Firestorm Armada & Ship Design

I spent some time last week mulling over the various starship models available at my friends store and making up their stats using the rules found in Firestorm Armada.
The store has a lot of starship models available (see store here) and I took on the challenge of writing up the rules for his Battlestar Galactica ships.


We played two games with the first draft, first game was BSG vs. Starfleet and second game was BSG vs. Klingons.

Here are some pictures of the second game. We didn't play any special scenarios, just straight up blow up the other guy.

Klingon deployment


Colonial Deployment


Klingon D-7s advance


Klingon Battleship advances while one of the battlestars tries to flank. The battleship is non-canon as I don't think there were any battleships in the Trek universe during the Kirk-era. The Birds of Prey at this point took out the Colonial frigates that were screening the battlestars.


Klingons continue to advance


Klingons close in on the kill. They had already managed to board and capture two of the three battlestars at this point. Maybe I made Klingons too good at boarding? Mind you that's what those guys live for.


I made the battlestars pretty much reliant on attack craft (fighters, bombers, interecptors and assault boats) to win their games. The battlestars were undergunned compared to the Klingons but they carried a lot of attack craft, it just so happened that the Klingon battleship had a small fighter bay which the Klingon player elected to carry interceptors (dedicated anti-attack craft). The Colonial player had the capacity to take 18 attack craft total and took 12 fighters and 6 bombers (in hind sight probably should have just gone with more bombers). The Klingons had little in the way of point defense so lots of bombers could have crippled the cruisers and birds of preys faster.

Oh well, I took it as a sign to redesign the battlestars a little bit. In the shows they tend to take and give punishment up close so I upgunned them a little bit in the shorter range bands. They still have maximum defensive stats so trying to get a lucky critical hit on them is very difficult and they will take a beating and keep on firing (albeit the more damage you take, the less you shoot back so it can snowball). I also thought about changing their attack craft (the rules in Firestorm Armada allow you to create your own attack craft too!) to be a little more effective yet more expensive.

Admittedly, the Klingons just may be too overpowered against the Colonials (they hold their own against the Federation).

Anyways for anyone who is interested the stats for the Federation, Klingon and Colonials are below. These are the latest versions.

Firestorm Armada - Federation, Klingon & Colonial fleets

For reference, the two fleets were as follows

Klingon Imperial Fleet
B-1 class Battleship with 3 Interceptors
3 D-7 class Battle cruisers
3 B'rel class Corvettes
3 B'rel class Corvettes

Colonial Fleet
1 Zeus class Battlestar with 6 bombers
1 Columbia class Battlestar with 6 fighters
1 Columbia class Battlestar with 6 fighters
4 Scorpion class Frigates