Babylon 5, X-wing, Armada, or Other?

[Marinealver 8,073]

So if there was a Babylon 5 table top game. What format do you think would fit it best?

So as we know the key fighter in Babylon 5 is the Star Fury, think of a stubbier X-wing.  However for most of earth ships you either see the space station or occasionally the Omega class Destroyer. in a matter of fact each of the 4 main races (Narn, Earth Aliance, Centuri, Minbari)  with the exception of the ancient races (Vorlon, Shadow) has a standard Capital Ship and a Standard Star Fighter and that's about it. So Armada could be part of it. Or do you think it would be better in some sort of 4x game like a simplified Twilight Imperium?

If you were to make Babylon 5 the tabletop game, what type of game would it be?

[Sbloom141 751]

I think a massive part of Babylon 5 was the political manoeuvring, so straight up combat wouldn't capture the feel of the show for me. I think it would deserve something a bit more like Forbidden Stars but with less of a focus on outright fighting.

There has already been a Bab-5 space combat miniatures game but I have no idea how it played!

 

edit; Mongoose's 'A Call to Arms'

Edited January 30, 2017 by Sbloom141

[outerrimrebel 316]

Mongoose also had another B5 game Fleet Action, which was larger scale engagements. 

If they were to re-release a B5 miniatures game I think the Armada rule set would work the best.  It's already scaled for capital ship engagements, and fighters have they're own niche to fill in the game.  It would only be a question of balancing the factions and how crazy to go with the 'off screen ships.' 

[Forgottenlore 9,838]

Any of those options "could" be done for B-5. The various attempts over the years at b5 games have expanded the various factions military forces considerably compared to the show, so while you couldn't create a sustainable expansion sales model, a few waves and then done could create a good game in any scale. 

 

The best fit, though, would probably be a 4x type game, a reskin of twilight imperium would do well. Such a game could capture not just the grand warfare aspects of the setting, but also the epic nature of the overall story. 

[CDAT 243]

Babylon 5 had a great game made by AOG called B5 Wars, so much better than armada (not that armada is not fun, or is a bad game). Most of the problems that I see people have with Armada were solved in it. The only issue I see with it, is today's lack of any thing like an attention span. It uses more math than gamers today like, and is slightly more complex. But some of the issues that it solves are ramming (can be done if conditions are right, but not just being in the same location), the weapon ranges and movement are solved by function as if the ships/squadrons are really in space.

Edited February 1, 2017 by CDAT
fixing spelling

[DUR 885]

TBH, I owned a ton of AoG's B5 wars miniatures... the game just wasn't fun to me (chalk me up for short attention span!)

 

I would use the minis for games of full thrust though, that i used vector based movement for.  I loved the starfury minis- still the best space fighter design out there, IMO (well, other than the VF-25 Messiah Valkyrie... but c'mon, that one transforms into a giant robot).

[solaria 41]

• X wing and Armada would work well for a B5 setting. I suppose if you wanted to use one of the many B5 Star maps out there you could possibly use Rebellion (not sure though since I have yet to play Rebellion).
•  

[Democratus 1,698]

It would need to be a system that can handle very different mechanics for each faction.

This is why AoG and (to a lesser extent) Mongoose had custom systems for them. Some of the factions in the game are using different physics than others. So a "dice, shields, and hull" system probably isn't quite enough to reflect these differences.

I'm sure you could use a modified form of Armada where there were special faction-specific rules to cover ships that do impossible-ish things. 

Might be a fun exercise. 

[Marinealver 8,073]

On 1/31/2017 at 10:43 AM, solaria said:

• X wing and Armada would work well for a B5 setting. I suppose if you wanted to use one of the many B5 Star maps out there you could possibly use Rebellion (not sure though since I have yet to play Rebellion).
•  

Well Rebellion is an asymmetric battle system but Babylon 5 might be better as a I don't know about 4x system but one the 4x strategy format does seem to fit it the best. Plus it wasn't all even in terms of combat. Minbari tore up EA and Centuri destroyed the Narn. 

Edited August 12, 2018 by Marinealver

[Vineheart01 6,403]

Armada.

Bab5 fighters are for close range precision strikes, they cant do much more than recon without a capital ship around.

The big issue would be "shields" replacement. Bab5 ships dont have shields, afaik the only ship that did was that strange race the Vorlons had locked away in some Hyperspace cask type thing. I could be wrong as i havnt seen the series in a few years but other than that incident when they poured out from that container i dont remember any reference to shields. Just tons of armor platings and such.

Also we'd probably need race-specific damage cards since they have drastically different tech. Centuri/Narn are probably the most similar but things like the Human ships would have catastrophic effects if their spinning armor plates suddenly failed and they lost their artificial gravity.

[outerrimrebel 316]

5 hours ago, Vineheart01 said:

Armada.

Bab5 fighters are for close range precision strikes, they cant do much more than recon without a capital ship around.

The big issue would be "shields" replacement. Bab5 ships dont have shields, afaik the only ship that did was that strange race the Vorlons had locked away in some Hyperspace cask type thing. I could be wrong as i havnt seen the series in a few years but other than that incident when they poured out from that container i dont remember any reference to shields. Just tons of armor platings and such.

Also we'd probably need race-specific damage cards since they have drastically different tech. Centuri/Narn are probably the most similar but things like the Human ships would have catastrophic effects if their spinning armor plates suddenly failed and they lost their artificial gravity.

No you're correct, the only race that had shields were the Third Space denizens.  B5 ships relied upon an interceptor system for blocking/disrupting attacks in addition to armor plating. 

[CDAT 243]

45 minutes ago, outerrimrebel said:

No you're correct, the only race that had shields were the Third Space denizens.  B5 ships relied upon an interceptor system for blocking/disrupting attacks in addition to armor plating. 

Several of the races had shields, some of the ships had what we are used to as shields, others had gravity shields, and others had what I would best describe as polarized hull plating (like in the TV show Enterprise).

 

[Vineheart01 6,403]

Polarized hulls always sounded like a way to diffuse energy weapons to me, i.e. lessen the damage but hardly shield against it. But still better than nothing. That could be represented similar to Bright Hope: if the attack is an Energy weapon, reduce the damage by 1.

Gravity shields would be an interesting mechanic if there was a weapon-type system. Somehow i doubt they have powerful enough gravity generators to deflect pure energy but a torpedo could be warped off course. Defense dice essentially would play that role until it was deactivated by fighters/beam weapons, making torpedos/missiles unlikely to work.

A good way to combat lack of shields would just have armor plating values, or a hull-dependent HP you gotta break through to hit the actual ship HP. Probably wouldnt make sense to be able to fix it on the fly any easier than the core HP, actually probably harder since it would be external armor and not pressurized. I'd say 4-5 Armor would be standard instead of Armada's 2-3 shields since you wouldnt be able to get it back very easily, if at all.

[Green Knight 9,732]

Make shields into ablative armor.

Hull is structural integrity and system redundancy.

Problem solved.

[CDAT 243]

6 hours ago, Vineheart01 said:

Polarized hulls always sounded like a way to diffuse energy weapons to me, i.e. lessen the damage but hardly shield against it. But still better than nothing. That could be represented similar to Bright Hope: if the attack is an Energy weapon, reduce the damage by 1.

Gravity shields would be an interesting mechanic if there was a weapon-type system. Somehow i doubt they have powerful enough gravity generators to deflect pure energy but a torpedo could be warped off course. Defense dice essentially would play that role until it was deactivated by fighters/beam weapons, making torpedos/missiles unlikely to work.

A good way to combat lack of shields would just have armor plating values, or a hull-dependent HP you gotta break through to hit the actual ship HP. Probably wouldnt make sense to be able to fix it on the fly any easier than the core HP, actually probably harder since it would be external armor and not pressurized. I'd say 4-5 Armor would be standard instead of Armada's 2-3 shields since you wouldnt be able to get it back very easily, if at all.

Lots of interesting thoughts, but I do not think that it would work well, as each of the factions had special abilities. As other have said most used interceptors, that could not affect lasers (one sub-category of weapons for them), but at least one faction could. Ion weapons worked different in B5, if I understand it is more of an overload in Star Wars, where it is pure damage in B5. As for the gravity shields, at least some of them were strong enough to bend light (have lasers miss). As I have said I found B5 Wars funner than Armada, but it also has lots more detail, incorporating stuff from it into Star Wars would be difficult as Armada is much simpler. Some of the things that would cause issues I think are things like how in B5 there are no ranges, max speeds, and the direction that you are facing may not be the direction that you are moving (it treats space as space), in Armada it is more like we are flying in the air, so have max speed, range and must be facing the direction that we are moving.

[vsolfronk 81]

On ‎1‎/‎30‎/‎2017 at 4:19 AM, CDAT said:

Babylon 5 had a great game made by AOG called B5 Wars, so much better than armada (not that armada is not fun, or is a bad game). Most of the problems that I see people have with Armada were solved in it. The only issue I see with it, is today's lack of any thing like an attention span. It uses more math than gamers today like, and is slightly more complex. But some of the issues that it solves are ramming (can be done if conditions are right, but not just being in the same location), the weapon ranges and movement are solved by function as if the ships/squadrons are really in space.

It was a superior table-top game. Sadly you are right, B5 never could sustain itself in syndication like Star Trek did.

 

Of course I still have a great love for Star Fleet Battles and it's ST Universe.

Edited February 25, 2017 by vsolfronk

[solaria 41]

which B5 wars is based off of.

 

[CDAT 243]

1 hour ago, vsolfronk said:

It was a superior table-top game. Sadly you are right, B5 never could sustain itself in syndication like Star Trek did.

 

Of course I still have a great love for Star Fleet Battles and it's ST Universe.

Yea, with each show building on the earlier ones, it makes it very difficult for syndication to just drop a show in here and there. I started watching in season 2 or 3 and took me some time to figure out what was going on. Most likely I would not have stuck with it if my dad was not watching it, and his house, his TV, he gets to pick what was on, you can watch it or go someplace else.

1 hour ago, solaria said:

which B5 wars is based off of.

 

Are you asking what B5 wars is based off of? If so, yes it is based off the TV show, with extra information from J. Michael Straczynski (the creator) and last I heard every thing that was put out by AOG was considered Canon. If you are not asking what B5 Wars is based off of, sorry but I have no idea what you are trying to say. 

[Forgottenlore 9,838]

I believe he was pointing out that the game mechanics for b5 wars were based on (or at least inspired by) star fleet battles. 

[dkeith2011 25]

There were generally 2 different types of shields in B5 Wars, magnetic and gravitic.  Magnetic shields made a ship more durable, effectively acting as additional armor.  Gravitic shields made the ship harder to hit, effectively bending incoming attacks around the ship.

Certain ancient races has the classic Star Trek magic wall shields that absorbed incoming attacks with ablative hitpoints.

I don't think baseline X-Wing mechanics would really do B5 justice but could be a good starting point for a conversion project.  The new Battlestar Galactica game coming from Ares might be useful too.

 

[Qualitypunk 156]

Just discovered this thread and think a strict fleet on fleet/squadron on squadron game misses much of B5's complexities. B5 space combat used the third and fourth dimensions far more than Star Wars or Star Trek. Throw in the ambushes, espionage, egos, mixed fleets, et cetera and getting a game system that works is very difficult but would be fun. The biggest hurdle is Warner Brothers giving clearances to a game maker.

The best Babylon 5 based game I've played was the collectable card game Warner Brother's abandoned in the early 2000's . No cool models but lots of nice cards and focused on, as mentioned above, the political maneuvering. I wish it would be rereleased.

[Marinealver 8,073]

I can see a board game and every faction has 3 pieces, a ship, a fighter, and a warrior (infantry). 

[Noosh 1,295]

I think the game should be more like DND Esq, focus more on the campaign and story and the epic space ship battles will follow nicely. So think about it like a DND session with each ship forming a part of abattle group allow the story to flow naturally and it will all follow.