Here is a list of some of the topics that I spent some time thinking on; as I get something viable put together, I will post it here to the group in a more solidified form:
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#1 Tech System
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Based on some conversations from the forums, I think I have a tech formula sussed out that seems to hold up fairly well over a wide range of tech levels. The current formula for starships goes as follows:
Construction Cost * (1 + 20% * Starship TL) = Maximum Mass
In this case, "Construction Cost" is the cost of the unit, "Starship TL" is your empire's macro Starship technology level, and "Maximum Mass" is the maximum number of "hull points" you can add to a ship. The greater your Starship TL, the more "bang for your buck" you get when building starships.
The 20% modifier will likely have to be adjusted based on the number of ship statistics you use in a campaign, in order to make it fail gracefully in campaigns where certain unit statistics are or aren't used.
The "Mass Cost" for adding values to a starship is general 1 point of Mass for 1 point of ability. This applies to Anti-Ship (AS), Anti-Fighter (AF), Command Rating (CR), Basing Capacity (BC) and Endurance (EN). Defense Value (DV), because it is more important, has a cost of 1.5 Mass per point, and all units start with a minimum DV of 1. Bombardment Value (BV), the number of bombardment points generated, is cheaper at 0.50 Mass per point. Unit abilities range in cost from 1+; I also believe an empire should be able to add ability ratings above their current tech level in that ability, but at twice the cost. For example, let's say your empire has the Explorer (1) ability, and it has a Mass Cost of 2. You haven't researched Explorer (2) yet, but you could add that ability to a unit for 2 + 2 x 2 = 6 Mass (double the cost for the extra level).
Command Cost is a fixed value in this system, calculated as (Defense Value ^
.65 - 1). DV 1 ships are special, in that they have a Command Cost of 1/2.
Obviously there is some inherent room for abuse with this system as written.
That is why I think there needs to be a fixed multiplier (probably tied to
DV) wherein any one value cannot be greater than, say, 5 times that of the lowest core statistic (DV, AS, AF, CR, BC). I would prefer DV, as that is a good measuring stick for the size of a unit. Using a 5x multiplier, a DV 1 corvette could have at most 5 AS, for example. A formidable opponent, but still limited. It is still possible to design imbalanced units (DV 3, AS 15), but forcing a DV increase will eat into available points, and their lack of survivability should be balanced out by the opponent's increased hardiness.
Maintenance Costs are something else I have thought about this last week. As much as the bracketing system makes on-the-fly calculations easier, it also creates enough kludges and economy inefficiencies that I would rather see them done away with entirely. To that end, I came up with the following formula to use with the above ship construction system:
(Actual Mass / Maximum Mass) * Actual Mass / (20 + Starship TL)
This formula provides a bonus if you don't use your full mass, and allows Maintenance Costs for ships of a certain Mass to drop as your Starship TL increases. However, it still makes it so that larger ships are going to cost more to maintain.
Instead of charging maintenance by bracket, I have instead toyed with rounding it to 2 decimal places, and just having that be the actual cost per unit. That means that your 4/2 Battleship in the current rules would just have a Maintenance Cost of 2.00 under these rules - 2 EP per battleship, regardless of number. The balancing factor is that, as Starship TL improves, you will be able to build a similar Battleship that will cost less to maintain, making the original less appealing to keep around. You might choose to refit it to new technologies or for another mission, or just decide "to hell with it" and scrap it altogether.
These basic rules, with some tweaking, can be applied to Flight and Ground units, too. The major change in the variables is the concept of adding Unit Size (SIZ) as a statistic for both of these classes, and it replaces the fixed variable "1" in the Maximum Mass calculation. This allows larger units to gain points with which to purchase better abilities.
In both cases, SIZ influences how much space is required to base them. For flights, SIZ would be the number of Basing Capacity points a flight would require to be based. This is a boon for settings like Wing Commander, where you have fighters that are definitely of different sizes/capabilities. Light Fighters (Hornet, Ferret, Arrow) and weak Medium Fighters (Scimitar,
Hellcat) would probably be SIZ 1 fighters. Larger Medium Fighters (Rapier) and standard Heavy Fighters (Raptor, Crossbow, Morningstar) would be SIZ 2.
The largest Bombers (Broadsword, Longbow) would be SIZ 3. I have to make sure to suitably balance this change to make it so that a higher SIZ flight unit is going to be slightly more efficient than a smaller flight, with the tradeoff being you could have a wider variety of smaller flight units in the same space.
Ground unit SIZ is instead the amount of Assault Rating that they occupy.
For example, an Assault (5) unit could hold 1 @ SIZ 5 unit, or 5 @ SIZ 1 units. SIZ 10 (the current ground unit "size") is still my goal as an average value, though I am still considering going a bit smaller to allow a single transport fleet to carry 2-3 ground units on average.
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#2 Ground Units
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Speaking of ground units, I have never been all that happy with the current ground combat rules, or how ground units work. I am going to be playtesting a new set of rules that give ground units the following characteristics:
Construction Cost: the EP cost to purchase the unit
Maintenance Cost: the EP cost per turn to maintain the unit
Ground Attack (GA): attack value used against ground targets
Air Attack (AA): attack value used against air targets
Ground Defense (GD): defense value used against ground attacks
Air Defense (AD): defense value used against air attacks
Command Rating (CR): amount of ground units that this unit can command
Command Cost (CC): cost for another unit to command this unit
Attrition (AT): number of hits before a unit is killed
Basing Capacity (BC): total capacity for basing Atmospheric flights
Endurance (EN): number of turns the unit can be out of supply
Bombardment Value (BV): number of bombardment points generated
Unit Size (SIZ): Assault Rating requirement to embark
Unit Abilities: any special unit abilities
I think that is all of them. In addition to these values, all ground units are also assigned one of three types:
Land: These units are ground armor, infantry, artillery, etc.
Air: Aerial combat units, such as fighters, VTOLs, etc.
Sea: Wet-navy elements, including warships, carriers and subs.
Land units are your standard unit type, and the most straightforward. They are going to be the bulk of your combat power, I would imagine. Land units attack other Land units with their Ground Attack (GA) abilities and defend with Ground Defense (GD). They attack Air units with Air Attack (AA) and defense against Air unit attacks with Air Defense (AD). They cannot attack Sea units.
Air units functional similarly, attacking Land units with GA, etc.
Atmospheric flight units can participate in ground combat as Air units, with GD/AD = DV, GA = AS and AA = AF. However, they always have Attrition (AT) of 1. This makes them good impromptu ground units, but not up to snuff compared to TRUE ground units.
Sea units are the special one. They can attack other Sea units with their GA and defend with GD, and engage aerial targets with AA (and defend against them with AD). However, they can also function like orbital units when it comes to performing orbital bombardment missions. In detailed system generation rules, their deployment should be limited by the amount of Hydrographic Rating present (maybe 1 Squadron per point?).
The essential concept here is that, though ground combat is resolved one combat round per turn, it functions along similar lines to the CSCR. A ground army (space: task force) is formed containing a number of divisions
(space: squadrons) equal to the army command element's (space: task force
flagship's) Command Rating, and then battle progresses through the appropriate phases.
The reason for the extra detail -- and I won't deny, there is a lot -- is to make ground combat more *interesting* and vital. Right now, it is a clear sideshow compared to space combat, and tends to be pretty pointless in campaigns where you have enough bombardment points to just do Anti-Troop Bombardment constantly for a few turns until all enemy ground units are dead. Personally, I would like to see an environment where players would be some effort into designing/fielding interesting ground combat forces: some infantry and armor units, backed up by some air power. I will admit that Sea power is probably not going to be very important, but you can't tell me that it wouldn't be at least a fun exercise to run into a low-tech power who height of technological power was the equivalent of a modern supercarrier!
Just imagine the look on their faces when you destroy the thing from orbit!
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#3 Government Rules
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I have been doing some rethinking on these, and will probably have something ready to go in a week or so for review and playtest. The original concept is sound, but I have decided to simplify the rules to a large degree.
As it stands with this new set of rules you select a Political Focus (Military, Social, Trade, Religious or Scientific) and a Government Type (Collective, Decentralized, Confederation, Meritocracy, Representative or
Totalitarian) and then combine the effects. This makes it so that, no matter the Government Type, each Political Focus is available and has the same modifiers associated with it. That is to say, a Military Confederation government would have the same base Military modifier as a Military Representative. The actual modifier might vary (Confederation and Meritocracy DOUBLE the effectiveness of their selected Focus, both positive and negative in the case of Meritocracy), but they remain the same and (most
importantly) easy to memorize or look up. Working from memory, the Political Focus modifiers are similar to this:
Military: -5% total maintenance cost
Social: Intel bonus (launching/defending both)
Trade: commerce income bonus
Religious: Morale bonus
Scientific: Research bonus
The Government Types provide their only specialty modifiers, but I have tried to keep them distilled down to a core set of options. Most have a collection of advantages balanced by a matched mix of disadvantages.
Representative is special in this case, as its only inherent advantage is its ability to easily switch Focus, and its disadvantage is the Peacetime spending limit (max 50% TDP per turn spent on unit construction). That makes it a very good middle-of-the-road government type. The other stranger government types I think are better served becoming Menagerie Social traits.
Of the revised governments, Collective is probably the one that has underwent the most substantial changes -- and most of those were in an effort to balance it compared to the other governments, and make it a bit more appealing to some players while not game breaking in certain situations. As written right now, I can say that the Morale at colonies owned by a Religious Collective government will still be extremely hard to sway.
I am currently in the process of writing up descriptions for each of the different government permutations, so that players and CMs have a better of idea of what type of government might actually exist in that combination. It may be unnecessary, but I think it is a good tool for trying to determine what the author (me!) was thinking when he was drafting the rules.
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#4 Intel Rules
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Jay, Charlie and I discussed this a bit before I left, and I wished I would have made more headway on this during my vacation, but I didn't. In overview, I am trying to develop a simplified Intel rules alternative that is at the same time easier to track while providing more options.
The first major change to the system is that intel points are assigned from an empire's Intel Pool into one of three areas:
Military Intel: These intel points are assigned to specific task forces and armies to represent the intelligence assets that have been put at their disposal. The normal maximum Military Intel that can be assigned to a task force or army is equal to its flagship or command element's Command Cost. These points are used to modify scenario generation parameters. The goal here is to force players to determine which forces have received military intelligence data and which haven't.
System Intel: These intel points are assigned to specific colonies, with a maximum equal to a system's Census. These points are used to conduct both offensive and defensive intel missions. Each point of System Intel can only be applied to a single mission each campaign turn, and all count as defensive intel at that colony.
Diplomatic Intel: These intel points are assigned to diplomatic facilities at home and abroad, including Capitals and Embassies, and can be applied to diplomatic actions in order to influence the results. More on this later.
One overriding idea with these new division of intel is that intel points should NOT be "consumed" through normal action. The rules as written make attempting intel missions of any type very expensive, and likely not worth the effort. However, if intel points were largely reusable, then I think we would see more widespread use of intel. The background on the salarians from the Mass Effect game provided a bit of a springboard for this kind of
thinking: what if you could play an empire like that in VBAM, one that relied on its covert operatives as its primary offensive weapon?
Intel losses would still exist, of course. But before I talk about that, let me talk about another aspect of intel missions that I am testing out...
You know the old Mission Success formula, where you took one thing plus another and then divided by something else? Yeah... so do I. I am leaning instead towards converting to a straight up D100 percentile roll for mission success. Mission difficulties, racial bonuses, defensive intel, mission range, etc. would all be applied as modifiers to this percentile roll. Add them all together and you get your Mission Success Chance (MSC).
Under this option, there would be four possible results: Critical Success, Minor Success, Minor Failure and Critical Failure. The effects of the mission would vary depending on the outcome. That means that in order to get the maximum result, you would need a Critical Success. A Minor Success would still get the job done, but not as well.
You get a Critical Success if you roll less than or equal to half your MSC, a Minor Success if it is greater than half your MSC but less than or equal to your MSC, a Minor Failure if it is greater than your MSC but less than or equal to twice your MSC, or a Critical Failure otherwise.
For intel losses from these missions, I am leaning towards a simple rule of thumb that you only lose intel points on failures, and then 1 point for a Minor Failure or 2 points for a Critical Failure. That keeps intel losses clean and clear-cut.
In a CM'd game, I foresee Critical Failure being a result at which the enemy player would have the option of sacrificing intel points to feed the enemy false information. That is of course not an option in CM-less games, however.
For offensive intel missions, I am also thinking it would be far easier to apply a small economic cost to launching them: 1 EP per system participating. That way you don't have to worry about any of the weird calculations that you have to make under the current rules.
To put all of the previous blather into context, here is an example (using numbers drawn from memory): The salarians are launching an Espionage: System mission (Difficulty Level: -10%) against an Alliance colony in the Skyllian Verge. Three colonies and a total of 8 intel points (drawn from System
Intel) are being used on this mission, and the furthest colony is 5 jumps away from the Alliance Colony (Mission Range 5, which provides a further -25% modifier). It will cost the salarian government 3 EP to launch this mission.
The base chance of success for this mission is 20%, -10% for difficulty and -25% for range. The 8 offensive intel points provide a +80% modifier, but the Alliance colony as 1 System Intel (-5% modifier). This gives us a total modifier of 20% - 10% - 25% + 80% - 5% = 60% MSC. A percentile roll of 1-30 would be a Critical Success, a 31-60 would be a Minor Success, and any other result would be a Minor Failure.
Obviously, these numbers need some fine tuning to find a good balance, but I think it makes it a bit easier to remember the mechanics of calculating your Mission Success Chance (MSC) than via the current method. It also (IMHO) makes intel a more interesting and usable concept.
The downside to the revisions I have made, of course, is that you will need to have a printed copy of the intel mission results sitting handy to quick reference to see what the results are at different levels of success/failure. Also, I have been having some problems with the concealment and implication side of the rules. There needs to be modifiers for both of these -- and I am thinking that having it be a multiplier to the mission difficulty might be the best way to go. If concealment (hiding that your mission was being conducted) had a 2X multiplier and implication (trying to finger another government if you are caught) had a 3X multiplier, then the salarians in the previous example would have a 50% MSC if they tried to conceal, a 40% MSC if they tried to implicate, or a 10% MSC if they tried to conceal AND implicate (but why would anyone do that? I thought there should be a logical reason, but it escapes me). Thinking about it some more, implication probably could be kicked up to 4x instead... though at that point, it would almost price itself out of usefulness.
That is my ideas about intel in a nutshell. On to...
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#5 Diplomacy
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The last subject I will write about at this late hour of the night (morning
now) is diplomacy. To put it succinctly, I don't really care for the vagueness of the current diplomacy rules. I just really don't. It works fine for player vs. player play, I guess, but it could use some serious streamlining to make things more interesting.
First point of discussion: in working on this over the last week, I have come to the conclusion that it would work better in my campaigns if the AIX modifiers were universal, and that they carried with them set bonuses/penalties that applied to everyone, player and non-player empires alike. The modifiers I have come up with thus far go like this:
Aggressiveness (AG): +-25% modifier to declarations (higher AG makes it easier to declare hostilities/war), but an opposed +-25% modifier to Armistice Treaty signing
Integrity (IN): +-25% modifier to breaking treaties (higher IN makes it harder to break treaties), but an opposed +-25% modifier to breaking treaties with empires that have just broken a treaty with you.
Xenophobia (XE): +- modifier to signing treaties (higher XE makes it harder to sign a treaty). This value has given me the most problems, as I would like a second opposed modifier but can't think of one.
The advantages to letting everyone use these values is that it A) it allows players to gain bonuses/penalties that can bend their empire towards the kind of gameplay they want; B) remove a few Menagerie traits; and C) doing this actually makes handling NPE diplomacy easier, as they can use the same diplomacy rules as everyone else then for probably 70% of what they need to do.
In reference to point "B" above, Honorable gets rolled up into Integrity, and Xenophobic gets rolled up into Xenophobia quite nicely.
Another point to make (which I have alluded to, in a sideways manner) is that Signing a treaty would also have to be rolled for, and high Xenophobia powers would have a very hard time signing such treaties. Conversely, low Xenophobia empires would gain bonuses.
Aiding in signing, breaking and declaring would be Diplomatic Intel points.
Diplomatic Intel points located at you Capital could assist you in Signing, Breaking and Declaring, and your diplomatic intel assigned to Embassies at foreign Capitals would have similar beneficial effects.
I still need to hash all of this out, but the intent is for two empires that establish relations with one another to have to either dispatch diplomats (in the form of diplomatic teams or diplomatic intel) and send them to a foreign Capital so that they can open negotiations with the other part. An Embassy at a foreign Capital would allow for diplomatic intel to be assigned to that planet, rather than rely on Diplomatic transports or other such options. This kind of a setup would force players to actually make an effort to establish and maintain communications between their empires.
I have started on these ideas, but still need to let them simmer and percolate a bit before I know for sure the best way to advance.
Anyway, there in a broad stroke is the VBAM-related ideas that I came up with over my vacation. Any thoughts?
-Tyrel
