Friday, July 27, 2012

5150: Star Navy replay

Since we tweaked the rules for 5150: Star Navy, Ed the THW Guy and I decided to replay last week's playtest with the rules modifications.  Ed also thought it would be a good idea to add a few more ships to this battle, so it ended up being 47 Class 3s against one Class 6.
We remembered to designate a flagship this time, and Ed vaporized it the first turn, affecting the performance of the remaining ships.
I also had a chance to deploy my scratchbuilt escape pods, which I used to indicate the position of ships that had been destroyed (since surrounding vessels take a test to remain on the board).

It played out like last time--most shots from the smaller ships were ineffective, but sheer numbers allowed a few attacks to cause damage, making easier to cause further damage.  Meanwhile, the dreadnought was taking out ships left and right, but eventually its luck ran out when it failed a bridge damage test, which lowered its Rep.  This made it easier to fail subsequent tests, and an engine hit forced the ship to flee the battle, ending the game.  
We're happy with the rules feel and the way the game's going.  Check out Ed's battle report for more details of the game.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is there any sort of test to detect an opposing fleet's flagship? Otherwise, it seems like that'll be the first ship to target every single game.

-Ed Green

Desert Scribe said...

Hey edowars, sorry for not responding sooner. At this point the rules don't require any sort of test to locate the enemy's flagship. The idea is that scanners, AI and other devices can detect which ship is issuing messages to all the others, so the commander will know which vessel is the flagship. The player is always welcome to devote all the fleet's resources to taking out the enemy's flag, but that's an opportunity cost for each participant to decide.