> Brian Bell wrote:
> I would hate to lose this rule. It makes for a good alternative to a
This whole thread is very interesting; not just Brian's comments. I can't
agree that ramming should deliberately be ruled out for any speed or reason.
Why? I hate to say it, but war of any kind is never, EVER fair. Sides fight to
obliterate now, not to be gentlemanly. Consider the Russians of WWII
deliberately throwing out the lives of hundreds of thousands of men because
they know that the weight of pressing numbers is their best advantage over
their more mobile, better commanded German enemy.
In the Full Thrust universe, if you encounter a technically or tactically
superior enemy, and you don't (as a race) have the ability to win a combat or
war, then why not build cheap ships to deliberately ram the enemy? It's a
tactic that your opponent will have to deal with on a strategic level. If I
can build a really cheap ship that takes out your dreadnought that's 10x the
cost, that's a REALLY good tactic!! You're gonna be broke before I
am -
and that is more a part of war than who has the best equipment. Don't kid
yourself either - there will always be lots of volunteers to save your
planet, manning these ships!
Consider finally the typical analogy of nuclear weapons... If a nuclear power
can't win a strategic war, it's gonna nuke you on the way out. Why not? It's
got nothing to lose, and EVERYBODY loses in a nuclear war. Now that's
definitely NOT fair (or fun) but that's war.
Instead of ruling out ramming, create rules that allow one to defend
against it - 'cause it's gonna happen to somebody out there. As long as
there are millions of warring races out there, there will be those that ram.
After a few battles with a Rammer, if you haven't adapted your tactics
for defense - you deserve to be annihilated...
(Or just make a gentlemanly agreement with your opponent ahead of time that
ramming is not allowed.)
This is one example but we have a guy down here in Canberra who believes that
it is fair to FTL his whole or half of his fleet into your deployment line. It
is a legitimate tactic but one of no thought or style. Is this tactic or rule
going to be got rid of?
Simon LeRay-Meyer
Slerayme@pcug.org.au
[quoted original message omitted]
> Simon LeRay-Meyer wrote:
Simon, Options available are: 1) Invite him to take his toys and go home. 2)
Inform him that his tactics are not welcome.
3) Have the people on your group do a series of pre-prepared scenarios
in which he will not have any say in the ship construction. 4) Start a set of
written 'house rules' that everyone must conform to and abide by. 5) Start
using his own tactics against him, he may not think this is so clever if he
suffers a loss against 20 or 30 scout ships.
I'll stop with #5 as the remaining options can be rather messy.
By for now,
> Simon,
I personally think that the games we play are primarilly for 1) fun and then
2) to win. When people seem to be so obsessed with 2) the game just starts to
become pointless. I think that the influence of the Evil Empire company has
had a lot to do with this. I know that I much prefer to play fun games then
really really really competitive games. When it comes down to it, they are
just games.
> Simon,
And illegal, too, I'll bet! ;-)
Hiya all,
> From Jason Stephensen,
> I personally think that the games we play are primarilly for 1) fun and
Here here! I have stopped playing Evil Empire games because most of the people
I played with approach it with a "win at all costs" attitude, including using
army compositions that don't make 'sense', e.g. one guy actually had an army
that had more characters than units.....
As for the kamikaze tactics, we have a house rule that you can only do it if
you are on your last damage track, an attempt to simulate the "take some of
the bastards with us..." gung ho approach that is so much fun. Makes for some
very nervous superdreadnoughts when the little guys start getting rather
damaged, also makes for some hilarious moments, one time a thrust 6 cruiser
was outmanouevered by a thrust 2 dreadnought.... however if we are running a
campaign people are rather loathe to ram ships, better to live and fight
another day.
> On Sun, 23 Nov 1997, Dave Ross wrote:
> If
The problem with tactics like these is that they really fail the reality
check. They work so well only because FT abstracts away certain things, like
crew quality. Everyone is assumed to have an unlimited number of
"average" trained crews -- something which will NOT be the case after
someone resorts to suicide tactics as a strategic decision.
If you look at the kamikaze, the Japanese really resorted to those tactics
only after their pilot quality had deteoriated so much they didn't have much
of a chance to score with a normal bomb run.
To summarize, yes, suicide tactics can work -- but in reality they will
not work as well as trained crews performing the same tactics. It is even
quite probable that they don't work as well as trained crews using regular
tactics.
So, I'd say you are unfairly exploiting an abstraction in the rules if you
just build suicide ships to be used with vanilla rules. But if you're willing
to accept lesser crew quality, shoddily built ships etc., and
e.g.
plot movement two turns in advance, kamikaze defense can be built into a
working, fun game.
This, incidentally, is partly why I don't like the idea that small ships
are remote-piloted. Accepting remote control would unleash all sorts
of suicide tactics.
> Brian Bell wrote:
> >I personally think that the games we play are primarilly for 1) fun
we use a similar house rule in DS2/SG2, we create an acceptable
casuatly rate for a given scenero. In a border raid scenero we played a couple
of weeks ago, the casuatly rate was 50%, the first one to hit this was forced
to conced victory because holding this one border post was not worth that
sorta casuatilites... an SG2 game we played involved a commando raid aginst a
terrosist group with a doomsday weapon...obvisouly this was an at all cost
target with 100% casuatilities excepptabe by both sides (BTW, the terrosist
player asked if he could set off the bomb during the game)
> Jason Stephensen wrote:
> I personally think that the games we play are primarilly for 1) fun
When the game came in only one book this was called a disaster waiting to
happen. Things change!) I personally would say a form of satisfaction, I like
to go
into a combat on the short side of the points scale. Even in a
one shot scenario I'll pull out ships that are too damaged to be useful. I do
always try my level best to win the combat. I did consider the 'Jump in to
combat" as a possible weapon some time ago. I used the concept to provide one
of my alien races (Very heavy into guided missiles) with a jump weapon.
One of 12 new or modified types of guided missiles for use w/FT.
THE RULE: Jump Guided Missile
MASS=2 POINT COST=20 The jump missile is launched at the stare of the turn and
the target location is noted at this time (This is an X and Y range
measurement from a selected corner of the playing area). The next turn the
jump
engine is primed. The turn following the missile tries to jump to
the selected spot, using the jump into combat/misjump rules.
(I am putting on my flack suit due to having announced this heresy.)
The best long range solution to the problem is to say (in the house rules)
that a jump is stratigic movement and the minimum jump distance is 250 or 500
inches.
Have fun or do the best you can. Bye for now,
Amen, J.S., Amen
Gil
> Murphy's Laws of Combat #63
> ----------
Hmmm, this reminds me of the early "Starfire-Empires" rules problem.
We had an individual who's race/Tech level, would not allow him to
build anything bigger than a Escort. But he had very rich systems, which meant
he could build a LOT of them....... I began to think my invading fleet was
going to have a bad day when he borrowed all the Escorts from 2 other players
game sets.... Yikes!
Randy "Creative Financing is the key to any venture. Right John?" R. Hood
(Ret.)
> Instead of ruling out ramming, create rules that allow one to defend
Here, here!! I totally agree with Dave. The universe is a big place and I'm
sure there are many more fighting styles than mere humans have thought up.
my $0.02
CMC
> David Petterson wrote:
> As for the kamikaze tactics, we have a house rule that you can only do
Makes
> for some very nervous superdreadnoughts when the little guys start
I have to agree again with this game use of ramming. Unless your group is
playing a campaign or scenario, i think ramming should be a last ditch effort.
But, ramming should not be taken out of the game totally.
> J.Stephensen wrote:
> I personally think that the games we play are primarilly for 1) fun
again I agree, but, if you limit the players on what they can do the game then
become just like GW games. I left the GW game system, not because of the other
players "power gaming". there are always ways to take care of that. it was
because in GW games your limited to their rules. GW is a tournament styled
gaming system. I do not view FT, DS, or GS as such.
In the group i play FT with we use a GM "game master" (like from the old role
playing games) the GM arbitrates over the games to deal with these type of
maneuvers. (which they players wish to do something that is not written into
or fully explained in the rules.
> Simon wrote:
> This is one example but we have a guy down here in Canberra who
As I stated player should not be limited to rules. so maybe rules for FTL in a
combat maneuver should be added. If some one wants to FTL into your
zone what is the chance that he/she will be off target. it is possible
they his new super dreadnought could FTL into your scoutship thus causing the
dreadnought much harm. (???)
The point is that FT seems to be based on Starship warfare as a whole. so if
the game taken advantage of using a certain system or maneuver. have realistic
restrictions on those systems or maneuvers. but do not limit the "warfare"
tactics and what not. That's what FT is all about.
If you take a players creativity then you end up playing 40K style game again.
it'll come down to who can afford the newest character or who knows the rules
best, BORRING!!!
my $0.02 again
CMC
I still think all this kamakazie ramming at light speed stuff is nothing more
than a modification of the ST:TNG "Picard Maneuver"
Still, worth listening to.
Gil
Just to add - the Japanese began Kamikaze runs towards the end of the
war as a result of loss due to combat attrition. I think a ruling towards
desperate acts would be required to see if the crew maintained dignity enough
to die
with their ship or possibly mutiny. (Mutiny happens after all - and if
the crew is bad and you want to kill everyone, I think the seed of dissent
would be planted). Crew quality is a must.
> Dave Ross wrote:
Very interesting indeed.
> I can't
I feel the same way. Although, I can see the point of those against it. In a
PBEM (First Blood) that I participated in before, some rules were added to
board a ship. These rules made it easier to board a ship if both ships were
travelling in the same general direction.
I believe this type of modifier makes sense and that it could apply to
ramming. The modifier would make it easier to ram a ship from behind
and harder to ram a ship in a head-to-head fashion. Some scheme, as the
following one, could be used:
- ramming from behind: roll a SIX on a D6 (as per rules)
- ramming on the side: roll a SIX on a D6 and then beat a 2 on a D6
- ramming head on: roll a SIX on a D6 and then beat a 4 on a D6
> From a PSB point of view, it makes sense (think of aircraft dogfight:
it is easier to track a target from behind). From a play point of view, it
preserves ramming but requires more strategic skills.
I have not tested the rules written above and I do not claim that they are
fair. But I believe rules similar to those would help many situations that
were discussed on this thread.
As far as leaving the table under FTL, maybe the damage imposed on ships
around a destroyed ship is too much. How about ships within a 3 unit radius
takes full damage, and ships in 3 to 6 units range take half the damage?
It might be simplistic, but players from both camps (for and against kamikaze
operations) might find a consensus along those lines.
JP
> I personally think that the games we play are primarilly for 1) fun and
Amen!
> .... however if we are
You might want to set a rule to the effect that for either side to declair
victory, the fleet that destroys the enemy or forces him to flee, must have
25% of his ships (points and number) survive or it is considered a draw.
25% is rather a bloodthursty number. And ultimatly unsustainable. But easy to
measure. What are acceptable losses?
> Brian Bell wrote:
> What are acceptable losses?
Brian, Not less than 90%!!!!!! (Naturally this may be influenced by ones poing
of view.)
Bye for now,
> As far as leaving the table under FTL, maybe the damage imposed on
(Caveat: I'm the one that sent the Martyr class skip to Brian Bell for his
Full Thrust Ship Registry. It seemed such an obvious development that
*somebody* had to.)
Using the PSB that firing up the FTL engines for a jump involves the creation
of an artificial black hole that warps space to form a
short-lived wormhole (it vanishes when the ship--with its FTL
generator and artificial black hole--passes through), how about
something like the following: When a ship enters or exits the table via FTL,
the heading of every
ship within 6" is turned toward the ship by a factor of (6 - the
distance of the ship from the hole), or to a heading directly toward the hole,
whichever is less. Any damage suffered is incidental, due to possible
collisions (per FT/MT rules for ramming?), but it could wreak havoc
on carefully planned deployments--especially if ship speeds are high.
Alternately, if you are using a vector movement system, apply a vector
of (6 - the distance of the ship from the hole) directly toward the
hole (toward the arriving or departing ship).
(Raise shields--Red alert)
- Sam
> Samuel Reynolds wrote:
...Snip...JTL
> (Caveat: I'm the one that sent the Martyr class skip to Brian Bell
...Snip...JTL
> - Sam
> At approximately 11/24/97 8:41 PM, JP & Val Fiset wrote:
> I feel the same way. Although, I can see the point of those against
it
> is easier to track a target from behind). From a play point of view,
What if damage for going to or coming out of FTL near other vessels not doing
the same thin only effects the ship making the transit? Final acts of
desperation could still be enacted by ramming (if allowed), maybe using a
similar system to the one mentioned above in the replying text.
One thing I disliked about Task Force's SFB was that ships could disengaged,
IMHO, much too easily. Many players I played against used this mechanism as a
means to get out of bad situations they placed themselves in while making a
risky maneuver.