FASA Games, Inc.

I have...
But can't make it to GenCon, unless my boss allows me two vacations a year! xD

Ah... I thought it was for alll information etc. Well, I'm not myself involved in NA, but I can say that it is being worked on as we speak

Would love to see some pictures of the ships, the board and the ideas behind the new NA! =-D

Something like that. Once we get some of the bits and pieces finalized, especially where the miniatures are concerned I'll start posting up some pictures. The GOOD news is that if you already bought Noble Armada miniatures in the past you can still use them!

more like U-boats, eh?
i'll give it a shot!

(will have to shake 3 years of sail-in-space cobwebs out of my head, but still, just glad to see the game stand up again...)

I've gone through a few playtests and it is turning out nicely.

A little to add - I think we have captured a lot more tactical feel of moving ships and setting up areas of control and fields of fire. These ships still have powerful broadside weaponry though so I think we'll end up with something that is something much more fluid.

Boarding actions will still play a big role as well and being able to get your galliots in without being cut down by destroyers and cruisers will be tricky. Those galliots with their marines may be the best way to bring those cruisers down though. One thing that we want to keep is that these ships are tough. The smaller ones will still wither under heavy fire but they should still be able to perform significant roles in creating sensor lines and chains of communication.

My personal goal is to have as much information as we can about each ship on the readout and easy to access. I'm trying to reduce the amount of charts and tables that are needed to reference during game play so that focus is on the action and not on looking things up. NA:ACTA did a pretty good job of this but my personal opinion is it reduced the ships down a little too much. I've gone back to the original NA sheets and we're working on upgrading those.

The downside of the sheets is that it will make truly epic scale engagements more difficult to manage. I think that skirmish level (5 or so ships) and probably up to about 8-10 ships per side will be the sweet spot for a quick game. I'm envisioning though a system with multiple players per side each controlling a fleet and working in unison, allowing some really epic battles. I'll be trying it out at GenCon.