Elite officer suggestions

[nimrodd]

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

Except this limits the effectiveness of Doctor:Ship.

I agree with Tyrel, no more than 1 officer of each class, with a total limit of some level (maybe 1/2 cost) should be able to be assigned to a ship. For Systems (or worlds if you are playing Commodore level or better), maybe limit it to 1 officer per census, with no limit on what classes.

[Iron Knight]

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.

Balance wise I have to agree. One officer per ship, squadron flagships' leader leads the squadron, task force flagship's leaders leads the task force, seem logical.

[Bandit]

Alternatively, the other route is to signifigantly depower officers.

I pretty much dislike the current officer rules, and really like the proposed rules, but I am on the fence truthfully until I really get a chance to play with them in another long term campaign.

Maybe it is not the officers so much as what players sometimes do with them.

[Iron Knight]

It is really a fluff vs crunch thing. Sure multipul officers on a ship seems cool but it can't easily be balanced. The officer rules as they are, are pretty imbalanced in most cases. Scale effects it too, if the game consisted of managing 10 ships then I can see managing crew as a possiblity, but not with any scenario with more than that per player.

[Tyrel Lohr]

Alternatively, the other route is to signifigantly depower officers.

This is pretty much the route that I am headed. Some officer traits will remain pretty powerful, but all in all it will become much more difficult to create a truly dominating elite officer.

As an example, the space combat traits that used to provide a blanket bonus to all members of a squadron or task force (say, +1 AS) have been toned down so that each level of one of these traits allows *ONE* unit in the squadron or task force to receive the bonus. Just one. Not all of them. In other words, in order for an officer to get the kind of bonuses they were getting before, they would have to purchase about 5-6 levels of any one given trait.

Also, as I previously mentioned, I am adding prerequisites to many of the new higher-level traits so that an officer will have to progress down a specific path in order to gain the most powerful traits.

As for the absolute maximum number of officers available, I think that Nimrodd's numbers look pretty good to me. In combination with the limit of how many active officers of each type a colony/unit can have, this would help prevent runaway officer stacking.

I also plan on taking another look at the officer survival charts and adjust them a bit to make combat a bit more lethal even for high level officers.

[MarkG88]

I also plan on taking another look at the officer survival charts and adjust them a bit to make combat a bit more lethal even for high level officers.

Nelson (and his space based equivalents) would approve. Sounds like a good refinement to the system. I have little experience (one game of three turns) with elite officers but I can see this making them more manageable and less dominating.

[Iron Knight]

Another concern would be tracking all the officers. It might put more work on CM's that run NPE's/large battles. As it is now I have no problem running 60 or so NPE officers but if each ship is expected to have multipul officers it could get combersome, though I suppose the amount of XP generated could be adjusted.

The squadron idea is very cool, ++good. I'll be very interested to see it.

[nimrodd]

I agree with Tyrel, no more than 1 officer of each class, with a total limit of some level (maybe 1/2 cost) should be able to be assigned to a ship.

Actually, now that I think about it, maybe half CR instead of cost.

[Rainer]

I also plan on taking another look at the officer survival charts and adjust them a bit to make combat a bit more lethal even for high level officers.

I also wouldn't mind to see a "wounded for dX turns" result there.

[Bandit]

I like the wounded for X turns idea. Currently we have alive or dead, nothing in between.

[Tyrel Lohr]

I like the idea of an officer being wounded instead. That would remove the "all or nothing" effect as it currently stands, and would provide an extra use for Hospital ships (shave some turns off of that convalescence time).

As for tracking officers, I will have to playtest the rules in a high-combat environment to see just how many officers you end up with. In my previous two campaigns, I have ended up with only a handful of officers, and their effects were pretty minor when it came right down to it.

One proposed fix for a huge number of officers is to force players to spend a portion of Space and Ground Combat XP (say half) on unit grade improvements after an engagement before spending points on officers. This would create an "XP dump" to keep the number of actual officers in these fields down, while increasing the use of unit grades.

I also plan on readjusting the grade levels for units to make those a little less dire. Small bonuses or penalties -- nothing that would completely throw a force like the current +1 CC bonus for Green does (saw how broken that was first hand when the poor Breen were decimated by the Klingons in a campaign). I am also keen on tying the XP cost for unit grade improvements to the unit's cost to provide a reason to upgrade the grade of smallish units, and make upgrading the abilities of larger ships that much more expensive.

[Iron Knight]

I'd also like to see a random chance for units to upgrade from combat. If all upgrades are player picked, some units will never recieve upgrades which is a little unrealistic. I put in a chance that each ship could get a random upgrade if it participaes in combat in my campaign. It needs a bit more polish then it currently has but I think it would be a good way to fix the system. Without it a 4/4/0 would never see an upgrade due to no AF, or a combat transport that sees many battles due to its not generally effective in the long term.

[MarkG88]

I'd also like to see a random chance for units to upgrade from combat. If all upgrades are player picked, some units will never recieve upgrades which is a little unrealistic. I put in a chance that each ship could get a random upgrade if it participaes in combat in my campaign. It needs a bit more polish then it currently has but I think it would be a good way to fix the system. Without it a 4/4/0 would never see an upgrade due to no AF, or a combat transport that sees many battles due to its not generally effective in the long term.

I agree with Garland, I like the house rule he has on this in his current "Deadlock" campaign.

[wminsing]

I also like the idea of units getting a random chance to upgrade. A XP cost adjustment based on ship size would help too. The way it stands now only large ships tend to get XP spent on them, but it's often the small ships that are earning the XP! Besides, in naval warfare, small ships will often develop better or more experienced crews then the big ships, since they see more action- patrols, small skirmishes, convoy escort etc.

-Will

[mriddle]

I also like the idea of units getting a random chance to upgrade. A XP cost adjustment based on ship size would help too. The way it stands now only large ships tend to get XP spent on them, but it's often the small ships that are earning the XP! Besides, in naval warfare, small ships will often develop better or more experienced crews then the big ships, since they see more action- patrols, small skirmishes, convoy escort etc.

-Will

what about adding the CR of the ship to the XP cost, and lower XP cost..
so a veteran crew is 10 XP +1 XP per CR of the ship..