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John L:
I don't disagree we have aesthetic sensibilities. For some people, the counter
is enough. For others, they don't like chits or dice or anything 'not part of
the picture' on the game table. for others yet, it matters that unit insignia
and camouflage patterns and wear showing on the vehicles and mud and so on are
all just so. The sensibility seems to be a very personal thing.
Camouflage should (in the future) be fully adaptive and multi-spectral.
It should fit the surroundings. So any particular 'paint job' on a mini could
be construed to match some set of terrain (I expect most spaceships silver or
black but I'm not sure which).
Ultimately, TO&E and expected use are tightly coupled. If a unit is meant for
deep penetration, it will be very mobile (grav?) and have a mix more armour
heavy, for instance. The TO&E will follow from the doctrine for that unit. But
another unit type for the same power may follow an entirely different doctrine
and TO&E. This is why I say the NAC and the ESU may well have about a 90%
congruence in the broad catalog of vehicles and ships and combat systems.
TO&Es will derive from expected mission realities with the occasional twist
for politics or some other reason thrown in.
The faction that fields exclusively DFFG armed tanks when the other side has
HELs will often find itself picked to pieces. In these situations, the battles
become paper, scissors, rock. If the DFFG side can force close engagement
(ambush), they win. If the HEL side can force longer engagement, they win.
This is why any side will field a mix.
The idea that any combat system is going to remain proprietary from an enemy
for any length of time is an odd one. Spying, allies you've sold it to being
porous, similar developments based on captured or damaged versions, etc. will
quickly move any technology out into the common sphere. At most, some system
might give one side or the other a brief advantage.
But this is not usually what we build in SF games, because if each faction had
similar types of units, what is there to make one play one over the other?
In historical games, if the US and Japanese both show up to a naval battle
with cruisers and destroyers, there will be differences, but there will be a
majority of similarity. The reason to pick Japan or the US may be a historical
interest or it might not matter (random assignment). Historicals don't try to
make a particular faction 'unique'.
I don't say it isn't 'right' to play your game any way you want (anybody who
games should do what makes them happy), but I just find it odd that we work on
faction uniqueness quite so much in SF gaming.
At some point, I think it probably involves marketing.
T.
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I look at us getting out beyond the Earth using the following considerations:
- We were all supposed to be living on the Moon and Mars by 2000 (or
sooner) according to the 1950s
- The 1960s saw advances in genetics convincing us we'd have cured lots
of diseases by the 1980s or 1990s and that mapping the human genome would be
the key and results thereafter would flow like a river in short order
- We went to the moon in the 1960s. We haven't been able to get back in
the
last 35+ years.
- We figured we'd have flying cars. They are nearing the point where
they might happen now, but that's decades after.
- We thought we'd have nuclear cars and we only ever had one or two. Now
we probably never will.
The list goes on.
I think when some discoveries are made, they seem so magnificent, they have
allowed us to believe anything is possible. Short time horizons seem to get
assigned because they fall within one human lifespan (my theory) and nobody
likes to contemplate progress that will only happen decades or centuries after
their own death.
If I assume a hyper or jump drive is possible and could be invented sometime
in the next few hundred years, I would still imagine:
- It'll take mankind until at least 2050 to have any meaningful long
term habitation (even a dinky base) on mars or the moon (moon maybe
2030-2040).
- Filling out meaningful longer term colonies in earth orbit, orbiting
the moon, or orbiting mars will take another 50 years. They might be better in
that controling gravity is more feasible there. (spin habs)
- Developing engines that will move us around the system in any sort of
human-useful time frames might be done 50-70 years from now.
- So, let's assume by 100 years from now, we can have small colonies
throughout our system. But I suspect there will be a balkanization of space.
And these colonies will still have necessary dependencies back to Earth for
spares, some nutrients or compunds, etc.
- 200 years from now, the system may be more robustly colonized. There
will have been some problems and disasters along the way.
So if we posit some form of 'hyper drive' or 'jump drive' appears, one
would expect somewhere in the 100 - 150 years from now range would be
the earliest time we'd be able to contemplate much use of it. Exploration of
nearby stars may proceed at a reasonable rate, but colonization (when we
have viable in-system colonies) would require major economic or
political (or both) motivations.
So far, I haven't seen nearby expoplanets that justify this sort of logistical
effort. Much like how Canada talks about diversifying trade, but the reality
is we are connected to the US by road and rail which is still a huge economic
bonus, I don't see more than token colonies on most of these locations.
The first time we'd get a big push to move a sizable population off world
in somewhere in the 150-200 year time frame, maybe as a result of global
overpopulation even considering the shoving of population into the Sol
system's other areas. If we found a great expoplanet or two, maybe we'd do
some colonizing.
So any timeline that sets up major extra-Solar colonies before about
2120-2140 is too fast by my thinking. And to get a sizable number of
them on good planets with any real population? Maybe 2300, 2400, 2500?
The other thing that occurs to me, if great planets are not easily available,
is that populations may scatter into orbital habs over marginally habitable
places that can supply some resources. Resource limits would control the local
hab populations. (This is a bit of the High Colonies setting... once Earth was
a mess....)
Jon's timeline is a bit quick on the low end. I think you'd need to shove
another 50-100 years into that end of things to make it seem doable to
me.
Of course, that assumes no global catastrophe from war or a global runaway
greenhouse effect or massive superbug epidemics or some other similar sort of
apocalyptic occurence. That could crimp the timeline... sizably!
T.
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One again, I think that TomB and I are in full agreement. I think that the
reasons that many of us might choose to differentiate our sci-fi
factions is about fun and "personal uniqueness". There is something endearing
about
my Order forces (religion-based Germans) using mostly tracked and
wheeled vehicles (lots of industrial strength, but don't have the right mix of
higher tech materials and maint personnel for more hover and grav - just
my
political/doctrinal PSB to all me to use lots of tracked tanks!) all
painted gray. OTOH, my New Republic of America forces have a somewhat
broader mix - tracked MBTs, hover scouts, hover APCs and OGRE/Bolos in
the mix. Other forces will tend to follow similar trends toward uniqueness
simply because I like them that way. My Dominion will use mostly Brigade
wheeled SAC vehicles. My FSE DBLE task force will use Brigade hover tanks with
some GZG hover scout cars and such thrown in. My alien Kif use GZG grav
vehicles exclusively 'cause it fits their background.
All of this isn't to say that there isn't some overlap. My Order missile
support tanks have the same box launchers as are found on the NRA missile
tanks - but they use different chassis.
I find it kind of cool that there are enough models available from various
manufacturers that I don't *have* to use the same tanks in multiple forces.
While in WWII a tank was a tank, you could see clear differences
between German - U.S. - British - Russian designs. Kind of neat that
with
lend-lease you can field U.S. tanks in British and Russian forces, but
you don't have to.
It's still all games, and it's still fun building and painting.:)
J
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I'm going to chime in on this one.
While I recognize that in real life, there is an increasing tendency for
nations to use a combination of equipment and to use homogenized designs that
look much like everyone else, that is not what I like seeing on my tabletop.
I enjoy the visible cues that one force is Faction A, and the other Faction B,
and I enjoy the way they look while stored together in addition to when
playing a game.
So, while it might not be realism, it's certainly the way I like it.
Best Regards,
> On 01/02/2012 19:12, Sean Schoonmaker wrote:
I agree. Not only that, but I know of at least one starship game that went the
homogenization route, and pretty much ruined itself as a game. IMO, of course;
it's still going and presumably has a load of devoted fans, but I gave it up
when all the ships began to be almost identical
except for their shape. I much prefer it when Race/Faction A has put
their efforts into developing certain weapons and defences while R/F B
has gone another way, and half the fun of the game is dealing with the
interaction between the different technologies. Of course, the various designs
for each race do have to be more or less equivalent; one problem
I've had with FT is that the alien ships seem to be too powerful for the
humans -- but let's not start that discussion again <g>
Phil
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Phil said:
I agree. Not only that, but I know of at least one starship game that went the
homogenization route, and pretty much ruined itself as a game. IMO, of course;
it's still going and presumably has a load of devoted fans, but I gave it up
when all the ships began to be almost identical
except for their shape. I much prefer it when Race/Faction A has put
their efforts into developing certain weapons and defences while R/F B
has gone another way, and half the fun of the game is dealing with the
interaction between the different technologies. Of course, the various designs
for each race do have to be more or less equivalent; one problem I've had with
FT is that the alien ships seem to be too powerful for the
humans -- but let's not start that discussion again <g>
--------------
And yet, in some games, the technology is very similar (Attack Vector, Honor
Harrington off the same engine) and this was fairly common in games like
Harpoon or Microarmour.
The differences in military construction and in TO&E tend to be the result of
doctrinal differences, economics, and specifics of local terrain in the real
world. Space tends to mostly erode the local terrain aspect.
You could still justify having fleets with a greater balance of missile ships
versus carriers (for instance) if the missile ships are cheaper and the polity
in question can't afford the carriers as a rule. It isn't the mystical 'we
can't build them' it is 'we can't afford to build many of them and so go a
cheaper way'.
Similary, you could justify a force that uses primarily slower ships because
their political doctrine implies static defence of their planets rather than
offensive strikes into the systems of the opposition.
So the setting in some ways is the ultimate determiner of a faction's flavour.
But rarely can a faction not field vehicles or ships of any of the available
technologies, they just mostly choose not to.
For instance, on the groundside front:
Army A is from a democracy that is not expansionist militarily and whose main
concerns are self defense and the defense of its allies. The value of crew
members is high and vehicles are highly survivable, giving up some mass for
extra fire fighting, point defense and internal subcomponent armour. Mobility
is somewhat secondary, but still desirable as it may aid survivability. To
make up for having a main gun which may not be the heaviest or furthest
shooting, they make sure they have high quality sensors and fire control so
what they can range on and see, they hit. In this case, with mobility not the
highest priority, maybe tracklayers are okay.
Now, this is a generality. But within that force, it may be necessary as part
of a defensive posture, to have a fire brigade that can respond quickly. They
may be AC or Grav and will have to sacrifice a slight amount of armour to be
quickly mobile. They have highly mobile APCs and a fair proportion of their
infantry has mobility exoskeletons as well.
Army B is from an expansionist charismatic dictatorship. It's primary policy
and thus doctrinal goals revolve around incursions to expand territorial
holdings. They need to be fast and hard hitting, but sustainment is less
critical. They tend to have fewer logistics vehicles than they should and a
bit lighter armour and defenses, in exchange for which they fit large, long
ranged guns with good firecontrol (but not the best). The units are expected
to be more attritional than those of Army
A,
so they are overall cheaper and the crew and vehicles tend to be less
survivable individually. The focus is on coming to the battle with lots of
them.
The elite forces, for exploitation and gap filling if attacked, and probably
for mopping up enemy forces after some other poorer unit has taken the bloody
bill to create a breach in an enemy line, is a group of better tech, more
expensive grav vehicles. Still not totally concerned about crew survivability,
more on offense, but more likely to survive (and less likely to be viewed as
expendable) than the conventional armour.
So, there we have two examples where any army could build any technology, but
political aims, economics, and tactical doctrine all tie into what sort of
forces will generally be fielded.
I didn't throw in 'terrain related' design issues, because either of these
could be operating on multiple planets, but you could with a more constrained
scope.
You can still have flavour in forces, you don't need to say 'only the NAC have
PTs' or 'only the French use SMs' or whatever. You can simply set it up so
that the standard builds for each faction reflect the various
higher-level considerations that drive vehicle design. But that
shouldn't prohibit exceptions in small numbers.
T.
> [snipped lots of very valid stuff!]
I don't think I have ever said (or inferred) that the various FT human powers
don't (almost) all have access to the full spread of
human technology - I've always tried to be clear that it is doctrinal
differences that affect the use of certain systems by certain fleets in
preference to others, not the inability to build certain types.
I do agree with most of what you've written over the last few days, Tom, and
that is why, for example, I have actively resisted tying any
of the 15mm vehicle ranges to certain infantry forces - I'd rather
people chose their own forces, and no-one can then tell them "you
can't use that hovertank with NAC troops, it's a NSL design..." (all
said with that annoying nasal whine, of course!). ;-)
With the FT fleets, of course, the miniatures are much more
nation-specific - but that is really a commercial decision. I could
have made several fleets that looked almost identical apart from some
minor detail differences (as you point out, this is how real-world
wet navies appear), but I bet I wouldn't have sold anything like as
many.... ;-)
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Faction uniqueness is an extremely gamey device and really has no place on any
tabletop wargame. (Spartan Games I am looking directly at you!).
As you stated much better than I, a new technology is going to get spread
around and is not going to remain solo to one nation once it's value is
proven. (This still allows interesting battles to prove that value.
Play what you want, but pushing for faction unique weapons means that it is
truly a game and is not useful for learning.
Bob Makowsky
________________________________
From: Tom B <kaladorn@gmail.com>
To: gzg@firedrake.org
Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2012 4:32 AM
Subject: Our choice of factions and models for games
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John L:
I don't disagree we have aesthetic sensibilities. For some people, the counter
is enough. For others, they don't like chits or dice or anything 'not part of
the picture' on the game table. for others yet, it matters that unit insignia
and camouflage patterns and wear showing on the vehicles and mud and so on are
all just so. The sensibility seems to be a very personal thing.
Camouflage should (in the future) be fully adaptive and multi-spectral.
It should fit the surroundings. So any particular 'paint job' on a mini could
be construed to match some set of terrain (I expect most spaceships silver or
black but I'm not sure which).
Ultimately, TO&E and expected use are tightly coupled. If a unit is meant for
deep penetration, it will be very mobile (grav?) and have a mix more armour
heavy, for instance. The TO&E will follow from the doctrine for that unit. But
another unit type for the same power may follow an entirely different doctrine
and TO&E. This is why I say the NAC and the ESU may well have about a 90%
congruence in the broad catalog of vehicles and ships and combat systems.
TO&Es will derive from expected mission realities with the occasional twist
for politics or some other reason thrown in.
The faction that fields exclusively DFFG armed tanks when the other side has
HELs will often find itself picked to pieces. In these situations, the battles
become paper, scissors, rock. If the DFFG side can force close engagement
(ambush), they win. If the HEL side can force longer engagement, they win.
This is why any side will field a mix.
The idea that any combat system is going to remain proprietary from an enemy
for any length of time is an odd one. Spying, allies you've sold it to being
porous, similar developments based on captured or damaged versions, etc. will
quickly move any technology out into the common sphere. At most, some system
might give one side or the other a brief advantage.
But this is not usually what we build in SF games, because if each faction had
similar types of units, what is there to make one play one over the other?
In historical games, if the US and Japanese both show up to a naval battle
with cruisers and destroyers, there will be differences, but there will be a
majority of similarity. The reason to pick Japan or the US may be a historical
interest or it might not matter (random assignment). Historicals don't try to
make a particular faction 'unique'.
I don't say it isn't 'right' to play your game any way you want (anybody who
games should do what makes them happy), but I just find it odd that we work on
faction uniqueness quite so much in SF gaming.
At some point, I think it probably involves marketing.
T.
I find I have to suggest a bit of tempering of this attitude.
I'm not that familiar with FA, but I think these are ships of different
species, and there could well be different physical and historical (cultural?)
needs involved.
Also, at times of great change navies didn't even look like themselves, in
parts, as various technologies and doctrines are tried and discarded. New
technological advances seem to increase variety, if anything.
Finally, very different tech structures meeting, say the southeast island war
canoes facing early European explorers, would look vastly different, and not
necessarily in a lopsided advantage, under the right circumstances.
Personally, I find the current sculpting of GZG different by factions, and yet
more homogenous then the old designs. I write it off to maturing, and
dovetailing of experiences. Which can be quite shaken by new developments...
Doug
Robert Makowsky wrote on 02/02/2012 04:45:13 AM:
> Faction uniqueness is an extremely gamey device and really has no
> On Thu, 2 Feb 2012 09:27:06 +0000, Ground Zero Games <jon@gzg.com>
It's all good life-insurance, Sam - you never die while you've still
got unpainted minis...... ;-)
On Thu, 2 Feb 2012 09:27:06 +0000, Ground Zero Games <jon@gzg.com>
wrote:
> With the FT fleets, of course, the miniatures are much more
<Looks at several boxes of completely unpainted FT Fleets>
Yeah, you might be right there...
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If you have different nations that developed independently and then came into
contact with each other it's quite common to get very different technologies
and units in amries of the same period.
Look at the renaissance period. You had English armies using longbows and a
long debate about whether lonbows or muskets were better. No other nation in
the renaissance period developed significant numbers of longbows.
Many western european nations had knights, the Swiss didn't and the Hussites
fought from wagon laagers to protect themselves from knights.
Eastern nations had heavy cavalry with mail armour and bows, rather than plate
armoured knights and pikes so again a very different feel.
By the end of the 30 years war many of the western eurpoean had standardised
on weapons, tactics and doctrine based on the most effective of those used by
the participants.
Even at the start of Wrold War Two, tactical doctrines, political philosopies
and unit construction were quite different between the different factions.
Take aircraft carriers the US aircraft carriers had light deck construction
because they were expecting to be protected by their fighters. UK carriers
realised that their planes were rubbish and so designed their carriers to take
hits from 500 pound bombs. So a quite different philosophy and play in a game.
Even aircraft design at the start of WW2 was very different, you had biplane
fighters, monoplane bombers, 2 and 4 engine designs.