Q-Ships

[Tyrel Lohr]

As much as I like the idea - I hate the complexity it introduces, adding another attribute to track, and requiring a fair amount of calculation each turn.

I had the same thought, and I have been struggling with that same problem across the ruleset in trying to streamline the new rules that I have written during the last few years, since the release of the Campaign Moderator's Companion.

However, I think if we can make it so that changes only occur at infrequent event times we should be fine.

How's this?

1) Base raiding chance is equal to half the Commerce Value (round up).
2) Raiding chance is increased by total Raider Threat Level.
3) Raiding chance is increased by 5% per civilian fleet present.
4) Mobile military forces reduce raiding chance equal to Construction Cost or Defense Value (defined by campaign -- I would lean toward Construction Cost).

Example: Sol has 60 output, which because we aren't using the biosphere rules is also its commerce value. It would have a base chance of 30%. If it had a threat level of 12 and 3 civilian fleets, the chance would grow to 57%. If there were 34 EP of ships present, that leaves us with a modified 23% raiding chance.

If an unsuccessful 6 EP raid hit the system on Turn One, it would reduce the system's threat level to 6. However, if a successful raid occurred on Turn Two and 3 EP of raider ships survived, the threat leel would increase to 9.

It is still a bit wobbly, but in this case you would only increase/decrease the threat level after a raid, or after a related intel mission. Otherwise it would remain fixed. Raiding chances remain a bit high regardless, but the destruction of a solid raider fleet would have a significant impact on the threat level in a system.

[Charles Lewis]

I still think the output of a system needs to be the major factor in determining the base likelihood of raids in a system. A backwater planet with no economy or trade value of any kind would not be of much value to pirates looking to make a big score, but a major system with lots of income would be -- especially if it were largely undefended. I could see maybe halving the Commerce Value of a system to get the base raiding chance in that case, and then applying other modifiers as desired (including the system's Raider Threat Level).

Depending on the FTL mechanism in a setting, there would be a legitimate argument for pirate groups targeting otherwise unimportant systems for use as bases to then launch raids on nearby systems. An system with only a census or two and low RAW is probably going to minimal government forces present unless it's on a border. A backwater system like that would be all but begging for raiders to come in and set up shop.

I'm not saying you're wrong about the important of system output. But in a schema like what Gareth's proposing, it would not be out of the question for an otherwise useless system to have a high Threat Level.

Ooo...then you could also tie Threat Level somehow into the Rebellion check. A system with low morale and a high threat level would be very tempting for Raider leader to come in and set himself up as a king. Boom - instant rebellion, and that rebellion would already have some sort of fleet.

And all because the player couldn't be bother with minimal system defenses...

[Gareth_Perkins]

I don't know, that is a wild tangent there -- but I can see it applying to universes like the Wing Commander: Privateer setting where you had a lot of mercenaries flying around as guns for hire.

I quite like the idea of introducing mercenaries as a game-concept. There are a lot of backgrounds where it wouldn't work, but many in which it would,

There are lots of possible uses for mercs that could be explored, both in terms of raiding hostile systems (ideally with plausible deniability!) and "policing" systems,

I wish we had a good statistic that we could use to represent a rough approximation of military force in a system. You use DV, we've used Construction Cost, and neither really does the job well. That being said, your approach to raid modifiers is interesting.

Very tricky - AS makes some sense, but again - fighters would rule then!

There is some logic in suggesting that # of military ships (possibly also fighter wings) makes the most sense - for raiding it's the volume of patrolled space that's important rather than the size of the hulls after all. Once pirates are located even a destroyer can "call for the heavy support",

I still think the output of a system needs to be the major factor in determining the base likelihood of raids in a system.

Yes, I did omit anything like that - it might still set a good baseline, although with system incomes varying from about 1 to 60+ you might wish to make it a proportion of the income score?

Better police those systems!

I have some trepidations about the amount of extra bookkeeping that would be required to update each system's Threat Level, though,

You and me both!

The nice thing about the raiding chance right now is that it is a fairly simple die roll, and with a spreadsheet you can have it make the calculation for all systems in a single action and then record and resolve raider strikes from there.

Really? I've not been finding that. Figuring the ships (civilian and military) into the calculation is taking some time each turn!

What if you kept the normal raiding chance mechanic (one roll per system), but then only put the EP value of the survivors into the Threat Level statistic for the system? Then if a raider force is completley wiped out, you would remove their EP cost from the system's total? That doesn't allow you to have the maximum value aspect that you were trying for, but it would keep the Threat Level concept viable. It also means that a successful raider attack would increase the value, while an unsuccessful attack would reduce it.

Could work - I'll mull it over,

[Tyrel Lohr]

I quite like the idea of introducing mercenaries as a game-concept. There are a lot of backgrounds where it wouldn't work, but many in which it would

It kind of plays with the "Star Law" concept that has been introduced before, at least for local defense. It allows points to be applied directly to a system's defense so that you can "set it and forget it" (to quote Ron Popeil) and not have to worry about assigning specific ships to anti-piracy duty. It would be the equivalent of hiring mercenaries to fight -- and they would draw their potential forces from the same availability pool that the pirates would, so they wouldn't have top-of-the-line craft, but it would be cheaper than stationing a true military task force there.

I'm not quite sure I *like* not having to station defense ships in a system (just like Rainer's concerns over not having to move Census in the other thread), but it would definitely reduce micromanagement.

There is some logic in suggesting that # of military ships (possibly also fighter wings) makes the most sense - for raiding it's the volume of patrolled space that's important rather than the size of the hulls after all.

# of ships is probably the best solution, and it is the least prone to min/maxing (which is a problem with going by # of squadrons, as a player can make a huge number of 1 ship squadrons to game the system).

Using # of ships also provides a reason to produce lots of cheap patrol ships that aren't worth much in a true military engagement, but can effectively police a star system.

Yes, I did omit anything like that - it might still set a good baseline, although with system incomes varying from about 1 to 60+ you might wish to make it a proportion of the income score?

Probably halving it is the way to go. As for the high raiding chances that creates for large, rich systems -- I think that is not a bad thing, necessarily. It *should* be foolish to try and patrol the Sol system with two light cruisers and think you are not going to have droves of raiders attacking!

Really? I've not been finding that. Figuring the ships (civilian and military) into the calculation is taking some time each turn!

I don't tend to move units around very much except when they are actually doing something, so most of those changes are fairly infrequent -- or else small enough that the margin of error is within tolerable limits to not have a major effect on game outcomes.

There is something to be said about only having trade fleets affect raiding chances, especially if using my revised trade route rules. Under those rules, trade fleets tend to be pretty static, sitting in a single star system to activate it for trade. If you only counted trade fleets that were actively trading in the system, it would largely eliminate civilian fleet tracking for raider chance rolls. That still leaves you with having to count the number of ships in the system, of course. Then again, if you did have a mercenary/coast guard fund established in each system, you could have *those* points act as raider prevention, and not even involve military units in the calculation at all. That would certainly simplify things immensely.

What I am seeing now is that you would have two extra stats for each system: Raider Threat Level and System Patrol Level. The first gives a bonus to raiding chance, the second incurs a penalty. The base raiding chance is based only on the system's total Commerce Value and the number of trade fleets active in the system.

When a raid occurs, you roll for raids normally. If the raiders survive, their remaining EP is added to the Threat Level. If they die, their total value is subtracted from the Threat Level. In these raiding events, the defenders can either send its "coast guard" units out (from its Patrol Level pool) or assemble some warships to head out after them.

I am personally in favor of limiting military response to raider attacks, given that the raider attack happens without much forewarning. Maybe this would be another (or THE) benefit of the Q-Ship, that it could use its Q-Ship Rating to increase the total Command Cost of military units that can be dispatched to participate in the scenario? I have been using a CC limit equal to task force flagship CC for raiding scenarios, and it seems to work pretty well -- encouraging the participation of light cruisers or smaller for convoy escort duty.

[Chyll]

Sadly (as it distracts from Pandora work), this and the population discussion are making me think about playing a game in the Stars Divided Universe circa rise of the TSL....

[Charles Lewis]

Sadly (as it distracts from Pandora work), this and the population discussion are making me think about playing a game in the Stars Divided Universe circa rise of the TSL....

Stay on target, Red 5!

[jygro]

After reading all the comments in this thread, I like the idea of halving the output of the system adding modifiers based on threat level, civilian fleets and the like minus the number of military present to determine if raiders attacks occur.

First off, I had a radical thought about military presence. What if an empire's 'normal' military doesn't actually count for the calculation unless if it actually assigned to deter raiders. If that is their assignment, they are going to get a huge readiness penalty if they are forced into regular combat (my thought here is that the fleet is spaced too far apart to have a good readiness modifier).

I like the idea of the number of military units/fighter squadrons available to deter pirates and not the DV or construction cost. As someone said, it's not the size of the ship, it's the number of ships to cover the volume of space that is the real issue. Personally, I like the following formula to determine the percentage subtracted: # of assigned militaryunits ^ 1.5 (so 5 military units assigned to deter raiders = -11%). Star Law units might add 50% to the final percent value (so 5 Star Law ships = -17%). If these numbers are used, perhaps we should take the full output of the system, but playtesting will tell better.

Example: Sol with 60 output, two trade fleets and a threat level of 7 with 14 dedicated ships deter pirates has a 23% chance of raider activity(30+10+7-24). If those ships were all Star Law, it would drop to 11%

I also like that threat level stays level until intel is used to modify it or a raid occurs (successful or not) in the system. Keeps the bookwork to a minimum.

That's it for now,
-Bren

[mwaschak]

Stay on target, Red 5!

It seems either way we want to discuss it, short of the later revamp of raiding checks, is that Q-Ships, by either defeating and chasing off pirates, or by the overall effect of driving the pirates elsewhere, is that convoys stay alive. I think we can all agree on that. Right, Rainer ?

I have been personally toying with the ideas that Charlie presented awhile back with diverting ships to patrol duty. It is a bit more work in some of my settings, but does make things interesting. Bren makes a good point that military ships in the system are not necessarily working to destroy pirates. So the question there becomes, would a pirate bother working so close to any military unit they suspect is not looking for them?

Even a real warship engaging typical pirates at a readiness penalty is going to be a nasty surprise for the pirate IMHO.

-Jay

[nimrodd]

First off, I had a radical thought about military presence. What if an empire's 'normal' military doesn't actually count for the calculation unless if it actually assigned to deter raiders. If that is their assignment, they are going to get a huge readiness penalty if they are forced into regular combat (my thought here is that the fleet is spaced too far apart to have a good readiness modifier).

I had thoughts along similar (but not identical) lines. I would keep the normal subtraction for military fleets, but squadrons that are assigned to anti-piracy patrol for the month would count double. Of course these anti-piracy squadrons would not be able to leave the system that month, and would be in the Reinforcement Pool if the system was attacked by another governments war fleet (I assume most war fleets would come in along a different vector than civilian traffic to avoid warning their victims, and thus the A-P squadron would be out of place to defend).

I also would allow a Police function on warships (basically becoming civilian anti-piracy ships) up to destroyer size. The police function would also double the "cost" of the ships that are subtracted from Raiding chances. This would be cumulative with the above Anti-Piracy patrol.

Thus if you had a system with 20 points of military vessels, you could end up with the following:
All military, no A-P squadrons: -20%
All military, 4EP in A-P squadron: -24%
16EP military, 4 EP civ Police in A-P squadron: -32%

[Charles Lewis]

I agree with Jimmy in that's it's better to give bonuses for units assigned to anti-piracy than to penalize those not assigned. I imagine there would be standing orders for any naval unit to respond to any pirate threat barring superceding orders (probably only in time of war). Quite frankly, if there's a battleship in the vicinity of a pirate attack, the admiral is going to be eager for an excuse for a "live-fire exercise" if nothing else.

I would penalize, however, ships not assigned to anti-piracy duty, in their ability to get involved in a scenario. Specifically, I would limit any such units to be reinforcements only and not available during scenario generation (or at the very least make it very unlikely for any such units to be present at the start of a scenario). I figure units not on anti-piracy patrol would have a much greater chance of being out of position to respond quickly to such an encounter, but their presence in the system should always have a deterrent effect.

[jygro]

I agree with Jimmy in that's it's better to give bonuses for units assigned to anti-piracy than to penalize those not assigned. I imagine there would be standing orders for any naval unit to respond to any pirate threat barring superceding orders (probably only in time of war). Quite frankly, if there's a battleship in the vicinity of a pirate attack, the admiral is going to be eager for an excuse for a "live-fire exercise" if nothing else.

Any military fleets can respond to an actual raiding attack, but they are not actually contributing to the looking and stopping pirate raiding.

I figure units not on anti-piracy patrol would have a much greater chance of being out of position to respond quickly to such an encounter, but their presence in the system should always have a deterrent effect.

I guess it depends on what someone thinks military assets are doing for the time that they are just sitting about for a month. My thought is that the warships not actively assigned to pirate control and 'too busy' (training excerises, meetings, general maintenance) to worry about pirate attacks.

My thoughts is to force a player to place ships on anti-pirate activities to lessen the amount of bookwork a CM has to do when fleets are moving about the empire. Your results may vary.