Construction Destruction (Shipyards, Convoys, Repairs)

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Emiricol
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Re: Construction Destruction (Shipyards, Convoys, Repairs)

Post by Emiricol »

I really like these rules. Get rid of as many special cases as we can, scaling seems in line with what I like to see, etc.

Tyrel, I already play with bases at 1/1, and as long as they're in supply I haven't found "base spam" to be an issue. Or perhaps I don't mind it thematically so it hasn't irritated me to think about it. Most of the fiction I've read as little depots and research stations and little Utopian experiments and so on all over the damn place.

I'm very much in favor of using these ideas from throughout the thread. Galaxies is going to be pretty awesome, and a further separation from StarFire type ruleset, which is what drew me to VBAM in the first place ;)
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Tyrel Lohr
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Re: Construction Destruction (Shipyards, Convoys, Repairs)

Post by Tyrel Lohr »

Emiricol wrote:I really like these rules. Get rid of as many special cases as we can, scaling seems in line with what I like to see, etc.
It seems to address some of the core issues from 1E that I attempted to fix in 2E via other means. The limited construction capacities in particular seem to "fix" the problem of ships building too quickly when not using the Extended Construction Time rules. I tried making those rules standard in 2E, but I think there's enough players that preferred the simpler "I buy it, it gets built" rules that using construction capacity as the more restrictive limit works better for controlling production rate.

Getting rid of special cases is also great, because it makes the rules easier to explain and requires less time spent looking up oddball rules.
Tyrel, I already play with bases at 1/1, and as long as they're in supply I haven't found "base spam" to be an issue. Or perhaps I don't mind it thematically so it hasn't irritated me to think about it. Most of the fiction I've read as little depots and research stations and little Utopian experiments and so on all over the damn place.
I think that the 1/1 should work fine then. I shifted to 1/1 for the bases and 1/2 for convoys in my playtest campaign and while I still need to finish the rest of Year 2 it seems to be balancing fairly well. The resource investment required to build the convoys to then build the bases are now sufficient that you shouldn't be able to spam supply depots and shipyards too often.

And I guess even if a player does spam out those special bases, they still have to pay to maintain them, and that is going to wear down their economy. Cheaper supply depots also probably make more sense given that you don't get free supply points anymore in Galaxies, so you really have to worry more about establishing a redundant supply network.

From what I'm seeing right now on the shipyard front, I could see building 2-4 shipyards at key systems to keep a flow of larger ships coming out of the yards. But that opens up the question of whether or not you want to put all of your eggs in one basket or diversify and spread your shipyards around. 10 capacity is enough to let you build up to a CB in a turn, but if you want to build BB or larger then you'll want at least 2 shipyards to pool construction capacity to achieve that higher construction. And if you're trying to play in a setting with Titans, then you'll need 3 shipyards to build a one of those ships in a single turn. Not that you could *afford* to have many Titans, of course.
I'm very much in favor of using these ideas from throughout the thread. Galaxies is going to be pretty awesome, and a further separation from StarFire type ruleset, which is what drew me to VBAM in the first place ;)
This should end up being a good revised version of 2E. It definitely is kind of taking 1E and 2E and mixing them together and letting it cook a bit longer to figure out what we did right and what we could improve upon in the rules. I'm finding that there is a bit less bookkeeping required, but I'm still early enough in my test that I'm not sure if that's just because we're still missing a few essential elements that I just haven't tried using yet.
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