RE: Its Doctrine, Scouting and Tactics not Fighters

>From a previous post of mine reagarding DBM's setup with some general
ideas on how to implement in FT:

>>>>>
The interesting parts of this set-up:

1) Each player has some say in the terrain to be used - which allows
each side to choose terrain that is favorable to it's units (i.e.
archers have a hard time hitting targets in woods, but psiloi
(skirmishers) pass easily through woods so woods and orchards are a good
defense against archers).  The assumption of DBM is that the attacker
gets to choose the season of attack, but the defender (in his homeland)
gets to choose the actual location, and is given more options in placing
terrain. If terrain such as nebula, a star's corona, asteroid fields
etc. can be placed by the "defender" you can negate or reduce the
capabilites of the attacker. 

2) Ambushes and flank attacks - if ships can use asteroids, cloaking
devices or ECM to "hide" on the board, then both sides become much more
wary.  If mines are terrain feature that a defender can choose then
attackers will be more cautious in approaching.  If there is the
possibility of a fleet of ships appearing to the side or behind you,
your battle formations are going to diffferent than if you know all the
enemy ships are in front of you. Flank attacks are rolled for each turn
- the the owning player rolls a 6, the command is on it's way and will
appear on the designated side on the next turn. This might represent
powered-down or cloaked ships that were pre-positioned or "coasting" but
under strict communication silence.

3) Commands - in DBM an army is demoralised if enough commanders are
killed.  Fleets should have Flag Ships where the Admiral or Commander is
located, and loss of said ship should cause either a morale check or
some sort of disruption as the Flag is passed to the next ship in line. 
This might require that a very powerful ship is held out of the line of
battle to keep the Admiral safe.

4) Supply - Although not covered in DBM, supply could be introduced as a
cost for ships in a fleet - a certain price or mass cost for the fleet
to maintain full supply, i.e. for every 10 mass of expendables
(missiles, fighters, mines, scatterguns) it costs 1 mass for the supply
train.	Failure to provide the required mass requires a supply roll
similar to a threshold system check, each expendable not covered would
roll to see if it were operational. So a fleet with 55 points of
expendables opts to only pay 5 mass for supply, it would have to find an
expendable system(s) (a hangar of fighters, or a 5 point SML magazine
etc.) to roll on a threshold check (a 6 means it's empty).  So a fleet
can pack up a large amount of missiles, scatter guns or fighters, but is
going to expend a portion of it's overall value to guarantee that they
are available or take the chance that they spent the mass for a hangar
or SML for nothing.

--Binhan

> -----Original Message-----
> From: laserlight@quixnet.net [mailto:laserlight@quixnet.net]
> Sent: Monday, May 06, 2002 11:01 AM
> To: gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu
> Subject: RE: Its Doctrine, Scouting and Tactics not Fighters
> 
> 
> From: Ryan M Gill rmgill@mindspring.com
> Subject: Its Doctrine, Scouting and Tactics not Fighters
> >Two fleets just don't line up at 500 Klicks 
> and advance in line. There is really lots of maneuvering and scouting 
> that goes on. There is a massive fight for information before the 
> first shot is ever fired. You need to add to the rules, not change 
> them.
> 
> Ok, so we need rules which
> a) simulate pre-battle manuevering
> b) simulate pre-battle recon
> c) affect the tabletop setup
> d) are simple
> e) are quick
> Suggestions?
> 
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