RE: Single Ship Campaign.

Hopefully From: owner-gzg-l@lists.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU
On Behalf Of:	Dave Pullen
Sent:		09 March 2002 14:39
Subject:	Single Ship Campaign.

> I am thinking of running a campaign game at my local club
> where each player has only one ship.

That could be tricky. As plots go, FT is pretty simple.
Ships meet, ships shoot at each other, one ship goes bang!
Or did you have something else in mind?

Simple suggestions: Make FTL a core system. Allow micro-jumps so
ships can escape into the outer system, and rendezvous with boats
that have survived the battle. Defer ordinary damage control rolls
until after the battle. Allow generous resupply and replacement.

Problems: What will you do with players who are eliminated despite
your efforts to keep them in the campaign? (Perhaps you can
allocate them "non-player cruisers" if it will support the notion.)
If you rig the rules as suggested to increase player survivability,
what are they fighting over? How can a single ship (or a single
force) hold multiple objectives?

> I want to be able to keep track of what is damaged and where, 
> rather than the Full Thrust level of abstraction. Conversely
> something like Brilliant Lances (GDW) dumps way too much
> paperwork on the players (though has wonderfully detailed ships).
> We do more than enough B5 Wars (AoG) as it is, this means I am
> open to suggestions as to detailed systems?

I'm afraid you want the best of both worlds. Many people play FT2
precisely because there isn't a lot of paperwork. You can't add
lots of extra detail without raising the clerical workload. I've
never played B5wars, but from what I saw it's SLOW. StarFleet
Battles is slow unless you use PF boats. Silent Death has an inane
initiative / movement system, and for what you get it is slow.
Unless your players are good, Renegade Legions is slow.

Shooting Stars (Yaquinto) has an option for localised damage.
Guess what? It slows the game down (and it's designed for boats
rather than ships). The Star Trek Simulator (FASA) aka ST III
does detailed damage, but not to the level you require.

Stepping outside the SF genre, I've played numerous naval-type
wargames and I don't think any of them went into Lensman-style
"the meltdown in generator room four not only cut our tractor
beam, it also dripped down into torpedo room six and caused the
launcher to jam" detail. Battlewagon could handle counterflooding
and variable armour scattered over the ship, but that was about
its limit. For all practical intents and purposes, if it's
possible to generalise a row of cannon or a bank of oars then any
sensible designer will do this for the sake of speed.

Enough negativity: if you have enough time and enthusiasm, try an
idea I first experimented with for Shooting Stars twenty years ago.
Reproduce your ship record sheet on graph paper, redrawing the
grid so it is large enough to have one system per grid box. Some
multiple-mass systems may need to extend over several grid boxes.
If you are using FT2, superimpose the four arcs over the grid.
If you are using FB1, superimpose the six arcs over the grid with
a space in the middle for the core systems. A weapon can only fire
out of the arc it is placed in, unless you permit weapons on the
vertex between two arcs (where they will have twice the chance of
being hit). Count up how many grid boxes fall within your ship
outline, and compare them with the total number of damage boxes.
Pick a FLAT dice range for each arc that corresponds to the number
of rows or columns passing through your ship outline. Say for
example there are slightly fewer than three grid boxes per damage
box on your test ship. When damage strikes, adjudicate the arc it
arrived through and roll a column or row as appropriate. For your
example, cross off three grid boxes per point of damage from the
row or column. For "area-effect" weapons such as missiles and
plasma bursts, you might ignore the dice and cross out grid boxes
parallel to the surface of the ship. In both cases, successive
hits on the same locations cross out further grid boxes. Ordinary,
or "Penetrating" damage can cross into other arcs; area-effect
damage will just progress quicker as the arc narrows.

I don't know how big an FT2 drive should be, but I would suggest
that it take up most of the rear arc. Divide it into columns with
one column per thrust point it is capable of. Set a general rule
that at least half the grid boxes of a multi-box system must be
crossed out before it fails. In terms of speed, you lose time
rolling damage locations but gain time avoiding threshold checks.

Given that most weapons are surface-mounted, this will give
quick weapons loss but hopefully slow drive damage. The ratio of
grid to damage boxes is pretty important as it determines how
"narrow" the weapon effects are. The "white space" ratio (of
empty to occupied grid boxes) also needs to be fairly consistent,
or bloated designs will be unreasonably damage-resistant.
Fortunately, you have very few ships to draw up, and I assume
you will have a single umpire doing the work.

I haven't tried this myself since I'm content with the two FASA
systems above. If you wanted to try it, the first step would be
to draw up a single design and have two copies fight each other.

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