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• About Starmada
• A few of my Starmada factions
• A gallery of scratchbuilt starships and terrain
• Starmada Scenarios
Starmada is a generic starship combat system from Majestic 12 Games, which is a small operation run by a dedicated group of gamers. The beauty of Starmada is that you can entirely design your own weapon systems, ship stats, equipment load-outs, and everything, so the character of your fleet is completely in your control.
Starmada uses a simple combat
system driven by d6 dice,
which makes it fast-moving and simple, while not being simplistic.
The rules can easily handle large fleets or small skirmishes,
and you can increase or decrease the complexity of the game by limiting
hull values. For instance, you can plan an encounter between a
single Constitution-class cruiser and a single Klingon D7 battlecruiser
by building ship plans
based around a Hull Value of 15 for each, which will allow you to
include
all sorts of minutiae (security teams, transporters, sick bays, etc.).
Or you can have a dozen Federation starships taking on a Klingon
flotilla, by reducing the hull values to a level where you are forced
to
just focus on weapons, shields, and engines. It's a great system.
One thing that really helps is the
Microsoft Excel-based Starship Construction Assistant, available as a
free download from
the MJ12 website (or the company's Yahoo fan group). Using this
spreadsheet, you can play with different options until you've come
up with a design you really like, and -- guess what! The
spreadsheet
has already generated a playable ship record for you! No need
to transcribe everything you've done from one sheet to another.
From this worksheet:
... you get this:
Starmada Factions:
• The Polamaras Free-Trade Cartel
• The Eta Carina Hegemony
• Centurion Military Corporation
• The Chuuru Bio-Fleet
Scratchbuilds and Conversions
One thing I love about minis games is the ability to make your own stuff! Below are a few things I've whipped up for Full Thrust and Starmada. Click on the pictures to see them full size.
I was installing a micro-drip sprinkler system in my wife's flowerbeds when I was caught by the look of a particular drip-head (my wife has learned to fear the times when I stand, transfixed, holding some miscellaneous bit of junk). I knew then and there that I would be using that drip-head to make me some defense platforms!
These things were so easy that there should be a law against them. Each one took about five minutes to build, and cost about $1.50 in parts. The parts included: a drip-head, a copper BB, three steel straight pins, and two turrets from Tamiya's 1/700 IJN ship accessories packs.
The above base is
a fighter base. A ramp has been constructed on one end
to allow access to the interior hangar bays. Three turrets help
protect the installation, and a huge radar dish keeps the base in touch
with its allies.
My second attempt
was a civlian mining base, sporting the logo of my own fictitious
omnibus megacorp, the ZyLex Corporation. This will make a tasty
target for privateers or pirates... or maybe they'll just be coming for
the freighters parked in close orbit...
This was my attempt at making a Ringworld/Halo for the tabletop. It has no real value except as scenery, much like any custom planet. It was made using the inner hoop of a wooden 4" embroidery hoop, available at Michaels craft store for around $2.
I started by texturing the inner side of the ring with spackle (the paste used to patch holes in drywall). I tried to have a good variety of mountains, ridges, and flat spaces for water. Two coats of white primer followed once the spackle was dry. I used solid colors for the base -- dark blue, dark brown, etc. Then Iightened the paint by cutting it with white and did successive layers of drybrushing. The forests were made using a stipple method, while the bodies of water were lightly drybrushed with white to give them some depth. I finished by drybrushing the peaks of the highest mountains/ridges with white to make snowy peaks.
The whole ring got a coat of Dull-Cote, then I glued on a strip of printed circuit plastic sheeting I liberated from inside an old Dell keyboard. I figured that a lot of renderings of Ringworld/Halo showed all kinds of industrial greeblies on the outside of the ring, so I used the printed circuit sheeting to make an effect of that nature.
The ship in the picture is Brigade Models' Dortmund-class battlecruiser, included for comparison.
This dreadnought
and its accompanying cruisers were made from sprue, dollhouse books,
fake jewels, puppet eyes, and some beads.
The carrier above
and its escorts are made from balsa, plasticard, beads, puppet
eyes, fake jewels, and cross-stitch fabric. The fighters on its
deck are from DLD
Productions, a garage-kit gaming company that
I can't recommend enough.
Both of these
minis were built almost entirely using materials from Michaels
craft store -- balsa, pine, cross-stitch fabric, dollhouse bitz, and
some sprue. The decals are from GW. The white one is a bulk gas
freighter, carrying four huge gas modules. The greyish one is a modular
gas freighter, carrying a dozen smaller gas cells for various
customers. Both are owned by Terra-Avalon Universal, a heavy shipping
company (the decals on the
freighters reflect their T.A.U. heritage -- ahem, ahem).
In my quest for pirate fodder, I built another freighter. This one is a bulk ore carrier, a ship that really just consists of an engine block and habitat welded onto an ore-rich asteroid, which is then flown back to an orbital smelter.
The mini was made by supergluing a rectangular piece of sprue onto a volcanic rock from my neighbor's yard (sssshhh!). The engine block is a pair of wooden dollhouse books adorned with bitz and greeblies (including some BB's for gas-containing apparati), and the habitat section is a small wooden sphere. The two golden radar dishes are bits if plasticard punched out and slightly curved (using the extremely scientific process of pushing them into the palm of my hand using my finger).
I brush-primed the plastic and wood, coated it with a Testors light grey, then washed it repeatedly with sepia ink to make it good and grimey -- this thing's a workhorse, not a beauty queen! The decals are from some random AFV that's crying softly to itself somewhere in my bitz box because it's nekkid.
I'll post more pics of conversions and scratchbuilds as I do them! Thanks for looking!
And it's automatically generated
for you.
Starmada Factions:
• The Polamaras Free-Trade Cartel
• The Eta Carina Hegemony
• Centurion Military Corporation
• The Chuuru Bio-Fleet
Scratchbuilds and Conversions
One thing I love about minis games is the ability to make your own stuff! Below are a few things I've whipped up for Full Thrust and Starmada. Click on the pictures to see them full size.
Space StationsThe above station was made from a plastic ring I "appropriated" from the Carousel downtown, a toilet repair part, metal straight pins, and a small fake jewel from Michaels. I like the 2001 feel of the thing. The ships in the pictures are from Brigade Models and Ground Zero Games; the fighters are from DLD Productions. The star mat underneath the minis is an excellent felt mat from Monday Knight Productions -- if you're into starship combat games, you really gotta have one. They come in non-hex versions, as well.
Orbital Defense Platforms
I was installing a micro-drip sprinkler system in my wife's flowerbeds when I was caught by the look of a particular drip-head (my wife has learned to fear the times when I stand, transfixed, holding some miscellaneous bit of junk). I knew then and there that I would be using that drip-head to make me some defense platforms!
These things were so easy that there should be a law against them. Each one took about five minutes to build, and cost about $1.50 in parts. The parts included: a drip-head, a copper BB, three steel straight pins, and two turrets from Tamiya's 1/700 IJN ship accessories packs.
Asteroid BasesI was replacing the ceramic briquettes in my propane barbecue when I found a six-pound bag of lava rock for about $3.99 at Home Depot. Perfect asteroids, I thought to me old self. I chose two out and started in on converting them to asteroid bases -- yet another extraterrestrial object for my fleets to scrap over.
Ringworld
This was my attempt at making a Ringworld/Halo for the tabletop. It has no real value except as scenery, much like any custom planet. It was made using the inner hoop of a wooden 4" embroidery hoop, available at Michaels craft store for around $2.
I started by texturing the inner side of the ring with spackle (the paste used to patch holes in drywall). I tried to have a good variety of mountains, ridges, and flat spaces for water. Two coats of white primer followed once the spackle was dry. I used solid colors for the base -- dark blue, dark brown, etc. Then Iightened the paint by cutting it with white and did successive layers of drybrushing. The forests were made using a stipple method, while the bodies of water were lightly drybrushed with white to give them some depth. I finished by drybrushing the peaks of the highest mountains/ridges with white to make snowy peaks.
The whole ring got a coat of Dull-Cote, then I glued on a strip of printed circuit plastic sheeting I liberated from inside an old Dell keyboard. I figured that a lot of renderings of Ringworld/Halo showed all kinds of industrial greeblies on the outside of the ring, so I used the printed circuit sheeting to make an effect of that nature.
The ship in the picture is Brigade Models' Dortmund-class battlecruiser, included for comparison.
Ships of the LineI challenged myself at one point to make a fleet solely out of items that could be found at Michaels craft stores (a large chain here in the US). Below you can see some of the results.
FreightersOne of the stock scenarios for any starship combat game is the convoy raid -- fat, slow freighters pounced on by enemy forces, while a few gallant escorts try to protect them!
In my quest for pirate fodder, I built another freighter. This one is a bulk ore carrier, a ship that really just consists of an engine block and habitat welded onto an ore-rich asteroid, which is then flown back to an orbital smelter.
The mini was made by supergluing a rectangular piece of sprue onto a volcanic rock from my neighbor's yard (sssshhh!). The engine block is a pair of wooden dollhouse books adorned with bitz and greeblies (including some BB's for gas-containing apparati), and the habitat section is a small wooden sphere. The two golden radar dishes are bits if plasticard punched out and slightly curved (using the extremely scientific process of pushing them into the palm of my hand using my finger).
I brush-primed the plastic and wood, coated it with a Testors light grey, then washed it repeatedly with sepia ink to make it good and grimey -- this thing's a workhorse, not a beauty queen! The decals are from some random AFV that's crying softly to itself somewhere in my bitz box because it's nekkid.
I'll post more pics of conversions and scratchbuilds as I do them! Thanks for looking!