1E observations, and wondering about their 2E solutions

[Boneless]

Howdy. First 4-player VBAM game halfway through its first year with me as CM, and I'm hoping for some opinions on what I'm seeing. Both in the sense of how they will play out here in 1E, and how they are being implemented in 2E.

I know half a year is too short a time to see anything well, I'm just extrapolating out in my head. Maybe I've even just got a rule horribly wrong.

1) Maintenance is orders of magnitude bigger than ship cost. Ships that cost 10 have like a 8/2 maintenance. That is per month, right? Ten-to-one in the space of a year. That economic pressure is really keeping people from making big cool fleets to throw at each other. Everyone has just 2-4 warships to suppress pirates and they've all declared peace.

2) Population growth is Key. The 60EP insta-grow colony fleet is the only source of economic growth here. Getting a single new point from natural growth is unlikely in the space of a year. 2 of the 4 players took population boosting race powers, and they seem almost powerful enough to require a ban.

3) Pirates are hilarious. I am so annoyed that I keep missing the rolls on undefended homeworlds. But they are doing a good job of poking at big civvy fleets and keeping people honest. Yarr!

[Tyrel Lohr]

1) Maintenance is orders of magnitude bigger than ship cost. Ships that cost 10 have like a 8/2 maintenance. That is per month, right? Ten-to-one in the space of a year. That economic pressure is really keeping people from making big cool fleets to throw at each other. Everyone has just 2-4 warships to suppress pirates and they've all declared peace.

This was done intentionally, as the original intent of the rules was to provide a campaign system that players could use with third-party tactical tabletop games. Most tactical rules break if you have too large of fleets in play, so the maintenance tends to be pretty high in most cases.

That being said, if you think the fleet sizes are too restrictive for your empire's economic sizes, you could institute a maintenance cost reduction across the board -- maybe halve the costs? In theory that should allow your players to field twice the number of units that they can now.

Maintenance Costs remain pretty much the same for 2E, though they trend a bit towards the lower end.

2) Population growth is Key. The 60EP insta-grow colony fleet is the only source of economic growth here. Getting a single new point from natural growth is unlikely in the space of a year. 2 of the 4 players took population boosting race powers, and they seem almost powerful enough to require a ban.

Population growth is extremely important. In the base game, it happens so slowly that, outside of a long campaign or random events, you aren't going to see much of it. The 60 EP colony fleet w/ Census was added to allow players to actually form new colonies and increase populations within the time scale of your average VBAM campaign.

2E modifies population growth so that a 10 Census planet will experience Census growth at least once a year, and there are no "free Census" colony fleets this time around.

3) Pirates are hilarious. I am so annoyed that I keep missing the rolls on undefended homeworlds. But they are doing a good job of poking at big civvy fleets and keeping people honest. Yarr!

Pirates are the only way to make sure that empires don't leave their homeworlds completely undefended. Without them, the players just build giant stacks of ships and go around trying to kill everything in sight. It will be interesting to see what will happen when one of their homeworlds *does* get hit by a raider attack...

-Tyrel

[Boneless]

First off, I blew two more undefended planet pirate rolls again. Sigh. Not that I'm vindictive or anything that all four players are at peace.


Anywho, that is very interesting to hear about the maintenance. We are indeed using a tactical game for the fights, so I could look at what a good-sized fight should be, and then scale the maintenance to match it.

Now, If I were to do that, what should be the target EP cost as a percentage of Output? Like if you made 60 EP a month, would 45 EP be "As big as your forces should get"? 30? 50? The math will be easy once I know what people's experiences are as to fleet costs.


For the population going from 60% to get one guy to "at least one a year" is a big jump. Would you call that growth 3 times as fast? I have 1000 babies equaling one new census in the method below to match the expectation from the normal game system. Should I go to 750? 500? ...333? *gasp*

(I am using the deterministic population growth method from another thread with some small math tweaks to account for a ten month year. 6 babies per Census, 3 babies per half-empty colony, 1 per other non-full colony. Fast Gestation is 12/14/18 per census, Fast Population Growth is 8 per census and costs only 1 trait point (what is up with the math on this power normally? Hella worse than gestation), Population Explosion changes the 3 to a 6. I has a chart. Fast Gestation is the overpowered one I mentioned before.)


PS: Please say years are 10 months long in 2E. A non-metric future frightens me.

[Tyrel Lohr]

First off, I blew two more undefended planet pirate rolls again. Sigh. Not that I'm vindictive or anything that all four players are at peace.

It isn't vindictive to want to teach your players a lesson about how the game rules work! It would go a long ways towards showing them that they really should keep at least some defenders at every planet, lest someone move in to destroy their fleets or pillage their planets.

Now, If I were to do that, what should be the target EP cost as a percentage of Output? Like if you made 60 EP a month, would 45 EP be "As big as your forces should get"? 30? 50? The math will be easy once I know what people's experiences are as to fleet costs.

As an off-the-cuff estimate, I would say you could take the total Construction Cost of an average sized fleet that is playable in your tactical system, divide that total by 3, then multiply the result times the preferred number of color or star systems the player is going to control. That should give you a pretty good ball park of how many units the empires will average in the game, and then you can balance that against income.

In most of my campaigns, the empires have spent about 1/2 to 2/3 of their income on unit maintenance. Its usually closer to 1/2 during Peacetime and 2/3 during Wartime (especially when using the Wartime economy rules, as your income takes a bit hit during Peacetime which requires you to be under 1/2 in order to be able to make any purchases).

For the population going from 60% to get one guy to "at least one a year" is a big jump. Would you call that growth 3 times as fast? I have 1000 babies equaling one new census in the method below to match the expectation from the normal game system. Should I go to 750? 500? ...333? *gasp*

I would have to run the math to be sure, but it think it ends up working out to being a bit more than twice the population growth rate as we saw in 1E. A colony with 10 Census in 1E has a 50% chance of having a pop growth in a year, while that same 10 Census will generate 1 Census each year with 20 extra population growth points left over to go towards future population growth. The balancing factor is that players can no longer "purchase" Census via the Quick Expansion Colony Fleets optional rule.

PS: Please say years are 10 months long in 2E. A non-metric future frightens me.

Alas, years are still 12 months long in 2E. However, there are no longer any year-end operations that need to be performed, either. All of the previous year-end rolls have been converted into progressive operations or campaign checks that are performed every turn. For example, with population growth, you add 1 population growth point (PGP) to the empire's Population Pool for every Census and colony the empire controls. Then, once you reach 100 PGP, you get to place a Census at one of your colonies.

-Tyrel

[Boneless]

Then in my universe I will have decimal time. I am teh emper-ar.

I just wanted to reply with what happens when your homeworld actually does get hit by pirates. You lose your shipyard and all in progress ships. You don't produce your 60EP next turn. You make a -3 morale check, and every other colony makes a -1 morale check. Any new 1 population colony that fails then goes in to rebellion.

Defend your gorram home planet.

[Charles Lewis]

Defend your gorram home planet.

It's sad that that needs to be said.