December 2011 Forum Playtest

[Tyrel Lohr]

@virtutis.umbra: Very interesting choice going split Carrier/Tender on the escort tender, virtutis. That ship is small enough to be built in large numbers, too, which is always beneficial, too. In combination, the Beaks give the Hawks some offensive firepower that they would otherwise lack. The Carrier is interesting because it lets the Phoenix Republic field some fighters alongside the gunboats to help split enemy Point Defense.

@mavikfelna: Without adding up specific construction costs, the New Zion Defense League forces look good. That gives you a nice mobile force but keeps enough space and ground forces in your home system to keep piracy and system loyalty under control. The size of the ground forces in particular reduce your chance of Morale loss at homeworld to 1% (the minimum amount). It also give the NZDL some room to maneuver should it decide to start moving ground forces around.

Another important thing to note: you can move and land ground forces in systems that are uninhabited. So you could drop troops off in a system to maintain a definite claim to the system. An enemy would have to declare against you to start bombing your troops if they wanted to get rid of you.

@nimrodd: The more the merrier! Jump right in! Everyone that gets setup information to me over the weekend will get dealt into the game. I'll be sitting down to get the initial map created and player sheets mailed out tomorrow morning, and even if the initial round of players get a few turns in there will still be room for more players.

[Tyrel Lohr]

Since Mavikfelna has his force already purchased and ready to go, I'm sending him his first turn. We'll get everyone else caught up once the time comes. Everyone else can get me their starting force information and we'll go from there.

[virtutis.umbra]

Here's my 100 EP starting construction. I added some empire-specific class names for flavor, but other than the Gunboat and Escort Tender designs the rest are all from Tyrel's generic starting list. Let me know if it's not obvious which ones are what...

Valiant Squadron

• Valiant Hawk - Hawk Escort Tender
• Valiant Strike - Beak Strike Gunboat
• Valiant Wing - Talon Heavy Aerofighter

Dauntless Squadron

• Dauntless Hawk - Hawk Escort Tender
• Dauntless Strike - Beak Strike Gunboat
• Dauntless Wing - Talon Heavy Aerofighter

Intrepid Squadron

• Intrepid Hawk - Hawk Escort Tender
• Intrepid Strike - Beak Strike Gunboat
• Intrepid Wing - Talon Heavy Aerofighter

Resilient Squadron

• Resilient Hawk - Hawk Escort Tender
• Resilient Strike - Beak Strike Gunboat
• Resilient Wing - Talon Heavy Aerofighter

Phoenix Fleet

• Flight - Eagle Light Cruiser
• Lancer - Raven Frigate
• Corsair - Raven Frigate
• Albatross - Albatross Freighter
• 2d Phoenix Irreg. - Light Infantry

Phoenix Home Guard

• Aerie Station - Aerie Orbital Base
• Rookery Alpha - Rookery Defense Station
• 1st Phoenix Guards - Medium Infantry
• 1st Phoenix Irreg. - Light Infantry

[Tyrel Lohr]

I'll get the information plugged into Excel and email you your Turn 1 file in about an hour, virtutis.umbra. Mavikfelna is up to Turn 5 and going strong, but over the next few days we can get everyone caught up and in synch.

[nimrodd]

Okay, since I have my turn orders, I am just wanting to make sure I have this right.

The Max Infrastructure we can have is equal to the systems Carrying Capacity + Census, so for this game we start with a max of 18 Infrastructure on our homeworlds. That Infrastructure is already maxed out with Productivity, Shipyards and Agriculture of 4 each and Tech and Intel of 3 each.

We get 20 Agriculture points per turn and (at the beginning) we spend 2 per Census to feed them, leaving us with 4 Agriculture Points to turn into 4 Population Points. Now according to page 19, it costs 50 PP to colonize a new system, so it will be 13 turns before we have the PP to colonize a new system (on the 14th turn). And we can't increase this speed without tearing apart other infrastructure first.

I did like the ability to purchase an initial colony in 1E colony fleets.

[nimrodd]

Looking at my Excel.PDF you sent me, the Piracy % does not match up to the book. It looks like you are using a 2% per census (same as Morale), instead of the 5% per the playtest files on page 49.

Is this the correct value, or is your Excel sheet wrong?

[Tyrel Lohr]

The Max Infrastructure we can have is equal to the systems Carrying Capacity + Census, so for this game we start with a max of 18 Infrastructure on our homeworlds. That Infrastructure is already maxed out with Productivity, Shipyards and Agriculture of 4 each and Tech and Intel of 3 each.

We get 20 Agriculture points per turn and (at the beginning) we spend 2 per Census to feed them, leaving us with 4 Agriculture Points to turn into 4 Population Points. Now according to page 19, it costs 50 PP to colonize a new system, so it will be 13 turns before we have the PP to colonize a new system (on the 14th turn). And we can't increase this speed without tearing apart other infrastructure first.

This is all correct. I had debated on giving you less infrastructure or letting the individual players assign 3 infrastructure as they desired, but opted for the current solution to save on setup time.

If you want to ramp up population point production, the best option will be to sell off an infrastructure at the home system on one turn and then purchase a new piece of infrastructure on the next. Depending on your strategy, Shipyards or Intel are probably the two safest infrastructure types to dismantle for space.

For faster short-term colonization, you could also reduce the population at your homeworld. It would get some population points back and decrease your tech advancement costs.

I did like the ability to purchase an initial colony in 1E colony fleets.

Depending on how this playtest plays out, the rules may shift back to having colonies be purchased with economic points instead of population points. I've gone back and forth between the two options over the last few months, and the current rules were established when it was looking like players were building up quite a bit of excess population points. Being able to purchase colonies with economic points would address your concern, but I worry that it would lead to too rapid of a build up of Census at new colonies. I am probably overthinking this, though, and need to ponder on it a bit before I make a decision one way or another.

Looking at my Excel.PDF you sent me, the Piracy % does not match up to the book. It looks like you are using a 2% per census (same as Morale), instead of the 5% per the playtest files on page 49.

Is this the correct value, or is your Excel sheet wrong?

I updated the text for the Morale chance and forgot to do the same to the Piracy chance. They were both originally 5% x Census, which proved to be way too high. I shifted them down to 2% in response, though I may still increase them back to 3% so that the chances will peg out at about ~35% for a 10 Census colony. The other option is to keep it at 2% x Census but increase the base chance to 10% on both. That would have a similar effect.

[nimrodd]

I did like the ability to purchase an initial colony in 1E colony fleets.

Depending on how this playtest plays out, the rules may shift back to having colonies be purchased with economic points instead of population points. I've gone back and forth between the two options over the last few months, and the current rules were established when it was looking like players were building up quite a bit of excess population points. Being able to purchase colonies with economic points would address your concern, but I worry that it would lead to too rapid of a build up of Census at new colonies. I am probably overthinking this, though, and need to ponder on it a bit before I make a decision one way or another.

I would just put in the rules that Colonization Fleets, or Purchasing a new Colony, can only be done to initiate a colony, it cannot be used to build up census.

I am just afraid that with that slow a buildup of population points (50 PP / 4 PP Excess per turn = 12.5 turns) will make this a frustrating game for exploration. Yes, in this case you gave us a jump in starting PP, but that just means that I will be able to do my first colony on turn 9, but my second will still be 13 turns after that.

Also, with the way Infrastructure has been scaled back (our homeworld's income is 1/3 of what a First Edition homeworld would give you), and now that ships cost a lot more, you have an exponential effect of fleets being a quarter of what First Edition players have come to expect.

Okay, I hope that this gets taken the right way. I liked VBAM 1.0 because we could have somewhat large fleets flying about (and it was hard enough to do that at times), that this scaling back, to me, is the wrong way to go. And it does not appear that this playtest homeworld is scaled back very far.

[Iron Sky]

Depending on how this playtest plays out, the rules may shift back to having colonies be purchased with economic points instead of population points. I've gone back and forth between the two options over the last few months, and the current rules were established when it was looking like players were building up quite a bit of excess population points. Being able to purchase colonies with economic points would address your concern, but I worry that it would lead to too rapid of a build up of Census at new colonies. I am probably overthinking this, though, and need to ponder on it a bit before I make a decision one way or another.

You could let people do a mix of population and economic points rather than just going one or the other?

[Tyrel Lohr]

I would just put in the rules that Colonization Fleets, or Purchasing a new Colony, can only be done to initiate a colony, it cannot be used to build up census.

The only way to purchase Census is via population increases, which cost 50 PP, so economic output isn't a problem there. You can have all the money in the world coming in and it won't help you accelerate your population growth unless you direct it towards building up a strong reserve of Agriculture infrastructure and associated food production.

I am just afraid that with that slow a buildup of population points (50 PP / 4 PP Excess per turn = 12.5 turns) will make this a frustrating game for exploration. Yes, in this case you gave us a jump in starting PP, but that just means that I will be able to do my first colony on turn 9, but my second will still be 13 turns after that.

I think that is a valid argument for making the colonization of a system cost economic points instead of population points. That would address the issue of establishing colonies, but Census growth would still be limited to about what we would expect from 1E (1 Census per 12 turns was common there). Now, this does get thrown for a loop once you start colonizing and find a nice high Biosphere system to start building up. Find a BIO 4 system with 6 Capacity, and you could colonize it and put 6 Agriculture there to net you +24 PP per turn, which would allow you to purchase a population increase almost every other turn.

Also, with the way Infrastructure has been scaled back (our homeworld's income is 1/3 of what a First Edition homeworld would give you), and now that ships cost a lot more, you have an exponential effect of fleets being a quarter of what First Edition players have come to expect.

One thing to take into consideration that maintenance costs are between about 2/3 to 1/2 what they were from 1E, mostly due to a difference in rounding. This partially defrays the higher cost of units. You're right that the homeworlds now don't produce as much income as they did in 1E. I'm experimenting with 10 CAP, 5 RAW, and 5 BIO to see how they work, while the previous homeworld baseline tended to be 12 CAP, 6 RAW, and 6 BIO. Going that route would increase income slightly for each player, but not appreciably.

That all being said, so far in my own test games I haven't found the reduced income to be a huge problem. It isn't hard to get new mining colonies established and producing income for your empire, and while there never seems to be enough economic points to fund every project you never get the feeling that you're completely bankrupt, either.

We'll have to keep an eye on the issue and see what happens in the long term. An easy solution to the problem would be to change the max infrastructure to being Capacity + Census x 2, which in our particular case would give you 10 + (8 x 2) = 26 infrastructure at your homeworld. This would allow you to purchase +4 Productivity and +4 Agriculture, doubling your income and agriculture production.

Okay, I hope that this gets taken the right way. I liked VBAM 1.0 because we could have somewhat large fleets flying about (and it was hard enough to do that at times), that this scaling back, to me, is the wrong way to go. And it does not appear that this playtest homeworld is scaled back very far.

You can still have large fleets flying around, but you have to have the colonies to support them. Because Census is no longer required to utilize a basic level of infrastructure, you can actually get away with establishing 0 Census colonies that are still fairly productive in and of themselves, although they are only really useful as resource extraction sites. I understand your concerns and I'll keep an eye on the situation as we go.

[aelius]

Sorry to volunteer for the playtest and then disappear, but my computer has decided to break on me. I am working on repairs, and have it working partially for the moment but it is not reliable enough for any ongoing use. Since I am able to get online for the moment I thought I would ask a few questions and make some comments.
The new rules for the combat system are pretty good, clean and concise, but they lead to very small battles. In the small Interception scenario there is a CC cap of only 2! Even the largest battles have a limit of 18. This means an average battle will have only a hand full of cruisers or so.
Tyrell mentioned that ideas from FA were imported for the battle rules and I suppose this could be part of that. Battles in the Star Fleet Universe tend to be no more than a dozen ships per side tops. If the CC limit were instead the number of ships that could participate it would alleviate the problem somewhat. Or you could return to the earlier version that limited the battle scenario's to a percentage of the total fleet strength in system.
I noticed in the description of the "Atmospheric" tech that ground units with "Atmospheric" are capable of fighting in space. Mecha and stuff... Does this mean that, for instance, a unit of Atmospheric capable Mecha could be carried in Assault spaces for transport, but fly in the space combat segment? Then drop for the ground segment? Could be cool.
Overall the new rules seem to be shaping up nicely.

[Tyrel Lohr]

Sorry to volunteer for the playtest and then disappear, but my computer has decided to break on me. I am working on repairs, and have it working partially for the moment but it is not reliable enough for any ongoing use. Since I am able to get online for the moment I thought I would ask a few questions and make some comments.

Once you get your computer ailments fixed you're more than free to jump back into the playtest. I hope to have turns out to the remaining players tonight, and by this weekend we should all be back in synch. Just let me know when you're ready. You'll start a few turns behind everyone, but that isn't an insurmountable handicap.

The new rules for the combat system are pretty good, clean and concise, but they lead to very small battles. In the small Interception scenario there is a CC cap of only 2! Even the largest battles have a limit of 18. This means an average battle will have only a hand full of cruisers or so.
Tyrell mentioned that ideas from FA were imported for the battle rules and I suppose this could be part of that. Battles in the Star Fleet Universe tend to be no more than a dozen ships per side tops. If the CC limit were instead the number of ships that could participate it would alleviate the problem somewhat. Or you could return to the earlier version that limited the battle scenario's to a percentage of the total fleet strength in system.

The CC cap doesn't include the task force flagship, so there is a bit more wiggle room there, but the end result is a larger number of smaller battles. The major advantage of this system is that it forces fairer engagements in many cases, allowing a player to substitute in their undamaged units into a fight even if most of their force has already been bloodied. That encourages more of a back-and-forth between hostile enemy forces with running battles across a solar system. The CC caps may prove to be too low and need adjusting, but that's what we're here to test. The highest I would consider increasing them is to 3 or 4 x Intensity, but we'll have to see how everything plays out in this and other playtests. Now that I think of it, though, 5 x Intensity wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility depending on how large of battles you really wanted to fight. The larger the command limit the fewer battles you would end up fighting, and the greater the intensity cost would have to be (or else reduce the amount of intensity that each player can contribute). So far I have liked having a greater number of smaller battles if only because it minimizes the effects of luck for both sides, but it can get a little monotonous if each size keeps plinking away with 1 intensity minor intercepts.

Having the command limit the absolute number of ships would penalize escorts a bit more than I would like, but it is a possibility if the current command limits end up being too harsh to larger units. The problem with applying it as a max ship limit is that it would make wolf pack / swarm fleets harder to pull off, because they rely on numbers for strength.

You did just remind me of a change I had planned for the intensity rules but then forgot to record. Right now you roll D6 for intensity and add intensity based on your total command cost. The planned revision is to instead have no base intensity and just have players contribute up to 10% of their total construction cost (instead of command cost).

I noticed in the description of the "Atmospheric" tech that ground units with "Atmospheric" are capable of fighting in space. Mecha and stuff... Does this mean that, for instance, a unit of Atmospheric capable Mecha could be carried in Assault spaces for transport, but fly in the space combat segment? Then drop for the ground segment? Could be cool.
Overall the new rules seem to be shaping up nicely.

I think that would be reasonable. I would have to add rules to cover Atmospheric ground forces launching from their transports, though the more obvious solution would be to allow Atmospheric ground forces to be transported in Carrier slots if they are going to be used in non-defensive battles. Another option would be to allow them to be launched from Assault using the Launch ability or something similar. I'll have to think on that.

[virtutis.umbra]

I noticed in the description of the "Atmospheric" tech that ground units with "Atmospheric" are capable of fighting in space. Mecha and stuff... Does this mean that, for instance, a unit of Atmospheric capable Mecha could be carried in Assault spaces for transport, but fly in the space combat segment? Then drop for the ground segment? Could be cool...

I think that would be reasonable. I would have to add rules to cover Atmospheric ground forces launching from their transports, though the more obvious solution would be to allow Atmospheric ground forces to be transported in Carrier slots if they are going to be used in non-defensive battles. Another option would be to allow them to be launched from Assault using the Launch ability or something similar. I'll have to think on that.

OK, now I know what I'm prototyping first for the Phoenix Republic.

EDIT: If the gist of the 'Atmospheric' unit attribute is being broadened thus, though, to encompass Ground-to-Air-to-Space capability as well as Space-to-Air-to-Ground, perhaps 'Atmospheric' is no longer the correct name? 'Versatile' or something? 'Transorbital' (because the unit, regardless of type, is enabled to operate "across the orbital boundary [in either direction]") ?

Or perhaps 'Atmospheric' is merely the wrong name for ground units, who should have an equivalent 'Spaceborne' or something - or roll this into the Marine ability? The 1E 'Transformative' capability for Flight units let them act as Ground units, but this seems different.

[Tyrel Lohr]

EDIT: If the gist of the 'Atmospheric' unit attribute is being broadened thus, though, to encompass Ground-to-Air-to-Space capability as well as Space-to-Air-to-Ground, perhaps 'Atmospheric' is no longer the correct name? 'Versatile' or something? 'Transorbital' (because the unit, regardless of type, is enabled to operate "across the orbital boundary [in either direction]") ?

Or perhaps 'Atmospheric' is merely the wrong name for ground units, who should have an equivalent 'Spaceborne' or something - or roll this into the Marine ability? The 1E 'Transformative' capability for Flight units let them act as Ground units, but this seems different.

You might be right. Atmospheric could be restricted solely to starships and flights, and then create a separate ability to encompass the benefits conferred to ground units. The ability would let ground units fight as flights in space combat, being based from Carrier or Assault. As for the name of the ability, we could be somewhat honest on what this represents and just call it Mecha, though Transorbital would be a broader term with fewer setting-specific connotations attached to it.

[nimrodd]

You might be right. Atmospheric could be restricted solely to starships and flights, and then create a separate ability to encompass the benefits conferred to ground units. The ability would let ground units fight as flights in space combat, being based from Carrier or Assault. As for the name of the ability, we could be somewhat honest on what this represents and just call it Mecha, though Transorbital would be a broader term with fewer setting-specific connotations attached to it.

I would think that a ground unit with Atmospheric would be a normal jet fighter squadron.