points system...

[cgutzmer]

This is gonna be the hard part.... I am thinking we will use a base 10 points system for attack and defense items. For instance a shield can have a rating of 1 to 10 a laser can have a rating from 1 to 10 (can be a subset as well based on type of shield or weapon) like maybe a laser is really 1-3 and a heavy laser is 4-7 etc etc. A unit can have multiples like 1 laser and one nuclear missile and 2 shield generators or no lasers and 5 shield generators etc etc - this will make a nice way to customize ships based on usage, race preferences etc etc.

shields will either be 10(functional) or 0(knocked out) armor can be damaged so will use counters of 0-10 to mark current status, maybe every hit that penetrates shields takes it down 1 or 2 notches based on attack type.

Thoughts?

[Blackronin]

How do you pretend to work the interface between games. Let's see. A invasion fleet composed by 3 cruisers and one carrier-destroyer, two freighters and 30 fighters jumps (?) in a system. The defenders have 3 destroyers and 50 fighters. During the combat one of the fighters and 12 fighters escape unharmed and move in into the planet orbit. Waiting for them there is a combat sattelite and 6 reserve fighters. The battle will prove to be bloody.

Well. First. How do you pretend to convert the big ship battle fighters into the figther vs. fighter combat?

Second. What are the relative sizes of ships. How many fighters would be necessary to destroy a battleship?

Third. What reason should I make to drop troops while I can make attacks from the space with my big ships?

This is the part of the universe construction that we must make before we make the small rules. If a game doesn't have internal logic, it won't work.

I played, back in the eighties a RPG called Star Wars from GDW. Our game master sent us into a quest that at the end gave us the power to control the mind of our enemies. Before he could make a counter-power, this breach in the internal logic of the game permitted us to gain control of a superstardestroyer and crash it against the core of a death star.

If a game system, fantasy or otherwise doesn't have a good internal logic, the players will disconnect the "suspension of disbelief" that enables them to play a game.

Maybe you shhould look a bit into it.

[cgutzmer]

This is the kind of stuff I have my experts around for! I dont think about this stuff

I am coming up with these answers off the top of my head....

I have no idea - I was going to try to come up with some matrixes to work this out - any help appreciated I have some thoughts about all of them but I gotta work them out a bit...
Chris

[Blackronin]

Internal logic:

1)Interstellar voyage: (pick one )

a) Hyperspace - Ships have an Hyper drive. They have a sub light drive that permits movement in "normal" space and an Hyper drive that let's the ship jump almost instantaneously from star to star. They cannot "appear" near a planet. Gravity, uncertainly of arrival point might destroy the ship, hence, time for defenders prepare an attack against the arriving fleets. Also, ships stay out of planet range, for the big planetary defenses can destroy a ship easily. Starwars approach.

b) Warp. A ship enters warp, another layer in the fabric of the universe that can make ships move much faster than the speed of light. A very controllable movement factor that enables ships to go anywhere, even inside planet atmosphere. It would make our three kinds of combat game harder to maintain with logic. Star trek approach.

c) Warp Gates. Natural or artificial points where ships can jump from system to system. Strong points: We can make interesting maps of system to system "web" that it is an interesting concept, but it was also already done. Star Empires game, etc. Weak points: If I had a warp point in a system I would defend it as a crazy and it would be very hard to attack it.

d) A little bit of this. A little bit of that. Our own fabrication using a logic approach but taking what we want from the three systems above. I would go for. Hyper drive streams. Places in the space where ships can move faster than light. All connected and in several places around a star system, so defenders cannot know exactly where enemies will arrive. Enemies must move in system with sub light drives. Fighters are very good but must be transported by carriers. Planetary defenses cannot engage smaller ships, so large ships stay away from planets until planetary defenses are destroyed or the planet is taken.

[Blackronin]

On Unit sizes. Considerations and choices.

The reason for having 3 different games in a game system:

Different types of combat.
Different scales.
Different units.

It all checks in our games.

Space game.
Huge ships clashes in the darkness of space.
Ships are individual at scale 1:1000 to 1:2000
Fighter would be 3D counters of squadrons of 4-12 fighters. (If we go this direction I have an idea for the 3D counters that I find good.)

Orbit Defense game.
Satellites, freighters, drop ships and fighters duel in higher atmospheres.
All models are individual and scale should range from 1:100 to 1:300.

Ground Combat game.
Grunts are the last line of defense. It always has been this way, there is no reason to be different in the future. (Don't trust very much on this last sentence, OK? )
30mm scale.
All models are individual.

[Blackronin]

Hexes or Rulers?

Will we play in a hex map or in a table with free movement? I'd go for free movement.

Hexes will limit size of models, hex maps will have to be downloaded and printed and people might not want to "waste" paper and ink to play a game that they don't know. Furthermore, space is "tradicionally" black, so print several sheets of black hexed map (for those unlike me - the majority) that don't have several space hexed maps might be too much.

Space combat can very easily be translated to free movement and ground combat will get richer with 3D buildings and terrain.

I like and play hexed games. But I prefer "counter games" when playing with hexes. I believe that if we are going to make a miniature game, we should go for the complete experience.

[Blackronin]

"They got the weapons, we got the numbers!"

Number of units in the game. A question of interface between the games.

How expensive is a Space Cruiser? Can we field a lot? That would mean that we could field vast armies of tanks and infantry. Or is it so expensive that each player would be very careful to commit a vessel into battle? A 5 combat ships and 3 freighters transporting 12 fighters, 12 tanks and 100 infantry units is a big or small combat force? I would go for expensive. Very expensive high tech material and very cheap human low tech grunts. This would make the universe hard and believable. And we could write some good "human" tragedies and scenarios. This also would make the campaign and strategic game much more balanced. A player could hardly invade a system with overwhelming forces. Overwhelming forces always make a game look unbalanced, even if it is because a player is much better than the his adversary.

[cgutzmer]

Busy last night werent ya

For travel I like D quite a lot - Each scenario we develop could require a hop through several hyper drive streams (shall we call these hyper streams?), this would allow for meetings to be set up between forces (battle) this could have some degree of randomness in it? Races could setup battle groups of ships that can make more hops per turn helping them arrive faster or slower say if they wanted to setup an advance vangaurd or something. We would want to have a couple choke points in each scenario to try and force "chance" meetings. I think this idea adds a lot of strategy to the game

I would like to be able to utilize models between the deep space and orbit phases. This will cut down on number of models they need to build (also all models will still have their 2.5 d representation for those that dont/cant do the model builds. There is no reason the same model cant represent one unit in atmosphere and a squadron in deep space, they will just need a different attack card developed.

The main use of the big ships is to get to the planet and unload resources. Of course there will be big battleships/cruisers as well. I want them to be usable somehow for the other phases as well, I dont want them to suddenly become obsolete. My thoughts are different configurations based on Race or maybe even player customization. We can predevelop different configs (unique cards) for the big ships. Each one will have definte strengths and weeakness's for instance:

Cruiser config 1:
10 heavy lasers
10 rail guns
no ground bombardment
haul 15 points resources or 15 points fighters/drop ships (or combination)
5 shields

cruiser config 2:
5 standard lasers
2 ground bombardment laser (same as standard laser but can attack ground ONLY)
haul 30 points reources/fighters/dropships any combo
10 shields

you can see where one will be really good in deep space but the other will be much stronger in phase 2/3

I personally like free movement A LOT better - if we can get it to work in every phase that is my preference.

I want forces to be kept small. I forsee each ground unit of INFANTRY to actually be a squad, not an individual person. Each vehicle/ship will be an individual unit. Keeping them smaller will help determine game balance.

I would like each player to be able to develop their fleets and armies prior to every game based on number of credits they have to spend (or some such system) then they can pick their ships, build resources, vehicles, infantry etc. They will also need to pick what ships these are stored in during travel in case they are destroyed.

[Blackronin]

Originally Posted by cgutzmer

Busy last night weren't ya

Nope. This morning. I wanted to see things in a more clear way. I really don't fully understand yet what you are looking for.

Originally Posted by cgutzmer

For travel I like D quite a lot - Each scenario we develop could require a hop through several hyper drive streams (shall we call these hyper streams?), this would allow for meetings to be set up between forces (battle) this could have some degree of randomness in it? Races could setup battle groups of ships that can make more hops per turn helping them arrive faster or slower say if they wanted to setup an advance vanguard or something. We would want to have a couple choke points in each scenario to try and force "chance" meetings. I think this idea adds a lot of strategy to the game

I like the Hyper Stream idea. I toyed with it a lot before and rarely I have seen it used. So we can work from there.

Node points, places where several streams would meet would be important strategic places. We can work around that concept.

Originally Posted by cgutzmer

I would like to be able to utilize models between the deep space and orbit phases. This will cut down on number of models they need to build (also all models will still have their 2.5 d representation for those that don't/cant do the model builds. There is no reason the same model cant represent one unit in atmosphere and a squadron in deep space, they will just need a different attack card developed.

It's a question of concept and also a question of media freedom. I always hated to play with line ships that were of the same size or just a little bigger than the fighters that those ships transported by the hundreds. Added to that we are working with a media that is cheap, that is the main strength of this game. So we can give players the "Sparrow" fighter in 3D, in 2,5D and in a squadron counter (I have a good idea for this counter) that he can play with the big ships. Last, but not least, if you put the line ships fighting in the low orbit combat, why do you have two different games?

Originally Posted by cgutzmer

The main use of the big ships is to get to the planet and unload resources. Of course there will be big battleships/cruisers as well. I want them to be usable somehow for the other phases as well, I don't want them to suddenly become obsolete. My thoughts are different configurations based on Race or maybe even player customization. We can predevelop different configs (unique cards) for the big ships. Each one will have definite strengths and weeakness's for instance:

Cruiser config 1:
10 heavy lasers
10 rail guns
no ground bombardment
haul 15 points resources or 15 points fighters/drop ships (or combination)
5 shields

cruiser config 2:
5 standard lasers
2 ground bombardment laser (same as standard laser but can attack ground ONLY)
haul 30 points reources/fighters/dropships any combo
10 shields

you can see where one will be really good in deep space but the other will be much stronger in phase 2/3

I personally like free movement A LOT better - if we can get it to work in every phase that is my preference.

I want forces to be kept small. I forsee each ground unit of INFANTRY to actually be a squad, not an individual person. Each vehicle/ship will be an individual unit. Keeping them smaller will help determine game balance.

I would like each player to be able to develop their fleets and armies prior to every game based on number of credits they have to spend (or some such system) then they can pick their ships, build resources, vehicles, infantry etc. They will also need to pick what ships these are stored in during travel in case they are destroyed.

I couldn't disagree more. Sorry Chris, for being so much of a bother. In my opinion, about the customization of a game, you have two approaches, we can lean to one or the other. You build a solid universe where you have different factions with different tech and society and you give the players the units that go with it. Players choose units, not customize units. A Tie fighter is fast, fragile and cheap as life is in the Imperium. Or you have full customization in where, normally all the players have the same access to everything and they can use a personal tactic. As in making a deck of MtG. Or you can have something in between, but you never start with the "in between". Creating a game that grows with expansions is like teaching a small child. You give clear pointers, even if the child doesn't understand that that is a pointer, and only when the child is familiar with that you start adding complexity.

[cgutzmer]

you arent being a bother in the slightest I need this kind of discussion to figure things out.

configs out

I think i see where you are coming with on the actual ship, vs squaron counter idea now. That makes sense. It adds a factor of realism to the game through appropriate scale - correct?

You think it would be best if ships of the line were only available in one phase? My main thought here is that they are likely a really big expenditure for only being used in one phase. Fighters will be used in two phases (one and two) if we only allow ships of the line to be used in phase 1 we need to make sure they are appropriately priced. Of course this would also add yet more strategy to be placed on fighters/freighters with just one big ship along for protection. Or maybe even just running a pure freighter/fighter combo who knows!

We will need to figure out unloading ships too.... shuttles most likely. teleport - not.

Maybe it would do us well to start a thread of ships and units we know we will need (talking core models to make the game playable)
Chris