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AdAstraGames
@adastragames.com
1.8K followers 270 following 2.3K posts
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.

https://adastragames.com | https://discord.gg/uuYC48wE4c | https://ascbi.net
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adastragames.com
Pick-up Romance of the Seven Realms teaching game at 5 PM Eastern time tomorrow.

Join our Discord server (link in Profile). Come play the game that X-Wing wished it were. :)
A desktop wallpaper showing two space fighters done in white with anhedral canards, with red highlighting, being chased by two bat-winged fighters with solar panel wings. Two blasts are coming from the left-most bat-wing fighter are juuuust missing the pursued bigger fighter. The background has a nebular cloud with stars in it, in light gray over a starfield, with an earthlike planet in the background. Over the top is ROMANCE of the SEVEN REALMS in a font from Long Long Ago, with the Ad Astra Games logo in the lower left, and the Squadron Strike! logo in the lower right.
October 22, 2025 at 4:25 AM
adastragames.com
Soon. Soon this will be unleashed upon the world.
A screenshot showing an Excel spreadsheet name and an absurly large file size (49152 KB)
October 20, 2025 at 2:59 PM
adastragames.com
And now the XML clears through XMLLint for the Starmada conversion. I've got at least one feature left to implement, if I can find the data in the Starmada conversion without touching Dan's crazy CSS tricks.
A snippet of a screenshot from XML lint saying: Result All good, your XML is valid.
September 22, 2025 at 6:35 AM
adastragames.com
The previously mentioned data structures, now "behaving".
Two blocks of Excel cells with some in deep magenta and some in pink, with a lot of white space. There's a lot of function calls going on behind the placidity.
September 21, 2025 at 4:32 AM
adastragames.com
Trying this uploading it as a video...
September 2, 2025 at 7:37 PM
adastragames.com
This is an experiment -- making a screen cap "gif" of the movement from Monday's teaching game.

I didn't finalize the camera position until the end of turn 1, and I probably need to overlay text labels on the ships on the next one I do.

As well as turn number and step labels.

But hey, shiny!
An animated gif showing the positions and orientations of five ships in a Newton's Cradle game for Squadron Strike, walking from the initiai position to the end of the game. The first few frames have a different camera position from the rest.
September 2, 2025 at 4:23 PM
adastragames.com
Jess has gotten brilliant shots, and almost got two more kills. As in both of my pilots are mortally injured, and the Cockatrices Desire is Suffering and Karmic Tourist are limited to a pivot of 1 *or* a roll of 1, but not both. No fighters were killed, and all my fire was largely ineffective.
A screen capture of an R7R game, with fighters in closer positions, as the upper Excalibur (Valakas) is trying to turn and bring himself around to shoot at the fighters menacing his wingman! Two Cocnatrices (Desire is Suffering and Karmic Tourist) at the bottom of the image, both missing their Bridge and Movement boxes...greatly hindering their maneuver.
August 29, 2025 at 2:24 AM
adastragames.com
Having killed both the Karmic Tourist and the Desire is Suffering, the wheel of suffering turns, and they are reincarnated!

The Not Again is also dead, but since the Not Again is still alive, it doesn't reincarnate yet.
A screen shot of the R7R demo, with two explosion markers for the Cockatrice fighters that died, and two Excaliburs flying in opposite directions.. The aft of two reinforcing Cockatrice fighters are in the foreground at some height above the hex map.
August 29, 2025 at 1:47 AM
adastragames.com
Jess has taken some damage, but she's now up 2 kills to nothing.
Two Excaliburs. The Gator has lost her rear shield and has taken shots inside the ship!
August 29, 2025 at 1:41 AM
adastragames.com
Gator (Jess Miller-Camp) is currently 1 kill to Valakas' (Ty Eklund) 0!

Turn 3.
A screen shot of a Romance of the Seven Realms demo, with two Excaliburs making a maneuver mistake! There are three Cockatrices maneuvering to take advantage!
August 29, 2025 at 1:24 AM
adastragames.com
For practice with the call-and-response of resolving attacks and damage, Teentengee also fired at the now dead Not Again.

Tim did two SI hits, destroying a fighter.

On the second row of Xs, you can see Teetengee working out some anger management issues...
A Squadron Strike ship systems display showing four Cockatrices, named Oh No, Not Again, Karmic Tourist and Desire is Suffering. All but the Desire is Suffering have had their SI hits shot off; we tracked excess SI hits to show practice in the fire procedure. The Not Again is the actively damage ship, with marks in red. You can see that there are 2 "X"s on the row with the SI box, and 10 "X"s marked underneath it...
August 14, 2025 at 9:20 PM
adastragames.com
Next, we tested of Mode 0 versus Mode 1, once we got the relative pricing worked out for Mode 0 and Mode 2. (In a very real sense, you can think of Mode 2 movement as the underlying baseline of Squadron Strike, and the other two are variants of it.)

Which leads to this table:
Maneuver Equivalencies & Mixing Movement Modes Only mix movement modes if you expect experienced players to play with the setting. Figuring out what your ships can do and anticipating what your opponent’s ships can do is difficult enough when everyone is using the same laws of motion. It can become overwhelming when movement modes differ. If you’re determined to do it, here are some X to Y to Z notes. The table below assumes that mode 2 movement is the default, and treats thrust/movement and pivots as a ratio of the mode 2 baseline. If you’re doing this, it helps if you keep the ships simple; TinyFleets and Diaspora mix movement modes in extant Squadron Strike settings. For example, if a Mode 2 ship had a thrust of 7, a pivot of 8 and a roll of 4, the corresponding numbers for Mode 1 would be 3 thrust, pivot 4, and a roll of 4. For mode 0, it would be Move 10, pivot 5 and roll 3. Mode 2 Mode 1 Mode 0 Thrust/Movement 1:1 2:1 1:1.5 Pivot 1:1 2:1 1.5:1 Roll 1:1 1:1 1.5:1 Mode 2 Mode 1 Mode 0 Thrust/Movement 1:1 2:1 1:1.5 Pivot 1:1 2:1 1.5:1 Roll 1:1 1:1 1.5:1
August 12, 2025 at 9:43 PM
adastragames.com
66) Which means your space fighters are more akin to "space technicals."

Like this bad boy from Newton's Cradle:

Sadly, there's no call for Really Kewl Wingz with geometry that makes no aerodynamic sense, and especially no call for tail-planes/rudders.
A ship systems display for a Rockhopper that's been hastily turned into a technical. It's got four missile launchers, each with 4 shots each, a maximum thrust of 2, a pivot of 9(!), and is terribly fragile. To put in the missile launchers, they literally removed the pressure bulkheads of the left side of the ship, and even the bulkheads that are left aren't great defenses... In one scenario, we name one of these the "Hiluxian Avenger!" after the traditional use of the Toyota Hilux in the global south as a technically armed and armored vehicle....
August 11, 2025 at 12:09 AM
adastragames.com
I love art turn-over day.
Plan view of an Anduril-class space fighter from Romance of the Seven Realms. Plan view of a Corax-class space fighter from Romance of the Seven Realms. Plan view of a Habakiri-class space fighter from Romance of the Seven Realms. Plan view of a Jacalus-class space fighter from Romance of the Seven Realms.
August 6, 2025 at 6:18 PM
adastragames.com
Eye candy should be equal opportunity. Let's see if this gets auto-flagged for naughty content...
An render of a caucasian-ish male wearing glisteny leather straps in artistic curlicues, showing lots of skin, including spirals into his nipples, and a chromed dildo-esque codpiece, holding a spear in his right hand. His headpiece has extended spikey bits, holding up feathers. He has the "disinterested model" facial expression and a barely there black leather strap mask covering his cheekbones and eyebrows that offers no protection or identity concealment. The caption read: If Men In Video Games Were "Armored" Like Women. A black man in an all white outfit with thighs concealed by straps, thigh high boots, a "coat" that has a full left sleeve, but only part of a right sleeve; the coat spreads wide to show his abs, hipbones and thighs, and draws the eye to a white leather cocksheath. He is wearing a conical white hat that conceals his face to his cheekbones and probably makes it hard for him to see.
July 30, 2025 at 1:03 PM
adastragames.com
Hey, guys, new Shatterpoint set just dropped!

And it comes with the paints! Game changer!

I wonder what the cards look like!
A package of Bluey ceramic figurines that happens to have the right mix of figure sizes to be a typical Shatterpoint minis set. With included paint pots!
July 13, 2025 at 12:43 PM
adastragames.com
AV:T 3rd Edition Box Art Reveal!

Charles Oines does great work.

I expect to send these to press tomorrow, and be shipping the game in about 2 weeks.
The front cover of the Attack Vector 3rd Edition boxed set, with both the left and right side panels. The words "Third Edition" are in reddish orange text on the front and both side panels, and on the front is the product ID number (ADA 11000) and the names of the designers and contributors. It has the Attack Vector logo in the Earth font, with the word Tactical blocked out of a rounded rectangle; the logos are in an extruded chrome finish. Beneath the logos are two spaceships, the one farther away has a spheroid main hull, with flame and light coming out of a terrifying hole in its side. Both spaceships have fusion engines that are at the end of masts sticking out of the aft of the ship, with spiked radiators sticking from the engine bell. The ship in the foreground is cylindrical with a radiator housing prominently visible on the dorsal surface, and weapon turrets on the side, and is cylindrically shaped. A part of its hull, not directlyfacing the camera, is still glowing white from a weapon hit. The back panel of the AV:T boxed set, which has a picture of a spaceship in an AVID ball on the center, the Origins Award Winner logo in gold as a diamond shape, the game logo, endorsements by John Rennie of Scientific American, David Weber (author of the Honor Harrington series) and Jerry Pournelle, co-author of The Mote In God's eye. The tagline at the top says: "DO YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO COMMAND A STARSHIP? and a lot of text extolling what the game does, and what makes it unique (3D, vector, segmented movement, scientifically accurate, lots of meaningful cascading decisions.) There is a photo of game components on a black starfield hex map, showing box miniatures in tilt blocks at different altitudes, the ship's future position markers showing a separating set of vectors, end the red and blue Ship Control Cards, along with a bit of one of the shellstar cards in the game.
July 11, 2025 at 5:58 AM
adastragames.com
These are all for Squadron Strike, the virtual table top also supports Attack Vector: Tactical.

We run teaching sessions for both games regularly; the Discord server in this account's bio is where we schedule them.

Click the right face on our anti-spam fake CAPTCHA to see all the channels.
A screen shot of box minis and a planet hovering over a hex grid on a blue starfield, showing 3D orientation and altitude. A screen shot of box minis and a planet hovering over a hex grid on a blue starfield, showing 3D orientation and different altitudes, including torpedos moving. A screen shot of box minis and a planet hovering over a hex grid on a blue starfield, showing 3D orientation with torpedoes moving and ships making unwise decisions to avoid them... Uh oh. This looks bad. That's a lot of torpedoes in the foreground of the shot, near their target...
July 3, 2025 at 6:49 AM
adastragames.com
I've tried hard, multiple times, to make the "take strategic territory, build units, take more strategic territory" kind of game that would generate Squadron Strike battles and failed at it. Tau Deichmann wrote one for me for an upcoming product called Wung Jian's War.

Here's its map.
A hex map of the delta-v costs between the four Galileian moons and Amalthea, where the dV prices are in the topmost corner of each hex, there's a track numbered 1-12 on the bottom, an there are arrows that indicate which transits are available on which turns between certain hexes. You maneuver with fuel and orbital mechanics on it as a strategic play space for fighting a proxy war.
July 3, 2025 at 1:11 AM
adastragames.com
Now we needed to figure out why the default ship image wasn't displaying:

Which we did!

We're trying to figure out how to pass through the Squadron Strike image data for a ship, including filepath, through Starmada's HTML sequence, and have found it to be dodgy.
And now our converted SSD is a perfect match.
July 2, 2025 at 11:32 PM
adastragames.com
So, it looked right, and then we asked "Why is the converted ship so much more expensive than the native built one?"

This required digging through some places in the conversion process where we fixed (literally) cse of two numbers being flipped into the wrong columns.
A Starmada SSD for the faction "See Universe!W1" minus the default graphics, the random damage allocation hit location tables, and the usual 4-track Starmada damage allocation system with "loss limits" in each box rather than a countdown of systems. The Engine track is shaded for AP costs, as is one weapon icon, and three of the systems on the ship, which generates 3 Action Points. It has 3+ screens on the front, left and right, and a 5+, 4+ and 3+ Screen on the Aft, with the 4+ box costing 1 AP and the 5+ box costing 3 APs. It has 4 shield bubbles on the Aft. The weapon table and firing arcs are showing correctly. The price is correct!
July 2, 2025 at 11:32 PM
adastragames.com
That was our next fix, and in the process we figured out some errors we'd introduced in the data pulls for the Starmada native HTML ship sheet layout.
A Starmada SSD for the faction "See Universe!W1" with the default graphics, the random damage allocation hit location tables, and the usual 4-track Starmada damage allocation system with "loss limits" in each box rather than a countdown of systems. The Engine track is shaded for AP costs, as is one weapon icon, and three of the systems on the ship, which generates 3 Action Points. It has 3+ screens on the front, left and right, and a 5+, 4+ and 3+ Screen on the Aft, with the 4+ box costing 1 AP and the 5+ box costing 3 APs. It has 4 shield bubbles on the Aft. The Random Damage Allocation tables are displaying correctly. The "@" symbols are screen hits.
July 2, 2025 at 11:32 PM
adastragames.com
We figured out how to get the weapons to display; it was an 'off-by-four' error on where that part of the HTML was pulling information, and figuring out how Dan encapsulated the AP data with the weapon data!

We also fixed the Stutterwarp display.

The damage allocation tables are still broken.
A Starmada SSD for the faction "See Universe!W1" minus the default graphics, and the random damage allocation hit location tables are still incorrect, and the usual 4-track Starmada damage allocation system with "loss limits" in each box rather than a countdown of systems. The Engine track is shaded for AP costs, as is one weapon icon, and three of the systems on the ship, which generates 3 Action Points. It has 3+ screens on the front, left and right, and a 5+, 4+ and 3+ Screen on the Aft, with the 4+ box costing 1 AP and the 5+ box costing 3 APs. It has 4 shield bubbles on the Aft. The weapon data is now showing properly, including the weapon firing arc glyphs with AP shading. Starmada only allows 1 AP per group of weapons, due to shading limitations in CSS. We've also gotten the Stutterwarp to show up properly, compared to the 'done in Starmada's sheet' version.
July 2, 2025 at 11:32 PM
adastragames.com
Our first export of HTML to generate an SSD actually generated valid HTML once we put the two additional tags on it, which we figured we'd need to do before we tried. That was a promising sign! We expected more chaos at first.

However...
A Starmada SSD for the faction "See Universe!W1" minus the default graphics, the random damage allocation hit location tables are just numbered 1-6, but the usual 4-track Starmada damage allocation system with "loss limits" in each box rather than a countdown of systems worked just fine! The Engine track is shaded for AP costs, as is one weapon icon, and three of the systems on the ship, which generates 3 Action Points. It has 3+ screens on the front, left and right, and a 5+, 4+ and 3+ Screen on the Aft, with the 4+ box costing 1 AP and the 5+ box costing 3 APs. It has 4 shield bubbles on the Aft. It does not have the corner lines defining shield boundaries...which is probably tied to the graphics problem. While we have the movement order area dispalyign correctly, we're missing the Stutterdrives, and all the weapon information save for the AP hinting hexagon showing up to highlight where the weapons should've been, and aren't.
July 2, 2025 at 11:32 PM
adastragames.com
Here's what we fixed, as a narrative, fixing the Starmada SSD export! With screen captures!

This is the ship in Dan's spreadsheet:

It is not a sensible ship. It's "collection of corner cases for conversion" we made to test auto-conversion.

You'll want to read Alt Text for the bug-hunting.
A Starmada SSD for the faction "See Universe!W1" with the default graphics, the random damage allocation hit location tables, and the usual 4-track Starmada damage allocation system with "loss limits" in each box rather than a countdown of systems. The Engine track is shaded for AP costs, as is one weapon icon, and three of the systems on the ship, which generates 3 Action Points. It has 3+ screens on the front, left and right, and a 5+, 4+ and 3+ Screen on the Aft, with the 4+ box costing 1 AP and the 5+ box costing 3 APs. It has 4 shield bubbles on the Aft.
July 2, 2025 at 11:32 PM