Starmada had its origins on Usenet in 1994, and this version is the seventh incarnation of the rules. However, it doesn't deviate too incredibly far from its previous incarnation, Starmada X. The intention was to both streamline the gameplay as well as address common complaints about various aspects of the system, while also expanding the customizability of ships and system alike, thus creating a "toolkit" system for hex-based space combat.
Format:
The game book is an 80+ page book or PDF, depending on how you decide to buy it from Majestic Twelve games. The interior art has changed into passable 3D art made through DOGA. While there is eyecandy, the great majority of the pictures in the book are dedcated to showing off play examples and other aspects of the rules, such as terrain (covered later in this review). The actual text is, as before, divided into sections by category, as usual. The first six chapters are dedicated to describing the core aspects of the game, such as the basic structure, tha ctions taken in the various phases, fighters, and the ship construction system.
The next 38 pages are dedicated to describing the various options that one can apply to... Well, just about every aspect of the game. Everything from movement, to construction options for ships and fighters, to terrain, to even possible scenario setups. Four pages are dedicated to a conversion guide to bringing over your ships from Starmada X over to the new edition, a relatively painless process, but it still may strip your vessel of some eqyuipment, as a few pieces have been eliminated. The Epilogue is basically Dan Kast talking about the reasoning for making the changes and removing a few bits of equipment, and pages 78-79 are a rather servicable index.
The last few pages are are data sheets for eight sample ship designs, ranging from frigate to battleship, as well as blank data sheets.
Gameplay:
The biggest change in gameplay in the new edition was the switch in the movement system. While in all previous incarnations of Starmada, the movement has been like Battletech (MP alotted to forward movement and facing changes), Starmada has finally adopted inertial movement as its main mode of getting your ships about the map, thus bringing it in line with just about every other space combat game on the market. Other than that, though, the gameplay remains largely the same. Each side starts with a pre-determined point value worth of ships, usually some multimple of 500 or 1000, and the objective is to sink the othe guy's fleet.
Movement is pre-plotted, and each side moves simultaneously, making Starmada an initiative-less tactical guessing game of where the opposing ships will line up. Asfter all of the movement has simultaneously taken place, however, both sides plot their fire, and make simultaneous weapon declaration against targets that happen to fall in the firing arcs that have weapons capapble of attacking them. If there are any hits scored, they roll a number of dice equal to the weapon's Impact dice (Impact is the new PEN), and if any get through the ship's defenses ("Shield" is used as to describe the aggregate sum all of a ship's passive defenses), the weapon's damage is rolled for each successful Impact roll.
The damage track has been changed as well. 1-2 is Engines, 3-4 is Shields, and 5-6 is weapons, and odd numbers mean hull damage in addition. Weapons also have their own additional, unique damage track depending on the design of this ship: this was to make it so people would know exactly what kind of damage was rolled with each attack just by looking at the dice (Armor Plating causes all "1" results to be nullified). The Shield and Engine tracks are far more robust than in Starmada X: The amound of hits required to totally destroy a ship's engines or shields are now equal to the number of hull points a ship has, which eliminates what I call the "pillbox" effect, where large, low-thrust ships could be totally crippled with a couple of lucky hits.
Fighters are roughly handled in the same way as before- They launch in flights of six, have a one-hex range, and explode when hit (though it's harder than hitting a ship). The big change to the default fighters is that they no longer halve shields- Apparently, Dan forgot to include that ability in their cost in the previous edition.
Victory is declared when one side has had more than half of their total point value of vessels removed from the board- If it happens to both sides simultaneously, it's a draw, or if the players feel like engaging in a bit of roleplaying, both sides can claim victory for space king and space country.
The last section in the basic rules is the construction system, which works basically the same as Starmada X. You choose a hull size (soft cap now at 24) to determine your hull space as well as sheild and engine costs, buy weapons and equipment, and so on until you're satisfied. However, this doesn't truly shine until the options are gieven a good look-over
Options:
This is really where the meat of Starmada is. The options section of the book is actually larger than the rules section, and unsurprisingly so, considering the amount of options it contains.
The first option set is for starship construction, and includes many of the old standbys, such as Armor Plating (For those extra-rugged ships), hyperdrives, Stealth, Cloaking, Regenaration, and so on. A few things have been removed, however. All weapon-based special equipment (Anti-fighter batteries, Carronade, Spinal Mount) have been removed due to being, well, weapons, not really special equpment. Tachyon Detection and Ranging is gone, and will be missed by few, due to its ability to decide games in one roll. Ionic shielding has been removed due to the dangers of equipment one-upmanship(If this ignores shield-ignoring weapons, what about a weapon that ignores ionic shields?). All non-combat ship functions (Transport, Cargo, Medical, etc.) have been rolled under "Auxiliary Services", and the player simply decides how much space he dedicates to each. Fighters and Drones have been rolled in under "carrier", and the player secides how much capacity to dedicate to that, too (See below for the full implications of this). EWS and Long-Range sensors have been folded under "Fire Control", since they both, in essence did the same thing. Decoys and ECM are folded in to make "Countermeasures", which provides a penalty to enemy attacks. Mines work differently, being abought in "factors" which can be spent to create minefields of various sizes. Marines and Security Teams are now just Marines. They do the same thing, but you have to buy them a ride (Teleporters or Boarding Pods) if you want them to go places.
As far as weapon traits go, most of them have been retained, but Shield halving and ignoring have been rolled into "Piercing", which gives a bonus to Impact rolls. Area of Effect is now a trait, so no more clumping. The range of accuracy, Rate of fire, Impact, and Damage has been increased. The max value for ROF, IMP, and DMG has been increased to 5, and Accuracy can now range from a base 2+ to 6+ to-hit on a D6. Range can go from 3 to 30, and a new set of weapon arcs can also be used, based on what I call the "Full Thrust" configurationm with a 60 degree arc facing straight forward and building the other 60 degree arcs around that. An illustration might be better, but those don't seem to be allowed in reviews. The total estimated combinations of ROF, ACC, DMG, IMP, DMG, Range and weapon traits has been calculated by Dan at around 8.93 million.
The original, "Basic" movement of the previous incarnations of the game are included as an option. The other options should be familiar, such as evasive action to reduce chances of being hit, sideslipping, and rolling the ship to present opposite firing arcs to opposing vessels. Nothing that new here.
Explosions (for local collateral damage) and damage control for repairing system damage in comabt return, though you no longer get the buckets of dice for damage control that you could get in Starmada X. It's now possible to target specific system types on an enemy vessel at the expense of accuracy, and given that the game is played with D6's, that's a pretty big hit. Sequential movement and firing are also options this time around.
Remember how I said that Carrier space was abought as raw space capactiy rather than as flights? Well, here's why- there is a greatly expanded customization system for fighters, small craft and seeking weapons, and their capacity cost is dependant on what you give them. Fighters and seekers can now be customized to have their own defense rating (shield level), speed, accuracy, ROF, IMP, DMG, and other ship weapon traitas like Piercing, Extra hull damage, and so on. Fighters are reusable, while seekers, boarding pods, and other such things are not. Fighters and similar small craft can also be bought and used independant of ships, to represent fighters from a nearby base or something like that.
The Terrain section covers things like asteroids (Nature's minefields), Planets, obscuring dust clouds, shield-hindering nebulae, and nasty, nasty black holes. This, as always, is a welcome addition.
The last section is given over to presenting sample scenarios for more tactical games of Starmada than just "kill the other guy." There are, of course, the usual space game standbys, such as Patrol, raid, Fleet action, Breakout, and so on. Nothing too spectacular, but it's good to have some variety in gameplay, and it might spark the imagination of others.
Converting:
To make this brief, not all ships are going to come through completely intact, for reasons that may have been illustrated above. Some options or traits just didn't make the transition to this version of the game, but it does offer some suggestions as to how to simulate the missing equipment. If a ship used to have Point-Defense system, then it would have a higher shield rating. A lost Spinal mount could be replaced with an actual weapon with the same range and total DMG. It's not a totally painless process, but odds are your ship will at least be recognizable.
Conclusion:
The new version of Starmada seems to have not lost all that much in terms of playability due to its switch to the new edition of the game, and has even gianed a great deal in terms of customization due to the new approach to the game. I know I gave it a 4/4, but that was mainly to avoid looking like a shill or rabid fanboy- Besides, review text is generally more valuable than any numbers.
