Ad Astra
By JP Frantz |
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2004 at
10:22 pm
Ad Astra Games is a company specializing in scientifically and mathematically accurate games. Attack Vector: Tactical is their take on a true, 3D simulation of ship to ship combat in space. The pieces look like they do for a reason, with realism over aestherics. It sounds cool, but it is a bit pricey. Their Universe section details the backstory to the game. Check out the download page for more interesting stuff. Their What’s New also reads like a mini-blog.
A short, but invasive, alien abduction to The Eternal Golden Braid for the link!
Updated to spell universe correctly so the little gray grammer aliens won’t flog me anymore.
Filed under: Web Sites
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It’s pricey because Ken is using realistic economics to launch the game–in other words he is trying to do it realistically and not bankrupt himself!
Aside from that he is giving us a game with not only great thought put into it (he’s been bouncing it off some very picky people) and some very high quality components. I bought the playtest version (when it was called Delta Vee), and for a playtest the components were better than most finished games.
By the way…”Universe”…
JP mistakenly used the “Univerese” which is the universal language of the Universe.
So Fred, since you’ve played it….
How is it? Is it fun? Is it capital ship based? Are there fighters? Can I have a copy?
Well…recalling that I played a playtest version…
It’s fun. It’s realistic. You won’t be able to do Star Trek or Star Wars swooshy maneuvers. It’s based on good-ol Newtonian physics…you have to plan carefully. If you just blow off some missiles, you’re likely to miss because you weren’t plotting where you’re opponent will be.
If by “capital ship” you mean aircraft carriers in space, no it’s more like “destroyers in space”. Not fighters, not battleships. If you look at the backstory, you’ll see there’s a limit on resources, plus people were scared into “brushfire” wars, rather than all out wars.
Can you have a copy? You can order one. The more that get pre-ordered, the faster we see our finished products. There’s also a download of the first section or so, to get you started.
That was a joke there Fred. I’ll order it if I can scrounge up the money and if I can find any willing players. Scott? Kevin? John?
Oh, does it mention how long it takes? I’ll look again. And thanks for the link Fred. This game looks cool!
I’m in.
Here’s a flyer that explains a bit about the game. Be warned, massively colorful and illustrated Adobe Acrobat document that takes a long time to open if you’re stuck on a dialup (like me!):
http://www.adastragames.com/downloads/GTM_AD.pdf
Now that is a serious PDF file. 8.5 MB for one, admittedly landscape, page. And its a cool flyer to boot. In fact, all their games sound cool. Especially the fleet level one. And it doesn’t surprise me to see that a Star Fleet Battles veteran is involved with the goal of making AV:T, simple to play (at least simpler than SFB!).
Just got the following in e-mail…
I now have 3 complete copies of the game (minus the box miniature
sheets, color cover and mapsheets) to take with me to GTS.
Every component for production is either at the warehouse, or at the
printers. I just printed up the cover art as an 11×17
laminated “show-off at the booth” item, and got admiring sighs out of
ZipWhaa games.
I am anticipating being able to ship these games out to the pre-order
customers and distributors by late April.
The download library now has:
The table of Contents of the rulebook
The index of the rulebook.
The master ship chart for the shipbook.
2-page spreads on the Wasp and Rafik classes, with the class history
on the left hand page of the spread and the SSD on the right.
You can find all of these (and a few other goodies) at:
http://www.adastragames.com/downloads.html
Please feel free to bounce this email to mailing lists that might
find it of interest!
Just out of curiosity Fred, what is GTS? I’m assuming its a trade show of the gaming variety.