Planetary Surfaces

[Tyrel Lohr]

While throwing the ball for the dog this afternoon, I started wondering if it would be worth creating an optional rule for the Companion that would allow players to create detailed maps of planetary surfaces? A planet would have a number of planetary hexes equal to its Carrying Capacity, and each hex could therefore support a maximum of 1 Census. A colony always occupies 1 hex, even if it has 0 Census.

The following is a mockup of a planet with 4 Carrying Capacity. There is a Terran Commonwealth colony in hex 0201, with 1 Census present (x1 note).



Then, for giggles, here is an uncolonized planet with 7 Carrying Capacity:



Now, taking the detailed planetary surfaces to their logical conclusion, we could also have players roll to apply terrain to each planet that would provide a bonus of some sort. For example, the Hydrosphere climate value would define how many of a planet's hexes are covered in ocean. Of the non-ocean hexes, we can also roll for the presence of terrain (Mountains, Hills, whatever -- this is an area I could use some direction on from old time wargamers, or those with strengths in this area).

Here's that same planet with some sample terrain:



The random LunarCell planet that I created for the background called for 58% water, so I just took 7 Capacity x 58% and rounded to nearest (4 hexes), and then rolled randomly to determine the placement of those ocean hexes. I also decided on a whim to add mountain terrain to hex 0203. Tadaa! Detailed planet!

It is important to note that everyone can still live in the ocean hexes -- they aren't "no man's land." However, if you were an Aquatic species, you could probably fit more people in one or more of those hexes.

If the general consensus is that ocean hexes should be off limits in this optional rule, we can probably get around that by doubling the number of hexes per planet and requiring two contiguous hexes per Census. I just thought that this was simpler.

So, any thoughts on whether this is something to pursue for the Companion or not? Would you ever see yourself wanting to use these sorts of rules?

-Tyrel

[Tyrel Lohr]

As a general follow up to the previous post, I am wondering if the easiest way of handling terrain (other than the land/sea split) would be to assign a "Terrain Value" to each hex, which would be the cost (in Mobility Rating) to move into that hex from an adjacent one. The costs could be on a scale from 1-3 or 1-4, which would make it roughly equal to that of jump lane travel.

By assign Terrain Values that limit movement between hexes, you would be creating a more interesting ground combat environment. It would also give empires a reason to build Aircraft with Cargo and/or Assault stats, so that they could do air drops from one location to another. Planetary warfare would definitely be changed by the use of detailed planetary maps.

There is a temptation to add climate zones into the mix, too, but I am thinking that is just adding more cruft for cruft's sake. Sure, you could use the Temperature climate stat to determine what type of biomes are present in each hex, but I am not sure how useful that information would be. I think think of some scenarios where it could allow for some new wrinkles in strategy, but I am not sure it is worth the extra bookkeeping. For example, a Jungle hex might provide modifiers to Formation Points and also increase the rate at which out of supply units earn Out of Supply Levels. But, is that really worth the work involved to generate out the planet? I guess it might be, as it would make it so that you would know exactly what the planetary surface is like.

If we did go with the extra detail, I see keeping the Terrain Value itself (display it as a number within a craggy mountain icon in each hex) and then having a text descriptor for the biome type. Each biome type could then have its own set of modifiers, either adding to the Terrain Value, affecting supply, formation points, or what have you.

It would not be difficult to create a biome chart, either. We can use the Temperature climate value as a modifier to a D10 die roll to determine the type of biome in each hex. Low values would lead to ice fields or ice flows, while high values are desert. You could then also divide each planet template into torrid and temperate zones, and give each biome type a preferred zone (ex: deserts appear in torrid zone before temperate, while ice appears in temperate before torrid).

Considering the movement limitations imposed by Terrain Values, Aircraft would always have a movement cost of 1 regardless of the terrain; and "Seacraft" would receive the same bonus when traveling into water hexes (ice flows would slow them down, but that would be a special biome-induced penalty).

-Tyrel

[Gareth_Perkins]

This might be a cool idea for very small-scale games with planets habitable by several empires (the Jovian Chronicles background springs to mind),

Generally I like it, but I think it's far too much for most games (it's very "Light of Altair" if you've played that... Good game if you haven't), especially if using the Admiral-level rules (potentially ten planetary maps per system!)

I wouldn't worry about "Terrain" (or climate zones) too much - other than in a very generic planetary way (i.e.: generate a single terrain type for the planet - one that determines movement rate for ground units), after all the hexes represent thousands of square kilometers - that's potentially a lot of different terrain types within a hex (even on a dustbowl like the moon you have plains, mountains, hills, etc all within your hex), unless you plane on having a lot of hexes on a planet (roughly nine or ten is the max at the moment right - as the remaining couple generally come from moons?)

One thing you could do in this way is give minable asteroids several hexes, just not hexes you can move between (representing the half dozen of so large (read: potentially habitable) asteroids),

<edit> And aircraft need not always have a movement value of one (and may not even be viable on some planets - permanent bad weather may make ground-support impossible even if aicraft are viable)

[wminsing]

To be honest, the only time I could see myself using these rules is a few specific circumstances. The first is in a single-system game (like Jovian Chronicles, as Gareth mentions) where it would be likely that each planet could have more then faction inhabiting it full time. The second is a game where all the players were rival powers on the same homeworld, and could be placing colonies on the same worlds. Finally, in game set in a universe were ground combat is the focus (Heavy Gear, Battletech) I might use these rules. Otherwise I think it's a much too detailed for most games.

On a final note, in order to use this feature at all I'd need to have 'blank' planetary hex maps provided in the book or as a web-extra. I don't have the graphic design skills to make them myself easily, and I suspect a lot of players are in the same boat.

-Will

[Tyrel Lohr]

The consensus appears to be that the rules might be useful in some circumstances (especially games where play is restricted to a single solar system), but would not be used in many situations beyond that -- which tracks with my initial impressions, too.

Gareth, after hearing your argument against addressing the climate issue I have to say that I am in agreement with you. Earth would have all of about 3 land hexes under my current formula, and that means each would represent roughly two continents each (North/South America, Europe/Africa, Asia/Australia), so climate really has no place at that level of detail. I think assigning a Terrain Value is probably just the easiest way of addressing that, to provide a movement cost (in Mobility) to move ground units around on the planet's surface; and that is probably all of the detail needed for planets. Worrying about which hexes are ocean are not really isn't necessary at our current level of detail, either.

Now, if we were to expand the number of hexes per Capacity, we could get into more detail, but that becomes very unwieldy, and is best left for specific scenarios and/or Historical.

Also, Will, I do have mockups created in Illustrator, and if these rules do get ironed out and included in the Companion, the easily-printed templates will be included along with the book. They won't be "pretty" like the ones I posted, but they will be functional.

-Tyrel

[Gareth_Perkins]

Pretty is not a problem - if need be programs like Fractal World Explorer will generate them anyway,

[wminsing]

Also, Will, I do have mockups created in Illustrator, and if these rules do get ironed out and included in the Companion, the easily-printed templates will be included along with the book. They won't be "pretty" like the ones I posted, but they will be functional.

That's fine- I would just need something that covers the standard planet sizes. A big gray circle with hexes in it would be enough.

-Will

[jygro]

In one of my games, I actually did something simular. I wanted to make ground combat a little more 'exciting'. I remember the rules from the board game Imperium (not a bad game overall). Perhaps I could dig out those rules for you.

I think I used a 7 hex hex for each CC of a planet. So a size 4 planet had ~28 hexes! But the game I was modeling was Battletech/Wardogs.

-Bren

[Chyll]

This would actually work pretty well in terms of something I am drafting in anticipation of 2E for Stars Divided: Legacy.


With that in mind, I want it to include the 'planetary system' - that is any orbital elements. So Earth-Moon, or as mentioned with Jovian earlier, having Jupiter and its key orbital bodies included in such a map would be potentiall cool.

[TeknoMerk]

While this looks really cool, I would only use it in one-to-two system games.

In fact, I usually abstract the ground forces even further, much like in the Twilight Imperium 3 board game. This helps keep the empire momentum going.

[Tyrel Lohr]

With that in mind, I want it to include the 'planetary system' - that is any orbital elements. So Earth-Moon, or as mentioned with Jovian earlier, having Jupiter and its key orbital bodies included in such a map would be potentiall cool.

Depending on map scale, a planet's major moons would also need to be included, yes. I think there would have to be rules provided that would allow ships to automatically ferry ground units to moons at their location, too, as a free action (but they can't be used for anything else that turn -- but they could embark/disembark on the same turn, essentially).

While this looks really cool, I would only use it in one-to-two system games.

That is my feeling, too. I couldn't see doing this in an "epic" campaign, but it would work great for a "solar war" style scenario setting where the campaign is limited more or less to a single solar system, with a special emphasis on ground warfare.

It will be interesting to see if players really take the opportunity to exercise their ground unit design freedom when 2E comes out. Some settings beg for it, but in conventional 1E games I have seen few players that really invest in ground units. This is usually because orbital bombardment is too effective in 1E, and ground units are either too expensive to build or cost too much to maintain to be worth their possible usefulness.

-Tyrel

[XSiberia]

I actually think that they need to be pretty, down-loadable extras. I know this isn't the case for a lot of folks, but I could only justify the extra record keeping for something like that if it had exceptional aesthetic appeal. I would actually need something like a map pack (plant backgrounds, hex overlays, unit icons) that I could queue up in photo-shop from which I could quickly produce attractive products like those posted above. Most games are being played online and in today's high-bandwidth world I like to have pretty pictures.

For my grognard-money I do like having planetary campaigns that take many turns (even game years) to resolve. But I can get this out of some tweaks to the operational level system without breaking out a planetary hex map...

Just my two cents. Thanks for all the thought you're putting into product improvement.

[James]

I've noticed there was some discussion on planet surfaces and I wanted to offer some ideas and suggestions on the matter. First there probable should be two standard options for 2e. Option 1 treat the planet's capacity as a complete total object just like in 1E and thus keep ground battles simple and straight forward affairs. The other option that I suggest is to treat each point of capacity as a seperate region. Each region of course is limited to 1 cens, prod, research, facilities, etc. By treating each point of capacity as a seperate region it gives players planetary locations in a modular abstract format much like star systems. Players developing largely empty planets could have the option of building up facilities in seperate regions from their census or other facilities. Both defending and invading players now have choices on where to deploy their forces. It also would make it easier to divide a planet up among several empires. I suggest that RAW be equally available to all empires on a planet as the stat is not tied to Capacity in any way (just to keep things simple). Movement for armies can be from space to a region or from a region to another region during a turn. In an age of space travel its safe to assume that any ground armies can be transport from region to region easily enough. Further more by keeping it somewhat abstract and modular players can easily add more detail for ground campaigns by plugging in a warzone map for each region. Each region can be a seperate warzone using detailed nodel, hex, sectional territories, or even grid based maps. Players can represent Cens and facilities on these warzone maps as special locations and objectives.

The down side of course is more record keeping. The default placement would probable be to start in region 1 and go in numerical order. These options would give players some added detail to ground combat but also leave them with some difficult descisions for placing ground forces as well as facilities. I think something like this should be include in e2 as there are many tabletop wargames out there that players would love to run an interstellar campaign.

On that note you might also want to treat Capacity on moons as seperate regions as well.