Fleet Battles - Squadrons

I wasn't sure I sent this out earlier, so I apologize if this is a repeat.

Mike

> Mark wrote:
to
> prevent this, we'd need rules about valid squadrons, which would be a

> Well, you could say that any two opposing squadrons fire

That could be interesting doing it on a squadron level. Some things to
consider:

1. Recording damage now becomes a pain. You need to indicate that damage has
been taken but will not take affect until the end of the combat between the
two squadrons. It seems this would also slow game play. This is a
potential spot for errors - e.g. A player might forget which damaged
occured

this turn from previous damage, and not fire a weapon system. 2. Another
consideration is tactics. This approach will likely change the way you pick
targets as you are limited to firing at only one enemy squadron.

3. Lots of potential for wasted shots if all ships are required to call out
targets before firing. 4. What determines what ships are in a squadron (use of
minis)? Should they

be limited in distance between each ship in a squadron, something like the way
fighter screens work? This might be simple and clean and would help

visually identify a squadron versus a bunch a ships spaced out to get maximum
coverage versus maximum firepower concentration.

I played FT using simulatenous fire as a test a long time ago with a friend
and neither of us liked it much, but considering an option for playing at a
higher level this would warrant a good retest, especially since we didn't try
it with squadrons...just one big fleet against another. That was a real

pain.

IDEA: A solution which might abstract the game further might be to just roll

a total damage from each squadron and resolve the damage by equally
distributing it to all ships. Use of specialized weapons like needle beams
would be abstracted to just a damage die and not worry about targeting
specific systems. Simplifying ranges will also help. All weapons uses 12"
range bands.

For example:

Total damage dies to be rolled determined by:

Beam Batteries: No change. Needle Beam range: 12" (1D6) SMPs range: 12" (2D6),
range 24" (1D6)
SMLs/SMRs range: 24" (3D6)

Shields reduce total damage dies rolled by a specificed amount. For example:

Shield level-1: Reduce 1D6 for every 12 enemy dice.
Shield level-2: Reduce 1D6 for every 6 enemy dice.

CONS: Little ships go boom fast. Damage die rolls could be quite large.

PROS: Very fast play at a squadron level.

I'll work on this some more.  You guys got me interested! ;-)

Mike

> Michael T Miserendino wrote:
...Snip...JTL
> 1. Recording damage now becomes a pain. You need to indicate that
XXX
     Not at all!   A very minor change in the process makes this VERY
simple to accomplish! Systems that have been damaged in the current turn
get a slash mark for a notation.   At the end of the turn the slash
turns into
an 'X'.   JTL
XXX

Bye for now,

I would just use different color dry erase pens 5 colors should outlast the
ship.

[quoted original message omitted]

> John L. wrote:
I would just use different color dry erase pens 5 colors should outlast the
ship.

More work to prepare. Now you need to make SDS with plastic covers and make
sure you have all the pens you need. I like to keep it simple, but using
colored pens does have a certain appeal to it.

> Not at all! A very minor change in the process makes this VERY

It doesn't appear my emails are getting through... I mentioned earlier that
we use "/" for damaged and "X" for destroyed to differentiate between
repairable damage and systems destroyed by needle weapons. Very simple and it
works.

We can come up with a ton of different ways to symbolize this, but I would
prefer to keep it simple and not require special accesories like colored

pens. It would make a nice enhancement, but should not be a requirement to
play.

Mike

Simultaneous fire, can work and I have used it before (PBeM games;). One
reason I'm not thrilled with simultaneous fire is that it takes away one of
the few tactical decisions there are in FT, and one of the complaints I have
heard about FT is the lack of tactical decisions needed in the game.

In FT, your decisions are 'how to move', 'when to fire' and 'what's your
target'. Games that use simultaneous damage resolution (B5 Wars, SBFBS for
example) usually replace 'when to fire' with more complicated movement where
ships move one by one instead of pre-plotted movement.

On all ships in a squadron firing at the same time (back on topic for the
subject;) I think it works best when squadrons are escort ships are smaller.
Anything cruiser sized or larger is resolved by itself but a group of 3 DDs
firing at once saves time and effort when gaming a large fleet battle.