Hello all,
I was curious how everyone else handles fleet FTL communication in their
campaigns. The way I see it happening is via FTL courier drones carried by the
larger vessels. These small unmanned ships could possibly jump to a
designated point and broadcast their electronic message or jump to a
pick-up
point where another vessel can recover it. This would depend on the situation
and the information being sent. What do you all think? How have you guys dealt
with this issue?
Bill
> BDShatswell@aol.com wrote:
I haven't personally. But if you have a referee,
[quoted original message omitted]
> On 10-Jun-00 at 16:07, BDShatswell@aol.com (BDShatswell@aol.com) wrote:
How
> have you guys dealt with this issue?
We assume instantaneous FTL communications. We couldn't figure out how to do
it otherwise and still allow players to know where their ships are and know
the outcome of battles, which is kind of hard to keep from those fighting
them. We do not allow full info on the enemies dispositions, but that is a
totally different ball of string.
> BDShatswell@aol.com wrote:
Nyrath said
> I haven't personally. But if you have a referee,
Well, I own a copy of Trillion Credit Squadron...but I haven't seen it for 15
years or so (if anyone had a copy you'd like to get rid of, let me know
offlist). What method is described?
> Laserlight wrote:
Nothing earth shattering.
It just methodically explains how a patient referee keeps track of everything,
and only tells each squadron commander what information has reached them.
Military assets not directly under control of a player have extensive
contingency orders drawn up, which are filed with the referee.
Military communiqués are given a destination and filed with the referee. The
ref calculates the transit time. When the xboat courier reaches said
destination, the communiqué
is given to all authorized personnel. Or unauthorized if the courier is
intercepted by hostile forces and the message distruct malfunctions.
So at any given time, a squadron commander only knows what ships are in the
same system with them, and what they are told by their received communiqués.
The Sky Marshall would do well to give lots of autonomy
to the squadron commanders under them, as micro-managing
with such time lags doesn't work.
If the game lacks a referee, perhaps an adaptation of the system in THE FIFTH
FRONTIER WAR could be used.
In that system, communiqués work as normal. For fleets, however, everybody
can see where all the fleets are, enemy and friendly. (this represents general
info you get from neutral merchant traffic)
The catch is: each fleet commander must pre-plot their fleet
movement from system to system *several turns in advance!*
In TFFW, each fleet was commanded by an admiral, who had a "leadership
rating". This rating specified how many turns in advance that fleet had to
plot its movement.