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91
Starfire Rules / Pre-Purchase Question
« Last post by Wolf359 on February 19, 2017, 03:26:28 PM »
I ended up here via a Steam review for another game, which led me from here, to the Starfire website and rules.

I'm interested in buying the Starfire rules from "Starfire Design", but it looks a little shady.

I sent Cralis a PM via this board to ask a couple of questions, but he hasn't been here in a while and there was no response.  No surprise there.  Activity for Starfire is low here.

I've read some things about the Starfire community history and such things happen of course.  That isn't such a big deal for me as I have no favorite starfire version.

What concerns me about Starfire Design at the moment is that the owner seems to be using community members to do all the work on Starfire while he collects the checks for just himself.

Cralis seems to indicate he is not an employee, but he is clearly doing all the major work from what I can see via their board.  Apparently, people are submitting their scans of old products for Cralis to clean up and Starfire Design to then sell.

I would like to buy the product, but I'm not going to support a disreputable business.  It's great to support a product and game you like, but the IP holder shouldn't ransom his product for slave labor.  I wouldn't support that with my business.

Am I off in my assessment?

I apologize ahead of time for such an incendiary comment and question.  I would have preferred to simply ask Cralis privately.  I didn't think contact on the Starfire Design website would be private and asking such a question there publicly would be rude.
92
SA Questions / Re: Emergency Repairs and SA
« Last post by Paul M on November 09, 2016, 02:14:13 AM »
SA doesn't track emergency repairs so far as I can tell.  I had to use emergency repairs on one ship in the last battle otherwise I'd have had to scuttle it, as the Qs has no back up lifesupport.  The only thing you can do is record it in the notes for the ship and manually allocate damage to the ship in combat.
93
SA Questions / Race with no Income
« Last post by Serviceaha on November 08, 2016, 08:50:42 PM »
lets do a sim with a race that worships a creature known as images and makes him their god and captain
images

the seed has been planted mwahahaha
94
SA Questions / Emergency Repairs and SA
« Last post by Serviceegb on November 08, 2016, 05:49:33 AM »
Emergency repairs typically only happen when you capture a pirate ship that was only a couple more cannon hits away from sinking.
95
SA Questions / Re: Rulesets used by SA?
« Last post by Paul M on October 25, 2016, 09:30:46 AM »
For the most part SFA uses 3rdR and Imperial Starfire.  In addition, to this is the changes to Imperial Starfire introduced with Sky Marshal 2.  Plus you get the technology from Alkeda Dawn and with SFA7 you get the UTM (possibly that showed up in SFA6).  When you start a game there are other options available to the player they can set (-1 to all PD rolls for example).  There are also experimental optional rules which Starslayer and I are using (supply lines and mine laying systems).  There are also setting to adjust things like growth rates, and cost of technology.  The database is also available to be edited if you have the access 2003 program, the skill and the password to allow you to have house tech. 

Overall there are significant number of options available to the SM for the game.

There is no way to not use the core rules (3rdR, IS, and SM2) as these are programed in.  They are used for race generation, system generation, the tech available per EL and the combat resolver.
96
Starfire Rules / Gunboats and the Minefield
« Last post by Paul M on October 24, 2016, 10:05:36 AM »
As things have started moving again in our starfire campaign and the Alien mung has intruded upon my space (or Squidzie space or both) the question of gunboats and the local minefield has been forced under my nose.  I had a look at the rules and it is clear that the UTM uses the rules from ISW4 verbatum for this particular section.  And well based on the way the rules are written my feeling is that they were written by David Webber and that the SDS didn't change them when they took over the process.

I am not familier with the rules pre 3rdR except in a rather vague general way (I played games under other rules sets but never saw the rules) and so I have to guess a bit.  I do know that mines had an attack roll of 7.  I also know that point defence operated by 9-7-5-3-1 process leading to minesweepers being designed so that as many mines as possible would be intercepted with a 9, hence in Crusade you see sweepers with huge numbers of Dx something which in 3rdR actually makes no sense 5 Dx would be acceptable and 10 Dx would be the most needed for a BB sized sweeper.  Point defence versus mines can't use targeting (extra shots applied to increase the number of the intercept) in 3rdR so there is no need to jam a mine sweeper with point defence.

Anyway using what I know, and the rules for gunboats the mine field vrs GB rules seem to make sense.   A GB squadron is attacked by 10 mines.  A GB is -3 vrs ship to hits, 7-3 = 4.  Thus of the 10 mines attacking only 4 hit.  The rules say roll 4 dice.  Makes sense.

Then the GB has a Dxz so it has a 9 to intercept.  Chance of a kill is 1 in 10.  Makes sense the rules say the kill number is a 1.   A +1 for AAM (which has penaids for -1 PD number) and +1 for turn of transit (where PD is at -1) also make sense.

So it looks to me like the rules are from 3rd or earlier version.

In 3rdR though the rules are different Dx is 5 on 7 not 9-7-5-3-1 and able to restart.  Non-minesweepers get a -2, no targeting bonus applies either (this rules is forgotten by most) so the 7 (or 6) stands.

So starting with the same 4 mines inbound you now have a base intercept chance of 7, or 6 is you apply the -1 to all PD rolls.  Unless the GB know the mines are present they  also should get a further -2 on the intercept number, plus the other ones listed before.

But the baffle gab rules for 3rdR say there is really 70 mines in the pattern not 50...so 14 mines would fire on the gunboat squadron not 10 and in this case 14*.4= 5.6 which could be rounded up to either 6 (mathematically) or down to 5 (game play) but basically you should roll more dice per squadron.

The 3rdR PD rules push the kill number high:  Base 3 + 1 (turn of transit) +2 (non-minesweeper) = 6 to kill and 7 to kill vrs AMMF (+1 if using all PD degraded by 1).   This will seriously degrade GB moving through a minefield at speed on the turn of transit or any other turn as you have to know the MF is there to get the minesweeper status.  This leaves them with slow 1 hex a turn advances.  That probably gets the GB slaughtered by firepower.

The only saving grace for the GB is that a pattern can engage only a single squadron so send 30 squardons through a minefield with 10 patterns and only 18 will be engaged (10 on entering and 8 on leaving).  Still with a wide enough minefield even with lower patterns per hex the GBs are going to be seriously attritted.

I may be wrong in how the rules were arrived at, but on the other hand the difference between a GB and an EX class ship is minimal and EX class ships would be obliterated entering a minefield so that GBs take a beating is not really unrealistic.  Fundamentally the changes to the point defence rules in 3rdR made minefields considerably more dangerous to ships as a whole.   Crusade minesweeps could deal with very heavy patterns of minefields but 3rdR minesweepers max out at a 7 rather than the mines being able to be intercepted at a 9 base.  A 3rdR ship in a AAMF will suffer seriously as the best you get is a 6.   A BB sized ship will thus suffer per AMMF pattern 25*0.4*2 = 20 points of damage per pattern on average.   Still 6 BB sweepers would require 40+ AMMF patterns to likely destroy them, and there is all the other things (EM, and EDM drones) plus beam weapons to add to their survivability.

What are other peoples thoughts here?   Change stuff?  Not change stuff?  Am I barking up the wrong tree?

Added in Edit:  -2 for non mine sweeper and a bit of grammar improvement to enhance readability. 
97
SA Questions / Rulesets used by SA?
« Last post by Josephine98 on October 12, 2016, 05:47:44 AM »
Basically what the title says, which of the rulebooks and/or optional rules does SA use, and is there any way to configure what is used and what isn't?
98
SA Questions / Where does SA save the Starfire.mdb location?
« Last post by jackbrownii on June 05, 2016, 12:16:03 PM »
Mine was in C:\Dropbox, but, I moved my dropbox folder to the D: drive. Now, SA says it can't find it and blows up in an never ending series of error 91 messages. It never gets around to asking me to pick a database. Pointers to where that is saved?

Thanks.
99
SA Installation / Re: Windows 10?
« Last post by Tor Cha on March 06, 2016, 06:16:43 PM »
thanks Boggo2300
100
SA Installation / Re: Windows 10?
« Last post by boggo2300 on March 06, 2016, 02:33:01 PM »
I'm running it in Windows 10,  no issues (I have the same cutoff windows, but that's nothing to do with windows 10 and everything to do with using a laptop with stupid modern resolutions)
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