December 2011 Forum Playtest

[countercheck]

I think a jet fighter unit would just be considered Ground, not Atmospheric.

One question I've run into. Is flight basing determined by the flight's C$ or CC? I'm running into conflicting information.

[virtutis.umbra]

... 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.

How about EVA or Zero-G?

[countercheck]

... 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.

How about EVA or Zero-G?

I sorta feel that flights make the most sense for having a Transitional ability. Ground units that fight in space might be called Marines, and halve their stats in space combat, the reverse for ships... they are fighting out of their element, and should suffer some sort of penalty. Unless we're looking at truly 'amphibious' units equally capable in space or atmo, like dropships, in which case it doesn't matter whether they are space or atmospheric, and can be coloured any way you like. Though they provide you with a planetary assault force that doesn't need to be transported in assault vessels, so the ability should be priced accordingly.

[virtutis.umbra]

I'm breaking off the discussion of Marines and Space/Atmo/Ground unit capability to a separate thread

[Tyrel Lohr]

I think a jet fighter unit would just be considered Ground, not Atmospheric.

In the previous drafts I had a separate Aircraft unit type that were strictly planetary flights, but I ended up ditching them because they didn't seem to get used enough to make them worthwhile. That does make me think, though, that maybe Aircraft should be a flight-only special ability that provides a unit with either more mass to spend on combat abilities in exchange for only being able to be used in ground battles (possibly without needing carriers for basing, but that opens another can of worms that requires more work to get right).

One question I've run into. Is flight basing determined by the flight's C$ or CC? I'm running into conflicting information.

I originally had flight basing limited by construction cost, but the way that the current unit design system works that no longer is all that reasonable because a C$ 1 flight is much more combat efficient than a C$ 5 flight, and there is no reason for a player to get 1 x 5 EP flight vs. 5 x 1 EP flights. Going by CC fixes some issues because of how CC is integrated into the maximum mass calculation, so jumping up to CC 2 actually gives you some tangible benefits.

The simple answer is therefore 1 Carrier can hold 1 CC of flight.

I still want to limit the size of flight that a carrier can hold, however, to prevent some shenanigans of destroyer-sized carriers transporting heavy cruiser equivalent flights. The easiest way I can see to do that is put a basing limit on carriers so that they can only base flights that have a construction cost less than or equal to their own. That means a 12 EP heavy carrier could only base flights that cost 12 EP or less regardless of how much Carrier value they have. It also means that a 2 EP escort carrier couldn't carry a flight that cost more than 2 EP.

[virtutis.umbra]

prevent some shenanigans of destroyer-sized carriers transporting heavy cruiser equivalent flights.

This jives a bit with Countercheck suggestion in the Edge Cases discussion:

One option would be to have Flight Cargo/Assault capacity be capped by Command Cost. Command cost is equivalent to physical size, yes? That way, as tech improves, the combat power of assault shuttles improves, but carrying capacity remains the same.

... since CR and CC have a fixed relationship with C$, 'destroyer-sized' vs 'cruiser equivalent' can actually be traced to a quantitative value as CC or CR.

So what about:

• The sum of a starship design's Assault, Cargo, Carrier, and Tender capacities cannot be greater than its CR.
• The sum of a starbase design's Assault, Cargo, Carrier, or Tender capacity cannote be greater than 2x its CR.
• The sum of a flight design's Assault or Cargo capacity cannot be greater than its CC (not CR).

This caps a Flight's storage space at 1/5 of its C$, compared to 1/2 of C$ for ships and full C$ for stations. This addresses the Matrioshka effect a bit while still allowing for versatile options like a Carrier full of Assault shuttles. I rationalize the difference in stat cap thusly: Flights are by definition small for their cost, and stations are big for their cost. Particularly, a Flight is implicitly composed of 1..N smaller subvehicles whose individual existence isn't addressed by the rules; but it follows from the square-cube law that, for instance, a cruiser's got more potential for internal cargo space than an equivalent construction cost of heavy fighters since the cruiser is one ship and the Flight is "probably more than one."

[countercheck]

I would probably peg it to 2x command rating even for starships, otherwise carriers get seriously nerfed. And while they could use some nerfing, not THAT much nerfing.

Another option would be to increase Carrier cost to 1.5 mass points, which would make carriers filled with flights equipped with cargo holds less efficient haulers than dedicated transports. As written now, the only reason you'd NOT do that is to avoid paying for the lighters.

[virtutis.umbra]

I would probably peg it to 2x command rating even for starships, otherwise carriers get seriously nerfed. And while they could use some nerfing, not THAT much nerfing.

I'm not sure I see that - the Heavy Carrier design from the first post in this thread is CR 6, Carrier 5. Is that nerfed? I guess at higher TLs it gets easy to peg out the Carrier stat with the extra MU, but that just means you can either

a) build really mean, survivable Carrier ships with lots of fun extras (Launch, EW, Jammer, ...), or

b) split the MU between Command (assuming we count that as true "bonus CR") and additional Carrier ranks (using the bonus CR from Command), which also gives you more room for carrier escort starships, which is probably wise for your fancy high-tech high-capacity supercarrier.

[countercheck]

Oh, no, quite right. I was out to lunch. Carrier slots = to CR seems very reasonable.

[Tyrel Lohr]

Tying maximum stats to CR is a bad idea because CR doesn't change, it is a fixed value.

What I have ended up doing and will test in my local playtest as a dry run for rolling it out to the other is to give flights a 4x special ability cost multiplier. That means that Carrier would cost them 4 MU instead of 1 MU, while Scout would cost 8 MU instead of 2 MU. I realize that this is a fairly draconian way of handling the problem, but it does make it so that flights are supplementary to starships when it comes to these special functions.

Talking about unit construction, two other revisions I am looking at are a) getting rid of the percentage-based mass costs for FTL and Atmospheric and leaving them as multiples of command cost as they were once before; and b) giving units a base Defense value equal to their command cost. The first change would make it easier to design units without a spreadsheet, and the costs don't vary enough to be really worth worrying about fractional mass units. The way the max mass formula works right now, it also means that a unit effectively gets 1 FTL paid for (as the command cost is added to construction cost in the formula). The change to Defense is meant more as a way to prevent 0 DV units so that they don't become a logical problem (biggest issue being that 1 DV isn't that much better than 0 DV right now) and gives larger units a minimum DV.

[Tyrel Lohr]

Just a note to let people know I'm not dead (yet), but that I have been down with sinus infection and a massive advertising project that pretty much knocked me out the first two weeks of this year. I had hoped to get turn files out last weekend, but that didn't happen. I hope to have them out by the end of this week, however.

[MarkG88]

Sorry you've been not feeling well and I can appreciate life getting in the way of fun things like VBAM. Glad things are turning around for you now though.

[Tyrel Lohr]

Okay, after a weekend spent on another side project, I'm going to be getting turns out to everyone tonight. We'll continue using the last build of the rules for at least five more turns until we hit Turn 10, then I'll realign us towards the new rules. Thanks for bearing with me here.