We played a rules variant over the weekend that was pretty successful.
Basically we played a small game (2 sides 1000pts a side 4 players) where we
didn't roll initiative, and where fire was simultaneous.
What we did was to move our ships as normal. Then we laid out colored dice on
our targets based on our arcs and available weapons. I used red for beams and
white for pulse torpedoes. When everyone had their dice, we rolled them in any
order (even in parallel where there were multiple little battles going on). We
didn't damage assess, we just noted the damage on the SSD as a number. After
everyone had finished, we all sat down, assessed the damage, did our
threshhold checks, did our repair rolls, and went on to the next turn.
Note that this DOES affect how many/what kind of
threshholds you do.
The result was a fast moving, fun game that we quite enjoyed. It's always
seemed artificial to me that a ship could wait to see what another ship did to
a target before deciding to fire on it himself. And it always seemed
artificial that a ship would wait to be destroyed instead of firing at the
same time it was being fired at. We put up with it because it's a game
mechanic, but this seems easier (as long as you can distinguish different
people's dice).
Has anyone done this, and if so, are there any drawbacks?
We have played FT this way, with large battle as well. It work very well, as
that lovely SDN you have does die before it can fire anything.
> David Griffin wrote:
> The result was a fast moving, fun game that we
I've played like this before and I don't like it. It lessens the amount of
system checks you roll and it gets rid of battle initiative which I think is
important. We play with the card deck initiative system where we give each
ship a card in a deck and flip them over to see which ships fires. It make the
initiative more random and there's no haggling over which whip to fire next.
The reasons I don't like initiativeless systems is that they get rid of the
idea where that some ships will be faster on the draw then others. It's nice
if all the ships can line up and unleash at once but it's not very realistic.
If you're well organised the card drawing system if pretty fast and hassle
free and keeps the feel of better and worse crews.
[quoted original message omitted]
> One way I`ve tried involved simultaineous fire and using innitiative
Has anyone tried the opposite? Simultaneous movement (plotted) and then Init.
fire by ship? I have to admit, I prefer Init. by ship because it allows for
Crew Quality modifiers, etc.
> avid Rodemaker writes:
> One way I`ve tried involved simultaineous fire and using innitiative
Isn't this the standard way?
> >> One way I`ve tried involved simultaineous fire and using
> avid Rodemaker writes:
> >> One way I`ve tried involved simultaineous fire and using
Ahhh. This is the way I run my PBEM games. I assign a random shooting order to
all the ships (and a seperate random shooting order to fighters).
From: David Griffin <carbon_dragon@yahoo.com>
> We played a rules variant over the weekend that
> Has anyone done this, and if so, are there any
This is my preferred method of both PBeM and Face to Face gaming. I believe it
helps preserve small ships in th eline of battle, since they will get to fire
at least once anyway. Opponents tend to target ships that have the most
firepower they have a reasonable chance of destroying.
Jaime points out:
> The reasons I don't like initiativeless systems is that they get rid
I'd like to try the card system sometime, but the case for "simlutaneous"
fire is based on the granularity of FT. A turn is anywhere from 5-20
minutes depending on your scale, and ships are assumed to be firing and
maneuvering throughout the turn, so "faster on the draw" tends to abstract out
IMO.
So, now we have unbalanced firing in favor of a lot of 'little' starships?
<grin>
Glenn/Triphibious
This is my Science Fiction Alter Ego E-mail address.
On Mon, 16 Apr 2001 17:26:56 -0700 Corey Burger
> <burgundavia@crosswinds.net> writes:
> So, now we have unbalanced firing in favor of a lot of 'little'
I've been thinking about the different fire options, including simultaneous,
thrust based, mass based and just plain old random. All the arguments I've
heard so far have been very good and quite convincing, which leads me to think
that perhaps a combined system might be best. I was thinking that initiative
could be divided up into groups, and each groups fire would be simultaneous
within that group. The groups could first be formed based on thrust, so as to
give the more nimble ships a first shot, by taking the thrust of the "fastest"
ship and averaging it with the thrust of the "slowest" ship. All ships with
thrust ratings greater than that average are in group one, all other ships are
in group two. Then, maybe the groups could be divided once more based on some
other criteria, such as crew quality. That could break each group into
possibly three groups as your elite units fire first (simultaneous), followed
by veterans, followed by green.
All in all, you end up with six groupings, based on nimbleness of the various
ships, and quality of the crew. Within each grouping, the fire is
simultaneous, because as someone aptly pointed out, each turn is like 5 to 20
minutes in length. I personally chose thrust over crew quality because in my
opinion, a crew, even a really good one, can only do so much with a ship. I am
sure this can be argues to the converse as well. Additionally, other types of
modifiers could be added, depending on the complexity desired. The interesting
thing is, it could add a few other design features to the games and scenarios.
For example, a ship behind in maintenance manned by an elite crew could be
treated as Veteran for purposes of initiative for the scenario in question.
The system sounds a lot more complex than it is. For example,
NAC Vandenburg Heavy Cruiser Veteran Crew (Thrust 6)
2 NAC Furious Escort Cruisers Green/Veteran Crews (Thrust 4)
4 NAC Ticonderoga Destroyers Elite Crew (Thrust 6)
versus
FSE Roma Battleship Veteran Crew (Thrust 4) 2 FSE Milan Escort Cruisers
Veteran Crews (Thrust 6)
Average of High Thrust (6) and Low Thrust (4) is 5. So all ships with thrust 6
are in first group, all other ships are in second group. IN each group,
elites, then veterans, then green fires, so initiative would go like this:
FIRST: NAC Ticonderoga's SECOND: NAC Vandenburg Heavy Cruiser, both FSE Milan
Escort Cruisers (simultaneous) THIRD: 1 NAC Furious Escort Cruiser, FSE Roma
Battleship (simultaneous) FOURTH: remaining (green) NAC Furious Escort
Cruiser.
That took me a lot longer to type up than to figure out (less than a minute).
If playing with secret fleets, its still not a challenge to find out the best
and worth thrust rating from each fleet, make the calculation, then notify the
players of the breakdown. Then during play simply call out, "FAST GROUP ELITE
Fire!" "FAST GROUP VETS FIRE", etc etc etc.
Just a thought.
Since I don't get near as many games in as I'd like, I'd sure appreciate it if
someone would try it out and let me know....
George
> stranger wrote:
> I've been thinking about the different fire options, including
Sounds waaay too complicated. I don't believe in thrust based initiative
personally since I think it's more about the firecontrol and the ship's crew
then the speed of the ship itself. The more you try and break things down and
even things up by ship stats the more complex and unwieldly it gets. I'd
rather not spend an equal time calculating groups and fire procedure as actual
gaming. If you're really intent on making it more even for those who have more
ships and don't like just drawing cards try this:
Person with more ships has initiative, they fire ships until the numbers are
equal, then you alternate.
In the Operation Avalanche game we seperated the ship-to-ship fire into
"Fire Phases". In a normal game, a fire phase would be 1 ship firing. In OA, a
Fire Phase allowed a Fire Group to fire in a Fire Phase. A Fire Group would
consist of 1 capital (Battlecruiser and above), 2 Cruisers (Light to Heavy
Cruiser), or 3 Escorts (Hvy Destroyer and under). You could also fire 1 escort
in place of a cruiser if you desired. Fire Groups were fluid, and could change
each round. Inititive was rolled for each side. The winning side got the 1st
Fire Phase and then the Fire Phases alternated.
This helped bring the balance between the large ships and the small ships
closer (not equal, but closer). This was a set scenario, so the numbers of
large and small ships on each side was about equal.
If doing a 1-off, I would suggest giving a +1 on the inititive roll to
the side with more ships. If the groupings are 2:1, then allow the side with
more ships to fire 2 groups to the other sides 1 group. If 3:1, then 3 groups
to 1 group, etc. This does not necessarily fix a mixed group fighting an
Uberdreadnought, but helps in most situations.
-----
Brian Bell bkb@beol.net
http://www.ftsr.org
-----
> -----Original Message-----
--- "Bell, Brian K (Contractor)"
> <Brian.Bell@dscc.dla.mil> wrote:
...In OA,
> a Fire Phase allowed a Fire Group to fire in a Fire
I would think that would be worse. Whole squadrons would dissappear before
getting the chance to fire just on a roll of the dice (initiative). I liked
the initiativeless approach because luck was less of a factor. It was planning
that seemed to be
accentuated -- deciding who to fire at. Besides
the mechanics of deciding who fires first takes time that we didn't have in
this small test game.
I originally started this thread with an idea (not mine but a member of my
group's) for NO initiative play on the principle of speed and a reduction in
the effect of luck. All ships allocated fire by means of laying out dice and
then assessed damage at the end of the turn before repair rolls.
One person didn't like it because he thought some ships should fire before
others. One didn't like it
because of the effect it had in turning 1-3 lower
threshholds into a larger one (reducing the number of systems available at the
end). While acknowledging these problems, I thought it was worth it. Does
anyone have any further downsides for this approach?
It seems to me that more and more complex initiative systems is kind of the
opposite to the original intention of the thread. Of course you can all
discuss whatever you're interested in, but I was hoping to get a little more
guidance in this method.
Brian Bell said
> > a Fire Phase allowed a Fire Group to fire in a Fire
in retrospect I'd have asked Brian to make it 4 Escorts, not 3
David Griffith said:
> I would think that would be worse. Whole squadrons
War is hell, yes...
> the initiativeless approach because luck was less
a) it doesn't take time to plan and record simultaneous fire?
b) it usually only took a couple of seconds to decide--mostly
communication between two players.
> --- Laserlight <laserlight@quixnet.net> wrote:
...
> David Griffin said:
...
> > the initiativeless approach because luck was less
We were admittedly playing a small game, but it only took about 5 seconds to
lay our dice for our weapons next to the ship we were shooting at. Everything
takes SOME time, but the time we spent doing this was less than the protocol
of going through the shooting of each ship with everyone either paying
attention or standing around bored waiting for his turn to come up.
Let's not forget the mild friction that always seems to come up between
partners when deciding who gets to fire a ship next either. This way, everyone
gets his chance to fire and firing last has no game consequence.
Why is everyone firing at the same time unbalanced in favor of little ships?
> --- Glenn M Wilson <triphibious@juno.com> wrote:
> Why is everyone firing at the same time unbalanced
As Oerjan (or one of the other number crunchers out there), he`ll explain how
a large ship is more effective due to the ability to take dammage with less
chance of threshold rolls taking out your weapons compaired to small ships. If
you use one of the ways people have discribed, it gives small ships a chance
to even up the odds. Of course, you have to be careful not to swing the
balance too far the other way.
It was (an attempt to make a joke) based on one's comment that the SDN
dies before it can do anything instead of the pop-corn corvettes.
On Thu, 19 Apr 2001 12:56:34 -0700 (PDT) David Griffin
> <carbon_dragon@yahoo.com> writes:
> --- Bif Smith <bif@bifsmith.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
> > Why is everyone firing at the same time unbalanced
...
> As Oerjan (or one of the other number crunchers out
Yes, I admit this, but that's a bias inherent in the game. I don't think it's
that much worse using this rules variant. We didn't play this rule last night
but are supposed to try it again Saturday, so I'll see how it goes then.
> Sounds waaay too complicated. I don't believe in thrust based
Personally, I could care less about evening it up for the smaller ships. All I
was trying to do was offer a solution that carried many of the good arguments
in it. I don't think the system is brokem when you factor in the idea that the
system was built very generically to allow people to recreate their favorite
genre's in science fiction andf simulate it in the game. On any kind of wide
open points system like that, it is very very easy to blow the balance all to
hell and take all kinds of advantage. I really think its the genre that
controls balance. I've heard that termed an "artificial" limitation before,
but I disagree. Even for genre's people make up, after some playing they will
know what works and what doesn't. Ther person
building the super-Sa'Vasku ship was not keeping wihtin the genre, and
that's why it didn't balance. If he had been interested in playing the genre
his design would have been within the framework provided for the Sa'Vasku.
If I had to change the system, I think I would opt for simultaneous fire. The
turns are just too large scale for small differences in ship maneuverability,
quality, and crew differences to matter much. However, I'm all for it if it is
in keeping with whatever genre you're trying to portray.
> On Wed, 18 Apr 2001 20:26:24 -0400 "stranger" <stranger@cvn.net> writes:
<snip>
> I've been thinking about the different fire options, including
George, this is a well thought out system but... well, it adds more layers to
a simple system then I prefer. The attraction to me was the lack of SFB
detritus (ducks as phaser fire bounces off the walls) of the system. If that
means my Nekton NB boats die by the droves but I have a fun games, well that I
can live with. But if someone would try it out and make it work easier then it
appears, then I'll certainly try it. Guess i just use KISS to cover my
inherent laziness.