[GZG] Re: Points systems

[Hugh Fisher <laranzu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Subject changed again...

"Mike Hillsgrove" <mikeah@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Being mostly an historical gamer, point systems have no value at all to me.
> Never in the history of human endeavor has a General concerned himself with
> having too many points.   So, my concern with this is entirely playability
> and reality (in terms of physics).  I also would prefer predesigned ships
> from ship books to eliminate the min-max and soap bubble garbage that
> unscrupulous players can come up with.  In my opinion, when GZG releases a
> ship miniature, the appropriate ship status sheet should be available.

Nobody with more than half a brain believes that a points
system in itself prevents unscrupulous players from coming
up with min-maxed unrealistic designs. There are too many
cultural, economic, political, logistical, etc factors
that affect real armed forces composition for any points
system to handle. You need army lists/fleet books, or
good scenario designers.

That's true for every page in Full Thrust though, not
just the point system. Good players with good referees
don't in theory need any rules at all. They can make it
up case by case as needed. Freeform roleplayers handle
very complicated games without any rules all the time.

I believe that a points system is something like money.
It doesn't prevent fraud or cheating, but for people of
good faith it is a very convenient way to put a value
on different ships that everyone can more or less agree
on. Always accurate? Of course not. But most of the time,
it's good enough and much quicker and easier to use.

If you don't like exact point values, I just bought a
copy of Babylon 5 A Call to Arms (the new Mongoose
Publishing game, not to be confused with the old B5
Wars) which has a very nice fleet selection system.

Translated into FT terms, ships are divided into frigates,
destroyers, light cruisers, heavy cruisers, battleships,
dreadnoughts, and superdreadnoughts. For any battle, the
players/scenario designer chooses a class and each
player has five points to spend. A ship of the scenario
class costs 1 point. Ships of higher classes double each
level, and ships of lower decrease in cost by 1.

So for a 5 point destroyer battle, the expected is 5
destroyers. But you could replace 1 destroyer by 2
frigates, or 2 destroyers by a light cruiser, or 4 by
a heavy cruiser. Very quick and simple, no calculators
required.

	cheers,
	Hugh
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