies.



BTW, Jester, fantastic job on the counters! Very impressive!

 

[Court Jester]

True, but if we took what happens in the films as fact for rules in games things would be very different. I am sure there were monitary and tecnological reasons for the way the Endor battlescene was shot.

I think for better representations of Star Wars Fleet action the first 5 minutes of Episode 3 is how it should be...

 

[demiurge]

Not sure I follow - what exactly do you think would be different about the battle of Endor if Lucas shot it now?

The level of detail is higher in ROTS, I'll grant you, but the basic concepts are the same - lots of fighters screaming around, large ships trading broadsides at point blank range, and relatively little damage being shown - the ships can slug it out at point blank range for quite some time, indicating the shield levels are probably stronger than the weapons. Oh, and the ships seem vulnerable to critical hits - for example, the Executor going completely out of control after the bridge is taken out, and the Droid Control Ship having a chain reaction after one of its power cores was hit with a lucky shot.

 

[Court Jester]

In RotS you see ships from bothe sides taking heavy damage and the scene itself is far more battle-like and epic.

I'm just think that if games were designed around the films to the exact degree the good guys would always win. Just because it wasn't filmed for the Endor scene doesn't mean it didn't happen....

I like to think if Lucas re-made the Endor Battle (for the better... :roll: ) you would see much more damage to both sides. I would expect scenes with the same visceral action and gut wrenching power of the new Battlstar Galactica.

On a seperate note too it may well be entirely for game balance issues. The number of fighters those capital ships are chucking out could well mean a suitable counter measure is needed.

 

[chaos0xomega]

Demiurge, where are the rules for it? I didn't see them posted in this thread.

As for a star destroyers(and by proxy all other capital ships) anti fighter firepower, they pack quite a bit of it in the form of laser cannons, and I think Blaster cannons(though I can't remember if blasters are mounted on SD's and some fo the larger cap. ships) too, but the problem is that laser cannons only really work at range when a fighter is closing in. There is the issue of 'tracking' When a starfighter gets too close, it becomes harder for the turret to turn and keep speed with the firepower, and the rate of fire is too low to just spray the area with it. Hence the reason for Lancer's. They serve to be 'close-in' anti-fighter escorts.

 

[demiurge]

chaosomega - they are up on the mongoose mods section that pixelgeek put up (thanks pixel!). There's Mongoose's home rules for Star Wars ACTA and Ben Rubery's Battlefield evolution rules for ground combat in Star Wars. Also a new BSG conversion that I haven't looked through yet (but will soon!).

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mongoose_mods/

Membership requires approval, so you'll have to wait a little while - too many spam bots out there (the B5 Wars forums are getting spammed by Matt Sprange's account right now, which is funny.)

As far as laser cannons not being able to track fighters, that's actually the old excuse given for turbolasers - laser cannons, especially the 'point defense laser cannon' as introduced in the Ep I Incredible Cross Sections, are just that - small weapons designed specifically for antifighter defense. The Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology is pretty clear on the fact TLs are longer ranged anti-ship weapons, and laser cannons are shorter ranger faster firing, largely anti-fighter weapons.

Of course, that gets back to the Prequel ships carrying many hundreds of these laser cannons, yet us not seeing them in the movies.

The biggest problem is the stats for the Prequel ships are done in a totally different context than the earlier stats for the original trilogy ships, and make the Prequel ships appear significantly more powerful, despite constant background information on ships like the ISD being the pinnacle of imperial might. Especially in the fighter load outs - an Imperial Star Destroyer carries 72 TIEs (and we never see even a fraction of that on the screen), the supposedly inferior Venator carries 492, and the Trade Federation Battleship carries 1500, plus 50 large landing craft.

At this point there's just a huge amount of inconsistancies. Taken at face value the prequel ships are flat out better than the later Imperial navy. There's something wrong there.

 

[chaos0xomega]

The Trade Federation Battleship(Deathstar wannabes is more like it) is a rather huge hulking mass of metal thats much larger than a Imperial Star Destroyer. Plus it's use of droids for troops and starfighters and minimal living crew requirement means that it can use far more of its massive bulk to house them. SO I am afraid in that respect you are wrong.

The VENATOR on the other hand... well now we have problems... Smaller than an Imperial 2 class, but not by too much. The only reason I can find for it being able to carry so much is the fact that it only carry about 9k people(crew and troops), while an Imperial 2 carries more around 40k, the Venator has 5/9 the cargo capacity of the Imperial 2, Doesn't carry a full invasion force, has that huge-ass hangar spanning most of its hull, and doesn't have anywhere near as large an armament. So concievably I could see it, although it is still surprising.

 

[demiurge]

Yeah, it's a big ship.

Problem is, we see it's fighter wing in the attack on the Droid Control Ship - it's 100 fighters. We see the attacking force, which is no more than 2 dozen Naboo N-1s - we even see them launch.

Now where exactly are the other 1400 fighters in the attack on that ship?

Or the blockade. Queen Amidala's ship runs the blockade. There's over 20 Lucrehulk Trade Federation BBs in the blockade, right?

So where's the THIRTY THOUSAND droid starfighters? On vacation? Playing hookie? Rusting in the corner?

We see the landing on Naboo. Should be around 1200 landing craft according to the specs.

We see less than 10.

The specs are nice, and I'm sure they are internally consistent.

But they aren't what made it to the screen.

And that's what Star Wars is, even according to Lucas' order of canon.

 

[chaos0xomega]

Ok. One step at a time

Problem is, we see it's fighter wing in the attack on the Droid Control Ship - it's 100 fighters. We see the attacking force, which is no more than 2 dozen Naboo N-1s - we even see them launch.

You counted!? Well, remember, the planet was in a state of occupation, and some of those Fighters are bound to be on the planet running arial recce/assisting in the battle with all them gungans on the surface. That, and I'm sure that some of them were shot down or lost during various parts of the invasion.

Or the blockade. Queen Amidala's ship runs the blockade. There's over 20 Lucrehulk Trade Federation BBs in the blockade, right?

If I remember right, the invasion had not yet begun, so I honestly cannot tell you. Presumably the Trade Federation didn't have enough time to react(did they even launch starfighters?) or simply did not care enough to bother. Either that or they are all on vacation sipping mai thais or daquiris or something.

We see the landing on Naboo. Should be around 1200 landing craft according to the specs.

We see less than 10.

Remember, Naboo is a big planet, more than just the capital(Theed?) and the surrounding countryside. All those 1200 landing craft aren't going to go to the same area, they are going to disperse throughout the planet. And of course, a ton of them are bound to be shot down while they are in the process of landing.

 

[chaos0xomega]

sorry for the DP, but I thought I should share:

It seems neither MP nor I will have a shot at the Star Wars license for a very long time:
http://theminiaturespage.com/news/547242/

It seems that 2010 won't be the year I was hoping for...

 

[Commador Q]

has anyone concidered allowing fighters in the Star Wars mod skin dance? i mean they always seem to be doing that in the movies, and the A-wing that took out Executer looks like the perfect example of a lucky fail on a skin dance role.

 

[pixelgeek]

Membership requires approval, so you'll have to wait a little while - too many spam bots out there

Is there a delay in getting the approval emails? I tend to approve them almost as soon as I get them? Maybe Yahoo isn't sending them immediately?

Its a PITA that this is necessary but its better than getting emails for watches or other more adult items.

The "Reason for joining group" question is something Yahoo has by default and I guess its another step to make sure that a human is filling the form out. Just put something in appropriate to the group so I know you're human and its fine.