VBAM Games Forums

Okay, given that I've been so quiet the last two months, let's get something started to actually get the ball moving in anticipation of 2E's release. This weekend I'll start up a quick, low key playtest game for people that are interested in playing. Post in the thread if you're interested and I'll get a quick map and set of sample ships created for us to play around with.

I am interested in trying out the new rules.
Let's give them a stress test

Definitely interested here.

--Mav

I'm extremely interested but time-strapped, so I'm in IF this is to be structured like the previous Terran Senate playtest where I can weigh in and vote and influence decisons but not block others' fun if I can't slap together a turn order quickly enough...

In the interests of hitting the ground running, what I'm going to do is give each of the starting empire a fairly good homeworld and the same set of starting ship designs - but each empire gets a wild card selection to add to their force list to spice things up a bit. Players can start designing and prototyping new ships at the start of the campaign to get them started.

Homeworlds:

10 CAP, 5 RAW, 5 BIO
8 Census, 8 Morale, 4 Productivity, 4 Shipyards, 4 Agriculture, 3 Tech, 3 Intel

Colony Income: 20 EP / turn

Starting Points: 100 EP to spend on starting forces

Basic Units:

Frigate
C$ 3, M$ 2, BT 2 TL 0 Starship
DV 1, AS 1, PD 1, CR 2, CC 1
FTL 1, Atmospheric

Destroyer
C$ 5, M$ 2, BT 3 TL 0 Starship
DV 2, AS 1, PD 2, CR 3, CC 1
FTL 1

Light Cruiser
C$ 8, M$ 4, BT 4 TL 0 Starship
DV 4, AS 3, PD 3, CR 4, CC 2
FTL 1

Heavy Cruiser
C$ 12, M$ 6, BT 6 TL 0 Starship
DV 6, AS 6, PD 3, CR 6, CC 3
FTL 1

Military Freighter
C$ 8, M$ 4, BT 4 TL 0 Starship
DV 4, AS 0, PD 2, CR 4, CC 2
FTL 1, Cargo 4

Light Atmospheric Fighter
C$ 1, M$ 1, BT 1, TL 0 Flight
DV 0, AS 1, PD 1, CR 1, CC 1
Atmospheric

Medium Atmospheric Fighter
C$ 2, M$ 1, BT 1, TL 0 Flight
DV 1, AS 1, PD 1, CR 1, CC 1
Atmospheric

Heavy Atmospheric Fighter
C$ 3, M$ 2, BT 2, TL 0 Flight
DV 2, AS 1, PD 1, CR 2, CC 1
Atmospheric

Defense Satellite
C$ 2, M$ 1, BT 1 TL 0 Starbase
DV 1, AS 2, PD 1, CR 1, CC 1

Space Station
C$ 12, M$ 3, BT 6 TL 0 Starbase
DV 7, AS 7, PD 4, CR 6, CC 3

Light Infantry
C$ 4, M$ 2, BT 2 TL 0 Ground
DV 2, AS 2, PD 2, CR 2, CC 1

Standard Infantry
C$ 8, M$ 4, BT 4 TL 0 Ground
DV 4, AS 4, PD 4, CR 4, CC 2

Wildcard Selections (Choose 2)
(Note: I would allow custom ships here if someone wants to roll their own special units, but otherwise these give you some ideas to work from)

Assault Cruiser
C$ 12, M$ 6, BT 6 TL 0 Starship
DV 6, AS 2, PD 3, CR 6, CC 3
FTL 1, Assault 4

Armored Cruiser
C$ 15, M$ 7, BT 8 TL 0 Starship
DV 8, AS 6, PD 3, CR 8, CC 3
FTL 1

Battleship
C$ 20, M$ 9, BT 10 TL 0 Starship
DV 9, AS 8, PD 6, CR 10, CC 4
FTL 1

Light Carrier
C$ 8, M$ 4, BT 4 TL 0 Starship
DV 4, AS 0, PD 3, CR 4, CC 2
FTL 1, Carrier 3

Heavy Carrier
C$ 12, M$ 6, BT 6 TL 0 Starship
DV 6, AS 0, PD 4, CR 6, CC 3
FTL 1, Carrier 5

Interceptor
C$ 2, M$ 1, BT 1, TL 0 Flight
DV 1, AS 1, PD 2, CR 1, CC 1

Multi-Role Fighter
C$ 3, M$ 2, BT 2, TL 0 Flight
DV 1, AS 2, PD 2, CR 2, CC 1

Bomber
C$ 5, M$ 2, BT 3, TL 0 Flight
DV 3, AS 3, PD 1, CR 3, CC 1

Heavy Defense Satellite
C$ 5, M$ 1, BT 3 TL 0 Starbase
DV 3, AS 2, PD 2, CR 3, CC 1

Battle Station
C$ 20, M$ 5, BT 10 TL 0 Starbase
DV 10, AS 10, PD 8, CR 10, CC 4

Heavy Infantry
C$ 12, M$ 6, BT 6 TL 0 Ground
DV 6, AS 6, PD 6, CR 6, CC 3


I'll refine the list of options and add anything I might have missed as I set the game up.

virtutis.umbra wrote:I'm extremely interested but time-strapped, so I'm in IF this is to be structured like the previous Terran Senate playtest where I can weigh in and vote and influence decisons but not block others' fun if I can't slap together a turn order quickly enough...

I can deal you in a position and then you can play as you have time. If I end up with enough players the game might go a bit slower, but I am hoping for a max of 6 players per set -- which means that, yes, there is a possibility that I might end up running more of these if there are enough players interested.

I'm thinking six players on a small map floating map would give us enough room to maneuver to test the rules a bit more and see what happens. It will be a claustrophobic setup, probably 5 hex distance between homeworlds to force early interaction and/or conflict.

YeeeeaOkay I'm in.

Are ANY custom wildcard designs acceptable as long as they're TL0, or are there some restrictions I should be aware of?

virtutis.umbra wrote:Are ANY custom wildcard designs acceptable as long as they're TL0, or are there some restrictions I should be aware of?

Any custom designed wild cards are fair game. The idea is to use a baseline set of units for most everything, but then still give each empire a bit of special kit that they can use to their own advantage. It makes the empires each a little interesting without getting bogged down in unit construction and also tests a few other technologies.

Also, if anything isn't given a mass cost yet just ask and I'll fill in the blank with the best guess based on the current state of the rules. Playtesting thus far has focused on the core technologies, sometimes at the risk of ignoring the others -- or, worse, changing their useful characteristics. One example is the Repair ability. It used to cost more, but in trying to design a worthwhile TL 0 Repair ship I found that I really needed to reduce the cost of the ability to make it worth taking.

If anyone wants a specific unit but needs help going from concept to practical stats they can just ask, too.

Cool - I'm a big fan of the Surans from the 1E Menagerie, so ideally I'd like to use my wildcards for a gunboat and tender design pair; I noticed the Tender ship ability persists, but I'm not seeing rules for gunboats. Am I SOL for this iteration of the rules, or just missing something?

EDIT: I am definitely missing something, p.58 shows Gunboat as a class of Flight unit with a C$ of 6. Is that really all there is to it, Tender provides 1 basing for (exclusively) a Gunboat class flight unit (which otherwise cannot be based by the standard Carrier ability)?

virtutis.umbra wrote:Cool - I'm a big fan of the Surans from the 1E Menagerie, so ideally I'd like to use my wildcards for a gunboat and tender design pair; I noticed the Tender ship ability persists, but I'm not seeing rules for gunboats. Am I SOL for this iteration of the rules, or just missing something?

EDIT: I am definitely missing something, p.58 shows Gunboat as a class of Flight unit with a C$ of 6. Is that really all there is to it, Tender provides 1 basing for (exclusively) a Gunboat class flight unit (which otherwise cannot be based by the standard Carrier ability)?

Gunboats are... one of those things that I'm still beating my head up against the wall with. I think the best solution to the problem is going to be the "Jump" ability that isn't in the book yet but that I have been playing around with in relation to covering ships like those from Babylon 5 that can move other ships with them from one system to another. I'm currently thinking that the ability would need to cost about 2 MU and allow a ship to transport 1 CC of ships with them between systems.

That being said, and since the Tender ability is still floating around, I would say the best option that comes to mind would be for Tenders to work for starships like Carrier does for flights. That would make gunboats small starships that would typically forego FTL in return for more combat abilities. Based on the current rules for flights (that still need codified in the draft), you could end up with 1 CC of starship per 1 Tender, and the largest unit that a tender could carry would be equal to its own CC. Likely the core rule would only allow CC 1 units to be carried, however, but I know Starfire had some races that had monitor-sized carriers that could bring large ships into battle under the same principles. The weakness of course is that the carrier/tender has to survive long enough to launch all of its units, and that can take time. Under normal circumstances a carrier/tender will only start with 50% of its fighters/gunboats launched at the start of a battle. For a 10 Carrier fleet carrier design, that's 5 CC of flights launched; the rest have to launch as the battle progresses.

Now, taking that for what it's worth, I would say that you could design a ship with the Tender ability at 1 MU per point, that would then allow it to dock and carry 1 CC of starships with it. So your 2 wildcard slots would be used on the Tender itself and a gunboat class to take advantage of it.

New Zion Defense League

Starting Forces
Task Force 1
Assault Cruiser (wildcard 1)
Light Cruiser
Destroyer x2

Transport Squadron
Military Freighter

System Defense Squadron
Battle Station (wildcard 2)
Medium Atmospheric Fighter x5

Division 1
Standard Infantry
Light Infantry x2

Division 2
Standard Infantry
Light Infantry x2

Awesome, I'll run with that!

Meanwhile I took the liberty of copying all the TL0 units, both regular and wildcard, into Tyrel's design spreadsheet. I added a column specifying unit type and altered the M$ calculation to properly halve maintenance for Starbases. And then I uploaded it onto the Yahoo! site for anyone who wants to use it as a basis for generating their own empire force lists for this playtest.

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/VBA ... Playtests/

I'll reply back with my preliminary Tender / Gunboat pairing shortly.

Custom Designs of the Phoenix Republic:

Beak-class Strike Gunboat
C$ 3, M$ 2, BT 2, TL0 Starship
DV 2, AS 3, PD 0, CR 2, CC 1

Hawk-class Escort Tender
C$ 6, M$ 3, BT 3, TL0 Starship
DV 3, AS 0, PD 3, CR 3, CC 2
FTL 1, Carrier 1, Tender 1

Typically loaded with a Talon Heavy Aerofighter (from the standard list) and a Beak Strike Gunboat, Hawks are dispatched in pairs for basic patrol and force-reconaissance duty. This minimizes the number of FTL drives necessary to field significant combat power; the Hawks provide point defense and coordination while the formation's four flight/gunboat maneuver units bring the fight to the enemies of the Republic.

Do these look legit?
EDIT: was leaving a MU unused on the Hawk; added a point of PD.

I would love to be in on the playtest game.