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From - Thu May 03 16:24:06 2001
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Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2001 23:44:52 -0400
To: gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu
From: John Crimmins <johncrim@voicenet.com>
Subject: [FT] Not quite an AAR
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I ran another small FT game on Friday night, and it's left me with a few
questions that I am hoping to get some input upon.

It was a small game, with three players (each running two ships) on each
side.  The Alphans had a total of 2386 points, and the Betans had 2378.

The SSDs have been posted here:
http://www.voicenet.com/~johncrim/FTGame.html

(For the game, each SSD was printed out and laminated, and each player's
ships were put on a small ring to keep them together.  Worked out well,
and
damage was recorded with grease pencils so the sheets could be reused.
I've finally found a record system that I really like.)

Despite the point totals being very well balanced, the game turned into
something of a rout.  The Betans lost one BC (S17), and their SDN had
only
a few hull boxes remaining at the end of the game -- the rest of their
ships had suffered superficial damage at worst.  The Alphans, on the
other
hand, lost every single ship.

While discussing the game afterwards, the Alphan players insisted that,
despite the equality of the point values, their ships were decidedly
inferior to those of the Betans.  They felt that speed and screens were
of
far less importance than heavy hulls and armor, and that their pulse
torps
were nowhere near as good as Class 4 and Class 4 beams.  They were all
impressed by the PBLs, though, which nearly reduced the Betan's
Superdreadnought to a gutted hulk with a single shot.

I disagreed.  I felt that their heavy loses could be attributed to a
number
of factors, especially:
    Unfamiliarity with the Vector system.  The Betan players all had a
much
easier time managing movement under this system for some reason.  A
prime
example came from the third turn of the game -- my pair of BCs ended the
movement phase directly behind the FSE SDN, racing away from it, and had
rotated to face the enemy.  The Alphan player, having underestimated my
final position, was facing *away* from my ships and could bring almost
none
of his guns to bear.

(I had intended to use the cinematic system that night, but after I
described vector movement there was enough enthusiasm that we decided to
give it a try.	Everyone loved it, and I've resolved not to
underestimate
these people again.)

     A failure to concentrate their forces.  They had four ships on one
side of the board (which caused the single Betan loss), facing two Betan
ships, and the remaining two ships were far enough away from each other
to
provide mutual support.  Each of these ships was destroyed by a
different
pair of Betan ships, which were then able to concentrate fire on the
remaining ships.

     And just plain *terrible* dice rolling.  Not so much on their hit
rolls, but the threshold rolls were terrible to behold.

...but maybe I'm just rationalizing.  It was too late to switch sides
and
play another game, but we are planning to do just this the next time
around.  But I wanted to get some opinions from more experienced players
in
the meantime.  What's more important, speed or durability?  And are
beams
really that much better than pulse torps?  Do the forces we used seem
particularly unbalanced to anyone out there?  I wanted to make the
forces
as distinctly different as I could when I designed these ships, and it's
more than possible that I just went too far and made the Alphan ships
just
too damn fragile..

I should add, by the way, that everyone had a good time and there were
really no serious complaints about the game itself.  Everyone is looking
forward to playing again, although it's likely to be a bit of a while
before we are able to do so again, since we already have games planned
for
the next few weeks.

John X Crimmins
johncrim@voicenet.com
  "...is one of the secret masters of the world: a librarian.
They control information.  Don't ever piss one off."
  --Spider Robinson, The Callahan Touch.
From - Thu May 03 16:24:06 2001
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To: GZG-L@csua.berkeley.edu
Subject: Stepped squad casualties in SG2
Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2001 23:01:53 -0500
From: Andy Cowell <andy@cowell.org>
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(This is a retransmission-- it never came back to me, so I'm assuming
it never went to the list.  Sorry if you do get this twice.)

Has anybody ever thought about running SG2 rules with a more standard
basing?  I've been looking around at similar scale rulesets, and the
standard basing really seems to be something like 3 figures to a 1
1/2" square base, each base representing squad, half-squad or
fireteam.

Any ideas how to play SG2 with such basing?  You could just play as
normal, and track casualties, but that seems to be somewhat lacking.
My first thought was some sort of "stepped casualty" system, where,
once you took a certain amount of casualties, your FP was adjusted
down a notch and a stand removed (or some such).

Any thoughts on this?
From - Thu May 03 16:24:07 2001
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<3.0.3.32.20010421234452.006a15e4@popmail.voicenet.com>
Subject: Re: [FT] Not quite an AAR
Date: Sun, 22 Apr 2001 00:10:36 -0400
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> around.  But I wanted to get some opinions from more experienced
players in
> the meantime.  What's more important, speed or durability?

In Vector, IMO, durability is better than speed.  If you're opponent
is a SMR nut, then it's nice to have to speed (plus a lot of PDS); and
if you have a reaon why you want to control the range (eg you have
B4's and he has all B2's), then high speed is useful.