The big picture gaming - was RE: Carriers & Fighter Capacity

I've been playing a bit of DBM (De Bellis Multitudinus) recently and was
impressed by the degree and effect of the starting factors.

First, there is the season of the game - some seasons have a higher
chance for rain and snow which can affect certain units (bows and arquebuses).
After deciding the season, you roll for the actual weather
(which can change through the battle).  You then choose terrain - each
side has certain choices for terrain and how much terrain which are
placed semi-randomly - the sector is random as well as whether the piece
touches the edge of the board, otherwise the orientation and position within
the sector is the players choice. The players then decide on
whether they want the position units for ambush or off-board flank
attacks. The players then place their armies, alternating between commands.

The interesting parts of this set-up:

1) Each player has some say in the terrain to be used - which allows
each side to choose terrain that is favorable to it's units (i.e. archers have
a hard time hitting targets in woods, but psiloi (skirmishers) pass easily
through woods so woods and orchards are a good defense against archers). The
assumption of DBM is that the attacker gets to choose the season of attack,
but the defender (in his homeland) gets to choose the actual location, and is
given more options in placing terrain. If terrain such as nebula, a star's
corona, asteroid fields etc. can be placed by the "defender" you can negate or
reduce the capabilites of the attacker.

2) Ambushes and flank attacks - if ships can use asteroids, cloaking
devices or ECM to "hide" on the board, then both sides become much more wary.
If mines are terrain feature that a defender can choose then attackers will be
more cautious in approaching. If there is the possibility of a fleet of ships
appearing to the side or behind you, your battle formations are going to
diffferent than if you know all the enemy ships are in front of you. Flank
attacks are rolled for each turn
- the the owning player rolls a 6, the command is on it's way and will
appear on the designated side on the next turn. This might represent
powered-down or cloaked ships that were pre-positioned or "coasting" but
under strict communication silence.

3) Commands - in DBM an army is demoralised if enough commanders are
killed. Fleets should have Flag Ships where the Admiral or Commander is
located, and loss of said ship should cause either a morale check or some sort
of disruption as the Flag is passed to the next ship in line. This might
require that a very powerful ship is held out of the line of battle to keep
the Admiral safe.

4) Supply - Although not covered in DBM, supply could be introduced as a
cost for ships in a fleet - a certain price or mass cost for the fleet
to maintain full supply, i.e. for every 10 mass of expendables (missiles,
fighters, mines, scatterguns) it costs 1 mass for the supply train. Failure to
provide the required mass requires a supply roll similar to a threshold system
check, each expendable not covered would roll to see if it were operational.
So a fleet with 55 points of expendables opts to only pay 5 mass for supply,
it would have to find an expendable system(s) (a hangar of fighters, or a 5
point SML magazine etc.) to roll on a threshold check (a 6 means it's empty).
So a fleet can pack up a large amount of missiles, scatter guns or fighters,
but is going to expend a portion of it's overall value to guarantee that they
are available or take the chance that they spent the mass for a hangar or SML
for nothing.

--Binhan

> Really one should play with all aspects of the game -