Let's Play(test): The Vangaan Republic

[Tyrel Lohr]

We're back!

Okay, when we left our stalwart aliens, we were considering their ground units. Let's just assume that we have a single ground unit available for now, something that will be small enough as to have a manageable Maintenance Cost.

Vangaani Republic Guard
Construction Cost 4, Maintenance Cost 0.28
SIZ 3 Ground Unit, Command Cost 1, Mass 370

General: Attrition 2 (+100), Command 2 (+88)
Weapons: Anti-Ground 1 (+44), Anti-Air 1 (+50)
Propulsion: Mobility 2 (+88)

I included the Mass Costs for each of the equipment types in parenthesis above, so that it will be easier to check them (and see if I screwed up or not!).

I chose a SIZ 3 (400 Mass) ground unit, the land equivalent of a space-going Destroyer, because that gives us enough Mass to create a passable fighting force. It has 2 Attrition, which will allow it to take 4 Damage before being dead. It has 2 Command, which allows it to command itself plus 2 Command Cost of other units (and the unit's Command Cost is 1, so that means three of these guys can form a single "Squadron"). Now, on the weapons front, it is pretty pitifully armed. Three of these guys together can score 2 Hits per Combat Round 50% of the time. That isn't too shabby, I guess. I did give them higher Mobility, so that they could generate more Formation Points. Not a big deal with such a small "Squadron" size (note: people with a better basis on ground terminology, what would be the land-based equivalents of Task Forces and Squadrons?), but if we later built a larger unit to serve as a Command Unit, it could leverage this high Mobility stat to provide better Formation Levels (more guard units = more formation points = higher formation levels).

Now, we don't want to bleed our embryonic Industrial power dry, so we are going to have to limit ourselves to 1 EP or less of Maintenance. The MC for this unit is 0.28, so we divide 1 by this MC and discover that we could start the game with three (3) of them and still be under our self-imposed Maintenance maximum.

Now, we could have either under-equipped these troops or designed a smaller ground unit in order to save ourselves money and allow ourselves to field more of them. However, these units would have been pretty pitifully equipped -- not to say our current unit isn't pretty crappy, but the cheaper, more numerous option available to us would have been even worse.

Anyway, the next item up for bids (isn't a new car, sorry!):

Diplomatic Report
Currently our empire doesn't know of any other empires. But we do know about ourselves, and we need to assign our AIX stats so we will know what our diplomatic modifiers will be. So, without further ado:

Aggressiveness (AG): 38
We don't appear to be very militant...

Integrity (IN): 35
...however, we also don't seem to be very good about keeping our word.

Xenophobia (XE): 28
On the other hand, we are very friendly towards other governments! Yea, us!

Now for the modifiers based on these AIX stats:

Based on our AG, we have a -5% Declaration penalty (it is harder for us to declare against rival powers) and a +5% Armistice bonus (it is easier for us to sign an Armistice to end a war).

Based on our IN, we have a +10% bonus to breaking treaties, but only a +30% reaction modifier when others break treaties with us. The "reaction modifier" is a bonus that we receive to breaking treaties against an opponent that broke a treaty with us. The values decays by 10 percentiles per turn, so on the first turn after they break a treaty with us, we have a +40% bonus to breaking a treaty (including our normal +10% bonus), +30% on the second turn, +20% on the third turn, and then back to +10% (our normal level) thereafter.

The higher your IN stat, the harder it is to break treaties, but also the greater the reaction modifier you receive. At IN 96-100, you actually have a -25% breaking modifier and a +100% reaction modifier, providing an effective +75% bonus when breaking treaties with an empire that just broke a treaty with you.

Finally, based on our XE, we have a +10% signing modifier and a +2% offering modifier. The signing modifier increases our chances of successfully signing a treaty, which is no longer automatic as it was in 1E. The base percentile chance of signing a treaty is based on your Relationship value with that empire minus the treaty's difficulty. You can of course expend unused Diplomatic Points to push a treaty through, but this further prevents two empires from signing pacts if they are blood enemies. The offering modifier, meanwhile, has no effect on us -- it only affects a NPE's chances of offering treaties each turn.

The way these AIX based modifiers are setup, all we have to do is reference our AIX values against charts to find our modifiers and then record them on our empire's sheet so that we know what they are. Thus their effects boil down to at most six extra modifiers. That's not too bad!

Government Report
For now, we won't be using the Government rules, which may or may not become standard in 2E depending largely on page length concerns. The way that governments are handled in 2E is that you choose a Government Type and Government Focus. All focuses are now available for all government types, and both types and focuses just provide cumulative modifiers to various aspects of game play. Focuses always provide bonuses, while each government type provides both bonuses and penalties. The better the bonus the government type gives you, the worse the offsetting penalty will be. The intent is to keep each government type balanced.

In the case of our the Vangaan Republic, we would be a Representative government. The benefits of a Representative government is that you can periodically change focus (every 12 turns, I think) without having to engage in costly political reforms. The disadvantage is that, outside of a War or Total War declaration, the amount of EP that can be spent on military units is capped at 50% of per-turn income.

The five available focuses that we could choose from (if using the rules) would be: Military (Maintenance Cost reduction), Social (Intel bonus), Religious (Morale bonus), Trade (Commerce Income bonus), or Scientific (Tech bonus).


-Tyrel

[Tyrel Lohr]

And looking at your numbers, it sounds like it's even worth closing up the last few points of variance on your bigger worlds if you plan on preforming several expensive projects (even variance 1 -> variance 0 is a 4% saving),

That's the intent. It will hopefully give players a reason to terraform, and create situations where an empire might actually take the time to try and move worlds closer to their preferred climate.

Another nice byproduct of that is that it gives us up to four new non-combat technologies that an empire could unlock and research. Having a separate terraforming tech for each climate stat might seem excessive (and it might be), but it would allow you to demonstrate that one empire is better at doing atmospheric terraforming, while another is better at gravity terraforming.

This might mean that a lot of care needs to be taken when constructing a game, as you need to ensure that there are a reasonable number of colonisable planets for each empire to grab (with a suitable spread of resources),

Playing in randomly-created game maps can be interesting for this very reason. There may not be that many good planets available for colonization, leading to empires fighting over a RAW 1 planet simply because it is the best colonization candidate in a system or border region. That kind of scenario really would never occur under the current rules, but in 2E the dynamics have shifted to a degree where RAW isn't the end-all, beat-all statistic. A high-Capacity RAW 1 planet with a Biosphere would be very useful, especially if it was close to your preferred climate values.

On a related note, "blended" empires become more interesting using the custom species rules from the Menagerie. If you have an empire that contains multiple species types, the chances that habitable planets can be found increases as you have a wider range of preferred climates to work with.

Of course in Star Trek/Star Wars/Babylon 5/Farscape and a lot of other sci-fi settings every race is going to have climate stats within a point or so of human stats, so I guess in many games it won't matter that much

Too true! Your conventional alien species from television and film would have at most have about a 4-6 stat difference between them. They might like their planets a bit hotter or cooler, their atmosphere a bit thinner or thicker, but overall they are still along the 5/5/5/5 baseline. Some species, like the Tholians and Breen, would be outliers to a degree, but there are so few "extremophile" species in the major visual science fiction universes. In print you find more of them, since alien conceptualization isn't strictly limited by special effects budgets.

In a truly randomized campaign, such as the solo exploration campaigns I play, the range of species is very quite interesting. I hope to add some helpful guidelines in the new Menagerie book, too, to provide some background for what types of aliens a player may have encountered, based on their climate stats. As it is, we at least have some greater variety in that book, as all aliens fall into one of six categories: Carbon, Silicon, Exotic, Synthetic, Hydrogen, or Transcendent.

-Tyrel

[MarkG88]

We're back!

.... Not a big deal with such a small "Squadron" size (note: people with a better basis on ground terminology, what would be the land-based equivalents of Task Forces and Squadrons?), but if we later built a larger unit to serve as a Command Unit, it could leverage this high Mobility stat to provide better Formation Levels (more guard units = more formation points = higher formation levels)......

-Tyrel

Ground terminology 101:

Task Force = Corps or Army (2+ divisions per corps, usually 2+ corps per army)
Squadron = Division

Divisions are made up of Brigades or Regiments (typically 3 per division)

Brigades are made up of 3+ battalions. Battalions are 500-1000 men typically to give you the number crunch to the size of the units. GDW's traveller used battalions as building blocks to "build" higher level units for the various planets based on the tech level of planet and the population size, it is a rather nifty system I've always been found of. You spend two battalion "build points" to make an armor battalion, or an elite unit so an elite armored regiment would cost 20 build points while a regular infrantry regiment would be 5 build points. The armored elite regiment had combat strength of 20 however, to the inf reg's 5 so a 4-1 advantage when it came CRT time (with the tech levels raising or lower the odds).

I'd call the ground units "anti-air" rating simply "anti-flight" since some of those "airplanes" will be space fightes on strike interdiction/close air support missions.

Are we going to have ground units with an anti-ship rating? (Think ion cannon from Empire Strikes Back here for sci-fi version and the fortress artillery units armies had in the 20th century with battleship size cannons). It would be an artillery unit with poor ground combat rating but it would be able to shoot back at space bombardment ships (and actually maybe able to bombard enemy ground units on the same planet with it or an adjacent moon for that matter like a ship can).

I've put some serious thought into ground combat stuff so I'll be yaking about it in depth someday soon I promise lol

-Mark

[wminsing]

(note: people with a better basis on ground terminology, what would be the land-based equivalents of Task Forces and Squadrons?)

Would depend on what a 'ground unit' is supposed to be, but I'd personally go with Squadron = 'Corps' and Task Force = 'Army'. It's both generic but gives a sense of scale at the same time.

-Will

[Tyrel Lohr]

Task Force = Corps or Army (2+ divisions per corps, usually 2+ corps per army)
Squadron = Division

It seems between your response and Will's, we can agree on Task Force = Army, but have to decide on whether Squadron = Corps or Division. I am thinking that Corps would be better, as each ground unit in the Corps would effectively be a division.

GDW's traveller used battalions as building blocks to "build" higher level units for the various planets based on the tech level of planet and the population size, it is a rather nifty system I've always been found of.

A colony's Census will define the maximum SIZ of ground units that can be purchased each campaign turn. This will tie the ability to raise armies to your available Census, and prevent a low (or no) Census colony from raising a large number of ground units, or ground units larger than their local population could feasibly support.

I'd call the ground units "anti-air" rating simply "anti-flight" since some of those "airplanes" will be space fightes on strike interdiction/close air support missions.

Actually, you will be able to build Aircraft along with Flights. Aircraft are essentially Flights that are strictly atmospheric, functioning as ground units but designed in much the same way as Flights are (lower Mass, less cost, must be based to be used in combat).

The reason for this shift is because of how it allows the Atmospheric ability to dovetail with the ground combat rules. You see, any Starship or Flight that purchases Atmospheric capabilities can participate in ground combat as if it were an Aircraft, with Defense equally Attrition, Anti-Ground equal to Anti-Ship, and Anti-Air equal to Anti-Fighter. Therefore, if you had an Acclamator from the Star Wars universe, it could actually fight as an air unit in ground combat scenarios!

This rule makes putting Atmospheric equipment on a space unit a bit more useful, as they get to perform double duty in both environments.

Are we going to have ground units with an anti-ship rating? (Think ion cannon from Empire Strikes Back here for sci-fi version and the fortress artillery units armies had in the 20th century with battleship size cannons).

I am leaning heavily towards adopting Noel Weer's "Space Defense Gun" model for these types of units. They would be handled as a special facility that is allowed to make an uncontested attack against units that attempt to blockade or perform orbital bombardment at their planet. They get to fire once per campaign turn prior to orbital bombardment taking place, so they could destroy the ships before they can fire. The Defense Guns could then be targeted like ground units or facilities thereafter.

Now, I am not married to this concept, and we could just as well allow any ground unit to purchase points of Anti-Ship and/or Anti-Fighter Rating and then just allow them to fire during this special attack phase immediately prior to orbital bombardment. Actually, that probably makes more sense, as that would allow players to actually build planetary defenses that would be the absolute last line of defense for their planet. Unlike orbital defenses that can be rapidly cleared out and destroyed, the planetary defenses would take longer to destroy -- but that is balanced out by the fact that it takes them comparatively longer to do any significant damage to the orbiting enemy force.

I've put some serious thought into ground combat stuff so I'll be yaking about it in depth someday soon I promise lol

That works for me!

As we discuss 2E ground combat, too, everyone that thinks there is something that they would like to be able to do in their favorite setting related to ground combat, please chime in. For myself, I am trying hard to figure out the best way to shoehorn wet naval units into the mix, so that the rules will be there for when we do the Historical campaign book.

-Tyrel

[wminsing]

A colony's Census will define the maximum SIZ of ground units that can be purchased each campaign turn. This will tie the ability to raise armies to your available Census, and prevent a low (or no) Census colony from raising a large number of ground units, or ground units larger than their local population could feasibly support

Would this replace or be in addition to the limit of the Colony's production output?

-Will

[Tyrel Lohr]

A colony's Census will define the maximum SIZ of ground units that can be purchased each campaign turn. This will tie the ability to raise armies to your available Census, and prevent a low (or no) Census colony from raising a large number of ground units, or ground units larger than their local population could feasibly support

Would this replace or be in addition to the limit of the Colony's production output?

-Will

It would be in addition to the other limit. That would create a situation where larger ground units will always require larger populations to raise them, but more expensive units will still require Productivity to be in place to afford their necessary equipment.

This would mean that ground units won't be able to be raised at planets without Productivity (otherwise they would have a production output of 0), but I don't think that is a big problem. A colony with 8 Census but no Productivity probably wouldn't have the resources to build the guns, tanks, munitions, etc. needed to equip a ground division. They just don't have the native industry. They could still raise 8 Militia units if they're invaded, which would be better than nothing, but they couldn't muster anything better than that.

-Tyrel

[wminsing]

It would be in addition to the other limit. That would create a situation where larger ground units will always require larger populations to raise them, but more expensive units will still require Productivity to be in place to afford their necessary equipment.

Good, I think that's a perfectly fine rule. I agree that to produce modern mechanized troops you'd need worlds with both heavy industry and large numbers of potential skilled recruits.

One tech area you might want to explore is an 'automated ground unit' field. This would represent creating robotic troopers/vehicles ('battle droids', 'bolos', what have you). How I think this would work is it would produce a new piece of 'equipment' that reduced the effective SIZ of the unit for the population requirement. So if a SIZ 6 unit included 'automation' at rating 2 it would count as SIZ 4 for the census requirement.

-Will

[Tyrel Lohr]

One tech area you might want to explore is an 'automated ground unit' field. This would represent creating robotic troopers/vehicles ('battle droids', 'bolos', what have you). How I think this would work is it would produce a new piece of 'equipment' that reduced the effective SIZ of the unit for the population requirement. So if a SIZ 6 unit included 'automation' at rating 2 it would count as SIZ 4 for the census requirement.

The effects of the Robotic trait from 1E (which I think appeared in Stars Divided but I am not sure where else) still need to be spelled out for 2E. It needs to be a leveled technology, but it would probably function like Atmospheric in that you only purchase it once per unit, and the added tech levels just reduces the cost. Robotic ground units would eliminate the Census requirement for construction, and would not count against a planet's Census-based ground unit construction limit. Instead, they would just use local production output to build them.

A somewhat related trait would be the Clone tech, which would allow a power to quickly clone new ground units. I had originally intended on allowing powers to build Cloning facilities to use this tech, but I am wondering if leveraging an existing colony stat would be better. For example, Tech infrastructure could be used in lieu of Census to build Clone troops, possibly at a rate of 2 x Tech in SIZ per turn. It would make sense that a planet doing a lot of cloning would have a high Tech stat. As with Robotic, then, leveling the Clone tech would just make it cheaper to add the ability to a new ground unit.

As for your Automation idea, I think the advantages of Automation would be that units would be easier to command along with having lower personnel requirements. Maybe each point of Automation added to a unit would reduce the unit's Command Cost and personnel requirements by 10%? So long as the tech is Mass-intensive enough, that would curtail most of its potential abuse. Otherwise, going to 5% per point of Automation Rating might be best. Then you just round each value to the nearest value to see the effects.

Example: A SIZ 4 Ground unit has a Command Cost of 2 and Personnel Requirement of 4. If you add Automation 3 to this unit, its Command Cost drops to 1 and its Personnel Requirement drops to 3.

The other option, of course, is to do like the Robotic and Clone techs and just have Automation provide a flat reduction (halving?) of Command Cost and Personnel Requirement, and just have leveling reduce its cost to add to a unit. Not sure how well that would work, though.

That all being said, these technologies would be a better fit for the Engineering Manual, as they are a bit more involved than your basic technologies.

-Tyrel

[HairyHeretic]

Would you use cloning to quick produce census as well?

[wminsing]

The effects of the Robotic trait from 1E (which I think appeared in Stars Divided but I am not sure where else) still need to be spelled out for 2E.<snip>

To be honest I had forgotten about the Robotic trait- that might be an easier way to represent the concept I am thinking of. I do like the idea of it being 'leveled' rather then a straight trait, since that allows you to create fully manned units, fully automated units, or something in between. I think the CC reduction is also a potentially good idea.

A somewhat related trait would be the Clone tech<Snip>

Since a planet with with cloning capability could also still recruit 'regular guys', I'd make Cloning allow you count the Tech level of the planet as a bonus to your Census for determining max SIZ. So it would be 'Max Unit Size for unit with Clone Trait = Census + Tech Trait (or Tech Trait x 2).'

That all being said, these technologies would be a better fit for the Engineering Manual, as they are a bit more involved than your basic technologies.

Definitely, I think all this sort of stuff should wait until a later book.

-Will

[Gareth_Perkins]

Since a planet with with cloning capability could also still recruit 'regular guys', I'd make Cloning allow you count the Tech level of the planet as a bonus to your Census for determining max SIZ. So it would be 'Max Unit Size for unit with Clone Trait = Census + Tech Trait (or Tech Trait x 2).'

Or you could simply use it to manipulate the census growth rate (clones take time to grow right?),

Higher level cloning could improve the census growth rate even more (representing forced-growth techniques coming in),

Alternately (and depending upon your background) it might be more appropriate to simply use cloning as a method of improving your ability to quickly raise ground units (manipulate the limit of ground unit construction), thinking storm troopers for example, this might be highly appropriate,

You could then possibly make cloning a technology rather than racial trait,

[teinedraig]

Of course, with cloning you still need to train the clone, they wouldn't pop out of the tank fully trained

However, if you had things like full immersion training, mind downloading, ....

You could also look at the concept of Golems from the Neal Asher books where the memories of a person are stored and then can be duplicated and downloaded into a robotic body.

[MarkG88]

It seems between your response and Will's, we can agree on Task Force = Army, but have to decide on whether Squadron = Corps or Division. I am thinking that Corps would be better, as each ground unit in the Corps would effectively be a division.

A colony's Census will define the maximum SIZ of ground units that can be purchased each campaign turn. This will tie the ability to raise armies to your available Census, and prevent a low (or no) Census colony from raising a large number of ground units, or ground units larger than their local population could feasibly support.

I'd call the ground units "anti-air" rating simply "anti-flight" since some of those "airplanes" will be space fightes on strike interdiction/close air support missions.

Actually, you will be able to build Aircraft along with Flights. Aircraft are essentially Flights that are strictly atmospheric, functioning as ground units but designed in much the same way as Flights are (lower Mass, less cost, must be based to be used in combat).

The reason for this shift is because of how it allows the Atmospheric ability to dovetail with the ground combat rules. You see, any Starship or Flight that purchases Atmospheric capabilities can participate in ground combat as if it were an Aircraft, with Defense equally Attrition, Anti-Ground equal to Anti-Ship, and Anti-Air equal to Anti-Fighter. Therefore, if you had an Acclamator from the Star Wars universe, it could actually fight as an air unit in ground combat scenarios!

This rule makes putting Atmospheric equipment on a space unit a bit more useful, as they get to perform double duty in both environments.

Are we going to have ground units with an anti-ship rating? (Think ion cannon from Empire Strikes Back here for sci-fi version and the fortress artillery units armies had in the 20th century with battleship size cannons).

I am leaning heavily towards adopting Noel Weer's "Space Defense Gun" model for these types of units. They would be handled as a special facility that is allowed to make an uncontested attack against units that attempt to blockade or perform orbital bombardment at their planet. They get to fire once per campaign turn prior to orbital bombardment taking place, so they could destroy the ships before they can fire. The Defense Guns could then be targeted like ground units or facilities thereafter.

Now, I am not married to this concept, and we could just as well allow any ground unit to purchase points of Anti-Ship and/or Anti-Fighter Rating and then just allow them to fire during this special attack phase immediately prior to orbital bombardment. Actually, that probably makes more sense, as that would allow players to actually build planetary defenses that would be the absolute last line of defense for their planet. Unlike orbital defenses that can be rapidly cleared out and destroyed, the planetary defenses would take longer to destroy -- but that is balanced out by the fact that it takes them comparatively longer to do any significant damage to the orbiting enemy force.

I've put some serious thought into ground combat stuff so I'll be yaking about it in depth someday soon I promise lol

That works for me!

As we discuss 2E ground combat, too, everyone that thinks there is something that they would like to be able to do in their favorite setting related to ground combat, please chime in. For myself, I am trying hard to figure out the best way to shoehorn wet naval units into the mix, so that the rules will be there for when we do the Historical campaign book.

-Tyrel

Ok I'm back for a few more comments to summarize and add to the above quotes lol.

So for generic ground units we have:
armies the ground base version of space task forces.
corps examples include: marine (space assault troops), armor (bonus vs militia/inf corps), militia (the free cannon fodder), infantry (high defense vs. space bombardment, good vs guerilla warfare/supressing rebellion, combined arms (benifits of armor vs militia/inf and of inf so these cost the most), planetary defense (space cannons/missiles in armored/buired/shielded bunkers/turrets).

To add additional "planet based" corps equivalents (refer to all the above units and below as ground units to keep it simple) we could also have:
air/aerospace commands a ground unit dedicated to air combat.
(air if they only have air units, aerospace for AS/AF abilities)
These would have high air to air ratings, bombardment rating (for ground attack/bomber craft), also a token ground defense rating, and AS and/or AF ratings for local "space defense" abilities.

For planetary "wet" navies we could have:
navies or fleets planetary ground units that specialize in water stuff.
task groups (or flotillas)
task groups are made up of CV equiped forces, sub units, surface units.

Naval units could get rather involved: air to air ratings (for CVs) bombardment (also CV plus missile/drone armed forces), anti-surface naval rating, anti-subsurface rating, etc.

Now some concerns I have:

Historically (up through the present) it takes one year to build, organize and train a division sized unit (1/3 of a corps in our game terms). Our standard turns are one month (1/12) so this gets interesting fast. It's been discussed that census will limit max SIZ of ground units. This works for me. I can see where this gets complicated (and annoying) but I was thinking of having a planet's ability to generate ground troops in a timely fashion should also be determined by census.

My example of "size matters": a 4 census planet can build one SIZ 4 corps in 12/4 turns or 3 turns (12 months divided by census size which determins pool of available recruits or technicians if using warbots etc). A planet is limited by its census to the amount of SIZ it may build per turn (a census 10 planet may build 1 x SIZ 10, or 2 x SIZ 5, or 3 x SIZ 3 + 1 x SIZ 1 limited by the productivity available to produce items).

This really hammers smaller census planets, but this is realistic, besides money (EPs) you need people to man the ground units. The time to build a ground unit can be reduced by 1 turn for each SIZ it is below a planet's census. So our 4 census planet can build a SIZ 3 unit in 12/4 - 1 or 2 turns. One turn is required no matter how small the unit SIZ and how big the census (10 census planets still take 1 turn to make a SIZ 1 unit).

Also on another tangent, I can see SIZ being the number of "steps" a ground unit has and used as a mulitplier of a units class to get its total strength. Example: a SIZ 4 armor unit with AG 3, GD 3, AAD 1 would have totals of AG 12, GD 12, AAD 4 (where AG = anti-ground, GD = ground defense, AAD= anti-air defense). Now lets see what a SIZ 10 inf corps looks like: AG 1, GD 2, AAD 2 for totals of AG 10, GD 20, AAD 20.

These are some earlier thoughts anyhow.

[wminsing]

Interesting thoughts. I have to admit that I don't really want ground units split into different set types (infantry,armor, etc), I'd prefer that they used a construction system similar to ships, and allow the player to decide what exactly those stats represent. One of the problems with coming up with set types is there will always be units that don't neatly fit this mode. If I'm dropping the 1st Free Worlds League Guards onto an enemy world I want to the stats to represent what I think a Regiment of Battlemechs should have, not be 'forced' into using armor or some other unit to represent them.


-Will