Logistics

I've been thinking about grand strategy games recently, and it occurs to me that supply rules are a lot like encumbrance rules, in that they're a pain in the ass but also worthwhile because they convey the same concerns the character experiences up to the player.  A dungeoneer worries about how much weight he's carrying; a general worries about how to keep his men fed.  What's more, as Keegan's History of Warfare suggests, supply concerns dictated the largely-coastal structures of campaigns in the Hellenic era.  Without supply, you get all kinds of crazy long-term unsupported actions in the enemy rear (this is a problem I have observed in, say, the Civilization series of games).

But the difference between supply and encumbrance is that we're reached a reasonablish compromise between complexity and realism in our encumbrance rules, with encumbrance by stone or with Traveller's low-kilos threshold.  I don't know if supply is amenable to simplication...  but until I find a set of rules for it which are really light-weight, I expect that it will remain one of those much-begrudged rules which is ignored by the players whenever I forget about it.

(Been thinking about wargame campaigns again, since I'm back in Collegetown and one of my main wargaming opponents / buddies is still around)

On Tactical Hyperdrive

While reflecting on Full Thrust, CBF's Raiders, and BattleShift today, I came the realization that the reason tactical hyperdrives, warp-gates, and cloaking devies are interesting to me is that they are some of the few mechanics in starship wargaming that really serve to differentiate it from naval (or for the 3d freaks, aerial) wargames.  The other main ones I can think of / see in practice are momentum-driven movement (doesn't work so well in high-friction fluids) and something like CBF's regenerating / faceted shields (no current technological analog), but those both bear much higher mechanical overhead than warp tech.

A Return to Wargaming?

Jimdad suggested on the recent organizational resources post that it would make sense for me to do some test runs of all the tech before trying to run a full-blown campaign with it.  This is sensible, but one-shots are unsatisfying as a rule.  Unrelatedly, I've had VBAM and space wargaming on the brain recently for no apparent reason.  But they do suggest an alternative means for tech-testing, in that wargames are primarily one-off affairs (at least in our group) which work well with a small and irregular player pool.  Playing one-off wargame scenarios also leads nicely into campaigns, which might beget universe generation and lead to workable RPG settings.

I'm sort of looking back at the Starmada Summer of 2011 as a model, but hopefully with a less flexi-fragile system (or a gentleman's agreement that if something is broken, you use it to win once and then can it).  I think Full Thrust in one of its several incarnations would probably serve us well, as it is a very simple core game with lots of optional things to experiment with (I for one would be curious to try Colonial Battlefleet's initiative system on top of FT's general mechanics; I'm just not a huge fan of pre-plotted movement).  Full Thrust is also old enough and well-enough vetted that its exploitable flaws are known (documented and discussed in the expansion books) and can hopefully be avoided.  It also has a nice-looking sample campaign in the back of the FT2E manual.

Other options:

• Starmada: Nova - we never really gave this one a fair shake, and the seeker rules are pretty neat.  On the minus side, forum reports that stacking up weapon traits is still pretty broken.
• Colonial Battlefleet - sort of hampered by lack of good shipyard spreadsheet.  I have one half-thrown together, but got bored.  Good stealth and initiative rules, and the Raider type from the expansion book looks like fun.  On the minus side, fairly heavy bookkeeping for shields.
• Battleshift - Fleet engagements with some cool tactical warp mechanics.  If I recall correctly, though, it needs a pretty big playing area, and I've seen roll20 lag out under less. 
• Space Hulk.  The problem with Space Hulk is that it's unusually stressful, because there is some serious "oh god oh god we're all going to die" going on continuously  (...  holy cow, this must be what it's like to play in my ACKS games.  No wonder they keep disintegrating!  On the other hand, if you play ACKS well, it's less of a problem than if you play Space Hulk well, because the DM is slightly less actively malicious than the 'stealer player).  Also the maps are deceptively expansive.
• BattleTech Lite - light to medium mechs from the earliest time period only, and perhaps no melee.  Could be fun as long as you keep the total number of armor / structure points low.
• Domains at War: Battles - Our experiences so far suggest that DaW:B is too heavy unless there's some significant investment in the outcome (ie, a PC realm at stake). On the other hand, two games between inexperienced players is not a whole lot to go by.  I've been meaning to write some scenarios for this - the system could definitely use one highlighting the fortification rules, and everybody loves Helm's Deep.
• Hell, a sample DaW:C campaign would be fun too, and if the battles were resolved using the Campaigns rules, it might work alright for one-off afternoon games (though I sort of expect a lot of overhead from the recon rules - TODO automate recon).  I could steal something from Crusader Kings and keep the magic-and-wyvern-cavalry level historically low for ease of use.
• Anything in the 15-25mm infantry sphere - I have my doubts about how well roll20 would handle these, and Vassal suffers from limited plugins.  Options include Stargrunt, Gruntz, WH40k, and many many others.
• Dirtside or other 6mm microarmor games - Again, I don't think this one would do well on roll20.  Also chit-based damage.

So if anybody from the old Starmada crew is reading this, hit me up via the usual channels if something here's interesting.

Kushan Battlefleet

While working on my test ships for Colonial Battlefleet the other day, I found myself upon the Homeworld wiki.  There I espied the claim that Homeworld had been intended as a videogame adaptation of Battlestar Galactica.  That Colonial Battlefleet was Galactica-inspired got the gears turning, and correlations starting to be made.  I'm not familiar with BSG, but the no-shields rules in Man vs Machine ought to serve might fine for modelling Homeworld...

So some conversion notes and thoughts (not going to spring into building ships, as CBF's shipbuilder spreadsheet makes my Open Source Excel Clone Of Choice segfault, which makes me bloody nervous...  besides, I want to do things it probably wouldn't let me)

• Motherships.  Proposed new role: Fleet Carrier, providing some combination of Carrier, Flagship, and Fleet Support functions.
• Tech lets us do most of the equipment manipulation.  Since it was a mighty symmetrical game, tech levels are pretty much universal.
• Antimatter somewhere around 2, for the torpedos (as used on Assault Frigates).  Homeworld capital ships are not particularly maneuverable.
• Conventional Weaponry at least 3.  We know the Taiidan possess strategic bombardment weapons, as employed against Kharak.  Optional rule that Max P.Def is equal to Conventional Weapons is in effect.
• Fighters 4-5 all round.  The upper levels of the fighter tech tree will probably need replaced.
• Lasers 1 for screen role, but no shields.
• Orbital Construction...  peculiar.  Haven't decided how I'm handling tonnage yet.  Nominally 4, since there are some damn big ships.
• Quantum Manipulation 2 for Taiidan, 3-4 for Kushan / Hiigaran.  Ion Beams are modelled as disruptors, and are available to both sides.  Stealth ships are the Kushan 'special' counter to the Taiidan defense frigate.
• Tonnage is complicated by the fact that Homeworld's ship naming conventions are mixed.  Two ways to play this one:
• Corvettes translate to destroyers, frigates translate to cruisers, destroyers to heavy cruiers, carriers, shipyards and battle/heavy cruisers translate to battlecruisers, and motherships and dreadnaughts translate to battleships, or
• Problem - unfaithful conversion of corvettes as fuel-constrained small craft, further mangling of the fleet construction system to accomodate large number of corvette / destroyers
• Corvettes are gunships per MvM, frigates are destroyers, destroyers to light cruisers, heavy cruisers to heavy cruisers, battlecruisers and carriers to BC, and motherships and dreadnoughts to battleship.
• Problem - modelling multi-gun, salvage, repair, and minelayer corvettes as gunships
• I lack a good way to model the Taiidan defense frigate's ability to shoot bullets out of space.  Screen is great and all, but that's not what it does.  Providing something like L1 shields to a nearby ship would actually sort of work, with the caveat that shields are ignored by missiles, fighters, and disruptors.  Taiidan defense fighters should probably work the same way.
• Gravwell and stealth generators likewise problematic.  Stealth generator is just not going to happen under CBF's stealth rules.  Gravwell might be workable as something like a spatial disruption torp.
• Missile destroyers fire cluster missiles since they're good against fighters
• The sensor arrays and probes are probably doable as a cross between Screen and Scout, with the +1 to hit nearby ships and the no-cloak within a certain distance, but without cloaking and +point defense.  Call it a Sensor role.
• Lots of unarmed support ships in Homeworld.  Not sure how well that's gonna work out...  Might need to change things up a little and have say Assault Frigate hulls with different roles representing point defense, sensor, or other gear.  The other option is to make stuff special equipment that uses lots of space, and then assign role Fleet Support to unarmed ships.  That seems a bit silly, though.
• FTL travel is somewhat contentious within the Homeworld universe; HW1 permitted capital ships to perform tactical hyperdrive sort of maneuvers.  Might be something to steal from MvM's Raider rules.

In unrelated news, it turns out Sierra released the Homeworld Source back in 2003, and one can still find it online.  The internet never forgets...

Colonial Battlefleet - First Game

Played a game of CBF against Matt yesterday evening, and it went fairly well.  We rolled 2d10 for tech points, receiving 13 each (not very many), then decided to play an Unprepared Defense scenario, as was suitable for our actual unpreparedness.  Fleets were constructed, point values were misunderstood, and we ended up with two fleets of three ships each.  I sort of won, by taking out his two escorts and reducing his battleship to half hull while he had only inflicted 1/3 damage on each of my escorts and none on my battleship, so we called it because it was getting late.  Observations:

• This system loves big, fat battleships.  The fleet composition rules favor them, the caps on defensive systems and weapons per battery favor them, and the weapon availability table favor them.  An armor-10 battleship with heavy railguns and some sort of shield-stripper weapon (phasers, heavy phasers, torps) is nigh-invulnerable to the fire of light ships and can destroy them with impunity.  It fears only other battleships (and possibly things carrying lots of anti-ship missiles or heavy torps).  Matt commented at one point that this was "OGRE in space."
• I am not yet sure what the proper function of light ships is.  Filling out extra tonnage available after buying a battleship is good, but having two smaller battleships instead is probably better.  The light ship roles (scout, screen) seem like useful support functions but I'm also sort of dubious of light ships' ability to survive near battleships.  They are also good, however, for jumping in front of missiles to protect your battleship (unless destroyed by enemy fire first).  I guess "cloak in, launch ASGMs at close range, run away" might work.
• Missiles are sort of scary because they ignore shields, come in packs, are hard to shoot down, and penetrate armor well, but can also only move in a fairly restricted lattice pattern (think bishops in chess).  Humans are liable to make mistakes and move ships into missile-threatenable areas, but I suspect an optimalish computer player could avoid them most of the time.
• Max shields + Defender is pretty good.  I had a pair of cruisers constructed in this fashion, and each was capable of surviving about three turns of close-range fire from Matt's battleship.
• Maneuver is tricky; I went fast, Matt went slow, and I ended up making two passes through his line.  Movement seems much more important than in Starmada (despite wider firing arcs), and the trick I think is keeping one's own concentration of force tighter than that of one's enemy.  This permits you to focus the fire of multiple ships on a single shield facing of a single target, while causing the enemy to split his fire across multiple of your shield facings (though this can also be bad if those are the weaker rear facings).  Their inertial system, while unrealistic for space, played pretty well (except when we forgot to write down new velocities) and added a nice wrinkle.
• Initiative and the tactical vs aggressive decision is really important.  Matt had a flagship for +init, but my d10s were hot and I won init for three decisive turns in a row (wherein I did most of my damage).  And then he started winning init again and I started running away from his battleship that I could barely hurt.
• Fighters are more annoying than lethal, but can serve to knock down shields and let punchy weapons through.  I could see a carriers+railguns fleet working pretty well.  I also want to try a quantum+laser fleet with phasers for breaking shields and disruptors for hull, with ASGMs for punching through on heavily-armored targets like BBs.
• I think spacial disruption torps, grapeshot, and missiles all sort of serve the aim of breaking up enemy concentrations so you can achieve superior densities of fire.

In any case - an interesting and fun game.

RennFest, Colonial Battlefleet, and Setting Work

Just what it says on the tin:

Had a good time at the Maryland Renaissance Fair(e) this weekend.  Rediscovered mead; much like honeyed whiskey, but with strong overtones of water.  The jousting at German renn faires was better, but this one had elephants and pythons and a cursing well which I am stealing for my upcoming campaign, so hey.

Also picked up a copy of Colonial Battlefleet from the wargame vault today.  Interesting system.  Their initiative mechanic and the roles mechanism are both interesting changes from Starmada, and the fact that they provide a Big List of Weapons should prevent some of the guncheese we had in Starmada: Admiralty. I don't like how they laid out said table (by weapon tonnage, rather than alphabetically by weapon name or weapon 'family'), but that is at least a useful ordering during ship contruction.  Their shields are also very different from S:AE shields (would be interested in seeing some non-forward-focused shields, but I'm happy enough as-is without the extra complexity).  I like the way they handled tech levels, mostly, except for Laser Weaponry, which I think they screwed up with regards to Screen role availability.  One thing that does torque me off a little is some of the really implausible faux science used to justify mechanics that are in place for game balance reasons - things like "When you teleport something, all inorganic chemical reactions in it cease.  As a result, you can only teleport marines, not bombs."  That grinds my gears a bit; you could've just said "You can't teleport bombs because the yield isn't sufficient for a man-sized bomb to damage a starship" (since scale is intentionally vague), or built a bomb-teleporter weapon, or left the players to not think of it like we didn't in six months of Starmada games with teleporter-marines, but no.  Instead you had to make something ridiculous up and call attention to it, which might produce a counter like "OK, that's cool, we're the Tyranids and we're going to build living bomb-marines with organic detonators.  Wheee-BOOM."  That said, upon running a test game against myself with some converted Homeworld ships, it was quick, bloody, reasonable simple, and overall satisfactory.  So if any of the old Starmada Crew is reading this, I'm down for some games over internet (it's hex-based, so should work fine with VTTs).  Fair warning, though - I have been growing out my beard since the weather cooled off... (for those unfamiliar, we observed that gamers with beards were significantly more likely to win at Starmada than were clean-shaven gamers.  The prevailing hypothesis is that this was due to the increase in planning efficiency acquired by stroking one's beard)

Oh yeah.  The editing is not fantastic, and some areas are lacking examples, but the intent of the rules is generally clear, so it's just sort of annoying rather than obstructionary.

Finally, ACKS setting.  Contemplated Wilderlands of High Fantasy, Northern Reaches (Western Marches into mythic Scandinavia), and Midnight in the Late 3rd Age.  Am currently settled on "The Scaled Continent".  The pitch:

In elder days, the children of squamous gods ruled the world, and man, elf, and dwarf suffered beneath their forked and envenomed lash.  But now their empire has fallen to ruin under rebellion and internal strife, and the men of Aura seek the reclaim the treasures that were once stolen from them and taken across the Sea of Tears, to line the jungled halls of the serpent-kings.  From the Isle of Voltager, their settlers and adventurers struggle against the environment, the natives, and sometimes each other for the riches of... the Scaled Continent.

Thematic elements:

• Settings: 
• heavily-trapped temples to bloodthirsty gods
• overgrown and ruined cities of the Old Masters
• human frontier settlements (incl. abandoned and overtaken)
• the Serpent's Tongue (major river)
• sailing ships anchored off the coast
• volcanoes
• Opposition: 
• Lizardmen, frogmen, toadmen, turtlemen, crocodilemen, &c
• With accompanying witch-doctors and guardbeasts
• Prehistoric and/or gigantic beasts 
• yes dinosaurs 
• also giant cockroaches 
• and dire armadillos carrying dire leprosy
• Monsters from South American and/or African myth and ecology
• (some research required, void where inaccurate)
• Dragons 
• Pirates
• Dragon-pirates
• not, however, from Ninja Island
• Screaming river-eels
• Wereleopards (forvalaka)
• Anything with scales that didn't fall into the above categories
• Ambulatory plant life
• Dysentery and worse jungle diseases
• Monsoon season
• Resources:
• Local guides
• Mules
• Dugout canoes
• Treasure maps of dubious veracity
• Steel and alcohol (as trade goods with the natives)
• Gullible henchmen (but when aren't those a resource?)
• Treasure:
• Golden idols
• Crystal skulls
• Rubies the size of a man's fist
• Holy grails?
• Spellbooks containing forgotten and forbidden spells of the reptile mages, written on halfling-skin vellum (demium?)
• Exotic spices and hardwoods
• Rescued slaves
• Cities of gold
• Fountains of youth
• Possible untimely death
• Modules:
• Caverns of Thracia
• DCC#16: Curse of the Emerald Cobra
• A source of fond memories from my youth
• Isle of Dread 
• Temple of the Frog (inasmuch as it is a ruined temple "in the city of the enemy")
• Thematic fiction:
• "Lost World" stories
• Heart of Darkness
• Pulp portrayals of the tropics (eg, King Kong)

 So!  Time to map!  Oh wait, I can just write "JUNGLE" in great big capital letters on a hexmap and be mostly good to go.  Just have to draw a coastline, some islands, a river, and a distant mountain range...