[GZG] Re: Initiative is it a game winner? And antipodian FT

Hi John,

Being a veteran of two Full Thrust games now :) I've assumed that the
winner
of initiative is the one who gets there firstist with the mostist, the
quicker on the draw, so to speak.

Unless damage is considered to occure simultaneously, then the first
crew
with the firing solution gets their shot away, and can therefore limit
the
incoming.  Do you play that the initiative winner fires all ships first,
or
only picks the first ship to fire?  I may be wrong, but I thought the
initiative winner only fired one ship first.  Otherwise, why have
initiative?

Regarding your second situation, I feel that the Dready has the
advantage
whether shooting first or second, because he is the biggest.  In a
campaign
situation, my Light Cruisers would probably remember a pressing
engagement
elsewhere and exit, stage left, flipping the bird.  Alternatively, go
for a
battle of manoeuver, flicking in any long range stuff they have and
trying
to separate the heavies (needs a moving table top to work), while
closing to
Class 2 range to nibble, working on getting the threshold rolls.

LOL, this is tactical advice from someone who hasn't fielded anything
heavier than a cruiser.  Seriously, the swarm thing could possibly work,
as
'eavy metal isn't supposed to go around without a protective screen,
possibly, from the campaign point of view, that losing a Dready is way
more
embarrassing (not to mention expensive) than losing a couple of frigates
or
cruisers.

As to other forms of initiative, I've played a fair bit of Langton's
Napoleonic Naval rules and he uses a system of grading commanders which
influences their initiative rolls (and going further back, Tony Bath's
campaign rules encouraged creating personas for generals which included
military ability so you could have a hopeless old lord duffer as general
and
basically loose all initiative rolls).	DBx systems are I GO/U GO based
on
the initial initiative of army you choose.  Armati uses a turn by turn
initiative roll (like Full Thrust), influenced, again, by the
nationality of
your army.  Do we want to grade FT star nations for initiative?

>From a campaign point of view, I liked Laserlight's suggestion
regarding
crew quality effecting initiative - could you please post the rule
section
crew quality appears in, Laserlight, I recall Fighter Flights being
rated as
aces or turkeys appearing in MT, but I don't recall crew quality off the
top
of my head.  Laserlight's explanation of CPV as an equalizer sounds good
for
1 off games, but in a campaign, this wouldn't necessarily work.

Anyway, would I be right in assuming you are involved in the Full Thrust
Campaign I have heard was being run in Wellington?  Is it at a stage
where
you could share some of the details with us?  I'm in Auckland and have
been
busily converting some of my gamer friends to FT with positive results. 
I
understand there is a FT group who play at the Auckland Wargames Club (I
saw
a Savasku/NSL game going on one day when I popped in for the
bring-and-buy)
but I haven't been able to get hold of any of them via the NZWDList (and
given the garbage on that list at the moment, I'm not surprised).  I'd
like
to hear more, either via here, or direct e-mail.

Regards

David

> Message: 7
> Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2005 13:57:10 +1300
> From: John Tailby <john_tailby@xtra.co.nz>
> Subject: [GZG] Initiative is it a game winner?
> To: <gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu>
> Message-ID:
> <20051026005710.JMIS2910.mta1-rme.xtra.co.nz@[202.27.184.228]>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> In our FT campaign we have had several battles with small numbers of
ships
per side, a mass 50 light Cruiser against a couple of mass 30
destroyers.
>
> The winner is almost always the person that won initiative in the turn
that the ships move into 12mu range, this effect is exagerated if its
the
player with the bigger ship.
>
> I have also seen points games where one side takes 6 mass 50 light
cruisers and the otherside has a mass 200 dreadnought and a mass 100
battle
cruiser. As soon as the mass 200 dreadnought gets to fire it swats
several
of the mass 50 cuisers either killing them outright or crippling them.
>
> When you have fleets of ships where the size of one combatants is
different initiative by ship gives the larger ship a significant
advantage
and favours bigger ship.
>
> Have people experimented with other types of initiative say by mass or
doing aeay with initiative and applying all damage results after all
ships
and ordnance have attacks?
>

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