RE: [FT] Background vs Scenario Balance

> The "equal fight" mentality stems largely, I think, from GW
> games, whose players
> are almost maniacally obsessed with it and whine about the lack
> of equality
> constantly.  I've played plenty of scenarios and the "line 'em up
> and shoot it
> out" variety of battles, but the fact is that whether or not you use
equal
> points, one side or the other will have the advantage due to
> factors that can't
> be taken into account by points costs of ships.  In most
> scenarios, I'd agree
> that the attacker ought to have an advantage, but then again,
> some of the best
> scenarios I've played in have been of the "ambush" type where an
attacker
> thought a defender was weaker than they really were.

I would agree completely. Most of the "fun" scenarios that I have played
tend to have really weird victory conditions also. Set up a FT battle
like a
SG scenario! Most often FT comes across as a bad dungeon crawl i.e.
whomever
can kill the most goblins/ships wins...

Great pick-up game, boring scenario.

> Personally, I wouldn't worry about fudging it.  After all,
> military commanders
> seldom have enough of what they want when fighting a battle,
> particularly if
> they're on the defensive.  To me, the idea of a bunch of ragtag
> leftovers trying
> to stop an enemy raid is a fun type of scenario to play (Or maybe
> destroyers and
> light carriers vs. battleships ala the Battle of Samar in WWII?
> THAT was a case
> in which the defender was *horribly* outclassed, and suffered for
> it, but still
> managed to drive the attacker away.  In fact, I may get around to
> writing a
> scenario for that one some day).  If, however, you're playing
> attacker/defender
> with the defender being weaker, one way to "balance" things out
> is to force the
> attacker to behave along certain prescribed lines (i.e. "Admiral, you
must
> destroy the orbital cargo facility and have only X number of
> turns to do so
> before the enemy reinforcements show up from the outer system",
> thus forcing the
> attacking commander to devote more of his weapons fire to
> destroying the orbital
> facilities rather than just munching the defenders and then
> hanging around for a
> few days bombarding it into rubble.  The point is, that it's not
always
> necessary to balance the scenario on the basis of forces on the
> table; it's also
> possible to balance it in terms of objectives as well.

Once again I would have to say that I agree with everything above.
Scenario
building is (probably <g>) more about deciding objectives than about
"balancing" forces. Basically the defender is going to have whatever
doctrine would say that they would have to hold their objectives, the
attacker is going to have whatever *their* doctrine says they are
supposed
to have to take their objectives. Nobody ever said that their objectives
were going to be the same...

The other "type" of scenario design is "seeing what would happen if..."
and
these are rarely balanced. The examples I'll give come from SFB (excuse
me
if I get the specifics wrong, I don't even own the rules anymore)

The whole Kobayashi Maru scenario for one.

"Lone Grey Wolf": One single DN without escorts escaping back to
friendly
space (actually a micro-campaign) after a failed treaty negotiation.

There was a similar scenario set at the end of the Kzin War of Return
with
the Khan (??) and the Usurper both battling it out one-on-one each with
a
single DN. A situation that would "never occur" in "reality".

Those are the three that come to mind, but I sure that there are
others...
The Kzin one was interesting because they came out and out said in the
scenario write up that players had been begging them for years to come
up
with an official scenario like this, but that they never had before
because
they couldn't figure out why the heck it would happen.