Hi John,
I was wondering how your new campaign was going. Any updates?
I assume you're playing the Daleks - do you adopt tech and weapons
systems
so your ships appear/behave 'Daleky', or is Dalek more of a proper noun
for your 'empire' than, say, Mon Calamari?
There are some terms in the rules, as linked, that I don't understand, or
haven't come across - are they perhaps derived from earlier rules your
group has used? Terms such as "Strategic Impulse", the varying levels of FTL
drive, Black Globe Generators, etc. Is there a more complete set of rules
available on the web?
For FTLing from a battle, my house rule is that all ships must first rig for
jump and cycle their drives. This is successful on a roll of 6 on a d6,
5-6
on the second try, etc. Once ships have successfully cycled their drives,
they may jump when ordered (this is pre-plotted as normal), so the
quickest
a ship could re-jump would be one turn eg jump in and cycle drives, jump
out the next turn if the cycling was successful. This gets interesting in a
pursuit game where there's always some silly blighter who can't cycle his
drive, while the rest of the squadron is hot to go and the KV SDN is getting
closer. If you play Captains' Quality, this can be used to modify the cycle
drives roll.
Regards
David
> From: "john tailby" <John_Tailby@xtra.co.nz>
> Well we are about to start a new campaign.
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~colefam/Full%20thrust%20Campaign%20Rules%20
and%20changes1.doc
> http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~colefam/CampaignMap1.xls
Hi
Our group got a bit frustrated with having the FT rules scattered over several
books written at different times with possibly contradictory or inconsistent
rulings. We could not find a complete set of the rules that
consolodated the various books into one volume so we srote our own. We sent a
copy to the FT creator but didn't get much of a response.
There isn't even a comprehensive set of playtest rules that we could find, and
download to experiment with. there seem to be only parts of rule sets and
ideas that some of the playtesters have shared, and they have not shared all
the ideas.
There are no campaign rules as such written into the FT rules. Our group has
made a version of the campaign style that we as a group like. This has an
emphasis on games rather than accountants in space.
Our supply rules are handled similar to many board games with a check to see
if you are in supply rather than having to model freighters. You can still cut
fleets supply lines with fast moving frigates and these need to be hunted down
by destroyers.....
We created a way to regulate how ships moved around the map. Initially this
was proportional to the thrust of the engines. Unfortunately this makes home
design biotech ships very fast because they can all have ludicrous levels of
thrust. it also means that most bioships have about the same level of thrrust
regardless of size. When the organic battleships are all able to
move 6 hexes and normal tech battlships can move 2-4 its a big strategic
advantage. In the latest iteration we have fixed the strategic move to the
size of the ship.
There are several sites that have invented additional technologies, weapons
and systems. Our group has borrowed heavily from these sources and invented
some of our own inspired by various scifi shows. These new systems are
entirely optional so its still possible to play classic FT with the fleetbook
ships.
My Dalek Fleet has Pulse torpedos, Gattling balsters Scatterpacks Salvo
missiles Fighters with robot modification Regerating armour variable hull rows
Super Advanced FTL.
So I have a mix of close range direct fire weapons and a longer range
ordinance attack. I chose technologies that reflected what I saw of Dalek
Technology. Daleks are masters of Time travel and show all over the place. the
have short range energy blasters that are pretty nasty, they have also fired
pulses of energy from their ships. Daleks have also had tough metal skins so I
went with 3 hull rows, they also have regerating shielding so I have
regerating armour. Dalkes have also used missiles and can send hordes of
Daleks out into space like their fighter craft. I don't think these will be as
effective as a dedicated space fighter though.
Most players in our cmpaigns pice a race from a scifi show and theme their
technoloiges from the capabilites described for that race.
I made some new ship models that look like the 2005 series Dalek Saucers. I
actually used GW flying bases to make the basic saucer shape. Glue 2 bases
together to make the saucer. Details like the domes and bulges were made my
moulding some components. I made weapon mounts, scout ships and some other
components out of beads. You can get some nice spherical hull shapes from
craft shops.
I have bout a lot of the GZG ORC fighters the (=) shaped ones as the fighter
squadrons. Some of the ships are gunships with a mostly direct fire attack and
some are carriers with a missile and fighter attack.
So far I have had 3-4 skirmishes with the Grey.
The Grey have an interesting tactical approach. The main fighting ship they
have deployed in large numbers is a micro carrier. This ships is ~ mass 13
Hull 2 FTL1 Drive 1 Mounts a hanger and launch tube containig a squadron of
attack fighters with fast and heavy modifications. (so quite tough) The ship
also has stealth hull so is hard to hit from long range. The basic doctrine in
our hyperspace engagements is to jump in as far away from the enemy fleet as
possible at speed 1. Stop, turn round and then activate FTL and exist the
table top. This leaves the fighters to do the work. The micocarriers are also
accompanied by a mass 3 banzi jammer that can attract long range fire or
ordinance attacks.
In the battles so far I have killed 3 micorcarriers and 3 scouts for the
loss of 1 destroyer and one microscout so about a 3-1 kill ratio.
In one game I entered close enough to the enemy ships to engage them with
direct fire weapons before they could launch ordinance and close with and
killed a second carrier and escort before it could escape.
My ships have in return been driven off by the fighter attacks and I have a
couple of ships that were crippled. So far the battles have gone my way and
the grey doctrine hase proved to be relatively ineffective against other
opponents as well.
Will have to see what next turn will bring.
Hi John,
Thanks for the update and thoughts on your campaign.
Your Daleks sound like mean dudes:) Good luck with them.
I like your idea of making saucer ships out of GW flight stands - are
you still able to get them locally? The St Lukes GW shop tells me that flight
stands are coming off the local shop stock lists and that in future will
have to be ordered direct from the UK:(.
The Grey micro carrier sounds quirky, I estimate 70 points with an Interceptor
or Standard Flight loaded and 82 with a Flight of Heavy Fighters? Sounds good
on paper, but I think scads of fighters would lack the heft to take on a
moderate sized fleet?
I'm not too sure how the Stealth rules work (I assume these are the ones
from the New Israeli Beta Fleet?) - I get the reduction in the size of
range bands, but I don't get what the Hull Signature factor is (unless this
makes a Battleship appear as a Cruiser when using bogies?).
Looking forward to hearing more as the campaign progresses,
Regards
David
> From: "john tailby" <John_Tailby@xtra.co.nz>
<snippage>
> My Dalek Fleet has
Daleks
> are masters of Time travel and show all over the place.
> will
A topic I warm to...!
I'm a little unclear about strat moves and pining, but I think it may be
merely because I'm not clear on how you are playing. Do you have a 'real'
map, and folks take turn in moves, or are the moves pre-plotted? If
pre-plotted, I should have thought you'd have to break down moves into
phases/impulses.
When I've tried to set up campaigns, the players get really picky about
working ways to screen this or that asset; is this in your ruleset somewhere?
Love the point about the rules are to allow battle; some of my players seemed
more interested in avoiding unless precisely evenly matched. Suicides may not
be particularly fun, but I've seen well played forlorn hopes, and think they
should be lauded.
By the way, in the forum section concerning 'Flotillas', would you add the
suggestion that a single piece can be the flotilla, and still give target
selections if the flotilla elements' positions are in view off table space? I
think I was working on something similar, with a large divided hex so it was
easy to determine which ship was closest to which fire arc.
The_Beast
PS I understand your frustrations, but really like most of the freeform, make
up as you go, nature of FT. Efforts like yours(kudos to your whole
club) give layabouts such as I plenty of ways to chose from. ;->=
"john tailby" <John_Tailby@xtra.co.nz> wrote on 09/28/2007 03:46:01 AM:
***snippage***
> Our supply rules are handled similar to many board games
***snippage***
Thanks for the interest in the campaign
We are using the stealth rules Inspired by the New Israeli playtest rules. The
range band reduction works well.
We play on a real map. Each turn we dice for initiative and player move their
counters on the map in that order. So sometimes it is an advantage to go first
and sometimes
later in the player turn sequence.
Each ship is represented by a counter on the map. This describes the
nationality, wheter it is a ship or a fort and its size class (mass divided by
50). This gives players the option to move their ships around the map and have
some idea about what they are facing. Although there is a big difference
between a mass 10 scout and a mass 50 light cruiser (thou they are both size 1
so look the same on the strategic map).
Signature distorters allow a ship to be depicted as a different size on the
strategic map. In the last campaign one team made great use of them. A squadon
of size 1 blips (so looking like a raiding group of destroyers) made it to the
enemy planet and were intercepted by a coulpe of battlecruisers (so on paper
an even fight. It came as a great surprise when the raiding
force turned out to 3 a major fleet assault and the attackers were actually 5
120 mass ships. The defending battlecruisers were defeated in short order and
the planet captured.
We tried prewritten orders and found them hard to make work in an enjoyable
way. People enjoy the phased movement.
IIRC GW stands are still available from stores certainly independant retail
stockists but I find it easier to buy things from the online store anyway.
We have played several campaigns and people are getting more aggressive as
things go on. People that play defensive find that all the battles take place
in their territory.
Space combat being the ultimate form of sports hooliganism or teenage road
trips definitely wants to be happening in the other persons back yard.
Each counter has a separate blip so you can see what is coming. If you want to
pin an enemy capital vessel you can do so by moving sufficient size ships do
block it. If it wants to move further, it's escorts need to come along and pin
the pinners to free up the capital ship.
Because each ship is a blip on long range scanners and size is indicated to
the nearest 50 mass you can't easily tell a scout from a light cruiser or an
escort cruiser from a battle cruiser so even if you want to match up evenly by
size that might not be an even points value.
We do get some forlorn hopes and some escape from ambushes and some sell you
lives dearly scenarios. Most battles can be reasonably even because players
all start with the same points and have to make the decision about how many
units and of what quality they want.
We have played under other rules and sometimes give people a large number of
points and then let people chose more technologies for a reduction in fleet
size. So you get higher tech fleets with more flexibility but lower starting
points.
We do get some strategic surprise ideas which can cause
paper-scissors-rock
mismatches and we generally get a lot of smaller games say 500 points or
less. Just because it is harder to put a lot of force into one sector with up
to 5 potentially hostile neighbours.
There is also a fine line between providing no incentive to attack and
providng too much. In the previous iteration of the campaign people got the
revenue of the captured enemy world instantly. So by turn 2 a couple of people
had production bases roughly twice that of their neighbours. By the end of
that campaign that alliance had overrun most of the galaxy and were building
multiple battleships per turn. For a very cautious group this might be the way
to start.