With A Purpose quick question

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BroAdso
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With A Purpose quick question

Post by BroAdso »

Looking at setting up a With A Purpose campaign, I'm not entirely clear on something.

Neutral systems with at least one Census - that is, ones which build their own small military and can be negotiated with - seem very important in WAP. However, the generation system in the VBAM campaign guide says that once players have selected their current colonies, all other systems are returned to Census 0 and Productivity 0 to represent the fact that they remain empty at the start of the game.

Does WAP differ from this norm? Are neutral systems in WAP expected to mostly keep their Census points and act as Neutral Systems, so that players can't land a colony ship just anyplace they feel like it?

This seems like the best way to ensure more use of the expanded Neutral Diplomacy system provided with WAP, but it also seriously limits player growth beyond the initial colonies they chose.

I may have just missed the section of the book which clarifies this, but I feel like I've read both the WAP sections and the corresponding section of the campaign guide a couple of times and can't come up with a good answer.
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Re: With A Purpose quick question

Post by mwaschak »

Thanks for your message.

Yes, neutral powers will play an important role. It will also depend on if you are playing with one of the base scenarios (which have plenty of neutral powers), but it sounds like you are looking to create your own scenario. In this case let's start with WAP 4.3 Creating Your Own Map and Scenario. You have a choice here between the Standard and Sparse scenario.

You are correct that 4.3 needs to be clarified (and I will get it in the errata) that in the CG 2.6.2 ▶ Placing Starting Colonies that Census, Morale, and Productivity values are NOT reduced to zero.

Please let me know if I can assist further and thank you for supporting the game!
-Jay
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Re: With A Purpose quick question

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Great! The book is clear enough that the commonsense answer which I guessed at was also the right one, so that's a compliment to WAP's adherence to its general goals and mission.

One other question - should the Neutral Powers also follow the doubled-cost rule when buying units? Should the CM 'set up' their initial forces using a certain number of EP (if the players start off with 60 EP to buy with, should each neutral power start off with, say, 10 or 15?)?

As you're looking to the future, it would be nice to see (and I'd certainly buy) a supplement with expanded rules for running neutral powers, especially since there are so many of them in WAP games.
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Re: With A Purpose quick question

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BroAdso wrote:Great! The book is clear enough that the commonsense answer which I guessed at was also the right one, so that's a compliment to WAP's adherence to its general goals and mission.
Thank you. I am afraid it was one of those things that just slipped through the cracks and will be corrected.
BroAdso wrote:One other question - should the Neutral Powers also follow the doubled-cost rule when buying units? Should the CM 'set up' their initial forces using a certain number of EP (if the players start off with 60 EP to buy with, should each neutral power start off with, say, 10 or 15?)?
Yes, I play them exactly as if they were a player empire when I set them up. So, five (5) times the player’s total System Income. Please note that in WAP 2.8:

"Please note that this rule only effects the Construction Costs of units built during the game costs, and any units purchased using starting points before the game use the normal Victory by Any Means unit Construction Costs."

The idea is that there are neutral powers out there and some can be formidable at the start of the game, even buying from a "lesser" purchase list than the players.

As the CM or scenario designer feel free to explore this though. You may want these worlds to be steamrolled in the first few months of the game.
BroAdso wrote:As you're looking to the future, it would be nice to see (and I'd certainly buy) a supplement with expanded rules for running neutral powers, especially since there are so many of them in WAP games.
Thanks! This is something we are definitely exploring.

All the best,
Jay
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Re: With A Purpose quick question

Post by Tyrel Lohr »

When you're rolling up maps, you could also use the following chances of a neutral system being inhabited at the start of the game:

Outpost 5%
Settlement 10%
Minor Colony 15%
Colony 20%
Major Colony 25%
Homeworld 30%

These are the activation chances as they appear for emerging empires in the Companion draft right now, and are close to what we had in the 1e Companion (if not identical).

This gives you a decent chance of having several inhabited neutral systems at the start of the game, but leaves some of them uninhabited for the player empires to move and scoop up.

As for extra rules for running neutral systems, the non-player empire (NPE) rules in the 1e Companion can provide some guidance here if you want to run them as something other than the 2e Non-Aligned Worlds rule. Now that With a Purpose is out, I'm working on updating the NPE rules for the 2e Companion, and they do add a "strategic focus" to the mix that is intended to give the CM an idea of what types of goals and methods the NPE might employ.

Beyond that though, what kind of guidance do you think would be valuable for dealing with neutral systems? I can get something drafted and put together and we can discuss it here, and then add it into the Companion as additional background for people that are running campaigns.
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Re: With A Purpose quick question

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Those percentage chances are great! For the moment I'm sticking with one of the pre-set scenarios at the back of WAP, but if I ever generate a map I'll test 'em out.

AIX seemed....complex. The current percentage chance of treaty acceptance in WAP is good, and doesn't need percentages-on-percentages modifying it. In a way, I'd prefer some simple modifiers, like the ones which are listed in WAP on the base chance of acceptance.

For example, when a player moves a military ship into a neutral system where the neutral power has ships, the chance that the neutral player will try to generate and Encounter (that is, fight the player) is, say 20% + (Census*10)%. You could introduce modifiers - for example, if the player has previously destroyed a military ship of the non-aligned/neutral power, add +20% to the chance of generating an encounter, if the player has a non-aggression treaty -20%, if the player has a trade treaty -30% and so on.

This means you don't have to get caught up too much in managing mini-empires of several systems deciding how to treat one another, when to attack the players, etc - but you do get a dynamic relationship with the player empires that reflects the way they've treated each particular neutral world.

A system like AIX could be implemented for larger non-aligned powers, but a WAP campaign seems smaller and more limited to begin with, so something like I brainstormed above might be helpful for making the player-neutral relationships a little more dynamic.
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Re: With A Purpose quick question

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BroAdso wrote:A system like AIX could be implemented for larger non-aligned powers, but a WAP campaign seems smaller and more limited to begin with, so something like I brainstormed above might be helpful for making the player-neutral relationships a little more dynamic.
WAP definitely has to handle a lot of minor powers. It was a bit tricky because there are times you have to conquer a minor power, another you have to woe them, and then other times you need them to behave so you can rescue a shuttle with engine failure.

-Jay
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Re: With A Purpose quick question

Post by Tyrel Lohr »

It really sounds like you about have the basic system already worked out there, BroAdso! What you're looking for is basically a diplomatic action table kind of like the player empires use for breaking or declaring, just set up to check if the neutral system decides to be aggressive or not.

Hmm. I would have to look at the numbers more, but what if the base chance of them attacking you was equal to the total Construction Cost of ships/flights that the neutral system has in the system, and then apply penalties based on the current diplomatic state and how much Construction Cost of ships/flights you have in the system? That way the neutral system won't do anything stupid if a big player fleet moves in, but they might try to jump a smaller fleet?

The AIX system ended up requiring too many die rolls to manage everything. It worked, but the 2e version is focusing on reducing things to fewer die rolls, and making relations change less frequently but have it be more interesting when they do change.
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Re: With A Purpose quick question

Post by BroAdso »

I developed a solution for this in a previous game, and you'll see it at work in the one I am about to run here with a Trek theme.

Essentially, the Neutral system in a WAP setting's chance of attacking ships entering the system is equal to:

10% + (DV + AP + AS total of ships not defenses belonging to Neutral in system) - (DV + AP + AS total of ships moving into the system).

Thus, let's say a Neutral had 3 Neutral Cruisers (DV 6, AS 5, AF 2) in a system, their base chance to attack would be 49%. If the player moved in with two Advanced Destroyers (DV 4, AS 3, AF 2). they would have a 31% chance of choosing to attack.

Other modifiers can be things like the diplomatic status of the Neutral and the Player, the current total Tension in the game, and the presence or absence of a Diplomatic trait ship. I have toyed with each Diplomatic ship giving a -15 to the total chances, the total tension in the game divided by 4 added to the chance of attacking, and more.
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