From: Allan Goodall <agoodall@a...>
Date: 16 Aug 2000 10:42:04 -0700
Subject: [FT] Demo and Tournament Games
As promised, here are some comments about tournament and demo games based on what I saw at GenCon. Demo games: My feeling is that demo games almost always last too long. There is no sense of objective with them. Of course, the idea is to play the game and learn the game and just have fun. The problem is that with Full Thrust the games can take a long time with nothing much happening. Case in point: the vector game I played. At one point all of the action was down at one end of the table. However, due to the nature of the figure placement I couldn't fire my ships without impacting opponent's ships that could fire at one of our other fleets. The main fighting was on the other end of the board, but we had to wait until that was all done before I could get a chance to do anything. So, here are some proposals. Demo Game Objective: Usually the demo games I've seen consist of 4 players a side, and the objective is to destroy the other side's fleet. In this variant, every player gets the point total of a ship the destroy. Even if all they did was fire the very last class 1 beam weapon for one point of damage that knocks out some superdreadnought, they get full points for it. If you've ever played the fun Avalon Hill card game "Naval War" you have the idea. If a player is eliminated, he gets more ships! However, anything destroyed by these new ships is only at half the point total. This keeps everyone in the game, but still rewards the better player. Demo Game Ships: Everyone wants to put a large capital ship in the fleet mix. This, of course, means that the games take forever. I suggest 750 points, mostly in escorts and cruisers. MAYBE a battlecruiser or battleship. Lots of things that go "pop", but with enough of a mix to keep things interesting. Maybe give everyone 1 or 2 squadrons of fighters for support, just to give them a feel for the fighter rules. I would also have ship records for the big ships available. Gives them something to drool over. Initiative: Initiative passes back and forth between two players in a regular game. In our demo games, we had it pass back and forth between each side. Instead, each player should get to shoot at something in order. Say side one has players 1 and 3, and side two has players 2 and 4. Everyone rolls initiative. Highest player goes first. Say that's player 1. Player 1 fires, then player 2, then player 3, then player 4. If player 1 can't fire, too bad, the next person to fire is player 2. This gives everyone a chance to play equally. You won't ever have to wait until everyone else is done before you get to fire all your ships. Now, about tournaments... Our double elimination tournament was a success, I believe. Certainly most players seemed to prefer playing 2 games for the event instead of just one. However, I did notice a couple of things. We had 15 players participate, with Lew Stoneking bowing out to make the total an even number. All players played 2 initial games. The point total for the two initial games gave us our top 4 players. These top four players were then seeded so that player 1 played player 4 and player 2 played 3. The two winners of these games went on to compete for first place. In order to get into the semi-final round, a player had to have a combined score of over 3700 points. That is, the total point value of ships and fighters destroyed + the total point value of the player's own ships and fighters left alive for both games had to be more than 3700 points. That wasn't a rule, that's just how the totals shook out. If a player and an opponent did not destroy any ships, they would get a score of 1500 per game. I believe the lowest point total for someone who had won both games was 3600+ points. What this means is that a player didn't have a chance to make it into the final round if they lost their first game. It was theoretically possible that everyone who won their first round game could lose their second round game, except that with the random choice of competitors for the second round some first round winners played other first round winners. This made it very difficult to get into the finals if you had a bad first round. I've been thinking about this, and I think I have a way of keeping the game competitive for all. This is based on the fact that we had three prize levels (first, second and third). It could also work for 2 levels. Option 1: After the first the winners would be placed into the "championship" side, and the losers would be placed into the "consolation" side. The champions would then play off to find the top 4 players (or, in a smaller tournament, top 2 players directly). The top four would get into the semi-finals with the two winners of the semis playing for first and second place. The consolation players would play to choose two "consolation finalists" who would then play off for the third place prize. This means that if you won your first round, you were in the running for 1st or 2nd, but if you lost your first round you could still win 3rd place. Yes, this does mean a player in the championship side could win both games and still not get 3rd prize. Option 2: Use the first game only to seed the players for the second game. First plays last, etc. Then, top 4 with the second game score ONLY makes it to the semi-finals. The problem: by definition, and our scoring system, the first place player WILL play the last place player in the second elimination round. Not exactly the best thing to do. Option 3: First game used to place players in two groups like option 1. Group 1 has 25% to 40% of the players in Group 2. Two players from group 1 will make the semi-finals, two from group 2. This means that the second game is more important than the first, but the first group will dictate the ease with which you get into the semis. Of the three, I prefer the third option myself. Comments welcomed as usual (as if I had any choice...). I'd also be interested in hearing how others play.