[FT] Avalanche's Imperium

Well, it's been 1.5 years since we discussed Avalanche's Imperium; as
I recall we got one "like it" and two "disgusted" votes.   What does
anyone think about it now?

I was recently re-reading the rules, though I've still not had an
opponent interested in trying it out. Through it and other games, I've been
trying to answer the question: what is necessary for the perfect campaign game
for FTII?

However, I must say I'm disappointed that you can play each lower level
without resorting to the next higher one, i.e. playing ship combat without
doing system or strategic, but not the opposite, as the ship combat seems to
me the least interesting rule set.

I'm thinking seriously of digging out my earlier version of Imperium, as I
must say I like the new versions components, and trying to use the battle
rules.

Isn't that about what others kvetched?

The_Beast

> --- devans@nebraska.edu wrote:

Depends on at what level you want to play. And how complex you want to get.

Perfection, for me, is unachievable at the Grand Strategic level because a
grand strategic (gather resources, alot them, build, develop tech, etc)
simplifies a nation's entire life down to how many battleships it can build.
Too simplified to be
meaningful--in Real Life nations are constrained in
how much and of what kind of weapons they produce by other factors too complex
for adequate modelling.

An operational level wargame would be fun, as well as much simpler to model
adequately, but I'm the only one that thinks so.

***
An operational level wargame would be fun, as well as much simpler to model
adequately, but I'm the only one that thinks so.
***

On the contrary, my first FTII campaign attempt was a 'frontier' system, very
limited developement, using only the ships on hand. Started well enough, but I
couldn't keep the players motivated.

My current design is of an even more limited area, a planetary assault. As
I've not figured a way to model the ground game with DSII in the manner I
mentioned sometime ago, I've been toying with a version of Fortress
America. I've plenty of the game pieces. ;->=

I doubt that I'm doing the level of detail you seek, but I certainly agree
that the grand strategy game tends to be unconvincing as to 'realism'.

The_Beast

> --- devans@nebraska.edu wrote:

> On the contrary, my first FTII campaign attempt was

Sounds interesting. Do you have the guts of that campaign system still around?

> My current design is of an even more limited area, a

DSII is more suited to company/BN level combat.
Depends on the size of the invading force.:)

You can also do a scale-down, where one DSII mini
represents a PLT or even Company. Was once in a CDII campaign that did
Barbarossa at a 1:125 scale, so that each corps was represented by a regiment
on the table.

JohnA said
> Perfection, for me, is unachievable at the Grand

You could arbitrarily say something like "maximum rate of economical
production of B3s is 15 units per year", with extras being allowed at an
increasingly high surcharge. IIRC the main limitation on building
battleships (for someone--don't recall which nation(s)) was producing
the guns. Doesn't matter if you can crank out 100 hulls a year, if you can
only arm 10 of them. Put that kind of limit on several systems and you have
something like the constraint you want. Of course, it also gets to be less of
a "beer and pretzels" game. Operations is probably easier.

> --- Laserlight <laserlight@quixnet.net> wrote:

> You could arbitrarily say something like "maximum

Well, you also get into "Sure, we can theoretically build 150 battleships, but
we havn't got the senior
and mid-level officers, nor the Petty officers to man
them" and you start having to balance crew quality with naval size. How much
can you ramp up your training programs and how much with that cost? Is it
better to open a new school for engineering officers, or lay down a
dreadnought?

Also, capital warships have a stupidly long lead time to build, and I've never
seen a game that adequately enforces that limitation on 'em. Or how about
"Look, we just invented the Uberbeam. I want to retrofit it to my 90% complete
battleship, but it's going to require redesigning the power distribution net
from the ground up. That'll take another year... "

Or maybe your people are just bloody sick of the draft requiring them to spend
5 years in space getting blown up.

Infrastructure investments are rarely handled well. I mean, if you've got a
big military, but crap education systems, health care, and other
infrastructure, you start looking a lot like Iraq.

Oh, and shall we discuss domestic politics?

> --- John Atkinson <johnmatkinson@yahoo.com> wrote:

Do not look to FT to correct the problem, since FT does not 'properly' scale
the ship classes to the traditional warships size vs firepower.

Bye for now,

> On Sun, Jan 12, 2003 at 07:52:39PM -0800, John Atkinson wrote:

> Infrastructure investments are rarely handled well. I

This is something I'm aiming to look at in the high-level strategic
layer of the campaign system I'm working on. It _will_ be horribly
complex - even the rough notes I've got suggest that - but I think it
may not be entirely un-doable. It'll certainly handle decent
construction lead times, crew availability, and internal politics to some
extent.

On the other hand it'll be a while before this is finished.

R

Roger Burton West schrieb:
> On Sun, Jan 12, 2003 at 07:52:39PM -0800, John Atkinson

This will depend a lot on the time-frame you want for your campaign.

If you plan to cover several generations, education and health care are open
to manipulation by the players.

If the campaign takes just a few years, it will be over before any changes in
those areas have a military effect. In such cases, just take them as part of
the static background situation.

Greetings Karl Heinz

> Well, you also get into "Sure, we can theoretically

Try the old Imperial StarFire; not the streamlined GSF. Old Imperial StarFire
will show you why you really don't want to keep track of all that by pen and
paper... While it doesn't have engineering schools, it does keep track of how
many personel your empire can have in service.

> Or maybe your people are just bloody sick of the draft

Why follow the US Korea/Vietnam era incompetent draft policies.  Have
them stay in the service tell it's won...

> Infrastructure investments are rarely handled well. I

Well, just as soon as you get about two dozen high end servers, a couple of
hundred programers, designers, economists, mathmaticians, statisticians, etc.,
to build this game; I'm sure it will be really awesome. But seeing how I don't
have the hardware to play it, I think I'll just stick with games that abstract
all those things into something I can manage. I.E., all that stuff is great,
but what's the point if it is so unplayable that it takes two days to game 15
seconds...

I've got it and played it. Not very impressed. There are a few good new ideas,
but too many new bad ideas to make it worth while. The game is very
pretty, but game play is slower.  There is no way the un-published four
map expansion will be playable in it. A little bit of scant information of
this expansion was published in Classic Traveller Reprints 5.

I hate the artificial limit of three turns of space combat.

I do like the actions segments. It's simliar to what GDW did in House Divided.
Great for game play, but it can be very frustrating.

The counters are nice, as is the map until you actually sit down an play. A
flat 2d projection (as in the original) would have been much less confusing
during game play.

> --- "Imre A. Szabo" <ias@sprintmail.com> wrote:

> > Or maybe your people are just bloody sick of the

That's fine for big cataclysmic conflicts like WWII. For any other point on
the spectrum of conflict that's impractical. The US involvement in VN spanned
20 years. Are you seriously suggesting drafting people for what I consider the
length of a career?

> Well, just as soon as you get about two dozen high

My point precisely.  Inadequately modelling real-world
concerns makes a boring game--if I want that level of
abstraction, I'll play chess. Or maybe Command and Conquer would be more
appropriate comparison.

From: "Imre A. Szabo" <ias@sprintmail.com>
> I've got it and played it. Not very impressed.

Unofficially revised rules for both the original GDW and the recent Avalanche
version here:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/martin.nelmes/

However, given that Imre was the "in favor of" vote 1.5yr ago when this was
discussed, I htink I'll stick with my GDW version.

JohnA said:
> Infrastructure investments are rarely handled well. I

Actually, one campaign system I saw that looked interesting was for colonial
game where each player is both a British minister *and* the commander of a
hostile force. "The Sun Never Sets," I think. You can imagine Lord
Mutterington (aka the Mahdi of Sudan) and Lord Staybroke (aka the Zulu king)
arguing for more battleships for the RN, the Earl of Scroop (aka Woo Li of
China) holding out for increases to the Egyptian regiments, etc.

> Unofficially revised rules for both the original GDW and the recent

Martin's rules are pretty good.

> --- "Imre A. Szabo" <ias@sprintmail.com> wrote:

> Gee, if we refused to let people out tell it was

1)You're wrong, and not even cleverly so.

2)Your point re: the draft is actually a point re: the individual replacement
system, which was stupid. But people can only spend so much time on line
before
becoming combat ineffective, barring the 1-2% that
never burn out (and who would be psychotics if they weren't in the military).
I prefer a unit rotation system.

> > Why follow the US Korea/Vietnam era incompetent

Gee, if we refused to let people out tell it was over, maybe we would have
taken the whole mess serriously enough to either not get involved (realize it
wasn't worth it before we went in), or fought it with a real national effort
to win (to bring the boys home so they would be there for 20 years). What we
did was to "manage" the conflict (try to keep any major disasters from
happening while keeping expenses low enough to not require economic sacrifices
from the civilians back home, and all of this was so the
poloticians could be re-elected).  It didn't work.

> > Well, just as soon as you get about two dozen high

You have to find a level of abstraction you enjoy. Somehow I really doubt you
would want to play a game modeled to the depth you say want. It would take a
network of servers to run, and would cost a fortune to make, and days to play
a few seconds. You still ought to look at Imperial StarFire. It has a lot of
what you say want. Enjoy the paper work.

Imre said:
> politicians could be re-elected). It didn't work.

John said:
> 1)You're wrong, and not even cleverly so.

I'd ask for a little more detail in that rebuttal, John, but I think perhaps
OFFLIST would be the route to go.

> 2)Your point re: the draft is actually a point re: the

Definitely concur on that one. Several histories I've read make a point of "We
didn't bother to find out the new guys' names till they'd been with us
a week or two--if they lasted that long."  "Big Red One", for instance.

On Tue, 14 Jan 2003 09:42:21 -0500, "laserlight@quixnet.net"
> <laserlight@quixnet.net> wrote:

> John said:

I'd like to see that too, though I think I know where John is going and
generally agree.

Just a question.

If FT doesn't "properly" scale the ship classes to traditional size vs
firepower, what would a corrected "hull table" look like? Would it
make an interesting race/nation tech/design feature?

Donald Hosford

> John Leary wrote:

> --- John Atkinson <johnmatkinson@yahoo.com> wrote: