Card Draws

Date: Wed, 15 Dec 1999 10:18:36 -0500
From: "David Reeves" <davidar@nortelnetworks.com>
Subject: re: Card Draws and Fleet Admirals

thomas,

the only idea we have at the moment is to separate the cards (both sides
combined) into piles according to crew quality.

** I suspect I dislike this option. Though it is interesting. It might be
worth toying with.

this seems to meet the design goal of better quality ships react faster, but
the admiral also may influence the course of events when he feels the
situation is critical. since this idea is fairly new to us, we have not
playtested it too much (2 times).

** How much of reaction in FT is crew? I think a lot is computer. Humans
decide strategy, set up contingency responses, computers implement them.
That's just my opinion. I don't forsee gunners firing
class-3s over open sights at ships thousands of kms away. Hence I'm
not sure this isn't an overkill effect.

i would like to hear your ideas on solving the crew quality part of this
equation. maybe you already have a better solution.

** I have my own theories on crew quality which will be webified and list
published soon. Where I think crew's factor in is:
1) Gunnery - they have better engagement and anti-evasion progs
developed. I assume these need constant retailoring and that the crew quality
has something to do here. Defensively, the opposite factor may
play in - good crew have better evasion routines.
2) Damage Control - fixing and rerouting is a manual task and knowing
what shortcuts work is experience.
3) Being able to overthrust without damage - pushing the limits of the
ship. 4) Communications. 5) EW and Sensors. 6) Morale... very important.

That's my guess for now. I will put out my actual suggestions sometime in the
next week or two.

======================
Brian's (I think) post
======================

Limited Use: I would suggest providing a limited number of Admiral's
Priviledge to the game. Perhaps give each Admiral a set number of tokens for
Admiral's Priviledge (sorting through the deck to find a particular ship and
fire it). Once the number of tokens is used up, the ships must be fired in the
order drawn. You can also provide for the quality of the Admirals by giving a
better Admiral more Admiral's Priviledge tokens.

** My idea was opposing admirals had a rating (1-5) and that was how
many times a turn. Opposing admirals could either both draw (at the players
discretion) or cancel and let the greater admiral take his normal number of
exchanges modified down by the opposing admirals rating. This is the simplest.

Crew Quality: If you have multiple decks or a specialized deck (such as Uno),
you can add crew quality to the mix by adding multiple of the same card to the
deck for higher quality ships.

** I like this one much better. It isn't a cut and dried "good fires first"
but it allows excellent chances for better firing position for good crews.

Green crewed get 1 card, Regular crewed ships get 2 cards, and Veteral crewed
ships get 3 cards.

** Like SG2, I run five quality levels of crew. But for these purposes, I'd
say...

Untrained/Poorly Trained: always shoot last. when they are drawn from
the normal deck, they are set aside face down in the order they occur. They do
not fire at that time. When the firing deck is done, then flip this deck over
and fire these ships in the order they were drawn. These rarely appear. Green:
1 card. Regular: 1 card. Veteran: 2 cards. Fire when the first one comes up,
ignore the second. Elite: 2 cards.

This increases the chances of drawing a higher quality crew early in the game.
When a Regular or Veteran crewed ship's card is drawn, the player may fire the
ship or wait until the card is drawn again.

** The waiting idea is fine, though it seems pretty unlikely... except in odd
situations.

I really haven't followed this that closely, so maybe this example has already
gone by.

It's a card based initiative system which is still turn based and still allows
distinctions for general fleet quality and, to a lesser extent, ship quality.
The admiral is rated for a certain number of cards (say 1 to
5)
and the ships are rated for a maximum number of cards (say 1 to 3). Deal each
ship a card and the admiral his cards.

Variant A: The admiral hands out his cards to the ships of the fleet. When the
card comes up, that ship is activated (if not already activated).

Variant B: The admiarl holds the cards and when one comes up, he can use it to
activate an unactivated ship.

The cards either come up through a countdown (A, K, Q, J, 10, 9,..., with
ties decided by suit Spade - Heart - Diamond - Club), or by cycling
through a second deck. Ships only activate once and only when their first card
comes up. Once activated, a ship discards all its cards for the turn (can't be
reactivated).

As a variant, you can give the fighter groups a card, too.

Obviously, good admirals have bigger hands of cards, good ships can hold more
cards. Great ships might always have a second card regardless of the admiral's
choices, etc.

comments inserted.

> Date: Wed, 15 Dec 1999 16:49:45 -0500

actually, i rather like brian's reply better as well -- one deck
with multiple cards for better crew quality.

> this seems to meet the design goal of better quality ships react

i am really not referring to that type of manual labor/intervention,
but more of interacting with the ship electronic systems to react to the
changing battlefield environment.

actually, we are in overall agreement even tho my explanation is not explicit
enough. my thinking is kinda like the HH universe in the sense that computers
are preprogrammed with the contingency responses that you suggest. however,
human intervention is required when the computer encounters unknown or
partially known situations or
attack/defense patterns.  couple this with a high level of computer/
human interface usability and the crew quality does count for more IMO. again,
this is all a function of how one views their FT universe background, tech
capability, etc. so this works for my universe. YMMV for others.

> i would like to hear your ideas on solving the crew quality part of

we have these as well, but i think i forgot about the damage control roll.
i'll need to add that one to our list as well.

> ======================

i see one major disadvantage for my FT universe with this one, tho. since our
fleet admirals may influence several differing types of things, this opposed
modifier idea would mutually negate any advantages for an admiral someone
probably paid extra points for (e.g. sit idle). additionally, this negation
effect is a general one. i would rather increase the command decisions of the
admiral by letting them keep their full number of "interventions". if opposing
admirals wanted to negate each others effects, then they could explicitly do
so, but they could also use them differently. this allows players to choose
where their admiral spends their focus, rather than a negating effect leaving
them relatively idle.
so we are trading a little more complexity/time for choice and
command decision.

i think both viewpoints are good here, since i believe the preferences of the
gaming group determines what they consider fun. for us, the
command decision part of the game is the most savored/talked about.

[snip]

this is a productive discussion. any more thoughts out there?

dave

> Tom McCarthy wrote:

> I really haven't followed this that closely, so maybe this example has
Deal
> each ship a card and the admiral his cards.

> [quoted text omitted]

> [quoted text omitted]

I first heard of this on this web page:

> http://underworld.fortunecity.com/descent/738/wwest.htm