We find the best kind of battles are on a 6'x4' table, but using cm's instead
of inches. It makes for an excellent game of manoeuvre, and the little ships
can operate on the flanks, or make fast attack runs from behind the big ships
and then hurtle out of range before being shot. If you're using inches,
there's no point to taking little ships, they just get chewed up by the
heavies.
Peace and Love
Just wondering, as I'm new to Full Thrust, what size battles do people
normally fight out? I'm guessing 1,500 points or so, per side, make for a
good one-on-one game.
In multi-player games, how many ships work per player? I'm thinking two
destroyers and a cruiser/battleship for 10-or-so player games.
Also, what kind of compositions do people prefer? A lot of small ships, or a
few monster ships, or a good mix?
Thanks,
> On Tue, 14 Jan 1997, John Kovalic wrote:
It depends -- for pick-up games, we usually play 2-4 ships per person,
with each person controlling a total of 500-1500 points worth of ships.
These games usually last 1 to 2 hours with 4-5 people, and we can get a
couple of them in per evening.
For campaign games, we have had battles with up to 3000 points per side.
These games usually take 6-8 hours because the players are restricted to
whatever ships they started the campaign with, and they aren't quite as
sanguine about making risky moves with their forces. IMO, these are the best
Full Thrust games I've played, because they require more thought & planning by
everyone involved.
Our games tended to run larger than 1500 points, usually in the range of 2000
(typical one-on-one) to 3000-4000+ with two or three per side.
Everybody always had lots of new ideas to try and wanted to use a variety of
ships,etc, so we usually ran pretty big battle. We played on a 6' x 6' board,
using the standard inch scale. This opened up the flanks somewhat, but small
ships were still pretty short lived. Nevertheless, most players prefered a mix
of ship classes, usually assigning special functions to smaller cruisers and
escorts (missile boats, aegis ships, torpedo destroyers, etc) with large beam
laden capitals anchoring the line and cruisers adding maneuverable firepower.
We genrally got a pretty good mix of different special weapons, etc because
everyone had their preferences.
Later
Brian
In most of the games I play around here we don't generally keep track
of point spreads - we kinda put scenarios together that 'feel' balanced.
As far as playing surfaces/areas, whatever we have available (dining
room table, living room floor, kitchen floor, etc) is what we use. :-)
Mk
> John Kovalic writes:
@:) Just wondering, as I'm new to Full Thrust, what size battles do @:) people
normally fight out? I'm guessing 1,500 points or so, per
@:) side, make for a good one-on-one game.
Actually, in our last campaign we used _much_ smaller numbers and
found it to be pretty enjoyable. We were playing a "take over the solar
system" game (on TSR's Buck Rogers board game solar system map, if anyone's
ever heard of that) and we started out with very small
forces - I think about 500 points each. We also limited the number of
types of ship (classes) that could be built, ala MOO, to five. We got ship
construction points for holding territory, and there were native forces in
most locations. What this meant was that we tended to split up our forces
quite a bit. On the first turn of the game, most of us
came in with five 100-point ships and sent each one to a seperate
location.
Obviously there isn't a lot of room for fancy tactics in a confrontation
between, say, a destroyer and a wing of "native"
fighters, but then again such battles took less than fifteen minutes -
so the campaign portion of the game moved forward quite rapidly. Near the end
we had some larger battles involving up to about 1,000 points per side, but
frankly I preferred some of the smaller, quicker
battles, especially the 600-800 point battles between pairs of
cruisers.
Before that campaign we had another with higher point values and variations in
technology. That was cool because we all had lots of big ships and none of us
knew what gadgets the others had. The problem with that campaign was that we
spent the first 90% of the time circling each other menacingly and wondering
what weapons we had, and the last 10% of the time in a few huge battles, at
the end of which no one had the forces to continue. I guess the battles
themselves were kinda fun. That was something like 3000 points on a side,
different technologies (four players and two instances of each technology),
and
one terrifying mass 70 thrust 8 railgun-packin speed battleship.
I ran a scenario for which I invented some ships. My idea was to have one side
be high tech but have fewer ships and the other side be low tech and have more
ships. The points came out to 2700 vs 2100, and it was a lot fairer than it
sounds. In fact, it was so fair that it almost worked. The attacking forces
saw a big battleship and got spooked but they didn't realize that it didn't
have anything better than a C battery. Anyway, that was a four player battle,
so call it a little more than 1000 points per player, and it worked out pretty
well.
So I guess I endorse the 1500 number, although probably 1000 ppp (points per
player) seems to me to be plenty. The problem with the
big ships is that they take forever to kill - if you want your battle
to actually end, you might consider doing a "cruisers or less" kind of
scenario. And you might be surprised at how enjoyable that can be.
> We find the best kind of battles are on a 6'x4' table, but using cm's
Yep I have to agree with the above. When playing on a table sized area then cm
is the only reasonable scale if the small ships are going to play any kind of
effective role. I prefer to have one or two large ships and then the rest, say
about six or seven, small ships (I really like the NAC Corvette mini from
Copelands).
> Peace and Love
regards gent
---
Slums may well be breeding-grounds of crime,
but middle-class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium.
****************************************
In message <199701151513.KAA03857@sparczilla.East.Sun.COM>, Joachim Heck
- SunSoft <jheck@East.Sun.COM> writes
> Actually, in our last campaign we used _much_ smaller numbers and
Anybody else have any campaign rules for inside a solar system? I have some
myself, but I'm not happy with the movement system I've come up with.
Also, if anybody is interested, I have some FT and DSII pages at
www.kontos.demon.co.uk
The FT page has some ship design templates, and the DSII page has some of my
own rules, plus a program for drawing damage chits(.EXE).
We often play five to eight thousand points a side. We have had a few fifteen
thousand point battles (mostly versus the Kra'vak).
You do need big tables though (or maybe even a couple side by side).
With only two players I think will Sam will agree with me that anything
more than 8000 pts the game bogs down with the huge number of units.
Has any body out there tried the following. Divide the table sides into 6
equal lengths and number them one to six. Divide the oposing fleets up
into squadrons or what ever takes your fancy. Roll a dice for each Squadron
and note down the value. During the fighter launch phase of each turn roll a
dice for each squadron. If the result is greater than or equal to the
threshold the unit appears that turn. Then roll a dice to
decide on which table edge the ship will appear. The player decides the
speed and heading of the ship. If both players get the same edge the should be
sperated by 2D6 inches along that edge.
If you need a background to this scenario it goes along the lines that
both fleets have emerged from jump space at the same time in the same system.
Normally a fleet would jump into a system then form up, however
on this occasion all hell has broken loose........
And this Friday Sam we will meet again across the black void do you want
to try the scenario? Shall we say 8000pts? This is on the provision that
my wife doesn't write off another car!!!
"Capitalism and imperialism are the tools of oppression........" Chairman
Xiang Wong Chairman of the Communist Party of the ESU
> Simon Campbell-Smith wrote:
> more than 8000 pts the game bogs down with the huge number of units.
> into squadrons or what ever takes your fancy. Roll a dice for each
> decide on which table edge the ship will appear. The player decides the
> speed and heading of the ship. If both players get the same edge the
Nifty idea! This would add some fun not knowing eactly where ships might
emerge from. It might actually be neat to allow fleets to enter normal space
on top of each other, making for one quick start to an engagement.
I
like the idea of timing as well which could also make for some interesting
battles. I thought of something like before, but I wanted to use a dense grid
that would allow extermely random positioning without limiting the start to
the table edge.
> And this Friday Sam we will meet again across the black void do you
Try using some super-ships. In order to speed up fleet creation, I
created one last week for a game. It was fun for a change since I am used to
using maybe one capital, a couple of cruisers, and a couple of escorts. I
fitted it with the following systems:
4 AA Megabatterys
3 3-arc A Batterys
3 Heavy fighter groups 1 Attack fighter group 4 Submunition packs 2 PDAF 1
ADAF
I think it also had two 3-arc C batterys as well.
It shocked my friend Paul when the first firing phase commenced and it
unloaded four AAs at one target while none of his ships had range to fire. Of
course with my luck one of the AAs overcharged itself. The supership was able
to wreak destruction on two opposing fleets with a point spread twice the
supership before being destroyed.
> On Mon, 20 Jan 1997, Simon Campbell-Smith wrote:
> into squadrons or what ever takes your fancy. Roll a dice for each
We've done this before, and it adds additional maneuvering to the game. Both
players will want to concentrate their forces in order to concentrate their
firepower.
The only problem comes when one player has their forces coming in close to
each other (based on the starting die roll), and the other has their forces
split across the table. It's a real challenge to try to consolidate your
forces when there's a lot of starting distance between them.
> You do need big tables though (or maybe even a couple side by side).
Just a question...are we the only people who play on the floor? Granted, you
can't leave they minis set up if you don't finish the game, but there's no
shortage of room to maneuver.
Just curious. Scott Field
> You do need big tables though (or maybe even a couple side by side).
Granted, you
> can't leave they minis set up if you don't finish the game, but there's
Who's 'we' include? I do; I have. Don't have tables big enough. :-/
Mk
In a message dated 97-01-21 13:24:44 EST, you write:
> Just a question...are we the only people who play on the floor?
Granted, you
> can't leave they minis set up if you don't finish the game, but
I have at times, but it's a bit uncomfortable, its easy to kick
over/step on
a destroyer, you are more susceptible to cat/toddler attacks (though
they can be less severe than an upset table). If I've got a nice big table
handy, I prefer that. Besides you can store beer, food and rules under the
table.
Later
Brian
> I have at times, but it's a bit uncomfortable, its easy to kick
How many AA-batteries does are required to take down a toddler, anyhow?
Not that I'm worried about it at my place, but...
> be less severe than an upset table). If I've got a nice big table
You guys don't have subfloors?? Tsk...primitives... ;-)
Mk