Re: GenCon

Rick wrote:
>Well, Mike's "Dark Star" scenario was based on a movie which I've never
>seen, so I didn't get some of the jokes -- for example, I was on the
>defending side, which had two large space stations that had a
super-secret
>mind-scanning defensive shield. When we turned it on, it scanned the
mind
>of the enemy, trying to find the invaders' most horrific nightmare, and
>projected that image onto one of our ships. Unfortunately, someone in
the
>invasion fleet was hungry and thinking of getting a hot dog, so Mike
>replaced one of our cruisers with a 4-inch model hot dog (mounted on a
>flying base)! The game went fairly slowly, due to the fact that there
were
>a couple of novices who didn't really get the concept of the game, and
we
>had just gotten to the point where the invaders & defenders were
clashing
>at short range when we had to pack up & clear the table for the next
game.

I was disappointed with the game speed.  In testing and at PentaCon(with
Novice players) last year the game moved fairly quickly with a decisive
victory.   I took some elements out of the game and reduced the number
of
ships on the Alien side to speed it up more.  One novice player stated
he
played SFB before and seemed like he would find FT easy.

Playing the aliens we had Rick and Mark with two novices while the Earth
forces were run by Dean, Allan, and two novices.  It seemed like
everyone on
the Earth side had seen DS before.  All the Thermo Stellar Bombs that
dropped, dropped without any side effects, with the exception of one
that
dropped outside the gravity well of the planet and just sat there
ticking
away.  None of the bombs were destroyed and none actually reached the
planet.

Early in the game, the Earth players quickly found that if they moved a
ship
within short range of one of the Phoenix asteroids, their ship's current
screen level was increased to level-3 while it was near the asteroid.

By the third turn of the game, we had some good ship combat taking
place.
Allan parked his capital ship with the Futtock Gun(Jon T's early version
of
the wave gun) right in front of the station.  The station took a
whopping
from the Futtock Gun which fired without a hitch.  Additional hits from
Earth ships sent the station into at least two thresholds in one turn.

Gravity started to influence the larger Earth ships and sent a couple
out of
control.  Allan's ship, Lewis, was now parked with its rear facing the
rear
of the station.  with the station's rear weapons disabled, neither Allan
or
the station could shoot at each other by the next turn.

The base controling players from the alien side each had a special
version
of the cloaking device.  When activated it would distort the image of
the
base's launched ships appearing to reflect something from the Earth
forces
imagination.  This would also increase the screen level of the protected
ships by one level each while lowering the screen level of the base
station.  

The aliens hoped to create a menacing vision from their attacker's fear.
Unfortunately, not all the Earth crews had the current situation of
their
mind.  Only one base activated the field which turned one of its system
defense cruisers into a hot dog as Rick mentioned.  By the time this was
done the hot dog was out of effective range while most of the Earth
ships
were in range of the station.  Again, the station got clobbered while
its
surviving cruiser/hot dog was on a collision course with one of the
Phoenix
asteroids.

Overall, I think the players had a good time.  We found that the
fighters
played almost no role in the game, except to slow it down.  I plan to
remove
the fighters from this scenario and maybe cut back on the Earth ships as
well.  I am also going to increase the chance of bomb failures(We needed
some real explosions! ;) ).  I did request to list the game as
intermediate,
but it was listed as novice.

>The neatest thing about the game was Mike's plastic wave gun template.
>Mike took a yellow plastic bag and cut out a 3-foot long template that
:
Actually, credit should be given to a friend also running FT games at
the
con, who gave it(spare parts) to me.  I have found that it is the
easiest
way to display the wave gun damage zone.

>He had it rolled up (for storage), and when the wave gun fired, he held
>the narrow end at the firing ship and rolled it out toward the target;
>it looked like a giant yellow tongue unrolling over our station!

I like the tongue description...fits the game well! :)

Mike Miserendino