January Game - Post Game Discussion and Improvements

[Tervlon]

Hey guys, 

I had a blast playing on Saturday! The game felt much quicker than last time we played and had a good flow. Hanging out with all of you was great and I really appreciate Josh for hosting us all in such a perfect venue. 

Over the last couple days I have been thinking about a few things that I feel might improve or simplify game play. I am just throwing things out there, some might be good ideas and others may be terrible but I feel like posting them here will be a useful exercise. Some were discussed on Saturday a little bit. 

1.  Pre-made Ship Templates - The single biggest problem with the game now is ship build out. We burned a third of our time trying to build ships. I think we should have a goal to develop a standard pre-made ship for each class in the rules. They should be decent and well-rounded without complicated equipment. All the pre-made ships could be posted on the Microfleet site and be printed off with zero problems or used in the Google Drive ship maker as starting points for customized ships. This way if we don't build out our ships before hand we can just use one that's already made. This is the best way to teach the game as well. 

2. Added Improvements to Google Doc - Fleshing out the Ship Builder doc that James has graciously started will give us a great way to easily build ships. Drop-downs menus for adding weapons, defenses, and modifications will go along way to simplify the process. I can work with James on this and have already done a few things. 

3. Angled rulers - I think using LEGO angle plates might be a great way to show the turning/maneuvers and weapons arcs. LEGO makes the 45 degree, etc angled wedge plates and these might be a good guide to show how turns and arcs are decided. This will add consistency too.

4. Battlescribe - http://battlescribe.net/index.html  Battlescribe is a free open source app for ios, android, and PC/Mac that allows you to create a catalogue for any game system and then build your armies. I use it for X-Wing and a lot  of 40k players use it. The software to develop it for a new game is available for free on the site and might be worth a look. 

5. Fighters/Point Defense - I think that fighters are a bit overpowered at the moment when you consider the lack of power point defense really has against them. The fighters attack at 6x the normal rate but only get attacked at 1x by the point defense weapons. In order to have defended against a squadron a ship will have to load tons of point defense weapons on board. Nothing seems large enough, even Large weapons rolling at 3D6, to effectively deal with fighters.When fighters get through they aren't doing piddly damage either they make serious damage on a ship with little fear of being knocked out. 

Fighters are as powerful as any medium ship, but actually more powerful because they carry way more weaponry and can use all of it at once. Honestly, from a cost perspective in the game it is better to field 10 fighter squadrons than 4 large scale ships. We want this as a larger scale game, i think fighters still hold too much sway. However, I think the current system is better than it was. 

 

 

A few solutions could include:

•  Making fighters have even lower hull thus being easier to kill, not necessarily my favorite option but it will speed things up perhaps

• Allowing each point defense weapon to roll a d6 for each fighter in the squadron (could be an augmented defense system?)

• Design some affordable flak type weapons for point defense that can be fired at a farther distance that allows the larger ships to keep the fighters at arms length and damages them before the fighters are in range of the larger ship. Damaging t This is probably my favorite solution.

• Fighters get a negative modifier when attacking something X Classes larger than them  

Let me know what you think and please add your own suggestions for the game. 

[James Eggleston]

Yeah, it was great!  I think it was flowing pretty well and yes, many thanks to Josh for making that space available.  That was awesome.

Jaron & Rich - I shared the google doc I started after our last meeting at the Shack; if you like you can throw ideas on there and I'll add them to the to-do list and eventually to the rules.  Or we can just keep them here; whichever works.

1) This has been something we've been wanting to do for a good long while.  I'm planning to do this in a couple stages: first, have a decent all-around fighting ship for each class premade.  Next, diversify these warships: fighters would be broken up into builds focues on survivability, speed, heavy weapons, etc.  Ultimately, I would like to get a ship builder together where you plug in a class number and a ship type and it would pre-fill a good build for you.

2) Sounds good - I'll add you as an editor to the template; feel free to mess with anything you like.  Maybe duplicate the main template just in case first, though.

3) That's a good point - having an easy way to denote weapon arcs (particularly for larger ships/weapons) is pretty needed with recent changes/refocusing.

4) Checking it out - will download the software and some documentation and see what I can come up with.

5) I agree, in general - if nothing else, I think 6-fighter squadrons are too powerful.  3 or 4 ship squads seem better to me, but that's just IMHO.  We nerfed fighter bonuses somewhat; we could keep going in that direction - +2 to engines and +1 to thrusters?  If nothing else, they would at least have to spend more power on movement if they want to be effective strikers.  Point defense needs a good re-work, we've never really messed with it since early days.  I'll have to think about this; giving a bonus against small-ship squadrons seems the most fair?

The more general point is that it seems like the game is balanced to favor small ships, I certainly agree with that and think we need to address it; we'll have to do some pretty serious testing to fix these issues, though.  I'm considering getting rid of the whole more-power-to-get-the-same-effectiveness from engines rules; thoughts on that?

6) One that Rich came up with is a module allowing you to move-shoot-move or shoot-move-shoot.  How would you price that?

7) Along the same lines, it seems to me that we need to go back through and price most defenses differently for small, medium, and large ships.

That's all I got for now; more later!  

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[Rich Schoonover]

1.  Pre-made Ship Templates - The single biggest problem with the game now is ship build out. We burned a third of our time trying to build ships. I think we should have a goal to develop a standard pre-made ship for each class in the rules. They should be decent and well-rounded without complicated equipment. All the pre-made ships could be posted on the Microfleet site and be printed off with zero problems or used in the Google Drive ship maker as starting points for customized ships. This way if we don't build out our ships before hand we can just use one that's already made. This is the best way to teach the game as well. 

I agree we should have a collection of pre-made and tested ships for each class.  At least one per class, but I would like to see more.  A good starter set could be like 3 sample ships for each class.  We could even take a representative ship from each of our factions so there would be four in each class.  

2. Added Improvements to Google Doc - Fleshing out the Ship Builder doc that James has graciously started will give us a great way to easily build ships. Drop-downs menus for adding weapons, defenses, and modifications will go along way to simplify the process. I can work with James on this and have already done a few things. 

I messed around with the spreadsheet James created the other day, and it has a very good start in ship creation.  I caught a few problems it has with engines and thrusters and subtracting power points from the value calculated on the left.  I have looked at the formulas for that calculation and they are very good.  We just have a lot going on with that value and its modifiers.  I can talk to James about that this week.

3. Angled rulers - I think using LEGO angle plates might be a great way to show the turning/maneuvers and weapons arcs. LEGO makes the 45 degree, etc angled wedge plates and these might be a good guide to show how turns and arcs are decided. This will add consistency too.

I think this is a great idea and if Jaron has a good plan for how to do this I would love to see what he can come up with.

4. Battlescribe - http://battlescribe.net/index.html  Battlescribe is a free open source app for ios, android, and PC/Mac that allows you to create a catalogue for any game system and then build your armies. I use it for X-Wing and a lot  of 40k players use it. The software to develop it for a new game is available for free on the site and might be worth a look. 

I still need to check this out.  I will have more comments later.

5. Fighters/Point Defense - I think that fighters are a bit overpowered at the moment when you consider the lack of power point defense really has against them. The fighters attack at 6x the normal rate but only get attacked at 1x by the point defense weapons. In order to have defended against a squadron a ship will have to load tons of point defense weapons on board. Nothing seems large enough, even Large weapons rolling at 3D6, to effectively deal with fighters.When fighters get through they aren't doing piddly damage either they make serious damage on a ship with little fear of being knocked out. 

Fighters are as powerful as any medium ship, but actually more powerful because they carry way more weaponry and can use all of it at once. Honestly, from a cost perspective in the game it is better to field 10 fighter squadrons than 4 large scale ships. We want this as a larger scale game, i think fighters still hold too much sway. However, I think the current system is better than it was. 

 

 

A few solutions could include:

•  Making fighters have even lower hull thus being easier to kill, not necessarily my favorite option but it will speed things up perhaps

• Allowing each point defense weapon to roll a d6 for each fighter in the squadron (could be an augmented defense system?)

• Design some affordable flak type weapons for point defense that can be fired at a farther distance that allows the larger ships to keep the fighters at arms length and damages them before the fighters are in range of the larger ship. Damaging t This is probably my favorite solution.

• Fighters get a negative modifier when attacking something X Classes larger than them  

I think one of the best defense for fighters is fighters.  Our goal recently was to encourage this game to progress more rapidly.  The first thing we could change on fighters is limit the number of weapons they can carry.  Maybe we should limit fighters to one or two weapons.  I also think that medium and large ships aren't tough enough.  Maybe we should re-scale the power point structure.  I know some larges were given bonuses for additional weapons, maybe we could weigh the power points so there are more available as you get closer to the top of the scale.  We could change armor so that instead it being 2 3 4 for small medium large, it could be 2 4 6 respectively.  I also like the idea of a Flak solution.  I had a thought about a Flak defense missile that would have a limited range, but a huge blast damage.  The idea is it is more warhead than fuel.  It would have a max range of six or eight and a damage of 4d6 or 5d6.  It could only be used against small ships.  We could also half the internal structure in all ships.  That should give most weapons a better chance of destroying a fighter, especially if you use a railgun or something.  We made a lot of changes to to fighter to help speed up the game and to nerf them defensively.  Before we change them again.  Lets play them as is one more time, and lets focus on fighters that play an anti fighter role or a medium support ship that could help defend large ships from waves of fighters. 

On Mon, Jan 28, 2013 at 3:19 PM, Tervlon <janson...@gmail.com> wrote:

--

[YourCure]

I really had a good time and enjoyed meeting everyone.

I think that the proposed changes will help make the game better.

Any ideas when the next meeting/game will be?

[James Eggleston]

Well, not really - I'd really like to take some time and get the website up-to-date soon, which is planned for late this month when I take some vacation.  As seems to be the theme since this fall, I have some ideas for rule changes & streamlining I'd like to try out soon; since Rich and I are missing our March meeting, maybe we'll get together another day and hash those out?

When would you guys like to meet next?  That'll be my deadline for getting at least 12 default ship loadouts written up.

-James

[SteveV]

Early April or mid-May are better times for me.

Steve

[Tervlon]

April is packed for us already. May is going to be just as bad. Mid to Late June might be the only opportunity I have before BrickFair. Can't believe that I am thinking that far ahead already... where does the time go?

[James Eggleston]

Well, we were already planning/knowing that the bigger the group of folks interested in the game/campaign got, the more we were going to have to have some get-togethers that some folks just can't make it to.  Personally, I would opt for trying to get something together roughly every 3 months or so and schedule it (in the future)  far enough in advance to plan around.  I'd be up for maybe a Richmond get-together in the next few months; probably on the north side of town or somewhere convenient for anyone who'd be willing/able to make the drive.

So, Rich & Josh - how does early april or mid may sound to you guys?

[YourCure]

I am game for either of those. More April for me. The third weekend of May I could do.

[SteveV]

The third weekend in May would work for me too. I have finals the week before that. April's looking to be pretty busy now.

On Mar 19, 2013, at 21:38, YourCure <yourc...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> I am game for either of those. More April for me. The third weekend of May I could do.
>

[Rich Schoonover]

The third week in may works for me as well. April is already looking bad for me.

Sent from my iPhone

[James Eggleston]

Well, unless there are any objections, I'm going to put us down for May 18th, tentatively at the Lego Shack if that's okay with Rich.  (also, I typo'd that as 'Lego Shark,' which I find hilarious as a mental image.  I'm guessing it's either a life-sized version of the old classic-pirates shark, or a card shark but with Lego.)

Since we missed out on mining last time, do we wanna give that another go?  Teams, or free-for-all?

-James

[YourCure]

Teams sounds good to me. Less chance of a dog pile on blue scenario. ;)

[James Eggleston]

There is that.  This will likely be a smaller battlefield - 8'x4' or so - so the big guns are probably going to have to stay at home, unfortunately.  (Besides, it was destroyed last battle anyway!)

-James

On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 1:24 AM, YourCure <yourc...@yahoo.com> wrote:

Teams sounds good to me. Less chance of a dog pile on blue scenario. ;)

[SteveV]

What kind of upper class limit did you have in mind?  

[James Eggleston]

Not 12+, mostly.  I don't think we've gone too big yet, except for maybe 5 fleets + space station on that table.