Professionalism and Quality in FT terms (long)

G'day all,

I have been thinking about Beth's quality survey and how it might be used in
FT games. These a rough ideas (do I have any other kind) and there is still
much to be worked out particularly with regards to costings.

CREW QUALITY: The difference in crew quality I think is most likely going to
show itself in damage control. A good crew will be able to keep their ship in
a fight longer than a poor crew.

Example. Grade 1 crews need 3 repair teams to be able to do a repair roll and
even though 3 teams are involved the repair is only sucessful on a 6. Grade 2
crews need 2 teams to attempt a repair succeding on a 6. A third team may join
them needing a 5 or 6 to be sucessful Grade 3 crews test as per the rules.
Grade 4 crews test each repair team were 2 normal teams ie needing 5 or 6 to
be sucessful. A second team may join in the repair but may not improve the
roll needed above 4, 5 or 6 for success. Grade 5 crews are gods and each team
needs a 4, 5 or 6 for success. Repair teams may not pair up. All repair teams
regardless of grade may only attempt to repair one ship system per turn.
        Crews are costed as follows; Grade 1 (-3 pts), Grade 2 (-1 pt),
Grade 3 (0
pts), Grade 4 (+1 pt), Grade 5 (+3 pts); for each Damage control party
on the ship. The total points cost is added to the ship cost. (Grade 1 crews
become a discount to their owners (which is just as well) whilst top crews
begin to cost. Also a top crew will still die but they will be able to inflict
considerably more damage before they do. Average crews are unaffected.)

I don't like the idea of improving the "to hit" chances of a fleet because of
the difficulty in fairly costing such abilities. It might be ok to use
the above points values (-3,-1,0,+1,+3) and multiply them by the Mass of
the ship given over to weapons (excluding shields, engines, senors, etc) and
giving the following abilities;

Grade 1: 4's miss and 6's do 1 point of damage for beams, SM's and PT's do
-1 pt of damage.
Grade 2: 6's do 1 pt, SM and PT as normal Grade 3: as normal Grade 4: 5's do 2
pts damage, SM and PT as normal
        Grade 5: 3's do 1 pt, 5's do 2 pts, SM and PT do +1 damage

Fighter qaulity: Assume all groups begin as turkeys at half cost. Grade 1
crews may not upgrade any fighter group Grade 2 crews may upgrade half fighter
groups to average at double cost (this is the normal cost given in the rules)
Grade 3 may upgrade all fighter groups to average Grade 4 may upgrade all
groups to average and half the groups to ace at 3 times cost (150% of costs in
rules) Grade 5 may upgrade all crews to average or Ace.

PROFESSIONALISM: Really I think this is going to show most in morale.

Fleet Morale: I really do think that Mission Motivation (like in SG) needs to
be considered. You might get a table like this showing the casulaties a fleet
will accept before breaking off

Level Grade 1 2 3 4 5

Low 15% 20% 25% 30% 35%

Medium 40% 45% 50% 55% 60%

High 60% 65% 70% 75% 80%

Ship Morale: Ships would test for striking the colours when they lose a or
core system. Ships strike on the following roll;

        Grade 1:- 3,4,5,6
        Grade 2:- 4,5,6
        Grade 3:- 5,6
        Grade 4:- 6
        Grade 5:- 6 but only if life support is down.

Fighter Morale: Fighter groups test for morale with the following modifiers;

        Grade 1: -2 (even a full group needs a 4 to attack)
        Grade 2: -1
Grade 3: 0 (as per the normal rules)
        Grade 4: +1
        Grade 5: +2

LEADERSHIP: Compare the ratings of the commanding officers of each fleet. The
player with the highest rated commander subtracts the opponents leader value
from the value of their commander. This difference is the number of offensive
chits the player with the higher value leader gets. The offensive chits can be
used to;

1) move a ship twice (but not fire) 2) Fire a single ship twice (but not move)
3) conduct an extra round of repair rolls on a single ship 4) seize the
initiative

When each chit is used is put to one side and cannot be used again. You could
add up the values of all the ship captains in ech fleet and compare the
results but this is likely to give you a large number of chits to use. You
might set the number of chits per game at say 10 with each player getting a
number equal the value of his commander, extras being discarded. When the
chits are used they are not put to one side but are handed over to the
opposing player who can then use them as if they were
his/her own.

RELIABILITY: This is really only going to be used in campaign games if at all.
Probably the easiest way is to multiply the reliability value by 20% this
giving a percentage chance out of 100% that the ship will be operational
(could also be applied to fighter groups) each turn. If the ship fails the
roll then it must return to port for one turn and test again at the start of
the new turn. Fighter groups would remain on station and simply be unavliable
for battle.
        If you use this then the cost of start up ships/fighters should
be discounted by the same amount ie a nation that has 60% reliability will
purchase the ships it begins with at 60% of the calculated cost. All ships
built during the campaign will be at full value.

Now that I have bored you all throughly I will go off and think of something
else (oh no). I hope some of the ideas might be useful.

Wilko.

> On 20-Jan-00 at 06:29, Tony Wilkinson (twilko@ozemail.com.au) wrote:

This is all well and good, but unless you want to have everyone playing NAC
you need to adjust point values on fleets to reflect the fact that everyone
other than NAC has picked up a severe disadvantage.

Beth, time for another data point on the Survey? Your survey is so small 1
person could severely weight it?:)

G'day Roger,

> This is all well and good, but unless you want to have everyone playing

Welll... rounding the means to closest integer (I need whole integer ransk for
what I'll be using the results for) you get:

Nation	 CQ   LQ GP  VR Opp
ESU 2 3 3 3 2 FSE 3 4 3 4 3 NAC 4 3 4 4 3 NSL 4 4 4 4 4

CQ = crew Quality LQ = Leader Quality GP = General Professionalism VR = Vessel
Reliability Opp = Opportunity

So I think the NSL may contend that the NAC aren't exactly streets ahead of
everybody;)

> Beth, time for another data point on the Survey? Your survey is so

Quite possibility if they decided to give very extreme answers (e.g. all 1s or
5s), however that'd be why I prefer to use the mode (not as easily
skewed and gives a better seperation of fleets - not so many sitting on
all
3/4) ;)

> Roger (Still maintaining that my FSE fleet is as well trained as the

I wouldn't exactly say the results suggest that Francophobia played heavily in
the results, though being an FSE player too I was deeply mortified to find
they didn't rate 5 in everything;)

I think if any nation should feel unjustly done by its the ESU which sits
amongst, or below, the smaller nations - I guess the grit and "I'll
stand here until I'm damn well dead" Russkies I think off (OK I play
Napoleonics) isn't something that goes with the navy?

Cheers

Beth

> At 09:11 20/01/00 -0500, you wrote:

But thats just the point. Unless the costings can be reworked in such a
way as to balance the advantages/disadvantages then there is really no
point to trying to represent the more abstract factors effecting ship
preformance. The costings are what needs work. As for Beth's survey I really
that assigning one value for the entire fleet is just not
reasonable. All fleets and militaries will have a quality/preformance
range. If they didn't you'd never see elite troops.

Wilko.

> At 08:53 21/01/00 +1000, you wrote:

Hi Beth, Yes perhaps the ESU is a bit hard done by if you take it that all the
fleet preform at the same level. In my books the ESU will have some
ships/crews that are the are the equal of any but that they make up a
very small proportion of their fleet. The ESU advantage would be numbers and
this should show in ships costings if a balanced cost system can be thought
up. Historically the Russian/Soviet and Chinese, at least for the last
300 years, Navies have never really preformed, or hung about when things go
bad, no NKVD/KGB/CSO (Chinese Speakers Only) battilons behind them.
As one Naploenic player to another, yes Russian infantry is great for saving
Austrian butts (namely mine).

Wilko.

It looks like the NSL is the group to contend with, I still maintain we need a
point adjustment if the quality counts in a signigicant manner.

Of course, you aren't going for Quality FT, you are working on what looks like
a different game that is based on FT.

G'day Roger,

> It looks like the NSL is the group to contend with, I still maintain

I agree to a large degree (especially if built into standard FT), but I
haven't sat down and specifically hammered anything out as under Erratic
Thrust there are pluses and minuses to all the races (e.g. ESU has porer
troops but is allowed to have more of them etc). After I've played a few
games I'll re-evaluate whether these haev to be explicitly costed.

> Of course, you aren't going for Quality FT, you are working on what

Yes it is probably significantly different, but most of that has to do with
movement and removing the strict sequence of move, fire etc. I've finished the
rules conversion I just need to have a couple of games with Derek to see how
it works and then I'll pass it on to any who're interested.

Cheers

Beth