Well, thanks to a lot of hard work by me painting and basing lots of ships and
making really cool fighter stands, my local gaming group is well impressed
with Full Thrust.
The only problem they find is the plotted movement. To me, that was always the
interesting part of the game, but when we're playing with
20-30 ships per side, some people thought it really slowed things down
and caused a bit of confusion.
I don't agree with them and think the plotted movement should stay but I was
just wondering if anyone else has played it without those rules
> On 31-Jan-00 at 11:28, Grogan, Paul (pg70201@glaxowellcome.co.uk) wrote:
Break them into task groups and write orders for the whole group.
> Grogan, Paul wrote:
...Snip...JTL
> The only problem they find is the plotted movement. To me, that was
...Snip...JTL
To speed the game up, and enable the little ships to have a shot, we move
ships in thrust order, Low to high thrust. Move order: 1) Missiles 2) thrust 1
and 2 3) thrust 3 and 4 4) thrust 5 and 6 5) thrust 7 and 8 6) Fighters
Firing order: 1) Missiles 2) Fighters 3) Thrust 8 and 7 4) Thrust 6 and 5 5)
Thrust 4 and 3 6) Thrust 2 and 1
Note: We do not allow fighters to have ranged fire, fighters must be in base
to base contact to have combat.
Between the removal of 'plotted movement' and 'single ship fire' the time
required for a game of 30 to 40 ships is about 2 hours.
Bye for now,
> On 31-Jan-00 at 11:28, Grogan, Paul (pg70201@glaxowellcome.co.uk)
wrote:
> Well, thanks to a lot of hard work by me painting and basing lots of
This is certainly the way to go if you're using more than about 10-12
ships per side; even if you just group the little ones into squadrons and keep
the big guys as singles. Dropping the plotted movement takes out the single
biggest core principle of FT, and makes it a TOTALLY different game.
One half-way option, especially with a new and/or very young player, is
that only ONE player (the older/more experienced one) writes orders,
then the other player moves his ships however he wishes without written
orders,
There are a number of things you can do to make plotted movement easier.
Working on the movement log can do wonders: I like peg boards, like for
cribbage, for increasing velocity, though I've only dabbled with this one. A
sliding scale marker might also work. Even varying how you put the columns
together on a standard ship display can help.
Also, as folks have trouble keeping right/left-starboard/port straight
when the ship is moving in a direction OTHER than directly away, I've taken to
adding paint dot 'lights' on the wings of my Battlestar Galactica ships to
make the visualization of writing directional orders quicker.
Helps enough that I'll get around to putting them on my GZG ships someday.
*notice NO one that knows me is holding breath*
The_Beast