I definitely like this, as I have often stated my preference to keeping the
main rules as are, and this seems to be a campaign rather than battle
consideration.
You could even flesh out a die table (1-expanding cloud of gas, 2-pilot
scragged/parts available for spares or intellegence 'depending on who
holds
the field', 3-pilot ejected/fighter trashed, 4-pilot ejected/fighter
parts,
5-pilot ejected/fighter repairable with spares, 6-pilot in fighter which
is
intact, merely off-line). You could expand to a 2d6 or 3d6 chart for a
bell curve of possibilities, or separate die rolls for the fighter and the
pilot... I have to stop now; the little man in my head is laughing maniacally.
As a side note, on rec.games.board, someone commented on doing Warpwar as a
PBeM, and I mentioned thinking it might be good as a campaign setting for FT.
So far, no replies, but the idea I had was to take the diceless combat
table, make its cross-reference results be whether fleets would actually
meet in battle, based on the limited intel they'd have as they were
approaching, possibly adjusting results based on comparative 'fleet speeds'.
Any comments?
The_Beast
Sean Bayan Schoonmaker <schoon@aimnet.com> on 01/15/99 10:32:12 AM
Please respond to gzg-l@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU
To: gzg-l@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU
cc: (bcc: Doug Evans/CSN/UNEBR)
Subject: Re: Curing the fighter blues
> 20th century analogs aside, I think fighter attrition is too high in FT
[snip]
There's actually another, simpler way of going at this. After the battle,
simply roll a d6 for each fighter that was destroyed to determine its ultimate
fate. That messes with the rules least of all, and still gives the possibility
the the pilots punched out before the big kablooey.
Schoon
> As a side note, on rec.games.board, someone commented on doing Warpwar
Funny, I was *just* e-talking with Noam 'Iceberg' Izenberg not even an
hour ago about doing a potential campaign FT game based in WarpWar. I've been
mulling this over for about 2 years now, but never got off my butt beyond a
very simple playtest run I did over the summer (which was left unfinished
as I ended up taking off on a 5-week adventure :). My take on this, at
least very initially, is to keep tech levels 'frozen', just to get a feel for
it. I was thinking of abstracting the economics to the limit (eg, all econ
points you collect in your empire are dumped into a pool at the end of each
turn for you to use as you see fit; also, enemy navy cannot attack the
merchants due to the level of abstraction, so the only way an empire could
lose their econ points is to have the enemy take over the system(s) giving a
given empire said resources). I wasn't going to do the WarpWar combat system,
but rather use FT to resolve battles in a contested system. On the map all the
other
player sees is where you are moving your task forces/fleets (said fleets
can be composed of whatever you want them to be, from 1 ship to many), and if
two enemy fleets meet in a system, resort to FT to resolve the battle. This
will,
no doubt, lead to some lop-sided, uneven battles, which is what some
people
would like to see. These could then *easily* be converted into stand-up
scenarios.
Naturally, movement of the Fleet counters would be pre-plotted each
turn.
I would also abstract away ship construction and say once you have the points
to buy a certain ship or ships, and spend the points, you have built it, it is
ready, at your homeworld.
To keep things very simple, I was thinking that each capital world would
generate 10 econ/resource pts, and each colony world 5 pts. Per turn.
This will tend to keep ship sizes also on the smallish end (you can play with
different numbers in this, too, if you want larger ships in your forces).
I also decided to abstract out ground combat and presume that whomever holds
the system at the end of the FT combat phase controls the
econ/resource
points for that system next turn (this *is* supposed to be a very simple
campaign sort of thing, after all). I won't tell you what Noam thought about
the ground combat stuff; you can ask 'im yourself.;) (you're welcome, Iceberg!
:)
Anyway, there you go, in a real brief nutshell, my thoughts on using WarpWar
in an FT campaign game. I'm hoping that Iceberg Noam and I can get together
here in the near future and put this to a test. After that, then expand it to
have varying tech levels and stuff, maybe less abstract merchant trains, etc.
The options are quite open; I just want to play with the initial skeletal idea
first. The whole idea here is just for doing naval engagements between enemy
forces. Other stuff can come or expand in it as one desires (and time allows).
If Iceberg and I ever get together and do this, we'll post a 'campaign
report'. Right now I'm kinda leaning to using the Fifth Frontier War map
instead of the WarpWar map. More systems, more options for attack, more fleets
to play with.
(actually this could make a good multi-player campaign for the GZG-ECC
weekend; too bad I didn't think of this before! ah well, maybe next year...)
Mk
Gee, replying to my own post. Am I lame, do I have a life, or what? ;-)
> ... My take on this, at least
[...]
> here in the near future and put this to a test. After that, then expand
I just had a random thought hit me (it only stung a little). A vague way
to do a pseudo-tech level thing would be to possibly restrict the
maximum Mass an empire may build (eg, cannot build anything larger than 40
Mass ships) until the empire meets an enemy empire and one of their ships of
equal or greater Mass than your max-Massed ship (eg, one of your ships
encounters an enemy ship equal to or larger than the largest ship in your
navy). At that point you can move up to the next Mass ceiling. This would give
some reason for *not* sending out your largest ships to the front lines.
Alternatively, instead of doing Mass-ceilings, you could just use
vanilla FleetBook ships and put caps on ship classes (eg, you can only build
destroyer-sized ships until you meet an enemy destroyer ship or larger;
at that point you can then begin building light cruisers, or up to what-
ever the largest enemy ship encountered was). That would be the *simple*
way of doing it (but would kinda sorta 'force' you to use FB ships -
although I would mix and match like mad!:)
Okay, enough brainstorming here. I gotta go think... :-/
Mk
> You could even flesh out a die table (1-expanding cloud of gas, 2-pilot
Something similar to this definitely works better for me.
> In a message dated 99-01-15 16:05:43 EST, Indy wrote:
> As a side note, on rec.games.board, someone commented on doing Warpwar
This will,
> no doubt, lead to some lop-sided, uneven battles, which is what some
Interestingly enough, this seems similar to the campaign I'm working on at the
moment, though it's more of a "Theatre" level rather than the Grand Strategic
level game. I wanted to add the merchant raiding without neccesarily playing
each little raid, so the plan (for now anyway) is to abtract it more or less
as follows. Each player can allocate ships to the Raiding Pool or to the
Merchant Protection Pool. Each ship has special value this role (*not* the PV,
because it seems to me numbers of ships out there raiding is a bit more
important than the actual combat value of the ship itself [ IE WWII, scads of
weak subs were much better at convoy raiding than was the Bismark, if only
because big B scared the crap out of the Admiralty and they were determined to
find and sink her, which of course they did]) During the strategic turn
there's a roll on a old style Combat Results Table to determine the damage
done to both the enemies logistics level and to the forces involved. The
Logistics Level is sort of (if you'll excuse the AD&D analogy) the combatants
"hit points", the lower the level, the harder it is to do repairs and
replentish the consumable munitions. I hope to finish the rules and whip them
into some reasonably understandable form on om my web page Real Soon Now.
> Naturally, movement of the Fleet counters would be pre-plotted each
Naturally. :-)
> I would also abstract away ship construction and say once you have the
In my campaign, since there's no provision for ship construction, I'm tying
reinforcements into each sides Victory Points (ie, "Oh crap, they're getting
the stuffings knocked out of them, send reinforcements!" to "Wah-hoo,
send more ships and the war's over by Christmas!").
<snip>
> I also decided to abstract out ground combat and presume that whomever
Yeah, me too. I'm just assuming that there's a widely accepted doctrine that
worlds that don't surrender to an orbiting fleet get trashed.
<snip again>
> The whole idea here is just for doing naval engagements between
Yep, same here. That's why I got rid of actually constructing fleets and
whatnot, I figure let the folks back home crank 'em out and let me deal with
fighting them. :-)
> If Iceberg and I ever get together and do this, we'll post a 'campaign
I hope to get my Minataur Sector Campaign started and on line in the next
couple of months. We'll see though.
> Mk
The discussion concerning Warpwar for campaigns is getting cooler by the
minute. I still think, though, that the table for determining if a battle
takes place is an idea of merit. Could even try using the non-defensive
escorts for their proper role: probing. ;->=
It would complicate the system a bit, but you could allow
screening/probing
units, and the main fleets could stay or bail based on new intel. I keep
thinking of the opening to Jutland.
The_Beast
> On Sat, 16 Jan 1999 devans@uneb.edu wrote:
how about using an opposed die roll based on thrust? here are a few
suggestions (all independent):
- the dice should be based on the highest thrust in the fleet, as the
fastest ships would be used as scouts.
- each player rolls to scout out the enemy; make an opposed die roll
based on the highest thrust in the scouter's fleet (the fastest ships would be
used for scouting) and the lowes thrust in the scoutee's fleet (as the thrust
of the whole fleet is given by the thrust of the slowest ship).
- to engage an enemy, you make an opposed roll based on the lowest
thrust in your fleet
- each player may scout out the enemy; pick your scouting group. the
thrust of the group is the the same as that of the slowest ship in the group.
the defender then picks a screening group. roll against the
screening group; if you succeed, you evade it (and scout it - you find
out its rough composition). if you fail, it intercepts you and forces an
engagement (this means screens and scouts will want to take at least some
firepower). if not, roll again against the main fleet to see if you can get
close enough to observe it. thus, your results are intercepted, failed and
succeeded. success gives you the number of ships of escort, cruiser, capital
and merchant types. if using ft2.5, well... i dunno. you'd then have to make
an opposed roll to actually engage the enemy (if he wants to evade), based on
the thrust of the ships you send.
so, if i have a fleet with 2 thrust-4 BBs, 4 thrust-6 CEs and 6 thrust-8
DDs, i would probably use the DDs as scouts and the CEs as a screen. or i
might commit most of my DDs as a screen, as they would have a better chance of
intercepting. if my enemy turned out to be a cruiser detachment, i would send
in my cruisers without the BBs, to maximise the chance of catching him.
anyway, just some thoughts.
> It would complicate the system a bit,
just a tad. a few rolls per potential engagement isn't that bad, is it?
> but you could allow screening/probing
right. the system must allow probing, screening and evasion of attempts to
engage. it should do this fairly simply, if possible. if you say that probing
and screening are done by the same ships, it might be simpler.
Tom