RE: Campaign Game

Good idea to incorporate into a campaign.

The ideal situation would be to have 2 concurrent levels of campaign
running. One on the Stellar (FT) scale and one on the DS2 scale
(planetary
conquest). I am not slighting SG2 or FMA Skirmish, but they are more
tactical than strategic in scale.
  The Stellar campaign would provide the grand strategic campaign.
Create
Space Superiority. Provide for trans-system forces and resources
movement.
When a system is taken, troops must be landed. As troops are landing,
switch
to DS2. Use DS2 to land the troops and take/defend territory and
resources.
Switch to SG2 or FMA Skirmish for city fighting, special forces
operations,
to take a specific objective using infantry. 
  The three biggest problems to this are:
    1. Syncing the time. If you give a FT & DS2 (p. 4) a turn of 15
minutes
that syncs them (easy!). SG2 suggests a turn is about 5 minutes (p. 5).
Not
having played FMA Skirmish, I do not know the time scale (I'll guess at
1
minute). Now you only have the Strategic Time scale to consider. So pick
a
time frame at random (call it one week.)  Now you have:
			       Str FT/DS  SG	Sk
	   Strategic		 1   672  2016 10,080
	   FT/DS2	     .0015   1	   3	15
	   SG2		     .0005   .3    1	 5
	   Skirmish	     .0001  .07   .2	 1
	   * Please forgive rounding errors.
Resources would be generated on a Strategic turn basis. Production would
occur on a FT/DS2 scale.
The game would have to be run on the FT/DS2 scale. Interruptions for
important SG2/FMASk battles would be at EITHER player's option.
Switching to
Strategic scale only when there is no conflict (and players agree).
     2. Production Units/Universal cost. How to convert production into
FT/DS2/SG/FMASk units. This is beyond me (number crunchers have at it).
But
a player should be able to decide to concentrate the war budget on
starships
or ground forces. A player should also have to provide for the
populations
under their control (do I put extra money into the population to avoid
riots
or skimp to build the military) with set consequences (maybe a table
with
population response and random events based on the response).
     3. Getting enough players to play. This is the biggest problem.
DS2/SG2
battles would consist the majority of play as taking and holding ground
side
objective would be more time consuming than obtaining Space Superiority
(see
Los' fine Rot Hafen saga).
  It is sad that there are not enough players to carry this out (at
least in
my area).

-----
Brian Bell
bkb@beol.net  
http://members.xoom.com/rlyehable/gzg/	  
-----

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Laserlight [SMTP:laserlight@quixnet.net]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2000 3:08 AM
> To:	GZG List
> Subject:	Campaign Game
> 
> This is a Half-Baked Idea which I'm writing up largely so I
> don't forget it, but if anyone wants to run with it, go ahead--I
> have flu+narcotics right now so my ability to crunch numbers is
> even more limited than usual.
> 
> In most campaign systems I've seen, your fleet goes in and
> crushes his fleet; then the planet either immediately
> surrenders, or it surrenders after you make one successful
> marine assault.  However, most nations don't have the strategic
> depth to be able to afford losing anything--the loss of one of
> your three star systems would be catastrophic.  Further, Canon
> history doesn't seem to be written that way, as there are ground
> campaigns that drag on for months.
> 
[snip]

> --Chris  DeBoe
> Quixtar IBO#706882
> http://www.quixtar.com