Playtest Rules Notes

[OneMadOgre]

To be fair, I have no idea. I just wasn't sure if it impacted or not.

[virtutis.umbra]

Do civilian fleets have a maintenance cost? I can't find it in the rules.

[Iron Sky]

I have jotted down that we start with 1 Starport, 1 Shipyard, and 1 Supply Depot. Is that still the case or do we have to buy those with our starting EP?

We are using exploring, correct? So we know all the jump lanes and systems and everything, we just can't use any jump lanes until they've been explored?

Also, we do get 500 to spend, correct? I was digging through my mass of vbam e-mails but didn't find where it said exactly what it was finalized to be.

[gstano]

I was under the impression that we had to purchase everything we wanted to start. Jay's e-mail indicated that a Shipyard and Starport are very important. Also, we would have 500 EPs available to start with a recommendation of using around 150 EPs on civilian fleets.

Iron Sky, you make a good point about the special abilities. I was trying to find if there was a limit to how much we can purchase. It came about when I started playing around with a super starbase design that would be rather fun to have if it were affordable. Overall, I see where the developers are trying to take this as the various special abilities are not necessarily major physical components of the ship.

[Iron Sky]

So we need to buy fleets AND facilities?

Also, if we have any EP left over, do we keep it or does it go away? For example, if I have 3 EP left over, do I get to keep it or is it gone?

[Asguard101]

I'd assume you get to keep it like any other turns extra EP.

[Iron Sky]

I would too, but I'd hate to be wrong...

[nimrodd]

This is for "VBAM 2E Campaign Guide 2013-01-06-A.pdf".
More errata and questions.

Page 47 - Signing or Rejecting a Treaty (1st paragraph, 1st sentence)
"When a treaty offer succeeds it is then passed on *to*the target who must then make his own roll to see if its government is willing to consider the treaty."
Insert the "to".

Page 50 - Armistice (1st para on page, 1st sentence)
"The empire that is offering the armistice must roll less than or equal to its target value in order to successfully often the armistice to its enemy."
Replace "often" with "offer".

Page 53 - Offensive & Defensive Intel (2nd para, last sentence)
"Players must bare this in mind when they're allocating their intel points each turn."
Replace "bare" with "bear".

Page 61 - Civilian Fleet (Suggestion)
Go ahead and specify maintenance cost here, whether there is any or not.

Page 63 - Atmospheric (2nd para, last sentence)
"Only flights with the Atmospheric ability can be deployed into *ground‐based* combat by ground‐based Carrier units."
Move the underlined "groundbased" to the *"ground‐based"* location. It should not matter where the Carrier is located, it only matters that only Atmospheric flights can be involved in Ground-Based combat.

Page 64 - Medical (last sentence) (I know this is under revision)
"The amount of Medical value required to perform field repairs on one of these units is equal to its build cost."
Replace "build" with "construction".

Page 66 - Assign Special Abilities (QUESTION)
Should there be a limit on Special Abilities, since they are essentially free (as far as Command Cost goes). Possibly a per ability limit of Special Ability TL +1 or TL +2, with a total ability limit of 5 x CC + Ship TL. Also, for ones that mimic base abilities (Anti-Fighter & Interception), maybe a combined limit of no more than PD.

Page 69 - Remote Construction (1st para, 1st sentence)
"Units with the Construction special ability are "mobile shipyards" that are equipped with machine shops and industrial fabrication facilities that can be used to build or repair starships, starbases, and flights."
Right now under the Construction Special Ability, they can only build Flights, Starbases or Fortresses.

Page 69 - Prototyping (2nd para, last sentence)
"The prototype's construction time is twice that of normal, and it has to be under construction for 2 x Command Cost turns before it will be completed."
This is redundant within the same sentence.

Page 74 - Emergency Jumps (2nd para, 3rd sentence)
"The unit's FTL drive will suffer a catastrophic overload if the die roll is less than or equal to this target, and the unit will take damage equal to 1D6 x Command Cost from *the* resulting explosion."
Add "the".

Page 74 - Jump Gate Movement (Suggestion)
Go ahead and specifically state that movement would still be constrained by Jump Lane type, or not.

Page 74 - Flight Movement (1st para, 1st sentence)
"Fighter and shuttle flights are capable of moving independently of friendly carriers if they are equipped with their own FTL drives or are using jump gates to travel from one system to the next."
According to the FTL Special Ability, only Starships may have FTL.

Page 77 - Out of Supply Levels (2nd para, last sentence)
"Units with the Endurance special ability add their *Current* Endurance value to their Command Costs when calculating the number of turns that they can be out of supply without effect."
Shouldn't this be "Current" Endurance? Endurance should be halved when crippled.

Page 78 - Command Actions (1st para, 1st sentence)
"When a player has the initiative he can choose to perform one of five actions: Attack, Retreat, or Pass."
This should be "three".

Page 81 - Fortress Scenario (2nd para, 2nd sentence)
"This bonus reflects that the defenders on fighting on their home turf and are better prepared to stage ambushes against the attacking enemy forces."
"are"

Page 84 - Electronic Warfare Phase (3rd para, 1st sentence) - Missing Information
"Jammers in the enemy task force meanwhile reduce the number of EW points a player has available by an amount determined by a combat roll against its total Jammer value."
Per the Special Ability, Jammers can also reduce Enemy Jammers value.

Page 84 - Stealth Attack Phase (4th para, last sentence)
"Because these attacks occur before an opponent can allocate its own Screening and Fast value to improve his units' formation levels they are almost definitely going to take extra more damage from a sneak attack than they would have if the attacks would have come later this round."
Drop one of these redundant words.

Page 85 - Anti-Fighter Fire (1st para, last sentence)
"Hits cannot be scored *against* inactive flights as these units are safely based aboard their carriers."
Add "against".

Page 85 - Attack Phase (1st para, last sentence)
"Hits cannot be scored inactive flights as these units are safely based aboard their carriers."
Remove this sentence, as it does not apply to this phase.

Page 86 - Ramming Check (1st sentence)
"Players that intend to ram must roll a check on a D20 die roll with a target equal to their Tension minus Aggression."
Shouldn't this be plus? As it is currently stated, pacifists will be the ones more likely to ram, whereas the most Extremely Hostile (AGR 10) will NEVER ram. Maybe Average of Tension and Aggression (rounded up)?

Page 87 - FTL Retreat Phase (2nd para, 3rd & 4th sentence)
"This indicates that the unit suffered a catastrophic FTL drive failure and has mis‐jumped or simply exploded from a drive overload. In any event the ship is destroyed."
Why not match Emergency Jumps (page 74) where the unit receives "damage equal to 1d6 x Command Cost from the resulting explosion. This is enough damage to ensure that the unit will be crippled, if not outright destroyed."

Page 87 - Recovery Phase (3rd para)
"After making these adjustments, each player chooses to continue the battle or retreat. A combat scenario continues until one side is completely eliminated or both sides choose to retreat."
There should be a third option, "defend". If both sides choose to defend, then the battle for that turn is over. After all, if you are in a defensive scenario around your homeworld, you probably don't want to choose Continue Battle or Retreat. Kind of hard to retreat when your back is against the wall.

Page 95 - Combat Resolution (DELETE or Rewrite)
This is a complete cut and paste from Tactical Combat Resolution (page 87). You probably need a short paragraph about it and then reference page 87.

Page 97 - Ring Map Generation (1st para, last sentence)
"Please these systems symmetrically around the hub so that they are equidistant from the hub and also equidistant from their other neighbors in the same ring."
Should be "Place" and system should be plural.

Page 105 - Spending Limits (whole para)
"An empire can never spend more resource points of any given type than it has available in its empire pool at the beginning of the campaign turn. This prevents a player from spending resources that his empire has not yet earned."
Per Income (page 103), "The first step of the Economic Phase is to calculate the amount of income that the empire earned on the previous campaign turn." Since what you get this turn is what was earned last turn, this paragraph does not make any sense.

Page 112 - Appendix Empires vs Playtest Main_Empires spreadsheet
The ship designs in the spreadsheet don't match the writeups for some of these empires. For instance, the Jain Empire says, "They attempt the same with their fighters but with less them optimal results.", yet on the spreadsheet, they do not use carriers or fighters at all. And the Holy Tirelon Empire says, "Tirelon ships are generally small and fragile and operate in what are most accurately called swarms. This philosophy extends to their fighters, with quantity more important than quality and most Tirelon ships carry at least one flight of fighters.", but they have the largest ship of all the empires at CC6, and all have relatively high DV per CC, plus only the two largest ships carry ANY fighters.

[mwaschak]

So we need to buy fleets AND facilities?

Yep! This is a good way for Tyrel and I to see how a variance in starting forces might affect an empire's abilities long term.

Also, if we have any EP left over, do we keep it or does it go away? For example, if I have 3 EP left over, do I get to keep it or is it gone?

You get to keep those.

-Jay

[Emiricol]

Will we see a new update of the draft rules before play starts?

[mwaschak]

Will we see a new update of the draft rules before play starts?

I don't think so. When I talked to Tyrel there was nothing we needed to change to play. So far the big changes have been the organization.

-Jay

[Iron Sky]

So, questions on how scenario generation works:

1) If I spend 8 CP on a scenario, that allows me to bring in 8CC Command units. Can I bring in any number of them as long as they are 8CC or less?

2) Does my enemy have a required commitment in return? What's to stop them from fielding a 1 CC corvette against my 60 CCs worth of dreadnaughts to use up my CP?

3) Does readiness ever change? If I roll a 3 for surprise and my opponent rolls a 12, am I stuck with a -2 vs +2 for the whole fight? Is it rolled again every round? If so, with no modifiers, same modifiers? Can I retreat somehow?

4) What is scenario duration? Until one side is destroyed? I didn't see anything that indicated a duration, so is that it by default?

[nimrodd]

Stealth Attacks
The last paragraph on page 84 does not make sense to me.
"Any unit that perform an attack during the Stealth Attack Phase won't contribute its Screening or Attack values to its task force during future phases this combat round. The units has already fired and expended its arsenal for this round."

Why is this? What happens if half my ships have Stealth and perform an attack. Do they not get involved in the later portions of the round, or are they in there, just pretty much defenseless?

What if my entire force (Senorians), is made up of Stealth ships and perform a stealth attack. Is that the end of that combat round? Or does my opponent get to attack me for free, like I just did him? If this is the case what good is Stealth?

It looks like this is pretty much only useable if you think you can wipe out all of the opponents units, otherwise, just attack normally, so you can at least defend yourself.

To me, Stealth should allow a free round of attack, then that combat round is over, start the next one with no stealth attacks allowed by units that have revealed themselves.

[countercheck]

On the other hand, since stealthed units have no need for PD, it's a neat way to screw over an enemy that's invested heavily in PD. Just don't install any PD in your stealth ships, and when you make a stealthed attack, you'll have a comparative advantage against the poor fellow who's bought a lot.

[Iron Sky]

As it was explained to me elsewhere (Yahoo group? E-mail? Can't keep track of it all), you apply your screening or anti-fighter PD during the stealth attack phase. I believe the intent is to prevent you from double-applying PD by applying it in the Stealth Attack phase AND the regular PD Phase.

And hopefully that explanation I received was how it's going to be run, since I designed some of my ships with that understanding.

Originally, I thought it meant what you said - Stealth Attack ships don't get PD at all - but I was told that it was incorrect and what I explained above is the case.

Getting a Stealth Attack every round instead of just the initial round doesn't make total sense to me, but it's how the rules work right now. That said, if they were Star Trek-style "cloak, fire, re-cloak" attacks, it makes much more sense.

I have another question about maintenance costs: do you round your total maintenance up? Down? Standard rounding? No rounding? If I have a maintenance cost for my ships of 1.01/1.99, does that cost 1, 2, or 1.01/1.99? Can we have fractional EP?

Lastly, do we gain Intel points automatically or do we have to purchase them? It seems from the rules that you just get UI points per turn to spend, but wanted to be sure.