Russian Fleet Box 1 for Squadron Strike is now up for pre-order! Yes, the game made it to the 140 pre-orders we needed to finance this and the Brits made it past 20 pre-orders.
The pre-order target to start production is 40 fleet boxes. We don’t know exactly how many ships would go into each $59.95 fleet box, but our other fleet boxes contain 8 to 18 ships each (the 8 includes a three-piece superdreadnought). The cost of making the molds varies with a lot of factors, including complexity of pieces, size of pieces, and number of pieces.
Click image for full-sized rendering.
From top left:
Kirov, Kiev, Slava, Moskva, Minsk
Next up are the Japanese. We need 7 more Squadron Strike pre-orders and at least 20 pre-orders for the Russians to be able to afford to put the Japanese up for pre-order. Here’s just a taste of the Japanese to whet your appetite:
As with all Ad Astra Games pre-orders, you pay nothing now and we don’t store your credit card information. When our caster tells us that everything is ready to go, we’ll send you a notice to confirm your order and pay.
Pre-order Russian Fleet Box 1 today!
Science Thursday is always a fun piece to write (even if the usual writer is off working on other projects this week). We’ve got a potpourrie of tech geeky goodness for you.
First of all, small ideas can have big consequences. You may remember some pieces from earlier on about how strange regulations were keeping model rocketry clubs from operating near the Cape. Well, model rocketry company Lund is making a rifle that mixes air and a liquid propellant on the fly to set muzzle velocities; this allows the same gun to be used for crowd control or lethal combat by selecting a lever. There are still issues with rate of fire and reliability, but it’s suitable for police work, if not high intensity (or even low intensity) combat.
Magneto plasma drives, also called Hall Effect thrusters, aren’t anything approaching an AV:T torch drive in terms of efficiency, but for most real world applications, they’re more than sufficient. Lockheed-Martin has demonstrated a new Hall Effect thruster that they’re trying to get the DoD interested in. One of the things that this application would do is allow for much more flexibility in configuring satellite constellations. While it’s hard to imagine something whizzing overhead in orbit at 7.5 km/sec as being “immobile”, most satellites really don’t have much maneuver capability. When one in a constellation is knocked out (or could be knocked out by an enemy power), there’s not a lot that can be done to move an existing satellite into a place where it can cover. Hall Effect thrusters, like any good electromagnetic drive, have really high ISPs - in this case, over 1500 seconds, and possibly more - and can be repositioned more readily. This is a lot better than having to launch a new one from the ground.
One of the issues that plagues exploration of other planets is that GPS is incredibly handy. From proposals to use Pulsars to create an “orbital GPS system” on down, one of the tricks that NASA wants in its quiver for future planetary exploration is a GPS like system. Enter Dr. Li, who was the lead scientist behind allowing rovers to navigate on Mars. He’s now working on a proposal to let a similar “faux” GPS constellation work on the Moon.
…we’ll find out!
Ken Burnside, and Loyal Demo Minion Ken Watanabe will be at both World Boardgaming Championships (Lancaster PA, August 6-10th) and then, with barely two days to recover, out to GenCon Indy (Indianapolis, IN, August 13-17.
Events on the slate for both events include demos of Attack Vector and Saganami Island Tactical Simulator, and Super Duper Secret Playtests of Squadron Strike. If you’re in the Lancaster or Indy area, come on by and say hi to Ken and Ken, before 10 days of gaming in a 12 day span causes their brains to leak out their ears!
