Re: [GZG] FT:XD changes, part 1

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http://mail.csua.berkeley.edu:8080/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lEric,

Campaigns I often see run with an 'official designs only' perspective. I
often see them run with limited (very) or no intelligence about what the
enemy is bringing to the campaign or to the individual fight. The amount
of
variance in fleets between fights varies by campaign from complete to
very
little.

In these scenarios, paper-scissors-rock isn't uncommon. And, although
you
might not agree, it is quite defensible from a 'PSB' standpoint. It may
be
*very* hard to gain meaningful intelligence about alien fleets (human
fleets... there's enough interconnectivity between humans at varying
levels
to gaurantee some leakage). Enemies can show up with little warning via
FTL
and could conceivable arrive with anything (allowed in the campaign).

Even if you only play with official designs, if you don't know what a
foe is
bringing (often done for entirely practical reasons related to real
world
miniatures available, players available, or time to pre-plan available
or
lack of), you can get 'rock'ed.

If you want to be able to run a low-overhead (ie little intel rules,
little
logistics rules, using official designs) campaign, you'd still better be
able to deal with the fighter swarm. And there *aren't* enough ships in
the
game built do deal with it. ADFC ships are rare and still don't pack
enough
PDS to overcome the gradient Oerjan mentions. There *are* enough fighter
bearing designs.

So some people can show up with the sledge and no one can have a
defense.
Similarly, if people try to defend even partially against this with
existing
designs, BDNs and small carriers look pretty dumb as small fighter
contingents are really worthless.

I think the 'official design' games are not uncommon. I further submit
that
a lot of people want a simple, low overhead campaign framework and don't
want to handle pre-game intel, mid-game intel, particularized fleet
composition restrictions, etc.

Given I believe this to be the case, I would like to see rules that make
the
existing designs make sense in those sorts of games.

Let's face reality:

People like you, Hugh, Beth and Derek, Oerjan, etc. who might actually
play
the game in a campaign setting will likely create rules (either explicit
or
just by scenario setup) to control fleet compositions. You'll also add
house
rules that give you the feel you want.

So the default ruleset in the game is not really aimed at you. You're
going
to build your own custom game no matter what, both at the tactical and
campaign levels.

It seems to me the default game rules should be targeted at the casual
tactical or campaign player who wants to throw some official ships down,
have a fight, and not find a huge exploit hiding in the rules.

Right now, that's not the case without a bunch of post-facto
restrictions on
fleet compositions.

So, although I respect your experiences in your own group and your
interest
in having a certain feel and flavour in your games, I'm not convinced
the
game rules should flow in the direction you, as what I will call a top
10%
player, are after. You'll be able to make whatever you want happen in
your
own group's games regardless.

The same is not true of the more casual player (say the middle 70-80% of
players) who might like the official designs to work and fast/light
campaigns with minimal overhead to work as well. Today, there's some
critically glaring holes for them and they don't have your resources and
dedication to fix them.

So, I submit, your points are likely valid for you and your dedicated
adversaries. But they are not, IMO, a basis for the default rules to be
designed a particular way. Note that I don't mean this in any critical
sense, just that you can work around anything you don't like and will
change
whatever is published in some significant respects in any event,
regardless
of what that is.

Tom B