Re: Babylon 5 Wars (Late Season 4 spoiler)

I playtested B5W, and while the games were worth playing, at least one
game 
left me wondering about the value of complete accuracy to the show.  
(Hideous number of Earth ships die without scratching a Minbari.  Even
less 
than in accounts of first Earth-Minbari meeting).

Frankly, I felt the system bogged down with a half a dozen warships on a

side.  No problem if you want to do the one-on-one duels we see and a 
hideous problem when doing larger battles like some I saw late in Season
3.

Combat resolution was complicated.  Ships could accelerate and
decelerate 
very easily but it was tremendously expensive to change the direction of

motion of the ship.  I didn't find the hex based motion restrictive, but

dreaded demoing it with my collection of models.

I fear for the safety of my models since the FT demo where a player
throssed 
a destroyed ship to me to put away.  I cringe when carefully painted
models 
are crammed together at close range, so I doubly cringe at B5W.  Many
models 
will physically be too big for a hex, but are so sluggish to maneuvre
and 
benefit so greatly from each hex they close the range that they will be 
moving in close quarters regularly.  Indeed, with no stacking limit and 
players moving models under the given movement rules, two or three ships

could share a hex.  Throw in a few fighter squadrons, who have the zip
to go 
where they want and the range penalties that will make that point be the

target hex, and you get huge traffic jams.  

With 6 fighters per squadron (1 inch long models), 4 squadrons per BD,
and a 
BD per side (4 inches long), how crowded will one 1 inch hex be ?

It was the kind of system I might have designed once.  Every number is 
supposed to represent something, and everything you can imagine has some

number to represent it.  Calculating the chance to hit might be a 
calculation like 65 (target base) - 12 (target Def EW) + 15 (weapon Off
EW) 
+ 20 (weapon firecon) - (2 * 7) (range penalty of weapon) = 74 %.  You
hit ? 
 Roll 5D10 for damage, then for each set of 10, roll % for loaction. 
We'll 
subtract the hit location's armour from some of those shots and then
roll a 
D10 for each location hit and see if any of those hits were criticals. 
Oh, 
but first, let me roll to intercept with these four systems.  Aaagh ! 
Just 
not what I wanted to have to teach beginning players.

Tom
Tom + Dana McCarthy