[GZG] Beta Playtest Rules

Is there a copy of FB3 FTIII beta rules that I can look at and hopefully
playtest?

Regards,

> Steven Gott wrote:

> Is there a copy of FB3 FTIII beta rules that I can look at and

The beta-test fleets at <www.star-ranger.com> (UNSC, NI, ORC) feature
some
of the beta-test stuff (variable hull row arrangements, new weapon
types),
and some other beta-test rules (modification to the points system,
fighter rules) have been posted here so should be in the archives, but there
is no
single coherent FT3 beta-test rules file to read.

Regards,

_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-l
In a message dated 9/21/2005 3:08:50 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> stevengott@hotmail.com writes:

Is there a copy of FB3 FTIII beta rules that I can look at and hopefully
playtest?

Regards,

Steven Gott

*raising his hands wildly* Ohh me to.. me to... me to... Oh please send me a
copy to..

Vince

> >Is there a copy of FB3 FTIII beta rules that I can look at and

Here are the actual links just so save some searching.

UNSC - http://www.star-ranger.com/UNSCpreview.htm
ORC - http://www.star-ranger.com/ORCpreview.htm
NI - http://nift.firedrake.org/Alpha/NIAlpha.html

Proposal of Fighter Changes -
http://lists.firedrake.org/gzg/200403/msg00286.html
Combat Point Value (a good overview) -
http://lists.firedrake.org/gzg/200406/msg00326.html

Please do play around with these new rules and ships. There hasn't been much
feedback on them lately, and the best way everyone can help the development of
FTIII is to test what is out there and post your results.
 A
constant supply of playtest reports keeps the playtest list buzzing and on
task so do your part.

If you're looking for specific suggestions that will really help:

We could use:
-Small, medium, and large battles (call it 1000,2000,3000 NPV) of the
three new fleets against the FB1 and FB2 fleets (and each other). I'm not
counting the SV at the moment, since they are horses of another color, and I'm
not sure if the revisions for them are archived in one spot yet.

(That's about 60 battles assuming standard meeting engagement only,
all of which need reports to be useful - other setups merit other tests)

- Escort, Light, and heavy Carrier battles against fighter and non-
fighter armed fleets to test the UF-AFP.

(Another 60 battles And reports...)

One at a time is fine, but every little bit of feedback helps.

> Noam wrote:

> (That's about 60 battles assuming standard meeting engagement only,

...and here's a guide describing how to record playtests so they're as useful
as possible to us. However, be aware that recording all this is a

rather slow business. Having one dedicated record-keeper who doesn't
participate in the actual game speeds things up considerably, though it isn't
always that fun for the one selected to keep records!

At the start of the battle record... * At least in the first report you post,
a *detailed* listing of which
rules you use - which movement system you use, whether or not you use
Core Systems, any optional, advanced or house rules in play, what size your
Measuring Units (mu) are, and so on. Do NOT just say "the usual rules"
until the rest of us know exactly what "the usual rules" are - Full
Thrust has a LOT of options, and they all influence the game balance to some
extent. * The size of your gaming table in mu, and whether you use a fixed or
a floating table. * Fleet lists of all ships on each side, including point
totals. If you use any custom designs, include all stats for them. * Starting
positions, velocities and courses for all ships.

During each game turn, record... * Who won the initiative. * Generalise
movement orders and current velocity. Eg., saying "The light ships turned 3
pts to starboard and accellerated to speed 26, while the capital ships and
escort cruisers accellerated straight ahead to speed 16. The fighters screened
the capitals." is generally more useful than listing
the exact movement orders for each ship - the text description is much
easier to read, and gives essentially the same information.
*  Combat results for every ship and fighter group - indicate every
weapon fired, its target, range, arc fired out of, and damage caused. I
usually

clump all weapons of the same type on the same ship firing at the same target
together, rather than displaying each individual weapon battery separately.
Eg., if a ship has 4 B2s and 2 B1s and fires 2 B2s and both B1s at one target
and the other two B2s at another target, I record them as 3 entries: one for
the first 2 B2s, one for the B1s, and one for the last two B2s firing at the
other target. * If a ship reaches a threshold or is hit by Needle Beams, EMP
weapons or similar, list any systems damaged or destroyed. * If a ship repairs
systems, list them.

At the end of the battle:
* Summarize the status of the surviving ships - the amount of hull and
armour damage taken in particular, but preferrably also all damaged systems
and unused expendable ordnance. This serves as a double-check to see if
there has been some damage that went unrecorded in the heat of battle.

This is quite a lot to record, but it really helps us a lot. The participants'
perception of what happened during the game is often quite

different to what actually did happen; a detailed report allow us to determine
what actually did happen... some examples (all of which have happened many
times during our playtest battles):

* All players thought that one side had won the battle hands down, when in
fact both sides had lost almost exactly the same percentage of their
hull/armour boxes; but while one side had lost several ships and had the

rest untouched the other had taken some damage to all units, so one side

*seemed* to be in far worse shape than the other;

* All players thought that one particularly overpowered weapon had decided the
outcome, when in fact that weapon was the *least* effective one in the
battle - but although most of its shots inflicted no damage at all, it
had
scored that one _massive_ hit that everyone remembered whereas the other

weapons had caused a steady but unspectacular trickle of damage instead;

* All players thought that one particularly overpowered weapon had decided the
outcome, when in fact the side using that weapon had outmanoeuvred the
opponents so they couldn't shoot back at all! (*Any* weapon can be a
battle-winner if the enemy can't return fire, like...)

In order to record all this data, I use a weapons-fire record sheet with

the following columns:

Turn   Firing ship   Target   Range   Arc   Weapon   Damage inflicted
Notes

The "Notes" column is used eg. to list damage deflected by screens, extreme
die rolls, target systems knocked out by threshold checks, Needle Beams or
EMPs, and anything else which doesn't quite fit in the other columns. Fighters
and missiles tend to have quite a lot of stuff in the "Notes" column, for
example.

The "Arc" column lists which fire arc the *firer* used, not which arc on

the target the shots struck.

While I can usually figure out the rough range fired if you give the number of
dice rolled for each weapon, but listing the range explicitly saves me a
fair amount of work and doesn't add much extra record-keeping for you
:-/

Later,

> Oerjan Ariander wrote:

> useful as possible to us. However, be aware that recording all this is

Nice intro to how you would like the reports - do you by any chance have

a report in this format you would care to share with us - examples are
always good:)

> Oerjan Ariander wrote:

Well - one could argue that the side with damaged ships were better off
than the one with lost ships.. Damaged ship might shoot back, might accomplish
mission tasks and might get away etc... Destroyed ships don't
;)

> I record them as 3 entries: one for the first 2 B2s,

"One for the first 2 B2s, one for the B1s" will mean a change of play as well
as of record keeping, as most players I know just lump all dice on a target,
as long as those dice give the same results with the same roll, i.e., sixes
are two points of damage and reroll...

One suggestion for those who want to run playtests for group members who might
not want to be quite so specific, is use different color dice for the
different weapons. "Here are your five dice for results" and hand them four
green for the B2's, and one white for the B1.

I have to wonder if it wouldn't be almost as easy to declare 4/5's of
any
hits for the B2's, and 1/5 for the B1.

Is this trip really necessary?

As an aside, I DID find a mix of colored dice very useful in threshold rolls
for smaller craft on a recent battle; 'here's the pile o' dice that represents
all the systems on your ship' with, say, three green dice for the three FC's,
four white dice for the four 360 B1's, one blue for the starboard B2, one red
for the forward B2, etc.

Did have to have two sets of rolls to cover all systems, but did seem quicker
than 'first roll for this B1, miss, second roll for this B1, miss, third roll
for this B2, down,...'

I just needed to assign colors and which system was in each set of rolls on
the SSD, and away we went.

Huge YMMV, of course.

The_Beast

On 9/22/05, gzg-l-request@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
> <gzg-l-request@lists.csua.berkeley.edu> wrote:

> Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2005 12:23:23 -0500

> "One for the first 2 B2s, one for the B1s" will mean a change of play

Oerjan's description of what we in the playtest group need is great. However,
I think that the playtest group could live with all beam dice lumped together
if it's going to speed play for the playtesters, and
if slowing down play will _limit the number of playtests_.

The important part is to get playtest feedback. If keeping track of beam rolls
is going to reduce the chance of players playtesting the rules, I think we
could live without that level of detail in favour of more playtest results.
What Oerjan listed is optimal.

We do need to know what weapons did what damage, though. We need to
know if, for instance, a new weapon is overpowered/underpowered. And,
to stress something Oerjan said, we need to know by way of hard
numbers. We've seen a number of people stress that such-and-such a
weapon is way overpowered, when in fact it does massive amounts of damage when
it hits but misses most of the time. Oerjan made it very clear when he said
that people remember the big hit and forget all the times the weapon missed.

That's why we need detailed damage, to weigh the overall performance of each
weapon system against each other.

Detail is the key. A playtest result that says, "We tried the fighter rules
last night. Didn't like it. Fighters are too powerful with them," or, "We
played SV versus UN last night, and the UN kicked butt! Great work!" is of
little to no use. We need data to see if the rules are working, or have bugs
in them.

I'll add one other thing to Oerjan's missive. If you provide comments from the
players, please indicate which player played what side. If Bob said the UN
were too weak, it may make a difference to know that Bob was the UN player and
was handily beaten by Doug playing the SV (and it means something else if Bob
was the SV player saying the same thing).

While we're on the subject of playtests, I haven't received much feedback at
all on the Phalon playtest rules from the SG2 crowd...

> Doug Evans wrote:

> I record them as 3 entries: one for the first 2 B2s,

In my experience rolling beam dice in single-weapon-type groups only
takes a few seconds longer than rolling them all in a single batch, and it is
much faster than trying to find the correct number of dice of a particular
colour for colour-coding the dice for different weapon types within a
salvo.

It is writing all the results down which causes most of the slow-down
for me and my local opponents; that's why I recommended having a separate
person as neutral record-keeper.

> I have to wonder if it wouldn't be almost as easy to declare 4/5's of

If you do this, you have to stick to those exact fractions no matter how

much damage you actually roll. Eg., if you have 4 dice from B2s and 1 die
from a B1 but only roll 3 pts of damage, you must assign 3*1/5 = 0.6 pts
to
the B1 and 3*4/5 = 2.4 pts to the B2s; you may *not* round the fractions
to 1 pt for the B1 and 2 pts for the B2s, since that would almost inevitably
bias your data in favour of one weapon type or the other.

Recording fractional hits in this way tends to get very messy when you add up
the data after the battle, since not every salvo will have the same
denominator. If the denominators are more awkward than the fifths used in the
above example (eg. sevenths or thirteenths), it also gets messier to

record them *during* the battle - calculating the decimals during the
battle is a pain, and writing down the denominator for each shot takes up a
lot of space on a record sheet which is usually rather cramped already.
Been there, done that :-/

In addition, if you have any weapons which *don't* use plain beam dice you
have to split them out into separate entries anyway. For me it is much
easier to use the same record-keeping routine for all weapon types than
it is to note down everything for some weapon types but take shortcuts with

other weapon types.

Is it *necessary* to use the detailed procedure I described in my prevous post
for each and every weapon type used in the battle?

No. You can take shortcuts if you like... but at least for me, the various
shortcuts suggested here (and others like them) either speed up the play

itself at the cost of increasing the time and effort spent on recording the
data accurately, or risk screwing up the accuracy of the data and thus risk
making the playtest less useful or even outright misleading.

***

> Allan Goodall wrote:

> Oerjan's description of what we in the playtest group need is great.

Well... any playtests are of course better than no playtests at all, but

feedback where we can't trust that the hard numbers are at least reasonably
accurately recorded isn't much better than the "This sucks!"-style of
reports since it is so easy to accidentally bias the
data unless you're very careful. The "This sucks!"-style reports are at
least obvious about being subjective :-/

There is one type of playtests where we record no data at all, and that is
when we're testing game-*flow* issues. It is rather difficult to
determine if a particular game mechanic plays quickly or slowly if you stop
the game all the time anyway in order to take notes! However, the vast
majority of
playtests test game-*balance* rather than game-flow, and for
game-balance
we do need all the data.

> We do need to know what weapons did what damage, though.

We also need to know how many shots each weapon type fired during the game at
what ranges. Knowing that we can work backwards to see how many dice were
thrown.

> We need to know if, for instance, a new weapon is overpowered/

As TomB pointed out, having all the hard numbers on record also helps us to
see if the die rolls were particularly hot or cold. I vividly remember a

particular weapon type which due to flukey dice averaged more than 1 point per
beam die in some of my own FB2 playtest battles rather than the 0.8
expected... if I hadn't tracked both the damage that weapon type inflicted
*and* the number of beam dice it had fired at various ranges in those battles,
I wouldn't have noticed that the dice were so hot and thus would've rated that
weapon as "overpowered".

It might also be worthwhile to point out that the number of people Allan

talks about above includes the entire 'official' GZG playtest crew :-/
Each point I listed in my previous post is there because of bad experience
from one or more playtests where we *didn't* record that particular data...
IOW, the list of data to be recorded is not "you have to go to all this effort
to be worthy of being a playtester" but rather "these are mistakes
we've already made in the past; please try not to repeat them" :-/

> Detail is the key. A playtest result that says, "We tried the fighter

Very much so - not least because the way a rule is intended to work
might not always be how the players *think* it is intended to work, causing
them to state that "it didn't work" when in fact it did perform exactly as
intended... :-/

Later,

> Claus Paludan wrote:

> Nice intro to how you would like the reports - do you by any chance

Here's a good example, posted by Roger Burton West in spring 2003. The
battle features a UNSC-led human alliance facing Kra'Vak and Sa'Vasku,
using alpha-test SV rules and the beta-test fighter rules. I've put in
some comments about the report in [OA: square brackets] here and there.

***
Setup:
======

The year is 2189. The Kra'Vak invasion of human space continues
unabated. In a forgotten spacelane near a third-rate star, a mixed task
force under United Nations leadership attempts to prevent a War Family from
rejoining the main fleet, only to discover that the Sa'Vasku don't
_only_ make deals with humans...

UNSC subfleet: BDN Sea: UNS North Sea (1 standard fighter group, 2 AMTs) CA
River: UNS Amu Darya CA River: UNS Orange CE Bay: UNS Green Bay DD Lake: UNS
Mobutu Sese Seko DD Lake: UNS Baikal FF Hunter: UNS Vasiliy Zaitsev FF Hunter:
UNS Karamojo Bell

ESU subfleet: CVA Konstantin: VKK Kuznetsov (3 interceptor, 3 attack fighter
groups) BDN Rostov: VKK Volgograd (1 standard fighter group) CA Gorshkov: VKK
Tashkent SB Zinoviev: VKK Istomin SB Zinoviev: VKK Krivoschyokov

NSL subfleet: SDN von Tegetthoff: KRS Otto Schultze (1 interceptor group) BB
Maria von Burgund: KRS Eleonore von Portugal BB Maria von Burgund: KRS Anna
von Boehmen und Ungarn
CL(E) Kronprinz Wilhelm/A: KRS Kronprinz Falkenberg
DD Lutzow: KRS Lutzow

(The Lutzow is one of Dean Gundberg's designs, found at
http://www.star-ranger.com/Stuff/NSL.htm; UNSC are Derek's; Zinoviev is
the Lenov/S under a new name; everything else is FB standard.)

[OA: Since we had discussed Derek's UNSC design just before Roger posted

this report, there was no need for him to include those designs in the
report.]

Kra'Vak invasion force: Attack Sliver Mother Ko'San: Ko'Kas (6 heavy fighter
groups) Ruler War Mountain Yu'Kas: Yuo'Das (1 heavy fighter group) Attack Dark
Ship Ko'Tek: Ko'Dol Hunter Silent Ship Vo'Bok: Vo'Rok

Sa'Vasku "technical advisors": Elder Leader Ship Vas'Sa'Rosh: Beorhte Leader
Ship Sla'Tha'Rosh: Gemaedde Younger Broodship Thy'Sa'Teth: Gedwolene Elder
Strike Ship Shyy'Tha'Var: Holdlice Strike Ship Var'Thee'Sha: Statholwonge
Strike Ship Var'Thee'Sha: Hrusan Strike Ship Var'Thee'Sha: Druncmennen Younger
Strike Ship Var'Arr'Sha: Hygegalan

(And I'm sure _someone_ on this list will work out where I got the
Sa'Vasku names from; the other players thought they were suitably alien.
:-) All designs are FB standard.)

Each subfleet was run by a separate player, but initiative and firing order
were integrated.

Rules in use:

- cinematic movement
- Sa'Vasku fixes at [OA: link to GZG playtest archive removed]
- UF/AFP as in CVS (in theory with escorting, but it didn't happen)
- Scatterguns do d3 hits in PD mode

The logging was done by a kibitzing player, and I may copy his notes
inaccurately.

[OA: Here it would've been nice with a brief description of the initial
set-up and the manoeuvres of the first game turn, but Roger jumped
straight to turn 2:]

Turn 2:
=======

(that being the first turn of fire)

The Zinovievs moved forward due to a communications failure on the Allied
side. Generally, the UNSC ships were to the fore, with NSL fairly close behind
them and ESU further back. K'V fighters launch but hang back.

North Sea shoots Yuo'Das at 24/F with 2 PTs (4), a Volgograd (5) and 8
beam dice (2).

[OA: I have no idea why the Grasers are called "Volgograds"!]
[OA: IIRC the only beam batteries the North Sea had which could reach
out
to range 24 were B2-3s, making it unnecessary to specify which weapon
type
they were; but I would've preferred it to be explicitly stated - if
nothing else to make the report easier to understand today, more than two
years and several UNSC design revisions later...]

Beorhte shoots Amu Darya at 26/F with 2 stinger dice (0).

Orange shoots Yuo'Das at 24/F with 2 PTs (5) and a Volgograd (2) for
first threshold.

Yuo'Das shoots Istomin at 23/F with 2 K1s (1) to destroy it. Yuo'Das
shoots Orange at 22 with 2 K6s (12) and 2 K1s (0) for first threshold.

[OA: Obviously the Orange too was in the Yuo'Das's (F) arc, since the
K6s could fire...]

Mobutu Sese Seko shoots Yuo'Das at 25/F with 2 PTs (0).

Ko'Dol shoots Karamojo Bell at 21/F with 3 K3s (6) and 1 K1 (2) to
destroy it.

Green Bay shoots Yuo'Das at 27/F with a PT (0).

Gemaedde shoots Krivoschyokov at 24/F with 3 stinger dice (3) to
destroy it. Gemaedde shoots Amu Darya at 25/F with a stinger die (0).

Tashkent shoots Yuo'Das at 36/FP with a beam die (1).

Ko'Kas shoots North Sea at 25/F with 4 K3s (0) and 4 K1s (1).

Amu Darya shoots Ko'Kas at 29/F with 2 PTs (0).

Holdlice shoots Orange at 33/F with 4 stinger dice (0).

Vo'Rok shoots Orange at 23/F with 2 K3s (0) and a K1 (0).

Statholwonge shoots Amu Darya at 30/F with 3 stinger dice (0).

Gedwolene shoots Amu Darya at 30/F with a stinger die (1).

Turn 3:
=======

The fleets move closer. The lighter Kra'Vak units move together to form a more
tempting target for the UNSC torpedoes. The UNSC player obliges by launching
both torpedoes. On the Sa'Vasku side of the board, lead UNSC units
interpenetrate the Sa'Vasku fleet. ESU fighters launch. K'V fighters swarm
Orange (while fully evading).

Yuo'Das shoots Otto Schultze at 20/F with 3 K6s (12) and 5 K1s (3).
Yuo'Das shoots torpedo #1 with 3 scatterguns (3). Yuo'Das shoots torpedo #2
with 3 scatterguns (6). [See end notes.]

Anna von Boehmen und Ungarn shoots Ko'Kas at 24/F with 12 beam dice
(10) and a PT (0).

Ko'Kas shoots Otto Schultze at 21/F with 4 K3s and 4 K1s (8).

Otto Schultze shoots Ko'Kas at 21/F with 12 beam dice (8) for first
threshold.

Ko'Dol shoots Otto Schultze at 16/F with 3 K3s and 1 K1 (18) for first
threshold.

Vasiliy Zaitsev shoots Beorhte at 4(6)/F with two Kuznetsovs (2) and
two beam dice (1).

Beorhte shoots Vasiliy Zaitsev at 4/FP with a lance pod (4) and 2
stinger dice (2) to destroy it. Beorhte shoots Green Bay at 2/AS with 4
stinger dice (1).

Lutzow shoots Beorhte at 7(10)/F with 8 beam dice (6).

Gemaedde shoots Amu Darya at 4/FS with 9 stinger dice (5).

Amu Darya shoots Druncmennen at 2/F with a PT (0) and 3 graser dice
(7). Amu Darya shoots Gemaedde at 4(6)/FS with a PT (2), a graser (1),
4 beam dice (1) and 3 PDS (0).

Statholwonge shoots Mobutu Sese Seko at 8/F with a leech pod (0) and 10
stinger dice (10) to destroy it.

Volgograd shoots Beorhte at 8(12)/FS with 8 beam dice (3) for first
threshold. Volgograd shoots Ko'Kas at 12/FP with 5 beam dice for 14!

Holdlice shoots Green Bay at 4/F with 12 stinger dice (5) and a lance
pod (6) for first and second thresholds.

Green Bay shoots Gedwolene at 5(7)/F with a PT (4) and 5 beam dice (1).
Green Bay shoots Beorhte at 2/FS with 6 PDS (3).

Gedwolene shoots Green Bay at 5/FS with 4 stinger dice (2).

Tashkent shoots Beorhte at 9(13)/F with 1 beam die (0). Tashkent shoots
Ko'Kas at 13/FP with 3 beam dice (1).

Vo'Rok shoots Otto Schultze at 18/F with 2 K3s (2) and a K1 (0).

Eleonore von Portugal shoots Yuo'Das at 27/F with a PT (0) and 5 beam
dice (5).

Hrusan shoots Green Bay at 7/F with 12 stinger dice (11) to destroy it.

North Sea shoots Yuo'Das at 8/A (having coasted!) with 4 beam dice (2).
North Sea shoots Holdlice at 7(11)/FS with 2 PT (2) and 8 beam dice
(3). North Sea shoots Ko'Kas with 4 PDS (0).

Druncmennen shoots Amu Darya at 7/F with a lance pod (6) and 9 stinger
dice (7) for first and second threshold.

Kronprinz Falkenberg shoots Ko'Kas at 13/F with 2 beam dice (0).

Hygegalan shoots Amu Darya at 11/F with a leech pod (0) and 7 stinger
dice (4) to destroy it.

Baikal shoots Yuo'Das at 10/AS with 4 beam dice (6).

Orange shoots Holdlice at 15(18)/FS with a graser die (3) and a PT (6).
Orange shoots Beorhtes at 2 K'V fighter groups (no effect) and 3 PDS at three
more (one kills 2 fighters).

Kuznetsov shoots Ko'Kas at 24/F with 6 beam dice (6) for second
threshold. Volgograd shoots Yuo'Das at 24/FP with 6 beam dice (3).

Surviving Kra'Vak fighters do not enter Ro'Kah, shoot Orange with 34 dice (21)
to destroy it.

Game called for lack of time.

Final states:
=============

North Sea: has lost 1 DP and fired both AMTs. Baikal: undamaged. Amu Darya,
Orange, Green Bay, Mobutu Sese Seko, Vasiliy Zaitsev, Karamojo Bell:
destroyed.

Kuznetsov, Volgograd, Tashkent: undamaged. Full fighter strength available.
Istomin, Krivoschyokov: destroyed.

Otto Schultze: lost all armour, 8 points from second threshold, lost fighter
bay, a B1 and the SM launcher. Eleonore von Portugal, Anna von Boehmen und
Ungarn, Kronprinz Falkenberg, Lutzow: undamaged.

Ko'Kas: 15 points from third threshold, with 3 scatterguns, 3 fighter bays, a
K1, a K3 and the FTL drive damaged. All fighter groups are on 1 CEF; 2
casualties. Yuo'Das: 1 point from second threshold, with a K6, a K1 and a
scattergun damaged and six scatterguns expended. Ko'Dol and Vo'Rok: undamaged

Beorhte: 12 points from second threshold, all armour lost, with two FS
stingers, the FP pod launcher, and 2 spicules down. Gemaedde: has taken 3
armour and 1 hull damage. Gedwolene: has taken 3 armour and 2 hull damage.
Holdlice: lost all armour, 1 point from first threshold. Statholwonge:
undamaged, 1 biomass expended. Hrusan: undamaged. Druncmennen: has taken 4
armour and 3 hull damage. Hygegalan: undamaged, 1 biomass expended.

At this point it seems fairly clear that the Alliance is not doing well; the
NSL and ESU are practically untouched, but the UNSC is effectively not there
any more. The aliens have taken significant damage but haven't lost a ship.

Questions arising, and comments:

> Claus Paludan wrote:

> * All players thought that one side had won the battle hands down,

> than the one with lost ships.. Damaged ship might shoot back, might

One could just as easily argue that due to the way Full Thrust's damage system
works the damaged ships will almost certainly lose their remaining weapons
faster, and also die faster, when they take further damage than
similarly-sized undamaged ships will.

In addition, Full Thrust's initiative system means that the fewer undamaged
ships get to fire before all of the more numerous damaged ships have fired,
thus further improving the undamaged ships' chances of knocking out weapons
on the damaged ships before the latter can fire their weapons :-)

Regards,

> Oerjan Ariander wrote:

> battle features a UNSC-led human alliance facing Kra'Vak and Sa'Vasku,

> using alpha-test SV rules and the beta-test fighter rules. I've put in

> some comments about the report in [OA: square brackets] here and

Thank you - most educational :)

From: "Star Ranger" <dean@star-ranger.com>
Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2005 12:40 AM
Subject: RE: [GZG] Beta Playtest Rules

> Combat Point Value (a good overview) -

I wouldn't say that's a very clear explanation. The formula should be, IIRC:

CPV = NPV - TMF + (Adjusted TMF)^2 / 100

Adjusted TMF is after subtracting non-combat systems, eg hangers,
passenger berths, holds, and any PTorps on Indy's ships.