> Michael Sandy wrote:
Every planet conquered, will have to be guarded. Such worlds would produce
less than they would free...
> There is very little provision for colonizing and
Or just use a HORD! of small (ie: in the normal ship building ranges) colony
ships.
> And yet, when a colony is established, its production
As to production rates...
No world, regardless of society, would devote 100% of GNP (Gross National
Product) to military spending. It is simply easyer to assume that the cash a
world produces is the "Military Spending Budget". This greatly simplifies the
budget rules of any strategic game.
Of course during a war, the military spending level would go up...So long as
the populous continued to believe and support the war. Large losses, long
stalemates, ect. would reduce this amount.
Just my $0.02....
> Jonathan Jarrard wrote:
Ahh yess! I have both of the previous versions, but not the current one.
Seemed a bit more than my wallet was prepaired to pay. Even the "New Empires"
(second version) has lots of info.
Having discussed how FT campaigns are run it seems the most popular way to
increase production is to conquer NPC planets and set them to producing for
your empire.
There is very little provision for colonizing and populating a system by
oneself. The big problem is that the size and cost of a colony ship capable of
transporting a significant fraction of a planet's population (> 0.1%) is HUGE
under most estimations of ship size.
And yet, when a colony is established, its production is somehow within only a
few orders of magnitude of the home system, even those its size in many orders
smaller.
More realistic would be for colonies to have production
less than 1/1000 of the home planet, but that makes
the establishment of distant colonies a much less attractive proposition.
Think about it, if the colony can justify its cost in X years that means 1000X
worth of ships have been built at the home system in that time! If a colony
ship is the cost of a large Capital ship, that is the equivalent of 1000
Capital ships! A huge bookkeeping exercise!
If the colony _can't_ justify its cost during the
lifetime of the campaign, it won't get built.
Unless colonies can somehow rapidly increase their production and population a
lot faster than on the homeworld, what is the point?
If the initial production is negligible for the first
100 or 200 years then a 100-fold or 1000-fold increase
in population could justify the colonies expense. That is a much greater
timespan than most campaigns!
On the other hand, such a timespan would involve ships hundreds of years old
somehow avoiding complete obsolescence...
> Michael Sandy wrote:
> And yet, when a colony is established, its production is somehow
You could explain it like this: the homeworld has a large unproductive
population while a colony is founded with a certain goal and a population to
fit. The colony would be more focused on one type of production and wouldn't
waste capacity on luxury goods either. Just think what would happen if all
earth resources were turned to terraforming Mars (rationing, no more home
computers but hey, masses of
interplanetary spaceships ;-)
> If the initial production is negligible for the first 100 or 200 years
Not if you're gaming Haldeman's Forever War ;-)
I think the math behind the pbem game Galaxy could be used to run a campaign,
dropping the technology and material calculations. When the new mass based
design systems appears in the FB it'll be easy to adapt: 1 point of ship mass
in Galaxy is just the same in FT. One mass of cargo can carry a unit of
colonists or capital (=industrial capacity).
}Having discussed how FT campaigns are run it seems}the most popular way to
increase production is to}conquer NPC planets and set them to producing for
}your empire.
}
} ...
}
}And yet, when a colony is established, its production}is somehow within only
a few orders of magnitude of the}home system, even those its size in many
orders}smaller.
Some of this can be explained away by the simple fact that the whole
population of the home planet is not dedicated to the production of war
materials. If you do as Scott Adams suggests for businesses today
and remove all the people who are not _directly_ involved with the
construction of new ships, it may end up that only 0.1%, 0.01% or even 0.001%
of the planetary population is involved in building starships. The rest of the
people are producing consumer goods to keep the rest happy, wasting time in
government, conducting tours of museums, engaging in other research, &c...
What needs to be examined is what the limiting factor to ship construction is
in any particular scenario. It could be having enough trained crew, it could
be the materials for some necessary part of the ship (like the jump engines in
B5). If those factors can be overcome by having alternate ship building sites,
then opening colonies may be wise.
} ...
}Unless colonies can somehow rapidly increase their}production and population
a lot faster than on the}homeworld, what is the point?
The presence of colonies could be used as resupply and repair bases only,
rather than spending extra weeks or months transiting back to the highly
efficient docks of the home world. And possibly FTL sensors can detect fleets
heading towards the homeplanet, allowing them to be intercepted.
> Donald Hosford wrote:
Imperial Starfire (from Task Force Games) has a very sophisticated set of
campaign rules and a nifty abstract system for dealing with planetary
invasions and occupations. Those who have access might want to check it out.
> Michael Sandy wrote:
> Every planet conquered, will have to be guarded. Such worlds would
Whether the world is conquered or peacefully inducted into your civilization,
it is a lot easier to get new production out of a populated world than to
colonize one yourself.
> >
Um, my point was that if you use the Dirtside II conversion rules, 1 Mass of
Cargo can move 50 people, then to get.1% of the population of a 5 billion
population world you'd need 2000 Mass of cargo doing 50 round trips. If you
don't mind doing the paperwork for thousands of ships,
great...
> As to production rates...
This
> greatly simplifies the budget rules of any strategic game.
Are you going to claim that an established world will spend less in combined
Civilian space ships,
military ships _and_ research than a colony world?
Yes, the homeworld will have more drones and more people on the dole, but that
can't reasonably account for more than a factor of two difference in
production.
> Donald Hosford
I suppose the easiest answer is that a Colony world isn't an economical way of
spreading one's power in most FT campaigns. Once you start meeting enemy
warships you may spend a lot on bribing/conquering
scouting other civilizations, but it is a little late to get colonial
production into play.
Thank you everybody for your comments!
> On Mon, 12 Jan 1998, Jonathan Jarrard wrote:
> Imperial Starfire (from Task Force Games) has a very sophisticated set
It'd be great if you didn't need "Intel inside" stamped on your forehead
in order to keep track of all the record-keeping necessary. "Very
sophisticated" is an understatement. That and the fact that the system
generation is highly impractical and results in the most messed-up maps
you can imagine... I suppose you don't have to use that part of the game: just
make up a predetermined setting.
I have tried to play some games of Imperial Starfire, and it has taken
literally days to make any progress whatsoever. The mountain of paperwork you
end up with makes a nice souvenir, but also makes you wonder if it's really
worth the headache.
Cheers!
> Michael Sandy wrote:
This
> > greatly simplifies the budget rules of any strategic game.
The economical way to build colonies is to put seed factories on the planet
with just enough colonist to do the maintence that the seed factories can not
do for themselves. This way you get substantial economic benefit with only a
small fraction of the cost and shipping tonnage compared to sending hordes of
people and machinery to set up colonies. It takes a bit longer, but seed
factories can grow exponentially... Which means they would rapidly surpass the
economic growth of a conventional colony.
In message <34B90AE4.BD971020@ping.be>
> Ludo Toen <Ludo.Toen@ping.be> wrote:
> Michael Sandy wrote:
Alternatively, the main bottleneck for production is resources. A new colony
world as lots of resources, and mining them is easy. Set up a few robotic
factories and mining stations, and you can quickly start putting together a
new fleet with a very small population.
Colony worlds will quickly become exhausted though, so you have to move on.
The homeworld will of course been exhausted long before the game starts.
> On Sat, 10 Jan 1998, Michael Sandy wrote:
> If the initial production is negligible for the first
I agree with your reasonings. Personally, I've always thought that setting
newly colonized wolrds to produce military units for you is at least a bit
silly, and strongly reminds me of Empire (deluxe or not).
I can understand taking over existing production facilities, especially of raw
materials, but building new ones is a bit too much...
It is, perhaps, because campaigns often ignore the real importance of forward
bases: Supply and logistics.