Sounds great, hopefully existing campaigns can be ported relatively smoothly.
I’m especially excited about the unique species abilities.
I love pretty much everything on that list. They’re things that I think the game will be significantly improved by. Except for one:
Challenge Dice.
It really depends on how they’re being replaced, but that’s a significant changes to how the game works (both combat and extended tasks, off the top of my head, rely on them) with knock on effects for Talents as well. Are there going to be updated PDFs for the supplements?
It’s making me nervous though. Like, is it just going to be flat damage? Combat can become a bit monotonous already in STA, and flat damage in my experience reinforces that. Usually, there’s a lot of other things added to spruce up combat in other ways (eg TOR has additional abilities that can be unlocked via challenge dice (by another name), automatic injuries for certain rolls, and so forth, which can be modified via your build). STA combat could improve by doing something similar, but then that’s stepping even further away from 1e rules…
Maybe it’ll improve the game, but it is a significant gamble, depending on what’s replacing them.
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I second you on that - it’s the one thing I’m not liking. Challenge dice are one of my favourite mechanics, and add all kinds of interesting elements that I don’t see easy to add back in by other means. I hope there will be options to keep them?
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Please, make at least optional rules, to use Challende Dice! That is important because the feeling. (Or just change your mind, and not take away something we love.) 
It literally starts with “the cool LCARS look is gone”. How were you even able to proceed with reading?!
THAT’s dedication!
(I am legally obliged to add that the above statement is an exaggerated form of irony-soaked humour that I tend to call “joke”. Please react accordingly. Thank you.)
For the rest of the list:
Well.
So, the “entirely new game”-approach, it is. How unfortunate.
I actually do like the idea of omitting challenge dice very much. They always felt strange. And while I never actually had the possibility to test Dune myself, from what I’ve saw streamed… well. I’d probably like it.
Yet, I am told that a game without d6 is backwards-compatible to a game with d6.
Curious how that will work out.
Since 2E “is compatible with first edition supplements and expansions” (or so I’m told), there will be no need for optional rules to include Challenge Dice into your game. Because of the two games being compatible, it should just work out of the box.
That is, unless of course, I do not know the meaning of the word “compatibility” which I take the freedom to doubt, right now.
Yet:
(It’s now 60+ posts, though.)
As for compatible, as I suspected, it seems Modiphius does have a different idea to me on what compatible is. That’s going to require conversions of the CD related feats at least. Hopefully the characters and ships will still be roughly balanced and they’ll give us a conversion document (eg for every CD you’d normally roll in 1e, you get +1 damage, and for every 3 CD (rounded down), you get an effect or something similar). I could see that being easy to work with.
Still, I’m all for the increased distinctions between species.
I wonder if words still have a meaning. 
“Compatible” sounds very, very cool from a marketing perspective, though.
Anyway.
Blog post says:
Truly hope there will be positive/negative influence lists for not only Starfleet and Klingons, but other polities as well.
Ugh… as an owner of every single print STA 1e product, the removal of challenge dice is a huge red flag for me. Also starship combat being streamlined, when IMO it was already too basic to begin with – I want MORE cool stuff ships can do, not less!
I’ve been a devoted fan of the line up until now, but from the sounds of it I’ll probably have to stick with 1e. I just can’t see how the two versions can be compatible if challenge dice are being dropped.
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No offense, but why be concerned because you own every single 1e product?
I’d understand concern because one owns lots of STA challenge dice (which I happen to do, incidentally, but that’s for another story). 
Even IF rules WERE not compatible (I’m told they are! 
) you could still use them for all the fluff.
It’s the physical dice that I’d worry about, if anything.
So there are 40-ish talents or roles that mention challenge dice, out of 500-ish total. Several of those are weapons-based (e.g. claws instead of unarmed strike), so that probably won’t change (other than the weapon stats). Several more are rolling for effect, which can be replicated by rolling a d20 and the effect happening on a specific range of numbers.
So depending on how things actually work, there won’t be that many talents to rework. (Based on challenge dice only—other rules may muck other talents up.)
It does kind of feel bad to splash out on books…only to have them not be correct. I’ve only got the CRB, SE and UP in physical (the divisions are digital and I haven’t gone for anything else yet). Obviously CRB is obsolete, SE isn’t a massive deal. UP is going to to irk me a bit. If it’s easy to convert it won’t be too bad, but still…it not being accurate and working out the box will be a negative.
Still, can’t have the editions frozen in stone forever, so I’m not salty about it…but I can understand where people are coming from.
I mean, I obviously do own lots of challenge dice, I figured that was sort of implied 
Plus three packs of Klingon dice sets, plus the ones in the Tricorder set, etc.
The big problem IMO is that the game is adding stuff I actually want (Strange New Worlds, for example), and removing things I also want (challenge dice, making starship combat even less interesting, etc.). I’d be happier if I got the former and not the latter, you know?
Also converting stuff sucks. I have barely enough time to game as it is, and for anything that’s not D&D 5e I’m always the GM, so I don’t need another time-sink of converting characters and ships and whatever to the new system.
My broad question is how much converting will actually be necessary? The free briefs that they produce, for example, don’t have any dice mentioned at all, just straight narrative. So in theory you can use the story from any book with either set of rules, right?
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The missions etc should be fine for the most part - just the occasional reference to extended tasks etc. Mostly itll be supplements like UP.
Hey, what was the meaning of “compatible” again? Maybe I just get the concept wrong. Maybe I’m just lost in translation. English isn’t my first language, you know?
I always thought “compatible” meant “able to (…) work successfully with something (…) else” or a state “in which two or more things work together in combination without problems or conflict”?
2e will be compatible with 1e.
So there will be no need for conversions etc.
Because that would be an incompability, right?!
But so many people here seem to assume that there will be the need to convert things.
Did I get the words wrong? I’m totally confused. 
You’re correct in your definition. However, there are degrees of compatibility.
2e is not 100% compatible with 1e. I can’t just take the Enterprise-D from my copy of UP and plug it in to a 2e campaign. Why not? Because when it shoots its phasers, it rolls 8CD…which don’t exist in 2e. You can’t just use it straight.
So, we have to find an equivalent of it in 2e to make it work. It could be really simple. 1CD, on average, gives (5/6) damage, so likely that will be converted to 1 damage. The Enterprise-D’s phasers will do 8CD damage, and so do 8 damage (or 7 if we’re fine tuning). However, how do you account for effects? Perhaps it will be that for ever 3CD you would roll, you get 1 effect (which is the average result of a CD in 1e).
That would be the simplest and easiest way to do itz but it depends on the new rules and how they work. It could be more complex than that. In fact, I daresay that it will be more complex than that. Regardless though, you’ll have to convert them - unless the odds work out evenly and you decide to just keep the 1e ships as-is and roll CD for them.
Of course, you also have Talents that affect the number of Challenge Dice you roll (or perhaps are activated by those rolls) which won’t work in a system without CD. Of course, you can use the guide I mentioned earlier - of the systems are close enough. I’m thinking that it won’t be as convenient as that though.
Y’know what’s sad? I know, I really know this will be a great game and I’ll 100% have a blast playing it.
And at the same time, this is the first STA product I have a hard time to feel any pleasant anticipation. On the contrary: I’m kind of “anti-hyped”. By a product that will be great. It’s insane. 
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I tend to find that drip feeding information, unless each “drip” is substantial, is likely to reduce my excitement rather than increase it - particularly if there’s something that’s making me anxious.
Take 1D&D for example; I was super excited and the drops every few weeks got me really excited. Until the one with the Druid came which was absolutely awful, and it just killed my interest. Like, I’m going to get the new books…but I have zero motivation to keep up with the UA.
The blog post helped. It was pretty much a laundry list of the things I felt 1e could have done better (barring CDs). I should really enjoy the new CRB. I just need something something to actually sink my teeth into - also a response on how easy it would be to use CDs in it would really help.
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Disliking dropping the challenge dice. Sure d20’s works great for Dune as it’s very abstract, For STA combat can drag on and the CD are what make it more interesting.
I’d agree this is not compatible. I guess it was marketing speak. Not excited
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Long time lurker … first post … have to agree with you all. I have stopped purchasing STA products with the announcement of the second edition. Not because I don’t think it will be a great game … I do … but I’m more concerned about my investment in 1e and see no reason for a 2e with so much left to develop/publish in 1e.
My hope is that we will hear more about how 1e will convert to 2e. For now, I am cautiously optimistic for 2e … but not really looking forward to such a fundamental change that invalidates the use of 1e material.
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