SLea wrote:There are elements of the rules as posted so far where the overall drive towards simplification and streamling of the system has maybe been pushed a bit too far, but the difficult/interesting thing about trying to form any sort of judgement about this is the knowledge that the CG only really represents the 'entry level' to the system, to be expanded/modified to taste by the future supplements.
I will admit that some of the rule changes have probably cut sections of the rules to the bone from a complexity standpoint, but I've tried to only do this in situations where the extra complexity wasn't really a benefit to game play and just amounted to busy work for the player. As you said, these rules are acting as the foundation from which the system's expansions can build by adding additional rules and options that get into more detail.
SLea wrote:On that note, can we press you for even a tentative idea of when the other books might appear after the CG has been published? Probably something you don't even want to think about. It certainly looks like the CG at least is inching towards completion. That's very good news, for your sake as much as anything else. Will you will be sticking with the cover art you posted in another thread last year? I hope so - I thought all of the images were great.
I've been breaking out advanced rules as I've cut away at the core rules, storing them in various documents as I go. Once the CG is finished I can go back over those cut rules and adapt them back to work with the current build of the rules and they should be largely ready to go, minus any rewriting of text that might be required to fit in the rules. The artwork all stays the same, though the covers may get tweaked slightly on presentation to make the titles easier to read. Once that's set in stone with the CG the same convention will be used on all future covers.
SLea wrote:Star Systems - I'm not sure about the Strategic Resources as presented. They seem to have a slightly wooly 'super science' feel to them which is somehow out of step with the rest of the system. For one thing, it's hard to see why at least some quantity of whatever the resource represents can't be transported for use elsewhere. Confining use to the system where they are found seems like an abstratction too far. I thing this is a concept that needs fleshing out, and it might be best held over to one of the later books.
This was my biggest concern with the strategic resources. Many sci-fi universes make use of strategic resources of one type or another, but creating rules to transport them back and forth ends up being not really worth the effort (as witnessed in 1E where I don't think I ever saw anyone actually transport the resources anywhere). Strategic resources could easily get moved to the Companion, and that is a point I've been going back and forth about for awhile.
Of the options you mentioned in your last post for more detailed star system generation, I prefer the second. Anything that adds more differentiation and 'character' to systems is a good thing. You might consider, as per 1E, including options for different levels of detail. I can see myself using a less detailed option for when systems need to be generated in a hurry, and more detailed ones for certain key locations, like the home bases for the key protagonists in a campaign.
I think it gives us the most room to maneuver, and the most room for players to add in their own special world types that they want to see in their campaigns. The breakdown of planets end up being about six terrestrial types (Water/Garden, Adaptable, Barren for those with atmosphere, Inferno, Dead, Frozen for those without) and three giant types (Gas Giant, Hot Giant, Ice Giant). I might throw in another "Dead World" variant that replicates Cerean dwarfs that are always part of an asteroid belt, too, to increase the frequency of asteroid belt terrain.
I foresee three levels of system generation: 1) the default rules; 2) one detailed planet per system; 3) multiplanetary star systems with multiple detailed planets possible in each system. Balancing those options is going to be the biggest problem, but one that shouldn't be insurmountable based on the notes I have mapped out thus far.
Encounters - in the iteration of the rules that you published back in December, there were modifiers included for the decection table, which seem to have disappeared again. Please reinstate them. As they now stand, the rules seem to portray a really odd situation whereby opposing forces blunder into each other without making any use of any capability for reconnaissance/evasion at the broad strategic level as represented by the detection roll, but then at the tactical level as represented by individual scenarios within the encounter, they suddenly start to make use of such capabilities.
The reason for the change is that it became obvious that players could, especially at high tech levels, completely game the detection roll modifiers for Scout and Stealth to the point that it was largely impossible to have a health spread of detection results. As it stands, you have at most ~9% chance of not detecting an enemy force, and this chance drops to ~3% if you have a point of Defensive Intel in the system. More than 1 Defensive Intel and the chance of No Detection drops to zero. The effects of Scout/Stealth were split between the new concealed movement rules and Surprise for two reasons. First, the concealed movement option allowed more versatility than a table modifier roll could provide. Second, the size of task forces in a scenario is a bit easier to control from the perspectives of game balance.
That being said, the one shift I could see is having a flat modifier on the table for a situational Scout/Stealth bonus, but the problem there is that it betrays some information about the enemy fleet. The two conditionals I can see is that you would get a -1 to detection if the enemy fleet's Stealth was greater than its own Command Cost; and you would get a +1 to detection if your fleet's Scout was greater than the enemy's Command Cost. The other big OR is to force square roots on people and have the modifiers be based on -SQRT(Enemy Stealth) and +SQRT(Friendly Scout). That works, too, but I've found math really, really scares people for some reason. You also end up with a similar problem as before where extreme amounts of Scout/Stealth end up really breaking the rules, unless you change the modifiers to be more akin to -(Enemy Stealth / Enemy Command Cost) and +(Friendly Scout / Friendly Command Cost) [round up in both cases]. Then at least a fleet with 18 CC of units that has 24 Stealth and 8 Scout would provide a -2 to enemy detection and +1 to friendly detection. On a more extreme angle, a 1 CC fleet with 3 Stealth would give the opponent -3 to detection.
Does that sound viable, or can people see ways for that to break, too?