Second Edition is Coming in the Year 3000

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darbycmcd
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Re: Second Edition is Coming in the Year 3000

Post by darbycmcd »

It is exciting that it is coming together Tyrel. And it is great that you have a whole release sched roughed out, it is good to see that it will quickly be built into a robust game system. I am really looking forward to this.
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Re: Second Edition is Coming in the Year 3000

Post by Tyrel Lohr »

nimrodd wrote:Where do the advanced Ship Design rules fit into these expansions?
The ship design rules are being included in the Source Materials chapter of the first book. We'll then introduce additional special abilities in future books on an as-needed basis. Virtutis has been helping me by running through my formulas and tweaking things so that everything can be done mechanically and eliminating as much of the guess work as possible. There have been three of us pushing and pulling on the rules to see how things turn out, and I'm pretty pleased where it has ended up.
darbycmcd wrote:It is exciting that it is coming together Tyrel. And it is great that you have a whole release sched roughed out, it is good to see that it will quickly be built into a robust game system. I am really looking forward to this.
I've about gotten to the point with the core rules that there isn't much that I can see adding or subtracting, which is far beyond where I have been in previous iterations. Every question that I've run into with my own playtests has had an answer somewhere. Playing the game is much different than writing rules for the game, and even I have to double check to see what the odd rule really is versus what I remember it being.

The playtesters that we have reviewing the rules have pointed out a few things that either need expanded upon or require some extra examples. I've held off writing the integrated examples until we know for sure that things aren't going to be changing, as it can take quite awhile to write a good example, and if you have too many changes along the way it can end up invalidating the entire thing -- then you get to start over from scratch. But I think I'm about to the point that I can start writing those examples up and figuring out what other content we need for the appendices.

As a development update, this weekend I worked on the internal page design for the book layout. I wasn't terribly happy with the previous iteration so went in a different direction. I think I have another 2-3 hours of work to get that completed, then I can port it back into InDesign and be ready to start incorporating the draft document over.

On the rules writing side, I have to complete the opening section of the Combat Phase text and another editing pass to finalize updates to the Space Combat rules. I also worked on the unit design and conversion guidelines sections in the Source Materials chapter. The Conversion section needs more work to give it a more unified voice and focus, but it is getting very close to being finished.

I am in the process of playing through a final 4-player solo playtest game to work through any remaining issues that I can find with the rules. Other playtesters are working through the rules on their own and sending over notes relating to problems that they've seen and indicating what they like and dislike from recent changes.

I remain confident about the current release date, and I think that within the next week I'm going to being effectively "locking" certain portions of the rules so that I can start laying them out in InDesign. That will give me time to convert the tables which can be very time consuming to adjust and format correctly when imported into InDesign.
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Re: Second Edition is Coming in the Year 3000

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One issue I have with the last ruleset I received (with the current playtest) is with
3.6.2 Planetary Construction
Planetary construction covers all of the production that takes place in a system that doesn’t require a Shipyard and its slipways. This includes bases, minefields, and ground forces. The amount of economic points that a system can spend on planetary construction purchases this turn is equal to its Utilized Productivity. These points can be used to make a single purchase or instead divided amongst several different projects. A system can allocate the cost of a purchase over multiple campaign turns in order to afford larger construction projects.

[skip 3 paragraphs]

Example: The Loran player has decided that Juna Tali (3 Census, 3 Productivity) is in need of a new Shipyard, which costs 24 EP to build. The player orders Juna Tali to begin purchasing this facility, spending 3 EP each Turn Orders Phase which is applied towards the new Shipyard. It will take a total of 8 turns for the Shipyard to be paid for. It will then take another 12 turns to build before it is finally operational and ready for business.
Why would Utilized Productivity control how much you can spend in this respect? It does not affect Productivity Investment. To me, it should only control how much can be built per turn.

For example, a player has a system with 3 Utilized Productivity (UP), and pays for a Base 1 (16 EP) and a Base 2 (10 EP) in the same turn. Since there is only 3 UP in they system, he can dedicate 2 UP (the maximum) to the 1st base (potentially finishing in 8 turns), leaving only 1 UP to dedicate to the 2nd base, therefore potentially finishing in 10 turns (2 turns after the first base). So, it might fall out like this.
Turn Base 1 Base 2
1 2 / 16 1 / 10
2 4 / 16 2 / 10
3 6 / 16 3 / 10
Now something happens and he needs to build a bunch of fighters to help defend the system, 12 x 1/4 EP.
4 6 / 16 3 / 10 3 / 3 (Fighters)
5 8 / 16 4 / 10
6 10 / 16 5 / 10
7 12 / 16 6 / 10
8 14 / 16 7 / 10
9 16 / 16 8 / 10
10 Complete 10 / 10 (Now that Base 1 is complete 2 points were devoted to Base 2 to complete it)

This would not entail much more record keeping than is currently done, just keeping track that you are only using the UP and no more. Of course Convoys would help with this as well.

Which leads to my next question. If a Convoy is transporting UP, does that mean that it subtracts UP from another system?
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Re: Second Edition is Coming in the Year 3000

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nimrodd wrote:Why would Utilized Productivity control how much you can spend in this respect? It does not affect Productivity Investment. To me, it should only control how much can be built per turn.
It also does not seem fair. With a 3 UP system, it takes 5 turns to just pay for a 15 EP base, then another 8 turns to build it (total 13 turns), whereas, I can pay outright for a 15 EP Dreadnaught and have it in 8 turns.

nimrodd wrote:This would not entail much more record keeping than is currently done, just keeping track that you are only using the UP and no more. Of course Convoys would help with this as well.
Actually, it would cut down on record keeping, as you would not also have to keep track of the payments into the build account, then the build time.
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Re: Second Edition is Coming in the Year 3000

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I cannot find it in the current rev of the rules, but is there a limit on how many fighters can be based at a Planetary Fighter Garrison?
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Re: Second Edition is Coming in the Year 3000

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nimrodd wrote:Why would Utilized Productivity control how much you can spend in this respect? It does not affect Productivity Investment. To me, it should only control how much can be built per turn.
The playtest will determine whether or not we need to seriously look at removing construction times for units that are built using Planetary Construction, or if any other changes need to be made here. These rules were pulled almost verbatim from Federation Admiral.

The reason for the shift away from system output being the limiter as in 1E is because that let players go hog wild building up troops and other war materiel at a rapid pace, to the point that it was almost trivial for them to replace losses of goods that could be built on the planet.

Still, as I said, we might want to eliminate construction times for units built using Planetary Construction, with an exception for starships that are being built differently, anyway.
nimrodd wrote:Which leads to my next question. If a Convoy is transporting UP, does that mean that it subtracts UP from another system?
Not at this time. The thought is that the Convoy is ferrying workers up to orbital zones so that you don't have to build everything on the ground and launch it into space. I do think I need to put a cap on the number of Convoys you can have supporting construction in a system, however -- that's something that came to mind yesterday that I still need to address.
nimrodd wrote:I cannot find it in the current rev of the rules, but is there a limit on how many fighters can be based at a Planetary Fighter Garrison?
There's no limit to the number of fighters that you can have in a system, at least not at the moment. Fighters are considered to be fixed defenses in that case, and can only be fielded in defense of the system. And then only 1/3 of the starting total can be active at any given time. For example, if you have 100 fighters in a system, then you could have 33 of them in your task force during any given combat round. That's a lot of fighters, but not significantly more than what a squadron or two of carriers could bring to the fight.

Good notes as always, Jimmy! Keep them coming and I'll keep updating the rules accordingly!
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Re: Second Edition is Coming in the Year 3000

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As a follow up, I have integrated Jimmy's advice into the rules. Bases, minefields, and ground forces that are built using planetary construction sources are now completed on the same turn that they are fully paid for. This makes it easier for a player to quickly build up bases and troops in their systems, but it also takes into consideration that most systems are going to require multiple turns to be able to pay for these kinds of infrastructure.

I also put a limit on the amount of Convoys that can be used to support planetary construction. This limit is equal to the Carrying Capacity of the system in question. For example, a 4 Capacity system could have at most 4 Convoys improving the local Utilized Productivity for the purposes of planetary construction. This restriction should make it harder for the rule to be abused, although there are edge cases where it could still be a problem. I think those edge cases are going to be rare, however, but I'll think about the best way of handling them within the rules.
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Re: Second Edition is Coming in the Year 3000

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Tyrel Lohr wrote:As a follow up, I have integrated Jimmy's advice into the rules. Bases, minefields, and ground forces that are built using planetary construction sources are now completed on the same turn that they are fully paid for. This makes it easier for a player to quickly build up bases and troops in their systems, but it also takes into consideration that most systems are going to require multiple turns to be able to pay for these kinds of infrastructure.
I was actually leaning the other way. You pay in full up front (just like all other projects), then build out using the Utilized Productivity each turn to build it (with a maximum of 2 UP per project).
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Re: Second Edition is Coming in the Year 3000

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nimrodd wrote:I was actually leaning the other way. You pay in full up front (just like all other projects), then build out using the Utilized Productivity each turn to build it (with a maximum of 2 UP per project).
That probably would be cleaner and more consistent with the other construction rules. I'll update the rules tonight.
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