VBAM Second Edition Errata

[Tyrel Lohr]

This thread is intended to collect all of the errata for the new edition of the Victory by Any Means Campaign Guide as players run into problems or have questions about the rules. As much of this errata as possible will be integrated back into the Campaign Guide before it goes to print.

Players should expect to see the first updated PDF to correct any release errors in about two weeks, then periodically from there as we find, isolate, and fix bugs.

[Tyrel Lohr]

V 1.1 Errata
UPDATED FEBRUARY 10, 2016

Rules Clarifications

• (3.3.1 Starship Movement) A ship cannot move across a major lane before or after it crosses a restricted lane.
• (3.3.1 Starship Movement) A Fast ship CAN cross a major or minor lane after it crosses a restricted lane with its normal movement. This is because the Fast ability confers an additional move AFTER its normal movement. A crippled Fast ship loses its bonus movement ability.
• (4.6.4 Exploring a Jump Lane) Jump lane exploration attempts are rolled during the Movement Phase, with fleets moving to a target system on an exploration success at the same time that other ships perform their jump lane movement.

Typos & Omissions

• There is a rules numbering error in Chapter 4 Options rules. The rules number 4.24 is repeated. This should be 4.25 Random Events, 4.26 Accelerated Campaigns, 4.27 Quick Expansion Colony Fleets, and 4.28 Colonization Alternative.
• The Map Legend on page 140 (Large Map) is misaligned.
• The Command Costs for the following ships are incorrect on the force lists (correct CC is in parenthesis): [Graal] Roc (4), Pelican (4), [Human] Hera (5). These ships were missed when the CC values were raised for these larger ship types.
• The entry for "Construction" on the Special Abilities Table should read "Mobile Shipyard". The name of this ability was changed at the last minute and didn't get updated here.
• There are two Fire Phase Ones in the rules. The second one should be Fire Phase Two.
• 3.1.2 Commerce Income: "round fractions to the nearest whole number" should read "round up".
• The maintenance example on pg 31 has several errors. There should only be 3 Artemis CA in the fleet (top portion), and there are only 3 Apollo CL in Reserves (bottom portion). With these changes the total maintenance below is correct.
• (Sample Maps) The 3 and 4 player maps have a few systems that are unlabeled. Here is a download with the updated maps: VBAM-Campaign-Guide-2e-Maps.pdf
• (5.1.8 Barbarians at the Gates) "imperial thrown world" should be "imperial throne world". Unless they have a really big mass driver, at which point then maybe they are throwing the capital around?
• (3.7.5 Purchasing Convoys) Trade Fleets cost 10 economic points, not 20 economic points.
• (Morale Conditions Table, pg 80) There are duplicate entries for "The system’s Productivity is less than half its Census value, representing a lack of jobs and self sufficiency". The duplicate has been removed.
• (NEW) Missile Flights. If the CG 4.20 Ordnance Packages are not available in your campaign, a flight with the Missile trait may boost any ONE of its combat values (DV, AS, AF) at the start of the battle by +1 -- this can reflect countermeasures (DV), heavy torpedoes (AS) or flechette missiles (AF). If Ordnance Packages are available, flights may employ any package the empire has access to.

Rules Errors

• The ground combat portion of Combat Example says that defending troops don't get a counter attack during an invasion; this is incorrect; they DO counter attack against the unit that attacks them. This was a rule omission from 1e that survived to 2e. It will be corrected in the next edit.
• (3.5.6 Raiding) The sentence "Roll a percentile die (d100) for every system that contains a Convoy or where no military ships are present." should read "Roll a percentile die (d100) for every system that contains a Convoy or has a Census greater than zero." This is the intended effect.

General Notes

• Unit Construction: Bases use the same set of templates as ships, and minefields use the same set as flights. I will review the rules and see what needs to be done to make that more explicit.

[nys]

How should feedback be submitted? Should players post questions and comments in this thread or should this be reserved for official rulings from VBAM? Maybe make an official Q&A thread to go alongside this one?

[Tyrel Lohr]

@nys: Post your questions or notes here, and then I'll keep updating the second post with the errata as it comes up.

@armyknight: Ships and bases use the same templates, just like flights and minefields use the same templates. But I'll make a note to try and make that clearer.

[nys]

Page 9 under Attrition it states "Ground forces don’t cripple," however I think it would be clearer to say "Ground forces cannot be Crippled." Otherwise, it suggests the unit is unable to inflict the Crippled status upon other units. I also capitalized it since it is a keyword. The same applies to Page 11, "Flights and minefields don't cripple."

Page 10, Carrying Capacity refers to max size of population. Rename to Population Capacity? I plan to for house rules at least.

[nys]

Sect 3.1.2 Commerce Income mentions to multiply by 50% and then "round fractions to the nearest whole number." In other words, round up?

I think there are some typos in the examples on Page 31.
"example section 1"
4 Artemis Ca > 3 Active (what about the forth?)

"example section 2"
4 Active Apollo CL costs 4 or 2?
2 Reserve Apollo CL costs 1, but there were 3 in Reserve in section 1

Of course, if any of these numbers are wrong then the total Maintenance Cost is incorrect on the bottom of the page.

Sect 3.3.1 Starship Movement. Can a ship start its turn going through a Major and then go through a Restricted since one of the lanes was Major? Can a Fast ship cross a Restricted and then use its bonus to go through a Major or Minor afterwards? Does a Crippled Fast ship lose its bonus movement?

[Tyrel Lohr]

Sect 3.1.2 Commerce Income mentions to multiply by 50% and then "round fractions to the nearest whole number." In other words, round up?

Ha, well, yes. Obviously I didn't get that when I changed the formula

I think there are some typos in the examples on Page 31.
"example section 1"
4 Artemis Ca > 3 Active (what about the forth?)

"example section 2"
4 Active Apollo CL costs 4 or 2?
2 Reserve Apollo CL costs 1, but there were 3 in Reserve in section 1

Of course, if any of these numbers are wrong then the total Maintenance Cost is incorrect on the bottom of the page.

That goes to show you that no good example goes un-typoed.

In this case, there should only be 3 Artemis, there should be 3 Apollo CL in reserves (price stays the same). The maintenance calculation is right with those two updates, but there must have been something change at the last minute that I did not catch. And I'm the one that's guilty for whatever happened there, but I can't for the life of me figure out what I was thinking.

Sect 3.3.1 Starship Movement. Can a ship start its turn going through a Major and then go through a Restricted since one of the lanes was Major?

No, and I'll more this more clear when I update the rules. If you jump across a Restricted lane then that is the only movement that the ship can do that turn.

Can a Fast ship cross a Restricted and then use its bonus to go through a Major or Minor afterwards?

This is something that isn't answered and needs to be. Because of the expense of the Fast ability, and because it is applied AFTER normal movement, I would say that it could move again after crossing a Restricted lane. I'll add this to the errata, too.

Does a Crippled Fast ship lose its bonus movement?

Yes, all crippled units now lose their special abilities. This was something that was supposed to happen in 1e, but it wasn't as explicit as it should have been. I'll add a note to the movement rules that this is the case, however.

[Tyrel Lohr]

In other related news, I should have the print proof in my hands in the middle of next week! The plan is then to continue collecting errata while I'm gone on vacation (July 22 - August 2) and then implement all the changes. Then I'll get a second proof and, if everything looks good, get the final print edition headed this way by August to go out to customers at the end of that month.

An updated electronic version will then be sent out to customers at the same time that I order that second proof copy.

[Haukea]

A couple of things that I've noticed:

pg 50 - The raider example says 9 EP was generated, but 10 EP are used to build the force
3 player map - The systems to the NE and SE of Terminus are missing labels; what systems are these?
4 player map - The system 2 systems SW from Centauri is unlableled; same for the one SW of Terminus

The scenarios - I find that most of the starting EP/fleets seems a bit too much (was trying a 3 player game, was having some trouble spending 200 EP when I already had 3 Civilian Fleets and an orbital yard).

Otherwise I'm quite enjoying it so far.

[Tyrel Lohr]

Here is a link to some updated maps that should give each of those systems proper names:

VBAM-Campaign-Guide-2e-Maps.pdf

I also corrected the raider example to say 10 EP instead of 9 EP. I think the cost of one of the ships changed at some point, that or I was just very bad at math when I wrote that.

I was worried that the number of points that I was doling out was too high considering the freebies involved. Based on your experience so far, would a roughly 2/3 reduction seem appropriate? For Triangulation, this would mean around 140 EP instead of 200 EP.

I think the high values are an artifact from where I was balancing things around the "classic" 1e homeworld that has an output of 60, whereas the 2e homeworld are around 30-40.

I appreciate all the feedback! I'm making notes on my side, too, about more things that I think need to be adjusted, or errors that I've found.

[Haukea]

Working with the lowered starting values, looking like they work a bit better, less of a drain ala maintenance. Though I noticed, as I automatically applied the optional Wartime Economies rule (as a reflex from 1st Ed), that without starting with extra colonies to start the lowered starting home world values really restricts the ability of an empire to grow, especially when starting with just a home world system.

Suggestion: Lower starting points when using Wartime Economies optional rule (prevents a drain caused by maintenance)? Or, perhaps, better starting home world values when using Wartime Economies? (Similar to 1st Ed, which was a 30EP peacetime/60EP wartime).

A couple of more things I've noticed as I play through:
1) For those of us coming from 1st Edition, I'm guessing that DefSats are built as Bases, and therefore cripple then are destroyed? Same with Gunboats (aka Attack Boats) - cripple then destroyed?

2) Typo: Morale Conditions Table - "The system’s Productivity is less than half its Census..." listed twice on the table.

[Blades]

3.75 says Trade Fleet costs 20
Sample Empire Convoy chart page 147 says Trade Fleet costs 10.

[Tyrel Lohr]

Working with the lowered starting values, looking like they work a bit better, less of a drain ala maintenance. Though I noticed, as I automatically applied the optional Wartime Economies rule (as a reflex from 1st Ed), that without starting with extra colonies to start the lowered starting home world values really restricts the ability of an empire to grow, especially when starting with just a home world system.

I think your suggested fix for reducing the number of starting points to half that of normal should fix the problem. The other option is to tune Wartime Economies so that they only increase income during wartime and not reduce it during peacetime. In that case, everything would be bumped up 50%, so you would be at 100% during Peacetime, 125% during Gear Up/Down, and 150% during Wartime.

Does either of these two options seem more reasonable than the other? Either one is fairly easy to implement.

A couple of more things I've noticed as I play through:
1) For those of us coming from 1st Edition, I'm guessing that DefSats are built as Bases, and therefore cripple then are destroyed? Same with Gunboats (aka Attack Boats) - cripple then destroyed?

Defsats are just small bases, and are treated the same as other 2e bases. What constitutes a "defsat" compared to a full starbase usually is tied to how much Towing strength your tugs have. Most tugs have 1-3 Towing, and because the largest base they can carry is equal to their number of towing functions it puts a ceiling on how big a base can be and still be moved from system to system.

When designing the sample force lists, I made the assumption that Cost 1-2 bases tended to be your normal defsats, with Cost 3 bases sometimes being portable enough depending on the faction to also serve as a heavy defsat.

EDIT: Oh, yes, and gunboats are just very small starships. They don't have enough construction points to purchase much in the way of abilities, but they have low Command Costs and are cheap to build which gives them some utility as throwaway attrition units or anti-piracy units. Especially if you give them both Atmospheric and Slow, as the latter cancel's out the economic penalty of the former.

2) Typo: Morale Conditions Table - "The system’s Productivity is less than half its Census..." listed twice on the table.

Doh. I was reorganizing that list before launch and forgot to remove the duplicate.

3.75 says Trade Fleet costs 20
Sample Empire Convoy chart page 147 says Trade Fleet costs 10.

Trade Fleet should cost 10. They cost more at one point when the costs were 10/20/30 and Trade Fleets generated more income than they do right now. I've made the update to the rules!

[aelius]

Page 120 says this in paragraph 3 of section 5.4.3.4
"The point costs for these abilities can be found on the Special Abilities Table. For example, it costs 2 CP to add a point of Assault rating to a unit class."
However the table lists the CP cost as 1.
I assume the table is correct, but ya know...

[Tyrel Lohr]

Page 120 says this in paragraph 3 of section 5.4.3.4
"The point costs for these abilities can be found on the Special Abilities Table. For example, it costs 2 CP to add a point of Assault rating to a unit class."
However the table lists the CP cost as 1.
I assume the table is correct, but ya know...

The table is correct, and I'll have to update that description and make it clear that the Cost/Maint costs only apply once (i.e., they are not cumulative). Only the CP costs are paid per level, the rest apply regardless of the number of "levels" of an ability purchased.

Specific to your point, Assault only costs 1 CP per point. It used to cost more, but I collapsed the costs of the special abilities because it was making it too hard to give small ships special abilities, and eating up too much CP for larger units.