Babylon 5 Wars Conversion to Firestorm Armada

[Stephan]

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

[Ruckdog]

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!

[Dakkar]

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

[Stephan]

Dale,

Those suggestions are almost a 100% match for the direction I'm already headed in.

Ruck,

What's the upload link?

[Ruckdog]

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.

[Landlubber]

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.

[Dakkar]

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??")

[Stephan]

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.

[markymark1970]

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.

[Stephan]

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. 

[Dakkar]

Don't forget Drazi! ;-)

[Stephan]

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:

[Dakkar]

Got any stats to share? How else cna we do armchair analysis!? ;-)

[Ruckdog]

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.

[Stephan]

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.