Re: Re: [GZG] John's Shipbuilding

[Ground Zero Games <jon@xxxxxxx>]

> On 1/17/06, John Tailby <john_tailby@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> >  Each ship could get a leadership value just like in Dirt Side and 
> > could take leadership tests at the end of every phase they take 
> > hull damage.
>
> I'm not entirely sure of this.  My read is that the crew didn't get to
> vote with their feet like in a land fight.  What I mean is that if an
> infantry unit's morale crumbles the troops may surrender, run for the
> hills, or just hunker down and hide.  This is not an option on a
> warship except in the case of boarding actions.
>
> What was more likely was that the officers make a professional
> judgement that their ship can no longer contribute to the fight, and
> that withdrawl is practical at that time.  Either that, or upon
> reading the damage reports they send up, their senior officer orders
> them to withdraw.  As that is a matter of professional judgement on
> the part of somewhat senior officers I'm not comfortable making it a
> pure dice roll.
>
> What I would prefer would be victory conditions that value withdrawal
> of damaged units, to give the players a motive to act like historical
> admirals.
>
> John


I fully agree here, John. Ignoring the occasional case of an 
overzealous or suicidal captain being relieved of command by the rest 
of his officers,  a warship will generally stay in the fight until 
its Captain decides it's time to leave. Of course, there are a lot of 
things that will influence when that point is reached - one of the 
most important being the sort of "mission motivation" that we use in 
SGII, so that a ship engaged in a defence of its homeworld against a 
ravening alien horde will be much more likely to fight on until 
destroyed than one that is currently tasked with intelligence 
gathering or on a diplomatic mission...

This can be reflected in game terms in a number of ways, but in FT 
terms I can see two good options: one is the victory 
points/conditions discussed earlier - either a simple 50% value for 
ships withdrawn, or grading it for amount of damage taken, which in 
FT terms is most easily represented  by threshold points reached: a 
ship withdrawn after it passes the first threshold is worth only 25% 
of total VP to the enemy, at the second threshold 50%, the  third 75% 
and if totally destroyed is worth full points.
The other option is making it dice-based, but variable according to 
mission motivation - a modified version of the old "strike the 
colours" rule from More Thrust; roll for continuing in combat at each 
threshold point: at 1st threshold, fail on 1, at 2nd, fail on 1 or 2, 
at third, 1, 2 or 3. Failure means the ship must disengage from 
combat and leave the table. Modify this for mission motivation if 
desired: -1 to score needed if HIGH motivation (mission success is 
more important than ship loss), +1 if LOW (preserving ships is more 
important than the mission). Desperate last-ditch defences of home 
planets might test at -2, or simply be ruled not to need a test....
Of course, there is no reason why the two options might not be 
combined, using the die roll for forced disengagement but also using 
the VP modifiers to encourage players to withdraw voluntarily even if 
the dice say they may fight on.....

Obviously the above thoughts are based on standard 4-row hulls and 
would need tweaking for 3 or 5 rows.

Jon (GZG)

> --
> "Thousands of Sarmatians, Thousands of Franks, we've slain them again
> and again.  We're looking for thousands of Persians."
> --Vita Aureliani
>
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