What's your faction?

[TheDreadnought]

The other thread on factions gave me the idea for this one.

What's your favorite faction? Whether from the CB setting, one you've replicated from another book or movie, or something you created from scratch, tell us about it and why you like it!

[kashre]

Currently we're using randomly generated factions with 18 points and no benefits (because we couldn't figure out how to balance it early on). I actually think it's really fun, because instead of getting to build exactly what we wanted we had to work within the constraints of the tech we rolled up. Which can be challenging, since my personal faction got 0 conventional weapons.

I'm working on fleets based on the EVE online video game empire factions though...

Minmatar: generally high delta, a lot of RDF designs, high conventional and laser (for shields) but with no actual laser weapons mounted on their ships, just conventional and missiles. A bit weak defensively, except for a couple designs known as "tankers" in the video game. Their faction benefit is that they can chose to swap the shield and armor damage of any of their weapon mounts at the beginning of the game.

Ammarr, high laser and conventional, lots of battleline designs, lots of armor but weaker shields, low deltas, all lasers (and some missiles). Their faction benefit is that their laser weapons (except gatling lasers) get 1d10 pen. I'm a little worried that it's overpowered so I might change it to +2 pen or something after playtesting.

Caldari: Shield heavy, lots of missiles and a few torpedo weapons (which seem the best match for EVE online hybrid turrets, particularly blasters, since they're short range, high damage and about even vs shield and armor). Low delta and lots of Defender roll designs. I haven't thought of a good faction benefit for them yet or. Maybe +20% damage to missiles. High Anti-matter and laser tech (but no lasers on their ships).

Gallente: Balanced between Shields and armor, lots of fighters (representing EVE drones) even on non-carrier ships, lots of torps and a few missiles, with lots of battleline ships and carrier rolls. High anti-matter and fighter tech. Also don't have a bonus for them... maybe +50% fighter range, or +20% torpedo damage.

[Jester]

Ive only played a few very small and short test games so cant answer the OP question but wanted to comment on Kashre's post.

I play eve and realy like your ideas. Let us know how they work out as I would love to get some "EVE tabletop" action going .

Also, what models were you planning on using?

[kashre]

Jun 20, 2010 22:49:46 GMT -5 Jester said:

Ive only played a few very small and short test games so cant answer the OP question but wanted to comment on Kashre's post.

I play eve and realy like your ideas. Let us know how they work out as I would love to get some "EVE tabletop" action going .

Also, what models were you planning on using?

Well, I am a super cheapskate and I have no proficiency at painting minis, not to mention no real space to store them in my little apartment, so I just make custom counters using paint:



Then I print them out onto Avery binder labels, cut out the ships and put the labels on blanks counters I got from this kit:

www.nobleknight.com/productdetailsearch.asp_Q_ProductID_E_2147360534_A_InventoryID_E_2147699444

It's a great alternative to having hundreds of dollars and lots of space sunk into minis, even though minis are really cool... these are easy to store, more portable, and since I played Star Fleet battles with it's weee little counters for like 10 years before I got into other space combat games it's really more of what I'm used to. Oh and so much cheaper.

I figure it shouldn't be TOO hard to make something that looks something like it's EVE namesake... although some ships are going to have boring top-down profiles... like the Effin Vertical ships for minmatar... the Tempest is just gonna be a big line

[Jester]

Nice, thats a good idea on the counters...would be good for some of our trips.

LOL on the tempest...at least the Rifter will look nice

[unclejoe]

What 'tech level' do y'all like to play? The book has 20 as the 'standard', but that doesnt seem restrictive enough IMO. I like having to make really hard choices for stuff like that so I went with 15 to design my starting factions. We kept the other same rules though (max of one 5 and a max of two 4's). This should hopefully lead to some diverse fleets over time.

As soon as I'm comfortable enough with the system I'm going to create a list of faction benefits/costs to spice it up even more.

So what tech level do you like to play? Do you like to have a few high techs and a few low or do you prefer to balance it out?

[Jester]

Weve only played 2-3 test games and used the Default settings in those games. Now that we have a handle on the basics, we are going to start playing with lower tech. I agree with Unclejoe, that 20 dosnt forces the hard decisions. 15 Sounds interesting. With our group, and thier different play styles, 15 should give us some very different feeling fleets (which is what I love about the tech level idea in CB).

I think we are going to create our own temp faction with 15 tech levels and play a few games with that as if that were our fleet. Maybe a very basic min-campagin using the scenario rules and victory benifites listed in the book.

Having said that, I really like the idea of fighters and Rail guns...so will have to decide which tech gets the 5

[warchariot]

You alsd should have a house rule that says something about how many 5s you can have, that way no one loads up on 3-5s and the rest zero.

[Jester]

Agreed, I think we are going to use the optional rules (no more than one 5, two 4s, etc.)

It becomes a totally different game with limited Tech...loving it...

[unclejoe]

I would also suggest everyone's tech levels being 'known' before anyone starts designing their ships. If someone has level 5 in Fighters, it would be good to know that for PD purposes.

Ditto for someone who has Orbital Manufacturing 4 or 5. You'll need to make sure you have some hefty anti-armor capability vs them

[Jester]

Yep, we have spies in all of your star nations...mwhahahahahahaha

[TheDreadnought]

Somebody was using the roll for them randomly approach, which sounded fun too.

I'd imagine something like 1d10/2 for each tech, then switch any two at the end. Could create some real underdogs, but it would be fun!

This discussion is making me want to work on my campaign system! But I've got 2 fleet books to get out the door first!! It never ends. . .

[RiflemanIII]

Jun 30, 2010 13:55:22 GMT -5 unclejoe said:

I would also suggest everyone's tech levels being 'known' before anyone starts designing their ships. If someone has level 5 in Fighters, it would be good to know that for PD purposes.

My Gatling Lasers will blot out the sun(s)!

[warchariot]

Rolling would be fun! Maybe a reroll for your lowest roll and then arrange how you want or switch two like Dread said. You could even set an upper limit. How about roll 3/4d10 add them up and that's what you have to work with. Might be fun to do an all five tech game too!

[kashre]

We used the rolled tech levels. We just assigned the TLs a number from 1-6 and rolled 1D6 18 times, re-rolling anything that gave an invalid result because of the 1x5 2x4 guideline.

It makes a fun challenge, but I got stuck with conventional 0... crap armor, crap PD, no missiles Although I *can* build mass 1000 ships with Spatial Distortion torps... that's fun.

We're probably going to re-roll factions with armor in the orbital tech though.