RE: [GZG] Beta Playtest Rules

[Oerjan Ariander <oerjan.ariander@xxxxxxxxx>]

Noam wrote:

> (That's about 60 battles assuming standard meeting engagement only,
> all of which need reports to be useful - other setups merit other tests)

...and here's a guide describing how to record playtests so they're as 
useful as possible to us. However, be aware that recording all this is a 
rather slow business. Having one dedicated record-keeper who doesn't 
participate in the actual game speeds things up considerably, though it 
isn't always that fun for the one selected to keep records!

At the start of the battle record...
* At least in the first report you post, a *detailed* listing of which 
rules you use - which movement system you use, whether or not you use Core 
Systems, any optional, advanced or house rules in play, what size your 
Measuring Units (mu) are, and so on. Do NOT just say "the usual rules" 
until the rest of us know exactly what "the usual rules" are - Full Thrust 
has a LOT of options, and they all influence the game balance to some extent.
* The size of your gaming table in mu, and whether you use a fixed or a 
floating table.
* Fleet lists of all ships on each side, including point totals. If you use 
any custom designs, include all stats for them.
* Starting positions, velocities and courses for all ships.

During each game turn, record...
* Who won the initiative.
* Generalise movement orders and current velocity. Eg., saying "The light 
ships turned 3 pts to starboard and accellerated to speed 26, while the 
capital ships and escort cruisers accellerated straight ahead to speed 16. 
The fighters screened the capitals." is generally more useful than listing 
the exact movement orders for each ship - the text description is much 
easier to read, and gives essentially the same information.
*  Combat results for every ship and fighter group - indicate every weapon 
fired, its target, range, arc fired out of, and damage caused. I usually 
clump all weapons of the same type on the same ship firing at the same 
target together, rather than displaying each individual weapon battery 
separately. Eg., if a ship has 4 B2s and 2 B1s and fires 2 B2s and both B1s 
at one target and the other two B2s at another target, I record them as 3 
entries: one for the first 2 B2s, one for the B1s, and one for the last two 
B2s firing at the other target.
* If a ship reaches a threshold or is hit by Needle Beams, EMP weapons or 
similar, list any systems damaged or destroyed.
* If a ship repairs systems, list them.

At the end of the battle:
* Summarize the status of the surviving ships - the amount of hull and 
armour damage taken in particular, but preferrably also all damaged systems 
and unused expendable ordnance. This serves as a double-check to see if 
there has been some damage that went unrecorded in the heat of battle.

This is quite a lot to record, but it really helps us a lot. The 
participants' perception of what happened during the game is often quite 
different to what actually did happen; a detailed report allow us to 
determine what actually did happen... some examples (all of which have 
happened many times during our playtest battles):

* All players thought that one side had won the battle hands down, when in 
fact both sides had lost almost exactly the same percentage of their 
hull/armour boxes; but while one side had lost several ships and had the 
rest untouched the other had taken some damage to all units, so one side 
*seemed* to be in far worse shape than the other;

* All players thought that one particularly overpowered weapon had decided 
the outcome, when in fact that weapon was the *least* effective one in the 
battle - but although most of its shots inflicted no damage at all, it had 
scored that one _massive_ hit that everyone remembered whereas the other 
weapons had caused a steady but unspectacular trickle of damage instead;

* All players thought that one particularly overpowered weapon had decided 
the outcome, when in fact the side using that weapon had outmanoeuvred the 
opponents so they couldn't shoot back at all! (*Any* weapon can be a 
battle-winner if the enemy can't return fire, like...)

In order to record all this data, I use a weapons-fire record sheet with 
the following columns:

Turn   Firing ship   Target   Range   Arc   Weapon   Damage inflicted   Notes

The "Notes" column is used eg. to list damage deflected by screens, extreme 
die rolls, target systems knocked out by threshold checks, Needle Beams or 
EMPs, and anything else which doesn't quite fit in the other columns. 
Fighters and missiles tend to have quite a lot of stuff in the "Notes" 
column, for example.

The "Arc" column lists which fire arc the *firer* used, not which arc on 
the target the shots struck.

While I can usually figure out the rough range fired if you give the number 
of dice rolled for each weapon, but listing the range explicitly saves me a 
fair amount of work and doesn't add much extra record-keeping for you :-/

Later,

Oerjan
oerjan.ariander@xxxxxxxxx

"Life is like a sewer.
 What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
-Hen3ry

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