RE: Capital Ships in Campeign Games

Phillip E. Pournelle on 27 Mar 97 wrote:

>    IMHO the reason that these issues regarding the use of
over-optimized 
> warships arrize is that the players have no reason to build all of the
other 
> ships.

    Exactly.  Full Thrust as it stands now is a great set of rules for
space-
ship battles, but has very little context in which those battles occur. 
This
gives rise to people building optimized fleets that would not make sense
in a
larger context.  On the other this allows Full Thurst to be used in a
wide
range of settings from Bablyon 5 to Sino-Russian War battle set in
space.
IMO this is an important factor in making Full Thrust popular, since
players
can use whatever background they wish.

>   So my suggestion to Jon and others is not to impose certain artifial

> limitations of vessels size etc on players but to create campeign
rules that 
> force the player to decide what he wants to do and outfit from there. 
Half the 
> fun of this game is seeing different philosophies of ship designing
clash on the
>  table top.

     Well put Phil.  I also love seeing what happens when different
design
styles clash.  I'd like to see a set of campaign rules presented as an
example of what can be done.  The campaign rules give the context in
which
the battles take place, and can lead to a larger varity of ship types
within
a fleet.  Idealy these rules could be used as given, or modified to fit
what-
ever background a group of players want to use.  That would leave the
existing
Full Thrust rules for those who don't want the extra complexity of a
campaign,
or just play one off games.  Personally I like both types of games.

Enjoy,
Tom Granvold				       
<thomas.granvold@eng.sun.com>