5 minutes ago, ovinomanc3r said:

lol I found it in the Urban dictionary:

An American expression for "not good". Bueno means good in Spanish but avoid using this expression in front of anyone who actually speaks Spanish as it's not grammatically correct and people will instantly know that you are an American trying to look cultured . Proper Spanish for "not good" would be "No está bien "

Fun, it provides advice. ?

The other day I discovered a chat room for English as a second language speakers living in the US. Most of them were trying to figure out what is and isn't offensive and why. Those were some of the best d*** conversations.

7 minutes ago, Megatronrex said:

The other day I discovered a chat room for English as a second language speakers living in the US. Most of them were trying to figure out what is and isn't offensive and why. Those were some of the best d*** conversations.

I have a fun story with a mexican friend. I guess every spanish has his own.

I also had a lot of fun with this video

@ovinomanc3r I'm proud of myself. With help from the subtitles I managed to understand most of that. I also learned my new favorite Spanish word "cachucha". A Colombian friend of mine always calls me "carechimba". Now I have an appropriately offensive comeback.

6 hours ago, ovinomanc3r said:

Surprise Attack

• "I have a bad feeling about this"
• "Sorry about the mess."

my god... it was right there all along... how did I miss it?

"It's a trap!"

Am I a failure? Do I resign now?

1 minute ago, Nostromoid said:

my god... it was right there all along... how did I miss it?

"It's a trap!"

Am I a failure? Do I resign now?

yeah, that's good too. I didn't take it cause the description you provided said close-range so Han Solo came to my mind quicker than a fleet clash.

I could try to find more quotes for the others like:

"You are a member of the Rebel Alliance, and a traitor."

"They promise me they fixed it!"

"Hive of scum and villany."

etc.

?

There are even more options that are no bueno because they wouldn't make it clear what kind of options a player might expect to get from the table if chosen. For example, "Anti-Squadron" is the least fun table name. But, the quotes about defending against starfighters are pretty bad.

• Quotes about people worried about fighters, not about people ready to blow fighters up.
  • "Fighters coming in" (RotJ)
  • "Enemy fighters headed your way" (ANH)
  • "There's too many of them!" (RotJ)
  • "Draw their fire away from the cruisers" (RotJ) - also too long
  • "Enemy fighters coming in" (R1)
  • "Here comes the parade" (TLJ)
• Quotes about one fighter destroying another fighter, while really the table mostly gives ships options to repelling squadrons.
  • "I'll take the leader" (RotJ)
  • "Stay on the leader" (ANH)
  • "Red and gold squadrons, attack formation. Defend the fleet." (R1)
  • "We'll destroy them ship-to-ship." (ANH)
• Quotes about destroying fighters, except they really could be talking about anything if it weren't for the context.
  • "We won't be seeing him again." (AotC)
• Quotes about not destroying fighters.
  • "Why aren't you blasting that puny ship?" (TLJ)
  • "They hate that ship" (TLJ)
• ...I guess
  • "Destroy that last bomber" (TLJ)

Confirmed: Squadrons are OP. FFG pls nerf.

6 minutes ago, Nostromoid said:

There are even more options that are no bueno because they wouldn't make it clear what kind of options a player might expect to get from the table if chosen. For example, "Anti-Squadron" is the least fun table name. But, the quotes about defending against starfighters are pretty bad.

• Quotes about people worried about fighters, not about people ready to blow fighters up.
  • "Fighters coming in" (RotJ)
  • "Enemy fighters headed your way" (ANH)
  • "There's too many of them!" (RotJ)
  • "Draw their fire away from the cruisers" (RotJ) - also too long
  • "Enemy fighters coming in" (R1)
  • "Here comes the parade" (TLJ)
• Quotes about one fighter destroying another fighter, while really the table mostly gives ships options to repelling squadrons.
  • "I'll take the leader" (RotJ)
  • "Stay on the leader" (ANH)
  • "Red and gold squadrons, attack formation. Defend the fleet." (R1)
  • "We'll destroy them ship-to-ship." (ANH)
• Quotes about destroying fighters, except they really could be talking about anything if it weren't for the context.
  • "We won't be seeing him again." (AotC)
• Quotes about not destroying fighters.
  • "Why aren't you blasting that puny ship?" (TLJ)
  • "They hate that ship" (TLJ)
• ...I guess
  • "Destroy that last bomber" (TLJ)

Confirmed: Squadrons are OP. FFG pls nerf.

That's why I came with something metaphoric. ?

New question: Best color for infoboxes?

This bright blue is kind of science fiction's generic "living in the future" color, reserved for all-purpose holographic displays. That's what the Corellian Conflict did, so a different route might be more original. The green-blue color is closer to what the Alliance has on their funny glass screens around their various command centers. Red and yellow seemed like fine alternatives, and might be fitting with the dusty planets of the Outer Rim. Or something else entirely? Just white?

5 hours ago, Nostromoid said:

New question: Best color for infoboxes?

This bright blue is kind of science fiction's generic "living in the future" color, reserved for all-purpose holographic displays. That's what the Corellian Conflict did, so a different route might be more original. The green-blue color is closer to what the Alliance has on their funny glass screens around their various command centers. Red and yellow seemed like fine alternatives, and might be fitting with the dusty planets of the Outer Rim. Or something else entirely? Just white?

Red stands out the most, so best provides an obvious border. The top right and left are too pale/weak. The top middle is too bright, making it somewhat harsh on the eyes.

9 hours ago, GhostofNobodyInParticular said:

Red stands out the most, so best provides an obvious border. The top right and left are too pale/weak. The top middle is too bright, making it somewhat harsh on the eyes.

Keep in mind that the actual map will have a starfield for a background, so whatever color it is will be against a black background, like this.

2 hours ago, Nostromoid said:

Keep in mind that the actual map will have a starfield for a background, so whatever color it is will be against a black background, like this.

Good point. The blue or the white seem the least harsh, yet most prominent.

I think the blue stands out the best personally.

First, the bad news:

This map looks awful with those infoboxes. Behold its hideousness!

The good news:

I think there's some potential for locations to be depicted more like this?

Thoughts? Coloring preferences?

2 hours ago, Nostromoid said:

First, the bad news:

This map looks awful with those infoboxes. Behold its hideousness!

The good news:

I think there's some potential for locations to be depicted more like this?

Thoughts? Coloring preferences?

the blue looks sad. Or maybe is the grey inside the boxes. It drains the color of the overall map somehow, I dunno. The other way looks awesome if you thinkit is possible. The infoboxes catch the attention out of the actual systems.

Other not fancy way would be all the info on the margins of the map.

We'll call this map version 1. The earliest draft of the map, which looks nice and has various planets and locations nicely shown and labeled. However, it's not really usable in a campaign, as the map ought to indicate the features of each location, and also should have room to mark locations as occupied, loyal, etc.

And this map version 2. It obviously has a lot of extra information, but it's cluttered. The images of planets aren't very functional, and the infoboxes seem to draw all of the attention away from the pathways and layout of the sector, which is a shame because this map should be a visualization of the overall campaign and should definitely give an at-a-glance depiction of friendly territory and hostile territory.

Version 3 is only at the stage of using this model to represent locations, or something along these lines. It would be much simpler, graphically, than version 2, and each location would exist exactly where it should, with no additional infobox floating nearby. The colors and the appearance of the funky glyphs are still up in the air, but I think this version has some legs.

Also, my map-making instincts led me to these 3D crescent shapes as little frames for the locations. However, they look more like metal blades than anything else, and that wasn't really my intention. That's not very Star Wars-y, and is more on-brand for some D&D campaign. I'm looking around for some good inspiration for what a graphical frame from Star Wars would look like. So far, I seem to be on my own in creating it.

@ovinomanc3r , did you think that the blue of version 2 looked sad? I agree that the amount of flat gray textboxes is pretty harsh on the eyes.

7 minutes ago, Nostromoid said:

@ovinomanc3r , did you think that the blue of version 2 looked sad? I agree that the amount of flat gray textboxes is pretty harsh on the eyes.

I think it is probably the grey what made me think that.

for your inspiriration

Having stared at the Star Dreadnought Command Prototype card all morning, there's got to be some good inspiration in the little graphics of this interface. Something like the little boxes around the hull/antisquadron values.

Progress! From this to this.

It doesn't look like much of a difference, but I've put a lot of time into iterating on the map images this weekend. Some of the planet images, for instance had, over the course of my many drafts, become too low-res, so I had to redo some of them. Also cleaning up most of the design by replacing cut-and-paste jobs with vectored shapes.

The biggest problem I had to solve was how to keep text compact but also legible, especially on a map with lots of high-contrast black, white, and vibrant colors. Some pathways and hyperlanes go right through these locations, resulting in shocking white lines crossing right through the text and making it difficult to read. Drop shadows didn't look good. I considered adding little glyphy bits off of this sci-fi looking framework thing to put them in boxes, but I was afraid of adding even more detail. I think the best solution was to just have another see-through shaded area on the side to shade down the background elements. Yes, I'm a little embarrassed that I spent so long staring at gray translucent shapes and struggled for hours and hours to think of gray translucent shapes.

But here's the newest draft of the planet Arkanis. On the first one, the text naming the objectives and victory rewards for the location follow the edges of the frame. On the second one, the text is left-aligned, better conforming to the new translucent back-fill, and it just treats the diagonal edges of the frame as the right-hand boundary. I prefer the second version, since it's kinda ugly to see the rectangular gray backfill not match the text in it. Although, it's slightly less compact, and I do miss that.

"Something big"!

Map version 5 is functionally complete, including all of the locations and their information. This is approximately what I'm looking at for the final map. This version needs some more tinkering as I nudge the locations around to make room or cluster up neighbors, improve the look of the space background, add back in the map key, and any other little bits of polish it needs. However, this is roughly playable.

In other exciting news, I will be playtesting the campaign with some guys from my local store, and we're kicking things off next week!

The latest news is that my local gaming store has launched a full-scale playtest for SotAS, with three Rebel and three Imperial fleets kicking things off tonight. In Round 1, both teams battled in a Fleet Clash to decide the initial spread of forces across the sector. The 300-point fleets--we'll call them Three Admirals, Two Generals, and a Darth--were:

• Rebels, heavy on MC-75s and MC-30s
  • General Dodonna, in an Ordnance Cruiser carrying two B-Wing squadrons and a Y-Wing squadron in its rapid launch bays, along with an external racks MC30.
  • Admiral Ackbar, in an MC-75 Armored Cruiser with a Landmonition, GR-75, and the beginnings of Rogue Squadron: Tycho and Luke.
  • General Rieekan, in the Profundity, carrying a Hammerhead Torpedo Corvette and towing Gold Squadron, Jan Ors, and some escort fighters.
• Empire, with a phalanx of Imperial-class Star Destroyers
  • Darth Vader (me), in a Kuat Refit, plus an Interdictor and a Raider with external racks for some big boomage.
  • Admiral Sloane, in a Victory-I and Imperial-II, filled to the brim with TIE Interceptors.
  • Admiral Motti, in an Imperial-II with a Quasar-II that launches so many TIE Bombers.

The fleets, newly arrived in the Arkanis sector, clashed over the triple stars of Foroon. What began as a slow, cautious approach of several Mon Cal cruisers toward a modest Imperial blockade quickly escalated as Star Destroyers dropped out of hyperspace behind the Rebel forces and began heavily bombarding their shields. The Rebels turned and focused fire on the lead destroyer with their laser batteries and bomber complements while the initial Imperial forces closed the gap. The Rebels knocked some holes in that star destroyer, but the damage slowed after Sloane's expert pilots took Jan Ors out of the fight. Vader dropped into the battle on the other side, pursuing Dodonna's cruiser which quickly launched a heavy bomber attack against the Sith's rear engine array while his early warning systems lit up like a Wookiee Life Day tree.

A stray dust field blocked a crucial volley or two from the most heavily damaged star destroyer, and provided generous cover for the Rebel ships rushing in, but Motti nevertheless held on for some time due to his engineering prowess and some helpful interdictor intervention that scrambled the close-range attacks of Rebel frigates that suddenly jumped into the middle of the battle. Evacuate, in Motti's moment of triumph? Obviously not, and he stuck it out to the end to drag as many Rebel scum down to **** with him as possible. The Imperial pincer attack eventually crippled the Profundity and forced Ackbar to retreat from the battle, Vader smooshed a flotilla against his front viewscreen like a highway bug, and at least one MC30 frigate was blown apart in the crossfire (crossfire!!!).

Next week, the fleets take up positions around the Arkanis sector and begin surveying for resources to rebuild their forces.

This looks great - my friends are planning to use it for our next Armada week away. Love the reward tables and the other changes.

Siege of the Arkanis Sector Playtest - Round II: Things Pretty Much Hold Still

Here is the state of the Arkanis Sector after the first set of battles played out. After the initial fleet clash, the Imperials dispersed the gathering Rebel fleet to individual pockets of the sector. The Rebels built some local connections and then struck back against Imperial power, launching attacks on the Regency Worlds of Arkanis Issor, and defending an attack on the gas giant Gedi IV. All three battles were won by the defender, so nobody lost any territory. However, new victory rewards were rolled up by the winners, and the playtest group messed around with the new Shipyards strategic effect, which generally unlocks some fleetbuilding options, including a much-increased-in-price method of unscarring a limited amount of stuff.

My own battle was the defense of the placid tropical planet Issor as Vader, against General Rieekan's fleet. I chose to be first player, knowing that Rieekan brought the Profundity ready to drop a torpedo corvette in the most annoying places. Of the three objectives (Close-Range Intel Scan, Fleet Ambush, and Navigational Hazards), Rieekan, as second player, eliminated Fleet Ambush, clearly spotting an opening for my Kuat and Ex-Rax Raider to pile into his flagship before it could do its trick. Instead, I picked Close-Range Intel Scan, partly because I figured I'd be rolling more accuracies than his ships would, but even more so because I never get to play with dust fields and I wanted to. We ended up deploying diagonally across from each other and both wheeling our fleets (pretty good formation flying by both of us, and dodging obstacles with big ships isn't easy) toward the center. My Raider, coming in fast at a cross-angle from the rest of the fleet and trying to guess where the squadron fight would be, triggered the start of the battle when a swarm of X-Wings launched at it. It didn't have great survival odds, though it was helped by the Slicer Teams that had been scooped up as a victory reward by Sloane's fleet and were gifted to me, and by Rieekan's other flotilla being chased off-course and fleeing from the action. Still, the Profundity commanded just enough squadrons to dump pain on the Redirect-less Raider and just manage to blow it up before it could contribute anything. Unfortunate, but only the first casualty. Both commanders counted up points that could be snagged here and there while the heaviest ships continued to barrel toward each other at a blistering speed 2. With the Raider exploded, I sent IG-88 and my handful of TIEs to try to blow up Jan Ors (who was scarred in the last battle), who pulled off a sudden escape with the help of her Intel keyword. The big show finally arrived: Kuat versus MC-75. Vader got an early advantage by getting the better of the first volley as they closed range, and then the Profundity launched its corvette. Still outside of black dice range, Vader opted to vaporize the point-blank corvette, which was kept alive by Rieekan and served as a speed brake to deny even more black dice. Both large ships suffered a few damage cards from collisions, and my Kuat took some pings from the X-Wings that had broken through my fighter screen. The Interdictor transferred shields over to the larger ship and used DCaps to fling its own damage into the MC-75. In the second round of brutal slug-fest, Rieekan realized that the Profundity was going to inevitably explode, but a massive volley of damage from the Kuat ended Rieekan's ship before he could escape to hyperspace. The Profundity survived through Rieekanism until the end of the round, but its counter-attack couldn't sink Vader and the battle ended quite abruptly. Victory to the Empire!

Elsewhere in the sector, Dodonna defeated Sloane at Gedi IV (Sloane retreated to Vor Deo) and Motti repelled Ackbar at Arkanis (Ackbar retreated along the hyperlane all the way to Piroket).

This week, we didn't meet because of scheduling difficulties. Round three coming up!

A second follow-up: Here is the final or nearly-final version of the sector map. I definitely want any and all feedback on this, so it can be perfect in the next few days and I can get a version printed up for the playtest group. (Click to embiggen.)

On 9/2/2018 at 7:49 AM, Nostromoid said:

A second follow-up: Here is the final or nearly-final version of the sector map. I definitely want any and all feedback on this, so it can be perfect in the next few days and I can get a version printed up for the playtest group. (Click to embiggen.)

New planet info design looks great. The Legend looks a bit cramped...can you put it below Rodia or above Vactooine? Maybe move the whole Trellius Trade Route left of Tattoine slightly further down to make more room for the legend below Rodia?