More Info on the Special Technologies Please

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BLHarrison
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More Info on the Special Technologies Please

Post by BLHarrison »

For example, having decided that my solo play empire is of mercintile bent, and that the "Police" special tech will be an early buy and that the Police ST will encrease the effective construction cost of anti-piracy patrols I must ask: By how much? +5ep/police? +const value of a ship? In other worlds a 3ep corvette with police counts as a 6ep vessel in calculating patrols total? Some other value that I'll slap my head for missing something so obvious?

Also while this is a game with focus on space/ship tech are we going to see special techs to help define ground troops? That is other than pure AS/DV values? The current draft has powered armor listed with some bonus given? Will Armor/Mechinized or Airmoble be available (if so most likley in the Engineering/Tech Suppliment). Arty already has bombardment, so they are already covered.

As to the already existing Marine ST. Is it limited to troops only or can Aircraft have it? An Air unit with both Atmospheric and some levels in Marine just might be of as much help in an invasion as the German Stuka was during the original blitzkrieg.

Well I'll let someone else talk, thank you for your time.
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Tyrel Lohr
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Re: More Info on the Special Technologies Please

Post by Tyrel Lohr »

I saw your post yesterday afternoon and went digging through my old drafts to start pulling all of the old tech rule ideas forward, updating the rules as appropriate, and adding them to the current playtest draft document. You can download the new version here: http://www.vbamgames.com/VBAM2E_20110912.pdf

To answer your question, in its current incarnation Police should cost 2 MU, as its advantage is fairly substantial for what it does (contributing towards a piracy check bonus) and making it cheaper would make it too easy for a player to build a single "police dreadnought" that could patrol an entire star system on its own while still retaining exceptional combat capabilities.

In the older drafts I think Police did work the way you described, with it doubling your ship's cost or size for benefit. Now it is just a +1 Construction Cost bonus for purposes of determining if your fleet size in a system is large enough to dissuade piracy.

Trying to find techs that help boost ground units alone has been difficult. Most of the techs that might apply to them, like Armor or Gunship, are dual role so that they apply to space or ground units equally. Any thoughts that people might have on ground combat abilities/roles that can't be filled with the basic combat factors or establish abilities can throw ideas out there, because I have had problems coming up with many good side abilities. Peacekeeper will probably still be slotted back in for martial law purposes, but I had been resisting that largely because it is such a niche ability.

The Marine ability can be added to both troops and aircraft. Marine Aircraft usually take on the role of assault landing shuttles or other attack craft that are designed to rapidly deploy soldiers to a planet during an invasion, but there's nothing saying that they aren't just really good for providing air cover during invasions.
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Re: More Info on the Special Technologies Please

Post by BLHarrison »

Tyrel Lohr wrote:To answer your question, in its current incarnation Police should cost 2 MU, as its advantage is fairly substantial for what it does (contributing towards a piracy check bonus) and making it cheaper would make it too easy for a player to build a single "police dreadnought" that could patrol an entire star system on its own while still retaining exceptional combat capabilities.

In the older drafts I think Police did work the way you described, with it doubling your ship's cost or size for benefit. Now it is just a +1 Construction Cost bonus for purposes of determining if your fleet size in a system is large enough to dissuade piracy.
Ah not quite the "slap myself for not guessing the obvious" level, but close. And all those +1's do add up if you apply them to escourt level ships.
Tyrel Lohr wrote:Trying to find techs that help boost ground units alone has been difficult. Most of the techs that might apply to them, like Armor or Gunship, are dual role
I wasn't sure if Armor was dual role and gunship IS a slap myself for not getting it option
Tyrel Lohr wrote:Any thoughts that people might have on ground combat abilities/roles that can't be filled with the basic combat factors or establish abilities can throw ideas out there, because I have had problems coming up with many good side abilities.
Well because you asked ;)

Special Forces (mentioned in another thread I recently posted) generates +1 IP, usable only from the planet it is currently stationed at. The bonus points can be used by any sabatogue or Espionoge mission cost 2mu/factor

Toughness or Resilance: Ground forces version of "Bulkheads" can be used show the Infantry's ability to soak up damage to individual soilders, while still remaining combat effective .5mu/factor

Combat Engineers: Can be used to eaither add +1 to AS/factor vs combats against instillations or add a +1 to the corps' total DV Because of the dual nature 2mu/factor?

I also suggest a slight rename for Powered Armor. Change it to Powered Armor/Mecha for those of us who want giant robots in thier Empires arsenals
Tyrel Lohr wrote:The Marine ability can be added to both troops and aircraft. Marine Aircraft usually take on the role of assault landing shuttles or other attack craft that are designed to rapidly deploy soldiers to a planet during an invasion, but there's nothing saying that they aren't just really good for providing air cover during invasions.
The USMC was one of the pioneers of close air support and that was going through my mind when I asked. But with the "dropping" ability implied by VBAM2's Marines would you still need "atmosphere" to go along with the Marine Special Ability?
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Re: More Info on the Special Technologies Please

Post by BLHarrison »

The discription of the "Expendable" type of weapon appears to be different from the other limited use technologies, like shields.

For shields and simular tech the line is in effect once per senerio per factor you can do this, so you if the unit had a factor of 4 for example it could perform the special effect 4 in for different turns or have an effect of 4 once or any other combination.

With the expendable weapons the description is once per senerio. Was this on purpose? Granted this gives one the possiablity for doing what a friend of mine calls "missile spam" I also would like to see the option of spacing out the use.

For example take a ship that has AS=1, Missile=3 and Expendable =16. As the way it is currently writen this ship could once a senerio generate ((1+16)*d6/10)+3 hits. But if you ment for it to function more like the other simular tech one could spread it out over up to 16 turns (giving one a ((1+1)*d6/10)+3 hit value or 8 turns of the prior amount and one turn of "OMG!!! Kill It!! Kill it!! Fire everything!!!" at ((1+8)*6/10)+3
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Re: More Info on the Special Technologies Please

Post by darbycmcd »

I also have a couple questions on tech items.

Comms: how is this better than spending 2 points on CR? Is there some other benefit I am not seeing?

you don't have missle in there yet, but how is it different than expendable? I am also a bit leery of the small cost of expendable. basically, it is always better to use all of your expendable in the first round and it will, given average rolls, defeat a non-expendable using fleet of similar size. remember you will on average (forgetting for now the suprise/quality mod) do .3 of your AS as damage, but you get 4 expendable for the same mass, so expect 1.2 damage. plus the fact that it can be used as PD as well, i think it should go up to .5 mass

reflective shield: too powerful for cost, it functions as DV PLUS gunship (which is already underpriced)

i like the tech section, you have lots of goodies in there. it does occasionally feel like you are piling everything you saw in every SF series in there, but that is not so bad. i would consider moving it to the unit construction section, that is where it comes into play. try to get the things that are used together, together, it makes it much quicker to reference.
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Re: More Info on the Special Technologies Please

Post by darbycmcd »

where are the rules for researching specific tech items? i can't seem to find it in the research section... i feel like i am just missing them.
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Re: More Info on the Special Technologies Please

Post by Tyrel Lohr »

The rules for researching special technologies were in an earlier draft of the rules, and it probably got omitted in one of the previous updates. There were actually two options presented earlier in the rules: the first was for you to roll on a table after each tech advance to see if you receive a tech level increase, a new special technology, or both. The chance of a tech level increase was the most likely. Another system that was used at one point and may be again was the macro/micro tech research rules from the Starmada edition, where you set a tech goal of either increasing your tech level (macro) or creating a matrix of 5 special technologies that you wanted to attempt to research (micro); upon finishing research on a micro tech goal, you then rolled a D6 to see which of the selected technologies you actually developed (6 was a player's choice result).

The decision was made between September and now (December) to eliminate the vast majority of the special technologies from the Campaign Guide. They will be deferred to the Engineering Manual, along with rules of how to research them. This allows the main book to concentrate on special abilities that are normally universal between settings.

The current draft has been piecing together abilities as I've updated, but that is the next step after I finish the diplomacy rewrite.

As for the past comments in the thread:

Expendable: Expendable is meant to represent things like the XO rack missiles from Starfire. They are potentially overpowering, and their MU costs need to be strictly controlled, but each Expendable point only gets used once per scenario, and there's every possibility that you'll blow your roll that turn and it'll come to nothing.

At the end of the day I do think Expendable should be split into separate AS and PD versions, and then the cost set at probably 1/3 MU instead of 1/4. A cost of 1/2 is a little too high, especially when most scenarios seem to average 3-4 combat rounds unless one player or the other are actively trying to reduce the scenario length with their combat advantages.

Too Many Tech Goodies: This is pretty much the case, and the reason why we decided to drop the overwhelming majority of them to another book so that we can concentrate on balancing the core rules before adding in the esoteric extras that are more situational or setting specific.
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Re: More Info on the Special Technologies Please

Post by Emiricol »

I think a selection of special tech to highlight the flexibility of the system is warranted. Not the whole kit and kaboodle, maybe, but a few.
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Re: More Info on the Special Technologies Please

Post by Tyrel Lohr »

Emiricol wrote:I think a selection of special tech to highlight the flexibility of the system is warranted. Not the whole kit and kaboodle, maybe, but a few.
The solution I went with is to include as basic technologies all of the technologies that every empire can or should be able to incorporate into their designs. This does mean that Stealth (aka Cloaks) does become a standard technology, but it also makes the special abilities more straightforward for players that are just looking to start out.

The other special technologies can then be added later on. I think the range of special abilities included in the base game will be enough to cover most major genre tropes, with other special cases being handled in the Engineering Manual.
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