Prev: Re: Capital Ships in Campeign Games Next: Re: Bigger not always better--Take 2

RE: Capital Ships in Campeign Games

From: Joachim Heck - SunSoft <jheck@E...>
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 1997 09:12:01 -0500
Subject: RE: Capital Ships in Campeign Games

Eugene M. George writes:

@:) Definately, a 'real life' campaign would be tough to win without
@:) tenders, tugs, merchant shipping, and revenue boats... Often these
@:) aren't the optimum force mix for rules lawyers or power gamers.

  I feel something of a responsibility to speak up for rules lawyers
here.

@:) I really prefer the full spectrum of ship designs, a low-down
@:) gritty combat between small, relatively inefficently (from a
@:) points-optimization standpoint) designed ships is my
@:) speed. Especially if it has a believable scenario backing it up,
@:) and/or a place in a grand campaign.  Why do all ships necessarily
@:) have to be optimum?

  They certainly don't and you're not the only one who would prefer if
they weren't.  I think most of us optimizers play in groups of people
who design their ships from the keel up and we end up being forced to
optimize because the only way you can make comparably-equipped ships
is to max them all out.  People who design ships based on what a
miniature looks like don't suffer this problem but I think they
probably do suffer the problem of gross imbalance between fleets.  You
might look at a thingie and decide it's an A battery, while I decide
the same thingie is a Wave Gun port.

  My group has had limited success with various systems for keeping
optimizations in check - mostly these center on allowing only certain
percentages of certain weapons on a ship and/or only allowing certain
percentages of ship classes in the fleet as a whole.  The idea of
command ratings in a campaign has been mentioned - this is when each
fleet is led by a flagship and the bigger the flagship, the more ships
allowed in the fleet.  So if you want a lot of small ships, you have
to bring some big ones along as well.  I guess if you want a lot of
big ships, you have to pay for them.

  In one campaign we distributed ship design bonuses and problems to
the players randomly.  Some players had +10% or -10% space in their
ships, or +-10% damage points.	Some players had rear-arc fire, some
had shortened range on all weapons and so on.  We weren't at all sure
all the factors balanced out but it certainly made the game more
interesting - especially since no one knew what the other guy had.
Optimization still occurred but now each player was optimizing towards
a different, possibly incompatible goal.

  As far as getting merchants into it and in general coming up with a
good way to automatically (by strategic movement or some such) produce
a wide variety of tactical situations, we've had little luck.  The
campaign side of things seems to rapidly overcomplexify and no one
wants to do the paperwork.  Anyone got any ideas on how to streamline
things on this end?  We certainly want to keep damage from one
scenario to the next, and we want ship construction and economic
factors and all that, but we want it to be easy.

  Oh, you could try computers for this.

-joachim

Prev: Re: Capital Ships in Campeign Games Next: Re: Bigger not always better--Take 2