Pok

As long as it's not boiled down to "Directorate is corporate, therefore the ships have to be freighters with guns bolted on" sort of caricature (which doesn't make sense, logically a corporation would produce something as cost-effective as possible, and purpose-built warship will be more cost-effective than freghter with guns), or aquan ships being literal dolphins with lasers, and there's enough continuity concept-wise I'll be happy to check it out.

There is nothing stopping you from "roleplaying" and moving the ship off the table when it's damaged. The fact is, making a game where not getting hurt is the way to win is going to result in turtle tactics. Getting a game in is a massive expenditure of time- you prepare the models, you paint them, you arrange a game in your precious time off work, and then it's over by turn 1 because Yamato got scared off by some torpedoes? Sure, it might be realistic, but I personally will not bother playing a game that simulates the most boring aspects of battle, and given that none of the mainstream games do so either, I imagine I'm not in minority on this.

On the contrary, I enjoyed 1.0 and 1.1 a lot. But that was very much despite the rulebook's best attempts rather than thanks to them. So yes, when I see that the new company took steps to amend what was in my opinion the biggest stinkers (SRS spam and boarding), I will gladly voice my opinion in it's defense.

I will ignore the fact that this was literally the Spartan games' reputation online, the game where whoever rolls more 6s wins (due to exploding D6 and bucket of dice attacks), but there is nothing non-abstract about how boarding worked. Nothing about the defender/attacker allocation was realistic, considering who won in which section of the ship had no result on what assault effects you got, and therefore made the whole thing a waste of everyone's time.

You mean killing the company? But yeah, this threat mostly proves there is no point in relying on "old fans" when trying to promote a revival of an IP, they just want the game that failed once already. As for the ever useful comment of "if you didnt like X just dont do X", guess what, opponents could've boarded me even if I didnt board anything, and then I had to play out the confused, slow, unexciting "boarding" process anyway. It was poorly written, poorly executed, and added no actual depth to the game.

I genuinely hope damage reduction of ad is a thing of the past. It slowed the game to a crawl, if i have to pick between aos or new dw, i will go for the one that plays faster. As for boarding, it was always a chore in dw, so im happy its more like FA 2.0 boarding.

Im pleasantly surprised.

I will be honest, this thing, at least after one read, exceeded my expectations. Such a marked improvement over the 2.0 version. Less clutter, the dual state statscards are elegant solution. Not a huge fan of so many different extra cards, but overall it looks like i will be giving it a whirl to try out.

And with that, my interest in the project dies. I have nothing against the man as a person, but I couldn't stand Planetfall, his take on Dystopian, and I doubt I'll like his take on FA. I'll check the rules out when they're done, but don't expect miracles out of it.

It feels like discussion about wording. In game terms, a ship with 0HP is out of action. To you, as a commander, it doesn't matter if it turned into gas or just blew a tire. In either case, it's state is so bad it cannot move under it's own power. After the battle the victor can roll to see if his ships are recoverable (probably not tho...at some point, the cost of repairs is higher than cost of building a new ship) if you want to play a campaign, but it should have no impact on the actual battle. It's destroyed until proven otherwise.

I think the military has a special name for people who run away from the fight without orders?

You die, because there is no way that a human can react in time to anything happening in any remotely hard sci-fi combat scenario.

How about we start with a working engine that's quick, fun and allows for decent tactical choices first, so we know what has to be written to make it work background wise?

I'd rather stick to damage dice if possible. I tried DropFleet, and the pegs damage system was used once before we went back to the more convenient and quicker dice damage tracking. Apps are fine...until the phone battery dies, which as we all know, happens at the worst of times. Cards are a fine solution, I don't mind them at all, and best option would be to have a simple program to prepare a fleet list, and print it out with all hardpoints accounted for. It also gets round the "1st ed cards packed with models when we're on v2" issue that come with pre-printed cards.

What I'd like to see but almost certainly will not be is move from land-inspired "lots of chaff, some mediums and few larges" list. Look at Jutland, the British had 28 battleships involved, with 14 cruisers/light cruisers in squadrons, and around 45 destroyers in the grand fleet. Obviously no one will field 28 BB's in a game, but it shows a force that is much more top-heavy than "balanced" fleets in Firestorm. I could be an unique selling point- focusing the game on large ships, you could have as much depth of detail as you want without bogging it down.