VBAM 2E Playtest Files (Was: Any Updates?)

[darbycmcd]

Ah, that must be a great time.....

So now about the question, could we get a bit of a status update?
I know it is probably a bit irritating, but there used to be great communication from you guys, but that seems to have broken down. Remember the only thing worse than people asking anxiously about your next product is no one caring....

[Tyrel Lohr]

I've been pretty much out of communication for the last six months due to various work commitments (Spring is always my busiest time of year), but it is far past time for some sort of an update on where 2E is and what our schedule looks like at the present time. I have to get caught back up on forum posts, too, so expect a lot of replies over the course of the next week as I get things sorted out.

VBAM 2E hit a juncture earlier this year where I had to take a very close look at it and decide where it was headed. The rules version that I had originally envisioned was an all-in-one omnibus that would have consolidated most of the 1E campaign rules into a revised edition that would put all of the rules in one place for easy reference. The reality of the situation, however, is that the rules became too unwieldy in that form and gave players information overload. It got to the point that the rules were becoming extremely overwhelming with too many details being thrown at players.

The last four months have been spent trying to pare the 2E Campaign Guide back down to a more sensible size. Most of the advanced and optional rules will be moved to the 2E Companion so that the main Campaign Guide can focus on the core campaign system rules.

In this wave of edits I ended up having to find final solutions to several existing problems from 1E and the previous 2E versions. The first was establishing extra consistency for how system statistics interacted with colony outputs. Prior to this point you had a mishmash of ways of figuring colony capacities, with some multiplying a colony stat by a system stat and others instead multiplying by colony stats. It was a mess. Now things are standardized so that you take a utilized colony statistic times a system statistic. Here are the main colony capacities:

Economic Capacity: Utilized Productivity x RAW
Production Capacity: Utilized Productivity x RAW
Shipyard Capacity: Utilized Shipyards x RAW
Agriculture Capacity: Utilized Agriculture x Biosphere
Tech Capacity: Utilized Tech x Science
Intel Capacity: Utilized Intel x Jump Lanes

As you can see, Science and Jump Lanes are new system statistics. Jump Lanes is just the number of jump lanes connecting to the system, but Science is an entirely new statistic that describes how suitable a system is for conducting scientific research. Admittedly it isn't perfect to have Science as its own statistic, but it plays to the sci-fi tropes and -- more importantly -- it makes sure that each infrastructure type ties back to a system statistic for purposes of measuring its effectiveness.

The tech leveling and unit design rules have also been reverted to an earlier version. Negative tech levels have been removed from the game (low tech powers will be treated in a fashion similar to 1E, and be included in the Companion), and each tech level now gives you a flat +10% mass unit increase. This makes calculating the number of mass units available when designing new units easier, and it also allows the tech level scale to be extended more easily. A TL 40 empire (+400% mass bonus) can build ships that are 5x as powerful as built by a TL 0 power. In the previous 2E draft the TL 40 power would be close to the 8x strength level.

I have finally arrived at an intel solution that I am mostly happy with. Intel has been a huge sticking point from 1E onwards, and I've tested several different options with varying degrees of success. The current model is that players use colonial intel capacity to purchase intel points (1 intel point costs 1 economic point, as before). These intel points are then spent to initiate intel missions. An intel mission's cost is equal to 10 times its mission difficulty, so a 2 difficulty mission costs 20 intel points to start. The number of campaign turns it takes for a mission to be completed is equal to the distance between the source and target colonies. Utilized Intel is assigned to a mission to determine its chances of success. Mission success chance is calculated by taking the total utilized Intel assigned to the mission divided by the sum of the mission's difficulty and the amount of utilized Intel in the target system (this is defensive intel).

Adding a time delay to intel missions makes it so that players have to plan out their actions more, and any utilized Intel assigned to one mission is unavailable until the mission is completed. Intel points are still in the mix as the currency used to pay for intel missions. I had debated removing intel points altogether, but I think it is better to keep them around so that special empire or species abilities can continue to manipulate them separately from a player's money supply. Forcing players to buy intel points for later use also adds another resource that has to be managed into the mix.

Rules discussions in January also spurred a final change to how population growth is achieved in 2E. The current rules base the number of population points an empire earns each turn from its colonies to the amount of excess agriculture points it produces. Empires with plentiful food supplies will therefore experience more population growth than those that can barely feed all of their Census. As with Science this change is more of a game mechanic issue than anything else, but I like it because it makes population growth easier to track while at the same time giving players a reason to compete for high Biosphere systems.

Speaking of system competition, it is important to point out that the system statistics now include Carrying Capacity, RAW, Biosphere, Science, and Jump Lanes. Three of these existed in 1E, although Jump Lanes was not considered a system statistic until now. RAW remains the most important system resource, but Biosphere is now needed for population growth, Science for tech research, and Jump Lanes for intelligence gathering and trade. Even if a system has a bad RAW value, it might possess an abundance of one or more of the other statistics which make it worth colonizing.

One other significant structural change to the 2E rules is a reversal back to the 1E layout of having the bulk of the rules laid out in an order that follow the sequence of play for a campaign turn. Rules that don't relate directly to the sequence of play, such as rules for star systems, colonies, and empires, are presented in their own chapters, but most of the rules appear in the third chapter, much as in 1E. I resisted doing this for the longest time so that all of the rules of a certain type could be consolidated, but this style does make it easier for the players to logically step through a campaign turn in order with all of the relevant rules provided in the correct order.

What I am currently doing is doing another pass through the old draft documents to see if there are any rules leftover that need converted into the current version of the rules or copied and pasted into the Companion document for resolution in that supplement. Once I have isolated and saved all important rule stubs I am going to finish off the draft document, send it around to the usual suspects, and then do some final testing before getting the book finished and out the door.

The end result of the changes to the book is that the Campaign Guide itself will have about the same amount of rules as the original version, but with updated rules that will hopefully add a bit more strategic depth and fix many of the problems encountered by players in 1E. The advanced rules (i.e., the ones I actually enjoy writing) will then be moved to secondary products to make the book flow better. I am not done pruning yet, and there is a good chance that more of the diplomacy rules will get cut back or that some intel missions that need more testing might be deferred to a later book.

With the content cuts, the Campaign Guide is currently sitting at about 90 pages before adding in scenarios and map generation text. The CSCR also needs a final update to reflect recent changes, but that might actually end up reducing page count as some simplifications are implemented. The final book should end up being around the 120-130 page size of the original 1E book. There is going to be less interior art this time around, however, so it should be more content dense than before.

The one spot of bright news is that we do have cover artwork completed for the first four books -- the bad news is that we have to get the 2E rules done first before we can get these published.

[darbycmcd]

Thank you for the update. It sounds like things are grinding forward. How soon after the base rules do you expect to have the companion available? I actually prefer more complex rules, so something more involved than basic 1st edition and less complex than starfire would hit the spot for me!

[Tyrel Lohr]

Thank you for the update. It sounds like things are grinding forward. How soon after the base rules do you expect to have the companion available? I actually prefer more complex rules, so something more involved than basic 1st edition and less complex than starfire would hit the spot for me!

The Campaign Companion should be out within about 45 days of the Campaign Guide's release. That will give us some extra time to adjust the Companion's contents should there be any post-release errata for the Campaign Guide. As much as I would like the Campaign Guide to be a pristine, flawless product, I know that there is probably going to be something that gets by us or has unintended interactions with other rules.

The time delay between the Campaign Guide and Companion will be used to fine tune the Companion's contents and get the Menagerie and Those Who Serve rules finished. In theory we might be able to get the entire slate of refreshed 2E books out within a 6 month period, but we are going to adopt a more conservative release schedule and just remain optimistic that we might be able to release them more quickly.

As for the contents of the Companion, right now it is looking like the book will contain the advanced rules for detailed star system generation rules, special traits (including alien ruins, nebulae, etc.), civil wars, low tech powers, exploration, etc. -- basically a refined "best of" set similar to what was found in the 1E Companion, with an expansion on each of the concepts that adds some extra details that 1E lacked.

[Tyrel Lohr]

Just a quick update to let people know that, in between doing billing and packing up for vacation, I am working on prepping the current draft of the 2E playtest rules prepped for release later tonight. I am currently working on rewriting the Encounters rules to get those finalized to a point that players can use them. The CSCR itself probably won't be sussed out until Monday or Tuesday before I leave on Wednesday, but at the very worst case I will just draft a primer that includes the basic flow of the CSCR and go from there. Ditto for the unit design rules -- they are extremely easy to use, but the section that details them probably won't get rewritten until I am up in the mountains and start banging away at it.

What will be released will be enough rules so that, in combination with some 1E knowledge to cover the current leaps in logic, players should be able to run at least a cursory game to try out the new components and see if there is anything that is too horribly broken.

I am gone from August 10 - 22, and during that time I'll be finalizing the sections of the rules that haven't been completely rewritten and then integrating the notes that come up while I'm gone. I think the plan is still for Jay to run a playtest here on the forums while I'm out, so look for that to start later this week.

[Tyrel Lohr]

I didn't get as far as I had hoped, and I don't think I will be able to get much more added before I leave Wednesday, but here is a data dump of the current playtest draft:

http://www.vbamgames.com/VBAM2E_20110807.pdf

The contents of Chapter 3: Playing a Game are the most current and take precedence over rules found elsewhere in the book. I didn't get a chance to rewrite the intel rules, either, but they will follow a system similar to that found in the Bombardment rules, with intel points assigned to missions and chance of success equal to IP / (Difficulty x 10). Mission difficulties will also be adjusted to include stat-based modifiers. I may still get that fix done before I leave, but I wanted to make that deviation from the rules as written explicit.

Another section that I didn't get to is the unit design rules. They are dreadfully simple. You set your construction cost, and then the number of mass units you have to spend is equal to construction cost x (100% + 10% x TL), rounding fractions to the nearest whole number. All of your base states cost 1 MU per point of rating. The costs for special abilities tend to be fairly low, usually 1:1 like the base stats. Scout currently costs 2 MU (this might be reduced once I finish fleshing that out), while FTL and Atmospheric currently cost 25% x Construction Cost (retain fractional costs until the end of building).

A unit's maintenance cost is equal to its total MUs / 10 (round to nearest), with a special chart for units with < 5 MU spent on their designs (which I may get rid of and just set it to a flat 1/2, just for simplicty).

Completion time for construction is construction cost / 5 (round up), and command rating is construction cost / 10 (round up)

The Readiness table may still end up being shifted so that it is +-4 like the Surprise table that can be found earlier in the Encounter rules. Also, as with the Starmada Edition, the number of flights that start a battle launched is determined by a task force's initial Readiness. +-0 is 50%, and it goes up 10 percentiles per Readiness shift either direction. So a +3 Readiness lets you start with 80% launched instead. Round fractions down in all cases. This means a 9 Hangar carrier at +3 Readiness would start with 9 x 80% = 7.2 = 7 EP of fighters already launched at the start of the battle. Flights launch land at the end of a combat round, and that max is still TBA. I originally had a Launch ability that modified it, but it is either going to be tied to a unit's command cost or Command rating. CR is the most likely candidate. If that was the case, and our 9 Hangar carrier had 6 Command, it could launch/land a combination of 6 EP of flights per round. Only launched flights can fight or take damage, but landed flights can retreat with the carrier (for FTL retreat option).

The CSCR in the draft is an older version that needs heavy revision -- probably complete replacement, because it is from before some of the newer elements were refined. Please refer to the Battle of the Dreadnoughts post for a better overview of the new CSCR and how it works. I might be able to get an encounter + CSCR example that includes multiple squadrons and carriers/flights done and posted before I leave on Wednesday, just so that Jay and Charlie have more than my fragmented notes to work from.

Again, everything outside of Chapter 3 is more or less a no man's land. A lot of the information is current, but there is no way of telling what is or what isn't if you don't already know. Part of what I am going to be doing on vacation is completing the rewrite and reconciling the previous drafts and cleaning this up to near final form in preparation for release.

If you see any major glaring errors don't be afraid to point them out. I am going to go over everything once I get back and see what additional changes or problems have been found and then incorporate them into the "Bighorns" draft of the rules. Once that's done we should be about ready to start layout and make any final modifications for release.

[Iron Sky]

I just skimmed through most of the book, here's a few initial impressions from someone who has never played VBAM before:

*Propaganda: Insurgency is cool.
*Casus belli is only defined after it's mentioned several times. I was wondering if I'd missed it's definition somewhere.
*Embassies seem very expensive for what they do and how easy they are to destroy.
*10 EP for a 50% chance at a 1 point relations shift seems expensive. Maybe scale it according to the current relationship rating somehow? Say, (100 - relations) / 10 (round up) to increase and relations / 10 (round up) to decrease? Scale it according to the census? Dunno.
*Selling units via a Military Treaty is cool.
*I like the Xenophobia = relationship degradation chance for treaty failure. Puts a price on treaty spamming.
*The surprise/intensity/scenario/command action stuff is still one of the most unique and coolest things about this system. I love it.
*Martial Law is cool. The morale system in general is neat.
*It never says explicitly what Trade Links do in the section they are introduced.
*Prototyping is a cool idea, but the implementation is unclear. I'm assuming it's something like: "Pay for and allocate Shipyards for the ship as normal, but progress does not begin until the prototyping is complete". Is that it?
*Does mothballing do the 25% maintenance cost from the chart or the 0 in the description?

Took about an hour-and-a-half to skim through (minute a page I guess). Not sure whether it'd be enough to actually run a practice solo game, but that can wait until later this week when I have more time.

[Tyrel Lohr]

*Casus belli is only defined after it's mentioned several times. I was wondering if I'd missed it's definition somewhere.
*Embassies seem very expensive for what they do and how easy they are to destroy.
*10 EP for a 50% chance at a 1 point relations shift seems expensive. Maybe scale it according to the current relationship rating somehow? Say, (100 - relations) / 10 (round up) to increase and relations / 10 (round up) to decrease? Scale it according to the census? Dunno.

The diplomacy section is one that I want to work on while I'm on vacation to even out the rough spots. Most of it was written about a year ago during a previous draft phase, and despite being updated six months ago it still has some older concepts that don't jive with other sections of the rules that follow it.

The casus belli rules may end up being removed or otherwise modified so that we end up with diplomacy checks for each relationship, using a similar mechanic to what's used with piracy and morale checks. The casus belli modifiers can then be more or less rolled into the modifiers for the diplomacy check, or at least described in tandem with them.

Embassies might cost too much. The idea is to force players to invest in diplomacy, and having an embassy is the only way that two non-contiguous empires can be in contact with another. Consider the following scenario with Empires A, B, and C bordering each other:

A -- B -- C

A is in contact with B but not C. A is in contact with B and C. C is in contact with B but not A. A and C must build embassies in B before they can establish diplomatic contact, or else extend their borders so that they touch. I may relax this requirement so that being able to trace supply into the opponent's space is the requirement, which makes a bit more sense while at the same time diminishing the role of embassies.

Another option I have considered recently is to have embassies function similar to how Intel infrastructure does in the recent drafts. Players can initiate "diplomatic missions" from their embassies or capitals to try and influence relations with other powers. The completion time is the distance between embassies/capitals, and a successful mission would either raise or lower relationship values. It would essentially move the diplomatic sabotage missions over to diplomacy instead of intel and give diplomatic powers something to do that didn't involve spying. I haven't worked out all the details for how that would work, but it is something I am going to test out while on vacation to see if it is viable.

*I like the Xenophobia = relationship degradation chance for treaty failure. Puts a price on treaty spamming.

That's the idea, otherwise there is nothing stopping an empire from just continually harassing an opponent until they finally sign a treaty. You can have some long-term negotiations, but eventually you'll either sign the treaty or talks will just break down and the discussion will end until the relationship recovers.

*The surprise/intensity/scenario/command action stuff is still one of the most unique and coolest things about this system. I love it.

The major change to 2E combat that I really have been pushing for is to make it more interactive and with a greater narrative flow. Jay took the first steps towards this with his original intensity/commitment level concept for Federation Admiral, then I took it one step further by trying to tie it into a broader setting. I am still trying to get the intensity costs and encounter totals balanced out and think I may have to go back to having the number of formations in an encounter influence the intensity (1D6 per 5 formations, rounding up?), but I like the results I have seen so far.

The biggest advantage that the system has coming from VBAM 1E is that blow out battles are much less likely, and it is harder for an enemy to come in and take complete control of a system in a single campaign turn. Often there won't be enough intensity available to generate more than one scenario per turn, or else an opponent may purposefully burn off intensity to prevent you from generating more scenarios. This lends itself to fighting low-level border wars when you only have a limited number of squadrons in a fight, while the intensity and carnage ramps up as you poor more units into an encounter.

The command action concept is somewhat borrowed (or at least inspired) from the last revision of the CSCR (which is the version in this draft, I think) where players had more command decisions to make at the start of each battle or combat round. This method of spending command points to modify scenario setup gives both players an opportunity to define the narrative for what happened to lead to the battle.

*It never says explicitly what Trade Links do in the section they are introduced.

I'll add that to the list to get fixed. At one point all of the commerce rules were together in their own chapter, but when I went back to a 1E-style sequence of play rule progression they got separate.

*Prototyping is a cool idea, but the implementation is unclear. I'm assuming it's something like: "Pay for and allocate Shipyards for the ship as normal, but progress does not begin until the prototyping is complete". Is that it?

I'll clean that up. The idea is that you purchase the new unit but the completion time doesn't proceed until the prototyping is completed successfully. Your interpretation appears to be correct. Before I had that back-loaded so you didn't roll for prototyping success until after the unit was completed, but that really don't make much sense.

*Does mothballing do the 25% maintenance cost from the chart or the 0 in the description?

I have to double check that to make sure. In 1E it was 0, but I think I had to add a maintenance cost to mothballed units to keep a player from just building up a huge number of mothballed units and sitting on them. There are a few other fixes that might make that work better, including going back to zero maintenance but having new units consume production/shipyard capacity when activated (which might already be the case).

[Vandervecken]

After seeing that Second Edition does not look dead; in fact, these last 2 weeks have seen tremendous board activity, I have gone from board lurker to registered member. And I like what I have seen. I almost wish I hadn't known that VBAM Games had started the process to update you Campaign System, for I have been waiting for over a year now to buy this mythical 2nd Edition when it comes out. My love affair with 4X space games started decades ago both on paper and on computer, and I like the niche your game system seems to fill, especially with some of the stuff I've heard about I can add with the Companion and Menagerie 2nd editions when they to go from etherial to corporial status, now hopefully just months away.

Where would you rate the difficulty levels for the 2E Campaign System with just the primary rules book, and where you see the system rated with all rules converted to 2E ? Use Rock, Nova, Scissors as a '1' rating and Starfire Ultimate Uber rules as a '100' (accountants/lawyers included).

Thanks, this will help me sell the VBAM game system to my fellow gamers.

[Gareth_Perkins]

I'll clean that up. The idea is that you purchase the new unit but the completion time doesn't proceed until the prototyping is completed successfully. Your interpretation appears to be correct. Before I had that back-loaded so you didn't roll for prototyping success until after the unit was completed, but that really don't make much sense.

Tyrel,

Have you considered making prototypes cost TP instead of EP (either as the full cost, or as a surcharge to the unit cost),

Also, do prototypes (or indeed, any ship) cost maintenance during production? This could also cost TP or EP as is deemed appropriate, It seems like there should be some cost incurred during the prototyping process.

Whilst using TP in place of EP seems like a trivial change (after all, the cost is effectively the same), it should have some interesting effects on empires with low levels of tech infrastructure, which might be quite interesting (and apt, representing the tech community being tied up with a specific project rather than working towards scientific advancement in general).

Regardless, I have to say that while the current prototyping rules are less detailed than previous iterations, they are much cleaner and simpler to play out - a definite improvement.

Just to clarify the process, it goes like this, right?

1/ Pay the unit cost
2/ Begin prototyping
3/ When prototyping is completed, begin production

Also, if I have multiple prototypes out, do they advance as a unit, or as individuals? When one is completed, what happens to the other units?

[Vandervecken]

Gareth,

Tyrel answered these last few questions in another post, well at least some

There is a maint cost to pay for your new designs, even when they are in the prototype stage that would be ..

2a) pay maintenance for prototype


Also, yes you can have multiple versions of a prototype being worked on, each with it's own individual rolls (Boeing vs Lockheed/Martin, eh ?). Each prototype you buy pays maint. every turn.

Look around the board for his original post which has designer notes on why Tyrel decided to go that route, I found it interesting; and more complete than what I can remember as well.

[mwaschak]

And I like what I have seen. I almost wish I hadn't known that VBAM Games had started the process to update you Campaign System, for I have been waiting for over a year now to buy this mythical 2nd Edition when it comes out. My love affair with 4X space games started decades ago both on paper and on computer, and I like the niche your game system seems to fill, especially with some of the stuff I've heard about I can add with the Companion and Menagerie 2nd editions when they to go from etherial to corporial status, now hopefully just months away.

Something to remember is that 1E won't run off in to the wilderness and die. We spent a lot of time and effort on 1E, and believe it still has a place in the product line. So while 2E will become the new flagship product and centerpiece for VBAM game development, 1E will remain fully supported.

-Jay

[Tyrel Lohr]

Vandervecken, I'll fully admit that the rumors of the game's death are justified from a pessimistic outlook of 2E's development. Take one step forward, two steps back seems to have been the operating pace for the project for some time, and it was only about six months ago that some good forward momentum was regained on the project after the last abortive rewrite and testing. It has been absolutely maddening getting closer and closer to being finished only to find a lose end or unintended consequence that caused another wave of rewrites. Luckily, after my week in the mountains working on the rules, I haven't found anything that wasn't easily fixable or that couldn't be addressed by reverting back to an earlier solution. My spirits are extremely high at this point that, after a bit of final writing, draft merging (the biggest chore), and testing, it will be ready for release. It looks like we have a good start on a public playtest here on the forums, and I am continuing to do solo testing on my end. That is actually what I have planned for my last two days of vacation tomorrow and Sunday: run a test game and see what shakes out after the changes I made earlier this week.

Where would you rate the difficulty levels for the 2E Campaign System with just the primary rules book, and where you see the system rated with all rules converted to 2E ? Use Rock, Nova, Scissors as a '1' rating and Starfire Ultimate Uber rules as a '100' (accountants/lawyers included).

On that difficulty scale, I would rate the basic 2E Campaign System as provided in the 2E Campaign Guide to be about a 40, with spikes here and there to 55-60. The core rules themselves are straightforward and, more importantly, consistent, something that 1E often lacked. There are six different system statistics and seven colony statistics, but the way that they interact is pretty straightforward (system stat x colony stat = something), and the costs to develop a colony are also very easy to remember (10 x new value, in most cases). Once you get those basics down you've probably learned 40-50% of what you are going to be dealing with in the game on a regular basis. The only problem you might run into (thus the spikes) is when you encounter certain "spot rules" (I think that's the right term) that are used very infrequently or only occur under certain special circumstances. Otherwise, after a few games, the flow of the rules should become apparent and you'll be able to hammer through turns in 10 minutes or less per player. In the Human Republic playtest thread, it was taking me maybe 5 minutes per turn to actually write orders and generate the turn; most of the time was spent writing the descriptive information for the updates. In a 6-player campaign, turn generation would probably take about 30 minutes plus whatever time is required to play out battles or resolve encounters.

A larger number of encounters would slow play down, but most battles should be able to be resolved in the CSCR in less than 5-10 minutes a piece. 2E streamlines encounters by limiting the opportunities for players to reorganize their squadrons/corps, so battles end up being a case of "I have these three squadrons, you have those two, let's fight!" unless a player spends command points to reorganize squadrons. Scenario intensity is also maintained at a level where you can have several battles in a single encounter, but not so much intensity that you are going to have to resolve a huge number of individual battles.

Now, when you start adding optional rules such as those in the Companion, Menagerie, or Those Who Serve, you are probably going to be adding up to +10 percentiles to the "crunch factor" per book, depending on the set of rules that you are adding to the game. For example, the multi-planet star system rules from the Companion will expand the number of statistic sources by 5-6 times, which increases the bookkeeping required in those campaigns. The species and social modifiers from the Menagerie forces the players to track Census by species and apply bonuses/penalties to colonies based on their majority population. Those Who Serve introduced elite officers and crews, which require tracking characters that provide bonuses and penalties to play similar to how the Menagerie does with species; and you have to track experience points that are spent on the officer/crew purchases.

Adding all of the rules from those three books plus the expanded special technologies from the Engineering Manual will give you a game with a crunch close to the 80-90 mark. It still doesn't reach Starfire levels of insanity (you are not tracking individual missiles!), but it gets top heavy enough that most players would be roundly intimidated by the rules. Of course, very few players would want to use all of those rules together because they either won't like some of the optional rules or they won't be applicable to the kind of game that they are trying to run.

The game system is also extremely flexible and you can easily make uniform changes to values here and there to fine tune the game to your liking. The best example concerns fleet sizes. Do you want your players to be able to field enormous fleets? Fine, just adjust the construction and maintenance costs to encourage massive military buildups. Do you prefer a setting where individual ships are more important and large fleets rare (i.e., are you using a tactical game and want to fight reasonable battles)? Then increase construction and maintenance costs to keep the number of units in the game low. You can do the same with system statistics to make games more resource rich or resource poor to fit your preferred style of play.

You can also completely eliminate certain aspects of the rules if you want. Don't want to deal with intel because you find the intel rules fiddly? Just get rid of it. Is tech advancement a bore? Go ahead and boot it out the door. It is extremely easy to apply home rules or excise elements from the game.

[Tyrel Lohr]

Have you considered making prototypes cost TP instead of EP (either as the full cost, or as a surcharge to the unit cost),

I had considered this, along with the idea of paying for colony tech level upgrades using tech points instead of economic points. This led to some conceptual issues in regards to the automatic tech advancement rules, and I ultimately decided that it wasn't worth the hassle.

That being said, your comment just gave me a thought: what if the number of prototypes that could be under construction at a colony is tied to its utilized Tech value? Or perhaps the maximum construction cost of prototypes under construction would be equal to tech capacity? This would tie prototype construction to Tech, but in a sideways fashion.

Also, do prototypes (or indeed, any ship) cost maintenance during production? This could also cost TP or EP as is deemed appropriate, It seems like there should be some cost incurred during the prototyping process.

This is a subject that I have been wrestling with since back in the days of the 1E Companion. Originally I was against making empires pay to maintain units that were under construction, or in this case still being prototyped, but the last year has led me into the other camp: units should pay maintenance during construction, as much because it makes the math simpler than anything else. If you add a unit to the maintenance lists when it is first purchased there is less chance you will forget to do so when it is finally completed!

Whilst using TP in place of EP seems like a trivial change (after all, the cost is effectively the same), it should have some interesting effects on empires with low levels of tech infrastructure, which might be quite interesting (and apt, representing the tech community being tied up with a specific project rather than working towards scientific advancement in general).

I agree that the concept has a certain appeal to it. The idea I proposed above about limiting prototyping by tech capacity is the easiest way to implement the change without rocking any other proverbial boats. The issue then becomes whether or not the prototypes should consume this tech capacity or just use it as a hard cap on prototype construction? I favor the latter hard cap solution, as I have been purposefully moving 2E away from having to track how much capacity is being used and what is available and just making it a per-turn calculus that is easier for players to remember.

Strictly speaking, using tech capacity as a cap harkens back to the 1E way of doing things, and to be truly in line with 2E the limits should instead be applied on a per-turn basis, too, so the maximum construction cost of prototypes purchased per turn is equal to the colony's tech capacity. This option could be combined with a limit of 1 prototype per 1 utilized Tech to limit both the size/cost and number of units that a colony can prototype.

Any clear preference between these options?

Regardless, I have to say that while the current prototyping rules are less detailed than previous iterations, they are much cleaner and simpler to play out - a definite improvement.

Thank you. One of the more time consuming (and ultimately rewarding) aspects of 2E's development has been taking the existing rules and slowly tearing them down and rearranging them until you get the same essential results while reducing the amount of time/hassle the players or CM have to go through to get there. The 1E prototyping rules in the Companion are nicely detailed and have a multitude of effects, but they also add enough exceptions and extra work that it can become difficult to keep track of. I printed off a copy of Noel Weer's Narum Authority diary that I rescued from my old Pegasus Mail folder before I left on vacation, and it made me remember just how annoying the prototype results could be, especially cost effects for fighters that already cost 1/4 to build.

Just to clarify the process, it goes like this, right?

1/ Pay the unit cost
2/ Begin prototyping
3/ When prototyping is completed, begin production

Also, if I have multiple prototypes out, do they advance as a unit, or as individuals? When one is completed, what happens to the other units?

That looks to be the correct order of operations. You purchase the unit on Turn X, and then get to start prototyping and paying maintenance that turn. Each subsequent Construction Phase you roll for prototyping again until you are successful, at which point you start working towards the unit's actual completion time. This ends up looking like this:

Turn 1: Bought a 10 EP light cruiser. First prototyping roll is a 6, no effect.
Turn 2: Prototyping roll is a 9, +1 to future rolls (+1).
Turn 3: Prototyping roll is a 6+1 = 7, +1 to future rolls (+2).
Turn 4: Prototyping roll is a 8+2 = 10, +1 to future rolls (+3).
Turn 5: Prototyping roll is a 7+3 = 9, +1 to future rolls (+4).
Turn 6: Prototyping roll is a 5+4 = 9, +1 to future rolls (+5).
Turn 7: Prototyping roll is a 7+5 = 12, Prototype Complete
Turn 8: Construction begins (1/5)
Turn 9: Construction continues (2/5)
Turn 10: Construction continues (3/5)
Turn 11: Construction continues (4/5)
Turn 12: Construction completed (5/5); unit available for assignment on Turn 13

It took 12 turns to achieve completion, but would have done so sooner if my rolls hadn't have been quite so lousy. In any event, it is much cleaner than before. Certain elite officers or alien civilizations could receive modifiers to their rolls on this chart, too, that would make it either easier or harder for them to successfully prototype units.

(Exploration will likely end up with the same chart as this, as that was the original inspiration for this new prototyping chart. The Scout and Explorer abilities will be marginalized slightly as a result, with the caveat that only squadrons containing units with these abilities can explore.)

In answer to the last part of your question, prototyping for a unit class ends once one class member rolls a success. If a player build three of those cruisers and one rolled a success on the first turn, then prototyping would be complete for all of them and they would start actual construction on the next turn.

...I am really liking the tech capacity / utilized Tech limit idea. I just have to say it again. That seems to be a good way of limiting prototyping while making Tech infrastructure more important. I like it.

[Tyrel Lohr]

Something to remember is that 1E won't run off in to the wilderness and die. We spent a lot of time and effort on 1E, and believe it still has a place in the product line. So while 2E will become the new flagship product and centerpiece for VBAM game development, 1E will remain fully supported.

Perhaps more surprising, once the 2E products are released I will actually be going back and reformatting 1E into a 2E-style supplement (same interior layout and cover design) and integrating the existing errata into the book. The 1E Campaign Guide will then be available in a refreshed form for players that either prefer that edition and want an updated book or those that weren't around for 1E and are interested in the differences between it and 2E.

The 1E Companion and Menagerie will receive the same treatment, though the various other 1E supplements won't. I know I have a personal preference with Empire Rising to just redo most of its wholesale for 2E, and I think Jay has expressed and interest in advancing the Boltian/Kuissian timeline and building off of the original WBK book from there.