> On Wed, Apr 07, 2004 at 12:36:13AM +0200, Leszek 'Leslie' Karlik wrote:
Congratulations! Not to mention Welcome to GZG-L!
> [I don't like this initiative advantage that a two-player alliance has
Generally when I play more than two-sided, I divide the forces into two
"sides" and allow free choice of unit to activate within each.
> The problem is, we intend to use bigger fleets next time, so fighters
It works pretty well in practice as long as you don't have a large enough
playing area that ships outrun fighters. Most of the time the results you get
are close enough to the ones you get from the standard
rules that you might as well have _used_ the standard rules.
Have you looked into the beta-test fighter rules posted to this list?
See the archives at http://lists.firedrake.org/gzg/200403/msg00286.html
if not. (These are not intended for distribution beyond the GZG list
just yet - they're still being worked on - but they may still be of some
interest in fixing the problem you haven't met yet, that huge numbers of
fighters will outdo almost any other weapon system...)
On Tue, Apr 06, 2004 at 09:49:00PM +0100, Roger Burton West
distributed foul capitalist propaganda:
[...]
> >OK, yesterday I've played may first Full Thrust game ever.
Thanks. :-) I really like the game.
[...]
> Generally when I play more than two-sided, I divide the forces into
Right, that's what we intend to do next time.
Also, rolling 2D6 for initiative will eliminate the frequent ties.
[And I'm thinking about allowing a purchase of an "exceptional
admiral" for +1 to Initiative rolls at a cost of, say, 25 points
and with a condition that if the ship he is on is destroyed, you only roll 1D6
for initiative on the next round. Then again, it's probably
not worth the bother. ;->]
[...]
> >the FT FAQ says that fighters keep their normal rules even when
> It works pretty well in practice as long as you don't have a large
Right, they do have a very large movement radius. OK, I'll see how they do
without vector.
> Have you looked into the beta-test fighter rules posted to this list?
Yes, I was searching through the archives with 'vector fighter rules'
keywords, so I did read them. :-) And I do intend to use them.
> See the archives at
I already saw complaints to that nature on the Polish FT list. I even thought
about translating the rules into Polish and putting them somewhere, but since
they are not intended for distribution beyond the list I had to decide against
it. Oh well.
> Roger
> Leslie wrote:
> [I don't like this initiative advantage that a two-player alliance has
I wouldn't have done initiative that way. I would have done initiative
alternating between each side, not each player. That's how I did it when I was
running FT games at GenCon.
> The problem is, we intend to use bigger fleets next time, so fighters
Why? I have played with big fleets, and I prefer not to play with fighters at
all.
> However, I'm not sure whether using
I do, too, which is one reason I hardly use fighters (the other two are a)
they are broken, and b) I don't play that much). I always wanted vector
fighters. But if you do that, you end up with vector missiles. You can't
defend against very fast vector missiles, at least not the way they were
written. Every time I've mentioned vector fighters on the playtest list
(albeit, not too often) it was shot down.
If you are really set on using fighters, try the playtest beta rules that were
posted here a few weeks ago. They apparently fix the problems
that fighters have in the FT/MT/FB1/FB2 rules. They don't make them
vector, though.
> Why? I have played with big fleets, and I prefer not to play with
Concur. Just swap out a fighter bay for other weapons.
> But if you do that, you end up with vector missiles. You can't defend
You can defend against the missiles, you just can't kill the
missile-launching ships. "I approach at high speed; while still out of
beam range, I launch a vast number of missiles; then I FTL away as my missiles
coast the rest of the way home." Brief, yet dull.
Vector fighters are not a problem as long as you watch your accumulated
velocity. It's easy to get them going faster than you intended and have them
end up off the table and out of the room.
OK, yesterday I've played may first Full Thrust game ever. (I got the FT
rulebook, Polish edition [1] for a Christmas present).
The battle was a three sided one, or rather, two against one (my 400 points
NAC task force and an ESU 400 pts task force have joined forces against a 800
points NSL force. We won, though the initiative advantage we had in shooting
(since ESU and NAC got in two shots for each one from the NSL at the beginning
of the round) may have contributed to it (this, and the extremely competent
master gunner on HMS Vanderburg, who took out the KRS Maximillian with a
reactor hit
on the second damage treshold :->>>).
[I don't like this initiative advantage that a two-player alliance has
over a one player task force, though the ability of a larger point total fleet
to field large ships may be somewhat of a counter.]
Anyway, we elected to play using the vector movement system (we don't want to
play "battleships in spaaace!"), which may be one
factor that contributed to the NSL defeat - HMS Vandenburg, with its
thrust of 6, was able to execute close pass to the Maximillan and flip after
passing past it, to bring all the guns to bear (and take it two damage
tresholds down in one salvo), but since it was the first FT game for all of
us, we decided not to use fighters.
The problem is, we intend to use bigger fleets next time, so fighters will
have to come into play. However, I'm not sure whether using
vector movement for fighters won't break stuff too badly - the FT FAQ
says that fighters keep their normal rules even when vector movement is used,
but I find this somewhat... disconcerting.
I first asked on SFConsim-L and on the Polish Full Thrust list on
yahoo, but I decided to come here anyway. I've skimmed the archives but I
haven't found any rules for fighter vector movement. So, Is there any elegant
way to deal with this? Or should we leave the fighters as they are?
I'm inclined to give the fighters an ability to move their future destination
marker by 24 MU in any direction during their movement phase, but make them
vector (escorting or attacking a ship requires matching vectors with it), and
I'm split between either making the additional 6 MU move (paid by with CEF)
displace the fighter and the vector marker in the same direction and by the
same amount of MU, or simply moving the future position marker by up to 6 MU
and moving the fighters. The second solution seems to suck, though, the first
one should be playable.