Some ideas as general rules for Star Trek Armada ships:

Leaky Shields
Whenever a ship cause 2 critical hits or more against a Star Trek ship that has either only one shield or no shields at full strength, the attacker can deal one damage card to the defender instead of allocatin the hit to a shield. A ship cannot be destroyed this way.

or already dealt damage cards are upped to cric damage.

Pointy Defense
Star Trek ships may not fire on all squadrons in a firing arc, but only on one squadron. Accuracy Results may be swapt to hit results.

Warp

Navigate Command: May perform a single, straight 5-8 Movement, but may not fire anything else than red dice that turn.

I have to completely disagree with you - using the flightpath system for Star Trek is not at all how most Trek ships move. (aside from very small ones like the Bird of Prey)

Like Star Wars capital ships, most iconic Star Trek ships are massive vessels of thousands of tonnes, so having them zipping around like fighters just doesnt make sense. The should have a sense of intertia and strategy in their movement (e.g. Star Trek II, Wrath of Khan) but also a clearly devestating impact when they dish out and recieve damage.

Yes they only tend to fire a few weapons, but those weapons (like the old cannons of naval sail days) take time to recharge, making positioning and facing critical in engagements - which is what we see in Armada.

Trek ships are also very complex, with multiple shield facings and weapon arcs, noone of which is adaquately modelled in Attack Wing. We alredy have those systems in Armada, and with Armada the idea of attacking twice from different arcs actually makes more sense for Trek ships to me, then Star Wars ships - why should a ship bristling with turbolasers only be able to attack in two directions rather than any? But sure, if you have a main phaser array maybe it can only make two shots per turn.

I agree Attack wing was a bad system for it, but as pointed out, we actually see that even the big ships are quite nippy compared to Star Wars ones. Yes, there is a definite different sense of inertia between a Defiant Class and a Galaxy class, but even the Galaxy would run rings round a Star Destroyer... or any Star Wars ship really, aside from the fighters. We see Nebula classes and Ambassador class ships turning almost on a dime.

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Star Fleet Battles from the '80s is still awesome for true indepth capital ship fun!....

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I always think that the obsession with energy management in Star Trek games an irritating one. It isn't actually what defines Star Trek ship combat, it is all just fluff and lines for them to say during the action, plus an occasional excuse to pull something out of their ass to save the day. Yes, it should exist in a Star Trek roleplaying game, but I always felt that a proper star trek ship game should just presume that your crews are doing what is necessary and leave it out. The Armada level of details is far more appropriate in my mind, especially as it is actually a far better representation of the kind of scale Star Trek fights usually happen at, ie a small handful of vessels. Until DS9 (which I love) came along, the 40-50 odd ships of Wolf 359 was meant to be a BIG fleet, and the fact the Borg kerb-stomped it was meant to be a big deal.

Though it would need a lot of work to really feel treky, just the level of detail is appropriate.

I'm pretty sure you are wrong about Torpedoes having the longest range, iirc. I could be wrong, but I'm fairly certain that phasers had the longest ranged, followed by disruptors, then torpedos. Again, I could be wrong, but I seem to remember it like that.

Torpedoes had the longest range, at least according to a couple of incidents on the show (post OS, where they were meant to be a special setting of the phasers, rather than a distinct weapon). There a couple of times when ships fire their torpedoes while explicitly outside phaser range, and there are some stats given somewhere which suggest ranges in the hundreds of thousands of kilometres, while phasers are usually rated as having ranges of tens of thousands of kilometres. Though of course normally they show fights happening at seeming knife fight ranges, sometimes explicitly contradicting the dialogue (I am sure Data at one point talks about them being thousands of kilometres apart, while they are clearly sitting a couple of miles of each others' bows), as it looks more dramatic that way.

Torpedoes are also presented in TNG as the "big stick" (less so in DS9, where they are used more casually). They tend to break the torpedoes out when they just want to blow **** up without any finesse, and it usually doesn't take many (they usually fire a handful at any one time), while phasers are used when they want to be more precise, less indiscriminate (such as targeting systems to knock them out, disable a ship rather than destroy it). Phasers are much more of a tool combined with a weapon, while torpedoes are more like breaking out the grenades for a tricky situation.

Yeah Picard once fought a battle at a range of light seconds though the exact distance is unknown. His ship had time to warp to a closer position and open fire before the light of when his ship jumped to warp reached the enemy ship though.

I have to completely disagree with you - using the flightpath system for Star Trek is not at all how most Trek ships move. (aside from very small ones like the Bird of Prey)

Like Star Wars capital ships, most iconic Star Trek ships are massive vessels of thousands of tonnes, so having them zipping around like fighters just doesnt make sense. The should have a sense of intertia and strategy in their movement (e.g. Star Trek II, Wrath of Khan) but also a clearly devestating impact when they dish out and recieve damage.

Yes they only tend to fire a few weapons, but those weapons (like the old cannons of naval sail days) take time to recharge, making positioning and facing critical in engagements - which is what we see in Armada.

Trek ships are also very complex, with multiple shield facings and weapon arcs, noone of which is adaquately modelled in Attack Wing. We alredy have those systems in Armada, and with Armada the idea of attacking twice from different arcs actually makes more sense for Trek ships to me, then Star Wars ships - why should a ship bristling with turbolasers only be able to attack in two directions rather than any? But sure, if you have a main phaser array maybe it can only make two shots per turn.

I agree Attack wing was a bad system for it, but as pointed out, we actually see that even the big ships are quite nippy compared to Star Wars ones. Yes, there is a definite different sense of inertia between a Defiant Class and a Galaxy class, but even the Galaxy would run rings round a Star Destroyer... or any Star Wars ship really, aside from the fighters. We see Nebula classes and Ambassador class ships turning almost on a dime.

While I mostly agree with you, we only see Star Trek ships turn "on a dime" when standing still. In motion they behave a lot more like ships with inertia, which can be seen in the Dominion Wars battles pretty good. Except for the Defiant/Attack Ships/ B`Rel, the ships are almost sluggish. But I think they should be more agile than Star Wars ships.

Watch the intro to the first episode of DS9 ("Emissary"), which shows some of the battle of Wolf 359. At one point you see an Ambassador class ship doing something like a 90 degree turn in it's own length (or not much more than that) at speed. Ok, it does appear to slow down during the turn, but the deceleration and acceleration kind of made it moot, hardly affecting it's stride.

Bizarrely, it often seems that ships turn slower when they are still or slow (The Enterprise never just spins itself around in space, always going into a slow bank from a stopped position), like they need some sort of forward movement to be able to turn quickly.

I will admit there is the question of how much of this to take as "fact" (in universe) and how much to treat as just the way the visual effects guys ended up showing it on screen.

Watch the intro to the first episode of DS9 ("Emissary"), which shows some of the battle of Wolf 359. At one point you see an Ambassador class ship doing something like a 90 degree turn in it's own length (or not much more than that) at speed. Ok, it does appear to slow down during the turn, but the deceleration and acceleration kind of made it moot, hardly affecting it's stride.

Bizarrely, it often seems that ships turn slower when they are still or slow (The Enterprise never just spins itself around in space, always going into a slow bank from a stopped position), like they need some sort of forward movement to be able to turn quickly.

I will admit there is the question of how much of this to take as "fact" (in universe) and how much to treat as just the way the visual effects guys ended up showing it on screen.

The best TNG movie First Contact showed it best I think. That is the best example of how all of the ships move, and as stated the glory that was the action moments in The Dommion Wars on DS9.

Good idea to post that.

I watched it several times now and no ship in the whole battle is making any hard turn.

The hardest turns we see is when the cube is destroyed (4:11-1:19:

The Norway is makes something like a very long 80° degree turn and escapes while any unknown ship class (most probably a Steamrunner or akira) class fails to do more than even a 45° turn and is destroyed. It also seems that the norway was moving faster than the unlucky steamrunner. Another Akira if also not turning at all when flying through the explosion.

Here:

https://youtu.be/OvhAh_M5pok

at 0:50 the defiant rotates nearly on spot pretty fast.

at 1:04 the B`rel moves beside the Defiant seems to turn faster.

The Defiant was a small, over powered ship, and repeatedly made turns that the larger ships were completely incapable of making. At 9:03 or so it slows, and makes a 180* turn to face the Battleship (I assume that's actually the Valiant , but whatever). Guessing they used a maneuver command dial to pull that one off?

PS: DS9 always did have the best battle scenes.

Good idea to post that.

I watched it several times now and no ship in the whole battle is making any hard turn.

The hardest turns we see is when the cube is destroyed (4:11-1:19:

The Norway is makes something like a very long 80° degree turn and escapes while any unknown ship class (most probably a Steamrunner or akira) class fails to do more than even a 45° turn and is destroyed. It also seems that the norway was moving faster than the unlucky steamrunner. Another Akira if also not turning at all when flying through the explosion.

Here:

https://youtu.be/OvhAh_M5pok

at 0:50 the defiant rotates nearly on spot pretty fast.

at 1:04 the B`rel moves beside the Defiant seems to turn faster.

Yup the Akira zooms away and passes right by as the cube blows up.

GLORY!

I ended up keeping the X-wing style movement for my own conversion. It seems to be adaptable enough for the way it should look. I also figure most of the ships are less then 5cm long in terms of model so it fits quite nice.

The more battle scenes of Star Trek I watch for this, the more I notice that Star Trek Ships hardly turn at all (Expect Defiant and B`Rels) even the Jem`Hadar Attack ships turn much less than I remembered.

The more battle scenes of Star Trek I watch for this, the more I notice that Star Trek Ships hardly turn at all (Expect Defiant and B`Rels) even the Jem`Hadar Attack ships turn much less than I remembered.

Yup... but dem B'rels and dat Defiant... whew!

Only certain ships need to turn a great deal, as long as they are in range. Most vessels seem to have sufficient coverage that they can fire all round, and it looks like the actual number of weapon emitters are not so important as it appears they can put their full firepower into almost any arc through whatever emitters they have that have a bead on a target. The Defiant is an exception to this, as are the birds-of-prey, as their main weapons have a much more restricted firing arc, ie not very much off straight forward.

This opposes to Star Wars ships which appear to have turrets with restricted firing arcs (Star Destroyers, whose actual main batteries seem to be directed in two rough broadsides, and not to the front as is presented in Armada), and weapons which are emplaced within the hulls and fire through "gun ports". To bring any specific weapon to bear you actually have to move the ship so that the turret can come to bear, or the target becomes visible to the gun ports. Aside from the smallest vessels no Star Wars ship can actually bring it's full firepower to bear against any single target, as some guns will always be pointing in the wrong direction.

However we never get to know if they can put out all firing power this way. In yesterdays Enterprise the Galaxy class fires into all "arcs" and it seems to stress out the ship.

I thought about a rule "Wide arcs" to represent what you said, but I left it away because it seem over complicated to me and added another special rule without giving it more star Trek feeling. But this is also what bothers me in Attack Wing, where most Trek ships have a 90° forward firing arc only.

Concerning the turning, its true that many ships doesnt seem to need to turn to fire much into the combat, but at least when two ships have passed each other there should be a need to turn, which we never see.

Some of the original models we were using in our games. The scales on many have since been revised to be a little closer. The only one we really shrank was the Romulan Warbird for practical purposes. The detail level is great. Currently mounted on Attack Wing/X-wing Bases but we are looking at a more Armada friendly system.

Sorry for the necro but with the news of a new Star Trek RPG I have to know who made these awesome miniatures?!

Just a quick brainstorming for Upgrade cards and titles:

Federation:

Officers:

Counselor
Discard this card to refresh any officer or crew upgrade on the same ship. - 1 point

·Diana Troi
If any crew, admiral or officer card has an effect on this ship, exhaust this card to ignore the effect. - 7 points

·Thomas E. Paris

Exhaust this card to gain a nav token when you resolve a nav command.

You may discard this card in your turn to place the Tom Paris Delta Flyer squadron card in contact with the ship. - 15 points

·Tom Paris (Delta Flyer)

Speed 4 Hull 3 ASq: 2 Blue ASh: 2 Blue
Brace / Scatter
Intel - Rogue

When you are in contact with any ship it cannot resolve Nav commands or use Nav tokens.