"Starship construction." Topic

Speaking of ship construction systems. Does anyone know if starmada and squadron strike are on the same level or is one more complex/open then the other. I have starmada but not squadron strike and was just wondering.

Thanks

Squadron Strike is consideraby more complex than Starmada. with Squadron Strike you might model a conflict between 4-6 ships in 4 hours, Starmada can easily handle much larger numbers.

This extends to the shipbuilding complexity as well, because it is modeled into the ship in regards to 3 dimensional shot impact.

The 3-D aspect has a minor effect on the complexity of ship design in Squadron Strike.

However, Squadron Strike has vastly more options for designing weapons and ship than Starmada. There are also more choices for the maneuverability/agility of a ship. For example, you could have a ship that has fixed pivot, roll, and thrust abilities, or you could design a ship with a sort of "energy allocation" system, so that it would have to choose which of those abilities to max out. (For example, the ship might only be able to use half of its maximum thrust if it uses its full pivot ability.)

You can also have weapons and defenses that require "energy," so that you have to trade off combat capability with movement capability. (You're not required to give anything an energy cost, so designing a ship that can use all of its capabilities at full power is trivial.)

Note however that while you have (IIRC) somewhat limited ability to make Starmada ships more complex, you can simplify the Squadron Strike ship designs considerably. If you wanted something like a fighter game where 1-2 hits was a kill, you can (and I have, in the beta builds) easily play 6-8+ ships in an hour or two.

A similar simplification could be applies to capital ships as well, dropping weapon and defensive options to something more basic. In a sense, once you understand the shipbuilding process, you get options for something like "dial-a-crunchiness."

One of my new convention scenarios will probably be "Die Rebel Scummm!"

Twin Engine Imperium Fighter

SI-2, two guns, pivot 3, thrust 3, no defenses.

Cross Wing Rebellion Fighter

SI-3, four guns, pivot 2, thrust 4, shields and shield regenerators.

I pick three people to fly two of the Cross-Wings, I recruit everyone else to fly pairs of Twin Engine Imperials. When your last pair of Twin Engine Fighters dies, we wipe off the sheet and give you two more to use at a neutral corner of the dogfight.

Scenario ends when the Rebel Scum are finally killed. :)

Mike Zebrowski ran this at GenCon, twice. Both times with 9 or 10 players. One game ran to 26 turns before the Rebels died (and they took down about 30 Imperial fighters in the process), the other one ended on time after 30 turns, with 22 Imperials dead, and two players still flying one Cross Wing each, one badly wounded.

In my experience, Starmada starts getting interesting at 3-4 ships per player. Below that point it's kind of bland. It starts to bog down at about 8-9 ships per player. Squadron Strike gets interesting at 1 ship per player, and scales to about 4-6 per player. The thing that trips people up on SS isn't the mechanics, it's figuring out what tactics they want to try.