Battle Fleet Gothic

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-07-10 10:37pm

Shit guys, we've got enough commanders to have a full scale war!

Feil · Post by **Feil** » 2006-07-11 01:28am

The Imperial Navy ships including ancient/rare vessels. Dunno if there's a use for the pictures or not, but I'm sick, stuck at home, can't concentrate enough to read a book, and can't fall asleep.

GeneralTacticus · Post by **GeneralTacticus** » 2006-07-11 03:26am

Feil wrote:Found the reference sheet and fleet sheet, plus some cutouts of squadrons and torpedos that might be moderately useful to us.
http://www.specialist-games.com/battlef ... layera.asp

So, how are we going to go about making representations of minis and a board-thing?

I don't know about the minis, but I might be able to help with the board. A long time ago, when I had vastly too much time on my hands, I created a graphics file of a blank board for precisely this sort of thing - a set of grid lines that can be used to represent a 180 x 120 cm board, at one centimeter per square.

Here it is - I had to cut it down a bit to make it small enough for ImageShack to host it, but expanding it is a simple matter of copying and pasting.

So, would that be any use?

EDIT: I should note that it looks very strange if you view it at anything other than 100% magnification.

Post by **weemadando** » 2006-07-11 04:07am

The Eldar fleet under the guidance of Farseer Weema D'ando is likely to be lurking somewhere too assuming I ever have the time for this.

Feil · Post by **Feil** » 2006-07-11 10:36am

GeneralTacticus wrote:
Feil wrote:Found the reference sheet and fleet sheet, plus some cutouts of squadrons and torpedos that might be moderately useful to us.
http://www.specialist-games.com/battlef ... layera.asp

So, how are we going to go about making representations of minis and a board-thing?
I don't know about the minis, but I might be able to help with the board. A long time ago, when I had vastly too much time on my hands, I created a graphics file of a blank board for precisely this sort of thing - a set of grid lines that can be used to represent a 180 x 120 cm board, at one centimeter per square.

Here it is - I had to cut it down a bit to make it small enough for ImageShack to host it, but expanding it is a simple matter of copying and pasting.

So, would that be any use?

EDIT: I should note that it looks very strange if you view it at anything other than 100% magnification.

Cool. I took the liberty of making it big and pretty, and getting rid of those small-detail dark grey lines (which make the picture file huge).

EDIT: Currently, it's 72x72, and the bright divisions are on multiples of 12, of all things. I'll try making it multiples of 10 at some point in the near future, for decreased inanity.

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-07-11 10:49am

weemadando wrote:The Eldar fleet under the guidance of Farseer Weema D'ando is likely to be lurking somewhere too assuming I ever have the time for this.

What sort of space battle would it be if the eldar didn't show up when no one wants them to?

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-07-11 11:15am

Feil wrote:The Imperial Navy ships including ancient/rare vessels. Dunno if there's a use for the pictures or not, but I'm sick, stuck at home, can't concentrate enough to read a book, and can't fall asleep.

It would be sweet if there were rules for like... half the ships in that list.

Thirdfain · Post by **Thirdfain** » 2006-07-11 11:17am

Hmmm. How are we going to go about this? I have a suggestion- let's make it a semi-strategic game, operated by a GM. We divide the players into 2 teams- Chaos and Imperial, plus pirate and raider factions for those who want to take Orc of Eldar or what have you. Each individual battle would only contain 2-6 or so players, but the GM would organize a little strategic map and the two main teams would be able to persue objectives on that map, either splitting the individual admiral's forces or not... could be interesting, no?

Acidburns · Post by **Acidburns** » 2006-07-11 11:23am

So, if we're using this battlemap, we could take top down photos of the ships, however I doubt that between us we own all the ships. Or even painted? We coud make little icons like this:

That above is an eldar frigate to scale with the map previously posted. Placing this ship on the map shows that perhaps the map isnt big enough yet. As a test I also added nebula underneath the grid hehe.

Azazal · Post by **Azazal** » 2006-07-11 11:26am

InnocentBystander wrote:
Feil wrote:The Imperial Navy ships including ancient/rare vessels. Dunno if there's a use for the pictures or not, but I'm sick, stuck at home, can't concentrate enough to read a book, and can't fall asleep.

It would be sweet if there were rules for like... half the ships in that list.

All of those ships have rules, they're jjst spead out over the different PDF files, primarily in "To Clense The Stars" and "Traitor Fleets" Both PDFs at BFG Rulebook downloads

Feil · Post by **Feil** » 2006-07-11 11:42am

Acidburns wrote:So, if we're using this battlemap, we could take top down photos of the ships, however I doubt that between us we own all the ships. Or even painted? We coud make little icons like this:

http://img49.imageshack.us/img49/2141/e ... air7us.jpg

That above is an eldar frigate to scale with the map previously posted. Placing this ship on the map shows that perhaps the map isnt big enough yet. As a test I also added nebula underneath the grid hehe.

http://img49.imageshack.us/img49/1738/b ... 3md.th.jpg

If you could make other ship icons like that, that would be awesome. However, I would imagine that could take a very long time...

The Nebula doesn't make sence to me unless we're fighting in the Cadian Gate or something.

---

Azazal, I only used the ship list in the main rulebook (Ships of Gothic) and To Cleanse the Stars. No Chaos ships are on that list.

Azazal · Post by **Azazal** » 2006-07-11 11:47am

Feil wrote:
Azazal, I only used the ship list in the main rulebook (Ships of Gothic) and To Cleanse the Stars. No Chaos ships are on that list.

Minor detail, ok so I only quick scanned your image and thought those were chaos grand cruisers

The Jester · Post by **The Jester** » 2006-07-11 11:50am

GeneralTacticus wrote:So, would that be any use?

The question is that since each BFG vessel has a heading, would the grid system still be effective for tracking movement (I can assure you very few vessels will fly parallel to the edges of the gameboard).

Feil · Post by **Feil** » 2006-07-11 11:56am

I'm sure that at SDN, of all places, we can use the pythagorean theorem or trigonomitry without difficulty to accomplish this sort of thing.

EDIT: Nova Canon rules would be screwed up, though. That could be... bad.

The Jester · Post by **The Jester** » 2006-07-11 12:11pm

Feil wrote:I'm sure that at SDN, of all places, we can use the pythagorean theorem or trigonomitry without difficulty to accomplish this sort of thing.

The point is how to mark heading. The only way I can see doing this is to place a number next to each ship.

Nova Canon rules would be screwed up, though. That could be... bad.

There were rules published for the Nova Canon which involved no guessing; just place the template and roll the scatter die. This is relatively simple to handle. Round shapes would have to be approximated though. So we need to reach some consensus on the shape of the ship bases, blast markers, planets and their gravity wells and the 3" blast template.

All of this would be best done with some form of CAD software, but I don't have any on hand and I doubt many others do either.

Acidburns · Post by **Acidburns** » 2006-07-11 12:16pm

Theres that free photoshop clone... GIMP is it? We could keep the images as seperate layers using that program. We could make a ruler and 45deg template in the same way as ship icons. Keep it all on layers and you just need to rotate and move the ruler around to measure. You'd have to assume a measure of trust using nova cannons. It'd be just like the tabletop! The problem would be storing/transfering the gimp files. Maybe just emailing em would work if they're not too big.

As for the icons... it might not be so bad. Most capital ships are the same hull with different combinations of weapon modules. I'll try making say a chaos cruiser or something as a test later.

Feil · Post by **Feil** » 2006-07-11 12:39pm

Alternately, our icons could be very simple affairs, like these.

Colored rim to tell players apart. The one on the left is an escort. The one in the middle with one set of extra lines is a cruiser. The one on the right with two sets of extra lines is a battleship. Class names go in the center. You build your fleet in MSPaint and then you play.

(assumes a 30mm base)

EDIT: Yes, GIMP is the thing you're looking for.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2006-07-11 01:00pm

My eternal inabilities with graphics might be an inhibition to my participation, but eh, can't hurt to try. Worst case, I get wiped out.

The Jester · Post by **The Jester** » 2006-07-11 01:11pm

Why not make most of the marker coloured so it is easier to determine which side a ship is on? It's also better to mark each ship's name instead of their class since leadership and damage need to be recorded for each one. An indicator for ship type (escort/cruiser/battleship) could be handy though.

Acidburns · Post by **Acidburns** » 2006-07-11 01:42pm

That'll be a lot quicker I'll say. Remember battleships have a 6cm base. Jesyer is correct that ship names are important.

Feil · Post by **Feil** » 2006-07-11 02:11pm

OK, so battleships are 6cm...

What are the bases for the others?

Azazal · Post by **Azazal** » 2006-07-11 02:26pm

Feil wrote:OK, so battleships are 6cm...

What are the bases for the others?

They use standard flight bases which are 4 cm iirc, I can check when I get home

The Jester · Post by **The Jester** » 2006-07-11 02:28pm

Escorts and cruisers both use 3 cm.

Feil · Post by **Feil** » 2006-07-11 02:45pm

Okay.

Ruler (made to be flawlessly accurate by the incomparable method of holding a ruler to the screen)
http://img236.imageshack.us/img236/5348/ruler3uz.png

The ship icons.
Dark grey areas should be painted the player's color(s) of choice to show whose ships are whose at a glance.

The top white area is for the name of your ship.
The bottom white area is for the ship's class (Cobra, Murder, Void Stalker, etc)

The ship is facing in the direction of the pointy end of the class symbol.
The light grey lines and little pink blobs show the division of fire arcs.

The Jester · Post by **The Jester** » 2006-07-11 03:11pm

Feil wrote:Ruler (made to be flawlessly accurate by the incomparable method of holding a ruler to the screen)

Why do we need a ruler? Shouldn't CAD programs be able to measure distances automatically?

The ship is facing in the direction of the pointy end of the class symbol.

Can you draw a line from the tip of the marker to the edge of the base? Otherwise it looks good.