From: Christopher Weuve Subject: SF Micro-review: Babylon 5 Wars Title: _Babylon 5 Wars_ COMPANY: Agents of Gaming SUBJECT: Tactical space combat in the Babylon 5 universe. PRICE: approx. US$50 CAVEATS 1) I haven't played the final version; Arius Kaufmann and I were playtesters, though, for two earlier incarnations, and I have looked over (somewhat briefly) the final version purchased by Arius at Origins. 2) Almost all of the suggestions our playtest group made were ignored. If this means you think that I am a cranky and bitter old coot whose pissed he didn't get his way, well, I would like to point out that my opinion of the product hasn't changed since we saw the first playtest copy. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY It's better -- barely -- than the playtest version. Most of the things that were broken are still broken. The likelyhood of something be fixed was inversely proportional to how seriously it was broken (i.e., they spent a lot of time changing light bulbs on the Titanic.) PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION Black unmounted maps with white hexes. Counters are beautiful (they were done by Mike Wikan, whose work can be found at [http://www.uwm.edu/~cthulhu/FT/ thrust.html]) but printed too darkly. Includes a half dozen minis which need to be assembled and painted. (I wonder if they tried to arrange a deal with Galoob for B5 micromachines?) PROS 1) Lots of background info, it seems. Big thick rulebook (90= pages) with plenty of black and white photos from the show. 2) They also came up with a somewhat-clunky-but-I-guess-it-works fix to one of the more serious problems, the "energy point" problem. In the playtest version, ships moved by funnel energy points from the reactor through their thrusters, which generated thrust points. Each reactor point (regardless of the ship) generated one thrust point, and each thrust point (regardless of the ship) generated one one hex per turn of thrust. Think about this for thirty seconds, max, and you will realize that implies that ALL SHIPS HAVE THE SAME MASS. Well, they fixed it, and while it wasn't exactly how we would do it, I guess it will do. They added an "engine", which has two salient features: first, it provides a certain number of "free" thrust points which can be routed through the thrusters to produce thrust; second, for "extra" thrust, it converts energy points to thrust points which are then routed through the thrusters, based on an "engine efficiency" rating. While this is somewhat cumbersome from an engineering point of view, it has the distinct advanatage that, in most cases, the players don't have to calculate anything on a regular basis. 4) Combat system has been simplified. Basically, its a d20 system now, instead of d100, with DRMs based on 150+ variables. (Okay, it's really only about ten variables.) CONS 1) The biggest con is that the movement system is STILL broken. Anyone who has read my earlier comments on this game knows that I think the movement system is clunky and unrealistic. (See [http://www.wizard.net/~caw/ aogprob.htm] for details.) Well, it appears that they have tweaked it a bit, but you still have things like rotating is in increments of 180 degrees and takes exactly three turns (regardless of the size of the ship), 60 degree turns cost less energy than 30 degree turns, etc. 2) One other problem with the playtest version that I have not had a chance to test with this one was the arbitrary nature of the combat system. This is from our second playtest report: > The more we play the game, the more uneasy we feel about the combat > system. We made certain assumptions about what the various values > (defensive ratings, damage ratings, fire control, etc.) are intended to > represent -- many of these are detailed in the discussion on fire control > and defensive ratings. The more we played, however, the more we ran into > specific instances that seemed to not fit in with the implicit model we > had constructed. Therefore, either our understanding of what the values > represent is wrong, or the value itself is wrong, or both. Next, we > realized that not only had we not determined in the system and/or values > made sense, but that we _could_ not do so without more information. At > best, we would have only a vague feeling that this or that value is > wrong -- often times it seems that different ships are different solely > for the sake of being different, or that the values were assigned in a > totally arbitrary manner. > > While bad enough in itself, this will potentially become intolerable when > the ship design system is introduced, for two reasons. First, if there > is no method by which a ship's ratings are determined, it will be > difficult if not impossible to devise a system which will allow you to > design the ship's included in the game. Second, even if the original > ships do not become illegal, it promises to make them suboptimal > designs. There should always be room for players to improve on the > efforts of the naval architects of the fictional setting, but care needs > to be taken not to invalidate all the designs which came before. 3) My personal pet peeve -- the Earthforce Omega class destroyer does not have a rotating section. Anyone who has seen the episode where the loyalist forces attacked Babylon 5 know that the bridge crew of the _Alexander_ was VERY worried about damage to the spin section forcing them to stop rotation. Considering the damage system involves specific hit locations, you would think the rotating section would have to be included. Yet, there is nothing in the game to indicate the ship even has a rotating section! 4) The Earthforce ships have "interceptors", which are CIWS designed to intercept incoming fire. To their credit, AoG change it so that the interceptors can no longer intercept incoming laser fire. However, they have added the idea that the interceptors somehow generate a forcefield that degrades laser fire. Yuck. 5) The ship sheets are in the back of the book, perforated for removal. Why do it this way? Why not make the ship sheets a separate booklet, where they would be easy to photocopy (which they grant permission for), like GDW did with _Star Cruiser_, TFG does with _SFB_, etc.? Players are left with the alternatives of defacing the rules or limiting the quality of the copies that can be made. OVERALL ASSESSMENT This is a generic tactical space combat game with the name "Babylon 5" slapped on the front. As such, there is little to recommend it *out of the box* over simply playing _Renegade Legion:Leviathan_, _Silent Death_, _Battlespace_ or a host of other such games. Anyone wanting to play a B5 game would be better off playing Ground Zero Games's _Full Thrust_ minis rules with any of the four or five B5 rulesets floating around the net ([http://www.uwm.edu/~cthulhu/FT/ thrust.html] is a good place to start searching for them), or waiting a month and getting Chameleon Eclectic's _Earthforce Sourcebook_ for their _Babylon Project_ RPG, which includes a _Full Thrust_-derived system written by the FT designer himself. (Incidently, this system has TWO movement systems: standard non-vector FT movement for the Minbari and First Ones, vector movement for everyone else.) This is not to say that I don't intend to purchase it. While pretty much useless as is, I think that _B5W_ can be saved by scrapping the movement system and replacing it with a homegrown system. Arius and I are working on such a system, which we hope to run at NOVAGCon in August. -- Chris Weuve [My opinions, not my employer's.] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ mailto:caw@wizard.net (h) http://www.wizard.net/~caw mailto:caw@intercon.com (w) Fixes for AoG's B5 game, books, mailto:chrisweuve@usa.net (perm) stuff for sale and more