Observations, thoughts, and questions :)

[unclejoe]

OK, so I've already posted a little of what we thought in the Design Decisions thread. But here is bit more rambling on what we've seen with the game so far. Note that these are initial impressions and they may change over time as we learn and as our group starts to jump up and down on the game mechanics.

Gameplay:

Movement
We REALLY enjoyed the maneuvering aspects of the game. There was a lot of thought involved without a lot of complexity and without any book-keeping for the movement. Our most recent system had been Starfire (the old version, not the new insanely complicated mess). Starfire's movement definitely shows it's age with the 'Turn Modes' and whatnot and in larger battles, it becomes a mechanical nightmare. We have also played the most recent two version of Starmada and we were pleasantly surprised by the maneuvering system in CB. It forces decisions but still gives plenty of options but without a lot of hassle.

Combat
For the combat portions, the attack die system works very well and you can easily see how the long-range (d10) weapons have a pretty big advantage. Having a high FC rating is a huge help too and it let some ships really reach out and touch someone.

As I touched on in the other thread, we aren't completely sold on firing the missiles at range (and thus paying for deep magazines). It seems to be a pretty big expense for some area denial. I'm sure experience will help us score hits at those ranges, but all of my group are pretty competent at angles/prediction/math and we were able to plot the 'threat zones' easily enough to prevent any unintended impacts. Of course this was a relatively small battle, but the cost of magazines seems to preclude wanting to saturate the area with missiles in the hope of securing a few hits (most of which will likely be on smaller vessels).

Ship design

Still working through this one. With our admittedly slim experience with the system, there still seem to be a number of 'no-brainer' choices, the biggest being armor. The cost does not quite seem to be high enough for the extreme benefits. Time will tell on this, but given the generally low penetration of weapons and the extremely high penalty for having armor penetrated, I can't really see why you wouldnt want to max this out. Perhaps if there are cheap high-penetration weapons, it might be less appealing to max-armor the ship but so far it appears that all such weapons are quite mass-intensive.

Other decisions seem fairly tight. Point Defense is situational and the cost scales nicely. Fire Control gets progressively more and more expensive. For Delta, on large ships 1 seems to be the way to go. It's too mass intensive for the benefit to go higher (at least for BBs IMO). For smaller stuff, it could still go either way.

Technology levels:

We REALLY like this aspect of the game as well. The only potential issue here is that not all tech areas seem to be created equally. The easiest one to 'bypass' seems to be Orbital Manufactoring. The only thing is appears to gate is the highest end hulls. Given that they are progressively more expensive anyways, we didnt see that this is a major benefit. Yes, the higher hulls are powerful, but you can still mount the biggest weapons on smaller versions of the BB hull just as easily. Assuming there isnt some sort of 'price break' at the highest end (and there doesnt appear to be), then this seems to be a tech that can be safely ignored (or at least down-played). We were thinking perhaps armor should be gated here. THAT would certainly make people think twice about skimping in this area...

We also had a question about the levels and roles. Some of the Level 0 say 'no 'x' role', but then the role isnt granted till a higher level anyways, so what is the penalty here? For example, for Quantum Manipulation, Level 0 says 'No Scout role', but then the Scout role isnt granted until Level 4 anyways. So what if you have Level 1,2, or 3? You still dont have the Scout role, right? If so, then what is the penalty for Level 0? Ditto for most the other tech areas with regards to Roles.

Weapons

What is the 'hook' for autocannons? Their low penetration, low shield damage, low range and relatively high mass makes them seem pretty unattractive. The only way their high Hull damage will pay off is if you penetrate the armor and that isnt likely with the d6 penetration. We had a handful of them in our initial game and can't see why we would use them again.

Lasers of various types seem to have a solid role as being long range/accurate shield scrapers. Then follow up with the d10 penetration weapons to hopefully score some criticals.

In the same vein, are we missing something with Fusion Torps? Yes, they are 1 tech level earlier, but at 2 vs 1, that doesnt seem to be a huge hook. The launcher are cheap, but the reloads are mass intensive. If you are going to put more than one reload, why not just put on an Anti-proton torpedo instead? The cost will similar (and much cheaper on the latter if you want more than 2 shots) and the performance seems to be the same (within reason). About the only thing we could come up with would be to use Fusion torps on a small ship without reloads to get higher single-round throw weight, but this is less desireable because of the fire control issues on smaller hulls. Perhaps if the Fusion Torp launchers were Compact? Then maybe we could see the trade off. As is, we were struggling to come up with reasons to use Fusion Torps.

Also on the design front, the rules of Turrets raised some eyebrows. The cost of a turret is the same if you use it for tiny little gattling laser or massive rail guns! That seems completely counter-intuitive and leads to the smaller weapons all being single arc while the huge weapons tend to have the turret mounting with wider arcs. That seems backwards IMO, unless you're following old 'wet navy' conventions (where only a limited number of turrets existed) which seems strange for a space combat system. Perhaps if the turret cost was influenced by the weapon cost it would also give pause to max'ing out the armor too (since the armor rating factors into turrets).

Any which way you slice it, it seems odd for small 'AA' weapons to be paying 3-4x their own mass to be turreted while the massive rail guns pay SIGNIFICANTLY less penalty percentage-wise.

Fighters
We didnt really get a chance to give these a workout yet, but they seem to be an interesting option.

Questions about the Armed Recon ability.

First, is it possible to denote the CV-carried Fusion Torps as Equipment using the spreadsheet? We couldnt figure out how.

Second, how exacty does this work? My guess from reading the rule is that each squadron can fire one per turn, regardless of how many fighters are left in the squadron. Is this correct? How is the attack exectuted? If the Fighters are adjacent, does the defending ship fire its PD etc before the torp attack? If so, it would seem that the only to pre-empt the torp attack would be to wipe out the whole squadron. Also, it would appear that the torps can be used as stand-off weapons and expose the squadron to PD fire? Finally, only Interceptors, not Strike Fighters can fire torps? That seems sort of counter-intuitive as well?

Finally, a suggestion for consideration regarding armor:

Perhaps allow any Critical roll of 'doubles' to remove a point of armor from the target? For example a role of 1,1 or 2,2 would remove an armor. This would allow you to use heavy weapons to hopefully weaken a high-armor target and bring it down to the level where some of the d6 pen weapons seem attractive. As it stands now, I can't imagine wanting to use many of those weapons when the better d10 pen weapons arent much more expensive and in some cases also come with a much better attack die.

Ok, that concludes the initial round of feedback, questions, and observations.

Thanks for taking the time to read through it all!

[TheDreadnought]

Hey this is some great feedback. Thanks for taking the time to provide it.

As an overall comment, Colonial Battlefleet has been written to allow you to easily replicate the starship combat seen in your favorite TV shows and movies. More custom options to even more closely provide a match are forthcoming, but setting utility considerations drove a lot of design considerations even in the core rules.

Let's see. . . .

As I touched on in the other thread, we aren't completely sold on firing the missiles at range (and thus paying for deep magazines). It seems to be a pretty big expense for some area denial. I'm sure experience will help us score hits at those ranges, but all of my group are pretty competent at angles/prediction/math and we were able to plot the 'threat zones' easily enough to prevent any unintended impacts. Of course this was a relatively small battle, but the cost of magazines seems to preclude wanting to saturate the area with missiles in the hope of securing a few hits (most of which will likely be on smaller vessels).

Missiles can be highly effective in saturation attacks as shown on some of the other threads. Typically space combat literature has emphasized the need for saturation - hence they've been written that way.

As far as area denial goes. . . I don't know about your group but even area denial can provide the turning point that changes a battle from a draw or loss to a crushing victory. To the extent that you can control your opponent's maneuvering to achieve local force superiority, you ensure victory. If they choose not to respond to the area denial strategy. . . well they are just going to have to eat some missiles.

There's a huge number of tactical considerations wrapped up in the employment of missile strikes, so I think many gamers used to other space games where they are just one more means of inflicting damage on the enemy, are initially having difficulty grasping how to use them. It becomes obvious when you watch somebody using them, but its probably hard to take from the page alone.

Still working through this one. With our admittedly slim experience with the system, there still seem to be a number of 'no-brainer' choices, the biggest being armor. The cost does not quite seem to be high enough for the extreme benefits. Time will tell on this, but given the generally low penetration of weapons and the extremely high penalty for having armor penetrated, I can't really see why you wouldnt want to max this out. Perhaps if there are cheap high-penetration weapons, it might be less appealing to max-armor the ship but so far it appears that all such weapons are quite mass-intensive.

I'm not really understanding why maxing out the single most effective type of defense for your ship SHOULD be anything but a no brainer.

If armor provided much more balanced benefits relative to its cost, the result is a game where it's frequently worth it to build "glass cannons." Huge, powerful weapons mounted on paper thin, unprotected hulls. Not only is this unrealistic, its not fun. So yes, it's generally always going to be worth it to forfeit the tonnage in weapons necessary to max out the armor your ship can carry. Not in every case. . . but almost.

So this falls into the category of "working as designed."

For Delta, on large ships 1 seems to be the way to go. It's too mass intensive for the benefit to go higher (at least for BBs IMO). For smaller stuff, it could still go either way.

As intended. If you want a fast capital ship, you'd better buy a BCR. This makes battlecruisers the fast wing of your fleet. You are playing into my evil plans nicely!

There is actually a price break for the larger hull sizes, but its buried in the math and relatively subtle. . . so it's not surprising that you wouldn't see it. We spent a lot of time figuring out how to make sure that capital ships were "worth it". You should buy smaller ships because of their specialized capabilities, not because they're "more efficient" platforms than the capital ships.

The easiest one to 'bypass' seems to be Orbital Manufactoring. The only thing is appears to gate is the highest end hulls. Given that they are progressively more expensive anyways, we didnt see that this is a major benefit. Yes, the higher hulls are powerful, but you can still mount the biggest weapons on smaller versions of the BB hull just as easily. Assuming there isnt some sort of 'price break' at the highest end (and there doesnt appear to be), then this seems to be a tech that can be safely ignored (or at least down-played). We were thinking perhaps armor should be gated here. THAT would certainly make people think twice about skimping in this area..

I tried to match the defenses to the offensive systems in designing the tech levels figuring that evolution of one, would drive evolution of the other.

Still. . . I REALLY like the idea of armor as an orbital construction tech. It makes sense, and does increase the value of that tech. I'm going to have to take a close look at that the problem is a major change like that could cause a big problem throughout the rest of the book. Take a lot of analysis to spot all the changes. Dammit. . . where were you when I was designing the game?

We also had a question about the levels and roles. Some of the Level 0 say 'no 'x' role', but then the role isnt granted till a higher level anyways, so what is the penalty here? For example, for Quantum Manipulation, Level 0 says 'No Scout role', but then the Scout role isnt granted until Level 4 anyways. So what if you have Level 1,2, or 3? You still dont have the Scout role, right? If so, then what is the penalty for Level 0? Ditto for most the other tech areas with regards to Roles.

Yeah, not the cleanest implementation there. The default settings assumed "Everybody had access to everything" which wasn't necessarily the same as "Tech Level 5 across the board." The advent of the Colonial Shipyard kinda changed the working assumption there. So as a result, the "subtraction approach" of some of the roles in Level 0 tech levels, doesn't seem to make as much sense as it did before "Default" meant "TL5."

Gonna post this then continue. . .

[TheDreadnought]

What is the 'hook' for autocannons? Their low penetration, low shield damage, low range and relatively high mass makes them seem pretty unattractive. The only way their high Hull damage will pay off is if you penetrate the armor and that isnt likely with the d6 penetration. We had a handful of them in our initial game and can't see why we would use them again.

In the same vein, are we missing something with Fusion Torps? Yes, they are 1 tech level earlier, but at 2 vs 1, that doesnt seem to be a huge hook. The launcher are cheap, but the reloads are mass intensive. If you are going to put more than one reload, why not just put on an Anti-proton torpedo instead? The cost will similar (and much cheaper on the latter if you want more than 2 shots) and the performance seems to be the same (within reason). About the only thing we could come up with would be to use Fusion torps on a small ship without reloads to get higher single-round throw weight, but this is less desireable because of the fire control issues on smaller hulls. Perhaps if the Fusion Torp launchers were Compact? Then maybe we could see the trade off. As is, we were struggling to come up with reasons to use Fusion Torps.

In virtually every case, higher tech level weapons are just going to be better than lower tech level weapons. That's the nature of technological advance.

So yes, if you're playing TL5s across the board, the lower tech level weapons aren't going to see much use. But if you've got fusion torps and don't have access to AM torps, fusion torps suddenly look a whole lot more attractive.

Wouldn't make much sense for a highly advanced race to load up on low tech weapons, unless there was a REALLY good reason for them to.

Also on the design front, the rules of Turrets raised some eyebrows. The cost of a turret is the same if you use it for tiny little gattling laser or massive rail guns! That seems completely counter-intuitive and leads to the smaller weapons all being single arc while the huge weapons tend to have the turret mounting with wider arcs. That seems backwards IMO, unless you're following old 'wet navy' conventions (where only a limited number of turrets existed) which seems strange for a space combat system. Perhaps if the turret cost was influenced by the weapon cost it would also give pause to max'ing out the armor too (since the armor rating factors into turrets).

Ahhh turrets. My favorite tech of them all! So design considerations were here:

1. Make it worth it to buy turrets.

2. Not make it "so" worth it to buy turrets, that everybody bought them all the time and therefore fields of fire became less relevant.

3. Drive the game in the wet-navy model. Big weapons in turrets. Smaller weapons along the broadside. Personally, if we ever do have space battleships, I'm pretty sure we'll see that approach used there as well. Turrets are heavy and complicated, so you use them where you get the most payoff and just pack on MORE of the lighter weapons instead.

We actually used several mathematical models for computing the cost of turrets including a number that incorporated weapon tonnage into them. But they didn't drive the game in the direction of the design goals. The final approach achieved our design objectives and also had the virtue of being extremely easy.

First, is it possible to denote the CV-carried Fusion Torps as Equipment using the spreadsheet? We couldnt figure out how.

Yeah, that was another late addition. The most current version of the Colonial Shipyard now enables that capability.

I never was entirely happy with the fighter fusion torp rule, but at a certain point you just had to go with it. There will be new related rules to reflect the use of nuclear weapons by fighters in the forthcoming Ravenstar/Fox Miniatures fleet book.

For the core rules fighters that launch attacks when they are not adjacent are not subject to PD or Flak, making the fusion torps an excellent-stand off weapon. Adjacent fighters are targeted normally.

As written, you must wipe out the entire squadron to stop the fusion torp. The revised rules stipulate the squadron must be at or above half strength. This may be something I retro-fit into the core rules.

Yeah, interceptors only. Originally thinking along the lines of BSG there. But now that we have a dedicated fleet book coming out, may go back and change that. Did want to add value to interceptors and enable them to have some anti-ship capability.

Perhaps allow any Critical roll of 'doubles' to remove a point of armor from the target? For example a role of 1,1 or 2,2 would remove an armor. This would allow you to use heavy weapons to hopefully weaken a high-armor target and bring it down to the level where some of the d6 pen weapons seem attractive. As it stands now, I can't imagine wanting to use many of those weapons when the better d10 pen weapons arent much more expensive and in some cases also come with a much better attack die.

Despite the conversation above above the relative value ot low-tech to high-tech weapons, part of me does like this idea, although it move towards a less realistic treatment of armor. I'll think about it.

[unclejoe]

Hi,

Thanks a lot for taking the time to read and respond to this! It's really nice to have direct input/feedback/channels to a game's developer/designer.

I'm not really understanding why maxing out the single most effective type of defense for your ship SHOULD be anything but a no brainer.

If armor provided much more balanced benefits relative to its cost, the result is a game where it's frequently worth it to build "glass cannons." Huge, powerful weapons mounted on paper thin, unprotected hulls. Not only is this unrealistic, its not fun. So yes, it's generally always going to be worth it to forfeit the tonnage in weapons necessary to max out the armor your ship can carry. Not in every case. . . but almost.

So this falls into the category of "working as designed."

Understood, if you're trying to 'force' the old 'wet navy' conventions, then yeah, this is makes sense. But even wet-navy designers had to carefully weigh the advantage of more armor vs speed vs weapons. I just dont think with the current cost, it's much of a weighting at all in CB...its just SO good for the cost that it might as well not even be an option (unless you want to hamstring yourself).

As I said in the design decisions thread, to me, the best design systems provide tough choices and trade-offs at every opportunity. Offense vs defense should be a key consideration IMO and it really isnt here. I cant see buying less than the max possible armor (again, unless you're trying to design 'weaker' ships) so that removes that trade-off...you just put the max and then spend the rest on weapons. Removing armor doesnt provide enough tonnage back in weapons to make up for the lack.

That said, if armor WAS tied to Orbital Manufacture capability and was possibly able to be scraped by criticals, then it becomes a bit more of a trade off. In the former case, because you're having to give up tech in other areas to have high armor and in the latter, because there is some risk that your investment might be weakened by a few early hits.

One other thing that mitigates the decision making is the dual-cost for adding weapons. Particularly on smaller ships, it's hard to just 'add a weapon'...the limit on hardpoints and the gating of hardpoints on FC means that it is pretty tough to add more, often leaving you with excess tonnage that is more easily translated into Armor/Shields/PD which dont have the hoops to jump through to balance in. I REALLY like the juggling to get the weapons in and I guess I just wish there was more juggling on the defensive side.

Perhaps more things could scale up based on armor rating? Dunno, maybe PD or Delta or whatnot could cost more for the armored thugs? It's probably too late to consider changes of that scale at this point anyways, but the change to the tech gating and the critical reduction of armor could more easily be retrofit if you felt the urge.

I tried to match the defenses to the offensive systems in designing the tech levels figuring that evolution of one, would drive evolution of the other.

Still. . . I REALLY like the idea of armor as an orbital construction tech. It makes sense, and does increase the value of that tech. I'm going to have to take a close look at that the problem is a major change like that could cause a big problem throughout the rest of the book. Take a lot of analysis to spot all the changes. Dammit. . . where were you when I was designing the game?

Yep, makes sense. I've designed a few home-brewed systems myself and they CONSTANTLY undergo change. The thought of picking a time to freeze development would be horrifying to me. So I definitely sympathize here.

But at a cursory look, the only real adjustments that would have to be made might be with the 'stock' ships provided. Nothing else seems to be gated off of where you get your armor capability from.

In virtually every case, higher tech level weapons are just going to be better than lower tech level weapons. That's the nature of technological advance.

So yes, if you're playing TL5s across the board, the lower tech level weapons aren't going to see much use. But if you've got fusion torps and don't have access to AM torps, fusion torps suddenly look a whole lot more attractive.

Wouldn't make much sense for a highly advanced race to load up on low tech weapons, unless there was a REALLY good reason for them to.

Again, granted, but the tech difference for Fusion Torps vs AP Torps is VERY small and since other things are gated on the techs, it seems like some of the 'low tech' items would be wasted in 90% of the cases since a simply 'better' option presents itself so easily.

Perhaps a higher tech could 'miniaturize' the ammo cost or something. If say, at Level 4 for Conventional, ammo tonnage was reduced by 1 for missiles and 2 for torps, I could suddenly see a use again. It wouldnt be cost effective for TOO many shots, but perhaps small fry would carry a few Fusion Torps at higher tech...in this case representing a change in capability from 'front line' service on Ships of the Line to the smaller ships as tech efficiency increases.

The same applies to the Autocannons...it would nice if they still had a role at higher tech, even if it's still not as sharp of an edge. Perhaps at higher tech level, all Autocannons get +1 Pen or something...just something to make them an possible alternative, even if something 'better' is available. Again though, if there were a possibility of armor being scraped, these weapons would look slightly better since they could make nice 'finishers'.

As with the armor issue, the more options that are available at one time, the better. Picking tech should be an important option IMO, but once picked, there should still be trade-offs within the trade-offs IMO.

Ahhh turrets. My favorite tech of them all! So design considerations were here:

1. Make it worth it to buy turrets.

2. Not make it "so" worth it to buy turrets, that everybody bought them all the time and therefore fields of fire became less relevant.

3. Drive the game in the wet-navy model. Big weapons in turrets. Smaller weapons along the broadside. Personally, if we ever do have space battleships, I'm pretty sure we'll see that approach used there as well. Turrets are heavy and complicated, so you use them where you get the most payoff and just pack on MORE of the lighter weapons instead.

We actually used several mathematical models for computing the cost of turrets including a number that incorporated weapon tonnage into them. But they didn't drive the game in the direction of the design goals. The final approach achieved our design objectives and also had the virtue of being extremely easy.

Agreed in principle, but it seems to be counter-intuitive to that. It's almost ALWAYS going to worth turret mounting your bigger weapons since the percent of increase is much smaller. Conversely, the smaller weapons lose almost all of their efficiency if turret mounted. So the maneuver is downplayed on the more important weapons since they are far more likely to be turreted and thus, in arc of fire.

So essentially by making it a 'flat tax' regardless of weapon mass, the big weapons will have it, the small ones won't. Some of the mid-sized weapons will have tradeoffs, but at the top and bottom ends of the scale, again, not as much of a decision as it could be, especially given how fantastic the maneuver system is.

Despite the conversation above above the relative value ot low-tech to high-tech weapons, part of me does like this idea, although it move towards a less realistic treatment of armor. I'll think about it.

I dont think it would make too much less realistic. I mean, as a ship takes increasing damage, it's structural integrity would start to falter as well meaning that armor is less protective than it is initially. In any case, it's pretty easy to come up with sci-fi fluff for any particular mechanic.

Ok, thanks again for taking the time to respond to this thread. I hope to get more of group involved for a game later in the week or over the weekend.