|
Post by captainquirk on May 22, 2014 1:28:14 GMT -5
Interesting. What was included in the old pocket edition? Did it have all the drones and fighters and whatnot. . . or was it just ship to ship? I'm really thinking a WWI feel is appropriate for the setting. Long long ago now... I think the ships were the Franz Josef Fed dreadnought and destroyer to go with the cruiser. The Romulan warbird, Klingon and Romulan D7. And a few extrapolated ships - the Gorn ships were never seen on TV, and the Kzinti ship was an invention based on one cartoon episode written by Larry Niven. That introduced the drones. I'm not sure about the fighters. The ship that started those off was a Kzinti ship which carried a dozen attack shuttles. Just can't remember if it was in this game or the next. It was another supplement in the same series which introduced the full plague of fighters into SFB. www.wargamevault.com/product/122714/Star-Fleet-Battles-Pocket-Edition
|
|
mrg
Ensign
Posts: 5
|
Post by mrg on May 22, 2014 2:46:03 GMT -5
Ah yes, those happy days of the pocket edition before the game was destroyed by rules bloat. A slimline 40 pages of which only 20 were actual rules.
The ships included were:
Federation: Dreadnought, command cruiser, heavy cruiser (Constitution class), light cruiser. Klingon: D7 and D6 battlecruisers. Romulans: Warbird (the ship seen in TOS), War Eagle (a warp refitted version of the same), and KR battlecruiser (Klingon lease ship). Kzinti: Strike cruiser and light cruiser. Gorn: Heavy cruiser and light cruiser General: A base station
That's it. All perfectly playable in a sensible time. No attack shuttles (fighters) or carriers, only one type of drone and only the Kzintis and Klingons had them.
|
|
|
Post by TheDreadnought on May 22, 2014 7:13:45 GMT -5
drones are essentially guided missiles?
|
|
|
Post by captainquirk on May 22, 2014 12:09:41 GMT -5
Yes.
The justification for them was that there were some drones shown on the first set of blueprints for the Klingon D7. They were extrapolated into SFB as being seeking weapons. However it was never particularly clear in the original source material whether the drones were actually intended to be target practice drones or a real weapon. After 35 years of SFB though, they are pretty firmly fixed as part of that particular iteration of the universe.
|
|
|
Post by TheDreadnought on May 22, 2014 13:50:25 GMT -5
Well I am ok with including some seeking weapons. There's already precedent for it with the plasma torps. But fighters are out.
|
|
|
Post by captainquirk on May 22, 2014 14:30:44 GMT -5
Precedent with the plasma torps.
And if you include the movies with the original crew, then photons are also seeking weapons. And by the movie era, Klingons are using photons as well as the Federation.
Not sure how other people feel on the subject. I'm not really fussed either way on drones. We didn't actually see them in any of the original series or the movies. Please let's not get into the whole SFB thing of Fed ships carrying Phalanx/Goalkeeper style CIWS gatling phasers and anti-drone drones though!
One of the big turn-offs with SFB as far as I'm concerned (apart from it suffering from the mother of all rules bloating) is the way it turned into an ego trip fantasy based around USN carrier groups - even down to calling the Federation fighter shuttles "F14" and "F18". SFB largely turned into a monster which had hardly anything to do with the original pocket game or the original TV series.
|
|
|
Post by kjncindy on May 22, 2014 17:41:30 GMT -5
Fighters did appear in later series (Deep Space 9, for example). But definitely not part of the original series. I happen to like SFB but I can understand the gripes.
|
|
|
Post by TheDreadnought on May 22, 2014 18:29:43 GMT -5
Without CIWS I'll probably skip the drones too and just stick to a true WYSIWYG game based on the show/movies. Having drones as a game element without the defensive system tailored to them seems wrong to me. If you want a Phalanx/Fighters/Missiles you can always just use the Colonial Battlefleet build rules.
|
|
|
Post by kjncindy on May 22, 2014 20:04:07 GMT -5
Yep, agreed. If you are sticking to original series I would try and skip drones/missiles. If you include them, you have to go down the countermeasures path and run the risk of appearing to parallel SFB too much. Although just like in Colonial Battlefleet, seeking weapons do add an awesome dynamic and tactical element. They introduce a great reason to maneuver other than just achieving optimal firing position/range. The problem with Trek is that it is not even consistent with itself. Klingons with disruptors and then photon torpedoes. Romulans with plasma torpedoes then distruptors. You just have to make some choices of what to model and go with it. I still like the multiple era approach but recognize that this makes the inconsistency problem even greater. What can I say? I have faith in you to somehow pull it off.
|
|
|
Post by TheDreadnought on May 22, 2014 21:47:56 GMT -5
I'll figure out something. Still need some play testers though.
|
|
|
Post by TheDreadnought on May 22, 2014 23:30:51 GMT -5
How often do you guy want to miss. . . versus adjusting shields up and down all the time.
I feel like the less shield addition/subtraction you have to do, the better. . . but that means a lot of missing. When do you get a hit, it tends to make a difference. Slow regen on shields will make it very difficult to just bounce back.
Thoughts?
|
|
mrg
Ensign
Posts: 5
|
Post by mrg on May 23, 2014 1:42:53 GMT -5
Just before we move off drones, there is one thing worth pointing out about them in the original pocket version of SFB (which is by far the closest to TOS). It's quite a key tactical point. They were *much* slower than the ships they were deployed against. Speed 8, versus a theoretical maximum ship speed of 31.
Only the Kzinti had them in numbers making them useful offensively and because of their slow speed relative to ships their tactical utility was limited. Either as part of an overrun attack (or to deter the same), or against a slow/stationary target or one you have in a tractor beam, or to shoot down other drones. Of the other races only the Klingons had them but in very limited numbers and of an inferior (slower rate of fire) type. They could also be handy for limiting an opponent's ability to manoeuvre freely but mainly they were there to tie up the enemy's defensive phaser fire when you were overunning him.
Agree there is little to no precedent in the TV series for them though.
|
|
mrg
Ensign
Posts: 5
|
Post by mrg on May 23, 2014 11:15:32 GMT -5
How often do you guy want to miss. . . versus adjusting shields up and down all the time. I feel like the less shield addition/subtraction you have to do, the better. . . but that means a lot of missing. When do you get a hit, it tends to make a difference. Slow regen on shields will make it very difficult to just bounce back. Thoughts? A design choice that any game has to make. If weapons do miss more often, then that emphasises luck over skill (all other things being equal, the luckier player will win through). If they miss less often then all other things being equal the victory will go the player with the better tactics. I prefer the latter experience myself in anything other than very short play games. Just a couple of observations to throw in to help inform the decision (or not): - In the TV series, even ships with full shields appeared to take at least some damage from hits, i.e. shields were leaky and not perfect defences. One your shields were gone, however, it was all over for you. Ships with no shields are very fragile and armour seems to be rare to non-existent. - SFB does not seem to model TV series damage very closely (you really need to pound a heavy cruiser mercilessly to blow it up), FASA much more so (three or four hits and it's game over). In that respect, SFB is reflecting its roots in Jutland whereas FASA was more in line with genre emulation. All that leads me to conclude that if you want genre emulation you need a mix of what you're suggesting, i.e. weapons hit more often than miss AND do big damage.
|
|
|
Post by captainquirk on May 23, 2014 17:27:58 GMT -5
Years ago we tried a home rule variant of SFB (back in the days when it was still the original game and just a couple of the early expansions) where the shields actually deflected rather than absorbed as their primary function. We didn't use the house rule for long because it was very random - after every attack, a target ship with a shield that was still up at the start of the attack simply rolled a d10 and whatever came up was the percentage that was deflected.... so anything from 0 to 90% was radiated away.
Mostly luck rather than skill.
However, it did have the effect that people put a lot more effort into moving around seeking the least opposed shot - instead of just reinforcing front shields and making overrun attacks. Few people wanted to just go head to head if there was a risk that their alpha strike might get deflected while the opposing ship's strike wasn't.
There WAS leaky shielding in the original source. But there were also plenty of times when tactical reported incoming fire as "deflected, keptin". So shields should also deflect rather than just absorb damage and collapse as they do in CBF and SFB.
So, I think shots probably hit often. But don't always penetrate.
|
|
|
Post by boywundyrx on May 23, 2014 19:47:36 GMT -5
Just chiming in on the original questions, but I'm very much in the TOS and TOS-based movies camp, with some options for other types of ships than just those seen on screen - but I'm ok if it comes with a build system so I can design ships to fit my collection of models, rather than a huge set of pre-made ships.
I'm also not a fan of the fighters and drones that have taken over the SFB setting, my previous efforts for this setting were to take other rules and ship designs and strip them back to TOS and the movies.
As for numbers of ships, perhaps a half dozen per side; and complex enough to be interesting tactically, but I don't want to do energy allocations each turn...
Chris
|
|
|
Post by TheDreadnought on May 23, 2014 22:28:26 GMT -5
Yeah, at this point your probably looking at just a couple ships per person. I've done plenty of games where players can run squadrons of ships. I think I want this one to be a little more detailed, which keeps the battles smaller and more in line with the TV/movies.
There will be a kind of "energy allocation", but the way I'm designing it is more like an action point system. Not some annoying task. So things should keep moving pretty quickly still.
I haven't yet decided how many designs to include. But I am guessing that there will be some kind of "build system". However, I don't want to limit what CAN be built, so my priority will be developing a reliable costing system. Build whatever you want, but you'll have to pay the points for it. That will be a lot easier to balance with no fighters and drones to allow for asymmetrical fleet designs.
|
|
|
Post by lincolnlog on Jun 10, 2014 7:30:33 GMT -5
A couple of things to keep in mind. Trek is the one scifi combat environment, that ships do not drop out out of FTL to fight. This means I-GO/U-GO movement with standard initiative make the game feel like sub-light combat, and then it's not Trek like. FTL combat occurs so quickly, so there needs to be multiple decsion points within the turn to provide maneuver and fire options.
While I would agree that the impulse movement system from SFB or FC is too clunky, I would recommend combining movement and combat into the same sequence of play, but divide the turn into 3 movement/combat segments. Instead of rolling for initiative, make initiative speed based, with slower ships moving first and faster ships moving last. Using a speed based initiative system rewards maneuver. Make combat simultaneous, if declared.
|
|
|
Post by TheDreadnought on Jun 10, 2014 9:03:59 GMT -5
I don't know if I agree with that. The TV show and first set of movies show a lot of sub-light combat. Only in the Next Generation do we start to see combat at warp speeds. Even then, most combat is still predominantly sub-light. Whatever the "fluff was" the reality is that on screen, combat was pretty much sublight. That said, I wouldn't count on initiative working similar to CBF or any game in particular. "Federation Battlefleet" is the working title for this game, but its a ground-up build. It will probably wind up getting a completely different title by the time we're done. I'm not sure I see the value of multi-segment combat. Why not just have each segment be one game turn? I think that's a concept adopted for SFB to enable their clunky mechanics. My goal here is not to replicate/improve SFB. By goal is to create a new, exciting game that goes back to the genre source. Speed-based initiative has some merit, and I will give it some thought, however in a 2 ship duel, that means that one ship always goes first. I don't necessarily like that. But you did just give me an idea though, so thanks!
|
|
|
Post by lincolnlog on Jun 10, 2014 9:29:03 GMT -5
In the original series only the one episode Balance of Terror was sub-light and that's because the progagonist didn't have warp drive yet.
In the Enterprise Incident the Romulans were chasing the Enterprise down at Warp Speed (after the Klingons sold the warp drive), and would have been able to engage, but the Enterprise got the jump on them and then of course got the Cloaking device working.
In Elan of Troy the combat was at Warp, and I can state several other examples. The Enterprise was at warp speed in while firing in the Episode The Doomsday Machine, and the wargames in The Ultimate Computer were all at warp speed. The only sublight target was the old freighter the computer destroyed.
|
|
|
Post by captainquirk on Jun 10, 2014 9:30:29 GMT -5
Not sure that speed is the only factor. Agility/nimbleness could play a part too.
For example, if a ship is only armed with a spinal weapon or front arc only weapons, then it may be going fast. But initiative could go to a slower ship with broadside weapons which has the agility to barrel roll and bring weapons to bear.
Just as a very rough idea, could ships perhaps have a combat initiative bonus which might be an amalgamation of both speed and agility/responsiveness?
|
|