AdAstraGames

@adastragames

Publishers of tabletop 3D flight simulators for space and jet combat, plus other games like Minimus (a tiny RPG) and non-fiction works useful to gamers and SF writers.

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AdAstraGames@adastragames· 25d

Unbeknownst to Ken, it's employee evaluation day at work.

An orange felid with a white muzzle, of distinguished age, is laying on his right side, between the monitor and keyboard, which he has shoved aside, his mouth open, giving constructive criticism on the typing effectiveness of the chief employee and cat food can opener of Ad Astra Game!

AdAstraGames@adastragames· 27d

For a handful of people, this screenshot is very exciting. Ken has finished[*] the rebuild of the XML export process for Squadron Strike ships. XML is now generated on the individual Ship and Fort tabs, and pulled into the export tab, which consolidates the two XML export tabs into one.

A screenshot from Excel, showing one blue and 19 purple cells, and a gray area with light orange text. The blue cell says "3D", the topmost purple cell says "HAS Sample" and the light orange text looks like HTML or XML tags.

AdAstraGames@adastragames· Jul 7

Game resumed two weeks later—here's some screen shots! We're slated to pick things up again on Monday the 13th.

A space map with blue stars under a hex grid with eight spaceships (shown by art on six sides of a rectangular box) and some torpedoes on the map at different altitudes.

The Federation ships have been flanked by the Romulan and Klingon ships who have gotten behind them.

A higher perspective of the fight after another turn of movement. There's a hex map over a blue starfield, with four Federation ships, low and in the center with two Romulan ships lined up to launch plasmas, and two Klingon ships that have been concentrating fire on one of the Federation ships.

AdAstraGames@adastragames· Jul 1

For those who know the Squadron Strike rulebook, this page shows a...transition. This is the beginning of the last formal rule in the book—transitioning between map scales with momentum-based movement. This part is new: Fuel (or magsail) use and transitioning to the ΔV map. Almost done...

$More realistic settings, using only Mode 2 movement, with 256 second turns, 0.25 G thrust increments, fuel and magnetic sails use this table instead: [Table showing different turn lengths/game scales/thrust scaling and fuel scaling, ranging from Newton's Cradle tactical hexes to the delta-V map printed in that product.] Once the scale transitions out of the first row of the table, maximum thrusts halve at each step. Retain fractions as a way of determining which turns (out of a consecutive set of two or four turn) that you can apply thrust 1 on. Note that the fuel efficiency does not improve between the second and third rows! Once you’ve reached the third row of the table, you may switch to the fourth row freely; your ships using magnetic sails, dropping their thrust to 6 milligees, taking 100 turns of thrust to generate 1 hex/turn of tactical velocity change,, but spending no fuel. If your setting has a delta-V, transitioning to magsail use means you should switch to the delta-V map and the (much longer) turn lengths.$

AdAstraGames@adastragames· Jun 30

While we were set to resume the SFU ships game, two players couldn't make it, so we ran a Habakiri versus Marauders game instead, playtesting Screens over Armor 1 as a defense, and letting someone newer to the game fly the simpler-to-fly Habakiri.

Four ships shown by box minis on tilt blocks with stacking tiles showing altitude in close horizontal proximity....

Those same ships in sticks view, showing the vertical separation more cleanly!

AdAstraGames@adastragames· Jun 23

Can your Star Trek game do this? @thomasthecat.bsky.social (wink)

Four Constitution CAs dealing with a drive-by attack by a pair of Klingon D7s, while a pair of Romulan Warbirds comes in from above. There's six drones in flight from the Klingons and the Romulan just launched a type R torpedo that'll be pursuing the Feddies for three more turns of movement.

One Klingon ship has taken about 10 damage inside shields and repaired one box of it.

AdAstraGames@adastragames· Jun 19

More fighters taking shape for Reprisal of the Hegemon!

Three space fighters shown at scale to each other. The new one is facing away from the other two as it gets detailed...

AdAstraGames@adastragames· Jun 9

Friday's playtest scenario is set up! Some details are in the alt-text. If you've gone through a Squadron Strike teaching game with the Romance of the Seven Realms, or just happen to like Star Wars-y space fighter derring-do, this should be fun for you. Start time is 8:30 PM EDT, 12 JUN 2026!

A screen capture of Friday's playtest scenario setup. There are two Wyverns and a Watatsumi jumping a Rookery (recently downgraded) escorted by an Anduril and Habakiri-class fighters.

The Rookery has to get off of the A map edge with a speed no greater than 6; it gives double points for the Royalists if it does so.

AdAstraGames@adastragames· Jun 9

At some point, I'm getting 2-4 more pieces of art, and the "make ships" part of Reprisal of the Hegemon (the second Romance of the Seven Realms product, after Flight of the Fisher Queen) will be done. I've been proactive, and been placing art on countersheet templates as it comes in.

A screen capture of a file folder showing both VTT box minis and (nearly all) of their corresponding Ship's System Displays for the Romance of the Seven Realms setting.

AdAstraGames@adastragames· Jun 4

Vale Jon Blanche

Tabletop Inquirer:

Jon Blache's Evil Twin Paints Everything Blue

(An image of WH40K figs painted blue, with a tweet:

Laurence Blanche

Yup, im here - as for painting ultramrines id just do them dirty brown then they wouldnt be ultramarines any more ...

AdAstraGames@adastragames· Jun 2

I could make this gun even worse, by adding: Multi-Pen (Choose 2) for the Penetration die rolls (roll 4 dice for Penetration, pick the greatest difference between any two) and then Raking Fire (2), (roll a separate Hit Location roll per 2 points of damage past Armor.)

A screen capture of the Barrage-O-Matic weapon and a sidebar describing its horribleness as a game play experience.

The Barrage-O-Matic
The Barrage-O-Matic is not a fun weapon, takes too long to resolve, and your opponents will be exasperated with you for using it.
If we spend the 3 APs for the Overload trait, we double the number of shots spent. For the sake of insanity writ large, we’re going to fire all 6 shots, which Overloads to 12 shots.
We roll a 10 on the first shot. All 11 of the remaining shots hit, and there’s at least one Continuous hit going.
Statistically, 40% of our 11 shots will be Continuous results, giving us ~4.4 additional shots total.
Of those 4.4 additional shots, 40% of them will hit, giving us 1.76 more hits.
Of those 1.76 additional hits, 0.7 more will roll a 7+. 4.4+1.76+0.7=6.86 additional shots, or about 19 shots total.
For each shot, we’ll need see how High Impact affects Accuracy, and roll Penetration each time.
We hope you brought snacks to share while rolling this out.

AdAstraGames@adastragames· May 31

Working, and working from @witty-user.bsky.social's Fleet Ops numbers, I've got a rough sketch on deriving weapon card sets from SqSt weapons for the nascent card game that's been lurking in the back of my head for 8 years. The "1,2,2,3,1" and "1,1,1,2,1" are damage values for a set of 5 cards.

An Excel screen shot. The number in the dark brown cell is how many cards are in this 'set', the rows that say 1,2,2,3,1 and 1,1,1,2,1 are the short range damages for each of 5 cards, and the long range damage for each of 5 cards.

AdAstraGames@adastragames· May 31

Fixed Drake Notation, thanks to some help from @witty-user.bsky.social Indexing errors (and differences in Excel formula philosophy) made this tricky. I gather data first, then wrap it in formatting, Dan wraps the data in formatting and then sorts the formatted data the way he wants it.

$A screen capture of a text editor with a Drake Notation "ship stat block" for two ships in Starmada! Text reads as follows: ===== Drake Notation Ships (Select this column and paste into a text file) ID: MAGELLAN CA-class Starship (96/III) See Universe W1 {±6|4|1} --- FWD: {_|_|_|_|_|_|_}[3+] PORT: {_|_|_|_} STBD: {_|_|_|_} AFT: {_|_|_|_} --- 1,3,5 HULL [6|5|4|3|2|1] 1-2 ENGINES [4|4|3|2|2|1] 3-4 WEAPONS [6|5|4|3|2|1] 5-6 SYSTEMS [6|5|4|3|2|1] --- Proton Cannon [GHI|GHI] (1) 1-4> 1×3+/3 | 5-11> 1×4+/3 Slow 1 --- Phased Array Emitter [AC|BD] (1) 1-5> 1×3+/2 | 6-9> 1×4+/2 | 10-11> 1×5+/1 β Defensive --- TwinMissile (0) 1-5> 2×3+/2 | 6-11> 2×4+/2 Seeker; Bursting --- Action Points [_|_|_]; Hyperdrive [_]; Shuttlecraft {_} Inverted Defenses --- ID: MARANHÃO DN-class Starship (267/VI) See Universe W1 {±26|12|2} --- FWD: {_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_}[3+] PORT: {_|_|_|_|_|_|_}[3+] STBD: {_|_|_|_|_|_|_}[3+] AFT: {_|_|_|_|_} --- 1,3,5 HULL [*|11|10|9|8|7|6|5|4|3|2|1] 1-2 ENGINES [4|4|4|3|3|3|2|2|2|1|1|1] 3-4 WEAPONS [6|6|5|5|4|4|3|3|2|2|1|1] 5-6 SYSTEMS [6|6|5|5|4|4|3|3|2|2|1|1] --- ER Proton Cannon [AC|AC|BD|BD] (2) 1-5> 1×3+/3 | 6-14> 1×4+/3 Slow 1 --- Proton Cannon [ABCD] (1) 1-4> 1×3+/3 | 5-11> 1×4+/3 Slow 1 --- Phased Array Emitter [JKL] (1) 1-5> 1×3+/2 | 6-9> 1×4+/2 | 10-11> 1×5+/1 β Defensive --- TwinMissile (0) 1-5> 2×3+/2 | 6-11> 2×4+/2 Seeker; Bursting --- Action Points [_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_]; Hyperdrive [_]; Shield Regenerator [_|_]; Shuttlecraft {_} Bulkheads (1); Inverted Defenses ---$

AdAstraGames@adastragames· May 29

Last night's teaching game! I mercilessly diced @docvivileandra.bsky.social's Phobos cruiser to death, with an *astonishing* run of missile hits, while she apparently bought her fire control system from Packard-Bell after its acquisition by Temu.

A screen shot of a Newton's Cradle teaching game, where two ships are very close to each other in the middle of the shot; unfortunately for the Phobos, piloted by Vivi, that ship that's close at hand is a Shackleton-p, and its particle beams are very accurate.

There are two more ships with vectors taking them out and down, and another Phobox that's about to eat a lot of missiles on the left of the screen.

Ships are shown by boxes with artwork on them, over a hex map with a blue starfield, rendered on sticks to show alttiude. Each box has a second stick rendered showing where its vector will take it.

AdAstraGames@adastragames· May 26

This is a cat checkpoint; relinquish your most recent cat picture on your phone. This little guy has cost an hour of work over the last week by hitting key combinations that force a reboot and/or inserting chart tabs into gigantic Excel spreadsheets.

Picture of an orange felid sprawled with his head on the "island" of Insert/Delete/Page Up/Page Down/Home/End keys of an ergonomic keyboard, his right forelimb sprawled out over the right half of the home road keys. His back feet and tail are juuust under the monitor on a messy desk.

AdAstraGames@adastragames· May 26

We've got clean Drake Notation output on auto-converted ships for Starmada! The converted ships make sense in Starmada stats. There currently isn't a way to show Action Point costs for things in Drake notation, but Dan is working on it.

A screen capture showing a bunch of text in white on a darkish gray background.

The text is ship stats for Starmada, which would be incomprehensible to a screen reader, and only slightly less incomprehensible to someone who doesn't play Starmada!

AdAstraGames@adastragames· May 25

For the gaming crowd! We'll see if anyone figures out what that episode title means in Squadron Strike.

A TOS-era episode card with the Enterprise, titled "Hit, 8 to the 7, Bursting, Double Damage to SI"

AdAstraGames@adastragames· May 21

Further bug fixing done! Not sure why ammunition is showing up for every weapon and not just the Twin Missiles. Not sure how the Drake Notation shows AP costs.

$AFT: {_|_|_|_} --- 1,3,5 HULL [6|5|4|3|2|1] 1-2 ENGINES [4|4|3|2|2|1] 3-4 WEAPONS [6|5|4|3|2|1] 5-6 SYSTEMS [6|5|4|3|2|1] --- Proton Cannon [AB{4|3|2|1}|GHI{4|3|2|1}|GHI{4|3|2|1}] (2) 1-4> 1×3+/3 | 5-11> 1×4+/3 Slow 1 --- Phased Array Emitter [AC{4|3|2|1}|BD{4|3|2|1}] (1) 1-5> 1×3+/2 | 6-9> 1×4+/2 | 10-11> 1×5+/1 β Defensive --- TwinMissile [AC{4|3|2|1}] (1) 1-5> 2×3+/2 | 6-11> 2×4+/2 Seeker; Bursting --- Action Points [_|_|_]; Hyperdrive [_]; Shuttlecraft {_} Inverted Defenses$

AdAstraGames@adastragames· May 20

This is a Starmada ship automatically converted from Squadron Strike using the Drake notation (a text-only SSD). Weapon traits aren't showing up under the right weapons, so there's something I need to backtrack and find.

$ID: MAGELLAN CA-class (106/III) See Universe W1 {±8|4|1} --- FWD: {_|_|_|_|_|_|_}[3+] {_|_|_|_}PORT: STBD: {_|_|_|_} AFT: {_|_|_|_} --- 1,3,5 HULL [6|5|4|3|2|1] 1-2 ENGINES [4|4|3|2|2|1] 3-4 WEAPONS [6|5|4|3|2|1] 5-6 SYSTEMS [6|5|4|3|2|1] --- Proton Cannon [AB{4|3|2|1}|GHI{4|3|2|1}|GHI{4|3|2|1}] (2) 1-9> 1×3+/3 | 10-11> 1×3+/2 --- Phased Array Emitter [AC{4|3|2|1}|BD{4|3|2|1}] (1) 1-3> 1×3+/5 | 4-6> 1×3+/4 | 7-9> 1×3+/3 Seeker; Bursting; Crushing --- TwinMissile [AC{4|3|2|1}] (1) --- Action Points [_|_|_]; Hyperdrive [_]; Shuttlecraft {_} Inverted Defenses ---$

AdAstraGames@adastragames· May 14

A screen capture of a hex map over a starfield, with pink borders, and some hexes highlighted in blue, yellow and red, with box miniatures on stick displays over, showing a Wyvern, Tizona, Corax and Colada all in a kinetic merge.

AdAstraGames@adastragames· May 9

One of the best parts of this gig is doing art approvals and getting art ready for playtesting on the Virtual Map.

The Colada Interceptor, a sleek fighter with a gigantic engine and stubby wings with a quad-barrel blaster on a rotating assembly behind the cockpit. There are a trio of missiles underslung on bottom.

The Corax Mercenary fighter, a bat-winged dual engined thing in red and gold with a large, bulbous and capacious cockpit. These fighters are durable and hard to bring down...fitting for a type used by Mercenaries who want to collect their paycheck.

The Jay Mercenary fighter, a dart-shaped single engined thing in orange and gold with a bulbous and capacious cockpit. These fighters are durable and hard to bring down...fitting for a type used by Mercenaries who want to collect their paycheck.

The Tizona Interceptor, a sleek fighter with a gigantic engine and stubby wings with a dual-barrel blaster on a rotating assembly behind the cockpit, with six underslung missiles.

AdAstraGames@adastragames· May 4

Did you miss out on our May the Fourth Be With You demos today? We've still got one more demo game on May 4th, at 7 PM Eastern US time!

The final end state at the end of turn 7, when the students luck finally ran out; that explosion used to be Stephen Rochelle!

Still, they got through three waves of Cockatrices, and I warned them that the fourth wave was "And now I play like I designed the game and want to murder you..."

AdAstraGames@adastragames· Apr 20

And he and the Ad Astra crew will be doing still more Squadron Strike demos on May 3rd and 4th supporting Squadron Strike, Romance of the Seven Realms! So, come fly the unfriendly skies with us! Many pewpewpews will happen! Fun shall now commence!

AdAstraGames@adastragames· Apr 14

We need two to five volunteers! The Squadron Strike 3rd Edition rulebook, tutorial book and SSD book are complete, and we need proofreaders. Proofreaders who've never played or read the game are particularly useful. We use a Google Sheet for tabulating feedback. Full details are on our Discord.

The last page of the Squadron Strike tutorial. The two paragraphs of text read:

Heinlein glanced at the painting Hitler was airbrushing, which had somehow turned the Sirius system into a roiling, frothing mass of rock, dust, and actinic rays coming from a double star. It looked nothing like reality. The Austrian was getting worked up again, his hands gesticulating as he mangled English and German at Smith—the man could only seem to focus on something when he was outraged over it. Typical artist temperament. Not wanting to get drawn into another of his tired recapitulations of Nietzsche and Marx on the nature of the superman and the inevitability of destiny, Heinlein withdrew to the blessed solitude of paperwork.
Two copies were needed of this report—one for the U.S. Navy, and the redacted one for the Brasilians.

There is a picture of an angular spaceship with glow-y bits at the stern on the left of the panel, the spaceship is verticaly composed, lit from a light source off panel to the upper right, against a backdrop of rocks.

AdAstraGames@adastragames· Apr 2

End of turn 4! 6 of 14 stranded crew have been picked up, and the League player made a 30 degree course non-change that meant they got hurt much worse than they wanted on the Feorag Dunnin. Game resumes next Wednesday!

The Feorag Dunnin, having taken enough damage to mess with her capabilities in ways that make her much iffier to fly.

The Kirklin-class DD has a damage/degradation state of "I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm great, that's all coming back fast..."

WHEEEEEEEZE "Oh god, that hurt, that's not good, that's..."

And the Dunnin just hit that second state. A lot of the things that make it "nifty" are still there, but there's no internal "stuffing". The *next* set of internal hits is going to be bad.

Ships, planet, and relative positions and vectors at the end of turn 4...

AdAstraGames@adastragames· Apr 2

Tonight's playtest. We have been assured, many times, that 3D makes no difference in space combat... Can you find all 9 ships in this image?

An image of an earthlike planet over a hex map on a blue starfield. There are box minis for 9 ships in this image, all at different orientations with end of turn tents sticking out of their fronts.

AdAstraGames@adastragames· Apr 1

And sometime today, there's PayPal fuckery going on. Our company bank account has two pending transfers to PayPal; my PayPal account does not show these transfers. They came in at 5:13 Eastern Time. The bank is trying to figure out if they can stop payment or get a refund process going.

PayPal balance showing no fund transfer entries, let alone two in the amounts that are on the bank account.

AdAstraGames@adastragames· Mar 26

Running a teaching game of Squadron Strike tomorrow at noon eastern US time, and have an open seat! If you've played X-Wing and wished maneuver decisions mattered more, boy is this the game for you! Because it's 3D with momentum, you don't need to sprinkle terrain on the map to make it fun!

AdAstraGames@adastragames· Mar 22

This now works. Next up, getting the fighter data into our XML files for the Starmada export. Dan Kast will get wind of this (We posted it on his Discord) and make a new edition of Starmada. :) We've boxed him in though! Most of the conversion is using his spreadsheet, embedded in ours!

A screen capture of the chunk of the Excel spreadsheet that handles the Starmada Drydock automatic conversion that shows several types of Carrier: trait, and several types of named fighter types.

It's populated the correct "types" of carrier trait, and the correct numbers of flights for each type of fighter present on this Squadron Strike ship design after it's been converted over.

AdAstraGames@adastragames· Mar 9

The art that came in...