RE: [FT] Background vs Scenario Balance

> > Many things that balance out in a scenario don't even come close to
> > balancing out in a campaign (and the other way around also...)
> I have a slightly different but related question:
> How do you cost ships that have a design feature that is irrelevant to
the
> scenario in question ?
> Say I have a ships that, because of the background universe used,
> because of
> some scenario considerations or because 'the mini looks that way' have
> features that are irrelevant to the planned game. Examples could be
> streamlining, ortillery, or even such things as screens against
> an enemy all
> of whose weapons ignore screens or FTL vs. a planetary defense
> force without
> FTL.
> I still would like to have a reasonably balanced force, but the side
with
> the extra features will be weaker in game terms.
> Do you just add a fudge factor for the weaker side ?
> Re-calculate the ships as if they didn't have the feature ?

All of these are the way that you can go about balancing out scenario.
However, most military planners tend to avoid "equal" conflicts if at
all
possible. One side *should* have some sort of advantage, even if a slim
one,
and it would probably be the attacker. If you are using straight costing
out
of FT(MT, FB...) then the FTL vs non-FTL should probably balance out ok
if
they both have equal points to spend.

The other stuff is a bit more problematic, I would tend to just fudge it
until I got the "force-flavor" that I wanted. Either that or give the
weaker
side some other advantage (the ability to bring their force in from any
mapside, or split their forces, or place their ships after all of their
opponents) or that took their streamlining or ortillery into effect.
(Some
ground target that gives them an extra 5 victory points or something if
they
destroy it...)

David

David