It's been almost a year and a half since I was able to put any serious effort into the table-top game. See when the pandemic started, I was just moving into serious playtesting the Star Fighter tabletop game. And that curb-stomped my play-testing efforts. It's kind of hard to play-test a table-top game when there's a pandemic and everything. My situation was further compounded by several other things that came to a head at about the same time. So with all of that, I put work on the game on the shelf for the time being. I was looking at my notes for it and I wanted to find a way to facilitate play-testing and development. So with a little looking, I'm gonna use Table-top simulator for playtesting and development. Once I do some review and re-write some of the basic rules, I'll be looking for people who have TTS and want to do some play testing on it. So keep an eye open if you're interested.
Right now I'm just using random models from other asset packages as fighter-stand ins, but I'm talking to Defiance about working something out.
I finished assembling an excel file where I can feed the stats for the pilots, fighters, and cannons into it, and assign a weight to each stat that is then used to calculate the cost of the fighter (Basically it's (weight
*each stat)+(weight*cannons)+(weight*# of missiles/torpedoes)). Interestingly, I feel like the formula works well for fighters under 300 points (Like the Hornet, HellCat, Darket and Dralthi) but doesn't seem to scale up like I figure it should beyond that point. The Excalibur coming in at only 50% greater than the Hellcat seems off. I would figure the Excalibur would be 2-3x the cost of the Hellcat, while the Lance would be 4-5x the Hellcat. The Devastator and Longbow seem somewhat more in range of what I would expect... though I'm not 100% sure about the Longbow being the more expensive of the two.
Right now I'm using the following system to calculate fighter cost:
(Burn value * 2) + (turn value * 6) + (shields * 1.5)+(Hull points * .75)+(# of decoys * 5)+(# of flares ** 1)+(4*# of missiles per bay ** # of missile bays)+(10*# of torpedoes per bay * # of torpedo bays)+(Cost of single cannon * # of cannons)+Special ability.
While for cannons, I'm presenting using the following system:
(Damage**2)+(Range-engagement distance * 1.25)+(Calculation of effect, see below) + (# of shots *2) + Cost of special ability.
The 'calculation of effect is a bit hard to spell out with the spreadsheet in front of you to reference.
If the effect results in a change to the number of shots the weapon makes, take the number of shots lost, and multiply it by .75. Then subtract that value from the rest of the cost of the cannon.
If the effect is a bonus to the targets dodge, take the amount of the change, multiply it by four, multiply that value by the number of shots, then multiple that by .75 and then subtract that value from the cost of the cannon.
if the effect is a reduction in damage, take the number of the reduction, multiply it by 2, multiply that by the number of shots, multiple that by .75 and subtract that from the total.
If the effect is a bonus to a reduction in the shooter's "to-hit" chances, take the number of the change, multiply it by .75 and subtract that from the cost.
This is the sort of thing I much prefer having something like excel to do the work in. This way I can change values and not need to review the formula I'm using unless I want to change that.
Not trying to just nitpick here, but the thing has enough errors to be distracting.
