NOS at the VERY back of the game/hobby/comic shop I visited today to pick up paint supplies and a new hex matt, on a bargain rack where nobody would ever see them, covered in dust and forgotten.

Well - no longer.

They immediately came home with me, and will get primed, painted and put into flight service where they will be destroyed again and again!
I got:
1 Beta Fortress
1 Mega Fortress
3 Pit Vipers
3 Darts
And 4 packs of bugs (which I'm stoked about!)


   

So - is anyone 3D modelling/Printing their own ships yet?

Just looking into either getting a 3D printer myself, or if I can find an economical 3rd party upload+print site.

I'm interested to hear what folks are doing! 

Here's a prototype "Bulletproof Monk". (working name for now)

   

Hey there - 

I'm new here.

Only discovered this website/forum etc. after having a "nostalgic moment" one night not too long ago, thinking back to my days playing SD in highschool.
Anyway  - went online to ebay to find a BNIB (complete) box set of SD:TNM. 
I Bought it right away. It just arrived, and I'm currently digesting all the material, and remembering why I loved this game so much. The story and the history of the 'verse is so compelling.

Anyway, was pretty shocked that I.C.E had gone under, only to lose the rights to the game etc. etc. etc.

So does "Metal Express" own it now? (all expansion books available in PDF format I see in the store section).

Just curious.

Hope everyone has had a great Holiday season!

Hello!

New to the forum. Glad this place exists!

Do we have any members/players from Calgary AB Canada or maybe even Edmonton, RedDeer or area?

..and I just rediscovered the site here.  Last time I played was fall of 2014 with the beta Night Brood rules at the time and I see that there seems to be progress towards a revised NB set as well as rules updates with DR being adjusted; I hope this will make the 0 DR, really high DV custom ships less common.  Will sextuple splatterguns still exist as well?

Seems like a new supplement (House Falsaff) has come out; anything else I should know about the current game status?

I was looking at someone's scratchbuilt Imperial Star Destroyer on another page, and it got me to thinking. This is not always good when I have too much on my plate as is, but...

I do model design for a buddy, and we picked up a vacuum former to make a 1:1 Mercury Capsule. We have been talking about getting into wargaming for sometime, once we get a couple major models done, and how we could use the vacuum former. What do you guys think of a vacuum formed game board, with holes drilled in a hex pattern? The terrain could be a "Death Star" type trench, with turrets and the like, or planetary/asteroid surfaces. You would probably have to paint though.

I got a bundle of books a while back and it seems they are in a different place on Drivethru now. Is there a way to fix this or would I need to purchase them again?

Who can I contact about orders?  PayPal shows some business, the order came from another business, neither that shows metal express?   I received only a partial order but no invoice etc saying things are back ordered.

Any info helpful.

Thanks

Shawn

Ship Defensive Values
 
The next item of the list of things to look at is the Defensive Values (DV).  While Drives are a fairly straightforward thing, you have an engine and it makes you go, a ship’s DV is a bit more complex.  I’ll start with a little history of what constitutes a ships Defensive Value before moving on to analyze the cost and slots values for DVs.
 
In Star Strike, there were four basic things that made up your Defensive Bonus:  the ship’s Armor Belt, Electronic Warfare, Screens, and Evade computer programs.  Of these, the ship’s Armor Belt was converted into Damage Reduction (this will be discussed more in a later post).  Both the Electronic Warfare and the Screens see regular mention in the Critical Hit tables for each ship.  Only the Evade computer programs are not mentioned in Silent Death: The Next Millennium (SD:TNM), although you will occasionally see an Evade Thrusters entry on the Critical Hit tables.
 
The first ship construction rules actually appear in the follow-up book to the Silent Death: Metal Express (SD:ME) core rulebook - Overkill: The Ptolemean Wars.  While it may be a stretch to call this “ship construction rules”, we do get some more information on what the definition of DV is:
 

Quote:“Defensive Value is a measure of either how tough a vessel is to hit (particularly if it is small and maneuverable), or how tough it is to affect with damage once hit (particularly for large, well-protected ships).
 
The factors which contribute to Defensive Value include the strength of a vessel’s energy screens, electronic warfare capabilities, and computer-directed fire evasion routines.”

Ship Drives
 

One of the first successes I had in deconstructing the ship design rules was with the drive values.  By that I mean that yes, I did figure out formulas that get me exactly (or very, very close) to the cost and slots that are listed in the ship templates.  I’ll explain that statement a little more later.
 
One of the first things I did was to throw all the drive values in a spreadsheet.  Once you start doing this, it quickly becomes apparent that the cost and slots for drives for a 300 or 400 ton SPAC are the same as those for a TPAC.  As you go on you’ll also notice the same thing for the 700 and 1,000 ton TPAC and Gunboat templates.  Skipping the Scout template (we’ll come back to that one in a minute), looking at the shuttle template we can see that while the shuttle is not allowed a drive above a 17, the cost and slots still match up perfectly with their SPAC and TPAC counterparts.
 
So, let’s look at the Freighter templates for a moment.  Of the three templates, two of them match up tonnage-wise with Gunboat templates (1,000 and 2,000 ton).  The second number (slots) appears to still matchup between gunboats and freighters with one exception, the slot cost for a 13 drive on a 2,000-ton vessel.  It’s 39 for Gunboats and 41 for Freighters.  I’ll try to touch on this again later, but after running all my numbers, it appears to me that the correct value should be the 41, not 39.  When one considers how many of the other numbers match up perfectly between these templates, these two should as well.  The cost for a freighter’s drive is different though.  It’s roughly ¼ of a gunboat’s drive cost.
 
For the Scouts, the 300-ton ship matches up perfectly with all the other 300-ton drive costs.  However, the 700-ton vessel’s does not.  In fact, when you look at it closely, the drive costs and slots match up perfectly with the cost and slots for a 1,000-ton ship.  Due to this, I really have to throw out the scout class template at the moment.  I strongly feel that either the wrong cost and slot values were printed or the wrong tonnage was put on the chart, but I can’t tell which by just looking at the drives so we’ll table this part of the discussion for a time when I cover the templates themselves.
 
Let’s start by looking at the cost chart below.  I’ve put all the drive costs for all the templates except the scout and 3,000-ton freighter into it below.  I’ve also highlighted the break between cheaper drives (in green) and more expensive ones (blue and grey).


   


If you look at the columns, particularly for Drive 10, you should see that numbers tend to go up at a steady rate.  If you also look at Drive 20, you can see a pattern emerge as well.  We can probably account for these with formulas. 
 
For the green number the math is pretty simple and straightforward.  If we take the tonnage times the drive value, we can get some large but reasonable numbers.  Multiplying that result by .002 (and rounding to the nearest whole number) will bring them down to exactly what we are looking for. 
 
I’ve always been surprised at how easily this part came together, and how hard the next set of numbers has been to deal with.  However recently I managed to figure out a formula for the blue numbers that has forced me to change the formula for the green numbers.  The results are still the same, but the equation is different.  Take the tonnage times the drive value, divide that result by 5 and multiply by 0.01.  Round the result to the nearest whole number and then multiply it by a factor of 1.  The last part may seem silly, but it becomes a little more important with the blue values.
 
For the blue numbers we run the same basic formula (tonnage times drive, divided by 5, multiplied by 0.01 and rounded to the nearest whole number).  However we now take that rounded result and multiply it by a factor of 1.5 (again rounding to the nearest whole number). 
 
One other note for freighters.  The cost of their drives is ¼ of the drives found on the other templates.  However the rounding for the cost is different depending on if you are looking at green or blue (and grey) cost numbers.  For cheaper drives, you round down.  For the more expensive drives you always round up.
 
Let’s move on to slots.  Again, I’ve put all the drive slots for all the templates except the scout below.  I did put the slots for the 3,000-ton freighter below to show something.  Those numbers match up pretty well with what would have been a 2,500-ton ship.  However, because there is no other data for a 3,000-ton ship for me to draw upon, I am forced to throw it out and not let it affect the work I’m doing.  Once again, I’ve highlighted the break between cheaper drives (in green) and more expensive ones (blue and grey).


   


The formula for the green drives is a fairly reasonable growth out of the cost formula.  Take the tonnage times the drive value and divide that answer by 12.5.  Now multiply that by the drive value again and times it by 0.001 (rounded to the nearest whole number.  Finally, as with the green costs, multiply the answer by a factor of 1.  I strongly believe that the 0 slot cost for the 50-ton fighter’s drive 11 is coincidental and that the 0 slot cost for the same drive on the 100-ton ship is a purposeful design decision. 
 
As with the cost formulas, for the more expensive blue drives we simply need to multiply the result by a factor of 1.5 instead of 1 and round that to the nearest whole number.  The drive 13 for a 2,000-ton ship is the one that has a difference between the gunboat (number in red) and the freighter (shown as black numbers).  The black value of 41 is in line with the calculations, so I think the 39 slots is a typo rather than a purposeful decision.
 
This leaves us with two values in light grey or white.  Each of these values is one point too high.  According to the calculation I have, the values should be exactly the same as the values for the 19 drives for these ships.  While I could be missing something in my calculation, I think this was a purposeful change to force a difference in the slots between these two drives.
 
Again, please leave any feedback you have, including any suggestions you may have for solving the riddle of the expensive drives.  I’ve honestly taken it about as far as I can on my own. 
 
THANKS