Man Battlestations Forum
Other Naval Games => Space Naval Games => Topic started by: Stephan on March 07, 2015, 11:44:11 am
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(https://lh4.ggpht.com/sAPtPRI3Byu2uaTdDFadDs9kagUEYlYyeB2Jdwwh4o3U_dKbpaEhmJt0nlzrHbR1ZdhwLA=w1264)
So, over the years I've made it my personal quest to keep B5 alive, converting B5 Wars into Battlefleet Gothic, then making more balanced fleet lists for ACtA, etc. A while back I started on a project to convert B5 into FSA under V1 but had to shelve it due to time constraints. This past week however, I found myself with about 5 hours of spare time and restarted the process. I went all the way back to the B5 Wars source material since, though impossible to really play on the table-top, it was considered the most canon of all sources and endorsed by JMS himself.
Ruckdog provided a place for me to upload some files a while back and I'm hoping he'll let me use that same space to post some playtest materials. I don't have time to test all the ship stats myself, so I'm hoping that as a community we can work the kinks out and have something we'd all be willing to share with the broader community.
Here's some background to help explain how I arrived at the starting stats and rules.
First, I took the B5 Wars stats and built a spreadsheet to convert them into the basic ship stats such as DR/CR, HP, SH, PD, etc. I have a Word doc that goes into the particulars in gory detail which I'll post to the upload area (once Ruckdog reminds me of where it is). I want to keep as close as possible to the original stats so as to preserve the intent of the B5 Wars designs, but I know we'll have to make some tweaks as we go through playtest.
I think the big thing now is weapons load-out. The weapons are VERY hard to convert, and despite my best efforts to codify everything into a spreadsheet, there's still a fair amount of art to it. I think I'm close, but those used to ACtA may seem some glaring differences since Mongoose didn't stick to the original B5 Wars material in some cases, probably due to the same difficulties I'm running into. For now, I'm building the ships to reflect the B5 Wars weapons load-outs as closely as possible. I've built out an Omega Alpha, a Hyperion Theta, an Artemis Zeta, and an Artemis Heavy, and so far the weapon loads look kind of odd compared to FSA. I'd ask that we not pre-judge and give them a few tries on the table-top to see how the ships and fleets interact before making any changes however.
We'll also need to abandon fleet composition rules for the most part since B5 Wars really didn't use them. As anyone familiar with B5 will know, Earth Alliance was perfectly happy to send out fleets composed of all Omegas and the Narn did the same thing with G'Quans, so there's canon to support that. Basically, bring what you've got (with a few very large or rare ships noted as restricted).
If you're interested in helping out, let me know. I've got tons of models and I'm pretty sure Mark and Dale have some as well, and obviously it's fine to proxy.
UPDATE: To help organize things a bit, I will keep this post updated with the latest links to playtest materials.
http://www.sendspace.com/filegroup/wtTEgZmDuPNWfThNUWfp48mEF8Lrsz6xJvkwLdUCbFR8diMV4xulsfkc0DmvdDPa (http://www.sendspace.com/filegroup/wtTEgZmDuPNWfThNUWfp48mEF8Lrsz6xJvkwLdUCbFR8diMV4xulsfkc0DmvdDPa)
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Sounds like a great project! I really enjoyed the B5 series, and I've always been kind of bummed that I missed out on the peak of B5 gaming. This might be a fun way to re-invigorate interest. When you get your project done, I'd love to host it on the MBS Downloads page!
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I'm always game to review results and playtest.
Some quick off the top thoughts:
-- Most races energy weapons would of course be Beams, Minbari with built-in Precision strike and variations on Energy Transfer.
-- "Pulse" Weapons might be Scatter
-- Most anything with "Cannon" (Matter Cannon, Ion Cannon) could be done as Kinetics
-- Oddball or Grav Weapons as Grav
-- Anything subject to Interceptors though, just do as "Torpedoes" and use PD as Interceptor ratings.
-- For Narn Mine Launchers, you'll have to invent something from scratch, or make them Nuclear
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Dale,
Those suggestions are almost a 100% match for the direction I'm already headed in.
Ruck,
What's the upload link?
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I don't really have a link for the hosting page...if you email the file to me, I will put it up for you, though.
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Sounds very cool, Stephan, and as I'm getting farther into the B5 series, my interest is growing. Would be happy to playtest the ships and stats with you sometime.
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Sounds very cool, Stephan, and as I'm getting farther into the B5 series, my interest is growing. Would be happy to playtest the ships and stats with you sometime.
Some advice - make sure Stephan lets you run Shadows or Minbari or White Stars when playtesting them, as opposed to being their "victim" ;-)
Also, general FYI - while I don't have all the race minis anymore, I have all the various "card-ships" that Mongoose ever released, so I can provide playtest tokens for any given race, in almost any combination. (i.e. "You want how many Hyperions??")
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Thanks for the support!
For anyone who'll be in Colorado Springs this Wed, I'll be down that way and I'd like to try playtesting some of the fleets. I've kept very close to the original rules, so there shouldn't be too much of a learning curve. Send me a PM if you're interested.
Also, I'm refining my ideas for how to represent Interceptors, which are a major part of ship defensive systems in the B5 universe. Right now I'm using PD, expanded to allow intercept of all Direct Weapon types except beams in addition to the usual SRS and Torpedo intercepts. Here are the two big changes to basic PD rules that I'm considering:
- PD now has Weapon Shielding (so defenses don't drop too fast)
- PD uses the Blue dice mechanic from DW when used against Direct Weapons (6's count as two successes but no Exploding)
Part of the reason for the above PD changes is that I'm also having to balance them against Shields, which should be BETTER than Interceptors since the advanced races almost universally have Shields.
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I've tried doing the B5 thing for Full Thrust. Them Narn Energy Mines and Interceptors were always the hardest thing for me to think of some good effect. I'm up for playtesting whatever. I have even more non-assembled and not painted B5 minis than I do DW/FA.
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I was looking throughy old B5 Wars books and how the AD on the different weapon types work out, and I've decided to update the Interceptor rules so that they can stop Beams, just not weapons listed as Laser in the weapon's name. According to the fluff, Earth Alliance interceptors have a chance of stopping Laser weapons due to the sheer volume of chaff they throw out, so I'm toying with giving them an intercept against Lasers using the Black 6 mechanic.
So far I've converted a sampling of ships from EA, Narn, Centauri, and Vree factions.
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Don't forget Drazi! ;-)
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Thanks to Greg for helping with the first game tonight. We did Earth Alliance vs Narn. Two Omegas with a squadron of two Hyperions vs two G'Quan, a T'Rann light carrier, a squadron of three Rongoth cruisers, and a squadron of two Sho'kar patrol cutters.
Overall the game went well. The Narn focused on the Hyperions and managed to take them out, but we're unable to scratch the Omegas. In return, EA wiped out the Rongoth squadron, killed the T'Rann and one of the Sho'Kar.
I'm not sure if the Narn's inability to damage the Omegas was due to bad rolling or imbalance in the Omega stats. I want to try out that EA fleet against the Centauri to see how they perform.
We came up with a rules adjustment on PD that seemed to work well with the new intercept ability. Normally, you can only use PD for defensive fire (against Torps) once per activation, but there's no restriction against using PD for defensive fire and against SRS in the same activation. I decided to change that for the B5 ships to say that they can be used for either intercept of Direct weapons OR against SRS, but not both in the same activation. There's actually a scene in B5 where this limitation comes into play, so I thought it appropriate and it forces Admirals to make some hard decisions.
Here's a few pics:
(http://i1382.photobucket.com/albums/ah241/hillmansm/Gaming/B5%20Playtest/Playtest-02_zpsfnjhk8pa.jpg)
(http://i1382.photobucket.com/albums/ah241/hillmansm/Gaming/B5%20Playtest/Playtest-01_zpsfuz633sf.jpg)
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Got any stats to share? How else cna we do armchair analysis!? ;-)
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Neat pictures! And I agree with Dale; lets see some stats :). Don't forget, you can email it to me to post on the Downloads page.
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Yes, I've got stats. I actually found a file sharing site that I'll use so I don't have to bother Ruck every time I want to update something. What I'm going to do is edit the top post in this thread with updated rules mods and links to the latest ship stats. I'll hopefully get to that over lunch today.
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Ok, here's a link to where you can download all of the materials. I've done a sampling of ships from some of the major fleets we used to play and written up a summary of the major rules additions/changes. My initial goal is to get reasonable balance between Earth, Centauri, and Narn. Once we're comfortable with those, I think we'll be able to take the lessons learned into the other fleets.
http://www.sendspace.com/filegroup/wtTEgZmDuPNWfThNUWfp48mEF8Lrsz6xJvkwLdUCbFR8diMV4xulsfkc0DmvdDPa (http://www.sendspace.com/filegroup/wtTEgZmDuPNWfThNUWfp48mEF8Lrsz6xJvkwLdUCbFR8diMV4xulsfkc0DmvdDPa)
Here's more inspiration!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGRxM1I-M_0 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGRxM1I-M_0)
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Files downloaded for analysis...probably tomorrow when head not pounding. ;-)
Also, found this quite inspirational B5 montage. Spoilery as heck though, so B5 newbs DO NOT WATCH>
https://youtu.be/jSa6Zl8fcyo
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Hi Stephen,
Joined the forum just to say that I'm extremely interested in the conversion that you are doing of B5 to Firestorm Armada.
I play Babylon 5 ACTA myself although I do have a copy of the Firestorm rulebook.
Well, just wanted to say that for now ::)
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Hi Stephen,
Joined the forum just to say that I'm extremely interested in the conversion that you are doing of B5 to Firestorm Armada.
I play Babylon 5 ACTA myself although I do have a copy of the Firestorm rulebook.
Well, just wanted to say that for now ::)
Hey Tim, welcome to Man Battlestations! If you want to, head over to the Introductions thread a tell us a bit about yourself--what games you play (and factions), where you usually play, etc. Glad you found our little corner of the internet!
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Hi Tim, thanks for your interest! Where about are you? Dale and I will be playtesting EA vs Centauri at Gamers Haven in Colorado Springs on Wed of this week if you're interested. Otherwise, feel free to download the materials and give them a spin, I'm always interested in feedback.
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I had a great playtest game against Dale last night at Gamer's Haven. I took Earth Alliance vs Dale's Centauri Republic. The points worked out that we both took exactly 1005 points.
EA -
2x Omegas (2 squadrons of 1 each)
Squadron of 2 Hyperion Theta
Squadron of 3 Sagittarius Missile Cruisers
Squadron of 3 Artemis Escorts
Centauri -
1 Primus
Squadron of 2 Centurions
Squadron of 2 Dargans
2 Squadrons of 3 each Vorchan
The game was pretty evenly matched throughout:
- Both Centurions, one Dargan, and 3 Vorchan lost, with the the Primus at about half damage.
- One Omega lost, one Hyperion lost, 2 Sagittarius lost, 2 Artemis lost, and one Omega badly damaged.
We found that the original Sagittarius stats were kind of crazy so I reduced them to 8 AD of Missiles (Torps) with a 360 fire arc. We played with adding the Combustible Cargo MAR, but the Sagittarius are vulnerable enough compared to the rest of the fleet that anyone crewing one would have to be suicidal to fly them in a formation, so I dropped it. That reduced their cost to 50 pts each.
We also modified the Plasma Accelerator special rule to simplify it. Rather than having an AD boost on the first time it's fired each game, the weapon instead gets a +1 to hit. I also boosted the basic AD at RB 1 to 8 AD and to 4 AD at RB 2.
The Dargan was mis-typed as a Battlecruiser. We agreed its stats were better typed as a Heavy Cruiser. I made the adjustment, but because the type is factored into the cost and DR/CR calculations, it had the net effect of dropping the CR to 6 and reducing the cost to 135 pts.
I modified the EA Interceptor special rule. Rather than going with the Black 6 mechanic when intercepting Laser weapons, EA Interceptors now count as impeded against Laser weapons. This made things a bit simpler and seemed to make the EA defenses more manageable.
Our game also raised the question of whether Direct fire counts as simultaneous when determining PD reduction due to Hull/Crew loss. We decided that it would be best to have the PD reduction take effect immediately upon loss of Hull/Crew. That simulates the interceptors getting saturated due to overwhelming fire from a single ship/squadron and keeps the game from moving too slowly due to the effects of the interceptor rule.
I've updated the EA, Centauri, and Summary files at the following link:
File Name: Abbai.pdf https://www.sendspace.com/file/v72lq8 (https://www.sendspace.com/file/v72lq8)
File Name: Babylon 5 Firestorm Rules Summary.pdf https://www.sendspace.com/file/7qebpm (https://www.sendspace.com/file/7qebpm)
File Name: Centauri.pdf https://www.sendspace.com/file/6fqajy (https://www.sendspace.com/file/6fqajy)
File Name: Earth Alliance.pdf https://www.sendspace.com/file/lbr2ad (https://www.sendspace.com/file/lbr2ad)
File Name: Minbari.pdf https://www.sendspace.com/file/ywvh9l (https://www.sendspace.com/file/ywvh9l)
File Name: Narn.pdf https://www.sendspace.com/file/1vju6z (https://www.sendspace.com/file/1vju6z)
File Name: Vree.pdf https://www.sendspace.com/file/si2fub (https://www.sendspace.com/file/si2fub)
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Wow! I'm impressed with all the work you have been putting into this 8). I will have to buy some more B5 minis so I can try them out for myself.
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You may be able to find the punch-out sets from B5 A Call to Arms that Mongoose put out. Those aren't as good as the actual ships, but they work well enough.
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I need volunteers to help with the ship conversion. I'm working on instructions on what I'll need you to do and I can provide all the original B5 Wars stat sheets for each fleet in PDF for you to work from. This will work best if you have Excel on your computer. The work is relatively minor, I just need you to collect some stats and put them into a spreadsheet for me. I can then bring them into my master spreadsheet that has all the conversion equations in it.
If you're interested, let me know and I'll get the materials to you. I've got a lot of the EA, Centauri, Minbari, Vree, Abbai, and Narn core stats converted, but I need someone to work on Drazi as the next big fleet I'd like to bring in, and then pretty much all the other fleets you can imagine from the series.
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You may be able to find the punch-out sets from B5 A Call to Arms that Mongoose put out. Those aren't as good as the actual ships, but they work well enough.
I actually have all those sheets in the B5 ACTA box set sitting on my shelf...found it on Ebay a few years back :)
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Throw Drazi my way... they are my 2nd fleet after all :-)
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Hi Tim, thanks for your interest! Where about are you? Dale and I will be playtesting EA vs Centauri at Gamers Haven in Colorado Springs on Wed of this week if you're interested. Otherwise, feel free to download the materials and give them a spin, I'm always interested in feedback.
Hi Stephen - I'm from the UK mate so getting over to watch your game was a little difficult I'm afraid ;D
I will be downloading your amendments Stephen (thanks for making them freely available) and hope to give them a try in a couple of weeks - other game commitments allowing. Just to explain though that I am a B5 acta player and very little experience of the Firestorm Armada rules so will have to try and learn those rules AND your conversion at the same time ::)
I currently own two fleets for B5 - EA and Narn. I gave you a list of the ships that I currently own would you be able to give me input of creating 2 balanced small fleets to start testing the rules with at all? That we free my brain cells up for just remembering the rules and not worrying about what ships to try and field.
Many Thanks
Tim
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Sure thing Tim. Send me a PM with your list of ships. If you've got something that I haven't converted yet, I can add them to the uploads as well.
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Unrelated per se, but I've just been discussing a side project with another friend to stat out B5 ships for Attack Wing, ala Star Trek Attack Wing (only better balanced...). If I get anywhere with it, I'll start a new thread.
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You guys are making me feel like a lazy bum.
I'll volunteer to play test, but I can't help with the math on the conversions due to not having the MS suite on my Mac. :(
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OK, so finally had my first game using the Firestorm rules for my B5 Ships and it was interesting. A little difficult as trying to learn the rules and the B5 Conversion at the same time but the guys I gamed with were positive so that's a bonus.
The fleet lists were provided by Stephan (many thanks) and were:
Earth Alliance: 1 x Omega; 2 x Hyperion and 3 x Artemis
Narn: 2 x G'Quan; 3 x Var'Ni,k and 4 Sho'Kos
The Narn player basically operated the Q'Quans and the Var'niks together and faced off the Omega and the Hyperions. One Var'Nik died real early to the Hyperions thanks to some exceptional exploding dice rolling but after that the Hyperions pretty much outgunned.
Apologies that one of the G'Quans is unpainted - that is currently being rectified as I post oh, and the Oracle was masquerading as an Artemis as I only own 2!!
(http://i60.tinypic.com/xfz4uc.jpg)
As for the Omega, well, it shot a few times but lacked any real punch to do any real damage to the G'Quans and was well, pretty useless. It managed to kill a Sho'Kos but that's not really too hard.
The Artemis though, when they linked all ships and 2 x railgun systems in an attack were pretty awesome - pity they were too far out of the early battles to get involved.
(http://i62.tinypic.com/3518mdw.jpg)
This was only our first ever game using a new rules as well as the conversion so more play time required but so far so good. When we have more experience I can post back our assessment of the conversion - keep up the good work!!
Tim
Edit - forgot to add but Stephan, your ship stats are a bit hard on my old eyes so I recreated them using Excel. I've attempted to attach the worksheet to this post for people to look at - hopefully it'll work ;-)
[attachment deleted by admin]
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Looks like it was a fun game! Interesting that the Omega had so much trouble.
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Sorry for the late reply, I've been fighting some plague. I agree, interesting that the Omega had such problems. That's not what we saw in previous battles. Did you have particularly bad rolls? Which weapon systems did you use, the Heavy Laser or the Pulse Cannons? Yes, the Artemii (plural?) are brutal up close (if they survive long enough).