From reading a lot of posts, I can see I am not the only one who loved BFG. I am no photo editing guru by any means, but here is the start of what I plan to use to integrate BFG into my armada games.

New Rules:

Torpedos

• Torpedos move 5 forward every round until they hit something or go off the edge of the board.
• They move straight forward during the squadron phase and do not engage with squadrons.
• Torpedoes when they hit a ship, they deal their dice in damage.
• Torpedos can be attacked by a squadron, and have double their dice in hit points.

Dorsal Weapon Batteries

• These weapons are on top of the ship and can be fired in any arc.
• All dice must be used to fire in the same arc.

Nova Cannon

• Can be fired on anything (in arc) that is past the long range on the range ruler.
• Can't be used on any ship that is within the range ruler.
• All ships/squadrons within range 1 of the target ship suffer 1 damage

Note: I haven't scaled it yet to print to the correct size. Nor did I assign a point value to the ship.

I finished up the big ships of the Imperial Fleet.

Here is a link that gets you to the viewable pdf. It was too large to post here as an attachment.

I like what you have done so far, however I am not sure that the Nova Cannon and Torpedoes need extra rules. Far easier to have their fire power represented by the dice. I do like the idea for Dorsal Weapon Batteries .

If I had any skill or access to photoshop I'd be tempted to have a go at doing some other fleets.

What might be an idea for getting the points cost correct is to take a ship that already exist in Armada and is near the same class of a ship in Gothic and tweaking it a bit depending upon the changes made.

KDYards is still probably the best place to test out all those upgrade ideas. Well for example, Dorsal Weapons Batteries:

It's a whole lot of fun. Anyway, that's not some serious balanced thing but it's really worth a look and I really do support something like this. I always loved BFG.

I noticed that there aren't any retrofits on my poor neglected Retribution-class. Tis' always a shame. I am glad to see a double brace, it absolutely feels like an Imperial ship (I've sort of been saying that Armada could make a Tector or 'heavy armoured' ship feel like an armoured ship by adding the dual brace rather than upping hull). Touch surprised by the shields, but then I'd have to get used to a differently scaled system.

If you really want to decouple the systems to make Armada and BFG Armada, you could think of the range bands too. Imperials lacked a lot of those long range heavy range bands that Chaos and Eldar had, so it would limit the number of red for more reliable blues. Like His Majesty's Navy essentially had to operate, you had to get in a little closer, and by the time you closed to that point blank range, the blacks represent that battery shift and the close-in stuff that most have (and Orks adore with their heavy gunz). Which seems to be generally done, but it bears thinking on anyway.

If you want to outright use BFG ships against Star Destroyers... well... I guess that's going to be a fan-war on what the relative strengths are (I'm so far into the BFG camp it would be unrecognizable).

Now, just things to consider and mull over: ever thought about having the Nova cannon as a discard or exhaust ability for ships in front arc, outside range 5, then using the ship as a target, and any ship, say 'within range 3, suffers 4 black die damage'? That way it's a blast effect in the way that Armada usually does it.

Torpedoes are difficult because we only have up to range 5, and it would depend if you're doing token or marker, or squadron. (Squadrons moving 'straight' is tough because it's a round base without any real set guideline) But maybe just 'when overlapped, roll 2 blue dice. On a hit, deal one face down damage card. On a critical, deal one face up damage card' a'la the Minefield sort of thing? Or just 1 die per point of strength?

I'd also heavily support giving the Dauntless a support slot so it can have its canonical engine tech space. They are stupidly speedy ships (I have 3 for a reason ). A lot of escorts would work deliciously as flotillas, now that I think about it.

Note: I updated the file, so take a look at it.

Stonehorse -

I like what you have done so far, however I am not sure that the Nova Cannon and Torpedoes need extra rules. Far easier to have their fire power represented by the dice. I do like the idea for Dorsal Weapon Batteries.

If I had any skill or access to photoshop I'd be tempted to have a go at doing some other fleets.

What might be an idea for getting the points cost correct is to take a ship that already exist in Armada and is near the same class of a ship in Gothic and tweaking it a bit depending upon the changes made.

I was looking to get the mechanics of how they worked to match how they worked in BFG. So I didn't feel just adding dice would work, specially with torpedos, as one big use is to break up formations and force opponent to move their ships.

Yea I need to sit down and really compare it to the ships, but I haven't done that just yet.

Vykes -

I noticed that there aren't any retrofits on my poor neglected Retribution-class. Tis' always a shame. I am glad to see a double brace, it absolutely feels like an Imperial ship (I've sort of been saying that Armada could make a Tector or 'heavy armoured' ship feel like an armoured ship by adding the dual brace rather than upping hull). Touch surprised by the shields, but then I'd have to get used to a differently scaled system.

If you really want to decouple the systems to make Armada and BFG Armada, you could think of the range bands too. Imperials lacked a lot of those long range heavy range bands that Chaos and Eldar had, so it would limit the number of red for more reliable blues. Like His Majesty's Navy essentially had to operate, you had to get in a little closer, and by the time you closed to that point blank range, the blacks represent that battery shift and the close-in stuff that most have (and Orks adore with their heavy gunz). Which seems to be generally done, but it bears thinking on anyway.

If you want to outright use BFG ships against Star Destroyers... well... I guess that's going to be a fan-war on what the relative strengths are (I'm so far into the BFG camp it would be unrecognizable).

Now, just things to consider and mull over: ever thought about having the Nova cannon as a discard or exhaust ability for ships in front arc, outside range 5, then using the ship as a target, and any ship, say 'within range 3, suffers 4 black die damage'? That way it's a blast effect in the way that Armada usually does it.

Torpedoes are difficult because we only have up to range 5, and it would depend if you're doing token or marker, or squadron. (Squadrons moving 'straight' is tough because it's a round base without any real set guideline) But maybe just 'when overlapped, roll 2 blue dice. On a hit, deal one face down damage card. On a critical, deal one face up damage card' a'la the Minefield sort of thing? Or just 1 die per point of strength?

I'd also heavily support giving the Dauntless a support slot so it can have its canonical engine tech space. They are stupidly speedy ships (I have 3 for a reason ). A lot of escorts would work deliciously as flotillas, now that I think about it.

I just tweaked the cards a bit, I added a retrofit to the Emperor Class and added ordnance to Retribution. I also switched out Ion upgrades for Turbolaser upgrades on some of the ships. I also switched out the weapons upgrade for support on the Dauntless. I tweaked the shields and hull on the battleships.

I tweaked the shields on the battleships, and the fore I gave more shields because of their armored prow. Except the Emperor as it doesn't have an armored prow. I was thinking they needed the double brace as it's a big mechanic in BFG, plus with low shields it gives them much greater survivability. I went with the hull they get in BFG, seemed like a pretty easy translation.

When looking at the dice each ship got, I tried to follow what was in the rules for ranges, 60 cm = red, 45 cm = blue, 30 cm = black. I did add some spread to it, so if a ship was all 60cm attacks like the Retribution, I gave it mostly red, but put a couple blue in there.

When it comes to torpedos (changed it to speed 5), I was thinking of using the torpedo markers from BFG, that way you can see which direction they are facing. - when I said - "Torpedoes when they hit a ship, they deal their dice in damage." I was going with the idea that its a normal attack where the defender can use defense tokens like normal and treat it like a long range attack if its beyond the normal range of short-medium-long.

I like the flotilla idea, I will work on that for the escort ships.

I plan on working on the Space Marines next, then Chaos, then Tau. I don't have Eldar, Necron, or Dark Eldar, so not sure I will ever get to those.

Seems pretty good to me. The retrofits just sorta feel right on the larger classes of ships, even if the BFG main mechanics didn't add too much (I just remember a lot of them adjusting the weapons strengths and ranges, a few adding engine tech equivalencies, and column shifts). It's probably a good idea to switch those things out, ion for turbolaser and the like (giving the retribution the chance to up its long range firepower, like it blasted-well should have back in BFG Always hated how my grand cruiser was more powerful than my flagship Retribution.

That's a pretty good idea point in fact, the armoured prow would fit pretty well -ponders- ever thought of an offensive retrofit for the prow-ram? 'When overlapping an enemy ship, deal 2 damage cards face down' or even 'deal a damage card face up'? Just a thought, I always liked how the BFG Armada expansion (Think it was Armada, the blue book's beige friend), had +1 ram damage.

It's true, brace was a way bigger thing in BFG which effectively negated the damage (well, for some players, I couldn't if I relied on it) but even so. I think it's well represented here. Low shields, higher hull, more chances for the all important criticals and such. Yeah, it's feeling more like the painful bits that go into BFG (and the ones I liked).

Yep, I agree. I think the dice ranges probably translate over well, and aside from something like a lance upgrade, I think it's fine. For the most part, 'Lance' is just a sort of XI7+Heavy turbolaser combination. I think the attack numbers seem pretty solid, I'd have to look into it again but that might also be because I'm trying to figure out if I'm missing something critical for torpedoes.

Using the chits is pretty good, they're flat enough that distance 5 measured from the back is perfectly doable. -nods- I was wondering about the range when it comes to that. I mean, brace is great, I guess it could be evaded easily too reflecting its miss chance. Yep, seems pretty workable to me.

Flotillas do seem like they could work out pretty well for the lighter escorts. Slightly depowered and still sort of partially combines the rules for squadroned escort ships into a more streamlined armada version.

That is a pretty good task -sighs- I only have a sizable Imperial fleet. Gave away a chaos fleet to people starting, never got Eldar and Tau before they sold out (I was told to wait for the restock that never came) But yeah, those all seem workable. I mean, the only fleet I'd be completely confused on trying to add Tyranids. And necrons can bloody well burn, unlimited ECM sort of hijinks

Seems pretty good to me. The retrofits just sorta feel right on the larger classes of ships, even if the BFG main mechanics didn't add too much (I just remember a lot of them adjusting the weapons strengths and ranges, a few adding engine tech equivalencies, and column shifts). It's probably a good idea to switch those things out, ion for turbolaser and the like (giving the retribution the chance to up its long range firepower, like it blasted-well should have back in BFG Always hated how my grand cruiser was more powerful than my flagship Retribution.

That's a pretty good idea point in fact, the armoured prow would fit pretty well -ponders- ever thought of an offensive retrofit for the prow-ram? 'When overlapping an enemy ship, deal 2 damage cards face down' or even 'deal a damage card face up'? Just a thought, I always liked how the BFG Armada expansion (Think it was Armada, the blue book's beige friend), had +1 ram damage.

It's true, brace was a way bigger thing in BFG which effectively negated the damage (well, for some players, I couldn't if I relied on it) but even so. I think it's well represented here. Low shields, higher hull, more chances for the all important criticals and such. Yeah, it's feeling more like the painful bits that go into BFG (and the ones I liked).

Yep, I agree. I think the dice ranges probably translate over well, and aside from something like a lance upgrade, I think it's fine. For the most part, 'Lance' is just a sort of XI7+Heavy turbolaser combination. I think the attack numbers seem pretty solid, I'd have to look into it again but that might also be because I'm trying to figure out if I'm missing something critical for torpedoes.

Using the chits is pretty good, they're flat enough that distance 5 measured from the back is perfectly doable. -nods- I was wondering about the range when it comes to that. I mean, brace is great, I guess it could be evaded easily too reflecting its miss chance. Yep, seems pretty workable to me.

Flotillas do seem like they could work out pretty well for the lighter escorts. Slightly depowered and still sort of partially combines the rules for squadroned escort ships into a more streamlined armada version.

That is a pretty good task -sighs- I only have a sizable Imperial fleet. Gave away a chaos fleet to people starting, never got Eldar and Tau before they sold out (I was told to wait for the restock that never came) But yeah, those all seem workable. I mean, the only fleet I'd be completely confused on trying to add Tyranids. And necrons can bloody well burn, unlimited ECM sort of hijinks

Ok, you convinced me. I gave it to the Battleships and Battlecruisers. The Emperor may not have really heavy guns to bear, but it will be a beast with squadrons!

I like the idea of adding an offensive retrofit for ramming.

Changes

1. Battleships and Battlecruisers get a defensive retrofit
2. Emperor gets an extra offensive retrofit
3. Mars BattleCruiser gets an Ion upgrade instead of Turbolasers since it has so many blues.
4. Dominator gets an offensive retrofit instead of Ion since it has no blues.
5. Dauntless gets two evades instead of redirect and second brace

I am not sure when I will be able to work on the flotillas, need to reread up on the information provided thus far.