Sulfurdown
Mongoose
I know this has probably been answered a million times, but does ACtA have any equation for ship building? Or is it all eyeballing and tweaking stats until it 'feels right'?
Ship build patterns
- Thread starter Sulfurdown
- Start date
Lord David the Denied
Mongoose
There was a forumla for making new ships in one of the BFG mags. It was fine, but if you used it to cost the existing ships it came out too high. From what I've heard this tends to happen with every such formula released for gamers to make up their own units.
Slightly Norse John
Mongoose
The 'best' points system I ever came across was Traveller's Trillion Credit Squadron. You had a budget, and an insanely complicated set of design rules that could reproduce existing ships exactly- what GDW had used, in fact. Nothing fixed except the total cost of the fleet.
Provded you were an accountant, an engineer or both, it was ideal. You literally did have to construct the ship, though- think, for a standard heavy cruiser, 30 sides of A4 in very small handwriting. More if you were using unconventional weapons- which you could design yourself.
You could play with everything, size, shape, deck plans, surface area, fuel volume, armour thickness, composition, back up fields, internal void spaces- talk about reductio ad absurdum. If you came out of it mentally intact, you must have been nuts to begin with- and if you weren't, you soon would be.
Let's just stick to eyeball twisting. Life's too short for FF&S.
Provded you were an accountant, an engineer or both, it was ideal. You literally did have to construct the ship, though- think, for a standard heavy cruiser, 30 sides of A4 in very small handwriting. More if you were using unconventional weapons- which you could design yourself.
You could play with everything, size, shape, deck plans, surface area, fuel volume, armour thickness, composition, back up fields, internal void spaces- talk about reductio ad absurdum. If you came out of it mentally intact, you must have been nuts to begin with- and if you weren't, you soon would be.
Let's just stick to eyeball twisting. Life's too short for FF&S.
Lord David the Denied
Mongoose
That sounds awesome... 
Commador Q
Mongoose
Slightly Norse John said:
if you think using a system like that is complicated, try deigning one...
the problem with any sort of ship designe sytem is it's impossable to account for a wide veriety of common occurances, such as synergistic effects of some trates, the role a ship plays in a fleet, etc.
in the end you'd end up having to play test and adjust ships anyway if you want balance.
Nightmares about Minbari
Mongoose
FF&S is a great source, if you wanted a hard science feel to your ships, but wasn't intended as a wargaming aid.
For the wargaming scale, the best system I've seen is the battletech mech building system. First appeared over 20 years ago, and it still works. Balanced differnet weapons capabilities by their size, weight and the heat they generated in battle.
Don't know if the aerotech system works as well, haven't played it for 20 years.
For the wargaming scale, the best system I've seen is the battletech mech building system. First appeared over 20 years ago, and it still works. Balanced differnet weapons capabilities by their size, weight and the heat they generated in battle.
Don't know if the aerotech system works as well, haven't played it for 20 years.
The problem I've found with most build systems is that they fail to take into account the huge cost of building a single customised ship, and typically they come out costing no more than the mass-produced ships. The B5 Ship Builders Manual gets around that quite well - if you try and duplicate an existing mass-produced ship under those rules it costs more than buying one already built. Most systems fail to recognise that the R&D process itself tends to cost more than the materials you bolt together to build the thing.
Of course none of that matters in a wargaming build system, which is more centred around points values.
The only real wargaming build system is eyeballing, or you're bound to run into something that is far too cheap for its effectiveness. Thats why 40K abandoned the character and vehicle build rules from the earlier edition(s). It's still fun going through build rules though and putting pieces together to see what you can come up with
Kinda like Lego on paper...
Of course none of that matters in a wargaming build system, which is more centred around points values.
The only real wargaming build system is eyeballing, or you're bound to run into something that is far too cheap for its effectiveness. Thats why 40K abandoned the character and vehicle build rules from the earlier edition(s). It's still fun going through build rules though and putting pieces together to see what you can come up with
Kinda like Lego on paper...There was always Dream Pod 9's Silouhette system (it charged you extra for one off productions, though massed produced models had less quirks to them). Hero Games are also pretty good at character/base/vehicle creation.
FF&S was great. I built an atmospheric capable spacecraft, able to fly at hypersonic speeds, was jump capable, in a needle hull arrangement out of Animal Hides and Wood at one point. It was in the same spirit as mounting 120 heavy machine guns on a battletech mech.... Why? Because you could.
FF&S was great. I built an atmospheric capable spacecraft, able to fly at hypersonic speeds, was jump capable, in a needle hull arrangement out of Animal Hides and Wood at one point. It was in the same spirit as mounting 120 heavy machine guns on a battletech mech.... Why? Because you could.
Lord David the Denied
Mongoose
Nothing was said to that effect when the forumla was published, and I seem to recall it was retired in a few months' time...
Triggy said:
They did much the same for Warhammer 40k, where the Vehicle Design Rules would make a 'replica' of an existing vehicle often cost 25%-50% more than the origional.
Again, I think it was to make players pay a surcharge for the freedom, especially as design rules can easily cover up intentional weaknesses of an army list.
Dream Pod 9's Heavy Gear has/had a really nice design system. Sadly, last time I checked in they've gone to more of 'eyeballing it' for their newest attempt. The old system was exploitable, and the old HG Mailing List used to critique designs harshly, looking for certain exploitable items. Many of these were the result of HG being a combo RPG/miniatures game, so certain design options were intended for RPG play but could help reduce costs for the wargame side.
As Balance has already referenced - this is the case for the 40K VDR system and possibly others. They explicitly stated that there was a premium to pay for the freedom of creating anything you wanted rather than necessarily because they couldn't create a system that reflected the points of their own designs.Lord David the Denied said:
Greg Smith
Mongoose
Usually it is better to design a game with the build system already inbuilt and the example ships/mechs/cars created with the design system. In the case of having existing ships and then trying to add a design system on afterwards, it is extremely difficult to get them to fit. When Megatraveller came out, the ships were classic Traveller ships and the design sytem did not work for them.
With ACTA the ships have to match what we have seen on screen, so the ships had to be created first - making a design system problematic.
New ships in ACTA are created by the game designers, playtested and tweaked. Which can be an imperfect process.
Uberstating is possible with a design system and uberfleeting is possible with fixed ships.
With ACTA the ships have to match what we have seen on screen, so the ships had to be created first - making a design system problematic.
New ships in ACTA are created by the game designers, playtested and tweaked. Which can be an imperfect process.
Uberstating is possible with a design system and uberfleeting is possible with fixed ships.
