VBAM Games Forums

Gents,

Here are a few suggestions to add to the elite officer section.

Infrastructure (Administrator)

Architectural Specialist – Level 1
Effect: This officer reduced the cost of
buildings built at his assigned
system by 10%. Round all fractional
Productivity costs up. (Restricted)

Base Construction Specialist – Level 1
Effect: This officer reduced the cost of
bases (including orbital shipyards and outposts) built at his assigned system by 10%. Round all fractional
Productivity costs up. (Restricted)

Shipyard Taskmaster – Level 1
Effect: This officer reduced the cost of
ships built at his assigned system by 10%. Round all fractional Productivity costs up. (Restricted)

Military Recruiter – Level 1
Effect: This officer reduced the cost of
military units built at his assigned system by 10%. Round all fractional Productivity costs up. (Restricted)

Flight/Attack Boat Manufacturer – Level 1
Effect: This officer reduced the cost of
flights and attack boats built at his assigned system by 10%. Round all fractional Productivity costs up. (Restricted)

Just something I wanted to post. Since the forum got quiet over the holiday weekend, I thought I'd toss this out there.

-Mark

2, 3 and 5 seem too powerful, I'd make them higher level and only allow it to be taken once per officer (unless officers' level price ramps each level). This does depend heavily on the force list and xp conditions though. 1 and 4 look good though .

Iron Knight wrote:2, 3 and 5 seem too powerful, I'd make them higher level and only allow it to be taken once per officer (unless officers' level price ramps each level). This does depend heavily on the force list and xp conditions though. 1 and 4 look good though .

Yeah I was just tossing out generic versions here. I agree some should be ramped up to higher levels especially based on size of economy and so on like you noted.

Iron Knight wrote:2, 3 and 5 seem too powerful, I'd make them higher level and only allow it to be taken once per officer (unless officers' level price ramps each level).

Actually, to me, using most ship lists I have played with, 4 & 5 are not worth that much. Most ground units cost less than 2 EP, so unless you are building 5 units at 2 EP or 10 at 1 EP (which can be hard to do if you are using the rule that 1 ground unit can be built per Census), so this only occurs very rarely. Fighters generally cost even less, usually less than 1 EP, and so unless you are building 20 or more fighters, you don't get any savings.

Even #3 really is only useful during buildup before you go to war (if you know it is going to happen), since you will probably have a high maintenance at later stages, that limits the quantities that you can build later. Problem is, you don't generally have the XP to get this ability until after the war has started.

Again all of this depends on your ship list and if you start the game with XP.

A lot of it is stacking, when you get 50% off fighters and are refilling a CV fleet every turn it could make a consistant profit.

Iron Knight wrote:A lot of it is stacking, when you get 50% off fighters and are refilling a CV fleet every turn it could make a consistant profit.

How do you stack when restricted ?

mriddle wrote:

Iron Knight wrote:A lot of it is stacking, when you get 50% off fighters and are refilling a CV fleet every turn it could make a consistant profit.

How do you stack when restricted ?

Restricted just means you can't combine the ability with another to get a better deal. Here is the section from the rules CC 10.1.2:

"Some abilities, notably Squadron, Task
Force, and planet level combat abilities, are
noted as being Restricted in their descriptions.
This denotes that the ability carries special
restrictions that apply to how they interact with
other Restricted abilities. If a unit, squadron, or
task force is subject to the effects of more than
one officer providing the same Restricted
benefit, only the best bonus between the officers
is used. The effects of non-Restricted abilities are
not subject to this limitation; they are cumulative
with those generated by Restricted abilities."

Since there are no other abilities that do these, in this case, it should mean that if you can't have multiple officers combine.

oh so a single officer who has taken the same ability 3 times would be -30 % ?

mriddle wrote:oh so a single officer who has taken the same ability 3 times would be -30 % ?

Yep, that's my understanding of the rule which is why I made them "restricted" so you have a true expert affecting his individual area of expertise.

The restricted concept is kind of a nuisance to deal with, and my current line of thinking with the revised elite officers rules that I have been kicking around essentially makes it so that only the best officer bonus applies no matter what, so all traits essentially become "restricted".

I will have to keep these traits in mind as I reorganize the existing traits and work everything back together. One major change I am working towards is that officer upgrades will be incremental, making it harder to create super officers. Higher level traits will also usually have prerequisites attached, so an officer will have had to specialize in a specific field in order to gain the superior benefits from a discipline. Each trait will also have a list of assignment types in which the trait can be used (to determine which traits from mixed-background officers apply at any one posting).

I am all but resigned, too, to separate the Intelligence and Medical Officers out into their own classes. They just don't make sense being integrated into any of the existing classes. I had thought about breaking the Marines out, too, but I am still on the fence on that one. There aren't enough traits for that class to really make it stand on its own, and it is more of a blending between the Fleet and Ground Officer. I may just provide rules for calling an officer a Marine class and allow Rank to be based on a combination of the two (or something).

The new methods for handling Career and Ranks (based on the Stars Divided rules, but expanded to a degree) seems to be working in my playtest campaigns, though I am thinking I need to provide a mechanic for "negative Career officers" -- those junior officers that are included for narrative purposes but otherwise have no effect on a campaign. That way I could create an officer with a negative Career starting value and then track his or her progression through the ranks until they hit the magic level of being relevent

Does medical have enough stuff to stand apart from science? Medical stuff is about half of the useful science anyways. It is good to hear that officer revision/errata is underway.

Iron Knight wrote:Does medical have enough stuff to stand apart from science? Medical stuff is about half of the useful science anyways. It is good to hear that officer revision/errata is underway.

The biggest problem I ran into with Medical is in regards to officer classification, and how many officers are allowed per unit. In trying to rebalance officers and unit abilities (in conjunction with each other, and the CSCR 2.0 proejct), I wanted to provide a hard limit for how many officers could be assigned to any particular unit, typically one of each type. Having Medical as a separate officer type allows for a ship to always be able to have a Medical Officer is addition to the other officers assigned.

The place where this can become most useful is in situations where players are trying to simulate the crews of famous sci-fi franchises. Let's use the Battlestar Galactica (new series) as an example. You already have Commander/Admiral Adama (Fleet Officer) aboard, and a few Flight Officers (Adama the Younger, Starbuck). It might be nice to be able to include Doc Coddle on there too as a Medical Officer, while still allowing Gaius Baltar to also be assigned as a Scientist. If Galactica was given the Command (1) ability, it would then get an extra Fleet Officer -- which would allow Colonel Tigh to become an officer, too (probably with a security focus).

Over in Star Trek land, you would also have the ability to have Kirk (Fleet), Spock (Scientist), and McCoy (Medical) all assigned to the ship, and then the rest of the crew represented by a Veteran or Elite Crew.

I will admit that the Medical profession would be a bit threadbare for traits. You have Ship Doctor and Fleet Doctor, Planetary Health Coordinator, Biological Weapons Specialist and other similar specialty traits.

Looking at all of the different officer types, Fleet is of course the most broad, with Administrator probably coming in second.

I am still in the process of deciding how I want to rework the Elite Officer system, but I am all but settled on breaking the Experience Pool out into 5 separate pools: Space Combat, Ground Combat, Administrative, Diplomatic and Scientific. This allows me to restrict officer traits to specific XP pools and allow a little more cross pollination of abilities, and any given trait may be applicable to one or more officer classes. In practice, this means that XP earned from space combat will produce/upgrade officers with traits that are somehow related to space combat -- not some other field.

I have to get Star Charts done before I can really work on getting a new draft of the Elite Officers rules done, but I plan on taking the last week of December off, so I might be able to get the Elite Officers rules worked on then.

Tyrel Lohr wrote:The restricted concept is kind of a nuisance to deal with, and my current line of thinking with the revised elite officers rules that I have been kicking around essentially makes it so that only the best officer bonus applies no matter what, so all traits essentially become "restricted".

I will have to keep these traits in mind as I reorganize the existing traits and work everything back together. One major change I am working towards is that officer upgrades will be incremental, making it harder to create super officers. Higher level traits will also usually have prerequisites attached, so an officer will have had to specialize in a specific field in order to gain the superior benefits from a discipline. Each trait will also have a list of assignment types in which the trait can be used (to determine which traits from mixed-background officers apply at any one posting).

I am all but resigned, too, to separate the Intelligence and Medical Officers out into their own classes. They just don't make sense being integrated into any of the existing classes. I had thought about breaking the Marines out, too, but I am still on the fence on that one. There aren't enough traits for that class to really make it stand on its own, and it is more of a blending between the Fleet and Ground Officer. I may just provide rules for calling an officer a Marine class and allow Rank to be based on a combination of the two (or something).

The new methods for handling Career and Ranks (based on the Stars Divided rules, but expanded to a degree) seems to be working in my playtest campaigns, though I am thinking I need to provide a mechanic for "negative Career officers" -- those junior officers that are included for narrative purposes but otherwise have no effect on a campaign. That way I could create an officer with a negative Career starting value and then track his or her progression through the ranks until they hit the magic level of being relevent

Sounds good Tyrel.

I am sort of of the opinion that the Enterprise had just one elite officer - Kirk and the rest fell into the classification of a Legendary crew. I call it the "Shatner effect"

I am all for limiting the number of officers that can be on a vessel.

Bandit wrote:I am sort of of the opinion that the Enterprise had just one elite officer - Kirk and the rest fell into the classification of a Legendary crew. I call it the "Shatner effect"

I am all for limiting the number of officers that can be on a vessel.

Well put ("Shatner effect" hehe). And if I were running a Star Trek original series campaign, I'd probably set it up just like you said.