Well, he did it. He finally got his stupid autokill rule, and killed CEDS (and likely the Alliance). It doesn't seem to me that disallowing maulers against formation bonus ships is enough to compensate for the greatly reduced (if not eliminated) ability of the Kzinti to counter attack on their turn. But, as yet, I've not played with the revised rule (and probably never will).
However, I am curious to see if anyone here has, and can post their impressions.
Oh, Sure.
I'm in the middle of a game with the brand new rules (2K10) but just the basic ones. Well, by "in the middle", we got through Coalition T7, and kind of stalled out before Alliance T7, but in theory, we'll start playing again in the near future.
-The autokill rule happens rarely, at best. You need to have 100+ compot, be in the second+ battle round, be at a BIR of 4+, and then roll a 6 for damage. Which happens once and a while, and is extra demoralizing to your opponent when it happens, but still fairly rare. I think in the first 6.5 turns of the game, we have had, maybe, 7-8 ships total killed by the autokill rule. In the game I'm playing, we both tend to direct something every single battle round for various tactical reasons that I'm not going to go into here, so we have an incredibly high death rate already anyway (I think we are down a total of 163 ships due to direct damage/auto kill by turn 6.5, and of those, as noted, like, maybe 7 or 8 were autokills).
-The lack of CEDS hasn't actually had much of an impact on the game so far. With the flexible CV rules in the basic set now, you can just stock up on extra EFs, and the Kzinti do fine. Occasionally they'll have to use ad-hoc FFs, but otherwise, it doesn't seem to be that big of a deal. I mean, yeah, the lack of out of turn retrograde and repairs can be a problem if you were using those a lot, but the way I tend to play the Kzinti (and the way my opponent tends to fight the Kzinti) sees not many cripples anyway.
-The flexible escort rules being placed in the basic rules are incredibly handy--I've never used them before in the previous, like, 15-20 games I've played over the years. Being able to escort CVTs and overstuff CV groups for those stupid pin battles (so you have a good compot but all that the opponent can direct is an ad-hoc FF escort) is very beneficial for the Alliance. I mean, yeah, it always was in the advanced rules, but it also generally came along with advanced EW and SFGs and whatever, all of which totally hosed the Alliance. The flexible escort rules as part of the basic rules set is very helpful for the Alliance and tends to far and away make up for the lack of CEDS. I mean, yeah, it helps the Klingons some too, but not as much as the Kzintis and Hydrans and Feds.
-No mauling the formation bonus is huge. The Feds don't have to worry about their stupid 10 point DNs all vaporizing on the first turn of the war.
-There are limits on plus/minus points going into pursuit now (no more than 3 points, no more than 6 if you are fleeing a capital, no more than 12 if you are pursuing from a capital and have a bunch of dead fighters) which makes pursuit a little more worth, ahem, pursuing for the Alliance.
-The basic set also gets the advanced conversion rule, where a SB can make 3 points of conversions rather than one conversion of up to 3 points. This greatly facilitates the building of escorts, makes building extra carriers easier (as this combined with the flexible carrier rule means you get to make 2 point carrier conversions and also something else). Again, something that has been around for a long time, but not in the basic set.
All in all, I'm totally pleased with the way the new rules seem to be working out. If you wanna go look at the game I'm playing, the link is:
http://www.starfleetgames.com/discus/messages/37/25752.html?1280035293
I wonder
"In the game I'm playing, we both tend to direct something every single battle round for various tactical reasons "
Well, obviously that has an effect on the results. Still, nice to hear at least one data point.
"With the flexible CV rules in the basic set now, you can just stock up on extra EFs, and the Kzinti do fine"
What about crippling the CVs themselves?
", yeah, the lack of out of turn retrograde and repairs can be a problem if you were using those a lot"
It seems that this would be extremely difficult to do, since you can't do out of turn retrograde, or out of phase repairs. I know not everyone used this in the past, but I (and others) made extensive use of it. To me, it's a huge loss
"The flexible escort rules being placed in the basic rules are incredibly handy--"
The problem to me is that now you have to spend more on extra escorts. I really wish they had done something to address the escort costs. Of course, that would have helped the Alliance, and Cole doesn't like THAT.
"The flexible escort rules being placed in the basic rules are incredibly handy--I've never used them before in the previous, like, 15-20 games I've played over the years."
Most of my games used it, so it's not an adder for me. Although I do recognize that it helps when playing the basic game.
"There are limits on plus/minus points going into pursuit now (no more than 3 points, no more than 6 if you are fleeing a capital, no more than 12 if you are pursuing from a capital and have a bunch of dead fighters) which makes pursuit a little more worth, ahem, pursuing for the Alliance."
Stupid arbitrary rule. If he had just changed the interpretation of crippling back to what it USED to be (you had to have 1/2 of the damage to BE ABLE to cripple; that was how it should have been read, it was pretty clear). Then there would have been no abuses.
So while I applaud the lack of abuses, I hate arbitrary solutions.
Thanks for the reply.
Joe wrote:
>>Well, obviously that has an effect on the results. Still, nice to hear at least one data point.>>
The short version is that we always direct, generally speaking. Over a few recent games as the Alliance, it became apparent that trying to overload the Coalition repair capacity was never going anywhere (given how conservatively my Coalition opponent tends to play), and if the Coalition directs something every round, and the Alliance doesn't direct something back every round, the ship number disparity quickly becomes untenable. To get away with this, the Coalition needs to only ever fight where it has a decisive advantage, or in meaningless pin fights (where it is just going to fight a round and retreat anyway, at which point, crippling a few CWs is much less good than directing something), but as that is how my opponent plays it, it works for us both. So the games we play tend to have a lot of ship death anyway, but never as a result of self killing (unless it is unavoidable--i.e. a tiny force fighting a huge force, and the few ships that get sacrificed just get self killed as that is what the math indicates happens).
>>What about crippling the CVs themselves?>>
I never see that happen. I'm usually the Alliance, and I rarely see the Kzinti fleet take many cripples at all, primarily due to the regular direct damage I see coming my way.
>>It seems that this would be extremely difficult to do, since you can't do out of turn retrograde, or out of phase repairs. I know not everyone used this in the past, but I (and others) made extensive use of it. To me, it's a huge loss>>
Reasonable view.
>>The problem to me is that now you have to spend more on extra escorts. I really wish they had done something to address the escort costs. Of course, that would have helped the Alliance, and Cole doesn't like THAT.>>
Yeah, there is that, the extra escorts. But still, if the Coalition isn't directing them, you have plenty, and if they are directing them, you aren't spending money to repair stuff generally speaking.
>>Stupid arbitrary rule. If he had just changed the interpretation of crippling back to what it USED to be (you had to have 1/2 of the damage to BE ABLE to cripple; that was how it should have been read, it was pretty clear). Then there would have been no abuses.
So while I applaud the lack of abuses, I hate arbitrary solutions.>>
Ah, yeah, that would have worked too. But barring that, the current rule is good enough. If indeed arbitrary.
>>Thanks for the reply.>>
No problem.
Overall, through CT7 in the 2K10 game I'm currently in, I feel that the Alliance is doing pretty well, overall--the Hydrans are totally hosed, but that was inevitable, given the Coalition startegy. They Kzinti still have a strong position and economy, and the Feds aren't in bad shape as of the T7 Coalition attack (and are looking forward to the benefits of flexible CV group rules and an infinite supply of DEs). So for my money, the new rules don't seem to be hurting the Alliance's game much, and in many ways is helping out a lot. But again, just the basic rules.
DirDam
"it became apparent that trying to overload the Coalition repair capacity was never going anywhere (given how conservatively my Coalition opponent tends to play),"
Well, if he's that conservative, allowing what damage there is to fall may make him slow down even more, and that could buy you time.....
"I never see that happen. I'm usually the Alliance, and I rarely see the Kzinti fleet take many cripples at all, primarily due to the regular direct damage I see coming my way."
Way back when, our games were similar, but nowadays, I see it all the time in my games. Different playing styles of course get different results.
Are you guys playing face-to-face, or on Cyberboard/Vassal?
Joe Wrote:
>>Well, if he's that conservative, allowing what damage there is to fall may make him slow down even more, and that could buy you time.....>>
Heh. Yeah, I tried that at some point in one of the previous games. Generally speaking, in the games that we play, as noted, the Coalition only fights where they have a significant advantage (say, at least 3-1 over a SB that they want to kill or a planet they want to take), one round pin fights (i.e. 1-1 over a SB where they don't want to fight and are just fighting an approach and leaving). With, say, 90 point battle lines, with the ~25 damage you are going to do as the Coalition, you can kill 18 Kzinti fighters and cripple a MEC, or blow up an EF and get ahead of the ship count. If the Coalition are doing this, the Kzinti can, with their ~25 damage, cripple a few CWs and kill some fighters, or blow up the biggest ship they can. So generally speaking, that is how things roll in these games. Over the Capitals, about half the time, there is a Mauler to blow up (which, for my money, is basically mandatory), which means that you are directing stuff anyway. So we just keep directing--for example, over the Hydran capital, once the PDUs were gone, the Coalition directed a cruiser each turn, so the Hydrans directed a ship back every turn. The Hydrans could have stopped directing back, but then the Coalition starts just letting damage fall, the fight ends much faster, and it is basically a wash.
>>Way back when, our games were similar, but nowadays, I see it all the time in my games. Different playing styles of course get different results.>>
Oh, sure--I can certainly see that being incredibly handy in the right situations. And with CEDS removed, that is no longer a possibility. Which is certainly adrag if that was something that you liked utilizing.
>>Are you guys playing face-to-face, or on Cyberboard/Vassal?>>
It's an actual game on a table. Luckily, Courtenay doesn't have a cat.
Where in NY, Peter B?
Are you in NYC or upstate? I'm always looking for new opponent, maybe we can play sometime.
I'd be interested in seeing how the different play styles interact.
Joe
Heh.
I'm way up in upstate (Ithaca). From what I understand, you are in NY near NYC.
Face to Face Games
I started a FtF game and then the guy moved states. We then tried playing via email/Vassal but he rarely has any spare time and doesnt save any of it for F&E or SFB anymore, apart from solo games he runs from time to time when bored.
Would be good to find people in a similar time zone to allow Vassal type games which dont completely rely on email.
Sub Optimal
Peter, you know I love ya so don't get all bent out of shape....
It seems to me like you guys are playing the classic suboptimal, "blow something up strategy".
I almost NEVER direct. NEVER. Even over the capital. I let him self cripple his own maulers. I bag the cripples. Over the capitol, the whole line might blow up anyway. (I've done it before, BIR=10, roll a 6, watch EVERYTHING explode)
If you cripple him, and cripple him, and cripple him... all of a sudden he doesn't have enough ships to stop 12 CVs from roaring out of the capitol and sitting on his FRD park till you let him in. 12 CVs + lots of FCV/CVL/CVEs can fight 3 approach battles no problem, then bang on 3-4 FRDs. That puts a REAL freaking kink in the Coalition. If they do have the pin count and endurance to survive that kind of fight, then the Hydrans are sitting behind CV and TGV lines cause you left them alone. There is nothing worse than bleeding a ulcer, but a Hydran with a capitol on T7 is pretty darn close. This is why Peter came up with the "MudSlide" If you impale yourself on the minor capitols.... the CV fleet of doom is going to trash your FRD park.
It takes a while to build of the Zin CV fleet of doom, but man, it is hard to stop one it gets rolling. It pretty much can wear you down over any 1 hard point it wants to (excepting a SB) and it is almost impossible to put it out of commission. Well... until CEDS was removed.
F&E2K10. Forcing the alliance to play suboptimal strategies because "thats how it should work". I'll accept CEDS being removed when the Lyrans are only allowed 1 CV and Maulers are 5 point cruisers that do nothing but tractor a cripple.
Haven't played them but
There would be little effect on my playing style based on what I read.
Early on I was a big opponent of the self-kill rule. Then I read the finalized version and I said so what. It will hardly ever have an effect. If anything, I think it will help both sides. First I should say that my primary opponents have always played even the Coalition as carrier heavy forces. Therefore, a typical mid-late war Coalition battleline would include 3 - 4 rounds of maximum allowed fighter/PF's. Since the requirement of 100+ compot is rare (not unheard of but rare) in the early war, a Mid to Late War alliance that had a 100+ compot and rolled a 6 would probably be directing to get through the fighters anyway. The same would most likely be said of an early war Coalition player as well.
The only difference I really see is that instead of directing on something weak as an alliance player, I would bag something bigger due to the rule limits of not hitting the smallest ship (did that make it into the final rule I don't remember).
As for the CEDs, when I play the Kzinti, I almost always build extra escorts anyway. Better to protect the Carriers in Pursuit. I also rarely crippled the CVS's. I usually crippled the MEC's and then the EF/FKE's. I would only cripple the CVS's is I had no other choice. If that was the case, I wouldn't be attacking on my turn anyway.
You need the out of order
You need the out of order CEDS repair so that you can:
1) Move off your hardpoint to pin a Coalition fleet and STILL be able to retrogade and attack on your turn (If you aren't burning at least 75% of your fighters, you are a: losing b: playing a suboptimal enemy)
2)Fight to the last fighter over your hardpoint and still distribute your cripples about so that they can be repaired.
Its nice to say, "don't cripple the CVS" but that is easier said than done sometimes. When fighting over 12PDUs and a SB I'm damn well going to eat as much damage on things like ship based fighters and ships rather than burn up my PDU fighters. Once the fighter bays are empty, PDUs are junk. (Obviously you burn fighters against a raid, but if he is coming to fight more than one round, you gotta keep the free compot alive)
If you are running the classic Zin line of DN+4CVh+3CV+3CV then you only have 18 fighters. After that you gotta find something to eat some damage, the most efficient thing to eat the damage on is the 4 MECs that you brought. (4CVh = CVS+2MEC+EFF, 4CV = CVS+MEC+EFF.... one is denser, but easy to drive off the line with DD) You HAVE to get those MECs repaired. Taking damage on EFFs is a terrible deal and they are vulnerable in pursuit, crippled MECs usually survive pursuit fairly well. You don't many MECs since you have all those retarded CLEs to replace.... you can't afford to have a pile of cripples at the wrong repair facility at the start of your turn... Zin are tiny but have a huge ability to suck up damage and giggle at the enemy, you gotta use that.
The fallacy of the Rodger Morgan "run them out of EFFs" strategy:
Of course, if the enemy is a retard and directing on your EFFs in an attempt to "Run the Zin out of escorts", then yeah, lack of CEDS won't really effect the game much since you never really need CEDS. Of course, I am STONGLY in the camp that following that strategy yields a dead coalition somewhere around turn 15...sadly it takes nearly a year of playing to prove that this is a dumb idea.(thus lots of people don't realize what a freaking bad idea it is) My argument is, by DDing the EFFs, you don't kill 18 fighters per battle round, thus you don't drive the Zin CVs off the line, thus they can fight more than 1 round (they only pull out the CV group you DDed..... and after T2 the Zin have enough spare 3CVs that this isn't really a big deal). By fighting more than 1 round, they do more damage than you.....OR they drive you off your hardpoint..... letting the Zin push you off your hardpoints is bad as they eventually kill every BATS in range of their capitol and rape your FRD park. You really want to deal with 15 turns of Kzin CV production and an devastated capitol hex? Good Luck. The extra damage they do to you means more cripples. The extra cripples means the Hydrans last longer. This means less abuse the Feds take. AND HERE IS WHERE YOU FINALLY REALIZE YOU SCREWED UP 10 TURNS AGO..... Because the Feds are no longer worried about a 400 ship stack raiding their capitol (or a line of bases cutting them off from their off map) they get together with the Lizards and break your pointy eared allies. Once the Pointy Ears are a remnant of a sentient race, (I WILL DRIVE A CVA INTO BOTH YOUR CAPITOL PLANETS YOU INTERGALACTIC SCUM!) then the Lizards are free to come join up with the ridiculous late game toys that the Feds get. If you think the a Fed 3rd way CVBG group with a Lizard battlegroup providing density and a G attack isn't a scary thing, you haven't played late game. Think about it..... you are looking at an overstuffed CVBG group with some 26 or 28 fighter factors and something like 4EW points if I don't even do crazy things(like those retarded 12 fighter factor + scout ship things). I've got 100+ fighters in reserve. YOU will be the one retreating from this. Maybe not the 1st time, but I AM going to run you out of D5s to take damage on. I will pursue with a Gorn DN and 5 BCs. That is pretty scary density. It only gets worse once I get the X ships out. (GORN DN + 3 BCX and 2 Fed CX..... BOOM, BOOM,BOOM!!!!!)
The Alliance can lose the Hydran Capitol. The Alliance can lose the Zin capitol. As long as those two guys don't lose their fleets, they will be ok. The Hydrans may never come back, but its really really really hard to crush the Zin as their carriers make them almost immune to getting hurt bad.... you simply can't get at the CVS till you get PFs. Even if the Hydrans never get their capitol back, they are going to bleed you forever. If the Romulans go down.....they aren't coming back. Unless the Coalition owns the Western half of fed space when that happens, its going to get REAL FREAKING UGLY for them.
Larry wrote:
>>It seems to me like you guys are playing the classic suboptimal, "blow something up strategy".>>
Heh. I'd never get bent out of shape over this.
>>I almost NEVER direct. NEVER. Even over the capital. I let him self cripple his own maulers. I bag the cripples. Over the capitol, the whole line might blow up anyway. (I've done it before, BIR=10, roll a 6, watch EVERYTHING explode)>>
Yeah, see, here is the thing. If the Coalition plays to:
A) Only ever fight significant fights when they have a significant advantage.
and
B) Pin, fight one round, and retreat everywhere else.
Directing becomes the main way to get things done. 'Cause when the Coalition shoots down your EF with the 18-20 damage they do in the stupid pin fight (to avoid just killing fighters), and you hit them back and cripple 3xCWs, and then they leave, and you can pursue into a full battle line (with 3 crippled CWs and some minus points) and get mauled, you rapidly lose the ship count war. And every Klingon that the Kzintis kill on turns 1-6 is one less Klingon to attack the Feds on T7.
>>If you cripple him, and cripple him, and cripple him... all of a sudden he doesn't have enough ships to stop 12 CVs from roaring out of the capitol and sitting on his FRD park till you let him in.>>
Only if he lets you cripple him that much. With conservative play, the Coalition can easily take cripples until they have filled up their repair capacity, leave with enough ships to still pin you out of the FRD park, protect it, repair everything, and then come back next turn. It might mean that the Hydrans (or Kzinti) keep their Capital for an extra turn. But in the long run, without killing the ships you can kill, there are 300 Klingons to attack the Feds on T7 instead of 200.
All things being equal, I think the Alliance (i.e. me) is in a very good position as of T7 relative to possibilities I have seen in many games in the past--the Hydrans lost their capital on T5 (which was inevitable), but their fleet is mostly intact (well, as intact as it is going to be) and can keep tying up Coalition ships until the shipyard is back on line, the Kzintis have most of their space and a strong economy and a well fortified capital, and the Feds are under siege, but have a lot of Kzintis to help them out. And the Coalition is down ~100 ships from where they could be at this point, which is very significant.
Larry wrote:
>>Of course, if the enemy is a retard and directing on your EFFs in an attempt to "Run the Zin out of escorts", then yeah, lack of CEDS won't really effect the game much since you never really need CEDS.>>
See, the issue is not "run them out of escorts", which is impossible. The issue is "pin them a hex away from anything important, fight one round, kill the biggest thing you can which is usually an escort, and then retreat".
>> My argument is, by DDing the EFFs, you don't kill 18 fighters per battle round, thus you don't drive the Zin CVs off the line, thus they can fight more than 1 round (they only pull out the CV group you DDed.....>>
Where are the Coalition fighting that they have to force the CVs off the line? If they are over the capital, they are probably directing PDUs or engaging in a long term attrition fight with a huge battle line and an opponent with 1/3rd-1/4th the number of ships they have. Anywhere else, they are pinning the Kzinti in open space, fighting one round, and retreating. And if the Kzinti leave their fleets out in space to try and get to the target next turn, they get pinned and then a ton more ships go attack whatever is left that the Kzinti aren't defending (the capital?)
Replies
"Since the requirement of 100+ compot is rare (not unheard of but rare) in the early war"
Perhaps if you only play the basic game, but if you are playing with the expansions, I can pretty well guarantee that I have that much in ever significant battle by turn 4.
"Yeah, see, here is the thing. If the Coalition plays to:
A) Only ever fight significant fights when they have a significant advantage.
and
B) Pin, fight one round, and retreat everywhere else.
"
He has to fight at the SBs eventually. It doesn't matter that he has a 3-1 advantage. Yes, he'll win the hex, but the point is to use your superior compot to inflict superior casualties. And if he is burning up 8-14 extra damage each round, that shifts the damage result further in your favor.
The thing about not directing is that it takes time.... it's a strategy of attrition, not a death blow.
"Only if he lets you cripple him that much. With conservative play, the Coalition can easily take cripples until they have filled up their repair capacity, leave with enough ships to still pin you out of the FRD park, protect it, repair everything,"
With CEDS, that pinning battle is an opportunity to inflict more causualties than his capacity allows.
More replies
"anything important, fight one round, kill the biggest thing you can which is usually an escort, and then retreat"."
That's just it. If you trade that EFF for 3-5 more cripples, and do this every turn.....
Either your opponent's facilities eventually get overwhelmed, or he goes even more conservative to avoid it. Either way, good thing for the Alliance.
Of course now w/o CEDS, things change dramatically.
Joe wrote:
>>He has to fight at the SBs eventually. It doesn't matter that he has a 3-1 advantage. Yes, he'll win the hex, but the point is to use your superior compot to inflict superior casualties. And if he is burning up 8-14 extra damage each round, that shifts the damage result further in your favor.>>
Oh, sure--but if he fights the SBs when he has significant advantage, and doesn't fight the SBs when he doesn't (just pinning and leaving), he takes not overly significant damage one way or the other.
>>The thing about not directing is that it takes time.... it's a strategy of attrition, not a death blow.>>
Oh, absolutely. I'd never claim that *not* directing can't work. But I think if the Coalition *is* directing all the time, the Alliance kinda needs to direct back, as otherwise, the ship disparity becomes humongous.
The issue here is that I'm currently in a game where both sides direct all the time, and I think currently, it is mostly a wash--I'm perfectly happy with my position as of T7, and am unconvinced that the Coalition is doing excessively well. So if the issue is "if the Alliance directs too much, they lose quickly", I'm not seeing that in this game, as the Alliance is doing pretty well. I mean, like, I'm hardly winning a crushing victory or anything, but I feel fine about the state of the game as it is. And in previous games where I didn't direct back all the time, and the Coalition kept doing what it is doing now, I ended up in about the same place at the end of T6 (the Hydrans with no capital, the whole Coalition fleet repaired and ready to attack the Fed), except that the Coalition has about 80 more ships than they do now.
Losing ships
If youre overloading his repair facilities, you losing 1 ship from DD for every 2 or 3 (or more) cripples is still going to lead to you having more ships on the line, isnt it?
Especially when they are often going to be CW hulls which are great for soaking up damage, while still putting out plenty of damage on their own. Youre either going to put up more D7/BC on the line and risk them being DD (or also getting crippled cheaply), or have to put up DD/DW and watch your COMPOT drop.
Hoju wrote:
>>If youre overloading his repair facilities, you losing 1 ship from DD for every 2 or 3 (or more) cripples is still going to lead to you having more ships on the line, isnt it?>>
The thing is that it is a lot harder to overload Coalition repair facilities than one would imagine, in my experience. If the Coalition is conservative in their approach, doesn't fight unnecessary fights, doesn't fight on the Alliance turn if they can possibly avoid it, and doesn't impale themselves on both Alliance capitals before hitting the Feds (i.e. kill one capital decisively, mostly ignore the other capital), and builds as many FRDs as possible, overloading the facilities, even with no direct damage being done at all, isn't likely to happen.
Mind you, I'm coming at this completely from the POV of only the basic game--when you can blow up FRDs with drone raids, and sabotage crippled ships with commandos, and whatever else, this might all be completely different. But from the POV of the basic game with just (now) the 2K10 rules, a conservative, consistent Coalition isn't getting their repair facilities overloaded.
I mean, yeah, it remains to be seen if this particular strategy makes the Coalition *win* in a basic 2K10 rules game. But currently, they are doing pretty well, but not overwhelmingly so at press time.
I remain unconvinced......
"Oh, absolutely. I'd never claim that *not* directing can't work. But I think if the Coalition *is* directing all the time, the Alliance kinda needs to direct back, as otherwise, the ship disparity becomes humongous."
and the reason why is that I used to fight this way, and when I ran into Pete Dimitri, I got my head handed to me, more than once.
Once I adapated, my results improved. I stopped directly all the time.
But as I said, killing CEDS may have forever invalidated the Pete Dimitri strategy....which I would not put past SVC as one of his goals....
I agree with the "don't
I agree with the "don't impale" yourself comment Peter.
If I come at you with one big blob while you still have 300 ships on the FRD park, I am an idiot. In that case, split up the fleet and send 3CV+command+overstuff onto every single BATS in range. Eventually the Coalition doesn't HAVE 300 ships on the Zin FRD park. Or the Hydrans got out of hand. Or the Fed are relatively untouched.
I could be wrong but I feel you guys are playing "inbred" tactics. They work for you guys cause you haven't seen the other ways to do it. Biggest example of this was Back in VA when the CVNs would dock and we would get 3 or 4 new SFB players off whatever CVN was in port. The most hilarious comment ever, "Yeah, we don't even bother with Gorns... they suck". To which my buddy Gerry Hartman went, "O-RLY?". He then proceeded to make mince meat out of their Orions and Feds. (IN his Gorn)
I feel the best way to kill a capitol is do it all at once. Eat the pain. These "raids" to reduce PDUs just seem like a great way to let the Zin burn PDU fighters more than once. Bring 300 ships and SIT on the capitol till the Zin runs out of fighters. Yeah it hurts. It hurts a lot. Which is why you only kill one minor captitol. Hell... as a coalition, I leave the Zin shipyard alone.
Larry wrote:
>>I could be wrong but I feel you guys are playing "inbred" tactics.>>
Maybe? Maybe not? I've played this game a lot. And have done so in many different ways, as both sides, using many different overall plans. The current game, which you can examine turn by turn, is working the way it works. The Alliance is doing pretty well. The Coalition has demolished the Hydrans and has just started attacking the Feds. Nothing wildly unusual has happened. My opponent is very careful and conservative in his play (i.e. we play such that the Coalition generally has a week+ to plan moves and retrograde before and after combat). And the way the game is working currently, what both sides are doing is working. This is one of the most balanced games, in terms of where both sides are at this point, that I have played of F+E in a long while.
>>I feel the best way to kill a capitol is do it all at once. Eat the pain. These "raids" to reduce PDUs just seem like a great way to let the Zin burn PDU fighters more than once.>>
???
How do the Kzinti burn PDU fighters more than once? On a PDU stripping raid, the Coalition parks a fleet with a Mauler over a planet, blows up the PDUs, and either the fighters vaporize as minus points, or land on carriers in the hex that already lost fighters, of which there probably aren't many dead as the Coalition has zero need to worry about the long term in this kind of raid--they are only going to be in the hex long enough to kill the PDUs they plan on killing. They then move on to another planet, or finish off the PDUs that are still there. The only fighters that ever die in such an instance are the ones that are possibly on carriers in an approach battle. You, as the Coalition, wander in, shoot as many PDUs as you have maulers to do so with, and leave. If you do it right, the PDU fighter minus points just vanish into thin vacuum (except for the -12 the Kzinti get to carry into the pursuit fight). Then next turn, you come back, there are no PDUs, no minus points to deal with, and you just fight until one side or the other is dead.
Replies
" feel the best way to kill a capitol is do it all at once. Eat the pain. These "raids" to reduce PDUs just seem like a great way to let the Zin burn PDU fighters more than once. Bring 300 ships and SIT on the capitol till the Zin runs out of fighters. Yeah it hurts. It hurts a lot. Which is why you only kill one minor captitol. Hell... as a coalition, I leave the Zin shipyard alone."
BINGO. I figured out long ago... we did a raid, and the causualties were heavy, and we only took out 4 PDUs. So teh next turn, we faced the EXACT same amount of damage. Then I realized..."Hey, what I'm doing is fucking stupid!" ;-)
"Maybe? Maybe not? I've played this game a lot. And have done so in many different ways, as both sides, using many different overall plans. The current game, which you can examine turn by turn, is working the way it works. The Alliance is doing pretty well. The Coalition has demolished the Hydrans and has just started attacking the Feds"
Well, I'm curious about the comment you made the other day about Hydrax going down on T5 always. Seems kinda aggressive to me, and I've yet to see that happen in games where the Hydrans aren't directing all the time.
Did you direct when he took down the SBs?
"How do the Kzinti burn PDU fighters more than once?"
Some people come in, "scrape" 4-6 PDUs off the capital, then leave. It's a raid, and not an assualt. However, the Alliance replaces 4 of those PDUS, and you have to kill them again. This was common in many games back in the GEnie days, and the early days of the SFU forum. Not so much anymore.
PDU Stripping
I would have thought you'd want 8 minimum, but really 12 or 16 (depending on when you go in), or else it simply wouldnt be worth it?
What was that rationale with going in and destroying only what could be rebuilt the following Turn?
In theory it ties up production...
that might be turned into more ships.
Joe wrote:
>>BINGO. I figured out long ago... we did a raid, and the causualties were heavy, and we only took out 4 PDUs. So teh next turn, we faced the EXACT same amount of damage. Then I realized..."Hey, what I'm doing is fucking stupid!" ;-)>>
Well, I can't imagine that running into a capital just to shoot 4xPDU off the capital planet is a good idea either. That's not what I'm talking about here.
>>Well, I'm curious about the comment you made the other day about Hydrax going down on T5 always. Seems kinda aggressive to me, and I've yet to see that happen in games where the Hydrans aren't directing all the time.>>
Oh, no, it doesn't always die on T5. But if the Coalition got for a "kill the Hydrans with excessive force as quickly as possible" doctrine, it is certainly a possibility. The Hydrans can hold the capital till T6 if they never direct anything, sure, but what are they really gaining? They are losing plenty of ships to direct damage, keeping the shipyard for an extra turn, and the 10 or so new ships they build from that extra turn of shipyard isn't going to make up for the incredible ship disparity that comes from not directing--for my money, the Hydrans serve the Alliance far better by losing their shipyard on T5 and killing 25 Klingon ships than they do by losing their shipyard on T6 and killing 0 Klingon ships.
>>Did you direct when he took down the SBs?>>
Sure. He, as the attacker, directs on my ship, so I, as the defender, direct back. The SBs are (in the instances presented) just damage sinks, as they are going to die anyway. So I could give up ships to Coalition direct damage, not direct back, maybe keep the SB for an extra turn that I can't really capitalize from (due to the need to defend the Capital, as that is where the Hydran ships are best used to do damage), or I could blow up cruisers as well as cripple a bunch of stuff and trade the SB for a bunch of good, dead Klingons. Which is working out pretty well so far. Conversely, if the Coalition directs something and I don't direct back, the Coalition can easily switch to not directing, just letting damage fall, the SB still dies, the battle is shorter, and the Coalition loses fewer ships. And I tend to side with the idea of "the more ships the Klingons lose, the better everything is for the Feds".
>>Some people come in, "scrape" 4-6 PDUs off the capital, then leave. It's a raid, and not an assualt. However, the Alliance replaces 4 of those PDUS, and you have to kill them again. This was common in many games back in the GEnie days, and the early days of the SFU forum. Not so much anymore.>>
Hmm. I can't imagine that that is going to be a good idea most of the time. When I discuss a "capital raid", I'm generally talking about the Coalition going in with a big fleet and maulers, spreading out over all the non homeworld planets (that the Alliance generally can't defend all at once), and blowing up the 4xPDU/2xPDU on those non homeworld planets. If you get slightly lucky and do it right, you get to vaporize all the PDUs in one shot and never have to deal with the minus points from all the fighters (as they stay with the planet) other than in the one round of pursuit (which you currently get to benefit from -12 if you are the defender).
In my current game, when the Coalition attacked the Hydran Capital on T4 with, like, 150+ ships (and the Hydrans only had, say, 40 to defend with as they were also defending some of the SBs), the Coalition stripped the PDUs off all the non homeworld planets quickly and didn't have to deal with minus points, and then went and fought over the capital, stripped off the 10xPDUs that were there, took a lot of damage, and left. They came back on T5, fought until the SB was dead and the Hydrans couldn't fight anymore. Yeah, the Hydrans could have not ever directed anything at all (instead of killing, like, two dozen Klingon cruisers and maulers) and likely kept the capital till T6. But I already spelled out that math above.
I'd never claim that not directing *can't* work. But for my money, if the Coalition is directing me, I feel that I benefit from directing back. And it all seems to be working out pretty well so far. At least in this game
Evne then
"I would have thought you'd want 8 minimum, but really 12 or 16 (depending on when you go in), or else it simply wouldnt be worth it?"
8 is better, but still not worth it overall. 12 or 16 is really an assault, not a raid. Might as well go for the whole thing, really.
"What was that rationale with going in and destroying only what could be rebuilt the following Turn"
What Ken said. The idea was that the Alliance is "wasting" 28 points on the PDUs.... but of course, if you are getting your face smacked or having valuable units DirDammed out from under you, it's not really a good trade.
All this F&E talk
I need to play a game...
You do!
"All this F&E talk
I need to play a game...
"
Just move within driving range of central NJ, and we can game! ;-)
Passports, Visas, Money, etc...
Are all that is holding me back !!
Well, get started!!
Start saving now!
Too late
Already saving up so my daughter can go on a school trip to Japan. Not easy when all the other kids in the class come from families overflowing with cash.
The Hydrans need to save the
The Hydrans need to save the CA lines for over the homeworld. Fight at the SBs with the Pal+3CV+4Uh+3CVT lines. Use the rangers as the world's meanest FCRs.
Larry wrote:
>>The Hydrans need to save the CA lines for over the homeworld. Fight at the SBs with the Pal+3CV+4Uh+3CVT lines. Use the rangers as the world's meanest FCRs.>>
As of T4, when the starbases are being attacked (as well as the Capital), the Hydrans have:
-1 total Paladins
-0 total CVs
-1 total UH
-Not enough escorts to escort the UH and the CVTs.
So it would be nice if the Hydrans could defend their SBs with Pal+3CV+4UH+3CVT, but at the point in the game when they have that opportunity, they don't have those ships. And the Pal is probably at the capital.
I mean, yeah, if the Coalition go for a "Kill the Kzintis First" doctrine, and don't have 100+ extra ships on the Hydran border on T3, and can't attack all the SBs and the capital at the same time, and the Hydrans can consequently afford to defend the SBs 'cause their capital can't realistically be attacked on T4, and then can keep the shipyard for a couple more turn (if not forever, given how the Coalition went for the Kzintis first), then sure, defend the SBs with Pal and all the carriers.
But if the Coalition spent T2 messing up the Kzinti SBs, ignoring the capital, and then ship 100+ extra ships to the Hydran border on T3, none of that is ever going to happen.
Then the Zin ought to be
Then the Zin ought to be blowing a lot of things up in K space. Or the Expedition worked. Or the EB SB got killed.
Its simply not possible to kill all 3 SB cheap, raid the Hydran homeworld, AND BAKE APPLE PIE!! (at least not on T4)
The Hydran SB do go down kinda cheap... never claimed they didn't. But you can't whack all of them and raid the capitol and not cripple like 200 ships. It just can't be done. (This is why the Zin needed to be crippling 10 or more ships every turn)
They don't even have that many...
"But if the Coalition spent T2 messing up the Kzinti SBs, ignoring the capital, and then ship 100+ extra ships to the Hydran border on T3"
.... to send.
To do that, they'd have to send nearly all of T1-T3 builds there. That leaves Red Claw, Lyran Home Fleet, Northern Fleet, and Northern Reserve Fleet vs. Duke's, Count's , Homeworld, Baron's and most of the Marquis fleets, plus T1-T3 builds.
If that happens, the Kzinti should be having a field day, especially considering the casualties that the Coalition should have taken taking down the SBs on T2.
And the the Coalition isn't sending that kind of firepower southward, I'm curious to know how they take out 3 Hydran SBs on T4, and still have enough firepower to take out all 6 planets plus the SB in the Hydran capital on T5, especially if the Coalition player is being conservative.
So I assume you are speaking hyperbolically.
Joe wrote:
>>To do that, they'd have to send nearly all of T1-T3 builds there. That leaves Red Claw, Lyran Home Fleet, Northern Fleet, and Northern Reserve Fleet vs. Duke's, Count's , Homeworld, Baron's and most of the Marquis fleets, plus T1-T3 builds.>>
Pretty much. It is mostly even at that point, ship wise, on the Kzinti front.
>>If that happens, the Kzinti should be having a field day, especially considering the casualties that the Coalition should have taken taking down the SBs on T2.>>
You'd think so, wouldn't you. But not really. There are enough ships around to pin most of the Kzinti at this point. Still.
>>And the the Coalition isn't sending that kind of firepower southward, I'm curious to know how they take out 3 Hydran SBs on T4, and still have enough firepower to take out all 6 planets plus the SB in the Hydran capital on T5, especially if the Coalition player is being conservative.>>
2x SB on T4. The 3rd on T5. The game is all right there for you to look at.
>>So I assume you are speaking hyperbolically.>>
Nope.
Just for Illustration Purposes:
At the end of CT3, Coalition ship numbers:
-Kzinti Front: About 140 Coalition ships in various places, all in range of the Capital.
-Hydran Front: About 200 ships in range of Hydran space.
Conversely, at the start of AT3 (including new builds), Alliance ship numbers:
-Kzinti: About 100 ships.
-Hydran: About 75 ships.
Which is enough ships to hit the Hydran capital significantly, kill two SBs (in this instance, there was an undefended SB, and two that had a dozen ships each. The undefended SB was killed, one of the defended SBs was killed, the other was pinned and ignored, and killed on T5 in an incredibly bloody fight), some BATS, and keep the Kzinti at bay.
To be clear here:
I'm not speaking hypothetically. This is a game. That I am currently playing. And you all can go and look at it turn by turn. I even posted a link up above somewhere.
And for my money, I think the Alliance are doing pretty well. I'm not at all unhappy with my position as of AT7.
Pinning the Kzinti fleet
"You'd think so, wouldn't you. But not really. There are enough ships around to pin most of the Kzinti at this point. Still."
Then the Kzinti needs to look at alternate targets, or alternate deployment.
Sure, if you sit in the capital with all of the ships and impale yourself on his FRD park, you'll be pinning.
Don't do that. There are may other options.
"2x SB on T4. The 3rd on T5. The game is all right there for you to look at."
In your earlier post, you had said that the Hydran was losing the capital on T5. I don't see them taking down the SB and clearing out the capital on T5. Maybe 6, definitely on T7. But not T5.
"there was an undefended SB"
Ouch
"and two that had a dozen ships each"
That's about right, depending on which ones. I usually like to have a little more on the Expeditionary SB, as it provides cover for the capital.
How many did he attack each SB with?
Joe wrote:
>>Then the Kzinti needs to look at alternate targets, or alternate deployment.>>
The Kzinti are doing fine. They have most of their economy, haven't missed a ship build yet, are killing BATS, have killed a lot of Klingons, and now are poised to help the Feds.
I'm kind of unclear on what the discussion is revolving around here--I'm playing a game, the Alliance is doing fine, and every one is all "the Alliance should be doing something else!". When what they are doing is working fine, currently.
>>Don't do that. There are may other options.>>
Yes? Again, I'm not clear on what is actually being discussed here. I'm perfectly happy with where the Alliance is at this point in the game, directly as the result of me doing what I've been doing.
>>In your earlier post, you had said that the Hydran was losing the capital on T5. I don't see them taking down the SB and clearing out the capital on T5. Maybe 6, definitely on T7. But not T5.>>
And yet the Hydrans lost their capital on T5. The game is posted, turn by turn, in fairly rich detail. If the Coalition put 200 ships on the Hydran border on T3, the Hydrans can easily lose their capital on T5. And the SBs too. Again, if the Hydrans refused to direct anything, they probably could have kept the capital till T6. But for my money, losing the capital on T5 and blowing up 25 Klingon cruisers and maulers is a better deal for the Alliance as a whole than losing the capital on T6 and not blowing up any Klingons.
>>Ouch>>
There are ~100 Coalition ships in range of the Hydran capital at the start of T4. There are another ~100 Coalition ships in range of other Hydran targets (SB/BATS/Planets). The Hydrans have 75 ships, of which about a third are frigates. How strongly can they defend three starbases on T4?
>>That's about right, depending on which ones. I usually like to have a little more on the Expeditionary SB, as it provides cover for the capital.>>
Sure--you put a dozen ships on each of two starbases (I had 10 on the Expeditionary SB and 15 on the Lyran Border SB), you have the OCS still off map as a reserve (as it isn't released yet), and that leaves you about 40 ships to protect the Capital against the ~100 that can get there.
>>How many did he attack each SB with?>>
It is recorded in the game report--the undefended one was hit with 15 or so janky ships that couldn't reach the capital; the Expeditionary SB was hit by about 20 ships vs the 10 that were there; it looks like they completely avoided the Lyran Border SB--I suspect (IIRC) that they moved around it early, so if I had reacted off of it, it would have died for a song, and I was hoping to keep it around for a while.
I didn't mean...
...to make you feel set upon, so if I did, my apologies.
I'm just trying to get a grasp on the game you guys are playing, from snippets here on the forum.
Heh--Not a Problem.
Like, I'm mostly just confused. Between you and Larry, I'm getting a lot of "But then the Alliance should be doing X, Y, and Z! And the Hydrans shouldn't be getting killed like that!" kinda stuff, and I'm just trying to figure out what you guys are looking at.
As noted, in the game I'm playing, the Hydrans lost their Capital on T5, as well as all their SBs in about the same time frame, 'cause the Coalition dumped all their ships on the Hydran border on T3. The Kzintis weren't attacked significantly (if at all) on Coalition turns 4, and 5. The Kzinti are in a strong position, but had trouble doing anything particularly exciting at that point due to the Coalition still having enough ships to pin the Kzinti--even leaving over half the Kzinti fleet deployed forward, they could attack the NR Starbase, which would have been a dubious move given that most of the time, the Coalition could have sent 2 or 3 strong reserve fleets to defend it (which comes from the Coalition not moving on CT4 and 5), and it is unlikely that the Kzinti could have won that fight. For a while, they had 20 ships that could rush the Lyran Red Claw SB, but again, with reserve defense, it is unlikely that turns out well for the Kzinti. So they killed a couple BATS and waged a war of attrition. The Coalition raided the Kzinti capital on T6 (after killing the Hydrans on T5), devastated a bunch of planets, failed to kill a MB>BATS conversion, leaving the Kzinti capital with 18xPDU and Vielsalm Major with 6xPDU and a BATS around it.
The Hydrans were going to get mauled one way or the other, with that many Coalition ships down there. Again, they probably could have kept the capital till T6 if they directed nothing, but considering how many Maulers were down there (and in the fight), that strikes me as a much less viable plan than selling out the Capital on T5 and killing about 30 Coalition ships in the process. The biggest error (for my money) that I made with the Hydrans was moving them at all on T3--they couldn't accomplish anything by attacking the Lyrans like they did (they probably could have directed one of the border BATS in exchange for 2 or 3 more dead cruisers, which again, seemed like a bad trade at the time), and if they didn't move at all (other than re-positioning units), I could have left the ships stationed at the Lyran border SB set up as a reserve, which would have required another 15 or so ships to pin them on T4, which would have kept something else alive that turn.
In terms of the Kzinti, keep in mind that we are just using the basic set rules--no raids or fast ships or drone raids, and whatever, which means that the Kzinti, even with mostly empty space, can't actually accomplish all that much as the Coalition can pin them away from any important target, and just give up unimportant targets. Now that it is T7, however, there is a lot more room to move for them, and they can start wreaking some havoc. Hopefully.
Here is my question:
"but had trouble doing anything particularly exciting at that point due to the Coalition still having enough ships to pin the Kzinti--"
I guess what I'm confused about is this; certainly, with 140 ships, the Coalition can keep the Kzinti away from any one target they chose. But they can't stop you in every possible location. And with 140 ships, he can't safeguard every captured planet in Kzinti space. So I'm curious as to which targets you went for. It does look like you deployed ships on the Marquis SB, and that's good.
"For a while, they had 20 ships that could rush the Lyran Red Claw SB, but again, with reserve defense, it is unlikely that turns out well for the Kzinti."
I wouldn't dive into the SB if it is defended by a reserve, BUT I might move ships there to force his hand. IF he doesn't reserve there, I kill the SB, and if he does, I fight the approach battle and leave. Now those ships aren't in a good spot, and if he sent them there, then he didn't stop me doing something else, so I might have won somewhere else with the balance of my fleet.
", they probably could have kept the capital till T6 if they directed nothing, but considering how many Maulers were down there (and in the fight), that strikes me as a much less viable plan than selling out the Capital on T5 and killing about 30 Coalition ships in the process"
Well, to me, getting that extra turn might allow me to kill just as many, as well as inflict more cripples. I might have gone mauler hunting on T6. But on T5, he'd have had to blow up a few extra ships on his own if I'm not directing, or else cripplie a lot more. That's my preference anyway. I really feel that overwhelming him with cripples has a better long term effect.
" if they didn't move at all (other than re-positioning units), I could have left the ships stationed at the Lyran border SB set up as a reserve, which would have required another 15 or so ships to pin them on T4, which would have kept something else alive that turn."
True, if the Hydrans aren't in a position to do anything significant on T3, sometimes the best thing is to redeploy. I usually like to attack if I can, but those situations arise where doing so just brings more ships into range of the capital, with little gain for the Hydrans.
Good like to the Kzintis... I look forward to seeing you wrecking havoc!
For Peter B. It's amazing....
how much better we get along when SVC isn't there to interfere :-)
Joe wrote:
>>I guess what I'm confused about is this; certainly, with 140 ships, the Coalition can keep the Kzinti away from any one target they chose.>>
In this instance, I took back a lot of planets and killed some BATS. As that was what I could reach.
>>Well, to me, getting that extra turn might allow me to kill just as many, as well as inflict more cripples. I might have gone mauler hunting on T6. But on T5, he'd have had to blow up a few extra ships on his own if I'm not directing, or else cripplie a lot more. That's my preference anyway. I really feel that overwhelming him with cripples has a better long term effect.>>
I'm yet to ever see it work. At least not in games where the Coalition doesn't try and get both capitals before T7. I've played (fairly recently, relative to the long term) games where I directed nothing trying to overwhelm repair capacity, which hasn't, in my experience, worked unless the Coalition chose to allow it to (i.e. keep fighting in situations where they didn't have to, try and get both capitals). In situations where the Coalition decided to only take one capital decisively, and not fight on the Alliance turns when they could avoid it, I've never seen the Coalition run out of repair capacity. I mean, yeah, years ago I was in a game where the Coalition backlog of cripples was so deep that they were self killing ships as it just seemed like a better idea that crippling more of them, but in that game they got the Kzinti capital on T4 and were trying to get the Hydran capital by T6, and when they didn't, they just gave up and we started over :-)
>>True, if the Hydrans aren't in a position to do anything significant on T3, sometimes the best thing is to redeploy. I usually like to attack if I can, but those situations arise where doing so just brings more ships into range of the capital, with little gain for the Hydrans.>>
Yeah, it seemed like I could attack the EB SB and pull some reserves further from the Capital, but it turned out that there were just too many ships. But I didn't cleverly pay attention to that till I'd already gotten there :-/
Really, I should have just strat moved some ships around to set up a good reserve at the Lyran border SB (which he was then going to need to pin, sucking up another 15+ ships) and not bothered trying to attack. Next time.
>>Good like to the Kzintis... I look forward to seeing you wrecking havoc!>>
Me too!
Joe wrote:
>>I guess what I'm confused about is this; certainly, with 140 ships, the Coalition can keep the Kzinti away from any one target they chose.>>
Just to clarify on this point--the Coalition had an FRD park in 1307 with a whole lot of ships, and usually another fleet of 40 or so ships near the Kzinti forward deployed fleet of 40 ships. But other than that, not many ships in Kzinti space. The Kzinti held (and still hold) planet 1502, 1001, and 1504 for most of the game so far, and most of their provinces. As noted, the Kzinti could get to a couple BATS without being pinned (and got there and killed them), and could have made a couple of abortive attacks on the two close Coalition SBs, but chose not to for various reasons (usually 'cause they could fight somewhere and kill some stuff that seemed more effective at the time). The Kzinti have had a strong economy the whole game so far--they haven't lost a single build, haven't had any trouble at all keeping up with escort losses, and built 20 extra PDUs and a BATS in the capital. So when I say "the Kzinti couldn't attack much", I mean "they couldn't attack much in Klingon space"--they get to pretty much freely wander around Kzinti space and kill province raiding FFs and liberate planets.
OK thanks
"In this instance, I took back a lot of planets and killed some BATS. As that was what I could reach."
OK good. That's what I'd expect to do as well.
"I'm yet to ever see it work."
I have, many times.
"Just to clarify on this point--the Coalition had an FRD park in 1307 with a whole lot of ships, and usually another fleet of 40 or so ships near the Kzinti forward deployed fleet of 40 ships. But other than that, not many ships in Kzinti space. The Kzinti held (and still hold) planet 1502, 1001, and 1504 for most of the game so far"
Ah, so he is being REALLY conservative. I call this the "pitty pat" approach. I've done it. It's a double edged sword though, as the Kzinti get to build a lot more. At some point, with the Feds in, the Klinks simply won't be able to hold you at bay.
" I mean "they couldn't attack much in Klingon space"--they get to pretty much freely wander around Kzinti space and kill province raiding FFs and liberate planets."
Cool. Thanks for clarifying. I have a much better picture of what's going on now.
Joe wrote:
>>OK good. That's what I'd expect to do as well.>>
Yeah, for the first 6 turns of the game, the Kzinti had a lot of room to move, but still had to keep an eye on the Capital--the Coalition didn't have a million ships, but they were still up, like, 1.5:1 and if I left the Capital empty, they could have rushed it and done a lot of damage, so while I forward deployed about half the fleet (they lived on planet 1504 most of the game), I still felt it was prudent to leave 30 or so ships at the Capital that I could bolster with off map reserves if needed. So the Kzinti could move around, and there were places in Kzinti space that the Coalition couldn't send reserves to (i.e. planet 1001, say), but in terms of Klingon targets, their options were the three Eastern BATS (of which 2 are currently dead), and the NR Starbase (which, as noted, never actually worked as a good target). They get to freely spread out and attack in multiple places every turn (there are usually ~4 fights of "DN, 3xCV, extra escort" vs something) to continue to attrit Coalition forces, and when I attack a hard point (i.e. BATS), there is a fight. Now that it is T7 and the Coalition is spread a lot thinner, and the Feds are involved, I expect that the Kzinti will have a lot more opportunity to kill things.
>>I have, many times.>>
(overload repair capacity)
I can certainly see it happening, but again, I can really only imagine this working if the Coalition play along (and by "play along", I don't mean conspire to make the plan work intentionally, but I mean the Coalition fighting longer and harder than they generally need to most of the time) and are more aggressive during turns 1-6 than I generally consider to be a good idea. Assuming they maximize their FRD builds, and the FRDs aren't left in places where they can get blown up (and there aren't drone raids that are blowing up the FRDs), the Coalition generally have the repair capacity they need, assuming moderate reasonable amounts of damage.
I can also imagine that if you are using all the expanded rules, where compots are just larger across the board more often (due to battle groups and admirals and whatever), there is a lot more potential to do more damage, which would also make this more viable. But with the basic rules set, there really aren't that many big battle lines that often, such that it is difficult to get past the Coalition fighter clouds (again, assuming the Coalition maximize their fighter/CV builds) anywhere other than a capital/star base fight.
>>Ah, so he is being REALLY conservative. I call this the "pitty pat" approach. I've done it. It's a double edged sword though, as the Kzinti get to build a lot more. At some point, with the Feds in, the Klinks simply won't be able to hold you at bay.>>
Oh, sure. That is my hope.
This is true
"I can also imagine that if you are using all the expanded rules, where compots are just larger across the board more often (due to battle groups and admirals and whatever), there is a lot more potential to do more damage,"
I don't doubt that adds a bit on the cripples.
Overload repair capacity
I played a game agains Bill Schoeller a couple of years ago. (actually about 10yrs ago). I did direct at targets of oppurtunity but mostly allowed him to take damage as the coalition in order to try and overwhelm in repair capacity. It didn't really work. If I recall correctly, Bill analysis was that he was able to pretty much keep up with repairs and build his full schedule. The only real effect was he was building mostly base hulls instead of specialty/variant hulls, i.e. more D6's less D6M/S/V etc.
Having said that, it was one or my early games and I made a lot of mistakes as the Alliance. For example, I got the Hydran Expedition through on turn 5 or 6 and then squandered it by spreading the extra Feds out over the border BatS in an attempt to make the first turn assault more damaging for the Klingons. It didn't work. All the BatS and 3 of 4 SB's all went down on Turn 7.
Additionally, we ended the game after turn 9 in favor of starting East Wind because we had a new player joining us. Therefore, I don't know if the long term overload would have worked out.
Overloading Repair
Again, I've seen the Coalition repair capacity get overloaded. But it was in games where they got the Hydran and Kzinti capital before T7, and generally didn't have enough ships to attack the Feds with on T7, and it all kinda fell apart for them in the long run.
I'll also reiterate the idea that with Admirals and Battle Groups and Prime Teams and whatever else you can add in to make battle lines much bigger than in the basic rules all the time, the Coalition can also take a lot more damage, resulting in a lot more cripples.
With the basic set rules, the Coalition are, more often than not, seeing, like, 80-90 point battle lines from the Kzinti (especially early on when they have all those anemic CLEs) which is an average of, like, 22 some odd damage. In one of those "pin, fight a round, and retreat" battles that come up so often, that 22 damage is going to convert into 15-18 dead fighters and a crippled CW. I'd much rather just blow something up :-)
Repair capacity
"The only real effect was he was building mostly base hulls instead of specialty/variant hulls, i.e. more D6's less D6M/S/V etc.",
Well, that is a useful effect.
"Having said that, it was one or my early games and I made a lot of mistakes as the Alliance"
That is a significant thing.
"In one of those "pin, fight a round, and retreat" battles that come up so often, that 22 damage is going to convert into 15-18 dead fighters and a crippled CW"
Well, it does take 3-5 turns to assemble the carrier force for the Coalition to do that.
Joe wrote:
>>Well, it does take 3-5 turns to assemble the carrier force for the Coalition to do that.>>
With the flexible CV group rules, the Coalition (well, the Klingons) can ramp up their carrier force pretty quickly--escorted CVTs, cheaply converted F5Vs, and the carriers they start with, and getting a solid cloud of fighters in the way isn't that difficult to pull off. They don't have *dense* carriers till T4+, as they have horrible escorts and the lame D6Vs till then, but they can get up to speed for pin fights (i.e. a CR10 ship and enough fighters to get as close to 18 as they can) pretty quickly.
Yeah but,
"cheaply converted F5Vs,"
If they are doing that, their compot drops. Even feeding the fighters forward.
And even still, they start with 7 D6V/CVT, but they don't have access to even 6 of them until turn 3/4, plus whatever they build. If you use up those FFF, that's another 3. But that's spread out as well.
Now, if you only attack 1-2 targets, sure, they can mass carriers, but even then, you are only talking about 20-24 fighters in a couple of hexes.
F&E Game Balance
Was just looking at the official forum and in one of the scenario write-ups someone said that at the moment the game is slightly favouring Coalition for the basic game, and heavily favouring Alliance for the full game with all expansions.
Seems to differ fairly significantly from here where the view (particularly of ikvsabre) is that the Coalition is favoured by the new rules.
Anyone else follow the various games that are being run?
Im tempted to get started on another solo game, but really want to hassle my friend who Ive played against a few times, but I know he is snowed under until after Christmas...
BTW: I figured I'd post something here because it hasnt been used much in the last couple of weeks, and people seem unhappy that this forum seems devoted to non-game issues (even though they arent actively trying to get game discussions going).
F&E Game Balance
"Seems to differ fairly significantly from here where the view (particularly of ikvsabre) is that the Coalition is favoured by the new rules.
"
"New rules" in my context referred to the 2010 rules, not the expansions. I agree with the notion that the revised expansions now lean pro-Alliance, but I feel the new 2K rules are heavily favoring the Coalition.
Right.
Here is my feeling on the game.
For a long time, the (unexpanded) game was wildly pro-Coalition. They had all the ships and all the momentum, and while, in theory, the Alliance could come back in the long run, the game was usually long over due to Alliance concession way before the long term advantages of the Alliance came into play.
Check. Then they made F+E2K, which seemed to shift the balance a bit more in the direction of the Alliance, but I think it was still advantage: Coalition. The new 2K10 rules, so far, seem to be helping the Alliance more than not (with the flexible CV group rules and no mauling formation bonus ships being huge helps), so my experience so far with the 2K10 rules is that they might be reasonably balanced as a standing rules set.
All indications are from folks who play the fully expanded game is that the fully expanded game pushes the balance in the direction of the Alliance--raids and fast ships give them a lot more to do (i.e. they can affect the board even though the Coalition can pin them in every direction and the Expedition becomes a lot more viable); the Hydrans get a big boost with the Off Map Treasury rule and DN activation rule; the Feds (and Alliance as a whole) get a big boost with the Fed Reaction rule (they go nuts if the Coalition capture both the Hydran and Kzinti capitals); the Gorns get a big boost with half cost field repair (and a huge increase in production schedule). There are a lot of other good upgrades for everyone side by side, but a lot of them seem to be a wash.
There is also the solid argument that the victory conditions greatly favor the Alliance--at the start of the game, the Alliance is winning by a significant margin by virtue of the VP calculations, and it takes a *lot* of work by the Coalition to push the game into a victory by points. But the reality of the game is that it rarely makes it to the point where you calculate VPs 'cause the game ended on turn 37 or whatever--one side or the other has either conceded by that point, or the game has just ended due to fatigue.
But in spite of all that....
I still could kick the crap out of the bulk of Alliance players ;-)
(present company excluded of course)
Present company being bakija
Certainly not me... Im sure you could beat me while devoting no more than 5 minutes per turn to planning, and 10 minutes per turn to moves.
So if I dont much like the idea of raids, drone raids, special raids, diplomacy, micromanaging hospitals/planetary forces/transports/etc, special this, extra that, etc... I should really just focus on the core F&E2k game which is fairly balanced in itself, and due to not having all of the above, means I will be able to play the games much, much quicker?
I think I like the sound of that.
I liked some bits of AO, and also liked FO, but if the bulk of FO is merged into the base game, then I can easily ignore the bits from AO that I did like if it means the overall game works better.
I'd much rather make it to T28 in reasonable time, than continually get to T12 and realise that once again the Alliance has seen off the Klingons and Romulans and no amount of PFs/X-Ships is going to swing the game back.
ikvsabre... maybe one day we should try and work across our timezones using Vassal or Cyberboard and I can play Coalition...
F&E feature creep
Until Planetary Ops, I used to disagree with Peter B. that there were too many rules in F&E. I still think that prior to PO & SO, things were mostly fine. But the last two expansions where so chock-a-block with minutia, that it's become a complete muddle. It's not that there aren't useful items there (there are), and even some of the minutia is useful, but much of it does not belong in a strategic game. It's clutter, designed to bulk up a product, and nothing more.
Much of AO is not a factor until later in the war, but the parts that are available early, IMO, are pretty good.
My suggestion to people is to play 2K/AO/FO. If someone REALLY wants to play 2K10, ok, fine. I still hate it. But most of the rest can be dispensed with.
I'd be very willing to play you using Vassal or whatever (although I use CB, I don't really like it, as it is cumbersome for F&E). It may take us 4 years to finish, but that's OK.
Of course, I need to get off my ass and work more on the game I've been designing. MUCH faster SoP. No fiddly bits at all. Build. Move, Fight. Move, Fight. Move, Fight. Build. Move, Fight. Move, Fight. Move, Fight. Build. Move, Fight. Move, Fight. Move, Fight. Build. Move, Fight. Move, Fight. Move, Fight.
Way more action and die rolling, and no more Federation and Accountants.
Hoju wrote:
>>So if I dont much like the idea of raids, drone raids, special raids, diplomacy, micromanaging hospitals/planetary forces/transports/etc, special this, extra that, etc... I should really just focus on the core F&E2k game which is fairly balanced in itself, and due to not having all of the above, means I will be able to play the games much, much quicker?>>
Yeah--all the added extra stuff, for my money, is just added complication for little gain. I've played with ground forces and EW and stasis ships and whatever (all the pre-AO stuff, historically speaking), and just found that they made things take a lot longer and didn't really change the end result that much (and before they fixed the EW and SFG rules, they made everything much, much worse...)
I think the F+E2K10 rules work pretty well so far. I think they do definitely push the tactics of the Alliance in a specific direction due to not being able to out of turn retrograde/repair escorts anymore, but I don't think it is necessarily a losing direction.
ikvsabre
Sounds like we should either get a game of F&E going, or start play testing your new game ! I dont own F&E2K, but have been thinking about buying it. Have you got a copy of the rules?
Ive not looked at Cyberboard, but Vassal seems very well set up to me. I can easily play it on my laptop which is slow and old. Would also need to check whether there is a new version, because mine is quite old now.
The map shows the counters well. You can stack things nicely. There are 2 battle boards you move your counters to for combat, plus there is a separate board for each Capital.
As for the games I have played, we used AO and FO only. I think the idea of having massive scale combat degenerate in to nitpicking over individual units is just plain silly. Raids should not even involve specific ships, if you are going to allow them. Something as simple as paying 5 CP or whatever, then having a disruption die roll is more than enough. Even going without them is fine.
It should be about getting fleets to knock out key points like planets and BATS, and massed fleets to take down Capitals. The idea that 100 ships can pin 100 other ships 1 hex away from a Capital is dumb.
2K rules
I have a spare copy of the 2K rules I can give you. I don't have the 2010 rules, as that would require giving money to SVC, and that's never going to happen again (at least not by me).
I'm up for a game on Vassal, and I sure would like the chance to test out some of my game mechanics :-)
"The idea that 100 ships can pin 100 other ships 1 hex away from a Capital is dumb.
"
Amen. NO PINNING in my game. The idea that ships with warp capability could be pinned at all seems, to me, silly.
My only really good choice
I have a 2 year old son. I figure he's playing Junior Monopoly at 4, real Monopoly at 6, SFB at 8, F&E at 10.
While still maintaining a heavy sports training regime so that when he makes millions as a teenager my wife and I can retire.
I also have an 11 year old daughter, but the most interest she has ever had in SFB/F&E is rolling dice as a 6 year old. She has no interest in sports either. So she is a lost cause.
We must focus on the boy !!
Pinning
Its not just warp capability. Its the fact that each hex is a gazillion KM cube so pinpointing the exact location of the enemy and spreading out your ships in a manner that restricts a huge arc of potential avoidance movements, while still enabling them to provide enough clustered defence to hinder the attacker is quite simply stupid.
You could even allow 2 stages of approach battles. The outer approach has zero non-warp ship defences, and if the defender chooses not to fight here, the attacker gets away for free or moves to the inner approach battle. The inner approach has all mobile defences, and if the defender chooses not to fight here, the attacker gets a free round of bombardment and can then leave or move to the actual target. Then you fight at the Base/BATS/SB/Planet/important thing-whatever it may be/etc.
Then you would have rules around what is required for the attacker to progress further towards the target if there are battles (doing more damage, or simply doing x amount of damage), or what is required to flee (sacrificing a single FF so that 150 ships escape is a bit of a dodge - so maybe it requires an escape round of combat where cripples are destroyed, or cripples are forced to fight a further round in order to escape).
Whatever is decided, Im sure you can come up with some very sensible rules. Pinning may have made sens 25 years ago, but obviously at some point a player found that it was the most important rule in the game and found the most effective way to exploit the rule, and now its simply too late for anything to be done about it.
Hoju wrote:
>>Whatever is decided, Im sure you can come up with some very sensible rules. Pinning may have made sens 25 years ago, but obviously at some point a player found that it was the most important rule in the game and found the most effective way to exploit the rule, and now its simply too late for anything to be done about it.>>
Yeah, I don't know that the game would work as it currently is if you removed pinning. It is too much built into the rules. If you remove the pinning rules, the Alliance suddenly can attack anything with impunity, and the Coalition simply can't maintain an offensive, as they can't keep any FRDs alive.
I mean, yeah, playing the Alliance is really frustrating when you can't go anywhere due to being pinned in all possible directions, but it is just too much part of the game to make vanish.
It seems likely that there would be a way to make the game work *without* pinning, but it would take an awful lot of restructuring of the game from the ground up.
Then so be it !!
Sounds like that is what ikvsabre is talking about anyway. Though of course, to avoid any copyright issues, Im sure his game would be totally different *nod* *nod*.
As a relatively new player Im not stuck wanting certain things from the game. I think pinning is definitely one of the most annoying rules.
Removing pinning doesnt really mean the Alliance can attack anything. If you change the way defences work, it can still be difficult for them to go on the counter-attack, unless they risk all their ships (which is another thing you can easily control the number of).
If they need to go through 2 approach battles before getting to an FRD park, planet, BATS, etc. then they need to be serious about their attack, and they also risk having a lot of cripples which wont be much use the following turn. So sure, they can freely move about however they want, but other than reinforcing their own defences, they wont be doing much in Lyran/Klingon space early on unless the Coalition messes up.
Hoju Wrote:
>>As a relatively new player Im not stuck wanting certain things from the game. I think pinning is definitely one of the most annoying rules.>>
Well, to be fair, yes. Yes it is. But again, very hardwired into the rules and the game balance. You'd really have to rejigger the whole game to make it work without pinning.
Would you be opposed to rejiggerizing...
I guess the question is, does the game offer enough enjoyment to you that you wouldnt be interested in much being changed?
Or if solutions could be found, would you happily use them?
I would think changes to the way combat works (only ever happens on key hexes), changes to the way approach battles and retreats are fought, and adjustments to starting ships and shipbuilding, combined with simplified economics would be a great game.
F&E has grown mostly because new modules are required to make money for the developer. Fair enough, but then you end up with a galactic scale game that descends into minutiae and does not really do much more than vastly increase the amount of time required to play a game.
I wonder when SVC last played a full game of F&E. In fact, I wonder if he ever played a full game of F&E...
The ideal game would be one in which you could use all the ships from F&E, create your fleets, attack your targets, and win or lose by killing them or defending them. Economics would be a matter of counting key hexes, paying a nominal upkeep, and building new units.
You could consider substitutions and conversions, or simply ban them and make variants available for purchase at any time. A grand scale game doesnt really need to come down to whether you converted that D6 to a D6M - "oh no, you didnt, therefore you cant assault the kzinti Capital this Turn - WHOOPS".
Being able to play a full game in a month or two of a couple of hours per week would be awesome. You'd still get the epic-ness of galactic combat, but without the years and years of devotion.
Wrong game...
"Yeah, I don't know that the game would work as it currently is if you removed pinning. It is too much built into the rules. If you remove the pinning rules, the Alliance suddenly can attack anything with impunity, and the Coalition simply can't maintain an offensive, as they can't keep any FRDs alive.
"
For this particular effort, I'm not looking to make alternative rules for F&E, rather, to make a completely different game. F&E is certainly an inspiration, but I want to make a game that stands on its own.
I see battles taking place at, around and near planets and colonies.....valuable for resources and/or strategic location. Hexes are just a transit to and from important systems.
I also envision multi-planet systems being common, rather than just being something of capitals. And there will be no reason why different planets in a star system can't be occupied by different factions at any given time.
"You could consider substitutions and conversions, or simply ban them and make variants available for purchase at any time. A grand scale game doesnt really need to come down to whether you converted that D6 to a D6M - "oh no, you didnt, therefore you cant assault the kzinti Capital this Turn - WHOOPS".
"
I foresee special purpose ships, not many conversions of existing models. F&E took something that was used in the early days of modern carrier aviation, and took it to a completely different level. While I've enjoyed converting many hundreds of ships over the years, it does seem to be TOO paramount a necessity.
AND NO BLOODY MAGIC TUGS. I ALWAYS hated tugs. They do WAY too many things. "Tug" isn't even a good term for them. Tugs in modern surface fleets don't have any serious logistics role, let alone become magical chameleon ships.
Scuffy the Tugboat...
... weeps at your put down.
I agree Tugs are far too good. Each race should have TGA/TGB type versions where one can be fitted out for combat (TGA-BT/TGA-CV/etc.) and the other fitted out as a cargo ship/fleet repair ship/etc. and none of them, realistically, should be better than the dedicated ship they seek to replace.
So a CV should be better than a TGA-CV, a DN should be better than a TGA-BT, an FRD should be better than a TGB-Rep, etc.
Given the size each hex would most likely represent, I also agree that you could have competing forces in those hexes with multi-planet systems, however this then leads to all sorts of challenging rule questions such as, "can they fight against eachother without fleets (ie. with bombardments)"...
Bombardments
"Given the size each hex would most likely represent, I also agree that you could have competing forces in those hexes with multi-planet systems, however this then leads to all sorts of challenging rule questions such as, "can they fight against eachother without fleets (ie. with bombardments)"...
"
I would say no. Given the size of even our solar system, the idea of missles travelling multiple AU to strike targets seems highly implausible.
In combat, however, standoff weapons would be very valuable for preserving one's fleet. I'm debating on how much "manuever" to have during combat. I have a few competing idea; not sure which one I prefer.
In one version, combat remains fairly strategic (F&E-like).
In another, combat is more operational level combat, in between F&E and FC.
I might make the former the default, with an optional operational combat system; way more playable than SFB on this scale, but more fiddly for people that like a touch fiddly (while maintaining a fairly quick game)
In space, no-one can hear you scream
Once a drone/missile/whatever is launched, it will continue to travel at whatever velocity its at when the rockets are turned off. So assuming some time in the future where rockets can accelerate to some massively insane speed (say 0.5C) it will traverse the solar system in maybe 10 or 12 hours. Boosters being used to make minor trajectory changes along the way.
Realistic? Maybe not. Unrealistic? Not really either. And if you happen to have 2 habitable planets in a solar system, they are probably going to be much, much closer. Unless these would always be controlled by one race.
I guess if you are saying that there are multiple stars and they are 2, 5, 12 light-years apart and the different star systems are controlled by different players, then that certainly would be unrealistic.
However, does this add unnecessary complexity? Particularly in terms of economics when the aim is the keep that simple so the focus remains on blowing up the enemy?
Ah, Ok
So you guys are interested in basically a whole new game that uses the same components. Check. Seems like a plan--not one that I'm that interested in getting involved in, but certainly I can see the appeal. Carry on.
Free return trajectory....
You could do it, but don't expect to hit anything. The targets will all have moved, simply by virtue of orbit around the sun.
"I guess if you are saying that there are multiple stars and they are 2, 5, 12 light-years apart and the different star systems are controlled by different players, then that certainly would be unrealistic."
No, just one star. But still, that time frame is too long to make a missle/torpedo attack meaningful
"However, does this add unnecessary complexity? Particularly in terms of economics when the aim is the keep that simple so the focus remains on blowing up the enemy?"
It probably would.
No interest at all?
"not one that I'm that interested in getting involved in"
No interest in a space strategy game that moves quickly, and doesn't take 400 hours to play?
Or is it that you aren't interested because of the lack of SFB/F&E tie-in? The rules for my game could be adapted for F&E (although the OBs would probably have to change)
Oh, No
Like, I'd be totally happy with a much faster version of F+E one way or the other. I just don't want to make it :-)
Ah, gotcha
Thanks for clarifying :-)
So What I'd Like to See:
What I'd like to see is a game that is similar to F+E, but far less complicated, and could be played in a long evening (i.e. the game could go as long as 6-8 hours like a game of Civilization, but should regularly get to completion by the time 6-8 hours is over). That was essentially the whole war, and you had lots of strategic options, such that you could, say, capture the Kzinti capital early or capture the Hydran capital early or attack the Tholians or whatever, and still had an economy and reasonably interesting combat, but far more streamlined.
Something more complicated than Risk, but not much more complicated than, say, Axis and Allies.
Thanks, Peter B.
I don't know if it will play out THAT fast, but I'm not excluding it, either. Hell, if a game could ACTUALLY be played in 100 hours (like the F&E box lies, and says it can), that would be a huge improvement. But if a game could be played in a day, that would be incredibly cool.
Whatever the time to play, I want the time spent on crafting strategies, not accounting
I'm going to try and work some more on the draft this weekend. I'll post developments here for your comment.
The thing I'm struggling most with is supply. I have multiple thoughts on how I want to run it, trying to decide which one will a) work the smoothest, b) make sense. I do think that supply should be a concern in a strategy game, but I don't want to bog the game down with minutia. I also despise arbitrary rules.
The 100 hour game
That would be nice. But to take your "in a day" post literally, Id say 24 hours for a full game would be great.
It would be nice to be able to play for a couple of hours a couple of nights a week, and be done in a month or 2.
You still get the feel for a massive game, without the need to set aside a few hours every few days every week for years on end.
EDIT: BTW was just looking at boardgeeks and the write-up said 300 minutes for a game of F&E. Maybe they meant thats how long it takes just to set up the board?
Joe - you may want to look at a few other games
Check out the following titles
Eastfront by Columbia Games
Command & Colors: Ancients by Days of Wonder
Both have some excellent ideas for making games play fast and avoiding accounting, plus interesting takes on the Fog of War.
I would like a game to be playable in 6-12 hours. :)
Looking at Axis and Allies
Which is far from the best designed game in the world (although reports are that the newest edition is vastly better balanced than the one everyone here played a hundred times), it does exactly what I'd like to see from a manageable kind of F+E type strategy game--you have an economy, you build units that are, on an individual level, different and interesting but not overwhelming. You have a large scale conflict with multiple factions. The game is playable in about 6 hours.
I could imagine that if you adapted that model (which would require a whole new board and components and, well, game), and split the universe into 2 halves (Western Front and Eastern Front) that were two separate games that could combine into one super game (the new A+A does this as well), and work on the same time frame (possibly condensed--say, Lyrans and Klingons attack the Kzinti on T1, Hydrans attack the Coalition on T2, Coalition attack the Feds on T5, Romulans attack the Feds in a combined game on T7, Gorns attack Roms on T8, war ends on T12 or something). You'd need to simplify the map (provinces instead of hexes or something) and vastly simplify the rules and ships. Say, each empire could build:
-Dreadnaughts
-Cruisers
-Destroyers
-Frigates
-Carriers
And that's it. Maybe add "light cruisers" in there or something. They could be slightly different by empire (i.e. the Hydran regular ships get some kind of fighter bonus, the Kzintis have good carriers, the Klingons have bad carriers, the Lyrans have no carriers, etc.). Have smaller fleets, simplified combat, simplified economics, a shorter time frame. There's a game you can play in 6 hours (say complicated enough for a 6 hour game with one front, twice that for both fronts).
Note - I'm not in the target demographic for this game
So, add Sodium Chloride to taste.
The old A&A game never did much for me. It never had much in the way of maneuver decisions; most A&A games tended to be "Put pile of factors together, shove at other pile of factors, roll dice." The decisions made were largely about "What kind of units am I buying" not "Where am I deploying them?"
To me, that level of decision making tends to feel like accounting, not warfighting. I realize I'm in the minority on this.
Somewhere in between.....
Personally, while I like A&A, for an epic space strategy game, I'd like something a little more crunch than A&A.
That said, I'm not opposed to comnig up with basic, fast-play rules, and then a series of optional mid-level and advanced rules to add more depth.
My tastes are probably closer to Ken's than Peter's
Nah ken, I agree with you
Nah ken, I agree with you about AA. I always looked at people who called AA a "strategic game" as morons(or just ignorant about wargames).
The big objection with F&E is that it takes too damn long. You play a strategy... and there is like NO feedback on weather or not it is working till 2 months (6 turns later) and you go, "opps, I lost this 6 turns ago"
Everyone is Getting Too Hung Up On Specifics.
Axis and Allies is simply a convenient example of a game that:
A) Provides a reasonable, if lower than probably most folks want, level of complexity.
B) Everyone has played.
As a result, it is a much easier example than, say, Command and Colors (maybe I'm wrong, but I suspect that most folks here are at least familiar enough with A+A to use it as a starting point for a discussion). Yes. It is hardly the best game in the world. By a long shot. But again, it is a reasonably complicated game (relative to, say, Risk) that does a lot of the same stuff (large war, economics, lots of different unit types that are purchased individually).
I'm not saying "make a game like Axis and Allies but has space ships". I'm saying "A game that is about the same level and size as the new version of Axis and Allies (which is considerably more viable than the version that everyone here played in high school) that can get played in about 8 hours is probably one that I'd like to see get made".
That does not mean "I want it to work exactly like Axis and Allies". Nor does it mean "It has to have the exact same level of complexity, or lack therof, of Axis and Allies". It just means "A game that is about the same size and of a similar level of complexity to Axis and Allies, which is a game that everyone here has experience with, would probably be good."
I'm sure there are ways to make a game of that level of complexity such that *where* you deploy your units is just as important, if not more so than *what* units you have to deploy. And can deal with things like supply (you need a supply path and are penalized if you don't) and whatever.
For my money, a game that takes 50-100 hours to play (which is still considerably less time than a full game of F+E) isn't much better than F+E, in terms of playability, such that I'd still just play F+E. A game that you could play to completion in one long or two medium length sittings (i.e., say 8-12 hours) but is similar to F+E in theme and flavor strikes me as very attractive.
A useful question to ask
"When you play this game, what is the movie that's playing in your mind?"
For Warhammer, it's almost always the Mass Charges from Braveheart.
For SFB, it's usually the battle of the Enterprise and the Reliant from The Wrath of Khan.
What is the movie that you see in your head, or that the players should feel is resonant, when they play this game?
What are/were the important decisions in that movie? Who made them? What information did they NOT have when those decisions were made?
How quickly does the decision made provide you with feedback about its outcome? How easy is it to adjust your next decision in a meaningful way based on the decision you made earlier?
Games are about decisions and exploring a 'space' where the decisions make outcomes happen. Sometimes those decisions are very simple (See SJ Games' Zombie Dice for one example). Sometimes they're very complex (SFB).
Peter B.
"For my money, a game that takes 50-100 hours to play (which is still considerably less time than a full game of F+E) isn't much better than F+E, in terms of playability, such that I'd still just play F+E"
How long do your F&E games take? 50-100 hours seems, to me, to be a huge reduction in time. Moreover, not just the reduction of time, but HOW one spends that time. At least for me, not spending it doing tedious tasks and accounting would be a huge improvement.
"A game that you could play to completion in one long or two medium length sittings (i.e., say 8-12 hours) but is similar to F+E in theme and flavor strikes me as very attractive.
"
Again, I don't rule it out, but my gut tells me that it'll end up in the 24-48 hour range.
Joe wrote:
>>How long do your F&E games take?>>
Hmm. I dunno. A long time.
Over the summer I was playing the game of basic F+E2K10 with no expansions at all, and we played about twice a week, for about 3 hours at a sitting, for about 6-7 weeks and got to the middle of T7 before we stalled out and decided to take a break. And that was just face to face time--my Coalition opponent spent an awful lot of time doing economics and moves when I wasn't around (as the game is in his living room).
>>50-100 hours seems, to me, to be a huge reduction in time. Moreover, not just the reduction of time, but HOW one spends that time. At least for me, not spending it doing tedious tasks and accounting would be a huge improvement.>>
Oh, 50-100 hours seems like a significant reduction in time to me too, relative to a game of F+E. But for my money, if I'm going to play a game that takes 50-100 hours, I might as well just play F+E which I know I already like. Even though it takes far more time then that.
If I were going to invest time and money and effort into a hypothetical new game that had, say, the same general flavor of F+E, but was less complex overall and shorter, I'd want the game to play in 8-12 hours, tops. Something you could conceivably play in one long evening, or broken up over a couple nights. Something that you could play multiple times in a given year if you were inclined, so you could see the effect of Strategy A vs Strategy B in a reasonable amount of time. As Larry mentioned above, one of the problems with F+E is that you can do something on T6 and not discover that it is making you lose for 6 months, and then not actually lose from it for another 6 months. I'd like a game that could get set up, played, and completed in less than a day of total time. A game that takes 50-100 hours to play, while certainly shorter than most games of F+E is still too long to make F+E look less attractive in comparison.
>>Again, I don't rule it out, but my gut tells me that it'll end up in the 24-48 hour range.>>
Which is certainly a huge time improvement. But for my money, what seems attractive is a game that has a similar flavor and many of the same elements, but can set up, be played, and finished in one long haul night if you were inclined. But again, that's me.
My last game of F&E
was the Demon of the East Wind scenario. I played with Bill Schoeller and Paul Bonfanti. We played it out to the end. I think the die roll ended the game on turn 36 or 27. It took us 5 or 6 years playing an average of 5-6 hours once a month.
That does not include prep time for econ and what not. That is totally FtF (or phone time with cyberboard after Bill moved). That comes out to somewhere between 300 & 500 hours of just playing time. Each of us probably spent an hour or two doing our Econ each game turn.
If it took a night...
It wouldnt really be anything like F&E. I think I like the idea of 24 to 48 hours of playing time, especially if the bulk of that is strategy/movement/combat.
That said, F&E economics, which is time consuming, is easily done outside of playing time, so doesnt really extend how long a game takes to play.
2 x 2 hours per week for a month.. sounds like a win to me. I struggle to find time to play a solo game of F&E so I dont know how regular F&E players manage.
Planning.....
"2 x 2 hours per week for a month.. sounds like a win to me. I struggle to find time to play a solo game of F&E so I dont know how regular F&E players manage.
"
I have my build schedule forcast for the entire war from the start. As actual numbers filter in and replace my assmptions, I revise the forecast, and my production.
What I build has become fairly rote for me. There will be the occassional build/conversion of opportunity, but I'm generally planning ahead....which cuts down on missed opportunities (I HATE forgetting to send ships to the TBS SB for conversion)
There are many others that do it now, but to my knowledge, I was the first :-)
Stop playing Coalition !!
Clearly you have done it too often.
You must go Alliance and endure turn after turn of being pounded by vastly superior numbers.
I've done plenty playing as Alliance
and I'll gladly play it again.
Most famously, there was someone on the forum way back when that suggested that the Alliance couldn't win, so we played a game online
After 1-1/2 turns, he'd racked up 100+ casualties, but instisted that he had me "right where he wanted me"
I refer you to the article "The Green Menace" in CL. Although I didn't develop all of those tactics myself (about half came from playing Pete DiMitri), I have used them all.
Planning with the Alliance is somewhat more difficult to forecast, but it's still not that hard to adjust when using my spreadsheet.
Oh, and throw away that spreadsheet...
...
......
.........
It clearly sounds like the combination of intelligence, experience, and tools really means Id have zero chance.
You should rely on pencil and paper, and I will get 15 minutes a day access to an NSA supercomputer, or if that cant be organised, one of them computers that beat chess grand masters.
Sound reasonable? The odds would then be slightly in your favour.
BTW: how do you take 100 casualties in less than 2 turns? As bad as I am, Im sure it would take me least 3 !!
That sounds about right :-)
"Sound reasonable? The odds would then be slightly in your favour."
"BTW: how do you take 100 casualties in less than 2 turns? As bad as I am, Im sure it would take me least 3 !!"
Well, he was stupid enough to put out a "lure". I always laugh at such tactics, because they depend on one's opponent to be stupid, and I have more respect for my opponents for that.
Of course, a guy with that much hubris isn't likely to be very smart himself, and this was born out.
He parked an FRD at 0502, with the hope of "luring" me to attack with forces from the Duke's fleet, which would put them out of range to retreat to the capital. He must have thought me REALLY dumb. BUT, again, with the hubris, I played a feint with him. I moved forces to 0602, and the blowhard reacted. This allowed me to attack his cripples at an FRD at 0502, and form a 3-hex retreat chain to retreat all the way back to 0803, with an ever-growing force at each step. I saved both BATS, killed 4-5 cripples, and racked up about 15-20 new cripples just in the subsequent battles.
This was on top of the cripples he took on CT1, and CT2.
Early in the war, 1 round of combat = 3-5 cripples for the Coalition in most battle hexes. Throw a few rounds at a SB, and those are 4-7 cripples. He took out the Count's SB on CT2 and those remaining BATS, but I made him PAY PAY PAY.
And having to deal with those BATS on T2 means fewer ships available for the SB attack.....it compounded his problem.
Hmmm I now see the error of his ways
Im sure I will devise a FAR more devious plan which you will NEVER see coming.
That said, given how green I am, Id probably be asking you questions all along the way, or have you point out the clearly crazy ideas Im trying out. To avoid investing 6 months or more in a game which was over some time between Turn 1 Production, and Placing Turn 1 builds.
I have a feeling the things I am worst at (knowing when to pin, and knowing how to construct zones of combat which will allow reasonably safe withdrawal chains of combat) are the things which can most influence the game.
I guess the key for Alliance is knowing when to come out and play, and when to stick to the BATS/Planets/SB/Capital.
While for Coalition its knowing when to make it a raid, and when to go all out.
You have it surrounded
"I guess the key for Alliance is knowing when to come out and play, and when to stick to the BATS/Planets/SB/Capital.
While for Coalition its knowing when to make it a raid, and when to go all out."
"I have a feeling the things I am worst at (knowing when to pin, and knowing how to construct zones of combat which will allow reasonably safe withdrawal chains of combat) are the things which can most influence the game."
You lack hubris. That's the most important element in learning :-)
"I have a feeling the things I am worst at (knowing when to pin, and knowing how to construct zones of combat which will allow reasonably safe withdrawal chains of combat) are the things which can most influence the game."
Bingo.
Goals
Aiming to take down a Capital before T7
Avoiding the Hydran Expedition
Surviving until PFs enter the game
I think Id be happy with the above in a game against a serious player.
My first real game was against a friend who combined a mix of conservative play and risky play, but always managed to pick the option which was the worst for him.
I also took some big risks, like having the Hydrans go after the Lyran BATS and SB, and having had so many shocking rolls, but being so heavily invested in needing to kill all of them, I lost a huge number of ships and had a huge number of cripples. Though in the end I was lucky because my mistakes werent as big as his.
I even managed to unleash the Klingon Eastern Fleet because I attacked the wrong BATS, but that turn I managed to take out 4 or 5 Klingon BATS because he had over-extended in one area, made a half-hearted attempt to kill the Kzin Capital, spread his ships too thinly between Kzin and Hydran (after the Hydrans made things very difficult for the Lyrans he then had to shift more Klinks that way), etc.
I also deliberately left the Marquis area for him to attack, thinking I could then compensate for the Eastern Fleet entering early by bringing in some Feds, but he didnt take that bait.
The game ended up slowly dwindling as he lost interest, and replaced his F&E time with sailing classes and studying more (while working 2 jobs).
Goals in F&E
Those are all attainable goals.
One key thing for the Coalition is to have a goal oriented, and not time-based, approach.
The idea that you have to take down X by time Y is false. It's nice, but not essential. If you don't crack your fleet, the Alliance doesn't hit (what I call) turnover until T12 at the earliest. Turnover being the point at which the Alliance EFFECTIVE production rate (and economy) exceeds the Coalition's. And even then, it's close. "True" turnover is the point when the Alliance fleet size exceeds that of the Coalition, and that takes an even longer time unless the Coalition fritters away his forces.
Do you think the mudslide theory works?
I assume here the goal it to go for SB, or raid outer Capital but not both. While never giving the Alliance the ability to heavily defend your ultimate target?
Im going to have to do some re-learning of things. Been a long time since I last played, so Ive probably forgotten more than I learned !!
I play a modified version....
of the "mudslide"
Think "vertical envelopment"
I dont think...
Therefore I dont know what that means :)
Certainly the second part makes sense, and would probably involve surrounding key hexes to restrict their ability to expand. Though surely you still need to win some stuff to stop the Kzinti and Hydrans from building their full schedules?
In the game I referred to above I was able to build Kzin carriers and PDU which meant I had awesome defence and offence. Im guessing the Coalition should at least be aiming to force the Kzinti to decide between 1 or the other.
Does your goal still involve taking out a Capital? Or are you happy leaving Just the Capital/Shipyard and stripping everything else, saving hundreds of ships and meaning you can then go and do the same to the Feds?
But Im not sure what the Vertical component is.
Vertical envelopment
as it refers to F&E goes as follows:
You "fix" forward positions with pinning forces (destroying key points in order to protect supply/retreat/retrograde paths), and move towards rear defenses, securing supply points close to major defense points (such as SB and most importantly, the capital).
With the capital threatened, the defender is forced to either abandon his forward positions to defend the capital, or remain forward in order to project power, but at the risk of sacrificing the capital for substantially fewer enemy casualties.
In effect, you bypass the SBs to get into position to attack the capital in force, then make the enemy chose which one he wants to defend. Only highly skilled players will be able to deploy forces in a way to maximize enemy casualties.
At that point, you let the enemy decide which he prefers, and attack where he's weak.
The beauty of it is that if he choses to defend the capital (most do), then the SBs go down for a song, and then your chances to taking the capital improve (when the time comes).
I generally use low compot
I generally use low compot units (with a CC or so) to defend the starbase(s) in such cases, at least I'm trying that in my current game.
My theory is those units are missed the least in a capital battle.
Kzinti capital fell on turn 4, I extracted a high price for that however. :-)
Better than nothing...
It's better to do what you do, than to abandon the base (which is what some people do, which drives me nuts)
The old 2 unit trick
CA/CC and and FF plus the BATS.
If the enemy ends up with a huge fleet, sneak the CA/CC away and sacrifice the FF. If they brought just enough to down it and no extra, either stick the CA/CC or FF in the bonus slot depending on how likely it is they could direct on the CA/CC.
Slightly off-topic, but since
Slightly off-topic, but since Joe was talking about a game he's working on that's faster than F&E, I have to ask: Anyone here ever play "Twilight Imperium" by Fantasy Flight Games?
I did, once (and will again tomorrow). I think it's got a lot of fun potential.
Well, to be clear if I am
Well, to be clear if I am defending a SB, I don't have just a CC/FF. To make it harder to attack bats with 'just enough', it's good to have a reserve fleet around to keep him guessing. It doesn't have to be a full reserve fleet, just big enough that he can't overkill all targets if you send the reserve there. This way you can (maybe) save a target. At least that's what I've been doing in my current game.
Imperium
I played this a LOT as a kid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperium_%28board_game%29
Was slightly flawed if the Empire deliberately killed off all its weak ships early, because it could then rebuild the good ships straight away, and never be worried about ship limits.
Kind of like Axis and Allies if the Russians went nuts straight away. Even some early minor damage against the Germans would see them lose in the long game.
Twilight Imperium at SWA
Twilight Imperium (especially the most-recent 3rd edition) is a very popular game when offered at SWA gaming events. It probably pops up at 2-ish Game-a-thons per year, and probably every Council of Five Nations for the past few years.
Board Game Geek Link:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/12493/twilight-imperium-third-edi...
Next time I get to Council,
Next time I get to Council, we'll have to fire up a game. I'm playing tomorrow at a buddy's birthday bash, and that'll be my second game. So far I love it. I must have just missed it the time I was at Council a couple years back.
No posts in 3 months?
Well, here goes. ISC War is to be released in June/July this year. While we've heard this a few times before, when was it first announced?
Im pretty sure it was some time in the mid-late 90s?
Is there another product ADB have talked about for a longer period of time which is actually going to be published?
Will anyone buy it? To me it seems like an interesting idea, but outside of a campaign where you have ISC vs The Rest and run the full historical battle, then I cant see myself getting in to it.
And then you get in to the issues with the Andros starting to ramp up their campaign at pretty much the same time.
Not me
And not JUST because I"m never putting another penny into his pocket.
But because, unless serious changes were made in the past 2 years, the product seemed
a) boring
b) laden with stupid rules
Many good suggestions were met not with dismissal, but outright hostility. I stopped participating in the project long before I was banned.
"the Andros "
Don't get me started. The Andros, as they currently exist in playtest material, are completely unplayable
Boring...
If anything, the ISC War should be MORE interesting than the General War.
The problem with the SFU is, no matter how many wars get fought the borders always end up being the same.
Vapourware
"Is there another product ADB have talked about for a longer period of time which is actually going to be published?"
There are quite a few that have been on the drawing board for decades, but I don't know which of them have any hope of seeing daylight. For example
Module Q (sublight - I suspect that so many doors are blocked on this that it's never going to be worth playing)
Module V (operational level - a few years ago there was a lot of good fan stuff on the BBS, but SVC wanted to do it himself so it never got anywhere useful. And now nobody cares any more)
Star Fleet Assault (seems to have died a death. I expect SVC's insistence that only real soldiers are allowed to participate has killed it)
X2 (never a realistic prospect, IMHO)
But yeah, ISC War is a classic.
Module V
Wouldnt that be FC?
Star Fleet A Salt
Never understood the need for this one. Blast the planet with phasers from orbit. End of resistance. Remember the Enterprise in the episode with the gangsters? Stunned a multi-block section of a city. Don't give any of that hooey about needing infanty on the ground to get the mission done. With this kind of tech, not to worry.
According to Petrick, that
According to Petrick, that scene is bogus because the "energy required would cause a hurricane in the atmosphere". Likewise, they've shot down the ability of a phaser pistol or hand phaser to disintegrate a target as "ridiculous".
Excuse me?
Is their game not BASED ON Star Trek?
Ah well. Arguing with icebergs will get you farther. But in my book, TOS should trump.
As far as arguing about "real soldiers"... don't get me started.
Not the way they were writing it..
"If anything, the ISC War should be MORE interesting than the General War."
Basically, the idea he foisted on us was that everyone WANTED the ISC to break it up. That doesn't make for an intersting scenario.
Assault
"Never understood the need for this one. Blast the planet with phasers from orbit. End of resistance"
End of the industrial base.....
It's a lot cheaper (usually) to get the locals to do the job, than to rebuild the entire infrastructure and make the place usuable.
Wars, ultimately, are generally about resources, not just wiping out one's foes.
" Don't give any of that hooey about needing infanty on the ground to get the mission done. With this kind of tech, not to worry."
Even in Desert Storm, we needed boots on the ground to occupy the territory and eject the enemy
Sorry, but technology doesn't change the pertinents facts in warfare, just some of the details.
Depends on the outcome
Obviously, the Mirror Universe showed us that the Empire will decimate a planet just to show their might. LOL
In real life, how you handle a war is based on what you want as the outcome. Desert Storm needed the boots to get the job done, but IMHO we never should have occupied Afganistan. We should have just bombed them into submission and said, "you give comfort to these terroist again and we will bomb you again." More like punishing a dog. (Though spec ops should have gone in and nabbed that Bin Laden).
I don't remember the episode,
I don't remember the episode, but there is one where Kirk, Spock the ambassador and a couple of others were held hostage on the planet that was conducting a computer war with another planet. The one where the people step into the disentigration chamber instead of real bombs etc. There is a scene where Kirk yells to Scotty over the communicator "General order 24...two hours'. Then Scotty comes back and tells them that all cities and military facilities have been located and feed into the targeting computers and in one hour and forty-five minutes the entire inhabited surface of the planet will be destroyed.
So to destroy a planet (at least the surface) in TOS is done without troops from orbit (if they wanted too). Whereas taking a planet over, as mentioned above, would require boots on the ground.
Yeah, I dunno
If ISC War is revolving around an interesting scenario (one that starts after the general war and is weildy) that one would play instead of the General War, I could certainly see folks buying and playing it.
"According to Petrick, that
"According to Petrick, that scene is bogus because the "energy required would cause a hurricane in the atmosphere".
I love when SP and SPP use the "realism" card to shoot down ideas in the game... a game featuring Space Dragos, giant ameobas, and the Masters.
In the game..
"In real life, how you handle a war is based on what you want as the outcome"
The way to dominate your opponent is to outbuild/outspend. You ALSO need a supply network to do that.
Both require that you control, not annihilate, the planet's population.
Boots on the ground
"So to destroy a planet (at least the surface) in TOS is done without troops from orbit (if they wanted too). Whereas taking a planet over, as mentioned above, would require boots on the ground.
"
Exactly. That's why, IMO, F&E should REQUIRE marine units deployed in order to CAPTURE a planet.
Sure, you can threaten, even devastate a world from orbit. But capture? No chance.
You mean...
A single Frigate CANT capture a planet???
Ground Combat Is Expensive.
I once worked out how many brigades would be needed to capture the US and suborn it to the will of its conquerers, using figures from friends of mine in the US Command and General Staff College.
This is JUST what's needed for occupation duty:
5,000 brigades. These 5,000 brigades do NOT need to be as well trained or as well equipped as our US light infantry...but it's still a HELL of a lot of transport capacity to put boots on the ground to control 320 million people. The general rule of thumb is that to do proper security and control operations, you need one brigade per 60-70,000 civilians, and the people running the job on the ground would be happier with one brigade per 40,000 civilians. This presumes a modern force that is reasonably professional, has computation technology, a distributed communications network, and small airborne surveillance assets.
This is the minimum necessary needed to make sure that you can turn the factories on, keep the infrastructure working and having them produce stuff for you - most of it on the "butter" side of the guns-vs-butter equations. This also generally takes at least a year, and can suffer pitfalls.
The same formula puts Iraq at needing about 320 brigades to do a 'proper' occupation of 20 million people - what we'd need to go in, ensure the oil fields ran, and tried to reduce the mean altitude of Iraq by 400 feet by sucking all the oil out of their country, a'la the "Haliburton's War" scenario.
One US division is somewhere between 4 and 5 brigades...and to the extent the occupation of Iraq is working, it's working because the Iraqi people (as opposed to insurgents) want us there to keep the insurgents in check while they go about re-establishing a new kleptocracy.
One light brigade has a replacement cost equal to an LCS (An SFU frigate). A heavy brigade has a replacement cost that's higher than a CGN (An SFU CC). Both take about 2 years to drum up, and 4 years to do 'right'. In war time, these costs drop considerably - you have conscription.
Heavy brigades are good for beating up defenders. However, every heavy brigade on occupation duty costs about 3-5x as much as a force of constabulary troops (who can do the job better once the enemy units are dealt with). In war time, these costs don't drop that much...
Frigate
"A single Frigate CANT capture a planet???"
Well, the rules allow it, but I posit that they shouldn't.
You've got transporters.
You've got warp power.
You've got cheap use of antimatter as a fuel source.
Why are we worried about occupying planets again? Oh, right, because F&E is World War II in SPAAAAAAAAAAACE.
Why occupy a planet? You
Why occupy a planet? You have to ask?
Resources. Do you really want to ship your own civilians over to a potentially hostile planet to get those resources? It is more safe to use troops to occupy the planet and get the resident population that know how to do it already to put out those resources for you.
Oh sure, if the only reason you're going to war is the mindless eradication of your enemy, then use a starship and kill everything on the planet. Just better make sure you win the whole war, because if you lose, the retribution will be something fierce.
Also, if you simply want the planet (say that it's completely suitable for your race) and are confident you can keep it and defend it, then kill everyone and move your own civilians in to rebuild everything or learn how to use all of the alien equipment to get the resources. Hope your civilians don't mind cleaning up the mess while they're living on an alien world. And again, you better make sure you win the whole war, because if you don't you've signed the death of all of those civilians you shipped to that planet.
You occupy planets to get resources...be it metals, minerals, food, water, other raw materials, money...even conscripted manpower! Plus you don't come across as a xenophobic maniac that just kills everything and unites all opposition against you in the necessary battle to the death (because if they don't kill you completely, they know you will just come back and kill them completely). Occupation, while many time cruel, at least keeps the need for total annihilation out of the minds of your enemy.
Small colonies
It's been oft stated that the targets involved in SFB ground combat are small colonies, not USA-equivalent (or even Iraq-equivalent) countries. That's typically going to be a scattered population of less than a million. Clearly that's not always the case in F&E, where the Kzinti and Hydran capitals get captured. I assume that much of the ground combat there is hand-waved.
The only F&E I have is the original from 1986, so I don't know how hard it is to capture the Kzinti capital (or if ground combat is explicitly required). Any offers?
Grimace:
All the metals on a planet are at a bottom of a gravity well. Rather than mine Earth, I'd turn Mars inside out and disassemble it. :)
We have cheap antimatter. We have transporters.
A transporter SHOULD be at least as capable as a modern 3-D printer. CERTAINLY anything that can beam marines across 50,000 km so they can fight a boarding party action is capable of beaming ice from a gas giant's rings. And if we can make antimatter cheap enough that tramp steamer equivalent can have it as a power source, we can power electroysis.
Certainly there's the power to form carbohydrates from base feed carbon and nitrogen.
You don't need Joe the Machinist. You need Joe the Guy Who Programs The Machines.
One of the fundamental problem of SF over the last 15-20 years or so is that once you look at what the knock on effects of interstellar travel are, it's very hard to have an economy (and plot conflicts) based on scarcity that make sense to us.
Interstellar resources
OK my two cents worth. You only need a livable planet for one resource: To continue your species. There is more then enough material resources floating around the cosmos that do not require even landing on a habitable world. Our own Solar system is abundant in natural resources! Look at Jupiter's moons, or Saturn's, not to mention the asteroid belt. So yes to land on an already occupied planet means you intend to take it from the current inhabitants. It makes no sense to go for resources you can get easier in the vast expanse. No, you go for living space!!
You're assuming that 1: all
You're assuming that 1: all aliens have the same mindset of humans, 2: that human tendencies of wanting to exploit things will change along with technology, and 3: anti-matter and transporters can fix/make/acquire everything
Suffice to say, it's a game and in the game there's the possibility of ground combat. Figure a way to work with it rather than simply say "it would never happen", as it happens in the game.
How much food....
"All the metals on a planet are at a bottom of a gravity well. Rather than mine Earth, I'd turn Mars inside out and disassemble it. :)
We have cheap antimatter. We have transporters.
"
....can you grow on the inside-out Mars?
Jim wrote:
>>The only F&E I have is the original from 1986, so I don't know how hard it is to capture the Kzinti capital (or if ground combat is explicitly required). Any offers?>>
In a standard game of F+E (i.e. General War scenario), it isn't at all difficult to capture the Kzinti capital (the issue in the game for the Coalition is not "can we capture a capital", it is "how much damage do we take capturing a capital, and how much does it compromise our ability to attack the Federation") if they want to capture the Kzinti capital (the same can be said for the Hydran capital--capturing one or the other is easy; capturing *both* and then being able to attack the Feds significantly on T7 is difficult, however).
Ground combat isn't really an issue (in basic F+E, ground combat doesn't exist; in advanced rules, ground combat exists, but mostly only as an extra way to kill planetary defenses). Conquering planets is simply an issue of killing all the fixed defenses, driving away defending ships, and leaving a fleet in the hex. The Kzinti homeworld, for example, is probably difficult to subjugate from the ground, but when there is a fleet of Klingons in orbit (or even abstractly in orbit) over a planet with no significant ground defenses, it is as subjugated as it needs to be.
Subjugation vs devastation
Logically, devastation from space is trivial, even for an EY freighter: just drag some asteroids over and dump them into the atmosphere. And if a planet is devastated, it's probably subjugated as well. Is a captured capital considered to be trashed? That's what you'd have to do to it if you couldn't land a huge number of ground troops.
I think Ken Burnside is an
I think Ken Burnside is an ISC operative from the future, sent back to change primitive minds and stop the General War from ever happening.
Turning planets inside out and growing seasons
Joe, if I can transport a rutabaga (or a steak) from the ground, I should be able to replicate a steak from raw component atoms. (Hell, we can already synthesize carbohydrates and many digestible proteins; there's a company in Belgium that's working hard on making synthetic beef that comes completely from tissue cultures.)
Now, you can argue that farming is more cost effective...but honestly, turning Mars inside out and using the raw materials to make orbital farms is probably no more expensive than trying to make enclosed farms on Mars, or terraforming it in under a millennium.
Sauur: I can neither confirm nor deny. However, everyone who buys stock in SLURM when it goes public will be richly rewarded....
You aren't talking about component atoms...
What you are really describing is the rearrangment of atoms. Because silicates and metals are never going to be rearranged into carbohydrates. I doubt there is enough carbonaceous material on Mars to feed too many people. To my knowledge, the bulk of the carbon on Mars in the form of CO2 and methane.
As for orbital fams, it's still farming. You still can't get past the energy requirements of an average person. You'rre going to need a LOT of orbital farms, and if you are placing the farms elsewhere, you're talking about just as big of a logistical problem.
"or terraforming it in under a millennium."
The point of a war is not to get resources a millenium from now....
Martian carbon
"To my knowledge, the bulk of the carbon on Mars in the form of CO2 and methane."
Highly unlikely, as the only way to lose carbon is by atmospheric loss into space, which effectively means losing CO2 or hydrocarbons. That would take a very long time and need some major churn of the soil. The various probes that have looked at Martian soil aren't sensitive to light elements, so we don't yet have the figures. But there's probably a lot of carbonate in there (even many meteorites have lots of carbon).
Carbonates on Mars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonates_on_Mars
Hmmm
So much realism here guys !
QUIT IT !!
It must be true
Wikipedia said so, and it's never wrong. };-)>
Actually, in this case it appears to be a well-researched, well-documented article.
The full game
So the other board has a discussion on whether the full game now is too heavily in favour of the Alliance and it mostly comes down to pin count.
Now, that in itself shows how flawed (in my view) the game can be, if being better at pinning your opponent in open space leads to victory. But the main discussion is not just on who the game favours, but also how often people make it to the very end, rather than calling the game early based on their assessment.
F&E seems to take months if not years to play to the end. So Im wondering who here who plays the game has played to the end, how often your games make it to the end, how often they have been called early - and if called early how comfortable you were with the assessment of who won at that stage.
Also, Im hoping someone reads this and goes "oh yeah, Im meant to be playing a game with Hoju, I should make some time".
:)
My impression is...
..that most games peter out in the T10-15 range.
Either the Coalition has a huge superiority OR
They don't, any they turn into weenies and give up.
I wonder how many Alliance players have had a chance to play out the part where they fight back.
My longest running game ended on CT18. The Lyrans were in position to attack the Gorn in force, and the Alliance capitulated.
Now I can't blame them for THAT.
I've played later into the war, but in those games, we hadn't started on T1.
Yeah
I've played a few games to about turn 15-17, and a lot of games to about T12 or so. Most of them were plain, basic, old F+E, and by that point, the Coalition generally had such a huge advantage that the game was a forgone conclusion by then.
I've played a few games where the Coalition did something risky/stupid, and gave up before turn 7. I've played a lot of games that went to about T10, and we stopped before the Romulans came in for purely practical reasons (that extra half of the map makes the game take up a great deal more space and time).
The most recent game I've played got to T7 and we stopped due to me going back to work. I'm hoping we'll pick back up during the summer, but that remains to be seen.