We are working with GSC2 to again speed up gameplay, rebalance where needed, and add some systems. These things will be posted up here, for you to read, playtest and give feedback about. Feel free to make recommendations of things you would like to see. Participants are welcome to join the Thane's Games E-mail group for larger discussions. Remember to click all of the no-spam options when you join. Otherwise, you can email comments to thane@thanesgames.com

The overall goal is to make changes that improve the game without requiring massive changes to the existing ships.

The new plan is to let shields occupy one block, not two. This will double the amount of shields on all existing ships. They will still cost two points each. To make this change to existing ships, double the shields, and add points equal to the new shield number to the VP. Nothing else will need to change.

I'm very certain this is the right rules change. This will almost certainly become a permanent change unless further playtesting shows a large imbalance.

Addition (12/4/03) - The 1 block shields have been working very well. A few extreme cases need to be tested, but I don't see a need at this point for any other changes to the way shields work.

Missiles - Missiles may be too weak for their space requirements and their odds of having an effect. A clever player can put a whole lot of MDS's in the path of a missile pack. A simple improvement would be to increase Strength 2 missiles to Strength 3, and Strength 4 to Strength 6. Acid Missiles will do 2 damage starting and 1 each round afterwards. Points costs stay the same. I'm not at all certain about this change.

Addition - The acid missiles need this improvement for certain, they are unable to penetrate shields otherwise.

(12/4/03) - The higher damage missiles are working pretty well. Extreme cases need to be tested.

Damage - Weapon damage can get complicate to resolve, especially when trying to figure how many armor saves to make after shields have absorbed some damage. In smaller battles its not a big deal, but in larger games, it can take a lot of time.

There are 3 ideas I've had about this.

Total Damage - This one is easy. Have the total damage stat for each battery right by the battery. This will reduce the amount of math people have to do. Even simple math beats down on people in long games. This has been done.

Full Battery Absorption by Shields - This will simplify calculating the number of armor saves. If any portion of a battery is absorbed by shields, none of the weapons in that battery can cause system damage (currently this is done by each weapon in a battery). This will increase the effectiveness of shields, and give another reason to make smaller batteries. This will require some playtesting.

Simple Armor Saves - This would be a large alteration. Instead of subtracting the strength of the weapon from the armor save, all armor saves are unmodified (except possibly from Ion weapons). Ship armors would be reduced by 2 or 3 to compensate. Taken with the other two changes, a battery which hits would have their total damage applied, without having to worry about X number of Y strength weapons hitting. If their shields were up for the battery, no armor saves would be made. If not, the ship would have to make X saves, with X being the number of weapons in the battery. The armor would not be modified unless it was a special weapon ability (like Ion Cannons).

This is a big change. It would greatly simplify the game, but that might not make it better.

Addition: Language change to simplify tracking damage on systems:

In general, systems that take up 14 or less blocks are disabled by the first hit and destroyed on the second. Those occupying 15-29 spaces can take 1 damaging hit and are disabled on the next. 30-44 can take 2 damaging hits. 45-59 can take 3. 60+ can take 4. Deflectors will be altered to follow this format.

Ranges - The original thought was that space weapons essentially shouldn't have range limits, just changes to how likely they were to hit. This is not a good game mechanic. It slows down the game with range penalty calculations and shots that really have no chance of hitting. It also give a major advantage to high targeting ships, because they can essentially shoot at greater range as well as at higher odds.

The following is a set of ranges that will speed the game along.

(12/4/03) This is a certain change.

Addition - I'm thinking of giving Light Weapons a +1 at normal range and a +2 at short, to make them more worthwhile, especially against hard to hit fighters. Of course, this makes fighters themselves more deadly.

 (12/4/03) The mines are interesting, but still hard to use well. They may be increased to a 5" or even 7" diameter

Ships without interstellar drives - I've long been wanting to have some advantage for system or carrier based ships. A simple way of working them is to give them an additional 2" movement above the level of their drives. This allows these ships to either be faster than equivalent ships, or to have one extra row of systems because their drive is taking up less space. For example, to have a ship move 10", a normal ship would have to dedicate 3 rows for a level 4 drive. If it were a system ship (or carrier based ship), it could buy a level 3 drive, which takes up only 2 rows, freeing up a row for extra systems. Or, it could have a level 4 drive, but now moves 12". This change makes all size 1/2 fighters 2" faster.

Fighter Movment I'm also considering giving all size 1 and 1/2 fighters an additional 2" or 4" of movement. A lot of players have felt that fighters should always move faster than the big ships. It would make up for their very limited weapon and system choices. I'm not positive about this, but it will be tried.

To hit modifiers - I will get rid of the modifiers for moving fast or slow, and just leave the +2 vs stationary targets. This will be one less thing to track.