I think one of the things needed for a campaign is to decide whether it's
operational scale (turns of perhaps a day or a week), or more strategic (turns
of perhaps a month or a quarter, allows enough time to carry out ground
campaigns and build new ships).
For the latter, I was thinking of having three resources: volatiles,
minerals, and power; combine one each of V+M+P to get MCr. I've
mentioned this on-list before, as I recall.
Part two, though, is to allow players to decide where they want to get their
resources from: Gas giant (eg volatiles at half price) Habitable planet (eg
volatiles free, power costs double) Asteroids (eg minerals and power cost
half, volatiles cost double) This way you'd have reason for trade, and reason
not to put all your settlements in one place.
You might add two other "resource" to the list:
-Population
-Crew (Trained Personnel)
Thus you get:
M - Minerals
V - Volatiles
E - Energy
P - Population
C - Crew
It would only take V+M+E+P to get 1 MCr. As a
location is attacked it looses P. A newly
acquired system only gets 1/2 P for a set time.
When ships are built/armies recruited, the
amount of C is used to determine if there are
enough crew/soldiers to crew a ship/man a unit.
Crew may be transferred, but it requires the use of a transport. It takes 2 P
to produce 1 C.
C are created on a 1/2 year cycle. C represents
both quality and quantity of the crew, so you can rush training to get more
bodies, but the quality suffers, thus the same amount of C. A major military
base in a system brings the ratio of P to C to 1:1. But the military base is
assumed destroyed in any attack on the planet. C can also represent the ground
defense capability. If a planet is lost, it has no C. C may not be generated
on the planet for a set amount of time
(x2 or x3 the amount of time it takes for the 1/2
P rating to return to full P).
> I think one of the things needed for a campaign is to decide whether
I like both. The Siege of Earth would be a grand campaign on the former
scale. The Third Solar/First Xeno war would be on the latter scale. Both
would be very cool.
> For the latter, I was thinking of having three resources: volatiles,
Its an interesting complexity, but I don't know if its needed. Why not just
abstract the whole system to MCr production? If you want, base the number on
the planetary system, but I think the level of detail you're proposing is too
fine.
> Part two, though, is to allow players to decide where they want to get
Advocating for the Devil: Seems like all three of these components can be
decentralized enough to fall below desired strategic granularity. Gas skimming
could be like
coastal fishing - hundreds of entrepreneurs based out of dozens of
locations. Asteroid mining would be like prospecting/mining of old.
Except for outsystem (Beyond 5+ AU in the 23rd century) solar power is
too cheap and easy to constrain anything, and by the 23rd one might
expect other sources to be available. In standard, fuel-free FT, we've
got reactionless (or 'total conversion', or 'zero-point') energy sources
powering our grav drives.
You'd still have reason for trade and multiple settlements, but no one
Gasport, asteroid, or power station would have high strategic value unless you
forced bottlenecks with PSB or specific scenario requirements.
> > I think one of the things needed for a campaign is to decide whether
Both
> would be very cool.
True, but should distinguish between them--you don't want to be cranking
out ships at a rate of 1 BC per week, if you want to be realistic.
> > For the latter, I was thinking of having three resources: volatiles,
This way you have trade, you have merchant shipping, you have a reason not to
base everything on one planet but rather to spread it around the star system.
I grant you it's on the strategic level vs the operational--if a player
didn't want to worry about economics and such, an operational scale is
probably better.
> Seems like all three of these components can be decentralized enough
Can be, yes, but I think the detail gives more flavor. You can abstract naval
combat to be X force points on either side and compare ratios, but
> I think one of the things needed for a campaign is to decide whether
I've always been a proponent of the "Week" turn scale, with 4 "weeks" per
month, and 12 months per year.
> For the latter, I was thinking of having three resources: volatiles,
IMO this is overly (and potentially needlessly) complex. I found simply giving
an income in MCr, without all the bothersome resources, made the game flow
much more smoothly.
> True, but should distinguish between them--you don't want to be
With a 1 turn = 1 week scale, I would think that a decent shipyard could churn
out 100 MUCr. of work on any 1 ship (though it could work on more than 1 ship
concurrently) per week.
Your average CH would take approx. 25-30 weeks to complete, while
destroyers could be produced at a ship per 3 months or so...
> This way you have trade, you have merchant shipping, you have a reason
I'm not sure about that. It's still MOST advantageous to have everything in
one place, and simply makes players juggle the numbers to make the elements
match.
Likewise, abstract MUCr. makes trade simpler to manage. All you have to do to
encourage trade is to make income and production facilities unequal. For
example: a system with shipyards will almost certainly need to import MUCr. in
order to keep production at max capacity. OTOH, a core system with high income
and little production will, by necessity, need to export MUCr.
> With a 1 turn = 1 week scale, I would think that a decent shipyard
That feels about right. Can speed up production +50% (max 100%) for
100% of base NPV. So a 120NPV DD would build in 12 weeks at normal cost, 8
weeks at 240 NPV, or 6 weeks at 360 NPV.
> I'm not sure about that. It's still MOST advantageous to have
That depends on how much more efficient it is to eg mine minerals from
asteroids vs habitable planets.
> Likewise, abstract MUCr. makes trade simpler to manage. All you have
I thought that he meant inter-system trade, but still
under the same government.
That is if System A has an income of 24 and a production ability of 6, it will
export 18MCr to Systems B, C, & D that have a production ability of 6 each,
but an income of only 3 each.
While abstracting MCr is easier, I still prefer moving resource markers. It
encourages the building of freighters to move the resources. It also presents
the options of Piracy and Commerce Raiding.
I like Chris' idea of making MCr be a conglomeration of resources. A system or
area of a system is rich in minerals, but low in energy. You would need to
build a freighter to move the minerals to the shipyard, which I imagine would
be high on energy. If you skimp on the freighters, you will pay the price
later on. And as commerce raiding becomes more prevalent, you will need to
escort the freighters or risk loosing them.
-----
Brian Bell
-----
[quoted original message omitted]
> How does that encourage international trade (other than selling ships)?
Oh, I was thinking internal trade, but the international bent works as well.
Nation A has extra shipyard capacity (or is not at war), and Nation B has
extra MUCr. but their yards are taxed out.
Granted, it's not very flowery, but it would be simple.
> --- Chris DeBoe <LASERLIGHT@QUIXNET.NET> wrote:
...
When I hear campaign systems like this, I can't help but think of programs in
WWII like the liberty ships and the escort carriers. Because it was necessary
to build them fast, they built them faster than anyone believed possible. They
weren't built to last, but they did work. I wonder if any production schedule
can simulate a truly... motivated... nation fighting for it's life.
> When I hear campaign systems like this, I can't
If you throw more money at it, you can always speed things up. May not be
terribly efficient, of course, but in wartime this isn't too much of a concern
("the only thing more expensive than building the best navy, is building the
second best..."). However, real shipyards in peacetime (US at least)
deliberately do not build as fast as possible because they'd rather
> -- Brian Bell Wrote:
[SNIP]
> That is if System A has an income of 24 and a
I would hate to use a system like that... It reminds me too much of old
computer games (ASCII style usually) where such an economic system was used.
It may sound simple at first, but I would always end up
with a brain-strain trying to remember what planet
produced how many MCr and where I should put them... To me there was more
complexity created by trying to reduce the number of variables.
> While abstracting MCr is easier, I still prefer
I'd much rather use resource markers too. Especially
if you make it simple where a planet only produces 1-3
resource units per turn. So if you take a simplified version of Laserlights
idea:
Earth-type worlds have Population (represents labor)
Mining worlds can produce Minerals (to build with)
Gas-Giants produce Volatiles (used as fuel)
So if you kept it simple 1V+1M+1P=xMCr (where x is
enough MCr to produce a destroyer or such), then your combinations are
simpler. You have to move 1V and 1M
to an Earth-type planet with at least 1P so you can
build a ship. You wouldn't want to move your P to
Mining or Gas-Giants without first building an orbital
ship yard first.
When building bigger ships the ratio of xV+xM+xP could
be kept constant for simplicity so a Battle Cruiser
would be maybe 3V+3M+3P to build.