Hi John,
Being a veteran of two Full Thrust games now:) I've assumed that the winner of
initiative is the one who gets there firstist with the mostist, the quicker on
the draw, so to speak.
Unless damage is considered to occure simultaneously, then the first crew with
the firing solution gets their shot away, and can therefore limit the
incoming. Do you play that the initiative winner fires all ships first, or
only picks the first ship to fire? I may be wrong, but I thought the
initiative winner only fired one ship first. Otherwise, why have initiative?
Regarding your second situation, I feel that the Dready has the advantage
whether shooting first or second, because he is the biggest. In a campaign
situation, my Light Cruisers would probably remember a pressing engagement
elsewhere and exit, stage left, flipping the bird. Alternatively, go for a
battle of manoeuver, flicking in any long range stuff they have and trying to
separate the heavies (needs a moving table top to work), while closing to
Class 2 range to nibble, working on getting the threshold rolls.
LOL, this is tactical advice from someone who hasn't fielded anything heavier
than a cruiser. Seriously, the swarm thing could possibly work, as 'eavy metal
isn't supposed to go around without a protective screen, possibly, from the
campaign point of view, that losing a Dready is way more embarrassing (not to
mention expensive) than losing a couple of frigates or cruisers.
As to other forms of initiative, I've played a fair bit of Langton's
Napoleonic Naval rules and he uses a system of grading commanders which
influences their initiative rolls (and going further back, Tony Bath's
campaign rules encouraged creating personas for generals which included
military ability so you could have a hopeless old lord duffer as general and
basically loose all initiative rolls). DBx systems are I GO/U GO based
on the initial initiative of army you choose. Armati uses a turn by turn
initiative roll (like Full Thrust), influenced, again, by the nationality of
your army. Do we want to grade FT star nations for initiative?
> From a campaign point of view, I liked Laserlight's suggestion
Anyway, would I be right in assuming you are involved in the Full Thrust
Campaign I have heard was being run in Wellington? Is it at a stage where you
could share some of the details with us? I'm in Auckland and have been busily
converting some of my gamer friends to FT with positive results. I understand
there is a FT group who play at the Auckland Wargames Club (I saw
a Savasku/NSL game going on one day when I popped in for the
bring-and-buy)
but I haven't been able to get hold of any of them via the NZWDList (and given
the garbage on that list at the moment, I'm not surprised). I'd like
to hear more, either via here, or direct e-mail.
Regards
David
> Message: 7
David B said:
> incoming. Do you play that the initiative winner fires all ships
FIRST ship, not ALL ships (unless you're playing Power Projection, in which
case you fire a task force at a time).
> Regarding your second situation, I feel that the Dready has the
In standard FT, this is correct. In the "one DN vs 6 CL" scenario using
standard FT, the DN is going to fire all its weapons before at
least 5/6 of the CLs. And the DN only has to take out 1/24th of the
enemy's total hull boxes to start reducing the number of active enemy
weapons, whereas the CLs have to take out 1/4 of the DN's hull.
> >>From a campaign point of view, I liked Laserlight's suggestion
Because it's not in the books, perhaps? ;-)
If you look at Roger Burton West's page
http://firedrake.org/roger/ft/index.html , you'll see the GZG List
Archives, and you can search on Crew Quality and come up with my original
post. Unfortunately my ISP is a bit whimsical, so the link
is no longer valid-- it's now
http://members.quixnet.net/deboe/ft/quality.htm
One modification: give Elites a d5 at +15% cost. Save the d4 for
"Legendary" or "Protagonist" level.
Hi David
> From suggestions other people have made it sounds like its been
Suppose you come up against a fleet of 3 mass 100 battle cruisers with 6
mass 50 light cruisers. If both are using human technology they could easily
have exactly the same NPV.
In the rules as printed the initiative is ship by ship so the battle cruisers
have shot all their weapons before at least 2 of the light cruisers have shot.
Given the battlecruisers will have twice the hull and twice the firepower of
the light cruisers its likely that they will have the ability to withstand on
cruiser Salvo and kill one cruiser each time they shoot.
We tried playing with simultaneous damage application so that damage from ship
fire is accumulated and all threshold checks apply at the end of ship fire,
then fighters attach and all damage is resolved and then there are
theshold checks apply then missiles and similar ordnance attacks.
We felt this game much better game results but whatever works.
In regards to "initiative = who gets there with the mostest" In a high tech
universe like BFG everything is run by computer so the computers can
accurately calculate the instant the enemy ship will be in range. So why
wouldn't all ships open fire as soon as the enemy is in range and with equal
range weapons the firing would be simultaneous.
If you were going for a much lower tech ( with gangs of sewating slaves
strugglinh to align the gun turret with a huge crank handle) or even a higher
tech setting with mind linked psychers predicting the location of the enemy
then I could buy ships having variable states of readiness.
> Anyway, would I be right in assuming you are involved in the Full
> been
> like
With this one we have gone with people having a home base and a 1500 point
fleet. You then go out and investigate star systems and can capture them. Each
colony is worth a random amount of points. To keep things a bit more
interesting there are some NPC alien races that could be discovered and they
are not always friendly. So they typically need a good kicking. This means if
you need to do gunboat diplomacy you need to send a decent gunboat.
Strategic movement is on a map with planetary systems linked by hyperspace
sections. Each hyperspace corridor has a size limit being the maximum size
that a ship can go through. The largest space is 200 mass so only bases can be
bigger. Strategic movement is by counters representing the size class of
ship (Size = mass /4 rounded up) This gives everyone some info about the
potential power of the opponents fleet. Although a 250 point mass 50 light
cruiser looks just like a mass 6 scout on the strategic map (but not on the
table).
Ships move on the map a number of squares equal to the thrust of the ship
divided by 2 rounded up. Savasku ship only get to use half power to stop
them having ludicrous speed.
We use our own races and ship designs.
The latest iteration is just about to enter its climatic phase (think season 4
of B5)
> We tried playing with simultaneous damage application so that damage
Big ships will still have an advantage, as I mentioned when we went through
this a few days ago. The dreadnoughts will knock out more systems thanthe
cruisers will, for a given amount of damage.
> In regards to "initiative = who gets there with the mostest" In a
You are making the assumption that "in range" is a discrete point, which is
not likely to be the case.
> On 28 Oct 2005, at 13:15, Laserlight wrote:
> FIRST ship, not ALL ships (unless you're playing Power Projection, in
True, but remember that a task force will typically have around 3 to 4 ships
(assuming higher tech levels) and one level of fleet tactics. And the spread
of a task force is limited by the computing power on the ships. It worked
quite well when we fought the Battle of the Two
Suns at TravellerCon 2004, with 80+ ships in play!!
We handled Crew quality by rating crews from Green to Regular to
Veteran to Elite, with a die roll modifier for combat of -1 through
to +2. Green crews reduced a ship's PV by 25%, and Veterans
increased it by 50%. Elites by 100%. Crew could gain experience by surviving
battles, in a generally log way (2 battles from Green to Regular, then 4 more
to Veteran etc).
Cheers,
> And the spread of a task force is limited by the computing power on
Which reminds me to tell about how we handed Trafalgar with 60+ ships.
The GM had business cards made up with Firing Ship, Target Ship, Damage, and a
few things specific to that game system (eg Rake). Each player would figure
out his target, get a witness, roll damage, and record it on a card. There
were two trays, each divided into 2x2" slots and with a ship's name on each
compartment. The GM passed the English tray to the French (so we could put the
cards in their proper slots), then to the English (so they could pull their
cards and record damage).
Using this approach we were able to resolve fire for sixty ships in about five
minutes.
The modification I'd make for FT would be to have a separate set of
cards with pre-generated thresholds. That is, the GM would have a
card pregenerated for each ship. The First Threshold card for Richthofen might
be "lose 1 PDS", the Second Threshold might be "lose Beam Turret 1, FTL and
one level Main Drive" and so forth.
***
The modification I'd make for FT would be to have a separate set of
cards with pre-generated thresholds. That is, the GM would have a
card pregenerated for each ship. The First Threshold card for Richthofen might
be "lose 1 PDS", the Second Threshold might be "lose Beam Turret 1, FTL and
one level Main Drive" and so forth
***
Brilliant!
Only complication is you have to generate possible multiple threshold
crossings, but I STILL love it. Threshold rolls can be a real slow down,
ergo my suggestions of single rolls of color-coded bags-o-dice.
Pre-rolled
is WAY better!
The_Beast
I like this idea [steals outrageously]. Now to find the time to update my
campaign rules...
Brendan 'Neath Southern Skies
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