OFF-TOPIC mini review B5 Wars

CAVEATS
1) I haven't played the final version; I was a playtester, though, for
two 
earlier incarnations, and I have looked over (somewhat briefly) the
final 
version purchased at Origins.

2) Almost all of the suggestions our playtest group made were ignored. 
If 
this means you think that I am a cranky and bitter old coot whose pissed
he 
didn't get his way, well, I would like to point out that my opinion of
the 
product hasn't changed since I saw the first playtest copy.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
It's better -- barely -- than the playtest version.  Unfortunately, most
of 
the things that were broken are still broken, with the likelyhood that 
something was fixed being inversely proportional to how seriously it was

broken (i.e., they spent a lot of time changing light bulbs on the
Titanic).

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Black unmounted maps with white hexes.	Counters are beautiful (they
were done 
by Mike Wikan) but printed too darkly.	Includes a half dozen minis
which need 
to be assembled and painted.  (I wonder if they tried to arrange a deal
with 
Galoob for B5 micromachines? Probably not.)

PROS
1) Lots of background info, it seems.  Big thick rulebook (90+ pages)
with 
plenty of black and white photos from the show.  

2) They also came up with a somewhat-clunky-but-I-guess-it-works fix to
one of 
the more serious problems, the "energy point" problem.	In the playtest 
version, ships moved by funnelling energy points from the reactor
through 
their thrusters, which generate thrust points.	Each reactor point
(regardless 
of the ship) generated one thrust point, and each thrust point
(regardless of 
the ship) generated one one hex per turn of thrust. Think about this for

thirty seconds, max, and you will realize that implies that ALL SHIPS
HAVE THE 
SAME MASS.

Well, they fixed it, and while it wasn't exactly how we would do it, I
guess 
it will do.  They added an "engine", which has two salient features: 
first, 
it provides a certain number of "free" thrust points which can be routed

through the thrusters to produce thrust; second, for "extra" thrust, it 
converts energy points to thrust points which are then routed through
the 
thrusters, based on an "engine efficiency" rating.  While this is
somewhat 
cumbersome from an engineering point of view, it has the distinct
advanatage 
that, in most cases, the players don't have to calculate anything to
expend 
thrust.

4) Combat system has been simplified a little.	Basically, its a d20
system 
now, instead of d100, with DRMs based on 150+ variables.  (Okay, it's
really 
only about ten variables.)

CONS
1) The biggest con is that the movement system is STILL broken.  Anyone
who 
has read my earlier comments on this game knows that I think the
movement 
system is clunky and unrealistic.  (See [http://www.wizard.net/~caw/
aogprob.htm] for details.)  Well, it appears that they have tweaked it a
bit, 
but you still have things like rotating is in increments of 180 degrees
and 
takes *exactly* three turns (regardless of the size of the ship), 60
degree 
turns cost less energy than 30 degree turns, etc.

2) One other problem with the playtest version that I have not had a
chance to 
test with this one was the arbitrary nature of the combat system.  This
is an 
excerpt from our second playtest report:
> The more we play the game, the more uneasy we feel about the combat 
> system.  We made certain assumptions about what the various values 
> (defensive ratings, damage ratings, fire control, etc.) are intended
to 
> represent -- many of these are detailed in the discussion on fire
control 
> and defensive ratings.  The more we played, however, the more we ran
into 
> specific instances that seemed to not fit in with the implicit model
we 
> had constructed.  Therefore,	either our understanding of what the
values 
> represent is wrong, or the value itself is wrong, or both.  Next, we 
> realized that not only had we not determined in the system and/or
values 
> made sense, but that we _could_ not do so without more information. 
At 
> best, we would have only a vague feeling that this or that value is 
> wrong -- often times it seems that different ships are different
solely 
> for the sake of being different, or that the values were assigned in a

> totally arbitrary manner. 
>  
> While bad enough in itself, this will potentially become intolerable
when 
> the ship design system is introduced, for two reasons.  First, if
there 
> is no method by which a ship's ratings are determined, it will be 
> difficult if not impossible to devise a system which will allow you to

> design the ship's included in the game.  Second, even if the original 
> ships do not become illegal, it promises to make them suboptimal 
> designs.  There should always be room for players to improve on the 
> efforts of the naval architects of the fictional setting, but care
needs 
> to be taken not to invalidate all the designs which came before.

3) My personal pet peeve -- the Earthforce Omega class destroyer does
not have 
a rotating section.  Anyone who has seen the episode where the loyalist
forces 
attacked Babylon 5 know that the bridge crew of the _Alexander_ was VERY

worried about damage to the spin section forcing them to stop rotation. 
Considering the damage system involves specific hit locations, you would
think 
the rotating section would have to be included.  Yet, there is nothing
in the 
game to indicate the ship even has a rotating section!

4) The Earthforce ships have "interceptors", which are CIWS designed to 
intercept incoming fire.  To their credit, AoG change it so that the 
interceptors can no longer intercept incoming laser fire.  However, they
have 
added the idea that the interceptors somehow generate a forcefield that 
degrades laser fire.  Yuck.

5) The ship sheets are in the back of the book, perforated for removal. 
Why 
do it this way?  Why not make the ship sheets a separate booklet, where
they 
would be easy to photocopy (which they grant permission for), like GDW
did 
with _Star Cruiser_, TFG does with _SFB_, etc.?  Players are left with
the 
alternatives of defacing the rules or limiting the quality of the copies
that 
can be made.

OVERALL ASSESSMENT
This is a generic tactical space combat game with the name "Babylon 5"
slapped 
on the front.  As such, there is little to recommend it *out of the box*
over 
simply playing	_Renegade Legion:Leviathan_, _Silent Death_,
_Battlespace_ or 
a host of other such games. Anyone wanting to play a B5 game would be
better 
off playing _Full Thrust_ with one of the four or five B5 rulesets
floating 
around the net ([http://www.uwm.edu/~cthulhu/FT/thrust.html] is a good
place 
to start searching for them), or waiting a month and getting Chameleon 
Eclectic's _Earthforce Sourcebook_, which, as we all know, includes Jon 
Tuffley's _Full Thrust_-derived system.  

This is not to say that I don't intend to purchase it.	While pretty
much 
useless as is, I think that _B5W_ can be saved by scrapping the movement

system and replacing it with a homegrown system.  A colleague and I are 
working on such a system, which I will put on my website as soon as it's
done, 
and which we hope to run at NOVAGCon in August. 

-- Chris Weuve	 [My opinions, not my employer's.]
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