VBAM Games Forums

We're curious how many people use a tactical system with their VBAM games.

Wish I had time for lots of tactical games, but it just isn't realistic anymore

To be fair, a lot of strategic games suck at generating entertaining tactical battles - it isn't a lot of fun playing through lots of very one-sided games (and players generally have a lot of incentive for making battles very one-sided). So often it's simply easier to focus on the empire-aspects of the game, and playing battles out very simply and quickly,

I'm getting the impression that the STrek supplement breaks this mould slightly because big battles will push the tension up, but I'm guessing that players will still want to skirt the fringes of excess to ensure victory,

Because of the much lower ship density in the Local Scale, it has the potential to generate a lot of duels of small squadron engagements that are eminently suitable for tactical resolution.

But you're right, most VBAM fights would not be a lot of fun to play out. That said, all the battles (or almost all) the battles in the Stars Divided playtest (which was used to establish the "official" history) were resolved in Starmada.

I'm a 'never use it' kind of guy.

I got attracted to VBAM because it's a campaign system and so that's what I/we use it for. I have to say I rolled my eyes and thought "What's going on here" when I read through the CSCR...it's not as if it's a quick resolution for unworthy engagements or where one side vastly outnumbers the other.

Cheers
Mark

Use Starmada to create ships, CSCR to resolve battles. I haven't been able to game at all this year and am trying to put a game together so that I can have a game of SX before the year ends. If I resolved all battles with VBAM:SX I'd be half-way through only one campaign this year...

I have used a tactical system for most of the battles in my player run campaign. I vacilate for solo games.

I like both options... but find CSCR a tad cumbersome and run back to tactical for simplicity.

I like the idea of the CSCR, but I rarely use it. When I first started out it was just easier to run it in a tactical system. The CSCR takes a lot of work in terms of prep and resolution that I've never truly gotten use to.

I think the perfect CSCR is the one that is computer controlled. If I could just translate all the ships into an excel sheet, start a macro that spits out the results, I'd probably use it a lot more.

Just my thoughts
-Bren

I'll second that - MRiddles CSCR program is great, but not exactly user-friendly to set-up, however it is exactly the sort of tool I'd find useful, if my current campaign didn't have special-rules that preclude its use

(http://www.rsolutionsnc.com/auto_battle_resolver/)