ideal starter game/ tonnage limit?

[reeftrigger]

Hey guys,
As you might know (probably not though) I only acquired this game yesterday, and I am going to try and introduce it to a couple of friends of mine who are not wargamers. Full disclosure, I am not really a wargamer myself so I don't even really know what to expect.

Basically I am looking to set up a game which would be fast paced and exiting, but still suitably "epic" and leaving everyone wanting to play more. I was thinking of doing ship customization (that is what makes CB so cool to me) but restricting some of the more complex/time consuming features, so fighters, missiles, stealth, mines, grapeshot, and probably ion cannons would be restricted. (e.g. I would discourage extensive use during ship creation, but allow one or two ships to make use of it for "flavor". For example one stealth DD or Missile cruiser might be ok, but a carrier force with 14 fighter squadrons wouldn't.)

What tonnage level per side would be optimum for this? I have no idea having never played a game. (Ok, I have some idea but its like 400<*optimum tonnage level*<10,000 so its not that helpful) Would this change if I have more than one player per side? (like 2-3 a side, max)

[warchariot]

You might want to build the ships yourselves and run the game, not play. Then you can look things up, keep people moving ect. I would go with one good size ship or two smaller ones per person. So you could give everyone say, 500 tons worth of ships.

Do stay away from missiles, fighters, mines, ect the first time out. Stealth might be fun, and could be away for you to play as you could come in turn two after everyone has a feel. Start the sides so that you have long range fire on the first turn, this way they get right into it. Also, this plays fast once you get going, so you may want to switch sides and play again. Good luck!

[reeftrigger]

Ok, cool. Thanks for the ideas warchariot. Whenever this goes down I'll be sure to put up a battle report as well as my thoughts, to help out other new players.

[TheDreadnought]

Ship design is easy, especially with Colonial Shipyard. . . but I wonder if people will really have any clue what they are doing until they've actually played a game. You might consider taking some of the pre-made ship designs and playing a quick game or two before turning people loose to design their own.

Off the top of my head, if you set the Quantum Manipulation Tech Level to 2 and the Conventional Weapons Tech Level to 0, I think that will eliminate all the weapons with custom rules.

Finally, when you do start allowing people to take missiles, I'd recommend a big play area to allow for a decent missile engagement, with starting distances 35+ hexes.

[kashre]

I agree that it's pretty hard to balance out your ship designs if you don't have any experience with them... but that could be mitigated by putting some limits in... like, everyone designs a 250t battleline heavy cruiser, and everyone gets 2 of them to try out.

Then just limit them to direct fire weapons and see what people come up with.

[warchariot]

The only reason I would not use missiles in the first game or two (you all know I love missiles), is because they are long range weapons, which players learn how to use the hard way. So I wouldn't want anyone to walk away from the game because they lost a ship without getting to firer. Using some of the pre-made ships would work and is a good way to start. I just thought you really wanted to build some.