Fleet Battles - Squadrons

I wasn't sure I sent this out earlier, so I apologize if this is a
repeat.

Mike

Mark wrote:
>>> owner-gzg-l@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU at internet 01/19/00 10:24AM >>>
>> However, I always fire ships separately.
>
>same here; firing as squadrons would change the game: i could lump all
my
>big ships in one squdron and fire them all at once on my first action.
to
>prevent this, we'd need rules about valid squadrons, which would be a
>pain.

>Well, you could say that any two opposing squadrons fire
?simultaneously.

That could be interesting doing it on a squadron level.  Some things to 
consider:

1. Recording damage now becomes a pain.  You need to indicate that
damage 
has been taken but will not take affect until the end of the combat
between 
the two squadrons.  It seems this would also slow game play.  This is a 
potential spot for errors - e.g. A player might forget which damaged
occured 

this turn from previous damage, and not fire a weapon system.
2. Another consideration is tactics.  This approach will likely change
the 
way you pick targets as you are limited to firing at only one enemy
squadron.

3. Lots of potential for wasted shots if all ships are required to call
out 
targets before firing.
4. What determines what ships are in a squadron (use of minis)?  Should
they 

be limited in distance between each ship in a squadron, something like
the 
way fighter screens work?  This might be simple and clean and would help

visually identify a squadron versus a bunch a ships spaced out to get 
maximum coverage versus maximum firepower concentration.

I played FT using simulatenous fire as a test a long time ago with a
friend 
and neither of us liked it much, but considering an option for playing
at a 
higher level this would warrant a good retest, especially since we
didn't 
try it with squadrons...just one big fleet against another.  That was a
real 

pain.

IDEA: A solution which might abstract the game further might be to just
roll 

a total damage from each squadron and resolve the damage by equally 
distributing it to all ships.  Use of specialized weapons like needle
beams 
would be abstracted to just a damage die and not worry about targeting 
specific systems.  Simplifying ranges will also help.  All weapons uses
12" 
range bands.

For example:

Total damage dies to be rolled determined by:

Beam Batteries: No change.
Needle Beam range: 12" (1D6)
SMPs range: 12" (2D6), range 24" (1D6)
SMLs/SMRs range: 24" (3D6)

Shields reduce total damage dies rolled by a specificed amount.  For
example:

Shield level-1: Reduce 1D6 for every 12 enemy dice.
Shield level-2: Reduce 1D6 for every 6 enemy dice.

CONS: Little ships go boom fast.  Damage die rolls could be quite large.

PROS: Very fast play at a squadron level.

I'll work on this some more.  You guys got me interested! ;-)

Mike

Michael Miserendino
Senior Software Engineer
Lincoln Re
mtmiserendino@lnc.com