Alpha->Beta Transition / Game Postmortem

[James Shepherd]

How goes it, everyone?  Let's discuss what we liked and disliked about last game.

I liked Jaron's suggestions of each class having its own creation worksheet and us each filling out standard warships for 2 classes.  I'll be working on formatting and disseminating those before too much longer.  I think building in skeleton crews and minimal movement makes good sense, and I think we also need to revisit penalties/power curves where we don't need them.  Also, we didn't really play much with ultra-fast medium-to-large ships; I imagine a blockade runner would be damnably easy to build and hard to defeat these days.  (Especially with a little FTL help.)

The Ship Creator spreadsheet obviously needs to be unified into a definitive version.  Steve thought the maximum volume was too high, and he had a good point there.  I'll probably shift the volumes down a bit, "capping" Motherships around 8000, and bumping the ceiling on Frigates up a bit, but not quite as much as I had.  Did everyone feel like they had enough power to make their ships feel as capable as they would've liked?  Was the extra power too much?

Splash damage was too hard-hitting, I think all agree - let's roll it as usual and cut that total in half.  Rounding doesn't matter much to me; it's 1 point either way, and that usually only matters much to fighter or patrol squadrons.

How did people like Capital-class weapons?  I think I'll modify them to function as Large weapons - max range of 16U - but are able to fire as Line-of-Sight artillery if their target is painted out to 72U.  I guess that would be the LOS equivalent of torpedoes.

Drones need revising; I don't know why I treated them so differently in the original game.

There are certain things I believe we've been playing with and we've all understood which aren't codified, so those need to be inserted.

Kate's been doing technical writing lately, so I'mma get her to go over the "release candidate" version once we're fairly happy with it.

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More specifically, I was very happy with how my force fared against Jaron's fleet; splash damage helped us both clear the skies quite a bit, and I think may encourage smaller, more surgical squadrons.  I like how everyone else was playing, that jumping in gave you essentially a phase cloak as you came through the jump gates/phased in until you can roll initiative.  That's very fair.  I thought our large ships were quite resilient, and effective in their own ways - I couldn't do everything I wanted to do with the fort, but it had good survivability against a larger force and I felt like I made very effective use of my fighter, patrol, and gunboat squadrons - game play ran quite quickly, once I decided what I wanted to do and once I had my record sheets in place.  The fact that I was the last to actually get my sheets together and our theater was begun and concluded inside 5 hours was pretty reasonable with fleets that size, in my book.  The capture-the-flags mechanic was interesting, but perhaps a bit too random.  Maybe next time we can simplify that and just have a couple different colors with point values - red is 1pt, blue is 3pts, and so on.  How did other commanders fare?

-James

[YourCure]

Had a great time and a lot of fun so now that I've played it twice I think I can offer some of my observations.  Just some feedback that I hope reads as trying to be helpful.  I wrote almost all of this offline so it looks like I talked about stuff already talked about but at least you will see my view point.

Ship Classes

Totally feel that those new numbers are still off.  Even the revised 8k is hella high to me.  Mine is around 1300 so even if it was taller and wider it would be difficult to hit that number.  What are we gonna do?  Have a table sized ship where we move the table as it’s stand?  While I love Iomedes newest SHIP, I tried to imagine playing with it as a piece.  Right now I think we are pushing the limits/capacity of sizes and playability.  The actual SHIPs to play so far hang over the edges of the tables so bigger

Definitely liked the oopsidaisey I had where I combined (truly Accidentally) the new stats with the old class levels.  (I blame Steve as his copy of the new stats did not have the volume/class references so I used the old volume class data)  That’s why Jaron’s and mine ran differently I think.  I ran big blue as a class 12 with 96 power.  It was not over nor under powered in my opinion and died reasonably well.  It did damage to be sure, but a heavy like that should be be able to be onry.

Another thought is to have a “free” special ability (defensive, offensive, etc) related to class.  Not sure if this would be items existing or something to be developed.  Just a thought but one could choose from three available and would add playability and surprise to Ship creation.

Splash Damage

Feel that it was a little out of proportion too.  I feel it is good for the game but needs to be modified.

 

Current rule:

Class of ship exploding = (#).  So if I understand the rule correctly, (#) of die determines damage applied to any ship that is within (#) of units of exploding ship.

 

No mention of where measurement is taken from so the front of the ship (furthest away from the overloading drives) causes same effective range as the rear.

 

Also feel that there should be a roll to determine if the ship has a catastrophic kaboom.  This could be mitigated with a bonus from having more than the minimum crew.  I mean Scotty can’t work miracles if hes not on board.

 

Alternatives:

A.)   < .5(#) range= full (#)D6 damage; > .5(#) to (#) range= .5 (#)D6 damage

i.e. a Class 12 goes boom –Full 12 D6 Damage up to 6 units, 6 D6 damage from 6 to 12 units out

Hurts up close but less so further out.

B.)    Need a point of reference for measuring damage effective distance.  Do not feel measuring from any edge of the ship is the best method.  Maybe centered around drive/engine section.

Just read the above again and saw Jame's idea on this.  Most likely simpler eh?

Shields

Really need a method of recharging shields.  That’s always the idea of shields is that they are energy based in my opinion.  I like Star Wars’ methodology.  It may be just me but to only use them as sparkly armor is a hole in the game.

 

Possibilities:

Must have equipment like a shield capacitor/converter.

Can roll a D6 for chance of overload (Shield Failure)

Can roll a D6 for chance of %recharge

 

Auto % recharge if no damage absorbed in a turn.

Engine power diverted to shields?

Heat penalties?  Turn penalties?

Class limits? Large & Capital?

RANGE/Firing Arcs

Weapon ranges. Are they measured from an edge of the ship?  Weapon arcs/ turrets.  If a turret is on a ship it needs a point of reference to determine arcs and ranged.  Makes a difference on the larger classes.  Need some details on this.

Capital Class Weap

I don't like the spotter idea for the long ranged direct fire weapons (especially with such a narrow firing arc) so help me understand the reasoning behind this please.  Damage was nice in play but never got to use the range.  Freaking roids!  Need rules for shoosting da rocks.  Do they vaporize?  Do they cascade and cause a chain reaction causing them to be projectiles that wreak havoc and destroy everyone's fleet.

Auto Hit

Shouldn’t there be rolls to hit?  Attack vs. defense numbers or something?  That's what I couldn't put my finger on that was bugging me.  All weapons hit with almost no chance to miss or graze.

 

Damage to ship systems causing adverse effects.  Critical hit system would work.  Again a D6 system to randomize.

Just tossing out niggles for conversation.

Ship cards/ship builder

Needs to have range, damage and effects referenced for weapons and defenses and such.  Would keep us from constantly looking up data from the rules.  and could still be used with drop down lists.

 

Fighters need to have optional squadron values noted on sheet (may help keep a dumbass like me from using a single fighter when there’s a freaking squadron there.)

 

So, I think that the ship builder could be done in a way that the output would be the ship sheet.  A lot of work but damn fine end results. 

 

Jump Gates

I heard we played it differently at our table than you two did in your remote corner.

 

I liked the ring representation.  I also think that we may be able to have it directional so that inbound jumpers know how they will be oriented.  The stacking system in the corner didn’t work out well for me but that was more of a layout thing.

 

The way we did it was that incoming jumpers had a 1 turn “grace” period where no actions could be taken nor be made against them.  While you guys had it where the jumper was a “dead stick” for one turn so it allowed in zone defenders to attack with impunity for that turn.

 

To me the dead stick makes sense but we could call it a phase imbalance or something to justify no shoosting for a turn.  I like Jaron’s idea about augmentation equipment making it work sooner.  What about a chance to roll for whether or not your ships phase in?  Bad luck would cause delays in battle plans and such.

 

Next Game Setup

Bigger tables yo!  When we decide a time frame I will reserve upstairs.  Again, money pays so we may have to reschedule but I’ll get us on the books and they will not bump us if they do not have to.

I like the jump gates and think we should have a very long center table with "pocket" side tables that are at least as large as this last games' center table.

[YourCure]

Or even a huge cross with satellite tables in between the spokes.

[James Shepherd]

Ship Classes - You're probably right, I think the problem is that I don't have anything in the right neighborhood as far as a MOC to measure, so it's kinda guesswork on my part.  I don't expect your SHIP would be anything less than a class 11, Josh, but I could see someone building a large, open, DS-9 style space station with a volume larger than it.  (For example, http://www.flickr.com/photos/brickapolis/6017146812/in/pool-richlug/) Maybe closer to 4000 for the top of the scale?  Another point to consider is our unit size - if we were all in the same scale with your fleet, we might be using 2-stud units instead of 4 stud, and you'd be 8x the size you are now, so...  I'm glad you were happier with your loadout, and I think with some simplifications/power curve changes Rich and I discussed on Sunday, things may improve further.  In the future, we'll have more finalized (and readable) printouts that should enable easier/more streamlined shipbuilding, even without the benefit of computronic devices.

Splash Damage - What you're talking about might be a happy compromise - in the past, splash damage was out because of its "too complicated" nature.  It was full strength Xd6 damage within 1 unit, and then -1d6 for every unit further away, with individual damage rolls to every affected ship/object.  Your proposal I like much better - one blanket damage roll is my aim with splash damage, and a half-damage radius makes a great deal of sense.  While I like the theory of measuring splash from a certain point, that sets up more rules lawyering/complexity than I'd like, and to me, the damage is potentially less from the KABOOM and more from the massive amount of high velocity shrapnel in the near vicinity.  It's a bit of a hand-wave excuse, but I think it works as justification for KISS-based design.  Apart from the nearest edge, we could rule that splash is from the center of a ship, which could also be quite fair, but I think would make little sense for standard long-and-thin MOCs.  My problem with "centered on the engines" is that it's just too nebulous - a hard and fast rule is difficult to argue/waste time over, and I'd like to keep the game moving fast.

Shields - Recharging is a good idea, and I've been thinking about this off and on for a while.  We had some arguments for "why have them?" in the past, and the answers vary.  For small ships, they're more effective than armor.  Battle pods can't punch through a ship with raised shields, and damage output of Particle Cannons against an enemy with shields vs. enemies without is a pretty significant difference.  I agree though, non-recharging shields don't feel right to me.  What if we ruled that be default, you got [Ship's Class] points recharged into the shields at the start of every turn?  I like the idea of adding defenses/abilities to speed up their recharge or to add a sudden, set amount to the shields from a capacitor, but that would take some playtesting.

Weapon ranges/arcs - This has been a recurring problem - there's no great way to note where the arc begins and ends, though I think we've agreed that range should be from nearest edge.  This really does affect larger ships, but makes a appreciable difference all the way down into larger Small ships too, I'd say.  We haven't really emphasized it yet, but perhaps it would be worthwhile once battle is joined to point out exactly where guns are firing from and declaring the weapon's arc to keep things fair?  What's written on the site now doesn't seem applicable as the game is currently played, so I'm definitely putting Range & Arc on my to-do list.

Capital Weapons - The idea was to have an artillery option for the game, something that would be high-cost & long-range, but with some significant draw back, since the target might have to cross a long field of fire before they even are in range of the artillery.  I would let it operate as a standard large weapon with a heavy damage roll inside 16U, but outside 16U, I feel it would need some drawbacks to offset its massive damage and range.  As far as asteroids, what we've (in theory, less in practice) been doing is calling them standard ships with no other systems but armor.  So a class 1 asteroid (which is what we generally had this game) would be an immobile, dumb fighter with 10 armor and 6 hull before it's broken up.  I'd say they either don't get splash damage at that size or maybe do half the splash damage of ships.  We could simplify asteroids a bit, and I'm generally putting the release of asteroids, mining, etc off for a few months while we focus on polishing the core game of "fleets trying to blow each other up."

Auto Hit - I think we had to-hit rolls in earlier versions of the game, perhaps even the version Jaron was introduced to.  The main thing was you rolled twice as often and did not double your "fun," by-in-large.  I like the idea of critical hits and damage to systems - they used to be a core part of the play - but I think that's more of an optional rule to add when you and one other opponent are playing for as long as you like, not when we have an engagement of the size we've had in Spotsy.  So, not opposed to it, just want to keep it out of "you must play like this" for the times when it would just be too much.

Ship Builder - Yeah, that's a pretty clearly needed improvement and one we had in previous versions which we need to re-implement.  Not sure what you mean with "optional squadron rules" - just that you can run one MOC as several ships?  I'm personally in favorite of running as many ships of any class as squadrons (or whatever you want to call them.)  In my book, if you wanted to, you could run your class 12 as a squadron of 8 ships and bring that one MOC as the bulk of your fleet.  There's obvious disadvantages to why you may not want to do that, but if you want to use squadron sheets to streamline movement and combat, I personally say "go right ahead," with the caveat that it should be made clear to all players from the word "go" that there's more than one ship there in such cases.  As for outputting a ship/squadron sheet that is useful for play, that's a big 10-4 and Rich, Jaron, and I are all agreed (afaik) and planning on that as a top priority.

Jump Gates - Yeah, bunching around a gate was an unforeseen problem.  And if two players who are unfriendly try and jump through a gate in the same turn, that's an unexplored problem as well.  We'll have to think and discuss further on how jumping should operate, but I'm more in favor of how your table was playing it than how Jaron and I understood it.  I think "phasing in" makes a good deal of sense for many reasons - you don't get the drop on the table, nor does the table get a drop on you.  I'm in favor of a higher-cost system allowing you to phase in faster - sometimes you need an ambush, but I don't want to give that ability cheaply.

Next Game - Yeah, bigger tables for sure.  Double tables seem to be a minimum to maneuver effectively.  At minimum, I'd say we combine our individual tables into two-player tables around the outside ring next time.

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Rich and I met Sunday and had some interesting ideas thrown out.  Highlights: 

1) Railguns - what if they did some damage to crew (by punching holes in a ship and decompressing sections of a ship) rather than their shitty armor-piercing damage they have now?  Shields would protect against this, and a "compartmentalization" defense would cut this damage in half when shields have fallen.

2) FTL - Maybe flatten things out so that all ships could jump every 3 turns?  Jump a bit further, like 8 or 10 units instead of 6?  We could allow jumps more often, but build in a margin of error for making these "wild jumps" without good calculations.  There's some more options we discussed around this, but that's the core of it.

3) Drones - we talked about them (and perhaps also fighters) requiring crew for operators, beefing them up in general, and making railguns the obvious counter to drone ships.

4) Medium ships need to be effective workhorses and we didn't feel like we had that yet.  Rich and I tossed out some changes to the power curve/bonuses and we'll report back.  The gist is "more power than https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AuLF5AA8yWDzdE9UVlBjaVhlbGJTZmd4ZjZxcFhldUE&usp=sharing with advantage to larger ships."

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[James Shepherd]

PS - mostly Kate and Josh - I went into the groups settings and changed you to recieve "all emails" instead of "no emails," which is what you were getting.  So...hopefully that's a change you wanted made and if not, you can change it back.

[Steven Vargo]

I agree with Josh that ship classes are way off now.  Just fiddling around with numbers, a ship with a volume of 1000 used to be a mothership but is now a class 8.  A ship with a volume of 4096 is only a class 10?!  I could see someone maybe bringing a MOC close to the spacestation in size, but would you really want to play with that (move around the tables)?  Would it not make more sense to run something like that at class 12 and add some special bonuses or something versus re-calculating the tables?  I didn't see anything wrong with the previous ship volumes, although the changes in bonuses were needed. 

I like your idea of ship class-recharge in shields per turn James.  I'll need to get back to you on the rest.

[James Shepherd]

Yeah, we're playing with the volume.  There's a comparison of our updates to the power curves/shipbuilding rules in the "Reference" sheet here, as well as a comparison between last game's, older, and beta-proposal volumes.  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AuLF5AA8yWDzdDVJa2lkczltMGkyRjNNR3p4U1VvUUE&usp=sharing

[YourCure]

Cool, all good points James.

Maybe have a different rules format for space stations and fortresses as it pertains to volume and such. Seems to me a different category than a class do ship by definition. And since stations typically only have thrusters and two ships in most of the fiction (Death Star not included but that thing was the size of a moon!) it could be done. I like the referenced station, sucker is huge. That could have hull and armor repair facilities for any size ship.

I added a not but then removed it due to this now being more public than before. I'm sending it to James now to see how he may want to proceed with this. Call me paranoid but you never know.

[James Shepherd]

Yeah, stations and large ships are going to go off the charts at some level, I suppose - I guess we can close that loophole with a blurb in the rules about "if your ship is larger, consider a larger Unit or feel free to write your own rules - as long as all players agree before play, 'fairness' is what you make it!"

[James Shepherd]

Steve, which two class names was it that you wanted to switch?  Frigate should be smaller than Destroyer, right?

[Steven Vargo]

Yeah, that's the current naval classification.  

[Rich Schoonover]

To support Steve in this.  I found an interesting snippet that may help clarify.  I wish we would have seen this in the naming process, but we didn’t do bad I guess.  

Modern frigates are related to earlier frigates only by name. The term "frigate" was readopted during the Second World War by the Royal Navy to describe an anti-submarine escort vessel that was larger than a corvette, smaller than a destroyer, and were about equal in size and capability with the American destroyer escort.