Losers lose big!

[MadSeason]

I have one basic problem with the 1st edition CSCR. I also have limited experience, so the experienced players can chime in and tell me to go to hell, if they like.

In my experience, the losers of a battle can lose so badly that they never recover, assuming both sides are relatively equal in economics. Usually this happens if one side concentrates more forces in a system than the other did. In a pursuit scenario, the bigger side can still demolish the smaller side.

If both sides have 100 eps worth of ships and in a battle one side loses 50 EP-worth while the other side only loses 15-20, the loser is behind the eight-ball for the rest of the game, trying to make that up, and is generally unable to now generate a dramatic victory against the first side (I have 50 Ep worth of ships to your 80 and while I rebuild my fleet, you are also building yours up and probably blockading/invading one of my income-generating systems in the process!).

Small, outpost fleets ought to have a reasonable chance to escape a system when the enemy's main fleet shows up. There should be a chance they can get wiped out but in the WC campaign it seemed predetermined. There should be a reasonable chance to escape unscathed, a reasonable chance to be wiped out, and a lot more chance that the results are somewhere in between.

[MarkG88]

I have one basic problem with the 1st edition CSCR. I also have limited experience, so the experienced players can chime in and tell me to go to hell, if they like.

In my experience, the losers of a battle can lose so badly that they never recover, assuming both sides are relatively equal in economics. Usually this happens if one side concentrates more forces in a system than the other did. In a pursuit scenario, the bigger side can still demolish the smaller side.

If both sides have 100 eps worth of ships and in a battle one side loses 50 EP-worth while the other side only loses 15-20, the loser is behind the eight-ball for the rest of the game, trying to make that up, and is generally unable to now generate a dramatic victory against the first side (I have 50 Ep worth of ships to your 80 and while I rebuild my fleet, you are also building yours up and probably blockading/invading one of my income-generating systems in the process!).

Small, outpost fleets ought to have a reasonable chance to escape a system when the enemy's main fleet shows up. There should be a chance they can get wiped out but in the WC campaign it seemed predetermined. There should be a reasonable chance to escape unscathed, a reasonable chance to be wiped out, and a lot more chance that the results are somewhere in between.

First things first, we'd never tell you to "go to hell" here....maybe visit Charlie's newly added "karma sink" topic, but that's about it.

In regards to losers losing big, historically that is the nature of naval warfare. And I've always considered earth based naval warfare to be the "model" for future "space based" warfare, keeping that in mind........

Nelson's victories at the Nile ended Napoleon's Egyptian campaign with the loss of the French fleet. Ditto for Trafalgar later on and any chances of France actually invading Britain to directly attack their main foe throughout the Napoleonic wars.

At the Battle of Midway, the Japanese lost four CVs to the USA's one. From that point to the end of the war, we built around 100 CV, CVL, CVEs while the Japanese built approximately 13 CV/CVL/CVE, and the loss of the fighter pilots for the Japanese hurt even worse. The USN took veteran pilots home to instruct the newly minted ones while the Japanese fought at the front the whole way (massive differences here in industrial capacity but the point is.......losers do in fact lose big in naval warfare historically).

Meanwhile "draws" tend to keep the losses even. Coral Sea, Jutland, the River Platte, etc. The losses are statistically close/even it's the tactical strategic result from the "who controls the sea" that matters.

The Coral Sea (US lost CV, damage to another, Japanese lost CVL, CV damaged) blunted the Japanese advance to take New Guinea (and threaten the Australian link to the US since Britain was unable to send much to its dominion);

At Jutland, the Germans sank more ships/tonnage, but returned to port leaving the Royal Navy with "sea superiority" that it never relinquished;

At the River Platte, the Graf Spee (German so-called "pocket battleship") damage the one heavy and two light cruisers that intercepted her off the coast of Argentina and Uruguay, but then scuttled itself when false radio transmissions convinced German captain that major British forces were going to intercept the Graf Spee after it had to leave port from neutral Uruguay.

To sum up, if you do engage in battle, you roll the dice, and take your chances. Don't forget, you can decline combat depending on the scenario generated etc, and the 2.0 stuff will clarify the tactical choices in a more streamlined, crystal clear manner than the current version (which still works fairly well overall as far as I'm concerned, and I've probably lost more battles than I've one).


-Mark (quasi veteran VBAMer)

[Tyrel Lohr]

MadSeason, I have seen the same thing in many campaigns. The worst case is when a combination of factors (such as Scouts) makes it so that the enemy has little to no chance of damaging their opponent, and can do nothing at all to extricate themselves from their dire situation. It just isn't fun to watch your fleet be wasted futilely like that, and as you point out the effects of such battles can possibly be game ending depending on the size of the fleet that was annihilated.

If it makes you feel any better, in the first Wing Commander campaign that Jay ran, my Kilrathi faction lost our entire fleet three times. By that point in the game, I was pretty disheartened, too.

A goal for Second Edition is to make sure that combat is more meaningful, and less of a meat-grinder experience. While two evenly-matched forces may still end up having lopsided combat results, we want to do everything in our power to increase the survivability of units so that a force can have its nose bloodied but still survive.

We are approaching this goal in a few different ways. First, we are planning on adjusting the scenario generation process to introduce a concept called Scenario Intensity that Jay created for Federation Admiral. Scenario Intensity is spent to generate encounters, and the amount of intensity spent determines the maximum number of units involved on both sides. Scenario Intensity is a limited commodity, which will limit the number of massive engagements that can be fought in a system each turn.

We are also planning on divorcing "Hits" from "Damage" in CSCR 2. To illustrate this change, when you total Anti-Ship values and roll 1D6 + Readiness Modifier (the normal damage mechanic in the CSCR), the result will now equal the number of "Hits" scored, NOT the amount of "Damage" scored. Hits will translate into Damage based on the target's Formation Level. All units will begin at Formation Level 1, and it can be increased by Engine Rating or ECM. The number of Hits to score 1 Damage is equal to a unit's Formation Level. For Directed Damage, you take Formation Level + 1, instead.

Units are Crippled and Destroyed as they were in CSCR 1; however, in CSCR 2 even Flights follow this mechanic. Once a unit is Crippled, its major statistics (minus Defense and Command) are halved, rounding fractional remainders up.

The slower pace of scenario generation coupled with increased survivability *should* make it so that the larger space battles could take multiple campaign turns before one side or another has a decisive advantage. This will allow a player whose fleet fared poorly in the last engagement an attempt to evacuate the system before they lose everything.

I also integrated Retreat rules into the new CSCR that should allow a player at least attempt to retreat units if they feel their position is absolutely dire. Retreated units have to leave the system, regardless of who ends up winning the scenario, but at least it gives you an opportunity to abandon a hopeless fight and get your damaged warships out of harms way (assuming they can survive an enemy Pursuit attempt).

-Tyrel

[Rainer]

We are also planning on divorcing "Hits" from "Damage" in CSCR 2. To illustrate this change, when you total Anti-Ship values and roll 1D6 + Readiness Modifier (the normal damage mechanic in the CSCR), the result will now equal the number of "Hits" scored, NOT the amount of "Damage" scored. Hits will translate into Damage based on the target's Formation Level. All units will begin at Formation Level 1, and it can be increased by Engine Rating or ECM. The number of Hits to score 1 Damage is equal to a unit's Formation Level. For Directed Damage, you take Formation Level + 1, instead.

Not sure I like this one. It will again lead to immense casualty figures among escorts while most of the Capital ships will come away with little to no damage when in fact your fire would be concentrated at these targets.

While Mark brought up Midway as an example, it is not a good one. Yes, the carriers were sunk but nearly all of their escorts, the trailing Main Body and the invasion transports got away.

[mwaschak]

While Mark brought up Midway as an example, it is not a good one. Yes, the carriers were sunk but nearly all of their escorts, the trailing Main Body and the invasion transports got away.

I find it very ironic that Midway has reared its head again when talking about the CSCR. To explain why this is funny to me I have to open the "way-back-when" machine to around 1999 or so when the first CSCR was being tested. Running a compable group in the original-original CSCR Midway could never be recreated because fighters did not have directed damage (I know, I know), and the defensive player would never assign damage to his carriers. And this is how fighter directed-damage was written in.

We used sci-fi equivalents of the ships but what Midway is not the equivalent of a stand up CSCR fight since the battlewagons never had a chance to engage each other, just the fighters and a submarine.

It is hard to say one way or another when talking about the results of battles, be it in the CSCR or a B5 Wars battle where a lucky reactor hit takes out your Omega. We introduce dice to have randomization, and some chaotic elements out of our control (seriously, how mad would the player running the Japanese be after THAT battle?), but we don't need to have that conversation again. I played so many campaigns that I have had my crushing defeats, outstanding victories, and even campaigns where I win the war but lose most of the battles.

-Jay

[Tyrel Lohr]

Not sure I like this one. It will again lead to immense casualty figures among escorts while most of the Capital ships will come away with little to no damage when in fact your fire would be concentrated at these targets.

The balancing point for Formation Levels and how they relate to the Hit/Damage system is that the number of Formation Points it takes to increase a Formation Level by 1 is equal to the unit's SIZ. That means that your (hopefully) faster escorts could opt not to protect the force and instead apply some of their FPs to themselves, vastly increasing their own survivability in preference to protecting the larger capital ships.

Players will still have the option (when scoring Standard Damage) as to which ships to damage, and spending 5 Hits to place 1 Damage on an insulated capital ship will look pretty attractive when the alternative is to score 5 Damage to unprotected escorts. In all of my test battles thus far, the player actually has a good reason to consider spreading the damage around between multiple units, and not just eliminating the smallest/cheapest ships in order, which was the case in the majority of 1E battles. For example, the Klingon player would always eliminate his B'rels FFs before he would take damage to the K'Vorts or K'T'ingas CAs, and all of those would likely be destroyed before damage was applied to his Komo Val BB.

To go back to the initial point of concern, consider a SIZ 1 escort that has an Engine Rating of 2. It starts the battle at a native Formation Level of 1, and its Engines generate 2 Formation Points. These 2 FPs are added to its squadron's formation pool, where they can then be spent to increase Formation Levels. In this particular example, the SIZ 1 unit could opt to increase its own Formation Level to 3 using its Engines alone. At FL 3, this escort takes 3 Hits before receiving 1 Damage.

Because smaller ships can more cheaply purchase Engine Rating, they will natively be able to defend themselves, if that is the player's wish; otherwise, they can use the FPs they create to increase the Formation Levels of their larger capital ships.

Also, it is important to note that there will be a mechanic when using Standard Damage that will ensure that a player cannot simply have all Hits be scored against their highest Formation Level unit. The current "rules of thumb" I have been playing around with is that you start out only being able to score Hits against units that are in a Formation Level equal to the lowest Formation Level in your task force, and each unit you score Hits against increases this maximum by 1. This prevents a player from placing a small unit in Formation Level 10 and then scoring all of the enemy's Hits futilely against it. Rather, you would have to start with the most vulnerable unit and work your way up. Now, you could still elect to spread damage thinly and work your way up to that unit, but in theory that should make it easier for your opponent to later take out those weakened units. Also, Directed Damage could be used to take out a ship's escorts, and prevent it from achieving such high Formation Levels.

Playesting will determine the best way to handle Formation restrictions, but the core benefit -- that starships will actually be able to survive major engagements -- is something that is highly desirable, especially considering that units will now take longer to build, so losses will be harder to replace.

-Tyrel

[Rainer]

I see. I am still not convinced that players will actually increase the formation rating of their escorts instead of the more expensive capital ships in actual game play but I am sure we'll find out in playtesting.

Another concern of mine would be designs that consist of nothing but DV and engines. You'd have cheap damage soaks while the core of your fleet is well protected.

[murtalianconfederacy]

How about this:

Instead of allowing the defender to apply all non-directed damage, instead allow the attacker to allocate 50% of the damage and the defender to do the same. Might not work, but it'd mean that the heavier ships would be hit more, and would actually be more realistic as the players would shoot at the Peacekeeper Command Carrier more than the Pantak, the Omega more than the Tethys, the Galor more than the Hideki.

[zyffyr]

How about this:

Instead of allowing the defender to apply all non-directed damage, instead allow the attacker to allocate 50% of the damage and the defender to do the same.

The problem with that is that it makes 50% of the damage into Directed Damage without the Directed Damage penalty.

[MadSeason]

Some sort of allocation mechanic would resolve all of this. It could be complicated or simple and it could include formation bonuses in the calculation. The main problem would be defining categories of ships as capital/escorts, although SIZ could be useful for this. In either case, it should be an option since it would invariably complicate the game.

Escorts should soak up a lot of the damage, IMO. However, I do agree with Rainer, it shouldn't be merely escorts taking the damage.

[Gareth_Perkins]

Escorts should naturally soak up fire however - because unassigned damage tends to get allocated to the escorts by the controlling player,

You don't really need a mechanic to represent this do you?

It's for damaging the carriers and battleships that needs some sort of special rule,

[Tyrel Lohr]

From what I have seen so far in tests of the new CSCR, it really is more favorable to the player to spread damage around a bit, rather than exclusively play "whack-a-mole" with its escorts. The reason for this is that destroying escorts will reduce the amount of Formation Points the squadron will have on future turns. If you were to take damage exclusively to escorts on one round, then on the second round you will be unable to increase the Formation Level of your capital ships to the same level as before.

The Crippling mechanic also serves as a balancing factor, as a player may opt to spread damage around rather than have their units be Crippled (and their stats halved as a result). Given a capital ship and escort, both at Formation Level 2, you can assign more damage to the capital ship before it is Crippled compared to the escort. So you might choose to voluntarily apply a little bit of damage to your capital ships in order to keep your escorts from being Crippled (or Destroyed).

-Tyrel

[MadSeason]

That makes good sense, Tyrel. Can't wait to see more!

[Tyrel Lohr]

That makes good sense, Tyrel. Can't wait to see more!

We are hoping everything works out as planned. A widespread playtest is the only surefire way to know for sure, though, and that is why we are going to push to get a playable playtest version of the CSCR 2 rules out by the end of next month. Once all of the corporate taxes are mailed off, I should have the time to sit down and hammer out the rest of those rules. By then Jay should be back from his trip, too, so the whole crew will be around to put the final touches on those rules.

Survivability is the key for 2E, and hopefully the setup for Formation Levels will make players stop and think when they are applying damage. In 1E, it is a trivial decision to sacrifice your escorts in order to protect the bigger ships; you don't even think twice about it. In 2E, however, you will have to choose between short-term and long-term gains: you can lose the escorts now and save your capital ships, but be less protected on future combat rounds; damage your capital ships now and save your escorts, but end up with more damaged ships that will need repaired.

The worst case scenario with this setup is something along the lines of what Rainer posited: a player builds a bunch of high Defense, high Engine damage sponges that have no other value whatsoever. In that case, a rule that forces at least some damage to be applied to units in lower Formation Levels first will ensure that the valuable ships will receive damage in preference to these sponges (should the sponges increase their own Formation Levels). Directed Damage is still an option for taking out the valuable targets, or you can resign yourself to killing the sponges first.

Given that the player using the sponges had to pay for them, and gave up firepower to do so, you will still get some return on your investment when destroying them.

-Tyrel

[XSiberia]

Some non-crunchy ruminations:

While there are some counter examples that prove the rule (like Jutland), naval battles do tend to be more decisive than their army counterparts. Keagan's The Price of Admiralty and Hughes' Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat are both books I'd recommend for getting into the nitty gritty of why this is.

If I may take a poor stab at summary:
-Naval warfare is not maneuver warfare. Rather, naval conflicts are resolved tactically through concentration of firepower (being the "firstest with he mostest" as the old adage goes). There are no hills, cover or impassable terrain features. The side that shoots first (accurately) with the most usually wins.
-Naval warfare resolves most WIA as MIA/KIA. Crippled ships do not often have the option of limping home with the fleet. When a battle is lost and the other side establishes local maritime supremacy ships that were only damaged and not actual losses are quickly picked off by the victor (especially if damage includes an effect on maneuver). Scifi ships with the ability to jump may mitigate this somewhat but damaged jump drives or inaccurate plots could also result in losses for these. Net result is that things that get hurt tend to be total losses in the end.
-Lost ships necessarily go down with all hands. Naval combat has always been bloodier than land combat--when it takes place. It is exactly for these above three reasons that nations tend to be risk averse to actually putting their fleets into combat.

Most often fleets simply threaten each other, denying the other side operational use of their fleet lest they risk losing it. The fleet that knows itself to be smaller generally spends it's time avoiding combat. However, this still forces the greater power to keep their fleet busy pursuing the smaller fleet. In continental European warfare this meant that fleets of different sizes/power canceled each other out while the armies got down to business.

I actually like that VBAM battles in 1E have been so bloody and decisive. It forces a lot of operational level strategic thinking on the players' parts regarding where, when, and why to commit their fleets. In a CM-moderated campaign with fogged movement this is a lot of fun!

For gameplay purposes, I think that the decisiveness is somewhat mitigated if players are arrayed onto two or more teams. When a decisive battle turns the tide on one front the players might work together and move forces from elsewhere to the beleaguered player's aid.