As requested:
First off, if you have any AARs that went out to the list and didn't get an
adequate response, send a copy (or archive links) to me offlist (laserlight at
verizon dot net) and I'll respond. Not that I'm the Official Voice of the
Playtest List, but I usually
have a decent idea of why a rule is the way it is (for FT or SG--I've
played DS III a couple of times but I haven't been following it intensely)
With that said, there are five possible results from a playtest: a. everyone's
happy with the new system: okay, we'll probably keep it b. there's an obvious
flaw in the new rule: highly unlikely, because if it was obvious enough to
pick up in one game, we'd almost certainly have caught it before putting it on
the Main List. c. the player is unhappy with a system the Playtest List has
come to a consensus on. This normally means that the player has only tried the
system
once or twice, and usually only from one side--eg, you've fought as the
ORCs but not against them, so you feel EMP beams are too weak. In this case,
we
usually need to add a mini-design note, such as you'll find on the
grasers and EMP beams. This sort of thing doesn't look like you made much
difference, but it is VITAL in explaining the new systems. d. nobody
understood what we intended: okay, we need to rewrite the rule. The posts from
the last few days had an example of that with the Unified Fighter Proposal in
Oerjan's original form and my edited form. Generally someone will provide as
"this is what we meant" pretty quickly. e. everyone's more or less happy: this
means that there might be something subtle that needs to be fixed. Or there
might not be, it might just mean that someone had bad dice, bad tactics, or an
unbalanced fleet selection. We probably can't tell just from one AAR, and that
means you're not likely to get much in the way of immediate feedback. But we
need to hear it, so we can *eventually* decide that yes, the Sa'Vasku do need
some kind of burnout
when they pump too much power through their stingers.
Ideally we'd like for players to tell us starting forces, starting position,
table size, speed, maneuvers, and yes, every single die roll. I've had
playtests where New System X looked like it was an UberWeapon, but in fact I'd
just rolled a 4.93 average over 60 rolls, and my opponent was at a 2.9 (yes,
using the same dice). If you don't feel like posting that to the
Main List due to its length, then post it to me and I'll respond and pass it
on to the Test List.
[quoted original message omitted]
> Also the test group needs to provide regular updates on progress even
That's a valid point. And the playtest group would like to be progressing
faster than we have been, but a couple of key members have "a life", whatever
that is....
> You need a fighter heavy fleet to go up against the "basic ships" from
> fleet book one.
Yep, we have that. If you look in the archives for "soap bubble carrier" I
imagine you'll find it.
> In our games we found that EMP weapons as written are very powerful.
Hit
> the ship with 3 hits and every system is knocked out on a 4+ threshold
> check.
Not "every" system--mainly engines, screens, and FCS.
I believe I mentioned in the previous post that EMP is one of those weapons
where the firer often feels it's too weak while the target feels it's too
strong. How many times did your group play with EMP-as-written before
changing it?
> Specific hits can be allocated against any system the sensors can
Yeah, they would, particularly if you can specify their power systems. I
don't play the SV, so I've passed that on to the test list for specific
consideration. Good catch.
> Because we don't use standard FT rules our groups games don't make for
> good playtest games.
If it's not using standard FT, I'm not certain how helpful it would be.
> John Tailby wrote:
> Typically when playtesting these things you need a test plan.
We do. However, formal test plans have several drawbacks when we ask the
public to report in their games:
a) While sticking to the test plan is (relatively) easy to enforce in a small
dedicated playtest group, many of these battles aren't all that interesting...
especially not when you're into the 3rd or 4th very similar
game in the test plan. ("OK, we've run drone-heavy Sa'Vasku against
beam-heavy NAC, beam-heavy ESU and beam-heavy NSL; now let's see how
they
do against beam-heavy OUDF...")
b) If the players do stick to the test plan, any combination we didn't think
of to put into the test plan won't get tested at all. By asking players to try
out whatever beta fleets or rules they like, we're actually
*more* likely to catch "unusual" match-ups or fleet compositions than if
we specified everything tightly.
c) The formal test plan battles need as complete record-keeping as
possible
- preferrably exact set-up data, complete movement orders, the range,
fire arc, target and effect of every shot, the result of every threshold
check,
and so on. This amount of record-keeping is a lot to ask of "the public"
-
but if we don't get this data (and therefore only have the players' more or
less subjective post-battle recollections of what happened, which is
usually not quite the same thing as what actually did happen), the report
doesn't really tell us much about game balance issues which means that we
can't count that battle report towards fulfilling the test plan.
For these reasons, we aren't allocating formally-specified test plan
battles to the public.
PLEASE NOTE: The phrase "the players' more or less subjective
post-battle
recollections" I used above sounds very negative, but it isn't. Such reports
are *very* useful to us for judging whether a particular game mechanic works
smoothly and is easy to understand or is klunky and awkward; but unfortunately
they don't tell us much about how much a new weapon or
other gadget is worth.
***
> In our games we found that EMP weapons as written are very powerful.
Hit
> the ship with 3 hits and every system is knocked out on a 4+ threshold
"Every system" is a bit of exaggeration! Weapons, Core Systems and
Fighter/Small Craft/Tender Bays are explicitly stated to be excepted
from the EMP effects, as are any systems that don't take threshold checks due
to hull damage (eg. DCPs, cargo holds and Sa'Vasku power generators).
(FWIW this is a good example of LaserLight's type "d" feedback - the
rule
is misunderstood and needs to be clarified :-) )
> We changed the EMP mechanism so that you get one hit per hit inflicted
What rules do you use for determining what systems your sensors can identify?
Depending on how easy it is to identify target systems and on whether you
allocate the hits before or after you make the damage roll, what you describe
could potentially be far more powerful than the EMP beams as written.
> Because we don't use standard FT rules our groups games don't make for
True, but you can still provide valuable feedback - as eg. on the EMPs,
above.
Later,
> john tailby wrote:
> If you want to solicit input from the list I suggest you put together
May I say, I think this would be a great idea.
If such suggestions were posted, my group would use some of them. We always
struggle to come up with scenarios, and this would give us something to start
from. And it would make it easier to help out the playtest group.
> If such suggestions were posted, my group would use some of them. We
Okay. Use the 1.3 page version of the Unified Fighter Proposal that I posted a
couple of days ago and don't refer to Oerjan's more complete version (so we
can see whether the short one is complete enough). Specifically include
the "anti-ship weapons shoot at fighters" provision regardless of
whether people initially like the idea or not. Set up qual points battles of
any of the following, using the CPV method of caluculating points: KV or
Phalon vs one of the new Human fleets (ORC, New Israeli, UN, OUDF,
IJN, Islamic Fed) Soap Bubble Carriers vs any of the above fleets (an SBC is a
design with
lotsa fighters and minimal hull, drives, and FTL) A swarm of tiiny ships (such
as the Islamic Fed 'ash Shaulah' strikers) vs any of the above Any other
"extreme" design which you wish to come up with. A missile barge, a supership,
whatever.
I'm deliberately not specifying set up information except in one case: I'd
like someone to try a missile fleet (Islamic Fed missile variants or
custom.missile barges) vs a slow moving NSL fleet.
[quoted original message omitted]
> I'm deliberately not specifying set up information except in one
> In regard to you last type of game. We did custom missile barges
Did you try it using the Unified Fighter Proposal (including anti-ship
weapons being able to shoot at missiles)? That's what I'm interested in:
a
plain NSL fleet, no banzai jammers, no fighters, versus a missile fleet.
> For a custom missile barge try
Yeah, that's about what I had in mind. You can squeeze in a couple more
missiles, I expect, if you have Mass 104 or something similar.
> People have humorous arguments with this kind of ship, about whether
That would be plausible, but most ships don't launch enough missiles for it to
make a difference. This one would drop mass by 32, to 68. You'd get Thrust 4.
> Yeah, that's about what I had in mind. You can squeeze in a couple
Are not heavy missiles mass 2 each so 30 odd missiles would reduce the mass by
60 so it's actually significant especially when a barge like that would be
doing nothing than escape.
I don't know about unified fighter proposal but we do allow ship weapons to
shoot at missiles or fighters with a -2 DRM as long as they are not
doing an attack run. (so beams hit on a 6) the limit is usually fire controls
because each missile is its own target and if you are trying to shoot at
missiles. This doesn't make a significant dent in a big missile swarm and most
of the NSL capitals can't manoeuvre worth a dam. The best defence out of a FB1
fleet would be to buy a high% of scouts and surround the capital ships as
missile magnets hoping that they would suck some of the missiles. The NSL
fleet would want to be moving at as fast a speed as possible so it's one
turn would put more than 6mu of change between it's actual position and the
one it would have been if it didn't turn. But that would require travelling at
speed 28.