Howdy, folks! Been a minute since I’ve written one of these. But with the release of Stardust v0.9.3 of the ruleset, it’s time once again for Rosalind’s Dev Blog. As we near the finish line for development on the rules of the game, we’re making fewer gross adjustments in favor of fine tweaks and clarifications. I’ll spare you, and myself, the effort of going through each minor adjustment, and we’ll focus on the big hits.

(Hi! Post-blog-writing Rosalind here. You might notice that your scroll bar is very small, despite my promise to only focus on the big hits. I promise I covered only the big hits — it's been a long time since the last dev blog. If I wrote about everything that was changed and why, this blog would be four times as long. Anyway, enjoy.)

Ruleset Changes

In 0.9.2 we introduced the Tactics Cards system. This is largely inspired by games like X-Wing and Blood Red Skies. When I started developing Stardust, I wanted to make the perfect game for me that I wished existed, but didn’t. I wanted a sci-fi space fighter combat game with Newtonian movement mechanics that weren’t obnoxious to play, one that focused on squadron-level combat like Blood Red Skies, but with the unit variety and tactical depth of Battletech and Battletech Alpha Strike — and I wanted the theory-crafting potential of considered squad construction.Thus far, I felt I had accomplished all but that last part. Tactics Cards are the final piece of that puzzle. For those familiar with X-Wing or Blood Red Skies, Tactics Cards should be familiar. The concept is simple: For every voidcraft in your unit list, you can equip 1 Tactics Card. Each card incurs their own points cost. Tactics Cards are used for broad effects that impact the entire list, as opposed to Transhuman Pilot Enhancements or Special Ammunition which are limited to the voidcraft that they are equipped to. With 0.9.2, we launched with about 25 Tactics Cards, then added a few more in 0.9.2.1 to get to 34. In 0.9.3, we will be adding another 28, bringing the total to 62.

Tactics Cards play off of many varied mechanics. Some modify how you draw your hand of Activation Cards, others impact sensor performance, weapon performance, your Defensive State, your opponent’s Defensive State, your Ship Quirks, and so on. No matter what voidcraft you have in your list, no matter their pilot skill, their equipped weapons, their enhancements or special ammo, there will be a Tactics Card that allows you to enhance certain aspects or paper over their negative qualities. For instance, one of my favorite voidcraft (aside from the heroic Crossbow, of course!) is the Laz-417 Banshee. It’s fast, durable, packs a punch in any of its variants, and being a two-seat voidcraft, it gets good action economy by default. But it is also one of the least maneuverable voidcraft in the game, with usually only 1 Maneuvering Point, and the Fixed Engine Nozzles trait limits its agility even when using Boost. This deficit can be corrected with one of the several Tactics Cards that can help improve your agility. One such card, Advanced Maneuvering Tactics, which costs 50 points, reads:

With most Banshee variants having a Flight Assist value of 9-11, for a modest points investment you can improve the Banshee’s agility in close combat where speeds are naturally lower anyway. Asymmetrical Thrust Training, which also costs 50 points, provides this effect as well:

Because the Banshee already gets good action economy with the Two-Seater Quirk providing free Target Locks — with such a high Thrust value by default in all variants — it can uniquely use the Reverse Thrusters action, get a free hex face turn, throttle up to a high Momentum again, and still get a free Target Lock action.

Another one of my favorite voidcraft is the K-4C Shortsword. It is the inverse to the Banshee; light, inexpensive, relatively slow, and somewhat lacking in firepower and durability, but exceptionally agile, able to dance around opponents in tight terrain, and very difficult to avoid getting hit by it with its off-bore laser weapons. However, some of these perils can be resisted with Tactics Cards.Armor Angling, which costs 100 points, reads: 

Since the Shortsword only has an 8+ Armor Save, statistically 33% of the time it passes its Armor Save, it will roll a 10 and with Armor Angling it will ignore all damage. For some Pirate variants of voidcraft like the M-18B-E Chimera, which has a 9+ Armor Save, they get an even disproportionate value out of such a card. Similarly, Layered Armor, also 100 points, provides the following effect:

This can be especially useful against weapons which deal a lot of base damage like Coilguns which would deal a lot of extra damage on a crit, or weapons which have a very good chance of rolling a critical, like Light Autocannons, which have a 80% chance to deal a critical!

These are just four examples. Tactics Cards rarely provide simple, raw buffs, and when they do, they are either limited in scope, or the card itself is very expensive. Tactics Cards usually provide a window in which they operate or are otherwise fairly contextual, which provides counterplay opportunities for an opponent. There are over 60 Tactics Cards in this version of the game, applying unique modifiers to over 50 available variants of voidcraft.

We’ve added several special Ordnance Weapon upgrades, which take up Missile Slots but provide alternate effects, like being able to place Debris or smoke screens, or adding armor and Boost points to your voidcraft. Army-building potential in this update is immense, and I’m tremendously excited to see what cosmic horrors players cook up (which I will have to then immediately step in and nerf).

We have also doubled the number of Transhuman Pilot Enhancements.

Speaking of, ‌when Stardust fully launches in version 1.0, we will not be including every single Tactics Card. Rather, for pre-release versions of the game, we want to maximize our testing suite, touching on as many mechanics as possible, so we can learn what works and what doesn’t. Early in 0.9.2 we included a Tactics Card called Firepower by Volume. Its effect allowed players to fire an additional Shot per attack, and if they did, the defender increased their Armor Save by 1 to compensate. It sounds innocent enough, until it was combined with the Heavy Coilguns of an M-71 Dolphin equipped with High Explosive rounds, enabling it to deal over 50 points of damage in a single attack. These are the kinds of edge cases we are testing by throwing everything at the wall.

And that is also how we learned we do not want to allow any effects that increase the number of Shots you can make in an attack. Once I realized there was no way to actually make that card balanced, it was removed. Adding attacks to weapons that only get 1 attack/turn is so powerful that in order to provide enough of a drawback to compensate, the card was worse to take than not having it at all. This is just one example, but if some cards don’t make it to the next version of the rules, let alone release, that is why. The game is pre-release; everything we’re doing is still playtesting, even though we are quite close to being done with development.

For launch, the goal is to have at least one, but ideally at least two applicable Tactics Cards for any given list-building strategy or gameplay tactic, so that players can have a wide breadth of ways to build a unique list and gameplay experience for themselves. One thing I am looking at is introducing faction-specific Tactics Cards. Plenty of existing cards were made to synergize with a particular voidcraft, weapon, or faction archetype in particular; but the more the merrier. This system is the last major addition to the rules I expect to make. It should provide a lot of the long-term depth for Stardust as a wargame and beyond, and help provide for a healthy competitive experience as well.

And just to be clear, Sublight Games has zero interest in placing these cards exclusively in paid expansions. We want to ensure that all players remain competitive at every level. We have no intention of, for example, forcing a Geminese player to purchase a Novani ship in order to get a new power-creeped card that breaks the game.

Upon release, all the paper components of Stardust will be available for download and printing at home, free.

Making Stardust Easier to Play

In 0.9.3, the goal has been mostly to iterate on systems put in place in earlier versions — to clean everything up. As the title of this dev blog suggests, most of the work of 0.9.3 has been to go through every part of the rules with a fine-toothed comb, and massage and streamline everything.

I revamped the way damage notation is expressed. Rather than having an arbitrary target result for crits, which is modified by the damage value, now the second number in the damage value is just the value you need to roll. So instead of 2/+2, to show that you add 2 to your crit roll aiming for the standard Target Result of 9, that same damage value would be expressed as 2/7+. Now you’re just rolling a d10 looking for a 7 or higher. Much easier. No memorization necessary, as long as you know what the notation represents (and we’ll gently drill this into you).

Control Checks underwent an overhaul and simplification. Instead of modifying the Target Result of 7, which is, again, arbitrary and often of meaningless difficulty, you now just roll a d6. And if you roll equal to or below your Pilot Skill, you pass. Simple, right? It provides a lot more incentive for purchasing better Pilots, since the default Pilot Skill 2 means you’re only 33% likely to pass a Control Check. This also makes Hyperlanes and the many upgrade cards that rely on Control Checks riskier to use, unless you invest in better pilots. Since some cards also force your opponent to pass Control Checks, veteran pilots may also protect you from those effects as well. Some Tactics Cards also make passing Control Checks easier, usually only for voidcraft with low Pilot Skill.

Many parts of the rulebook have been reformatted and reorganized. Rules for Atmospheric Combat have been overhauled and simplified.

Balance

Some balance changes were made as well, such as redesigning the Multirole voidfighter effect, which used to provide a 15 point discount. Frankly, this effect was silly, inconsistent with the other effects, and allowed some voidcraft to be dramatically under-costed. Voidcraft can also no longer cost less than 50 points under any circumstance, and a cap was placed on the number of voidcraft permitted at a given points level to prevent players from bringing massed formations of voidcraft for insignificant points investment. Similarly, it is no longer possible with the Voidcraft Builder in the rules to stack negative Ship Quirks onto a voidcraft and offset with Missile Slots to bring down the points cost while still meeting minimum Equipment Slot requirements. The Pirate Container Fighter might be a steaming pile of junk, but when a Pilot Skill 1 version of it would’ve cost -13 points, well, that’s a sign something wasn’t quite right.

I acknowledge the 50 points floor is arbitrary, but we want to encourage voidcraft to exist in the 100-300 point range. I was afraid that if I did not limit both minimum points cost and maximum number of voidcraft at a given points level, swarm lists would’ve been the obvious meta choice, which I wanted to avoid. You can still make swarm lists, and the benefits of picking cheap voidcraft are abundantly clear: with so many Tactics Cards in the game, the fewer points you spend on voidcraft, the more you have to spend on upgrades, which might offset the downsides in your craft choice. But Stardust is a squadron-level game. So if one player brings a squadron, and the other brings a full wing of 36, regardless of how crappy those 36 voidfighters are, that’s going to interrupt flow and make playing the game a slow, cramped, frustrating affair.

Some other balancing changes coming impact several voidfighters. Namely, almost every Geminese voidfighter, as well as several Sibylean voidfighters. Most of the changes were directed at the faction bonuses under the voidfighter construction rules for those two factions, which triggered a recount of their points cost, and many now cost less than they used to. However, some have had their stats altered, or rebuilt entirely. Coilguns in particular have also been rebalanced, dealing more damage at the low and medium end. This was done in order to help justify the M-65 Mk. I and Mk. II Lynx’s existence, without significantly buffing the M-71 Dolphin, which I felt was in a good place. Similarly, the K-4C-M Shortsword ended up becoming illegal under 0.9.3’s construction rules, and I felt that its place in the Sibylean lineup felt almost pointless. So that received a redesign, swapping its twin Medium Laser Cannons for twin Light Focused Laser Cannons, turning it into a sort of House Militia rebuild for those who couldn’t get access to the Crossbow. Not nearly as good as a Crossbow, but it tries its best to get there, and at a lower cost. 

That said, let’s talk about what’s left to do before 1.0.

Physical Game Pieces

As we near 1.0, the game pieces and components like the ship bases, tokens, terrain, and the cards have come under the microscope. In 0.9.2, we introduced new card designs, which were a dramatic visual improvement. In the last few months, we began iterating on the next generation of ship bases and all the final versions of the tokens used in-game. With that said, there is always optimization to be done.

For these items, I am constantly balancing several requirements so we can publish the game properly. First, as many of these items should be 3D printable as possible. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, or just don’t engage in the tabletop gaming hobby that much, 3D printing for game pieces is an exploding subset of the tabletop industry. You can scarcely walk into your FLGS without seeing some 3D printed pieces either used by players or on display for sale. I have 3D printed countless pieces for a variety of games that I play. As 3D printing improves in precision and cost, printers with more and more capable multi-color print capabilities are becoming available. That provides a lot of opportunities for token design.

This leads us into my second set of considerations, which are the items themselves. Tokens, for example, are really easy to get wrong. Take a Target Lock token, for example. One concept I had early on was to try to represent the token like a lock box icon from the HUD of a modern fighter jet, with the main body being black, and the inset detailing of a diamond and the ID number in green. Visually, I thought it looked great, and felt authentic to the aerial combat I’m trying to emulate.Then I placed it down on the space-themed hex sheet I used for playtesting and realized the obvious mistake of using a primarily black token on a space background. Oops. It would’ve worked fine in a modern aerial combat game where the background is green or tan or even blue, but not for a space game.

Okay, so brighter colors, got it. But that’s not enough. The tokens are bright and visible now, yes, but if all the tokens are some variation of a small circle, and especially if they're all in similar colors, how can you quickly and easily tell what the tokens are depicting without having to lean in or pick them up? And what about colorblind players? We need to make sure they have different shapes and sizes, too.

Then there are the bases. They need to be easy to print, without assembly, and they have to hold a standard 12mm d6, as well as the 15mm ID tiles we use to give each ship an ID code. They also have to be in at least 2 parts, because you have to be able to display the voidcraft’s Momentum Vector independently from the vessel’s facing. Initially, it was friction fit between the two halves of the bases, and you could press down on the d6 held through a hole on the top plate, pressing on the bottom plate to separate them. But the problem there became that rotating the top plate to change your Momentum Vector was annoying, because the die was just left behind and had to be moved out of the way. Some players didn't even like the friction fit. So the top plate now fully contains the d6, and the top and bottom plates are easier to pull apart.

How about the cards? Before we had each weapon type as one card, and fit all the stats for each size of that weapon type on that card. But we started seeing issues where players were hunting for the stats they needed on those cards, even when they knew what they were looking for. So, while it bloated the number of cards, we separated each card into type and size, instead of just type. We reorganized the order in which the cards express their information to flow with the order of operations in-game. The first thing you do when making an attack is check for range, so that information is now first. Next, you need to figure out what your To-Hit is, so the Accuracy of the weapon comes next. Then you’re rolling your attacks, so you need to know how many dice to roll, so that's the next item. You deal damage last, so now that info is at the bottom.

This sort of information ergonomics is central to improving the design of every card in the game. It may not appear immediately obvious, but when information is presented in a way that is incongruent with the process of the game, it slows you down and feels wrong, even if you can’t identify why. It’s on the designer to be thoughtful and intentional with these sorts of things, because it’s easy to do wrong and make the entire experience feel off.

Finally, card dimensions. We have two sizes of card now, small and large. Large cards are exclusively used for the Status Cards for voidcraft/unit stats, and small cards are used for, well, everything else. Small cards are sized to standard Euro Mini. Large cards are sized to a standard called Magnum Dungeon. (Yes, it is really called that.) At 87x112mm, it was exactly the fit and aspect ratio we were looking for.‌ You will find card sleeves for both types of cards, I have made certain of this.

Tabletop Simulator Updates

Our Tabletop Simulator module will also get an update. This time, it will be a major overhaul. Having played many hours in our module. ‌I have become intimately familiar with all the ways it was lacking — the many workarounds we had to make to get some basic functionalities out of the software. Previously, I had simply leaned into those workarounds to make it work better, but this time I am taking the time to actually just do the correct thing and provide all the components for a fully functioning game experience.

We had been forced to color-code all game pieces to match ships, their cards, and Target Lock tokens; and just used color-edited shrunk checkers pieces for ECM and Jam tokens. With this new update, bespoke custom tokens are now being used for all tokens, including ECM, Jam, Target Lock, ID base plates, Card ID tokens, Pilot Skill, and Damage tokens. All the terrain pieces have been overhauled visually too, to match our current real-life terrain pieces. All tokens and terrain are now provided in infinite bags, so no copying and pasting is required. 

This should be a dramatic improvement to the play experience in Tabletop Simulator. Playing in real-life is still ‌a smoother experience, but this way of playing should be far less janky and faster in every respect.

The Road To 1.0

One of the big things that needs to be completed before we can really call it 1.0 is the Stardust Simulated Intelligence (SI) system. It’s not actually all that complex. In reality, it’s just a flowchart to direct some actions to a given unit. This is designed to allow players to take part in cooperative or solitaire play, similar to how Heroes of the Aturi Cluster worked in the X-Wing miniatures game. Unlike X-Wing though, we don’t use movement templates, so the potential available options to any unit can be overwhelming. The goal is to design a system that is not too complex or lengthy to perform, one that acts with a limited degree of randomness so that it cannot be totally predictable, with deadly intent so that non-players are a genuine threat in combat.

Understandably, this is quite difficult to achieve, as some of these objectives in practice can be contradictory. And since the SSI can only really be tested and refined through playtesting, it is time-consuming to develop. So far though, I believe it is nearing completion. In the current iteration, the flowchart fits on one piece of paper, and a handful of behavior modifiers fit on the back. The SI effectively maneuvers around terrain, manages its Momentum and actions fairly well, and reliably maneuvers to get attacks in on enemies, all the while injecting a degree of managed randomness that is weighted away from making the dumbest decisions.

The SI extends the Campaign Play module. This module is well along in development, with the goal of providing a robust, flexible, modular way to play a narrative campaign in Stardust, either solitaire, co-operatively with friends, and against the SI or a human GM. I also intend to provide a means with which a campaign can be played in a PvP setting.

Although the Campaign Play book is in its early drafts, I’m absolutely confident that I can meet those requirements. I consider the Campaign Play book to be a sandbox that can be adjusted and modified extensively. It should be perfectly playable on its own with every faction and voidcraft in the game available to the player and provide a high degree of re-playability. I’m increasingly confident in the bones of the system I have written; the challenging part will create a large enough pool of mission types that can be replayed multiple times and not feel identical each time. But it’s looking good so far, so stay tuned.

Large Voidcraft and Naval Ships haven’t really seen development since v0.7, because they are an ‌inconsequential part of the game right now. That won’t always be the case, so let’s look at their possible future. One brainwave I’ve had is, why should Large and Naval Ships have to work any differently?

The actual scale of combat in the game isn’t fixed, but relative depending on proximity to a unit. We generally consider Short Range to be 4 KM, with each hex representing 1 KM. At Medium Range, we consider that to be roughly 12 KM, with each hex representing 2 KM, and the same goes for Long Range, which extends out to 20 KM. BVR Range is considered to be out to 40 KM, so each hex is about 5 KM, and BVR Long Range we consider to be about 80 KM, so each hex becomes 10 KM. With that in mind, why couldn’t you just put a 1:2400 scale naval ship on the exact same base and fly them around with the fighters? Maybe treat each individual fighter as a flight rather than a single fighter, but ultimately the scale of the hexes supports that, so why not? The scale of the miniatures wouldn’t be sync’d up, but this isn’t necessarily uncommon. For instance, in Blood Red Skies when flying with the Air Strike! ruleset, players will often use ground and naval targets that are of a significantly smaller scale to represent the difference in visual size from altitude. Perhaps what we are really doing with the grid is abstracting combat-relevant cross sections. Maybe the larger scale of a fighter would just be overall representative of a group of fighters, and would allow for easier board state identification. That would also mean that we would only need to run a series of naval ship miniatures, with the existing fighter miniatures able to be used in this new mode, rather than needing a full new run of smaller scale fighter minis. It would certainly ease the financial burden on a player (and us) to not need to buy a whole new set of minis for naval combat.

Anything to make the game affordable, accessible, and consistent over a period of time, without major version updates or errata after launch has always been a core focus for me. I don’t want this game to need a 2.0 where you throw out all your old rules and minis, where an entire fleet becomes useless or unplayable, or where you need to buy all the new things in order to keep up. 

Stardust hails most closely from Battletech Alpha Strike, but Battletech Total Warfare is still one of my favorite games. Using naval combat to make a smaller scale, more granular and slower gameplay experience would make perfect sense. Fewer numbers of ships, but which are more durable and more granular in their representation, and which maneuver slower. Voidfighters would be a part of this experience, but maybe rather than making naval ships work with the voidfighters, maybe making the voidfighters work with the naval ships would work better and be more mechanically interesting. I’m curious to hear what your thoughts might be on that.

Publishing Stardust

It’s worth discussing what a published 1.0 may look like. Because producing and selling physical assets is costly, much of the existing content we have ready will likely not be available for sale immediately. Besides, if we released everything that was “ready” at launch, then we would struggle to support the game in the mid-to-long term, and much of that content would be under-baked.

The following is subject to change. This is what I want to do, not what might necessarily happen. To be transparent, here are my basic targets for 1.0:

• 9 miniatures and 20+ total voidfighter sub-variants
• 5 factions at launch - Sibylean, Novani, Feronian, Geminese, and Mercenary
• 20 Tactics Cards, 5 Transhuman Pilot Enhancements, and 7 Special Ammo cards
• Rulebook
• Tournament Play Rules Packet
• Target Lock, ID tile, ECM, Jam, and Damage Tokens available for physical sale, as well as their .STLs made available
• Ship Bases, Debris markers, Space Station and Asteroid terrain pieces available for physical sale, as well as their .STLs made available
• Asteroid Field and Hyperlane terrain pieces available for sale and home printing
• Custom Activation Deck

Then, we aim for quarterly releases of new content. My prospective roadmap for Year 1 are as follows:

• First Quarter - 7 new miniatures, introduction of the Empyrean Hold faction, new Tactics Cards, Pilot Enhancements, and gamemodes
• Second Quarter - 5 new miniatures, new Tactics Cards, Pilot Enhancements, and gamemodes
• Third Quarter - 4 new miniatures, introduction of the Pirates faction, new upgrade cards, and gamemodes
• Fourth Quarter - Release of the Campaign Play expansion, 6 new miniatures, new upgrade cards

Content in Year 2 is still TBD, but much of it is in development currently, such as Naval Ship combat. Expect more voidfighters and more cards by default with most quarterly releases.

We have overhauled the game’s paper assets, but the current status sheets and cards are only temporary, and meant to be a proof-of-concept and suitable for demo kits. The layout of the cards is by no means final, there is still plenty we want to change to really optimize them before we launch the game. We need graphic design and some desktop publishing magic, too. So, before we can go to v1.0, the cards will need one more overhaul.

Tournament Play

Let’s quickly talk about the Tournament Play rules packet. I recently finished the first draft of that packet, referencing the rules packets for many tournaments I’ve been to in the past; X-Wing, Blood Red Skies, and Battletech Alpha Strike, for my own guidance. Stardust isn’t meant to be any one particular kind of game, but it is meant to be an authentic, robust competitive game and a narrative experience if you want it to be. Tournament play keeps wargames alive just as much as casual play.

The Tournament Play packet will be made available at launch, and we at Sublight Games will make our best effort to support competitive events where and when we can. We can’t make too many promises at this stage, but I will aim to provide for a few sanctioned events which comply with our standards outlined in the Tournament Play packet, with support such as prizes and official messaging. Here's an overview of what the Tournament Play packet will include:

• Tournament Organizer roles and responsibilities
• What Organizers and Players need to compete
• Organizer and Player conduct expectations
• How to run a Swiss bracket for Stardust
• Tournament-specific rules for the game
• A handful of optional suggestions to spice up your event
• A selection of competitive formats
• A handful of gameplay scenarios for tournament play

The end goal for the Tournament Play packet is that it should be a robust basis for TOs to base their events around, and get players up to speed on what is expected of them at events. Tournaments are incredibly fun and very important to me personally, and I will make every effort to ensure that the game has the best possible chance to shine in a competitive environment.

New Voidfighters

This is always the most exciting part of a dev blog. I never gave an update for the new voidfighters and variants introduced in 0.9.2, so I guess I’ll do that now! I don’t have much to share this time with regard to brand new miniatures though. We’ve basically reached the quota of miniatures I felt we needed for launch, and I’m now filling out the rest with variants of existing units, rather than new planes.

K-2B Falchion

The K-2B Falchion is an old Sibylean interceptor, fleet defense fighter, and escort fighter. It was designed as a direct counter to the Novani Laz-417 Banshee in the years after the blockade of Sibyl by the Novani Republic. In true Sibylean fashion, it sacrifices acceleration for agility, and though its sleek and curvy exterior might not suggest it, it’s built to last. Sporting Heavy Armor with a 7+ Armor Save and a whopping 20 structure points, it is one of the few strike craft in the game capable of withstanding a direct hit from a Medium Casaba Projector; and the variants of Banshees it was designed to fight don’t even carry those. However, its older main engine cannot achieve escape velocity on its own, so it carries provisions for two underwing disposable rocket boosters to help it achieve orbit from a land-based airfield.

Void-launched Falchions could also carry these disposable boosters, using them to achieve a single breakneck attack pass, or to make an attack, turn around, and trigger their boosters for an extreme momentum cancel to catch back up to their adversary. Armed with a Medium Focused Laser Cannon and a Medium Laser Cannon in the nose, its armament is on the light side but it’s versatile. The agility profile was, for the time, the best in The Bary, though it might be underwhelming now. Its agility was further enhanced in the B-model upgrade, where the entire fleet of Falchions was upgraded to include wingtip- and fuselage-mounted maneuvering thruster pods.

Phased out of House Militia service by the K-3 Lancer II and K-4 Shortsword and supplanted in Royal Navy service by the K-5 Crossbow and K-6 Stiletto, these mothballed fighter-interceptors were left to rot in salvage yards. Few noticed when some of them went missing, until they began to show up in the hands of pirates around Dowager. Fussed with by tinkerers, these voidfighters can make for a good “command ship” of sorts for a pirate crew — a solid “anvil” to allow less durable fighters to serve as the “hammer.” In many ways, the Falchion is a prototype of modern Sibylean strike craft doctrine. Compared to the Crossbow, it provides about half the firepower and a modest reduction in speed and agility, but provides a similar level of flexibility with a lot more durability. One-on-one, a Crossbow should easily dispatch a Falchion with its superior agility, systems, and firepower, but a Falchion will hold its own with a competent pilot at the stick.

M-70 Panther

The Geminese were slow to develop a strike craft doctrine, and at a point found themselves in desperate need of an affordable multirole platform that could play catchup. The M-70 Panther filled those needs. A departure from Geminese design principles in some ways, and a strict adherent in others, the Panther was designed with one goal in mind: do as much as possible, in the most cost-effective way possible.

Most curiously, it features a set of 4 retractable external radiators, a thermal management solution much cheaper than the more advanced cooling methods often used by the Geminese. It is very pondorous, and offers mediocre agility, except for in pitch authority. It makes up for this with a decent set of Medium Polyalloy Armor, and its underslung Heavy Railgun, along with a respectable missile payload for the craft’s size. Better than average sensors round out this package, coming in at only 165 points. The Panther is available on the Geminese export list for mercenary groups. It's no-nonsense, efficient, and cost-effective; if you can tolerate its pitiful acceleration profile.

New Sculpt

The venerable Sibylean K-3E Lancer II recently received a significant visual update. The original miniature was one of the first that I made while still learning 3D modeling, and had only received surface-level modifications to keep it relevant. My standards for miniature detail and quality are much higher now. The original sculpt did not meet those standards and had not for a long time. 

The new sculpt embraces a bolder design direction for the Lancer II, as well as a significantly higher level of detail in all areas. A few more sculpt reworks need to be completed before I will be truly satisfied with the line-up of miniatures, but this is one step closer to that goal.

New Variants

Many voidfighters have received variants, either to fill out more options for mercenaries, or to fulfill new roles for their faction.

Laz-417 Banshee

The full Banshee family has been added to the game. Included are the original -1 and -2 variants, the first true manned voidfighters in The Bary. Introduced as a response to the Sibylean Lancer-class sloops that dogged the Republican Fleet so handily during the blockade of Sibyl, the original -1 variant was a full-blooded interceptor-in-space, Novani-style. Featuring what remains to this day some of the most powerful engines mounted on a voidfighter (relative to the weight of the rest of the craft) it achieves a full Thrust value of 9. Armed with a single Heavy Plasma Cannon and an array of missiles, it was designed to close and engage with the Lancer or adversaries like it, using its extreme speed to protect itself, only carrying Standard Armor.

The -2 variant was a strike variant. It was designed to replace the existing fleet of Republican strike drones that had been so decisively defeated by the Sibyleans and their sloops. With a lighter cannon armament but a heavier missile load and improved armor, it trades some overall thrust capability for better survivability. Neither the -1 or -2 variants are available to the Novani, having been phased out long ago. These voidfighters are instead primarily available to pirates.

The -3 variant leans into the fighter-bomber role. While it in fact has a similar overall payload than the -2, it instead improves the sensor suite to allow for longer ranged attacks, and improves the engines to once again achieve a Thrust value of 9. This increases its standoff munition capability and thus, survivability. 

The -4 variant is a major departure; a pure reconnaissance craft that trades much of its weapon capacity for Hardened Composite Armor and a Heavy Advanced Sensor Suite. It is fast and durable for a recon craft, one that has proven irreplaceable in Fleet service.Finally, the -6 variant is a multirole redesign that cures the Banshees’ longest standing flaws: the Fixed Engine Nozzles Quirk, and the Maneuvering value of 1, which heavily limited its agility. The -6 variant also manages to find its way back to a Thrust value of 9, permitting this Banshee variant the agility needed to complement its raw thrust. It trades the -5’s Casaba Howitzer for a more mundane, but still quite effective Heavy Plasma Cannon. On the downside, it trades in the -5’s Hardened Composite Armor for “only” Heavy Armor, making it less resistant to fire.

Hak-99 Dragon

The new — or rather, older — variant of the Dragon isn’t a major overhaul. It’s a less maneuverable and flexible fighter at a heavily discounted price accordingly, making it attractive as filler for mercenary companies.

ErDa-116 Tempest

The Tempest family adds 2 new members, the -2 and -3 variants. The -2 is a focused dogfighter, and trades most of its missile capacity to improve its Medium Plasma Cannon to a Heavy Plasma Cannon, as well as a slight reinforcement of its structural integrity. This makes it one of the most dangerous knife fighters in the game. Offering a near-perfect set of thrust, maneuver, and boost stats allows it to cut through most engagements and deliver heavy firepower.The -3 variant is a dedicated multirole ECM variant, equipping a set of new ECM Array equipment. This variant is designed to sit in a larger overall formation, and provide ECM support that most earlier Novani craft do not have available.

K-3 Lancer II

The K-3F Lancer II trades all of its payload capacity to equip the ECM Array equipment, and gains 2 additional points of Structure. With a 6+ Armor Save and 20 Structure, it is the most durable voidfighter in the game currently. Its Heavy Focused Laser was already a force to be reckoned with. Now, with an ECM Array to top it off, the K-3F variant can work tactical support for a flight of Shortswords.

M-65 Lynx

A heavy and modular platform, the Lynx has received 3 new variants. The Mk. I variant is on offer to mercenary crews, offering the same offensive performance but in a much less maneuverable, and slower overall package. The Mk. II received two small offensive variations in the Mk. II Mod. 1 and Mk. II Mod. 2 variations. The Mk. II Mod. 1 is more or less identical, but trades out the Medium Coilgun for a new type of weapon, a Heavy Helical Railgun, and gives up two missile slots for it. The Mk. II Mod. 2 trades another missile and a structure point to upgrade to a Heavy Coilgun. Apparently, the Geminese had the same thought I did, that the Lynx is a pretty steep investment to only get a single Medium Coilgun out of it. I figured that programs to up-gun the Lynx would make it a more attractive option overall.

M-67 Harpy

The Harpy receives an older variant, the Mk. I, designed to be used by mercenary commands. Because the Geminese are up-costed on Maneuvering points, the Mk. I has one less Maneuvering point and one less Boost point, for a nearly 60 point reduction in cost, making it more affordable but only slightly less capable.

M-72 Sparrow

Besides the existing dedicated strike variant, the Sparrow gained the Mk. II variant, which simply traded 2 missile slots from its extensive payload capacity in order to fit an ECM Array, transforming it into a potent EWAR platform. Otherwise it’s the same as the Mk. I; it retains its otherwise best-in-class payload capacity, except now with the electronic warfare capability to further protect itself, and its friendlies.

S-12 Adder

The aging Feronian Adder receives 2 variants: the original A1, and the slightly older A6. Naturally, the A1 variant is only in use by pirates at this point, and although actually offering slightly better acceleration, has only Light Sensors and Light Armor compared to the Advanced Sensors and Heavy Armor of the modern A7 variant, and only offers a Medium and Light Autocannon, rather than the A7’s Medium ECLG Gun and Light Autocannon.

Meanwhile, the A6 variant, available on the Feronian export list, steps back the Armor and Sensors to Standard versions of both for a moderate points refund.

S-19 Cavalier

The Cavalier, new to the game, gets three variants: the modern A3 & A4 and the older A2 variant for mercenary and privateer usage. The A2 and A3 differ only in a single way: The A2 variant carries the Unstable Weapons Platform quirk, making every single attack slightly more difficult, unless the target is in the same hex row as where the ship is pointing. This one quirk heavily changes how these two otherwise identical voidfighters play, with the A2 far more focused on maneuvering precisely, and often taking a worse Defensive State to compensate for more difficult attacks.

The A4‌ is a dedicated recon variant, which mounts the full smack of a Heavy Advanced Sensor Suite, while also upgrading to an ECM Pod. That gives it some light EWAR capability. For these capabilities however, it downgrades to a set of Standard Armor.

D-20 Basilisk

In what is a common theme for the Empyrean Commonwealth, they like to sell their products in downgraded export variants, stripping out the classified, advanced Empyrean technologies for more mundane weapons and avionics. The new variant, the D-20A-E Basilisk, replaces the standard Light Particle Lances with Medium Autocannons, strips out the ECM Pods for a standard ECM suite, and downgrades the sensor package to Light Sensors. This makes it an exceptional blank slate for any outfit at an agreeable price point.

S-20 Strike Basilisk

The D-20s sister ship, the Strike Basilisk, similarly receives an export variant, the S-20B-E. Just like the D-20A-E, the Particle Lances are swapped for twin Medium Autocannons, and the ECM Pods are replaced with a standard suite. However, the sensor system remains a standard set, with the Medium Polyalloy Armor only being downgraded to Heavy Armor. Otherwise, it remains fairly similar, just at a slightly cheaper price.

New too is the S-20C variant, a more dedicated EWAR variant which trades a single missile slot for an upgrade to an ECM Array. Unlike most other EWAR variants, the C variant of the Strike Basilisk is pretty much as good as its original role as it was before, it just gained some new capabilities.

M-18 Chimera

The Chimera gained a newer export variant and a much older export variant, now in use by pirates. The M-18E-E Chimera strips out the ECM Pods entirely. It replaces the Heavy Particle Lance with a Heavy ECLG Gun, downgrades from Advanced Sensors to Standard, downgrades the Medium Polyalloy Armor with more mundane Heavy Armor, and frees up a great deal of bay space for a significant missile load.

The M-18B-E however, being much older, is further diminished. It offers only a single Heavy Autocannon, its Armor also weakened to Standard. The maneuvering thrusters are encumbered too, dropping the Maneuvering value to 2, and the Boost value to 1. Not quite having been fully refined, the M-18B-E adds the Poor Mass Balancing quirk, reducing its Flight Assist value. However, all this makes it cost just under 110 points, making the Chimera quite affordable.

W-21 Dragoon

Last but not least, the venerable Feronian Dragoon gets an A2 variant, a pretty substantial redesign that removes both of its Laser turrets and the accompanying Auto-Targeting Suite. It equips an ECM Array and a Advanced Sensors suite, which actually allowed it to shed some points and make it more affordable. 

Closing Thoughts

Phew. That was a lot of variants.

I know it's been a long time since I checked in. I hope this dev blog gave you a few things to get excited about! As ever, if you have any thoughts, comments, or concerns, reach out on your social media platform of choice (as long as your platform of choice is Bluesky or Discord, I’ll see it fast). I’m always hanging around the Sublight Games Discord server, and I’m more than happy to spend awhile chatting about the game or anything else.I hope y’all have fun with the game!

— Rosalind