> On Mon, 28 Oct 1996, Cleyne, Daniel wrote:
> Seeing as I'm only new to this Mailing list,
Welcome!
> please forgive me if I'm trying
No problem. Have you looked at the various links from Mark Siefert's FT page
(... to which I have forgotten the URL, but I'm sure someone else will be
delighted to supply it; or you can do a net search for Full
Thrust - I think Alta Vista is the one with most relevant hits in this
case)? There are some links to other people's campaign rules and suggestions
there.
Also, one very important observation: this is a GAME, not a historical
simulation. If something makes the game heavily imbalanced, remove it -
no matter how 'realistic' it is. You can almost always come up with reasonable
explanations to why things work as they do after you've made the rule!
All of my comments are very vague, since I haven't played any FT/DSII
campaigns. I have played both Starfire and Prefect, so these are my immediate
thoughts based on that experience:
> The first main question that came to mind was how to mate the two
Well... dunno; is a B-battery worth two medium tracked tanks? Since
space
superiority is extremely important - without it, I doubt if you'll
manage
to land/supply your ground troops - I'd gladly make ground forces much
cheaper than spaceships. I don't think the WWII analogy holds in this case; a
C battery is something very different from a ground artillery
piece...
> The next point was repair of ships. There is a brief mention of ports
What do you mean with a 'long term campaign'? If you have a well enough
protected repair base (so it doesn't get blown to bits before you can repair
anything in it), you need repair times less than your 'long terms'... In
Starfire, a badly mauled Superdreadnought can usually be
fully repaired in 2-3 months; a new ship would take three times as long
IIRC (and it also depends on how sophisticated ship yards you have!)
It depends a little on how long you can travel in one turn, too; mainly
for game balance reasons - how serious shall a defeat be? (I know I'm
referring a lot to game balance; this is because a campaign where one player
is very superior to the others is usually pretty dull IMO...)
> ... what about capture
- Ability to repair own destroyed tanks
- Ability to scavenge enemy tanks (provided both sides use similar
tech!)
- Better chances to rally 'destroyed' infantry elements (...those who
weren't picked up by ambulance elements, that is)
There are probably more... All these are in addition to the benefits of
having won the battle (if they did - a raiding force could accomplish
their mission (and 'win') even though they retreated after the strike, for
example).
> How long would it take a unit that has been beaten up
I guess it depends on just how badly they were beaten; and I think that
would depend on the race - some races could take a defeat badly, losing
faith in their ability completely, while other races (Orks, anyone?)
would bounce back as soon as no-one was looking...
> Where would this sort of activity take place?
Far enough behind the front that there is no immediate threat of ground
attack, I guess...
> Does it matter how structured this system is?
Not as long as you're satisfied with it...
> Would it be better to think out the whole system and justify it
I _think_ this is the same question as 'what role does the players have'
(see below) - if the players control the entire state, you don't need
random tables; if they are theater commanders, you need random tables to
simulate incompetent superiors. What will work best for you, I cannot say.
However, I've found that it is pretty hard to think out a complete system
- once you start using it, you'll find all the cracks in it. Playtest it
along the way, and don't be afraid to modify the system in the middle of a
campaign - if the change is made to simplify the system, or to remove
glaring imbalances, I don't think the players will protest (...except for the
one who is heavily favoured by the imbalance, of course <g>)
> Another problem is one of replacements. How do you determine what sort
> replacements?
This depends on what role the players take. If you are a theater commander (as
in Prefect), you have to cope with whatever the High Brass
(...in this case, the Space Master or a random table) throws at you. If you
are the Great Leader of the Empire (as in Starfire), you can decide what units
to build and where to send them. In this last case, you need
an economic system - populations generate resources which you can spend
on supply/maintenance, new units, colonization and so on. Be warned,
however, that this last campaign scope causes quite a lot of bookkeeping!
Another problem is that the income has to be big to allow various
activities - building, maintenance, exploring etc - but small enough so
you have to make priorities. (The latest edition of Starfire suffers from
this; everyone has far too much money...)
> There is a vast amount of stuff that needs to be done before I have a
I wouldn't call Prefect 'arbitrary'; 'exceptionally elaborate' would be more
accurate IMO... and in Starfire, you are more or less required to keep track
of every single missile you build (and with missile loads of 200 or more per
ship, that is quite a lot!) However, both these systems are prone to get
bogged down in bookkeeping quite fast. Prefect is mainly a game of logistics,
and the main reason to fight is to cut the supply routes of your opponent.
That part of it is very realistic, of course
<g>
> FASA tried it with
Well, since you can break down Prefect battles into individual starships
for play with Leviathan/Interceptor, or individual ground units
(remember, a Cohort/Company (the smallest units in Prefect IIRC) isn't
very big - 18 tanks or so in a Cohort) to slug it out with
whatever-the-RL-
ground-combat-game-is-called, I don't see this as a very problem. Within
a unit, supplies and maintenance resources are shared evenly (for morale
reasons, if nothing else!), so if any of the sub-units are low on
supplies, the entire parent unit will be. If you prefer integrated battle
groups (so each DSII battleforce is one more or less permanent unit), that
unit would be either hungry, or not hungry <g> I imagine that the infantry
would be unaffected by fuel or maintenance shorage for the tanks
- but of course their morale would drop without proper support, so you
can probably use one single supply level for the entire battlegroup.
> Sorry about the length of the post
No problem at all! This reply is even longer...
Regards,
> On Mon, 28 Oct 1996, Cleyne, Daniel wrote:
> Hi Guys
I have a similar question, what are people using for economic systems in
their campaigns? The Starfire III Empire rules, home grown or some other
system?
Hi Guys
Some friends and I are trying to start up a long term FT and DSII campaign.
While the integration rules in More Thrust cover the direct technical aspect
of the mating of the two systems they don't (and admits it) go far enough to
lay a firm base for a campaign longer than the one given as an example in FT.
Seeing as I'm only new to this Mailing list, please forgive me if I'm trying
to cover ground that someone else has covered recently. I'd be very keen to
see any material that people have posted here previously.
The first main question that came to mind was how to mate the two different
point systems. After having a look at the various equipment lists it seems
that a FT point could be equivalent to 100 DS2 points without too much fuss.
Is this a value that other people have arrived at or have I missed some vital
ingredient? This point ratio means that a DS2 artillery piece is with about
the same as a single arc C Battery in FT. I used the reasoning that a
WW2 army typically used 6-8" guns as heavy artillery and the
corresponding
navy used 6-8" guns as it main armament on cruisers and secondary
armaments on the larger capital ships. This argument isn't watertight but I
would like the point systems to have some sort of logical relationship.
The next point was repair of ships. There is a brief mention of ports in the
first FT campaign which covers placing ports near worlds and the capacity of
ship they can handle. What I would like to work out is how long things take to
fix once they are damaged. If you can't repair forces after a battle in a long
term campaign then you may as well not have saved the unit. Especially if it
has suffered damage like loss of fire control systems. I put together a rough
table of the basic equipment and how long I thought each of the systems could
take to repair or replace. The values are arbitrary and I have no real reasons
for any particular value. The overall justification again came from WW2 and
the length of time it took the US to turn out a ship from keel to
commissioning. I believe it took roughly 3 months for a liberty ship
and about 12 months for a light/medium cruiser. I am using 1 week as the
length of a turn in the campaign.
Repair/Replacement times for damaged equipment
Equipment Repair Time Replacement Time
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
Structure Points (1d6 points per Week) N/A
C Battery 2 Weeks 1 Week B Battery 4 Weeks 2 Weeks A Battery 8 Weeks 4 Weeks
PDAF 4 Weeks 2 Weeks
ADAF 8 Weeks 4 Weeks
Screen Generators 10 Weeks 4 Weeks
Fighter Bays 2 Weeks 4 Weeks Fighters Immediate* Needle Beams 4 Weeks 2 Weeks
Pulse Torpedo Tubes 8 Weeks 4 Weeks Pulse Torpedos Immediate* Spinal Mount
Nova Cannon 26 Weeks 20 Weeks Submunition Pack Immediate* Minelayer System 2
Weeks 1 Week Mines Immediate* Mine Sweeper System 8 Weeks 4 Weeks Fire Control
8 Weeks 4 Weeks FTL Drives 10 Weeks 8 Weeks
Sublight Drives (HV * Thrust) / 6 (HV * Thrust) / 8
* Obviously this is subject to availability of the particular system at the
port that it is being repaired at.
Given that this table pertains only to naval equipment, what about capture and
repair of Dirtside equipment? What sort of value should "holding the
battlefield" have? How long would it take a unit that has been beaten up
badly in an engagement to refit so that it is combat ready again? Where would
this sort of activity take place? Does it matter how structured this system
is? Would it be better to think out the whole system and justify it so that it
works logically or would it be better to do a best Guestimate for a few of the
values and from those prepare a couple of lookup tables you
roll dice against to get the result?
Another problem is one of replacements. How do you determine what sort of
replacements become available? Just allocating a point value per turn means
that the player can always get the type of equipment they need. Is it worth
going to the trouble of determining particular equipment types for the
replacements? It certainly would add an element to the game in my opinion.
Requesting 10 units of heavy tanks and being allocated 5 units of AA vehicles
and having to cope with them has an appealing ring to it
<grin>.
There is a vast amount of stuff that needs to be done before I have a working
system but the most important issue seemingly is Supplies. I realise that
keeping track of individual supply points is not in keeping with the FT ethic
of being fun and easy. But ships need equipment and troops need to
eat. I haven't yet come across a game that covers the constant need to keep
units supplied without being exceptionally arbitrary. FASA tried it with
Prefect but the system they used there is at the large formation level and I
can't seem to break it down to make it cover the unit sizes in DS2 as well as
the naval units in FT. If anyone has any really good ideas on this issue I'd
very keen to hear.
Sorry about the length of the post
Dan
> On Mon, 28 Oct 1996, Cleyne, Daniel wrote:
Why mate them?
I played in a large combined FT/DSII campaign last year which ran for
about 6 months. When we started, everyone had 7,000 Full Thrust points to
create their fleet, and 25,000 Dirtside II points to create their army (the
cost of the troop transports came from the Full Thrust points).
Nobody's battle was even-sided -- the attacker usually had more troops,
as far as points-value goes, and the only space-to-ground weapons
allowed were the "Ortillery" systems in the Full Thrust rules (remember, using
"A" batteries for ground-support is an optional rule).
If you really want to count the DSII points-cost for orbital
ground-support, count them the same as off-board artillery.
<concerning combing DSII and FT points>
> Why mate them?
In a long-term campaign, using the same "resource points" to purchase
ground and space units allows players to emphasize which aspect of the
game they prefer. E.g. one person may build a massive, tech-heavy space
fleet with a below-average ground force, while his opponent's fleet
might be composed of "blockade runner" type ships that are only
intended to deliver a high-tech, powerful ground assault. The latter
force can't afford to get into a slug-fest type space battle, but woe
unto the enemy if the assault troops land!
Only real drawback to campaign economy rules is the bookkeeping. I am
the only person I know who likes a super-involved, super-detailed
campaign system (o.k., my cruiser got hit? Let me check the crew roster. Hmmm,
ah, crew number #112, Lt.(jg)Mueller. Alright, roll again on the personal
injury table.). O.K., maybe not *that* involved, but you know what I mean.:)
In games where resource points are tied to planetary control, the campaign
becomes a delicate balancing act between building offensive
and defensive units. Can you afford to build all those size-5, HEL/5
FCON:SUP assault tanks, or should you scrap them to keep the "skies" friendly?
Oh, jeez, I love campaigns! Too bad everyone I know thinks of them as "canned
pains.":(
Christopher, Last of the Die-Hard Campaigners
"Go Steelers!"
> > Some friends and I are trying to start up a long term FT and DSII
Well there are two reasons which are fairly interconnected. The first is I
wanted to be able to provide a background where the players could choose to be
"warlords" and controls the production and economic portions of their
particular parts of space. This meant that I need some form of currency and it
seemed natural to tie this to an existing point system. The other reason is
that as a software engineer I have this undying urge to computerise everything
and a database system is easier to write and maintain with one
base currency/point system than it is with many.
Dan