2E Playtest: Universal Aquisitions

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Re: 2E Playtest: Universal Aquisitions

Post by Tyrel Lohr »

countercheck wrote:Wait, how are you costing FTL? For the Ferret and Wildcat, I'm getting an FTL cost of 2 (50% of 4), which brings the total MU cost to 9, no?
FTL cost at 4 BC would be 2 MU, correct. Let me run the math again to see where I might be screwing up there:

Ferret:
1 DV (1 MU), 1 FTL (2 MU), 4 Endurance (2 MU), 2 Scout (4 MU) = 9 MU (oops!)

Wildcat
1 DV (1 MU), 1 FTL (2 MU), 4 Endurance (2 MU), 4 Carrier (4 MU) = 9 MU (oops!)

Yeah, my brain wasn't engaging. I think I was forgetting to add the DV for some reason. You'd have to lose 2 Endurance from the Ferret and either 2 Endurance or 1 Carrier from the Wildcat. Probably best to just lose the Endurance to keep them in supply that much longer.
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Re: 2E Playtest: Universal Aquisitions

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countercheck wrote:So I've been playing through this. I just finished Turn 15. I've explored about 14 systems, averaging about 1 system a month. More often than not, I get two systems a month, but then I need to spend a few turns relocating my scouts to a more important sector.
That sounds about right. The exploration rate is actually a bit faster than normal, but then I think you've got quite a few exploration forces all actively exploring which drastically improves those odds. The relocation and hitting the end of your starting supply tether doesn't tend to stifle exploration after awhile.
The number of systems I've encountered with self-supporting BIO ratings is... really small. The first one I hit was behind a Plasma storm, which made it very undesirable. Other than that, I think I've only encountered two, but those two are ridicuoulsly good. None of them, however, are closer than 2 Jumps from homeworld
The Supply Depot at your homeworld goes out 3 jumps now, which gives you some extra room to maneuver. I am thinking that my original stifling of BIO might have been a tad bit severe, especially coupled with the food cost increase from before. On the one hand having Census eat 3 food per turn works good for keeping population growth down, but at the same time its playing havoc on the BIO availability in the universe. I think dropping back down to 2 food per Census is probably going to be the best option long term to ensure proper empire growth and encourage colonization.
The Morale isn't adding anyt choices for me right now. THere's no way I can influence it, other than the intel missions, and the fluctuations aren't dramatic enough to spur me to action. I'd like it if it were hooked into Police somehow. If it were something like Roll 1d10+(Police+Ground Units)/5, where anythng under a 5 indicates morale drop, and a natural 10 increases morale, then it would be something I could interact with. Or if there were twice the chance of it going down as going up, and I could do intel missions with police to bring it back up. Something.
The times that I made the Morale too elastic, especially on the negative side, it ended up propelling empires into a death spiral. I think the choice mechanic could harken back to something that you first mentioned in another thread and kind of repeated above: every time that you fail a loyalty check, you have a chance of avoiding the Morale loss if there are enough friendly troops in the system. Maybe divide the system's system's by the total number of ground units plus ground-based Police to arrive at the chance of the system losing Morale? That way a 2 Census system with 5 ground forces and 4 Police would have a 2 / 9 = 22% chance of losing Morale when it failed its Morale check. A system without any defenders would just have a 100% chance of Morale loss. That would return a reason for players to garrison their planets, as it could end up saving on those unsightly Morale losses.
Ditto Pirates. I haven't extended any trade routes yet (my only colony is two jumps away, and is too poor to be really worth the 20 EPs required to extend the trade route. Further, since the max chance of Pirate formation I can have is 5% until I encounter another power (which, since the chance of encountering another empire is still at 3%, seems like it won't happen for a while), policing systems with a few flights or couriers is really easy. I guess it is influencing my behavior a bit, in that I'm not extending trade routes willy nilly, but it's driving me to conservative play.
I'm playing with 10% x Trade Routes for piracy chance in my current game, but I think that might be too high. It's trivial in the early game to keep the trade routes patrolled, especially with Police frigates, but after you start trading with a few other powers it would spiral out of control pretty fast.

I'm not extending trade routes very far in my game, either. I usually don't even consider it until the colony has a trade value of at least 9 (3 Census, 3 Infrastructure). Forcing the player to build trade routes like railroad track system to system is going to be necessary to make anti-piracy planning more meaningful, something that I like and been trying to work into the game for some time. I prefer the calculated approach to trade and piracy better than having to just continually roll for things or track lots of trade fleets, though. It eliminates a lot of the busywork and lets the turns flow pretty fast.
countercheck wrote:Agh! So frustrated! Just got an abandoned colony, and rolled boxcars on infrastructure, on a CAP 9 system. The catch? Biosphere 0! Unless I find a really good breadbasket, all that's going to be scrapped.
At least you know why the colony was abandoned: everyone starved to death! :P
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Re: 2E Playtest: Universal Aquisitions

Post by Tyrel Lohr »

virtutis.umbra wrote:This is fascinating to me because it shows what a stark difference a very small tweak to the game engine can make in the feel of the system... it feels like "Slow Growth (3 food / Census)" vs "Fast Growth (2 food / Census" vs "Fast Everything (2 food / Census; 1/2 Tech Cost; 1/2 Build Time)" engine tweaks might be sufficiently important to dialing in the play experience that they ought to be called out as variants somewhere in the core rulebook.
My biggest concern in relation to food is that right now it is extremely difficult to expand because a system with average BIO (3) is only going to produce enough food to breakeven. That severely limits how large an empire can get before it either has to A) find a system with 4+ BIO; or B) start a war to take over a 4+ BIO system from another power.

In my own game my player empire has had a horrible time finding high BIO systems and it has severely limited my expansion and forced me to put almost all of my available funds into Agriculture infrastructure instead of other pursuits. The Filosi Consortium, the first NPE I encountered, has lucked out and found several high value farming worlds, though, but even they are experiencing something of a food production bottleneck.

The solution to the problem may be to use an idea that I think Mike Riddle came up with last year wherein the population points in the population pool also require food to maintain. It isn't as clean as I had hoped to keep things, but if you had to pay food maintenance on those population points it would keep you from getting too many population points built up in your population pool before you just have to spend them. I'm not sure what a good food maintenance for PP would be right offhand without crunching some numbers. My gut says 1 Food per 25 PP, rounding up. Combine that with a return to 2 Food per Census and you end up generating more food, but with diminishing returns as your population pool fills up.

Looking at countercheck's Census and food production as near as I can figure it, I see 19 Census and 76 food. At 2 food per Census that would put them eating 38 food with 38 food leftover. That's enough to support another 19 Census or 950 population points (ouch). The food maintenance for PP could be reduced to 1/10, but I think that gets a bit too restrictive.

My Nova Solar Federation has 17 Census, 57 food per turn, and 48 population points. With the above changes, I'd be eating 36 food per turn, leaving +21 PP per turn. That's... excessive. If it was 1 food per 10 PP, the food eaten increases to 39, leaving +16 PP per turn. That seems better, and helps to ease the growth curve as the population pool builds up.

I actually think the reason that the extra food seems excessive to me is because I've spent so much of my resources colonizing higher BIO systems and building up Agriculture infrastructure there. That's pretty much all I've done in my game. Only one colony (Pacifica) has a point of Industry, and I've only built 1 Research at each of my colonies. If I didn't need the food I would have been using that money to build more colonies, which would have spent my population points faster and helped reach an equilibrium where I controlled a larger number of smaller colonies.
True - under either paradigm, planting some orbital farm facilities on your existing colonies (esp. the ones with high BIO), since they grant +2 Utilized Agriculture, would let you trade some of your economic surplus fairly efficiently for additional population growth.
I'm still going back and forth on the facilities and how they should interact with the rules. I would love uniformity, but there are some of the facilities that are just much, much better than the others. The Mining Base for example is a no brainer, as it just increases your income with no downside. I think it needs to be changed to Asteroid Mining Base for asteroid systems only. Orbital Factories and Farms work with a +2 Utilized bonus as now, but I'm also looking at just having them provide a bonus based on the amount of utilized infrastructure already in the system. I'm testing it both ways to see if it feels 'better' one way or another.

The facilities rule update in the newest draft is still fragmented because I can't decide which of the available solutions I want to use. I hope to get that cleared up this weekend.
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Re: 2E Playtest: Universal Aquisitions

Post by nimrodd »

Tyrel Lohr wrote:
How are you deriving the CC value? Is it still BC/2? The revised versions of the WIldcat and Ferret (BC4, CC1/2) indicate that maybe it is something else. BC/5 rounded down.
CC is being computed as BC / 5, round down (min 1/2). That's why units that cost 1-4 end up with 1/2 CC. The CR is then (CC x 2) + 2. This gives small ships the ability to still command small flotillas instead of being completely crippled as they were before with 2-3 CR and 1 CC. A 3 CR / 1/2 CC frigate can command itself plus 6 other escorts in a single formation, for example.
The only thing I don't like about this way of calculating CR is that it results in a very tiered result:
BC 1-4 = CC 1/2; CR 3
BC 5-9 = CC 1; CR 4
BC 10-14 = CC 2; CR 6
BC 15-19 = CC 3; CR 8
BC 20 = CC4; CR 10

How about CR being: BC / 3 + CC round up. If you allow CR upgrades for Command Ships, the limit could be: BC / 2 + CC round up. Cost for the upgrades could be: CC / 2 (min 1/2).

This results in the following steps

Code: Select all

BC   CC      CR*  CR Alt  CR Max
 1   0.5      3      1      1
 2   0.5      3      2      2
 3   0.5      3      2      2
 4   0.5      3      2      3
 5    1       4      3      4
 6    1       4      3      4
 7    1       4      4      5
 8    1       4      4      5
 9    1       4      4      6
10    2       6      6      7
11    2       6      6      8
12    2       6      6      8
13    2       6      7      9
14    2       6      7      9
15    3       8      8     11
16    3       8      9     11
17    3       8      9     12
18    3       8      9     12
19    3       8     10     13
20    4      10     11     14
* Currently listed CR calculation as listed by Tyrel above.
This is just my thoughts about it
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Re: 2E Playtest: Universal Aquisitions

Post by Tyrel Lohr »

The problem with computing CR like that is that there's still a problem on the low end that makes fielding squadrons of small ships impractical. The 1 CR for 1 BC ships is too low; the lowest it should go is about 3 just to make sure that a group of corvettes could form a viable squadron in combat.

That being said, an alternative to your alternative would be to calculate the CR as (BC / 2) + 2 (round to nearest). This keeps the low-end ships with a high enough CR to still be able to put up some kind of fight while only giving the larger ships a moderate boost to their CR compared to what it is right now. Another option in the same vein Is to go (CC / 3) + 2 (round up), which gives a more restricted set of CR values but would allow a bit more variability.

Code: Select all

BC   CC      CR-A1   CR-A2
 1   0.5       3       3
 2   0.5       3       3
 3   0.5       4       3
 4   0.5       4       4
 5    1        5       4
 6    1        5       4
 7    1        6       5
 8    1        6       5
 9    1        7       5
10    2        7       6
11    2        8       6
12    2        8       6
13    2        9       7
14    2        9       7
15    3       10       7
16    3       10       8
17    3       11       8
18    3       11       8
19    3       12       9
20    4       12       9
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Re: 2E Playtest: Universal Aquisitions

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Tyrel Lohr wrote:Looking at countercheck's Census and food production as near as I can figure it, I see 19 Census and 76 food. At 2 food per Census that would put them eating 38 food with 38 food leftover. That's enough to support another 19 Census or 950 population points (ouch). The food maintenance for PP could be reduced to 1/10, but I think that gets a bit too restrictive.

My Nova Solar Federation has 17 Census, 57 food per turn, and 48 population points. With the above changes, I'd be eating 36 food per turn, leaving +21 PP per turn. That's... excessive. If it was 1 food per 10 PP, the food eaten increases to 39, leaving +16 PP per turn. That seems better, and helps to ease the growth curve as the population pool builds up.

I actually think that 1/10th is both easy to calculate and not unreasonable. PPs aren't just food, they're surplus population, and need to be supported. It also gives an incentive to use them rather than hoard them.
Tyrel Lohr wrote:I'm still going bac88888809k and forth on the facilities and how they should interact with the rules. I would love uniformity, but there are some of the facilities that are just much, much better than the others. The Mining Base for example is a no brainer, as it just increases your income with no downside. I think it needs to be changed to Asteroid Mining Base for asteroid systems only. Orbital Factories and Farms work with a +2 Utilized bonus as now, but I'm also looking at just having them provide a bonus based on the amount of utilized infrastructure already in the system. I'm testing it both ways to see if it feels 'better' one way or another.

The facilities rule update in the newest draft is still fragmented because I can't decide which of the available solutions I want to use. I hope to get that cleared up this weekend.
Could you maybe have them add RAW or BIO? It's not just infrastructure, it's more resources themselves. Maybe up to a cap? It provides +1 RAW or BIO up to a maximum of 4 OR +2 Utilized Infrastructure.
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Re: 2E Playtest: Universal Aquisitions

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countercheck wrote:I actually think that 1/10th is both easy to calculate and not unreasonable. PPs aren't just food, they're surplus population, and need to be supported. It also gives an incentive to use them rather than hoard them.
That's probably the best way to go. It makes it easy to calculate the food per population point ratio, and if combined with going back to 2 food per Census it would help to control the growth curve while at the same time making food a little less of a resource bottleneck. I would have loved to have spent the money I dumped into Agriculture infrastructure on new colonies and actually been able to make use of some of the nicer systems I found. Food is still going to be important, it just means that the BIO 3+ systems are going to be producing extra food to help balance out the systems that have less food available.
Could you maybe have them add RAW or BIO? It's not just infrastructure, it's more resources themselves. Maybe up to a cap? It provides +1 RAW or BIO up to a maximum of 4 OR +2 Utilized Infrastructure.
What I've entertained is something along those lines in that the facility gives you a bonus based on your utilized infrastructure. For example, an Orbital Farm would generate +1 food per utilized Agriculture in the system. That would be effectively the same as +1 BIO, though, which really means that having it increase the BIO is probably the better idea.

This feeds back into the other new thread I posted about expanded system resources, and I am still tempted to add those resources back into the rules just for the sake of consistency. I know some players absolutely hate the thoughts of some systems being better for research than others, but players could do a flat 5x still if they really hated them. Otherwise the +1 per utilized infrastructure bonus above would cover all eventualities... which does seem to make it a better solution.

I'm still on the fence with Mining Bases giving you economic bonuses. It's not that much money, and it'll take awhile to get your money back out of it, which might be enough of a balancing factor. I think Asteroid specials should double the effectiveness of Mining Bases, though.
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Re: 2E Playtest: Universal Aquisitions

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This feeds back into the other new thread I posted about expanded system resources, and I am still tempted to add those resources back into the rules just for the sake of consistency. I know some players absolutely hate the thoughts of some systems being better for research than others, but players could do a flat 5x still if they really hated them. Otherwise the +1 per utilized infrastructure bonus above would cover all eventualities... which does seem to make it a better solution.

I'm still on the fence with Mining Bases giving you economic bonuses. It's not that much money, and it'll take awhile to get your money back out of it, which might be enough of a balancing factor. I think Asteroid specials should double the effectiveness of Mining Bases, though.
Story-wise it would make sense that mining bases would increase the Raw values of systems, as they are allowing easier access to reasources that would otherwise have to be shipped across a system to the smelter which takes up significatly more space than already processed ore would take up.

Say if you had a 3 Raw system with 5 utilized economy. This would normally give you 15 eps per turn but if you add a mining base, making it a four Raw system, this would add another 5 ep's per turn. which would take, 10 turns to pay off? At the moment I'm thinking they cost 50ep. but I have a sneaking suspsion that it is actually 100ep.

Heck, now that I look at it what it does right now is essentially adding one RAW to a system. Perhaps make it cost more based on how much RAW is already in the system, a little like how infastructure increases work. This would make it cheaper to use on the lower RAW systems, while making it an expensive option for those worlds that already have excessive amounts of RAW in the first place.

Or perhaps make the cost increased by the Carrying Capacity of a system. 50 + 10*CC makes even more sense to me than basing it off RAW. This of course would make it cheaper in those lower cap systems that seem less valuable based on the fact they have low cap.

Just some ideas to throw out there.
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Re: 2E Playtest: Universal Aquisitions

Post by countercheck »

*
Tyrel Lohr wrote: That sounds about right. The exploration rate is actually a bit faster than normal, but then I think you've got quite a few exploration forces all actively exploring which drastically improves those odds. The relocation and hitting the end of your starting supply tether doesn't tend to stifle exploration after awhile.
I only have two exploration groups, but each group has 30 scout factors.
Tyrel Lohr wrote:
The Supply Depot at your homeworld goes out 3 jumps now, which gives you some extra room to maneuver. I am thinking that my original stifling of BIO might have been a tad bit severe, especially coupled with the food cost increase from before. On the one hand having Census eat 3 food per turn works good for keeping population growth down, but at the same time its playing havoc on the BIO availability in the universe. I think dropping back down to 2 food per Census is probably going to be the best option long term to ensure proper empire growth and encourage colonization.
That's actually something the supply rules are kind of contradictory about. Sometimes a Supply Depot increases supply range to 3, and sometimes it increases the range by 2.
Tyrel Lohr wrote:The times that I made the Morale too elastic, especially on the negative side, it ended up propelling empires into a death spiral. I think the choice mechanic could harken back to something that you first mentioned in another thread and kind of repeated above: every time that you fail a loyalty check, you have a chance of avoiding the Morale loss if there are enough friendly troops in the system. Maybe divide the system's system's by the total number of ground units plus ground-based Police to arrive at the chance of the system losing Morale? That way a 2 Census system with 5 ground forces and 4 Police would have a 2 / 9 = 22% chance of losing Morale when it failed its Morale check. A system without any defenders would just have a 100% chance of Morale loss. That would return a reason for players to garrison their planets, as it could end up saving on those unsightly Morale losses.
Actually, I just had a brainwave that could save on rolling. You do the standard roll once per sector, and if you roll Morale Loss, you roll 1d10 for each system in the sector. Morale loss occurs on a 1-9. Die roll is modified by +1 for each multiple of Census there are of police in the sector. So a Census 2 system would require 4 police to improve the roll by 2. This means that any morale loss is going to happen all at once, precipitating a crisis, but it'll happen less frequently, making it less likely you'll run into death spiral. I'd eliminate Morale gain entirely... it takes governmental action to decrease unrest - it doesn't happen on its own.
Tyrel Lohr wrote:
Ditto Pirates. I haven't extended any trade routes yet (my only colony is two jumps away, and is too poor to be really worth the 20 EPs required to extend the trade route. Further, since the max chance of Pirate formation I can have is 5% until I encounter another power (which, since the chance of encountering another empire is still at 3%, seems like it won't happen for a while), policing systems with a few flights or couriers is really easy. I guess it is influencing my behavior a bit, in that I'm not extending trade routes willy nilly, but it's driving me to conservative play.
I'm playing with 10% x Trade Routes for piracy chance in my current game, but I think that might be too high. It's trivial in the early game to keep the trade routes patrolled, especially with Police frigates, but after you start trading with a few other powers it would spiral out of control pretty fast.

I'm not extending trade routes very far in my game, either. I usually don't even consider it until the colony has a trade value of at least 9 (3 Census, 3 Infrastructure). Forcing the player to build trade routes like railroad track system to system is going to be necessary to make anti-piracy planning more meaningful, something that I like and been trying to work into the game for some time. I prefer the calculated approach to trade and piracy better than having to just continually roll for things or track lots of trade fleets, though. It eliminates a lot of the busywork and lets the turns flow pretty fast.
Do pirates develop only at the termini of the trade route, or at any point along it? One way to do it would be to roll once per trade route, and have the pirates appear in whichever system along the route has the lowest police/military presence.
Tyrel Lohr wrote:At least you know why the colony was abandoned: everyone starved to death! :P
I just wonder how it lasted long enough to get 9 in everything!
Last edited by countercheck on Sat Jun 02, 2012 9:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 2E Playtest: Universal Aquisitions

Post by Tyrel Lohr »

LiolLangston wrote:Or perhaps make the cost increased by the Carrying Capacity of a system. 50 + 10*CC makes even more sense to me than basing it off RAW. This of course would make it cheaper in those lower cap systems that seem less valuable based on the fact they have low cap.
That actually makes quite a bit of sense, given that the value of a facility is in most cases directly proportional to the Carrying Capacity of the system where it's built. This is certainly the case with facilities that more or less increase the system resource values. Supply Depots and Trading Posts don't follow this methodology, unfortunately, but there are ways to address that problem if we need to.

Looking strictly at Orbital Habitats, Farms, and Mining Bases, you could probably get away with a cost of 10 x (CAP + Range). This would increase the cost for your average home system back to 100 EP from 50 EP as now, but it would also mean that building that same facility in a system with less CAP would be comparatively cheaper.

The cost to maintain is trickier, because I really don't like the idea of variable maintenance costs for facilities if only because it adds an unnecessary amount of bookkeeping. Even at the current 1 EP per turn maintenance cost, I think there's probably a better way of handling it. One possibility would be to eliminate maintenance costs for facilities altogether and replace it with a piracy bonus. Make the piracy checks be required for systems that are on trade routes OR contain facilities, and each facility provides +5% piracy chance (same as a trade route). The cost to 'maintain' the facility is then covered by the maintenance costs of the units stationed in the system to protect it against pirates.

Going back to the facilities that don't currently scale their effects with a system's size, you could end up making the Supply Depot's range be based on the size of the system, and you could reinstitute a maximum commerce range for Trading Posts... but neither of those solutions really feel right. You've also got the problem of assigning costs to facilities built in systems without Carrying Capacity. Supply Depots also have the problem that they have to have a minimum range of 2 jumps to be of any practical use, and beyond 3 jumps you start reaching a point where an empire isn't going to have any problems maintaining all of its units from a single Supply Depot.

I'll have to think on the topic a bit more and see if there is any happy medium here. The more I look at it, the more it seems like most of the facilities really just need to go away and leave behind a more concise list with their own construction and maintenance costs.
Just some ideas to throw out there.
It's great help in focusing in on what changes might be for the best, and sometimes you stumble upon new ideas that might be better than what I've already come across :) Much appreciated!
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Re: 2E Playtest: Universal Aquisitions

Post by countercheck »

Tyler, I cross-posted with you.

I like the idea of Facilities being tied to CAP. Perhaps a Facility could take up a CAP slot? High CAP low resource systems then could be useful because you could put a whole pile of facilities there.
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Re: 2E Playtest: Universal Aquisitions

Post by countercheck »

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Re: 2E Playtest: Universal Aquisitions

Post by countercheck »

Wow. I just rolled PIRATES! in my home system, despite sufficient Police patrols, rendering the system Contested, and cutting off 80% of my space fleet from supply. While Sol is heavily defended by fortresses, and the pirate force isn't really powerful enough to threaten the forts, I don't have enough mobile units left to engage the pirates in deep space, meaning I'm going to need to call back one of my expeditionary forces and hope no ships are destroyed by lack of supply in the meantime.

Of course this is also the turn we discover an emerging empire.
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Re: 2E Playtest: Universal Aquisitions

Post by countercheck »

First battle in my actual playtest. I rolled Pirates just after ordering the bulk of my Home Fleet out of the system to go and pacify some natives with nukes. What should immediately occur, but I roll Pirates. 12EP of them, and give them a light carrier, a bomber flight, and a fighter flight, which are the core units in my navy - I'm assuming some captain went rogue. And me without any mobile combat units left in the system - I have some powerful forts, but forts won't stop them from blockading me. Thus, they put my entire fleet out of supply, since none of my colonies have a sufficiently developed industrial base to support 50 CCs of warships. I panic. But then, I remember, aHAH, that Police can count as PD or AS when fighting pirates, and I have four squadrons of customs cutters based on forts in the system. Of course, I need to halve their Police values, since police costs twice as much now, but no worries. So I end up with four flights of customs cutters against a light carrier, a bomber squadron, and a strike fighter squadron.

I rolled for detection (UA got normal detection, Pirates got complete detection). I tried to figure out how intensity works... Does all intensity generated by both sides get used? Must it all get used? What scenarios turn into other scenarios? Can you decline a deep space battle? If the invader declines a deep space battle, can supply be traced through the system?

I decided to keep it simple and had a straight up intensity 2 deep space battle, since the pirates certainly weren't going to go anywhere near the forts. The pirates got +1 readiness, and the police -1. Reasonable.

Despite having the upper hand, the pirates lose because they are forced to defend their carrier against the cutters, while the cutters, because they are based out of fortresses, and fortresses may not be included in deep space battles, are able to allocate all of their Police value (8 in total) to AS. In the first turn, they cripple the carrier, destroying the basing for one of the fighters, in turn destroying it. Turn 2, they do one damage, and turn 3, they do one damage more, killing the carrier and the last fighter. (Please Note, I'm still playing with Catapults, since I don't want to restart the whole playtest and rebuild the navy). Only one flight is damaged, and supply is re-established throughout the land!
countercheck
Lieutanant Commander
Lieutanant Commander
Posts: 86
Joined: Mon Oct 03, 2011 9:34 pm

Re: 2E Playtest: Universal Aquisitions

Post by countercheck »

I've been designing units for the new aliens I've encountered A few things I've discovered.

1 - Stealth is ridiculously good for small vessels, those at 1/2 CC. The Sneak Attack ability means that it's actually as cheap to buff a ship's AS with stealth as it is to buy AS. Maybe the bonus should be handled like the Command bonus: Stealth can be allocated to PD or AS, but only up to the ship's normal PD or AS. Otherwise, there would be no reason to buy AS over Stealth, at least not for small ships. If you want to play on the idea that stealthy ships are fragile, perhaps you could cost Stealth the way Armour currently is, = DV

2 - I think Tug and Tender need to be balanced with each other. One level of Tug lets the ship tow 1CC of ship, while 1 Tender lets the ship carry 1BC of ship. 1CC of ship could be up to 9BCs, making Tug, potentially, 9x better than either Tender or Carrier. It's partially mitigated by the halving of FTL, but since FTL is rounded up, there's still no reason a TL0, BC3, FTL 1, Tug 4 ship can't tow a BC 24 monitor into battle. Or almost worse, why a TL0, BC3, FTL 3, Tug 1 ship can't tow a cruiser at FTL 2.

3. I think Armour's price could be halved. In general, increasing FL is less useful than increasing DV because there are numerous effects that ignore FL. Damage due to failed exploration, OoS damage, Guided damage, and leftover, unallocatable damage all hits without considering FL.

4. A simpler effect for Interdiction is "(Strategic) Selectively prevents all FTL out of the system, except for ships whose FTL or CC value exceeds the Interdiction value. (CSCR) Only ships with FTL or CC greater than the Interdiction value may attempt FTL retreats" Large ships have big drives and can punch through, as can small ships with oversized drives.
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