Budgernaut said:
That's a really good idea!
Budgernaut said:
After playing 3 games on Vassal, I have a tip for making things move faster. When you open your player window and set up cards and stuff, go ahead and put any tokens you'll need in there as well (stress, ion, critical hit, focus, target locks with different colors and unique letters). It's pretty obvious now, but putting your tokens in that window makes it much easier and faster to grab them and drag them to the playing area. Looking at the AFM page, it seems Aiden had the same thing in mind since one of the screenshots shows a bunch of tokens next to the cards. You could also place all the maneuvers in a different player window, say, player 6. That way you just open it up, look for your template and pull it down. No need to scroll through lists. I only figured it out this last time I played, so I'm going to try this from the beginning next time. Hopefully it will shave some time off my 2+ hour game. Boy was that draining!
An aside about target locks, I usually give the letter of the name of the pilot initiating the lock. For my Biggs, Wedge, Luke game, I used the letters B, W, and L, so it was easier to keep track of the target locks.
That is a good idea with the Target locks! =)
And you are correct about getting all your chits and tokens into your hand before the game starts making things quicker.
As for Stress, Ion, Crit and Action tokens, they're taken care of in Ver. 3.0 as part of the ship itself, so no tokens to drag around when maneuvering, just a Keyboard shortcut (or right-click menu) to activate. Only Target locks are free-roaming now.
Unfortunately, all Player Hands are Player Specific, so Player 6 wouldn't work as a bit bin. But that is a good idea, so I'm making the Solitaire hand open to all players in Ver. 3.0 Thanks for the idea!
It's getting close to the drop, so if you have any more insights, let me know!
Great work. I've only scratched the surface but I have some questions/comments:
1) why did you go with 15 degree turning increments on the ship bases? I think every movement template is either 0, 45, or 90 degrees so really you only need 45 degree increments. You have the arbitrary adjustment option in there if people want to start with odd angles.
2) when setting up your ships (naming them, numbering them, putting in the skill, attack, etc information) it'd be nice to just put in the skill number instead of right clicking it nine times or hitting the hotkeys over and over. If you could open a window and fill out all the stats at once that would be even better.
3) love the pivot idea for the range ruler. Very useful. Any particular reason you didn't like it for the movement templates?
4) I thought there was a way to minimize the windows (like player 1, map, etc), is that not an option?
5) is there a way to set the different dice amounts thrown? Looks like the default is 5 dice and I can't change it.
6) I've only been playing it solo so far so when I put the mvt dial on the Contested Sector map, is it not revealed to the other players until I right click it to "reveal" and the ship image appears on it?
7) when I just have the "core set" loaded, I don't have the option to pick the upgrade card "Determination" (instead there is "Expert Handling") and I get "Backstabber" and "Winged Gundark" as Imperial options when it should be "Dark Curse" and "Night Beast". Since you can load all the elements in, this likely isn't a big deal. Just odd that they were switched around or missing.
As I said, great work on this and I can't wait to get used to it more so that a game will run smooth and not take too long.
Unfortunately 45 degrees is too limiting. So is 15 degrees. I know that the movements templates keep the ships facing in 45 degree increments, but you also have to take into account overlapping. When that happens, a ship has to move back along the path of the maneuver template until there is no more overlap. This means that using a bank or turn template during an overlap could cause you to end up with a final position that is an angle that is not divisible by 45 (or 15). The other thing to think about is starting position. I don't remember it eve being discussed here, but there is nothing in the rule book or tournament rules that says you have to start the game facing your opponent. Whats to stop you from starting the game with your ship starting at an angle? As long as it is withing range 1 of your edge of the play area, you could start the game facing any direction and at whatever angle you want. Therefor you should have to ability to rotate your ship any way you want to.
Just my 2 credits.
Roy
I agree with drkjedi35. Last game we tried playing with the free rotation after a collision and it took entirely too long to line things up. Sticking with 15 degrees when you collide is the easiest way to approximate the rules when you're playing digital.
drkjedi35 said:
Unfortunately 45 degrees is too limiting. So is 15 degrees. I know that the movements templates keep the ships facing in 45 degree increments, but you also have to take into account overlapping. When that happens, a ship has to move back along the path of the maneuver template until there is no more overlap. This means that using a bank or turn template during an overlap could cause you to end up with a final position that is an angle that is not divisible by 45 (or 15). The other thing to think about is starting position. I don't remember it eve being discussed here, but there is nothing in the rule book or tournament rules that says you have to start the game facing your opponent. Whats to stop you from starting the game with your ship starting at an angle? As long as it is withing range 1 of your edge of the play area, you could start the game facing any direction and at whatever angle you want. Therefor you should have to ability to rotate your ship any way you want to.
Just my 2 credits.
Roy
The ability to freely rotate is already in the module. This takes care of both of the issues you describe. The switch from 15 degrees to 45 is to facilitate the ease of turning the ships after executing a maneuver template.
If one says it takes to long to do the free rotate option for collisions, then I'd say have the 45 turn option and then make another hokey that goes 1 degree. That way it's quick to fine tune your rotation and you're not limited to some 15 degree limit. Why the free rotate is such a pain is because the second you let up on the turn, it stops and if you need to readjust, you have to right click again. 1 degree increments would be fast because you can hold the hot key down.
spacemonkeymafia said:
drkjedi35 said:
Unfortunately 45 degrees is too limiting. So is 15 degrees. I know that the movements templates keep the ships facing in 45 degree increments, but you also have to take into account overlapping. When that happens, a ship has to move back along the path of the maneuver template until there is no more overlap. This means that using a bank or turn template during an overlap could cause you to end up with a final position that is an angle that is not divisible by 45 (or 15). The other thing to think about is starting position. I don't remember it eve being discussed here, but there is nothing in the rule book or tournament rules that says you have to start the game facing your opponent. Whats to stop you from starting the game with your ship starting at an angle? As long as it is withing range 1 of your edge of the play area, you could start the game facing any direction and at whatever angle you want. Therefor you should have to ability to rotate your ship any way you want to.
Just my 2 credits.
Roy
The ability to freely rotate is already in the module. This takes care of both of the issues you describe. The switch from 15 degrees to 45 is to facilitate the ease of turning the ships after executing a maneuver template.
If one says it takes to long to do the free rotate option for collisions, then I'd say have the 45 turn option and then make another hokey that goes 1 degree. That way it's quick to fine tune your rotation and you're not limited to some 15 degree limit. Why the free rotate is such a pain is because the second you let up on the turn, it stops and if you need to readjust, you have to right click again. 1 degree increments would be fast because you can hold the hot key down.
Oh, is that why it's so wonky? I'll keep that in mind next time. A hot key for 1 degree rotation could be helpful as well, but I think we can get by without it for version 3 -- don't want to burn out Aiden. He's already got a lot on his plate for version 3.
Parakitor said:
spacemonkeymafia said:
drkjedi35 said:
Unfortunately 45 degrees is too limiting. So is 15 degrees. I know that the movements templates keep the ships facing in 45 degree increments, but you also have to take into account overlapping. When that happens, a ship has to move back along the path of the maneuver template until there is no more overlap. This means that using a bank or turn template during an overlap could cause you to end up with a final position that is an angle that is not divisible by 45 (or 15). The other thing to think about is starting position. I don't remember it eve being discussed here, but there is nothing in the rule book or tournament rules that says you have to start the game facing your opponent. Whats to stop you from starting the game with your ship starting at an angle? As long as it is withing range 1 of your edge of the play area, you could start the game facing any direction and at whatever angle you want. Therefor you should have to ability to rotate your ship any way you want to.
Just my 2 credits.
Roy
The ability to freely rotate is already in the module. This takes care of both of the issues you describe. The switch from 15 degrees to 45 is to facilitate the ease of turning the ships after executing a maneuver template.
If one says it takes to long to do the free rotate option for collisions, then I'd say have the 45 turn option and then make another hokey that goes 1 degree. That way it's quick to fine tune your rotation and you're not limited to some 15 degree limit. Why the free rotate is such a pain is because the second you let up on the turn, it stops and if you need to readjust, you have to right click again. 1 degree increments would be fast because you can hold the hot key down.
Oh, is that why it's so wonky? I'll keep that in mind next time. A hot key for 1 degree rotation could be helpful as well, but I think we can get by without it for version 3 -- don't want to burn out Aiden. He's already got a lot on his plate for version 3.
No doubt, Aiden has done a fine job and, to be honest, there was more functionality here than I actually expected so I don't want to diminish his efforts in anyway. If more people can jump in on v3.0 to supply feedback that would help against a vocal minority (myself included) pushing things in a direction that maybe aren't problems for anyone else. I'm definitely looking forward to the next release and will keeping playing around with the current version to get used to it.
Version 3.0 gives the options of 15 deg rotation, 1 deg rotation, and a 1 pixel up/down/L/R shift to help ease placement.
15 deg= L/R arrows, 1 deg= Ctrl+ L/R arrows (Control your rotation!), and the minute position shift is Shift+L/R/Up/Dn arrows.
This should help with placement.
spacemonkeymafia said:
Great work. I've only scratched the surface but I have some questions/comments:
1) why did you go with 15 degree turning increments on the ship bases? I think every movement template is either 0, 45, or 90 degrees so really you only need 45 degree increments. You have the arbitrary adjustment option in there if people want to start with odd angles.
2) when setting up your ships (naming them, numbering them, putting in the skill, attack, etc information) it'd be nice to just put in the skill number instead of right clicking it nine times or hitting the hotkeys over and over. If you could open a window and fill out all the stats at once that would be even better.
3) love the pivot idea for the range ruler. Very useful. Any particular reason you didn't like it for the movement templates?
4) I thought there was a way to minimize the windows (like player 1, map, etc), is that not an option?
5) is there a way to set the different dice amounts thrown? Looks like the default is 5 dice and I can't change it.
6) I've only been playing it solo so far so when I put the mvt dial on the Contested Sector map, is it not revealed to the other players until I right click it to "reveal" and the ship image appears on it?
7) when I just have the "core set" loaded, I don't have the option to pick the upgrade card "Determination" (instead there is "Expert Handling") and I get "Backstabber" and "Winged Gundark" as Imperial options when it should be "Dark Curse" and "Night Beast". Since you can load all the elements in, this likely isn't a big deal. Just odd that they were switched around or missing.
As I said, great work on this and I can't wait to get used to it more so that a game will run smooth and not take too long.
1) covered here already in discussions.
2) Unfortunately, in VASSAL, each stat has to be a separate Text Label, which are only editable individually. That's a restriction of the program. Using the hotkeys to set stats isn't really that long a process… and you can select all Ships with same stats and set all their stats with the same keystrokes. So, select your swarm of 12 Tie Fighters and hit Alt+A, D, H and all 12 will set at once.
3) Ver 3.0 removes the free rotation option on all pieces for the favored precision of full degree increments. And for standardization of movement options across all pieces.
4) Not quite sure what you're asking here. If you set your preferences to NOT "Use combined application window", then all your windows will become free-floaters, that can all be resized and minimized as normal windows. If this isn't what you're asking, clarify please.
5) Version 3.0 greatly improves the Dice operations.
6) Actually, you've got this switched. If the little ship Icon is displayed on your move dial, then this is telling you that the other side is seeing your Hide and not your dial. When you reveal your dial, the ship disappears and the dial is visible to all players. The "reveal" option is the same keystroke to show/hide for simplicity (or… confusion I guess)
7) There was some confusion as to pack contents when the module was first created (it released before the actual game did, so I deduced content), and it appears that I was incorrect as to content and the error has matriculated through versions. A new Version 3.1 will be releasing soon with some requested improvements, and this content error will be addressed. This will mean a full re-release of the Core module and all extensions.
Go here for complete information on Ver 3.0, as well as some helpful setup videos.
http://afewmaneuvers.yuku.com/forums/107/X-wing-on-Vassal#.UIbCEIaAex0