FW: campaigns

This brings up a good point. Any campaign system would have to either be
what I call "operational 
level", like Rick's example below, or "strategic level", like Star Wars
or Master of Orion. The 
operational level campaign is easier I think because there is no
construction, only repair/replacement.
 The strategic campaign gets into the whole economics of empires which
is hard to do well and even 
harder to do simply.

How about "FT Front" where the player is commander of "Alpha Fleet"
stationed on the rim of "Omega
 Sector." He/she has a set fleet and a set level of repair/resupply
points. Replacements come in on a
 schedule. Wins/losses and a few die roles determine whether the
repair/resupply/replacement pool
 goes up/down and/or comes sooner/later. There would be no "exploration"
only scouting. Auxiliary ships would be like "terrain" and have to be
defended as would starbases/repair depots.

Paul 

----------
From:  Rick Rutherford [SMTP:rickr@ss1.digex.net]
Sent:  Friday, March 28, 1997 2:25 AM
To:  FTGZG-L@bolton.ac.uk
Subject:  Re: campaigns

On Fri, 28 Mar 1997, Mikko Kurki-Suonio wrote:
> ... If you don't have the time to repair an existing ship,
> you certainly don't have the time to build ships from scratch. 

You're right-it's time to step back and examine the assumptions:
In the two campaign games I've played, one lasted two months (game
time), and one lasted 6 months. We used the campaign rules in the back
of More Thrust as a starting point, and played on a hex grid where it
takes one day (game time) to go from hex to hex. We felt that there
wasn't enough time to build new ships, so we all started with 7000
points worth of ships, and we made up some simple, streamlined repair
rules to keep our damaged ships in play during the campaign.
So...given these two assumptions (no new shipbuilding, and a relatively
short duration in "game time"), an official set of rules for
refit/repair of damaged ships will help keep things balanced.

--
Rick Rutherford ------ rickr@digex.net ------ The above opinions are
mine.  "I've seen collisions on fire off the side of the ethernet LAN.
I've seen CSU/DSU lights glitter in the dark near the router. All these
things will be lost in time, like dropped packets. Time to die."