Chit-based FT? Re: Fleet Escorts

13 posts ยท Mar 27 2001 to Nov 27 2001

From: Doug Evans <devans@n...>

Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 12:41:18 -0600

Subject: Chit-based FT? Re: Fleet Escorts

> In the combat phase, ships alternate fire as normal within its thrust

This brings to mind a question I had some time ago.

In fairly large battles, does anyone ever find difficulty remembering which
ships have fired?

I first thought of simple markers that would be placed next to fired ships.
Then, what the heck, you could allocate your firing order if the chits were
marked with a number, and you could place them reversed if you didn't want
your opponent to know your order of fire, and allocate his accordingly.

This seemed pretty simple as the ships would have completed there movement,
and the chits wouldn't have to follow ships, then I thought, you could
incorporate an idea I had, and we may have discussed, about mid-point
shots, at which point my head was hurting severely, and I decided to see if
anyone else had tried any of this.

From: Peter C <petrov_101@h...>

Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 18:53:46 -0000

Subject: Re: Chit-based FT? Re: Fleet Escorts

> From: devans@uneb.edu

<SNIP>

> In fairly large battles, does anyone ever find difficulty remembering

We just place a d6 behind each ship that fired.

Pete

From: Indy Kochte <kochte@s...>

Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 14:06:52 -0500 (EST)

Subject: Re: Chit-based FT? Re: Fleet Escorts

> On Tue, 27 Mar 2001 devans@uneb.edu wrote:

> > In the combat phase, ships alternate fire as normal within its

I've seen the use of chits, discs, dice, etc to mark which ships have fired
and which hadn't. One other method that I usually use (usually
means also when it's 2-4 of us, not a larger group) is to divide out
the SSDs. I make 1 SSD for each ship in play, then put the SSDs off to one
side for the ships that have fired, and keep the unfired SSDs on the other
side [of me]. It's a very informal system, means shuffling
a lot of paper when an already-fired ship is fired upon and takes
damage, but at the end of the day (or evening, or night, or morning, depending
on how long you're playing) it works okay.

Just another way to do. Not necessarily the best.

Mk

From: Jaime Tiampo <fugu@s...>

Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 11:23:02 -0800

Subject: Re: Chit-based FT? Re: Fleet Escorts

> devans@uneb.edu wrote:

We use cards. Each ship gets a number on its base and a card in the deck
related to its number. Then we shuffle the cards and draw them to see which
ships gets to fire. We like it more since it gives the sense of initiative and
luck of battle.

From: Doug Evans <devans@n...>

Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 13:28:24 -0600

Subject: Re: Chit-based FT? Re: Fleet Escorts

***
We use cards. Each ship gets a number on its base and a card in the deck
related to its number. Then we shuffle the cards and draw them to see which
ships gets to fire. We like it more since it gives the sense of initiative and
luck of battle.
***

Well, the conversation is going in directions I'd never imagined, but darn
interesting!

I see this could be modified so you'd have different colored cards for
different thrust ships, so you could maintain the fastest-shoots-first,
though it begs the problem of ships changing as to thrust, due to damage.

Not impossible, though. Kewl!

From: Jaime Tiampo <fugu@s...>

Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 11:50:46 -0800

Subject: Re: Chit-based FT? Re: Fleet Escorts

> devans@uneb.edu wrote:

Doesn't it always?

> I see this could be modified so you'd have different colored cards for

We've never looked into segregating ship firing by thrust and I'm not sure why
you'd need to do this. In battle it's not always the fastest ships that get to
fire first but the ones that are most ready. I'd like to hear your reasoning
on it.

From: Doug Evans <devans@n...>

Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 13:58:28 -0600

Subject: Re: Chit-based FT? Re: Fleet Escorts

***
We've never looked into segregating ship firing by thrust and I'm not sure why
you'd need to do this. In battle it's not always the fastest ships that get to
fire first but the ones that are most ready. I'd like to hear your reasoning
on it.
***

Well, there HAD been the discussion on allowing the smaller ships a chance to
fire before being torched, but my own feeling is that the total randomness of
the cards makes up for it. I was just assuming some might
want a little better chance for the fodder. ;->=

From: stranger <stranger@c...>

Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 19:42:37 -0500

Subject: Re: Chit-based FT? Re: Fleet Escorts

> Well, there HAD been the discussion on allowing the smaller ships a

I really like the cards idea, I don't like the smaller ships always fire first
idea simply because there seems no reason for it, except that their smaller.
Now, maybe if each ship had an initiative rating that was based on a
combination of randomness and mass or thrust or something. For example, roll
initiative as usual, then add THRUST rating. Ships fire in order of HIGHEST
total rating to least. The justification here is that the higher THRUST ships
are more maneuverable, and thus would usually be in the best position to react
thus fire earlier.

Of course the argument could go other ways to, I mean on bigger ships, being
more stable in a fight, the crew is calmer (possibly) thus more focused on the
fight, then say the crew of the corvette that's fighting to hold the ship
together and line up a shot at the same time.....

Like I said, lots of ways to look at it....

George

From: Jaime Tiampo <fugu@s...>

Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 17:08:04 -0800

Subject: Re: Chit-based FT? Re: Fleet Escorts

> devans@uneb.edu wrote:

Ah so. From experience I find that the fodder has a pretty good chance in deck
games, infact, since you get more cards the more ships you have a fleet of
small escorts will tend to be able to shoot a lot more before the opposition
can. This makes fleets of small ships much more usefull. I've been temped to
try a fleet of destroyers and a few cruisers but I have to paint up enough of
them first.

From: David Reeves <davidar@n...>

Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 16:21:55 -0500

Subject: re: Chit-based FT? Re: Fleet Escorts

> Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 12:41:18 -0600

this is similar to what we do. since we use initiative cards for fire
order, the card gets placed next to the ship when done -- or mark the
ship
roster if you wanna clutter-free table.

From: David Reeves <davidar@n...>

Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 08:58:12 -0500

Subject: Re: Chit-based FT? Re: Fleet Escorts

> Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 13:28:24 -0600

with card decks, colored cards, different piles, etc, lots of things may be
accomplished.... we use 3x5 index cards cut in half, each numbered. just write
a number net to the ship on the fleet roster. we use crew quality where the
better quality gets more fire initiative cards in the deck.

   elite      4
   veteran    3
   regular    2
   trained    1
   untrained  1

so the elite ship crews are more prone to choose to fire first. now toss in a
few fleet admiral actions: by using an action (admiral has very
few/turn), he may cause a reroll, choose a ship for fire initiative
(instead of a card), increase move order (so slower ship moves before a faster
one). this adds a lot of command decisions to the game based upon quality. the
points you pay for quality are worth it. it's also now possible to recreate
battle of quality vs. quantity (other than with little vs. big ships). to our
group, this adds more racial diversity and interest.

From: Laserlight <laserlight@q...>

Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 11:55:45 -0500

Subject: RE: Re: Chit-based FT? Re: Fleet Escorts

From: David Reeves davidar@nortelnetworks.com

> write a number net to the ship on the fleet roster. we use crew

> elite 4

> so the elite ship crews are more prone to choose to fire first. now

Ah, Dave, what points do you pay?

From: Beth Fulton <beth.fulton@m...>

Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 09:56:48 +1100

Subject: Re: Chit-based FT? Re: Fleet Escorts

G'day,

> In fairly large battles, does anyone ever

Derek's got a heap of plastic chips (like you get in kids board games or

poker takeoffs etc) in red, blue, green and yellow. We just drop a chip behind
each ship that's fired. We've never really had a problem with losing little
ships before the can fire either. If the opponent wants to direct

his fire against the smaller things I'm not going to complain and if he
doesn't I usually have more smaller ships than my opponents have FCs;)

Do like that card idea though.

Cheers

Beth