B5 Wars Designer Comments Part 2

Well Chris (Weuve) maybe your constant questions about hexless based
movement for B5 Wars did work. We'll have to see what the rules are like
but Roberts response (attached) indicates that the rules will be in the
Narn-Centauri War Supplement.

Score one for Chris and everyone else who asked for a none hex based
movement system for B5 Wars.

Jim Bell
To answer your questions...

The Narn DN still will not be able to take on a Minbari Warcuirser.  It
isn't significantly larger (450 meters for a J'Quan and 512 for a DN).

There is another scale for mid-class ships.  If we do them to scale with
the fighters they will be as small as the fighters but if we do them to
scale with the fighters they will be as big as the cap ships.  They will
be roughly 2 to 2 1/2 inches long.

And now with some additional answers...

Pivoting...

The restrictions we place on capital ships while in a pivoted state was
a play-balance issue, not a reality issue.  At one point we played with
the idea of allowing ships to turn while in a pivoted state and found
(through playtests at local stores) that it was highly abused and
allowed for much greater maneuverability than these large ships should
have.  All playtesters which tested this system agreed and requested
that the rules be reinstated back to their former system.  There was
also a number of additional rules which we were going to have to create
to prevent ships from effectively changing their direction by 120
degrees simply by pivoting 120 degrees and then turning.  This is
something that yes, a ship could do in reality but did not match with
what we see in the show, thus we would not allow it.  It also blurred
the line between an agile ship and a normal ship.

On the issue of the ships which can not pivot we actually only have one
ship in mind for this restriction and that is the EA Explorer class
vessel.  It is structurally very fragile compared to other ship and must
be handled with great care when maneuvering it.  The restriction is just
our way of showing it's fragility in maneuvering within the mechanics of
the game.

On the issue of sideslips...

I see what you are talking about at this point.  However, I think you
miss the whole point of allowing sideslips in a hex-based game.  It is
simply a way to give players an additional option during movement since
the hexes restrict what a ship can do during a turn.  You can find the
same basic principals in any number of other hex based games.  This was
not intended as another way to turn a vessel.  When the table-top rules
come out side-slips will not even be allowed as the restrictions of the
hexes goes away and side-slips are not needed.	(You can achieve the
same effect by pivoting your ship in a table-top game.)  Side-slips
should never been seen as a turn because they are not a turn in any way,
shape or form.
-------

In September when the first supplement is release there will be a full
set of table-top rules (hexless).  These rules allow for extremely
minute course corrections,(more so than FT as you must change your
course by 30 degrees).	This means that many of the restrictions felt on
a hex-map are lifted and players have a great amount of freedom when
maneuvering their ships.  I personally prefer a hexless system as I
don't like the restrictions which must be dealt with on a hex grid, yet
at the same time I understand why they are there.

As for the vector movement rules...

The decision we came to was arrived at from several view points...

1)An overwhelming majority of our playtesters (remember, we had over 180
playtesters on this project) preferred a non-vector system.

2)We tested several vector systems and while some of them were fine when
you are dealing with only one or two ship, all of them became much too
clunky and cumbersom when you have 15 capital ships plus their fighters
on the board.  Can you imagine keeping track of vectors on two hundred
plus ships?(We had a playtest game with this many ships, it took us
around eight hours to play to a conclusion, a vectored system would have
taken much longer).

This was not an abritrary decision.  We thought long and hard about this
issue as there were a number of people who requested it, but not a
majority by far.  I should note that the CE combat system is a
vector-based system and from a designers point it seems to have been
done very well.  However, from a players point of view it was lacking in
some elements and not very exciting.  This was a common problem we found
in all of the vector based systems which we read and/or tested and seems
to be inherent to that style of system. (Note: this is a personal
opinion,not one of the company's).  

Robert

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Agents of Gaming: Designing the Next Generation of Games
New web site!  http://www.agentsofgaming.com 
Agent One: Bruce H. Graw; Agent Two: Robert N. Glass