Aurora 4x
Starfire => Starfire Rules => Topic started by: DizzyFoxkit on March 19, 2012, 11:15:14 AM
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Does anyone know where I can get a copy of Starfire Rules? 3rd and 4th edition would be nice, but I'll settle for one or the other. I only ask because an hour + of google searching turned up nothing.
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3rdR is out of print, and unfortunately to play with the 3rdR rules requires you get multiple physical products none of which are in print.
But you need:
-- 3rdE starfire boxed set (this has the Imperial Starfire rulebook) for the empire building basic rules.
-- 3rdR Starfire book for the revised tactical rules and the tech items for TL 1 to 9 or 10.
-- the PDF file "Sky Marshal 2" this is an update to Imperial Starfire adding in a new economic model and updating the NPRs. You can buy this directly from Marvin Lamb. Unfortunately it isn't that useful without Imperial Starfire due to fact it assumes you have Imperial Starfire and thus only changes the relevent rule without talking about the others.
-- the PDF file "Unified Tech Manual" is not necessary but it is worth it. I have heard that you can buy this also from Marvin Lamb.
The first two you need to find in a gaming store in their back dusty corner. There are also other things that if you can get that are good: Alkeda Dawn, The Stars at War and Crusade. The PDF files "ISW4" and "Insurrection" I would think you can get from Marvin Lamb. ISW4 is unfortunately unplayable...it has fleets that are so huge unless you have dedicated gaming table and several weekends your chance of even playing the beginning battles of the war are slim. It is a fun read and adds a lot of understanding to the books as it covers the details of the battles a lot more than the books do.
Galactic Starfire (4thE Starfire) and the later products I would assume you can buy from Marvin Lamb and should be on the Starfire Design Studio webpage. I'm not sure what version they may be at currently it might be 6thE or something.
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Thanks for the information Paul,
Would it be possible for me to get the name of the 3rd edition?
Also, what is the general opinion on this board about the newer editions? (5th and 6th?)
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I think the 3rdE box set is just called starfire. I'll look tonight and double check. Added in Edit: I checked my box version is "Imperial Starfire" as others have said. If memory serves I bought it and the 3rdR book together.
My personal opinion of 4th Edition is rather mixed, there are good things in it and stuff that I don't like so much. I like the changes to ship costs, and the research changes. The weapons though I find too bland, they are too balanced (if that makes any sense). It is like generic beam weapon 1, 2 and 3 rather than laser, force and energy beams.
The biggest problem with any version of starfire outside of 3rdR is that you don't have Starfire Assistant and that means a lot of book keeping you have to do either on paper or with a home built spreadsheet. The spreadsheet solution runs into trouble when you have explored 20 systems since at that point you have 200+ lines in the system listing (it is about 10 lines per system on average) that you have to scroll up and down. Trying to track 350 ships would also be a major pain. It doesn't mean you can't do it...but it is a lot of work which makes you appreciate starfire assistant more, believe me.
I would suggest giving the newer version a go just because it is easier to get it and it is one unified package, but I stopped my solo 4thE campaign when I hit the first NPR and realized I had to double my existing spreadsheets. I honestly wonder if just using pen and paper would not in the end be easier...but then you have to recalculate the income every turn as growth is per turn. I could never interest anyone in a 4thE campaign not because of the rules, changes or whatever but due to the lack of computer support. I played in a number of PBEM starfire campaigns with spreadsheets: it does work but the SM has a lot more work to do, and so to does the player.
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There is a brand new system that just came out. Based on what I have been reading on their board, it may have a few kinks to still work out, but it may start from Earth, so it is smaller/slower to begin with.
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My copy of the 3rd edition box definately 100% did not have Imperial Starfire in it, I'm pretty sure it was in a second box originally
Matt
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It was two boxes. Imperial Starfire had diagrams extra etc. Starfire had maps. Both came with countersheets.
§rd Revised was a nice booklet. SM2 was a PDF, print yourself and changed a lot economically, diplomatically (more complex and interresting NPR's), and CFN wise.
UTM was the first result of the redesign group for 3rd. The unified rules manual never made it, and all other 3rd products where taken off the market at the same time.
I leave it to others to unravel what went on... But it was a loss to the Starfire community that 3rd was stopped and the rifting. But too many partisans involved, and other issues, so enough of it, I don't want to open a can of worms.
4rth and later editions I would play if there was a decent spreadsheet allreaddy around. I don't care about 'build your own' and the whole tech tree affair lacks a diagram showing how what is where connected, so too much of a hssle for me personally. Thus I play still 3rd edition. It's closest to the various novels, and to the pile of products I have, and it has a good computer support program wich makes bookkeeping for larger universes possible.
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Ok, my local gaming store doesn't seem to have a copy of 3rd Edition. So I'm stuck with one of the latter editions for now. Do you think Steve would mind if a friend and I created our own "Starfire Assistant" to help with the book keeping load that sounds like it will be a nightmare?
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Ok, my local gaming store doesn't seem to have a copy of 3rd Edition. So I'm stuck with one of the latter editions for now. Do you think Steve would mind if a friend and I created our own "Starfire Assistant" to help with the book keeping load that sounds like it will be a nightmare?
It's not Steve that would mind, but Marvin Lamb. This is a question better asked on the official Starfire site I think.
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It was two boxes. Imperial Starfire had diagrams extra etc. Starfire had maps. Both came with countersheets.
§rd Revised was a nice booklet. SM2 was a PDF, print yourself and changed a lot economically, diplomatically (more complex and interresting NPR's), and CFN wise.
UTM was the first result of the redesign group for 3rd. The unified rules manual never made it, and all other 3rd products where taken off the market at the same time.
Here are the articles on 3rd edition from Board Game Geek:
Tactical Rulebook (aka 3R) - http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/20432/starfire-3rd-edition
If you have a look at the image , you will see that the image is actually from the 1998 Revised edition.
Strategic Rules (known as Imperial Starfire (aka ISF)) - http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/2893/imperial-starfire
I've just had a look at Amazon (both the US and UK versions), and ISF is going from $190 - which is pretty expensive.....
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I've just had a look at Amazon (both the US and UK versions), and ISF is going from $190 - which is pretty expensive.....
Maybe it's time to ebay my copy.
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Maybe it's time to ebay my copy.
Maybe it's time for Marvin to re-print some...... ;)
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Ok, my local gaming store doesn't seem to have a copy of 3rd Edition. So I'm stuck with one of the latter editions for now. Do you think Steve would mind if a friend and I created our own "Starfire Assistant" to help with the book keeping load that sounds like it will be a nightmare?
I have no problem with it at all. The issue may be getting permission from the owners of Starfire. Aurora came into being because I was threatened with legal action if I continued to expand Starfire Assistant. While that was very annoying at the time, it proved to be an extremely good thing in the long run :)
Steve
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Here are the articles on 3rd edition from Board Game Geek:
Tactical Rulebook (aka 3R) - http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/20432/starfire-3rd-edition
If you have a look at the image , you will see that the image is actually from the 1998 Revised edition.
Strategic Rules (known as Imperial Starfire (aka ISF)) - http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/2893/imperial-starfire
I've just had a look at Amazon (both the US and UK versions), and ISF is going from $190 - which is pretty expensive.....
I have Starfire 3rd edition, Starfire 3rd edition revised, Imperial Starfire, Stars at War, Sky Marshal #2, Crusade, First Contact, Alkelda Dawn, ISW4, Insurrection, UTM and (dare I mention) the Third Edition Unified Rules :). Also some Nexus magazines that have Starfire content. I don't think I could bring myself to sell any of the printed manuals though.
Steve
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Ditto. :(
sorry
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I just got Imperial Starfire from Noble Knight Games and Alkelda Dawn, Crusade, Sky Marshal 1 and First Contact from Troll and Toad. Still waiting for Starfire 3rd (which should be here any day now)
Not cheap, I have to admit (80 bucks for Imperial and 3rd each) but I have spend more money on less worthy things.
Unfortunately, according to their web pages, those were the last ones they had, but it shows that if you keep looking, you might come up lucky.
PS: I am going through Imperial right now.
Holy cow! Will take some while to get my head around all those rules :)
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PS: I am going through Imperial right now.
Holy cow! Will take some while to get my head around all those rules :)
Could be worse - it could be GSF/Ultra! :P
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I just got Imperial Starfire from Noble Knight Games and Alkelda Dawn, Crusade, Sky Marshal 1 and First Contact from Troll and Toad. Still waiting for Starfire 3rd (which should be here any day now)
Not cheap, I have to admit (80 bucks for Imperial and 3rd each) but I have spend more money on less worthy things.
Unfortunately, according to their web pages, those were the last ones they had, but it shows that if you keep looking, you might come up lucky.
PS: I am going through Imperial right now.
Holy cow! Will take some while to get my head around all those rules :)
Interesting that you are paying so much for older versions of the rules when the latest versions are so much cheaper :). That was my favourite version though by some distance. I still occasionally read through the background material, particularly for Stars at War, Crusade and ISW4.
Steve
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Weber wrote very entertaining rules, and the back ground material if you divorce it from the game mechanics is very good. For the most part the interludes in the Stars at War bear no relationship to what would happen if you play the scenario. I found this to particularily jarring with the start of ISW3, where even role playing I could not achieve anything similar to what the interlude suggested happened. Based on my experience the interludes are written to generate overall an interesting story as you read through the book.
I got my start with Avalon Hill Board games, I don't find the rules in starfire either complex or well written, although again they are entertaining to read something that Squad leader is not. I do find them confusing and unclear because of statements like "a presser beam is for all intents and purposes a reverse polarity tractor beam." Worse by the end of the muddle over IS+3rdR+SM2+other publications finding a rule is a pain dans la derriere.
Still it works, and that is the key point. It works better when you have SFA to do a lot of the fiddle faddle for you. Also the newer rules have the advantage that they tend to be more organized, and well I find aspects of them too "balanced" or "bland" that is really a matter of personal taste and there are a number of things I like in Galactic Starfire, I just could never get the locals interested in a campaign because there was no GSFA program.
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I got my start with Avalon Hill Board games, I don't find the rules in starfire either complex or well written,
My first wargame was Star Fleet Battles. The second was Fed & Empire... Starfire was very simple after those ;)
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My first wargame was Star Fleet Battles. The second was Fed & Empire... Starfire was very simple after those ;)
Fed and Emp was complex compared to Starfire? SFB I can understand.
Michael
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Fed and Emp was complex compared to Starfire? SFB I can understand.
Michael
I'm playing my first F&E campaign in over 5 years and with all of the available expansions, I wouldn't call F&E complex but it does require a significant amount of brain power compared to a lot of other games. SFB is still the most complex game I've played without the safety net of computer assistance :)
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SFB pales besides Renegade Legion: Interceptor. The only time I played it was on a computer and after that when I first saw the rules I just shuddered. Determining an internal hit was a complex path depending on which armour block was penetrated.
SFB I recall playing a huge amount of as teenager, it only was complex due to the fact it grew and morphed and so much like in SF you had this whole hunt for rule x in book y...oh it isn't book y it is book w. After Squad Leader, and its 3 expansions I think my brain was affected for life. What was interesting was if you went back and played an earlier scenario in Squad Leader with a lot of the later rules it really tended to change dramatically. But my view is that Steel Panthers is pretty much squad leader on a computer.
I was a huge fan of the SFB system but where I hated it was when you attempted to do squadron battles. Those...didn't work so well. I was a big fan of the Kzinti and the Hydrans I have to admit. Still for star trek battles what I perfered was the rules from the role playing game. The starfleet command computer games were also a good conversion of the SFB battle system as was in many ways what they did in STO.
I'm still trying to find someone to play Assault Vector Tactical and Squadron Strike with. Nice rules but fully 3D newtonian movement makes it a bit tougher than move 5 spaces on a hex grid with a turn mode of 2.
The worst combat system rules I have ever encountered though has to be what is written for D&D. I'm all but certain it is intentionally written to be convoluted and imposible to understand because D&D combat is trival and is nothing more than slightly modified minature rules yet it takes them 80 pages to describe in full glory a system based on rolling a d20 and then rolling a yd(x).
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The only thing I recall being complex about RL:I was the damage. The rest seems to be to my memory, fairly easy. But then I was also a good 8 or 9 years older when I got it.
I never played ASL or the like. The closest would be either Richthofen's War or Blue Max, but those were fairly simple also.
The sheer volume of rules in SFB is what made them so complex I think. And the fact that later books superseded various things. I know I cut the binding off my books and put them in a 3 ring binder.
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I was thinking about the damage allocation specifically in RL:I. The movement and such was straight forward.
What made SFB complex was the sheer number of tiny details they had. Each new system had to have all sorts of bells and whistles and six different operating modes and 4 excpeptions to 3 different other weapons and so forth. Add in then that every race had their specific special abilities. And well exciting optional interactions such as boarding parties with a further set of rules.
How many different shuttles could you make by the end it must have been almost 10? Then ECM and ECCM rules...sensor rules...nebula rules...special rules covering things like speed changes...and exceptions to the speed change rules under circumstance 12. The task was to hold enough of it in your head so you could filter out the shlock stuff and "min-max" your way forward. Best was to pick a race or a couple or races and get good at playing them was my feeling. The nice thing about the game was the different races had ships that although essentially the same were quite unique. A Gorn ship was not a Romulan ship even if both used plasma weapons. A Kzinti ship was unique to itself. Klingon tactics differred significantly to Federation ones even for similar ships. It is what I think was lost in GSF...all weapons are essentially the same thing generic damage delivery device 1 versus GDDD2 rather than the difference between distrupters and photon torpedoes.
I have to say that fighters and pseudo-fighters were the start of my hatred of the whole concept of space fighters. I view them ultimately as large slow missiles, and so long as a missile is a credible threat that requires a response then a fighter is a death trap. Why I like Aurora's way of dealing with them much better. I'm still more a Leviathan fan. Yes...fire crowbar...thunderstrike! You can just imagine the whole ship torguing about under the impact of a half ton of highspeed steel. Fighters are just a device that makes the fight more immediate and meaningful to the reader/viewer as it is personal as opposed to the rather impersonal combat between captial ships. I consider them a crutch for the director or writer at the end of the day.
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I was thinking about the damage allocation specifically in RL:I. The movement and such was straight forward.
To be honest, RL:I is a favourite of mine, and every so often I fire up dosbox and play it again.....
What made SFB complex was the sheer number of tiny details they had. Each new system had to have all sorts of bells and whistles and six different operating modes and 4 excpeptions to 3 different other weapons and so forth. Add in then that every race had their specific special abilities. And well exciting optional interactions such as boarding parties with a further set of rules.
Sounds like Ultra (cough cough) ;) (I've never read the rules, but some of the critism I've seen about Ultra is it's size.)
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Sounds like Ultra (cough cough) ;) (I've never read the rules, but some of the critism I've seen about Ultra is it's size.)
I think the last copy of SFB I got weighed in around 1000 pages. Not counting the 10 or 12 books of SSDs.
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1000 pages? Holy cow on a broomstick.
Clearly they kept going after I stopped playing. It was already a pretty seriuos 3 ring binder if I recall correctly. What I liked was we used the cards to do damage...a precurser of card based gaming I guess but it was much more fun then rolling dice. Especially when you got to blow up the 3D chess set!
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1000 pages? Holy cow on a broomstick.
Clearly they kept going after I stopped playing. It was already a pretty seriuos 3 ring binder if I recall correctly. What I liked was we used the cards to do damage...a precurser of card based gaming I guess but it was much more fun then rolling dice. Especially when you got to blow up the 3D chess set!
They are up to R12 for the Alpha Octant with expansions for the Omega Octant, the Magellanic Cloud (pre-Andro and during Andro Invasion) and another galaxy whose name escapes me right now.
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Lets just say I clearly am behind the times...wow...that is impressive. I only vaguely remember the andromedian monitors with their energy absorbing panels or whatever and some kind of death ray dodad.
ah so...a light just dawned...as the next abomination, and retconprise came out they kept updating the game... Borg cubes in SFB...
Sorry I'm still stuck back in the 1980s of the game! Like discussing AD&D with people who play the 4th Edition.
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Lets just say I clearly am behind the times...wow...that is impressive. I only vaguely remember the andromedian monitors with their energy absorbing panels or whatever and some kind of death ray dodad.
ah so...a light just dawned...as the next abomination, and retconprise came out they kept updating the game... Borg cubes in SFB...
Sorry I'm still stuck back in the 1980s of the game! Like discussing AD&D with people who play the 4th Edition.
Steve has loosely modelled the Invaders on the Andros. I started SFB with the Captain's Edition in the early 1990s, I guess you were a Commanders Edition player?
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Before Starfire Assistant there was SFB Assistant written in C/DOS :)
I guess that was probably early to mid 1980s. I was playing SFB from the Designers edition - probably about 1980ish.
Steve
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Steve has loosely modelled the Invaders on the Andros. I started SFB with the Captain's Edition in the early 1990s, I guess you were a Commanders Edition player?
I vaguely recall the captains edition coming out as we moved on to other things. I know the person who was most keen on the game had a binder (official one) with all the rules and the hit cards. Beyond that there were many sets of small booklets and stuff that were some years older. I acutally started with this with game with only 3 ships (enterprise class, D7, and warbird) with the use of strings and stuff...that may have been another company of the first version of SFB. I'm not sure what it was officially we were playing in highschool...but mainly I recall many different expansion books. That binder with the full set of official rules was a godsend.
We had the Federation, Klingons, Kzinti, Romulans, Gorn, Hydrans, and Andomedians as races (rules and ship books) and several scenarios with "monsters." Even later we would get together and have frigate fights (they tended to fit better our time available).
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I think the last copy of SFB I got weighed in around 1000 pages. Not counting the 10 or 12 books of SSDs.
I just went out and bought Solar Starfire (6th ed) - and it comes in at 421 pages.....
Needless to say, I won't be playing Solar Starfire any time soon!
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What on earth got added between Galactic and Solar? Are the rules changing or just the technology trees and stuff?
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What on earth got added between Galactic and Solar? Are the rules changing or just the technology trees and stuff?
O.K - this is just a quick skim through the index:
- Movement is 11 pages (R3rd it is 9 pages)
- Combat is 20 pages (R3rd it is 17 pages)
- R&D is 13 pages (In ISF - it is 3 pages)
- Graded Leaders is 6 pages (R3rd it is 1 page)
- Ground Combat (preparation and the actual combat itself) is 10 pages (ISF it is 6 pages)
- Tech Trees (i.e descriptions) is 58 pages (R3rd/ISF it is 28 pages - although I should point out that SOLAR goes up to SL-50, whereas ISF only goes up to TL-11)
- Advice/guides is 15 pages (there is none in R3rd/ISF)
- Tables (which is a seperate section) is 25 pages (there is none in R3rd/ISF - as they are included in the rules)
- Examples is 20 pages (there is none in R3rd/ISF - as they are included in the rules)
- Optional rules is 35 pages (there is none in R3rd/ISF - as they are included in the rules)
So, aside from the addition of some new sections (Advice and Examples), it appears that the increase in size of SOLAR is simply due to "feature creap".....
(Edit) - I can remember a review of Ultra, where reference was made to it's size. I've finally found it again (it's called "Ultra Starfire, or why nerds need sex" - http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/350559/ultra-starfire-or-why-nerds-need-sex ) - and in the review there is the line "The manual, printed out, comes to around 400 pages (this for a rules system that started out 20 odd years ago at 12 pages, mind you!). "
So I think that Solar is just a re-work of Ultra - and Ultra is where the dramatic increase in size occurrred.....
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Thank you Matt. I'm in full agreement that nerds need sex, but I am not sure I think the size of ultra/solar is related to a lack thereof of the writers.
SM2 is what: 100 pages? The UTM is what: 30 pages? ISF/3rdR/SM2 would be about the same size as Galactic Starfire I figure, and you need to throw in AD realisticly in there.
The rest of it, I'm not sure what is causing the "feature creep" for some of the sections but I suspect it is a combination of new things requiring new rules, and attempts to close loopholes in the rules. In galactic what strikes me is the difference between some rules being highly detailed, yet others being exceptionally sparce. The technological devices were basically virtually just tables. From your list you could probably trim 100 pages from ultra/solar by either omiting things (such as advice) and editing. But on the other hand storage space is cheap and 400 pages or 40 pages don't make that much difference, it is a question of being able to find what you need to know. That is my biggest complaint about SM2/3rdR/AD/ISF games...you know that there was a rule about "something" but where is the damn thing?!? At least in galactic it is only two books to look through.
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Thank you Matt. I'm in full agreement that nerds need sex, but I am not sure I think the size of ultra/solar is related to a lack thereof of the writers.
SM2 is what: 100 pages? The UTM is what: 30 pages? ISF/3rdR/SM2 would be about the same size as Galactic Starfire I figure, and you need to throw in AD realisticly in there.
The rest of it, I'm not sure what is causing the "feature creep" for some of the sections but I suspect it is a combination of new things requiring new rules, and attempts to close loopholes in the rules. In galactic what strikes me is the difference between some rules being highly detailed, yet others being exceptionally sparce. The technological devices were basically virtually just tables. From your list you could probably trim 100 pages from ultra/solar by either omiting things (such as advice) and editing. But on the other hand storage space is cheap and 400 pages or 40 pages don't make that much difference, it is a question of being able to find what you need to know. That is my biggest complaint about SM2/3rdR/AD/ISF games...you know that there was a rule about "something" but where is the damn thing?!? At least in galactic it is only two books to look through.
G'Day Paul,
When Fred Burton started working on Cosmic, I was involved (in a minor part) of the discussion - and one of the parts that I heavily emphasised (and still believe in) is that a ruleset should not be over 200 pages (it is unrealistic to expect newcomers to read more), and that seperating the rules into a Tactical and Strategic Rulebooks is essential.
(A little bit of background - I read ISF long before I got a copy of R3rd ed - and despite the fact that I knew nothing of the tactical side of things, I was still able to understand the rules (mostly). )
My point? That by lumping the two rulebooks together, and adding all of the "wouldn't that be neat" features, you end up with a 400 page rulebook.
A rulebook that (to be honest), despite the fact that I like Starfire - I will never read! I shudder to think what a newcomer to Starfire thinks of the rules! And that is the point that the author is trying to make in the article - you need to be a uber nerd to want to try and play Ultra (and now, Solar).
R3rd ed is 96 pages. ISF is 96 pages. SM#2 is 96 pages (although ~1/3rd of it is already incorporated into R3rd ed, and most of the rest replaces existing parts of ISF, so only ~20 pages is "extra"), SAW has no new rules, First Contact has nothing new, Alkeda Dawn has ~12 pages of new tech, SM#1 has probaby ~3-4 pages of new information (~1/2 of which is replacing existing info), and Crusade has 11 pages of new technology.
So in total, 3rd Ed has between 240 to 330 pages (depending on whether you count the obsolete information or not). Note: That this information is spread over 2 core rule books, 2 "errata" rulebooks (the SM's) and 4 scenario books.
Compare this to ~400 pages of Ultra and 421 pages in Solar (each in a single book).
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Here is where my Avalon Hill game background hits I guess. But you are correct that a newcomer would find that a lot. As you say what they need is book for the tactical game and a book for the strategic game, and I think that they could easily make the ultra/solar essentially as long as 3rdR/ISF/SM2/AD + scenario books with additional rules (say 280 pages to split the difference between your two numbers) by a bit of trimming and some editing and or professional help.
I played my first game of Starfire, using second edition rules (the pre-ISF rules) and never had read any of the tactical rules at all. Some of my designs are probably best catagorized as "interesting." But I could certainly run an empire.
I agree with you on the "lumping" and "wouldn't that be neat" point completely. Far more useful than a lot of the stuff would be a few pages for the SM to the tune of "if player tries to do the following: blah blah blah" this is forbidden by rule x.x.x. And other such things rather than a lot of advice on how to play.
But I can't imagine why it takes 11 pages (or for that matter 9 pages) to explain the movement rules in Starfire. And even after that trying to figure out how far a ship moves at the system level is difficult. Try to sort out how a pod roller drops its drive field, rolls the pods and brings it up...and how long that takes in game turns. I think a lot of this is an editing issue...or more properly the lack of a professional editor issue.
I would say worse than the size of the book for ultra/solar is the fact that it has no imagination grab like The Stars at War. I understand why this is so...money but without something to turn the fights into something which isn't mechanical I don't see where you capture peoples interest. The TFN racing to rescue colonists from the on coming bugs is a lot more interesting then Fleet A engaging Fleet B with a time limit. That is what makes campaigns interesting...it is about your colony, it is about that vital system that you MUST hold to keep your lines of communication open, etc. Yet I see nothing of that in GSF...it is all bland and dry sterile numbers. Even things which are critical breakthru technologies don't feel like it...
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Here is where my Avalon Hill game background hits I guess.
There'll come a time, when no-one knows what that means.... ;D (As I mentioned elsewhere, I still play the PC version of "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" - despite the size of the rulebook!)
But you are correct that a newcomer would find that a lot. As you say what they need is book for the tactical game and a book for the strategic game, and I think that they could easily make the ultra/solar essentially as long as 3rdR/ISF/SM2/AD + scenario books with additional rules (say 280 pages to split the difference between your two numbers) by a bit of trimming and some editing and or professional help.
I played my first game of Starfire, using second edition rules (the pre-ISF rules) and never had read any of the tactical rules at all. Some of my designs are probably best catagorized as "interesting." But I could certainly run an empire.
I agree with you on the "lumping" and "wouldn't that be neat" point completely. Far more useful than a lot of the stuff would be a few pages for the SM to the tune of "if player tries to do the following: blah blah blah" this is forbidden by rule x.x.x. And other such things rather than a lot of advice on how to play.
But I can't imagine why it takes 11 pages (or for that matter 9 pages) to explain the movement rules in Starfire. And even after that trying to figure out how far a ship moves at the system level is difficult. Try to sort out how a pod roller drops its drive field, rolls the pods and brings it up...and how long that takes in game turns. I think a lot of this is an editing issue...or more properly the lack of a professional editor issue.
The problem is the feature creap. Take engines for example. There is the addition of Generation Engines, as well as a new engine type (Gt), in addition to the inclusion of Jc/J (from Alkeda Dawn). As a result of these new inclusions (and the changes in WP transiting rules), there are approximately double the options - which results in a quadruple in the complexity......
I would say worse than the size of the book for ultra/solar is the fact that it has no imagination grab like The Stars at War. I understand why this is so...money but without something to turn the fights into something which isn't mechanical I don't see where you capture peoples interest. The TFN racing to rescue colonists from the on coming bugs is a lot more interesting then Fleet A engaging Fleet B with a time limit. That is what makes campaigns interesting...it is about your colony, it is about that vital system that you MUST hold to keep your lines of communication open, etc. Yet I see nothing of that in GSF...it is all bland and dry sterile numbers. Even things which are critical breakthru technologies don't feel like it...
I couldn't agree more - and I notice that Steve has previously commented about reading the scenario packs for the fiction (so I'm not the only one who does this).
For anything to prosper, it needs as wide a exposure as possible - and 3rd ed had the advantage of David Weber's novels and work on the scenario books. (FYI, I've often toyed with the idea of updating the scenario books to R3rd ed - but there has been a number of factors which have continued to discourage me..... If Marvin would allow this (and I can muster the attention span logn enough to finish), I think that this would go a way to helping Starfires public visibility, due to the tie in with DW's novels. But, unfortunately, I don't think that this will ever happen.)
This resulted in a relatively wide exposure of Starfire.
However, the only recent exposure Starfire has is through the release of GSF, Ultra and Solar - which have only a small exposure to promoting new players. Unfortunately, if this is not corrected, then I can only see the number of Starfire players becoming smaller and smaller, until the game dies out..... :'(
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For a comparison, Astra Imperia weighed in at 100 pages, including fluff.
Astra Imperia 2 is around 130 pages, including fluff. (So far)
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I suspect that is unfortunately true...I'm not even sure who owns Avalon Hill anymore. Is it Hasbro? I quite enjoyed Rise and Fall...just hard to get a place to set the map up. I've been instead been playing off and on the Grigsby Games "War in the Pacific" and "War in the East." I'm fond of operational level games I have to admit. Eventually though it just bogs down as 1 person can't do the job of a full staff.
I had no idea about another breed of engine. I'm not fond of the way the generational engines were implemented. But this is again the question of consiquences versus nifty new rule. Even the J-I split seems much reduced in GSF. I know that I'm not a happy camper about a lot of the way things like this were done. I'm still unclear why there is a never ending increase in the basic hull cost of a ship, especially since you get nothing for it. A BB hull space costs 8 MCr while a DD hull space costs 4 MCr, why? If a BB weapons were longer ranged or something that would make sense (increased power plant size) but otherwise it seems particularily artificial.
But yes, the size of the rules goes up as the square of the features.
As far as I am concerned the interludes are only useful as fiction. The chance you get that outcome playing the game is negligable. But I too read the Stars at War as a story with only occasional interest in how the ships evolve over time and so on. But in GSF...it would be hard to even write interesting fiction take for example the generation weapons..."our fleet has been upgraded now with Beta Force Beams." Geez how do you make that sound interesting? Even worse when they offer a whopping 3% improvement over the previous generation.
Fluff no matter how it may seem unimportant is the hook that attracts players. Without it the mechanical act of rolling dice and pushing counters around is not very inspiring, at least not to me. Especially as the rules pushed the game more and more into "ESF" and "shoot on target 1 till it pops and switch to target 2...repeat ad infinatum." This is the time where you really have to sit back and take a serious look at where complexity can add to the game experience.
Weber introduced starfire to a much wider audience, especially when you look at the fact that the H. Harringswine books were just revised Starfire anyway. I know Marvin would swallow cynide chase it down with hemlock before admitting this but things like Steve's Rigillian campaign and Kurt's Terran Empire campaign, plus a lot of the smaller ones did a huge amount to make 3rdR popular. People enjoyed reading them, they enjoyed talking about them, disecting the battles and so on. It wasn't just about Rate of Return, or DPT per MCR per HS or whatever. As well these games stress tested 3rdR and showed where the rules snap. I've yet to see anyone doing an Alkeda Dawn write up or even talk much about the game.
One of the things I liked about Attack Vector Tactical was the setting, and I thought they would have come out with more on it but it seems to have vanished and even more dubious to me was that Squadron Strike came out with a wholy different setting rather than just giving the ability to run more than a ship to ship fight (or a couple of ships per side). To me the loss of the setting expansion was death for the game. Federation and Empire gains because of the setting fluff. Master of Orion was largely driven by the fluff. There is a huge difference to use an avalon hill reference between playing say Panzer Blitz and Tactics II. Tactics II was just blue side versus red side. It was generic and uninspired...in Panzer Blitz you are the Wehrmacht fighting the Soviet Hordes...or you are Defending the Motherland against the #### invaders. 3rdR is panzer blitz, GSF and later editions are Tactics II sums up my view.
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I suspect that is unfortunately true...I'm not even sure who owns Avalon Hill anymore. Is it Hasbro? I quite enjoyed Rise and Fall...just hard to get a place to set the map up. I've been instead been playing off and on the Grigsby Games "War in the Pacific" and "War in the East." I'm fond of operational level games I have to admit. Eventually though it just bogs down as 1 person can't do the job of a full staff.
Yeah, doing the nuts and bolts stuff can be a pain - which is why I play Rise and Fall on the PC.....
As far as I am concerned the interludes are only useful as fiction. The chance you get that outcome playing the game is negligable. But I too read the Stars at War as a story with only occasional interest in how the ships evolve over time and so on. But in GSF...it would be hard to even write interesting fiction take for example the generation weapons..."our fleet has been upgraded now with Beta Force Beams." Geez how do you make that sound interesting? Even worse when they offer a whopping 3% improvement over the previous generation.
Yeah - Marvin (and co), in their rush to move away from the "One True Path", have instead genericised it to (as you put it with Tactics II) "Red verse Blue".
I mean, the "One True Path" was exciting - the rush to develop the next toy (be it weapon, hull size, etc), the desperation of fighting someone who had something you didn't, the joy when you develop it, and the excitement when you first use the new toy to crush your enemies..... ;D
Unbalancing? Perhaps. Exciting? Definitely.
Interesting to read? You bet!
(EDIT: On the chances of achieving the "historical" outcomes as described in the Interludes - that is one of the things that I would like to address if I ever got a chance to update them....)
Fluff no matter how it may seem unimportant is the hook that attracts players. Without it the mechanical act of rolling dice and pushing counters around is not very inspiring, at least not to me. Especially as the rules pushed the game more and more into "ESF" and "shoot on target 1 till it pops and switch to target 2...repeat ad infinatum." This is the time where you really have to sit back and take a serious look at where complexity can add to the game experience.
Weber introduced starfire to a much wider audience, especially when you look at the fact that the H. Harringswine books were just revised Starfire anyway. I know Marvin would swallow cynide chase it down with hemlock before admitting this but things like Steve's Rigillian campaign and Kurt's Terran Empire campaign, plus a lot of the smaller ones did a huge amount to make 3rdR popular. People enjoyed reading them, they enjoyed talking about them, disecting the battles and so on. It wasn't just about Rate of Return, or DPT per MCR per HS or whatever. As well these games stress tested 3rdR and showed where the rules snap. I've yet to see anyone doing an Alkeda Dawn write up or even talk much about the game.
Amen Brother (preaching to the choir).
One of the things I liked about Attack Vector Tactical was the setting, and I thought they would have come out with more on it but it seems to have vanished and even more dubious to me was that Squadron Strike came out with a wholy different setting rather than just giving the ability to run more than a ship to ship fight (or a couple of ships per side). To me the loss of the setting expansion was death for the game. Federation and Empire gains because of the setting fluff. Master of Orion was largely driven by the fluff. There is a huge difference to use an avalon hill reference between playing say Panzer Blitz and Tactics II. Tactics II was just blue side versus red side. It was generic and uninspired...in Panzer Blitz you are the Wehrmacht fighting the Soviet Hordes...or you are Defending the Motherland against the #### invaders. 3rdR is panzer blitz, GSF and later editions are Tactics II sums up my view.
You know, I think that the above paragraph is the best summation about the difference between Ultra/Solar and 3rd ed that I have ever read...... (Especially the comparison to "Red verse Blue.")
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With the Grigsby games "nuts and bolts" becomes "setting the altitude and search patern for 200 scout planes over the whole pacific theather..." Yes I can let the computer do it but then I don't know it is done the way I want. Yes, that makes no logical sense but I'm a grognard, I'm allowed to grumble about stuff that sensibly I should not be.
The problem with Balanced is war isn't. It is a never ending race between offence and defence, offence normally leads but I'm not sure that is always the case. I suspect there was more or less effective AA defences before aircraft were a viable threat. In between paradigm shifting developments are then incremental improvements. This is not easy to do in a game. Because at the end of the day a fight between F and the original L at anything but a warp point assault wasn't a fight, it was a one sided slaughter. No one enjoys being the one slaughtered.
The thing is to avoid making it so there is only one path that works all the time, while avoiding that all paths end up being functionally identical. I doubt it is easy to do in practice. But this is where I like the whole trees and knots concept from GSF. It means it is possible to have some technology and not others. It means you can be stuck like the KON when faced with slow development of the CM. Its just that what is behind the whole critical knot is...a +5% improvement rather than a +3% improvement. Break out the marching bands folks!!
On historical stuff, as much as Crusade (both the scenario book and the novel) are fun reads...you realy have to ask one question. Why when faced with an enemy with pathetic shield technology, and huge reliance on armour that you can easily copy did the TFN delay their efforts for over a year to develop the HET, and basically make the battles one of identical ships blasting each other, when they had the Energy beam? The Energy beam negated every theban advantage, could have been quickly refit into the TFN ships and would have enabled their offensives to start sooner. It also would have throw the whole refit stress issue onto the thebans, who would have had to pull their ships back to remove their armour belts. It would have meant also that the theban's fighter program would never have gotten off the ground. The HET series itself is one of the most unbalanced weapons in the game, I have no idea why it survived playtesting. I get the impressing Weber just liked it, because it became the über must have weapon of the game.
yes I supose preaching to the choir is correct, it is just that I don't think anyone won there. And I'm glad you found the last paragraph useful. I always recommend GSF to people but with the caviat the I find it bland. But I think if the game is to thrive it needs new blood and that new blood needs to go into the new products. Otherwise, as you said earlier the overall number of people playing will just dwindle...err...kind of like what I though happened to SFB, apparently in error (to put it mildly).
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I've kind of sat back and read this thread for quite awhile now.
I'm surprised no one noticed that I hadn't chimed in.
As others could tell you, they ended up making me a playtester over on the SDS site - but that is not the same as selling one's soul. I still am looking forward to NA, and hope that some day it sees fruition. (REALLY! Just check out the number of posts...)
And the reason I have stayed quiet is I wanted to see where this would finally end up. I kind of had a feeling, but really wanted to make sure.
I was playing Starfire back in the baggies, and have followed it since. But I am horribly computer illiterate so what little I knew of the SF boards were the fiction I could con my Computer Eng buddies at ISU to print out for me, or the ECs they would bring me.
I was blissfully unaware of the 'social issues', as I prefer to think of them.
And it does bother me to read what is here. Because I know some of the names from what I read long ago, and the others I know from this site and like/respect.
And I will say that with a large number of the things that have been written in this thread, I agree.
Solar is a huge rule set. Really big. One of my big soap boxes has been getting something a new player could play. Still working on it. There is a Quick Start Rules set as a free download now so you don't have to start with a 400 page block of text/tables. There will be more in that vein. My public soapbox for a long time has been to make SF something folks could play without digesting a huge book to start. All my kids/wife started on the 'hallowed baggies' I still keep at home.
SF doesn't have an author like Weber anymore. Doubt it will ever be that way again. But most games don't have that luxury either...
And the huge jump in size occured, kind of, between Galactic and Ultra. Elite for GSF added a bunch to it. Ultra grew on it. Solar is an attempt to take the issues that cropped up in Ultra over the years and deal with them -while adding a story to it. I will admit, there has been more rules work than story.
Regardless, the rules are large. But so was 3e/R with all its attendant supplements/packs back in the day.
I actually prefer Galactic/Ultra over 3e, but that is because at heart I am a storyteller. 3e kind of locked you into the same story over and over. Galactic/Ultra don't have that so I can go where I want - at least a little more. (Of course, for those that might know the rules and have read any of my Nemesis fiction - we went a LONG ways from the standard rules...) I also didn't have to keep track of a dozen different books, printed out items, etc to play.
And for Matt, I am so glad that you maintained and brought back Kurt's stories. But for all the 'Red vs Blue' you say - anything can be that way if you don't make it your own. Even 3e will see both sides with the same options for weapons, ships, etc...
But Kurt could take that 'sameness/red v blue' and turn it into something else. I try to do the same with my Nem. fiction and in our games at home. It is all in what you put into it. Steve had awesome fiction (EDIT -still does, just not enough...I know, I have the same problem...). And it wasn't because he had awesome rules. Its because he wasn't limited by them. Fluff does hook people. But it doens't just appear. And you can't just generate it because you would like to (I only know that to well....). Authors who create that sort of stuff...well, it isn't just about generating a bunch of text...
Red v Blue is from the person running the games and not creating a story for them. Not the rules themselves (in most cases...).
But I won't argue with feature creep. It has been the death of many things. And I may get in hot water for saying so, but I do agree. An old prof. of mine once said the greatest enemy of good - is 'better'. It has turned a lot of fun games into huge masses of rules that appeal to a small group of players. Much like Aurora. You really have to want to deal with the mass of complexity to want to get into it. And it isn't easy. And SF is currently pretty heavy on it.
I don't know the solution, but I will say I have been listening. And the first step to a solution is to admit there is a problem.
EDIT
And to Hawkeye, congrats on buying the set. It is pricey these days. Hope you have as much fun as the rest of us have with it... :)
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Where did you think it would end up?
I own GSF, I've got no more problems with it than I do with 3rdR. Pretty much in either case for each rule I like there is one I'm less positive about. Starslayer and I play with the 3rdR rules because SFA exists, and without SFA you don't do 173 turn long, 1000+ system, hundreds of ships scattered over a hundred systems, 20 NPR games. I started playing SF with PnP and a turn used to take me 2-3 nights of effort. Admittedly it still takes me that much time but I am doing it with an empire that is much larger. No one can. Spread sheets break down at around 25 systems, and are a major pain to deal with things like ship status.
I could never get the gang in München interested in GSF because there was no computer support for campaign games nor was there scnenario packs for battles. We played a fair number of Stars at War scenarios and we even gave the first few ISW4 ones a try. No one ever suggested Alkeda Dawn...but that is so far as I can see the left handed stepchild of starfire anyway. I played an NPR in a pre-GSF release rule set and did a solo game until I ran into my first NPR and realized how much work that would be with x2 as many Excel spread sheets. There is nothing wrong principly with the system so far as I am concerned. There are things I don't agree with and would do differently but my view is from the sort of game I describe above and in those kind of games you have to balance very much differently then for games that 5 players, 50 stars and probably a total number of turns of less than 50 before it is clear which player got the best exploration luck.
As for Red vrs Blue. GSF lacks any sort of soul. It is like eating pre-processed soya pap. There is so little difference between the weapon trees you might as wall call them GBWx (Generic Beam Weapon x). Each is "balanced" (except for the E beam tree which gets the shaft) against the other so that what little flavour remains is virtually non-existant. Who cares if you have E and K or F and R or L and P? Your ships incrementally improve so that each new system causes you the headache of trying to decide if it is worth a refit now or just wait for 6 other improvements coming along. Plus you should have seen the complex logic that went into my excel spread sheet to do the whole tech development as per the rules. Are ships that are fully stocked with 1 generation higher better...sure but it isn't really the same thing as when you get Xr, or you get Rc. Those systems are "days the universe changed" Everything is different now that you can actually see the enemy at 6 system hexes. Everything is different when you can fire at range 30 with a hard hitting not so easily stopped weapon. Pods and minefields completely change the battle field experience.
But you are completely correct each 3rdR game has the same tech progression, and with the standard income you never need to think about tech system development. And because of the world changing effects of some weapons you are pretty much required to develop them. Those are the realities of the 3rdR tech tree. That is why I said that I liked the GSF system better for all that I would remove TRPTOTOVA development modifiers. It is also why in SFA when you generate an NPR they can also have a tech development path decided for them. For example the drakes use no armour or shields, perfer missile weapons while the Squids equip their ships with both L and E. The RM uses a mix of ship weapons. The Shanirian's use E, and Ra or Rc baring their survey ships which are L armed and their G armed assault ships, they also can't use fighters and probably will not use DN or larger hulls.
At the end of the day, reading the GSF rules is a very different experience from the 3rdR rules, due probably to Weber not being involved. But they just end up being that much more mechanical, that much more life less (ground combat is all about Qv and H...wee with a table that I must admit has some rather amusing results...aliens ignore invaders as the attack is so pathetic), the tech tree section is the part that astounds me as it is utterly devoid of anything "fluffy" and for the most part unlike in 3rdR where there is a description of the system and some rules a lot of things are just table entries. Small craft weapons are not even detailed just sort of barely described...they are all alike anyway so who really cares what you have is the feeling it screams out to me.
If I had to say which were the better rule on a purely mechanical basis I would say GSF. But in getting that mechanical improvement they lost their soul. They lost the wonder that Matt mentioned. They became PvP balanced, to use an MMO reference.
But ultimately the reason I don't play GSF is no computer support. Convince someone to produce the same quality of product that Steve did, even if I had to pay for it and I would break out my GSF rules without a problem. Either that or produce something like Stars as War, a mix of story and battles for GSF and again I would get it.
No matter if it isn't easy to express in words (outside maybe that whole "Why Nerds need to get laid" comment) there is simply a different feel to the systems after 3rdR. I think it is sad that it is so, and it is something I think that needs to change if Starfire is to grow, because you need new people to get excited about it. It is at the end of the day the only system that actually allows you to fight fleet engagments, with any degree of attachment to the ships themselves. I can't think of any other space combat system that can easily handle 30 ships a side without any particular stress. Starslayer and I did a WP assault in an afternoon with about that many ships a side easily (using admittedly SFA's battle resolver but that just simplified post battle damage tracking)...and GSF+ is no different in that respect.
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At the end of the day, reading the GSF rules is a very different experience from the 3rdR rules, due probably to Weber not being involved. But they just end up being that much more mechanical, that much more life less (ground combat is all about Qv and H...wee with a table that I must admit has some rather amusing results...aliens ignore invaders as the attack is so pathetic), the tech tree section is the part that astounds me as it is utterly devoid of anything "fluffy" and for the most part unlike in 3rdR where there is a description of the system and some rules a lot of things are just table entries. Small craft weapons are not even detailed just sort of barely described...they are all alike anyway so who really cares what you have is the feeling it screams out to me.
Heh - at the moment I'm running ISF through a OCR, and "correcting" the output (it's something I have been wanting to do for a while - and Cralis has already asked for a copy of), and as a result I'm noticing the little "nuggets" of humour that DW put throughout.
Little things such as (in section 14.04.03) it mentions uninvolved players sabotaging NPR negotiations - and the rules then go on to say "The SM may wish to rein in these festive souls....."
It's those little bits of humor that breaks up the drudgery of reading a mass of rules, and makes it less of a chore. (FYI - Solar is 300+ pages, and I would rather hand type up 96 pages of ISF, then to read the 400 page of Solar......)
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Thinking about it last night...gah...I need a life...anyway...you could subtitle GSF "Accountants at War" and that to me sums it up.
Yes Weber's little additions are what make the rules fun to read...until he does it for something like the presser beam being "for all intents and purposes a reverse polarity tractor beam." Uhm...yes...err...gaaaah.
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Where did you think it would end up?
To be honest, I wasn't sure. I will admit to being a computer neophyte at best. Pretty much illiterate in reality. I was wondering if the opinion was that SF had gone the way of the mammoth and the concensus was the computer games (like Aurora) were the only way to go in this field. Or if the thought would just be that the rules had become unmanageable to the point it wasn't worth wading through them. So I wanted to see where it would go.
I have been at this (SF) for awhile, but we are our own little group with little outside influence other than the oldest two kids playing RPGs with friends from school (one is actually run by the father of my oldest girl's friend - whom I played RPGs with back in HS. We didn't even realize it till I went to pick her up one day and met her 'GM'.) I respect the opinions of the folks here, and wanted to see which way you all thought the 'wind was blowing'. If the opinion was a resounding "board games are dead...", well, there isn't much I or anyone can do about that.
I own GSF, I've got no more problems with it than I do with 3rdR. Pretty much in either case for each rule I like there is one I'm less positive about. Starslayer and I play with the 3rdR rules because SFA exists, and without SFA you don't do 173 turn long, 1000+ system, hundreds of ships scattered over a hundred systems, 20 NPR games. I started playing SF with PnP and a turn used to take me 2-3 nights of effort. Admittedly it still takes me that much time but I am doing it with an empire that is much larger. No one can. Spread sheets break down at around 25 systems, and are a major pain to deal with things like ship status....
....But ultimately the reason I don't play GSF is no computer support. Convince someone to produce the same quality of product that Steve did, even if I had to pay for it and I would break out my GSF rules without a problem. Either that or produce something like Stars as War, a mix of story and battles for GSF and again I would get it.
No arguement. We have a fair number of house rules just to slow down the economic upward spiral of doom. It isn't the number of systems we decided, it was the number of habitables. Cut them back real hard - and the players stay smaller and the number of NPRs becomes fewer. We are still at it with P&P for my wife and kids over 300 turns in. Their 'known universe' between them is over 300 systems with a dozen or so NPRs. Turns for the players take just a few hours for them to do on notebook paper (but they have had a lot of practice at it...). Now for me as the SM, churning out a turn for all the NPR (known and unknown) takes close to 8 hours spread over a couple days. But I am a night owl by nature so sitting up by the woodstove with the dog at my feet, tweaking the turn sheet for the NPRs is my idea of a good ending for the day.
For those that want 1000 system empires with fleets of ships that rival or surpass that number - P&P would make tax time look relaxing. I can't help with creating a program for SF (heck, I am lucky to find the board on a given night...). And talent like Steve's is hard to find. Particularly on a volunteer basis. Until something like that occurs - I really can't help much. Someone who has the ability will have to decide it is worth the effort to make such a program, and it just hasn't happened yet.
As for Red vrs Blue. GSF lacks any sort of soul.
As for entertaining text, yeah. As for 'in game' play, I already touched on that.
But I will say that adding fluff to a set already 400+ pages long won't make it shorter. It might make for a more interesting read. But as Matt said, folks may just take a look at the page count and rapidly decide not to even try. Best writing in the world isn't worth a damn if nobody looks.
But you are completely correct each 3rdR game has the same tech progression,
I really think that it is just the nature of the beast, with the 4x games I have seen. SFB gets around it by creating a mass of special interactions/rules for each individual weapon/system. But that would just take SF over the deep end. In all of the SF versions, there is only so much space to cover the weapons/systems/etc. And after awhile folks come up with designs that optimize it and ships start to look the same at a given level. Is it ideal. Not really. Is it a game breaker for me, or anyone who has enjoyed playing any version of SF - I don't think so.
At the end of the day, reading the GSF rules is a very different experience from the 3rdR rules, due probably to Weber not being involved.
Again, not going to argue. I love playing SF with my kids. And to my suprise - they actually liked GSF better than 3e after they got into it. It wasn't the same rush to be the first to the 'next big system'. For my players it became a game of specializing and putting their personalities into their fleets. I was tickled, as GSF was where drakar became 'laser death' (which would never work in 3e), while my wife became the missile queen (which is tough in 4e, but is pretty much the 'predisposed' path of 3e).
But for as much life as my players brought into the game, only two of the four ever made it cover to cover on the GSF books. They aren't very fun to read. And only one has made it through Ultra.
I wish they were fun reads. But I think SF has a better chance of finding a software writer, than it does of finding another literary writer. For one huge reason. Weber has been there.
Would you want to try to both fill those shoes, and write the game? I sure as heck don't want to.
No matter if it isn't easy to express in words (outside maybe that whole "Why Nerds need to get laid" comment) there is simply a different feel to the systems after 3rdR. I think it is sad that it is so, and it is something I think that needs to change if Starfire is to grow, because you need new people to get excited about it. It is at the end of the day the only system that actually allows you to fight fleet engagments, with any degree of attachment to the ships themselves. I can't think of any other space combat system that can easily handle 30 ships a side without any particular stress. Starslayer and I did a WP assault in an afternoon with about that many ships a side easily (using admittedly SFA's battle resolver but that just simplified post battle damage tracking)...and GSF+ is no different in that respect.
I also think it is sad. And I don't want to see it go the way of the dinosaurs. I have spent a fair part of my life playing it, and some of my favorite memories of my family involve being gathered around the table playing it. Most folks I know who started playing it, liked it alot. A bunch still hold onto their old books, just because they liked it or hope that they will someday find another group. Watching my wife and three oldest kids hunkered around a table for 4 hours hammering out the last details before they committed to a WP assault in our game.... well, you know how it is. Even if they are plotting to kick your NPRs butt. :D
You like 3e, and we still get it out and crank through some of the old scenarios now and again. It is a good system. We just like 4e+ for our games as it lets the players 'stake out their territory' - which they like. (Although smcft are still the one 'have to have' system...but that is another issue.). But we have swiped stuff from 3e and stuck it into our games just because we can. ;)
If it was up to me, I would say support both. They are both good systems that appeal to different types of folks. And I think there are enough folks out there who would put in the time to support it. (crucis disappearance hurts... :'( )
But it isn't my call. If I can help keep starfire going, well, to me it is worth the effort.
So that is why I sat back and waited. It wasn't to see which version of SF you liked. I like them both. I wanted to see if you thought the whole genre was dead, or if it had just become something that was unappealing.
The fact you say you would break out GSF if the support was there gives me reason to try and find a way to make it work. If you had said that although you loved SF back in the day, it just wasn't worth messing with now the 'xyz' had come along... that is a different story.
It's those little bits of humor that breaks up the drudgery of reading a mass of rules, and makes it less of a chore. (FYI - Solar is 300+ pages, and I would rather hand type up 96 pages of ISF, then to read the 400 page of Solar......)
And that is the crux of the problem to me. Taking it and making it fun to read rules is not something I can do. Fiction, ...sort of. At least I try. But taking rules and making if fun...I have no illusions about my limits. I am not DW. (Well really, I guess those are my initials, but you know what I mean... ;) )
Only one of my players has ever tried to press through the mass of rules that is Ultra. GSF, at about 170ish pages for the two books, wasn't horrible. Dry, but doable. Most of the players managed to digest most if not all of them.
But Ultra is a beast. And I have voiced my opinion of that more than just a couple times over on the SDS site. No teenager is going to set down and read it instead of playing a video game. Heck, most adults don't have the attention span to read it - or free time for reading game rules if they do. Solar is just as large of a beast and doesn't solve the 'holy sh** that is a lot of pages' issue that happens when you get it.
I can't resurrect 3e. I am also not a world renown author. And I am most certainly not Steve and going to help come up with the 4e+ version of SFA.
But I don't see any of you as the enemy. I see a bunch of folks who enjoyed SF and have had a lot of fun playing it. Same as me.
Because to me, truth be known and like it or not, I don't think resurrecting 3eR/ISF/SM#2/etc would save starfire either. Give that pile to someone and they will also take one look at the mass of text and quickly find something else to do...
Sorry, but 3e got pretty large toward the end. Fun - no doubt. But still large.
With those limitations in mind - may I ask your suggestions?
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I think the first thing I want to say because maybe I'm not being clear. I like 3rdR but I also like GSF. It fixes some things that were clearly wrong in 3rdR. In both cases there is stuff I like and stuff I don't. I don't play GSF because I could never convince the München locals to play it due to lack of computer support. The single thing that for me that stands out in GSF is the whole tech tree and research system that is the best change they made. It makes each game new and different...if well the weapons themelves were so damn homongenized.
What I don't like about specifically SM2's economic changes (and these carry through with only minor modifications to GSF) is that the economy always grows and at some point it goes over the cliff to the "rich get richer faster and faster." GSF pushes that point back by making stuff more expensive and I understand why Marvin did that. For the games he likes, it will solve the problem. To me it is just kicking the can down the road as opposed to dealing with the problem. My solution is unfortunately not going to be popular. You have to make there be a cost to your empire. Buoys, Space Yards, mines, IDEW, etc have to cost money so that as you empire grows so to does your maintenance fee, to the point where you might not colonize a system since it costs you money for a long time before it brings in money. Or you may need to accept that a system is going to be a net drain but is strategically vital. The whole "corruption" shlock they put into Civilization games. Otherwise SF's economy is purely compound interest and it is only a question of what the rate of interest is. By making things simplier and easier and most importantly basically free in SM2 the net result was an increase in empire size and fleet size that both leads to more paperwork and to me unfun battles, since even starfire breaks down at 100s of ships per side. You have to do something that isn't just "money" to keep things in check. That can be lower chances of habitables, that can be slower growth, that can be slower hull construction, it can be personal points, whatever...money as a limit fails when the economy tends to infinity as turn number increases. See both Kurt and Steve's games for that. But logisitics and so on is about as fun as a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. But the result of a turn to turn budget in the hundreds of thousands of MCr is not any better. Steve's trial with supply rules for example can really put a slow down to exploration as you need supplies to explore. Requiring military mine layers also changes things. There is an infinite number of possible solutions. I'd be inclined to suggest an administrative fee per system, that goes up if it is more than a month from an ICC. You have to get the economy off the compound interest basis.
Also saying that in 3rdR you end up with identical ships is wrong. In our München games everyone's fleets looked vastly different, with the exception that we all carried reasonable amounts of passives. There is no optimal solution in starfire without being extremely specific. To assault a WP against a G armed enemy at TL 3 there is probably an optimal CL you can build...but there are 4 designs that will work 90% as good as that. I used to play a lot as the "guest admiral" for NPR - NPR battles and had to play ships generated by the random ship generator. What I learned is that anything can be made to work, but you have to change how you fight. This includes combinations that left be staring at the ship sheet in total and utter shock. There is always an underlying assumption to a design, most people who claim to have an optimized design fail to also mention their assumptions. Steve's Rigillians found this out when his fleet of "optimized ships" hit their first WP assault and the assumptions that make sledghammers in eggshells work broke down. General purpose ships aren't as good a special purpose ships if the special purpose ships are used in the way they are intended but underlying this is the assumption that you have the money to afford to build 3 ships (short range, long range, assault for example) plus the assumption your special purpose ships will be employed for that purpose. Heck one person in our group advocated a single Rc on every ship.
From time to time I think that doing it with pen and paper would be easier than with computer support if the empire was relatively stable (so you didn't have to recalculate growth and value) and the empire/universe size was limited. Every time I use SFA I'm impressed again by the work Steve did in that. It is the best such program I have had a chance to use.
As for the rules and size, I could write all the rules you need for tactical combat with standard basic ships on one page, or at most two pages. It is more a question of editing. Weber made the rules enjoyable to read, but not really all that good as rules (compared to an avalon hill game there was a lot of unclear things). But the more complex things get the larger the rules get to cover largely what one could call special cases and exceptions. But give Starfire to both a professional rules writer and a good editor and the size of the rules will collapse dramatically. Also a lot of rules exist to solely prevent people being "festive souls" as Matt pointed out that Weber refers to them as.
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Only one of my players has ever tried to press through the mass of rules that is Ultra. GSF, at about 170ish pages for the two books, wasn't horrible. Dry, but doable. Most of the players managed to digest most if not all of them.
But Ultra is a beast. And I have voiced my opinion of that more than just a couple times over on the SDS site. No teenager is going to set down and read it instead of playing a video game. Heck, most adults don't have the attention span to read it - or free time for reading game rules if they do. Solar is just as large of a beast and doesn't solve the 'holy sh** that is a lot of pages' issue that happens when you get it.
Side note on this. I was a HUGE Avalon Hill junkie in my youth, but haven't touched my old games for years (if not decades). A month or so ago I pulled the Nth fleet series out of the garage and tried to set up a game. I got about 5 minutes into the rule book, with all of its sequence of play and combat algorithm arcana (not to mention the pad of logistics forms to track ammo/fuel expenditure for each ship) and just put it back down. And this is from a guy who used to love to read rule books. It was a huge surprise to me that this happened - I was expecting to play a game....
I think that the advent of computers to do the bookkeeping has fundamentally changed gaming and the level of work that people will be willing to devote to running a game - it certainly did for me and I didn't even realize it!
John
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To be honest, I wasn't sure. I will admit to being a computer neophyte at best. Pretty much illiterate in reality. I was wondering if the opinion was that SF had gone the way of the mammoth and the concensus was the computer games (like Aurora) were the only way to go in this field. Or if the thought would just be that the rules had become unmanageable to the point it wasn't worth wading through them. So I wanted to see where it would go.
To be honest, I think that if SF is to continue, it will need one of two things. Either:
1) Go to PC form (ala SFA).
2) Be "dumbed down" to a "beer and pretzels" type game.
IMHO, with the advent of MMO's, face to face boardgaming (such as SF) is not going to last.
But I will say that adding fluff to a set already 400+ pages long won't make it shorter. It might make for a more interesting read. But as Matt said, folks may just take a look at the page count and rapidly decide not to even try. Best writing in the world isn't worth a damn if nobody looks.
Well, that's where we need to consider if that rule is really needed.
An example - I've recently typed up the ISF rules for tidelocked planets/moons (see 13.05.01), and it appears that here is where you can cut 1/2 a page of rules. I mean, seriously, who ever bothers with tidelocked planets/moons? Does it make a difference that the moons are tidelocked - or is simply an un-necessary feature?
To me, what happened in Ultra, is that there are a lot of features that are similar to ISF's tidelocked planets - where they could be easily removed without changing the gameplay.....
And as to fluff - a single line here and there (which is very useful in breaking the drudgery of reading the rules) is vastly different to pages and pages of rules that serve very little game purpose (aside from making the rules "astronomically correct" - or other similar reason).
Again, not going to argue. I love playing SF with my kids. And to my suprise - they actually liked GSF better than 3e after they got into it. It wasn't the same rush to be the first to the 'next big system'. For my players it became a game of specializing and putting their personalities into their fleets. I was tickled, as GSF was where drakar became 'laser death' (which would never work in 3e), while my wife became the missile queen (which is tough in 4e, but is pretty much the 'predisposed' path of 3e).
To be honest, the comments of "blandness" and "next big system" are different sides of the same coin - and it depends of which side of the fence you sit on as to whether it is a problem or not.
As Procyon stated (above), GSF has allowed players to personalise the weapon mix - however I've seen quite sucessful (some surprisingly so - such as the Khalian's) R3rd weapon mixes.
Similarly, one of the biggest complaints against R3rd is that it has weapons that totally dominates. Having said that, there are SL's in GSF where one weapon outclasses the others (but as a new weapon comes out every SL or so - it doesn't dominate for long.....)
This issue is very subjective - as to some players it is a gamebreaker (both the dominance of some R3rd weapons, and the "blandness" of the GSF weapons), but to others they don't mind (or even more often, the are O.K. with one editions "issues" - but cannot stand the other editions "issues"....)
If it was up to me, I would say support both. They are both good systems that appeal to different types of folks. And I think there are enough folks out there who would put in the time to support it. (crucis disappearance hurts... :'( )
Same here - I don't see any reason why the different versions can't exist side by side.
Having said that though - I don't know if Marvin has the time available to support both systems. Of course, the way around that would be to "editors" (for want of a better word) for the different editions (such as Fred for Cosmic, Cralis for Ultra, etc.) - people who manage the different editions, allowing Marvin to address Starfire in its entirity.
Having said that, Marvin is very anti-R3rd (for a variety of reasons), and I can't see that changing any time soon. (An example of the anti-R3rd, is the fact that he doesn't even sell ISF/R3rd ed any more (you can buy some of the supplements, but not the core rules)....)
And that is the crux of the problem to me. Taking it and making it fun to read rules is not something I can do. Fiction, ...sort of. At least I try. But taking rules and making if fun...I have no illusions about my limits. I am not DW. (Well really, I guess those are my initials, but you know what I mean... ;) )
You don't have to be a DW to make the rules fun. Some of the R3rd ed possibilities are through the use of examples throughout the rules (not at the end as Ultra has them). An example, in the anti-fighter rules, pointing out that the BB is going to be picked apart over the next few turns by a few fighters armed with lasers has the potential to be used to break up the drudgery of reading rules. The "interlude" doesn't have to be funny - merely different!
Because to me, truth be known and like it or not, I don't think resurrecting 3eR/ISF/SM#2/etc would save starfire either. Give that pile to someone and they will also take one look at the mass of text and quickly find something else to do...
Sorry, but 3e got pretty large toward the end. Fun - no doubt. But still large.
With those limitations in mind - may I ask your suggestions?
I agree - bring back R3rd won't "save" Starfire - the rise of cheap apps will eventually kill off Starfire!
As I stated above, I think that to save Starfire (in it's current form) - the only way to go is to automate it on a PC. Add in network support, and you might see it survive for a while yet.
Short of that, it is on it's way out..... :'(
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Side note on this. I was a HUGE Avalon Hill junkie in my youth, but haven't touched my old games for years (if not decades). A month or so ago I pulled the Nth fleet series out of the garage and tried to set up a game. I got about 5 minutes into the rule book, with all of its sequence of play and combat algorithm arcana (not to mention the pad of logistics forms to track ammo/fuel expenditure for each ship) and just put it back down. And this is from a guy who used to love to read rule books. It was a huge surprise to me that this happened - I was expecting to play a game....
I think that the advent of computers to do the bookkeeping has fundamentally changed gaming and the level of work that people will be willing to devote to running a game - it certainly did for me and I didn't even realize it!
John
Every year (or so), I break out the PC version of Avalon's "Rise and Fall of the 3rd Reich". It's increadibly unlikely that I would ever play the board version again, but due to the PC support (and the other advantages - such as lack of space, requirements for counters, etc.) I find that it is pretty enjoyable to play 3rd Reich on the PC.
Similarly for 6th Fleet (another game that I have on the PC.....)
Just thought to point out, that using a PC can help address a LOT of issues.
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Every year (or so), I break out the PC version of Avalon's "Rise and Fall of the 3rd Reich". It's increadibly unlikely that I would ever play the board version again, but due to the PC support (and the other advantages - such as lack of space, requirements for counters, etc.) I find that it is pretty enjoyable to play 3rd Reich on the PC.
Actually 3rd Reich is one of the ones I was looking for in the garage and couldn't find. That and Gulf Strike.
Similarly for 6th Fleet (another game that I have on the PC.....)
6th Fleet is the one I tried to set up (since my other 2 fleet rulebooks seem to have migrated - I think I was coding something up on the computer and they ended up in a pile of support material).
Are you sure you don't mean 5th fleet on the computer? I resurrected that and was playing it recently in DosBox. I was actually a bit frustrated with it because the combat results didn't seem to make sense in a lot of cases, and I couldn't see the numbers. But it was MUCH easier to play (which is the underlying point) after having been away for 10-15 years.
Just thought to point out, that using a PC can help address a LOT of issues.
Yep, that was the point I was trying to make. Actually, I think one of the best hex-game transitions to computers (other than CaW, of course) is Over the Reich. It was an AH title that was computer-only - it didn't have a physical version. Very similar to the mechanics in Richtofen's war, but the computer did all the paperwork and told you the valid moves with a very slick interface. I still dig it out every now and then....
John
PS - If we go too much further down this road, I should probably split the discussion out into an OT thread so we don't hijack this one....
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One thing on rules. In Squad leader each rules section had a fluff heading. Basically it demonstrated why the rule exists. Describing what "partial armour pentetration" was, why "leadership counted," etc. These were short but they put the rules in context. It broke up the effort of reading the rules and it allowed you to see what point of the whole thing was.
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PS - If we go too much further down this road, I should probably split the discussion out into an OT thread so we don't hijack this one....
That's ok with me. It kind of looked to have drifted when I chimed in, but figured it would be easier to answer here.
I think that the advent of computers to do the bookkeeping has fundamentally changed gaming and the level of work that people will be willing to devote to running a game - it certainly did for me and I didn't even realize it!
That is my biggest concern. When competing with a video game they can play without needing to read the rules...the future of a game with more than a page of rules looks kind of dim.... ???
If they actually had to get out something and do math.... :(
One thing on rules. In Squad leader each rules section had a fluff heading.
Yeah. And that would be nice. But the 'fluff' had something it was based on. Whether history (ASL) or DWs fiction. Until SF has something like that again it is a little sticky.
That and I am kind of the fly in the ointment when it comes to adding rules or text to the current set. With my players being kids and my having to train them - I tend to dig my heels in against rules additions/extra text unless they are really necessary. Simplify - ok. Add for the sake of adding - not so cool. Which has gotten me into several 'discussions'.
Just thought to point out, that using a PC can help address a LOT of issues.
....
To be honest, I think that if SF is to continue, it will need one of two things. Either:
1) Go to PC form (ala SFA).
2) Be "dumbed down" to a "beer and pretzels" type game.
Unfortunately, in this area, I am about as useful as ... Ok, I'm not useful at all.
But it has been brought up on the boards and among 'the powers that be' several times. And looked at. In that most of the 'powers that be' are some form of computer guru (although, compared to me, everyone seems to be anymore) there has been a bunch of discussion that I don't understand.
Some folks have made sys gen programs and speadsheets for Ultra (and GSF it think), but nothing like SFA to my knowledge (although I will admit to never having used any of them...).
All I can say is that it is being looked at. But what may become of it, I have no idea.
As for a 'beer and pretzel' type game, I don't know. I have long been an advocate for a simpler game. But other than SF#1, it never has been small enough to be 'beer and pretzels' to me. I doubt it could go back to that and be sustainable either.
Same here - I don't see any reason why the different versions can't exist side by side.
Having said that though - I don't know if Marvin has the time available to support both systems. Of course, the way around that would be to "editors" (for want of a better word) for the different editions (such as Fred for Cosmic, Cralis for Ultra, etc.) - people who manage the different editions, allowing Marvin to address Starfire in its entirity.
Having said that, Marvin is very anti-R3rd (for a variety of reasons), and I can't see that changing any time soon. (An example of the anti-R3rd, is the fact that he doesn't even sell ISF/R3rd ed any more (you can buy some of the supplements, but not the core rules)....)
As for supporting both versions. I have no issue with it, but it isn't my call.
As for editors covering the sets - that has happened, to a degree. Marvin has turned over the controls (for all intents and purposes) of Solar to cralis. It is pretty much his baby now. Which to me is a good thing. He has been the 'face' of the SDS site for some time, is the one most people deal with, and has the time/interest to work on it. A lot is happening behind the scenes (to me at least) in this area. But part of it is just deciding where to go and what direction to take.
Hence - my willingness to step out on a limb here and see if I get burned on either end of the candle.
As for Cosmic - I was really looking forward to it since all my players had started their games with 3e rules. We had plans to go back and do the 'separate universe' story and see where it went if we had stuck with the 3e rules for the 'Empires Camp.' But Fred seems to have become very scarce (I was worried for his health for a long time due to his disappearance -to be honest). I don't see anyone with the ability to pull 3e back from the brink without him. He is the only one with some claim to authorship in the Starfire books, and without that you would have to pretty much rewrite the entire set. I know Marvin has rights to the game, but anything in it that references DWs works could be a costly problem.
Without Fred, I don't know what the future of 3e is...
And I know that the issue with reprints of 3e materials probably transpired before the copyright issue, but I don't know that even if the SDS wanted to - that they could be printed in their previous forms without violating some laws - as DW made it clear he didn't sell the copyrights to the fiction/stories/setting (at least to my understanding. Wasn't there and don't have any knowledge but heresay, or any great knowledge of copyright law.).
As for the rules and size, I could write all the rules you need for tactical combat with standard basic ships on one page, or at most two pages. It is more a question of editing. Weber made the rules enjoyable to read, but not really all that good as rules (compared to an avalon hill game there was a lot of unclear things). But the more complex things get the larger the rules get to cover largely what one could call special cases and exceptions. But give Starfire to both a professional rules writer and a good editor and the size of the rules will collapse dramatically. Also a lot of rules exist to solely prevent people being "festive souls" as Matt pointed out that Weber refers to them as.
So true. I even wrote, and got the computer folks there to turn into something you could look at, a set called the Quick Start Rules - so that a new player could get started, or even try out the game without wading into or buying a 421 page rule set.
It consists of about 3 pages of rules (to include the weapon chart, blindspot illustration, ship list, and a few counters/scenarios), and one page of a hex map. I tried to aim at about 12y/o grammar (although it may take a few 'helps' from mom or dad) so just about anyone could download and play it. And print off a set for their friends without mom and dad getting torqued about burning up paper/ink. It would work with both Ultra and Solar, and for all intents could prime for GSF, although weapon ranges aren't identical IIRC.
And the game could easily be pared down to, perhaps, 150 pages, and still cover combat, ship construction, and a few other bits. Then leave the 400+ page monster for the folks who want to deal with it (and there are always those that do...). The big question is - would it be worth the effort to create a set that would be like that?
I think the first thing I want to say because maybe I'm not being clear. I like 3rdR but I also like GSF. It fixes some things that were clearly wrong in 3rdR. In both cases there is stuff I like and stuff I don't. I don't play GSF because I could never convince the München locals to play it due to lack of computer support.
I think you are fairly clear. I am just vague on what I am looking for. Figuring out the best hope to keep starfire going isn't exactly a clear cut path. And I agree. Most folks want some computer support anymore. My son (drakar on this and SDS board) is deploying overseas (Afghanistan) and plans to take SF with him. Even has a few buddies lined up to play it. He is playing it with a few folks from the SDS boards now to see if it needs tweaked.
And he has created his own spreadsheets, maps, etc, on the computer to help it along. It seems to be pretty standard. Even if I do like my P&P.
What I don't like about specifically SM2's economic changes ...
Snipped a bunch. Sorry.
Preaching to the choir here. As I said, we have a small book to handle the changes we made. Essentially we rewrote most of the rules.
We cut down growth, and then cut habs to one per 40 systems on average (I pregen the universe, so it stays fairly consistent/even). this has made it harder for the 100 ship fleets to exist. There is just to much space to cover it all with the resources of a single hab. A lot of the game is the dynamics of deployment and shifting fleets to deal with new issues/contacts.
It still grows though. But the players have dealt with it by turning their empires into 'sectors'. Each with its own 'turn sheet'. It all still totals up the same, but gets broken into more bite sized pieces. It is easier to lift 150# of hay, one 50# bale at a time - per se. The research still gets lumped into one 'empire wide' sheet with each sector donating its required amount as needed. But that is the only empire wide item for them. It does create some duplication of effort, but allows them to keep each sector on a single sheet and gives that sector its own 'feel' in the RPing of things.
We also (ok, I do) have a lot more 'SM' stuff crop up that taps the players funds. My wife keeps lots of CTs and DD sized CVEs as convoy escorts - as 'commerce raiders/pirates' crop up fairly regularly between the wide flung sectors. Same for all the players except that the middle boy (Chine/Sledge) tends more towards fewer/bigger in FG/CL as 'escorts' (but that suits his style).
So yes, coming up with a way to 'kill' the upward economic spiral of death is a biggy. But fixing it if no one is learning/playing the game won't help too much.
Also saying that in 3rdR you end up with identical ships is wrong.
Ok, not completely. But unless unusual circumstances crop up - there are some accepted trends. Like the 'weapon last' design. Or sticking a bunch of engines up front to 'pad' the weapon systems. Or the heavy S/A WP assault ship (how many 'non simul transit WP assaults have you seen with EX/ES...). Some things are just better handled in certain ways.
The players each come up with their own twists. Like the CT carriers in Kurt's fiction. But if someone else had decided to build a CT carrier - it probably would have had a striking resemblance to the others due to the limits of the rules. But that is ok. It is the little things that make all the difference.
From time to time I think that doing it with pen and paper would be easier than with computer support if the empire was relatively stable (so you didn't have to recalculate growth and value) and the empire/universe size was limited. Every time I use SFA I'm impressed again by the work Steve did in that. It is the best such program I have had a chance to use.
We have a lot of things we changed in our game to allow us to use P&P for a game lasting 300+ turns now. Even after this amount of time, my wife (New Euro) has a total income for her whole empire at less than 50,000 MC. Which broken up into a few sectors really isn't to hard to handle. But that is us.
With standard rules, it could turn into a nightmare keeping track of your empire on paper after even the first 100 turns. And yes, Steve and Kurt's fiction shows that. I love their stories, but could never have run that game in a notebook.
But I do appreciate the responses.
My biggest question now that the SDS/cralis has Solar out and a fair chunk of the bugs/typos ferreted out with the release of v6.01 - is what should be the next step? If I am part of where SF is going and I am going to help with SF, this is a big question to me. Adding to the rules doesn't sound (to me) like a good thing. Fixing typos, yes. More text...not so much.
And the best way to find out what folks want is to ask. I don't expect any of the folks here to just run off and buy a set of Solar. But you have all played SF before, and know what you liked most or perhaps even more important - disliked.
And there is a lot of history and wisdom over here. Ignoring it would be pretty foolish.
And I realize (for whatever reasons) that some of the folks here may never like the folks over there. But that doesn't mean I can't like all of you and value who you are and what you have to say.
And even if you go so far as to even 'hate' each other, I doubt anyone actually 'hates' SF.
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I just finished the turn...joy my empire and the RM. Took me the better part of 4 hours. But I had a lot of fiddling to do with fleet names, commanders and missile loadouts.
As for computer support, what is required is a database program. Excel is a spread sheet and it can do databases, but you need to know how, and I'm not myself sure how good its built in database functions would be. But that is where the computer support issue makes it or dies.
Ships being similar happens but I don't see any particular reason why that would not happen in any version of SF. Small ships end up being the same because they are small and at the end of the day you have 4-6 spaces free and that isn't going to provide a lot of variablity. Bigger ships can be more varied. Weapon last isn't automatically the best solution, padding with engines is equally bad in some situatons...as I said there are underlying assumptions to a design. Assault ships are all but required to be either the biggest thing you can shove through the warp point of the ship you can shove the most through. But Starslayer came up with the floating bricks one time for a race, look at the RM's newest assault ships and tell me if you think they are cookie cutter. I sometimes do wild and crazy stuff just to do wild and crazy stuff but what I have learned is that pretty much anything will work...in some circumstances but not necessarily all circumstances.
For SF to grow, I think the battles have to become far more interesting so things to prevent the ESF and shoot till they pop have to show up. In addition you need a solution the compound interest economy issue, and the stuff that comes out of it. I would think one of the best things that could happen is a way to play the combat out on a computer (Aide de Camp?), or a full game on the computer. There is kickstarter and such for generating the money to do this, but finding an interested Indy game company and getting a deal made. I'd do a lot of things differently ship design wise to get a more naval feel for the combat.
Lastly you need a hook. SF had the stars at war and so on. If Solar or whatever is the latest version wants to live it needs that. Otherwise, what would attract people to the game? Setting is very important, just see how imporant Faerun is to D&D. Or things like B5, star trek and so on. You also need interesting battles...I was just looking at the 12 scenarios in the back of 3rdR...and now I can't find any in GSF. Anyway my point is that rather than 12 bland and not very interesting looking scenarios (list of ships, victory conditions, special notes)...I would have 4-6 ones with a lot more to them so that people get interested in the battles. A mini stars at war basically. If you don't energize peoples imaginations you fail.
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I've megasnipped procyon's post - to avoid turning this discussion into a novel.... (well, any more then what I've already done! :D )
The problem that I with Starfire isn't the maths (as such) - instead it is the boring "carry forward" multi-turn stuff (i.e. the routine incrementing of R&D, shipyards, ships in transit, messages, etc.). This stuff ends up taking up a considerable amount of time, and reduces the time available to do the "fun" stuff.
That kind of mundane stuff is something that a program does well, but that I believe is difficult for excel to do. (It isn't impossible - but it is difficult.) I will just point out, that Aurora was once reviewed by a game magazine, who was critical of Aurora's GUI. Whilst the GUI may seem to be a minor issue (when compared to the actual game itself), first impressions count - and finding out that the "PC support" for a game is merely a spreadsheet is not a good first impression.
Onto Cosmic - I was briefly involved a while ago, and I have some concerns over the rules (not just the absense of Fred). The fact that they are based on the 400+ pages of Ultra being the biggest.
Onto existing 3e material - I believe that it is wholely owned by the SDS. The "new" 3e stuff (Insurrection and ISW-4) is the stuff that had the copyright issue (over the fact that DW worked on it for TF, and when the SDS bought the rights to Starfire, Marvin thought it included the rights to the unpublished stuff that DW had written).
Having said that, I don't think that there is any copyright issues over re-releasing old material - but publishing new material based on DW's "universe" is verboten! (For DW's POV of the discussion, check out: http://www.davidweber.net/posts/202-emstarfire-e.html ).
Onto the "Quick Start Rules" - I think that they are a brilliant idea! Make them freely available (even to the point of giving them out as advertisment at conventions/in magazines), and I think that you'd see some new people becoming aware of Starfire, resulting in more players....
As to paring the rules down to ~150 pages - that is a pretty good description of 3e!
The idea of cutting an empire up into seperate sectors (from an economic POV) would help the paperwork - similar as the idea of reducing the number of habitals. However, that only merely extends the time until the game gets too large - it doesn't address the root cause. (Mind you - the fact that it extends it past the point that most players are still interested in playing the same campaign means that it is a viable solution in a majority of cases). ;D
To me though, the best solution is the bring in a software engineer and code it.
Onto the future. Honestly, I think your idea of three different rulesets (Quick Start, ~150 page rules, and Ultra-sized rules) has merit. However that still leaves two issues:
1) How do we get new players? and
2) How do we keep existing players?
The answer to 1) is (obviously) the Quick Start rules and advertising.
The answer to 2) is to make the game easy to play, and scalable (so that once they want to play with more detail, it is available). However, while this would be addressed by having the ~150 page and Ultra rules, the issue of the "Rich getting Richer" remains. This may be addressed by reducing the number of habitals (as a short-term solution), or by introducing PC support (long term solution).
However, with the rise of mobile computing (and apps), I believe that pretty soon people's expectations of gaming will be changing, and that anything without PC support won't even be considered....
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Addressing a few points Matt brought up.
Excel isn't a database program and it very poorly updates from turn to turn. It has been several years since I dug into this deeply but unless they added new capacity it is possible to link data from one sheet to the other (but you have to have a rigid naming convention including drive letter), but it is different then storing values in a database. Also Excel breaks down because of two other limits, the first is that there is an absolute limit to the number of rows on a spread sheet and the other is the granularity of information. Implementing damage to a ship and tracking changes and so on that SFA does quasi automatically is very hard. You would have to either do some fancy macros or else store each letter in a seperate column and then access them by comparision to a design page. Needless to say this is principly more complex than a real database program in my naive (database program wise) view. Excel works but it is largely only good for keeping the books, rather than the real work.
Honestly the money aspect is the fastest part of the turn. It is all the things that come off that. Ship construction, fleet organization, transport of this and that, research, new designs, upgrades to designs, PCFs, patrol forces, orders to survey forces, SOPs. All that is where the time is. The budget is the least of it, and the only part that Excel is good at is the pure balance sheet stuff.
On Weber and Starfire and that blog. Thanks for putting that up again Matt, it helps...since then Weber fell off my favorite author list..."Honor Harringswine", "Marmalade Sexcapes" being the main reasons. The first safehold book was actually quite enjoyable though... Anyway, what is clear is that with the changes of 3rdR ISW4 battles fail even more than the ones in SAW to follows the interludes. Take the first battle of Justin (or second) where the TFN BCR's engage the bugs...with the 3rdR Dx rules the outcome of an entire SBM load will not be more than a few SDs shield down. I am dubious in the extreme the rules allow more than to happen. The changes both to the SBM, to Dx, and to Improved Multiplex Targeting make that tactic doomed. At 31+ hexs the chance of a missile to hit is base 4, add in +2 from Mi2 and then subtract -3 for ECM and you are at 3. So 30 SBM's fired, mean is 9 impact. That is 27 shots which is only 6 Dx (and I think each SD had that alone) so that is 9 to intercept...or 1 impacts. If ECM can be negated (and I don't think it can at that range as the missile is using onboard terminal guidance) that goes up to mean 18 impacts and 72 shots required (90 available to the data group) so 2 impacts. Also at that range you only know it is a SD nothing more...you have to have a ship or something inside of 30 hexs with an Xr to get "class" information and even then I'm not sure exactly. I can't recall what they did to identify them or maybe they didn't. I doubt the BCs would last very long in the phase where they were using CMs either...the SDs are harder targets and the Dx-3 ship group is as good as the Dxz with the exception that the SDs will loose Z earlier. Regardless the tech changes make the battle plan in the book utterly senseless.
The changes to pointdefence rules really really change things. But also as we found out when we tried "When Enemies Join Hands..." and came up with "...Rigillians dance on their graves." I mean really F2's with onboard fighter laser against F0's with guns? Ignore the F0's and hit the carriers...destroy them or cripple their bays and then destroy the light task force with fighter missile strikes into blindspots. We stopped after a short time. The only way the Rigillians can loose that battle is if they put their ships at the WP...and why in the name of Gods green earth would you do that? I had them DF down, and the strike went in with Ls packs...configured for a dog fight I thought I had to clear out the fighter first strike then come back configured for anti-shipping strikes...then when I realized the advantage I had I switched to engaging ships then realized idiot...engage the carrier NOT the DDE...then we stopped as we could see where this was going.
The game needs a transition to the computer. Actually such a thing exists it is called Space Empires IV or Space Empires V and is essentially starfire on a computer. Malfador Machinations...independent gaming company makes it. But really this is almost something that screams "console game" to me. It isn't graphically complex or computationally difficult so this is game that could run well on your big screen tv from your xbox or whatever. But even just having a computer board to play on would make life easier for Starslayer and I as we are physically seperated by 8 hours of train travel.
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Ok, I'm going to skip a lot of the quotes or this could get longer than my fiction postings... ;)
First, on the game and computer support - I'm pretty much useless there, but I will pass on what I can. I parrot things fairly well, but actually understanding what you are talking about with the different programs, spreadsheets, databases, etc - is pretty much lost on me. Sorry, just the limits of the person talking to you.
And I have heard of SE IV and V, but have no idea what they are like. I have heard from other folks on the SDS forums that they even (at least in some versions as I understand it) give some credit or such to SF. Which is fine with me. You can copyright text, but not game mechanics as I understand. So if the game plays like SF but doesn't copy the rules, it isn't infringing on protected material. But I'm not a lawyer.
On whether Webber is a good author or not, I like the SF novels of his (Ok, the bugs got a little over the deep end in parts, but the story wasn't horrible to me), read a couple of the HH novels and didn't dislike them - but wasn't super fond of them so didn't pursue the series. And haven't read anything else by him. But he does a better job of writing than pretty much anyone posting fiction to the SDS site - so like him or not he is still a step up from the rest of us.
SF needs a story, and all that Webber put together is off limits. The fact that more can't be created from what he wrote limits the ability to support the 3e materials if they were republished as no new works could be made if they based themselves off of the old materials. And what would be the point of gutting the 3e works so you could make new material for the game without any reference to what it had been?
So I am hoping that whatever story gets put together for the TSU is good, and can become the basis for a new series of materials that will be based off of it.
As for issues with the rules (ie, point defense, ship designs, 'shoot till they pop', etc...), there will always be some part of the rules that isn't perfect. Ok, most parts if you push them to the limits. But that has never been a game-breaker before and I don't see it as one now. If you love 3e you put up with the 1000 types of missiles, etc. Same with the other versions. I don't think game mechanics (on the table top) will kill the game. I actually see SF's mechanics as one of its strengths.
ESF is kind of a problem as it makes the game far less interesting. There are a few different optional rules that are offered in Ultra and Solar. We have our own that is a variation of one. It is simply that any formation of ships greater than 9 in a hex takes a -1 to hit and on D intercept numbers for every multiple of 10 (with sqns counting as a ship). So you can't stack your 25 ship fleet in a hex without taking a -2 to hit and -2 on point defense. This doesn't completely fix it - as some players will still try to get around it by using 'clumps' of 9 ships in adjacent hexes.
Now, the game issues with econ - that is another beast. When Matt used the word 'scalable' - that is probably the best I have ever heard it put. The econ needs to be capable of 'adjusting' to what the players want. If they want a game that can be played in a small series of systems in less than 100 turns and still 'go somewhere' - then it will need a different rate of econ than a P&P game that the players want to last at least 500 turns.
How to write rules to allow the econ to scale with the game...don't really have a clue how to do that without generating a MASS of text that in the end would still be rather vague....
This could take some thought. Maybe a lot.
As for the Quick Start, I am glad you like the idea.
It exists, and is a free download over at the SDS site. Grab a copy if you want. It won't set you back anything. And it is handy for teaching the kids. A few of the members over there have done just that with them.
And if (hopefully when) a set of rules in that 150 ish page size becomes available (hopefully in a POD format) I intend to take a bunch of copies of those QSRs and the 'mid sized' book to some of my local game shops and see if I can generate a few new players. Getting my family together for a few table top battles during the 'game nights' at the shops will probably help that along. I am not big on doing that now as the only rules I would have to offer them are rather 'intimidating' when you get past the 4 page QSR.
And lastly, perhaps most important, advertising and 'the hook'.
Advertising, or perhaps I should say marketing/business is pretty much greek to me. That I leave to the folks who are 'business types'. I just want to get SF to where if someone buys it - that customer will like what they get. In the end, that is what will get them to come back.
Now, 'the hook', is probably something I can help with. I just don't know what direction it will be going. I'm not the world's best writer, but I do try. And if I can help with putting together a story that will make SF interesting again - well, that is what I enjoy in my off time.
But I do appreciate the huge amount of responses. This definitely gives me more than what I had before, and some new ideas to throw out to the rest of the folks working on SF. The amount of thought that went into them tells me this is an issue that means something to you.
You all have my thanks and appreciation.
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I think the first thing I want to say because maybe I'm not being clear. I like 3rdR but I also like GSF. It fixes some things that were clearly wrong in 3rdR. In both cases there is stuff I like and stuff I don't. I don't play GSF because I could never convince the München locals to play it due to lack of computer support. The single thing that for me that stands out in GSF is the whole tech tree and research system that is the best change they made. It makes each game new and different...if well the weapons themelves were so damn homongenized.
Hi Paul. I don't own GSF. It's the only version of Starfire that I don't own. However, I will say that there's something to be said conceptually for tech trees. Maybe not exactly as they exist in Ultra (which I presume to be very similar to those in GSF), but conceptually. And its R&D model does create more uncertainty because you don't really know when you'll succeed, whereas with the ISF model, you have a pretty decent idea how long it'll take with average rolls to complete whatever project you're working on, be it a TL research or developing some tech system.
As for the weapons feeling homogenized, well yeah, a lack of good fluff will do that, won't it? ;)
What I don't like about specifically SM2's economic changes (and these carry through with only minor modifications to GSF) is that the economy always grows and at some point it goes over the cliff to the "rich get richer faster and faster." GSF pushes that point back by making stuff more expensive and I understand why Marvin did that. For the games he likes, it will solve the problem. To me it is just kicking the can down the road as opposed to dealing with the problem. My solution is unfortunately not going to be popular. You have to make there be a cost to your empire. Buoys, Space Yards, mines, IDEW, etc have to cost money so that as you empire grows so to does your maintenance fee, to the point where you might not colonize a system since it costs you money for a long time before it brings in money. Or you may need to accept that a system is going to be a net drain but is strategically vital. The whole "corruption" shlock they put into Civilization games. Otherwise SF's economy is purely compound interest and it is only a question of what the rate of interest is. By making things simplier and easier and most importantly basically free in SM2 the net result was an increase in empire size and fleet size that both leads to more paperwork and to me unfun battles, since even starfire breaks down at 100s of ships per side. You have to do something that isn't just "money" to keep things in check. That can be lower chances of habitables, that can be slower growth, that can be slower hull construction, it can be personal points, whatever...money as a limit fails when the economy tends to infinity as turn number increases. See both Kurt and Steve's games for that. But logisitics and so on is about as fun as a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. But the result of a turn to turn budget in the hundreds of thousands of MCr is not any better. Steve's trial with supply rules for example can really put a slow down to exploration as you need supplies to explore. Requiring military mine layers also changes things. There is an infinite number of possible solutions. I'd be inclined to suggest an administrative fee per system, that goes up if it is more than a month from an ICC. You have to get the economy off the compound interest basis.
I understand what you're talking about here, Paul. But I don't think that increasing costs solves any problems, though some of your suggestions I agree with.
I personally think that the root cause of the problem is any sort of aggressive population (and thus economic) growth. I know that supposedly Marvin believed that people didn't like the slow growth in pure ISF and changed that in SM2. However, it is that growth model that creates the economic explosiveness that you correctly point out. And I don't think that the problem with a broken economic model can be fixed by throwing bucketloads of band-aids at it. I think that the real solution is to attack the root cause of the problem head-on. However, in doing so, would people willingly accept that they'd have to give up any degree of quick growth as the price for solving the economic problem that so many seem to understand exists?
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An example - I've recently typed up the ISF rules for tidelocked planets/moons (see 13.05.01), and it appears that here is where you can cut 1/2 a page of rules. I mean, seriously, who ever bothers with tidelocked planets/moons? Does it make a difference that the moons are tidelocked - or is simply an un-necessary feature?
To me, what happened in Ultra, is that there are a lot of features that are similar to ISF's tidelocked planets - where they could be easily removed without changing the gameplay.....
And as to fluff - a single line here and there (which is very useful in breaking the drudgery of reading the rules) is vastly different to pages and pages of rules that serve very little game purpose (aside from making the rules "astronomically correct" - or other similar reason).
Matt, there are two reasons that tidelocking matters.
1. Without tidelocking, there wouldn't be any Type T/ST planets around Red Dwarf stars. ((However, last I read, this belief may not be as correct as once thought. There are some who apparently not believe that it might indeed be possible to tidelocked planets in a RD's narrow hab zone to be somewhat habitable. Somewhat as in a narrow band between the always lit and always dark sides might be habitable, which would then seem to make it a new type of habitable planet.))
2. Tidelocked moons do not rotate. That's the definition, of course. This impacts the firing arcs of PDC's on those moons, which could affect tactical combat.
And the TL rules are actually only 1/2 of a single column of rules on a 2 column page, but I understand your point. Still, there are some people who don't care much about detail in sysgen, and there are some people who are positively anal about it. There are some people who may not bother moving planets thru their orbits. And there are some people who whine about how the 1 sys hex every other month isn't a realistic orbital movement model. What can I say? Different people have different priorities.
To be honest, the comments of "blandness" and "next big system" are different sides of the same coin - and it depends of which side of the fence you sit on as to whether it is a problem or not.
I'm not sure if blandness is the opposite of "next big system" or of a lack of fluff to provide flavor. I lean more towards the latter myself.
Having said that, Marvin is very anti-R3rd (for a variety of reasons), and I can't see that changing any time soon. (An example of the anti-R3rd, is the fact that he doesn't even sell ISF/R3rd ed any more (you can buy some of the supplements, but not the core rules)....)
Actually, it's hard to sell hard copy products that you no longer have in stock. ;)
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Anyway, what is clear is that with the changes of 3rdR ISW4 battles fail even more than the ones in SAW to follows the interludes. Take the first battle of Justin (or second) where the TFN BCR's engage the bugs...with the 3rdR Dx rules the outcome of an entire SBM load will not be more than a few SDs shield down. I am dubious in the extreme the rules allow more than to happen. The changes both to the SBM, to Dx, and to Improved Multiplex Targeting make that tactic doomed. At 31+ hexs the chance of a missile to hit is base 4, add in +2 from Mi2 and then subtract -3 for ECM and you are at 3. So 30 SBM's fired, mean is 9 impact. That is 27 shots which is only 6 Dx (and I think each SD had that alone) so that is 9 to intercept...or 1 impacts. If ECM can be negated (and I don't think it can at that range as the missile is using onboard terminal guidance) that goes up to mean 18 impacts and 72 shots required (90 available to the data group) so 2 impacts. Also at that range you only know it is a SD nothing more...you have to have a ship or something inside of 30 hexs with an Xr to get "class" information and even then I'm not sure exactly. I can't recall what they did to identify them or maybe they didn't. I doubt the BCs would last very long in the phase where they were using CMs either...the SDs are harder targets and the Dx-3 ship group is as good as the Dxz with the exception that the SDs will loose Z earlier. Regardless the tech changes make the battle plan in the book utterly senseless.
A big change was in the Mi# system. The Mi# system as Dave envisioned it allowed you to buy as many levels of Mi# as you wanted. If you wanted a Mi10 system and were willing to plunk down the Mc for it, it was yours. And the ISW4 battles you describe were written under that assumption, both in the novels and in the original ISW4 scenario book manuscript.
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Matt, there are two reasons that tidelocking matters.
1. Without tidelocking, there wouldn't be any Type T/ST planets around Red Dwarf stars. ((However, last I read, this belief may not be as correct as once thought. There are some who apparently not believe that it might indeed be possible to tidelocked planets in a RD's narrow hab zone to be somewhat habitable. Somewhat as in a narrow band between the always lit and always dark sides might be habitable, which would then seem to make it a new type of habitable planet.))
2. Tidelocked moons do not rotate. That's the definition, of course. This impacts the firing arcs of PDC's on those moons, which could affect tactical combat.
And the TL rules are actually only 1/2 of a single column of rules on a 2 column page, but I understand your point. Still, there are some people who don't care much about detail in sysgen, and there are some people who are positively anal about it. There are some people who may not bother moving planets thru their orbits. And there are some people who whine about how the 1 sys hex every other month isn't a realistic orbital movement model. What can I say? Different people have different priorities.
My point is quite simple - is it worth it? By the time you add 1/2 a page here, 1/4 a page there, another page over here - you end up with ~200 pages of rules turning into 350+ pages. You have to ask yourself, is pandering to the anal retentive people at the cost of the average player helping the game or not?
Actually, it's hard to sell hard copy products that you no longer have in stock. ;)
Well, answer this - why isn't R3rd ed rules being sold in electronic format? I know the SDS has it (I gave Cralis a copy that I put together a few years ago) - so why isn't that sold?
Why isn't the UTM sold?
Both of these products are in electronic format, and could easily be sold, so why aren't they???
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My point is quite simple - is it worth it? By the time you add 1/2 a page here, 1/4 a page there, another page over here - you end up with ~200 pages of rules turning into 350+ pages. You have to ask yourself, is pandering to the anal retentive people at the cost of the average player helping the game or not?
Well, not to be picky (or maybe I am), but original 3e/ISF managed to include tidelocking and stay (just) under 200 pages. ;)
Still, I know what you're getting at. But I still maintain that one person's "must have" feature is another person's "optional, and can be cut" item. And yet having said that, I suppose it's the game designer's job to make a decision. Include lots of features and build up page count? Or try to hold page count down and only retain the critical "core" rules?
I actually think that there could be a third answer. Hold page count down with a product that tries to stick to the critical core rules. BUT assemble all the other stuff for some sort of "advanced players" book that could contain those nice, but not critical "features". Things like random events, oddities, graded crews and leaders, etc. Anything that could be removed from the core game without preventing the core game from functioning properly. I think that there might be a pretty fair amount of stuff that falls into this category that people may take for granted.
EDIT: BTW, I should add that pulling out some non-critical rules isn't always as easy as it may seem, since many rules may be cross referenced by other rules. And those cross references have to be yanked as well. Graded crews, for example. I suspect that there are references to graded crews all around the rules and tech systems, talking about how this or that is affected or not affected by crew grade. Of course, on the flip side, I imagine that tide-locked moons' cross references are limited to a small handful of references also in the sysgen section. Anyways, food for thought.
Well, answer this - why isn't R3rd ed rules being sold in electronic format? I know the SDS has it (I gave Cralis a copy that I put together a few years ago) - so why isn't that sold?
At the moment, I can't answer your question without betraying a confidence. Sorry. :-X
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I actually think that there could be a third answer. Hold page count down with a product that tries to stick to the critical core rules. BUT assemble all the other stuff for some sort of "advanced players" book that could contain those nice, but not critical "features". Things like random events, oddities, graded crews and leaders, etc. Anything that could be removed from the core game without preventing the core game from functioning properly. I think that there might be a pretty fair amount of stuff that falls into this category that people may take for granted.
EDIT: BTW, I should add that pulling out some non-critical rules isn't always as easy as it may seem, since many rules may be cross referenced by other rules. And those cross references have to be yanked as well. Graded crews, for example. I suspect that there are references to graded crews all around the rules and tech systems, talking about how this or that is affected or not affected by crew grade. Of course, on the flip side, I imagine that tide-locked moons' cross references are limited to a small handful of references also in the sysgen section. Anyways, food for thought.
As you point out, the problem is that due to the cross referencing, the Core rules then end up being bigger then they would be without the Advanced rules. E.g, All of the rules that cross reference crew grade - there would have to be a paragraph saying "If playing with optional rules on crew grade, then do XXXX, otherwise do YYYY".
And when you have multiple cross referencing (i.e. optional rules of nebulas, with optional rules on tidelocking, with optional rules on racial traits), then even simple rules get complicated (and long) to account for all of the possibilities...
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As you point out, the problem is that due to the cross referencing, the Core rules then end up being bigger then they would be without the Advanced rules. E.g, All of the rules that cross reference crew grade - there would have to be a paragraph saying "If playing with optional rules on crew grade, then do XXXX, otherwise do YYYY".
I'm not sure that it must be that way, but you're right that it's certainly a possibility. That said, arguably, an "advanced players" rule product could handle all of that stuff. if those things were written properly.
Regardless, I fully expect that there'd be differing opinions on what is "core" and what is "non-critical". I might say that the CFN rules are non-critical, and other people might go ballistic at the thought of the CFN rules being yanked from the "core" rules. Or crew grade. Or the NPR Race/Gov't type rules from SM#2. I shudder to think what people might say if I yanked out the things that *I* consider non-critical, given my pre-SM#2 Starfire background. ;)
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Hi Paul. I don't own GSF. It's the only version of Starfire that I don't own. However, I will say that there's something to be said conceptually for tech trees. Maybe not exactly as they exist in Ultra (which I presume to be very similar to those in GSF), but conceptually. And its R&D model does create more uncertainty because you don't really know when you'll succeed, whereas with the ISF model, you have a pretty decent idea how long it'll take with average rolls to complete whatever project you're working on, be it a TL research or developing some tech system.
As for the weapons feeling homogenized, well yeah, a lack of good fluff will do that, won't it? ;)
It is a lot more than a lack of good fluff in GSF, though the one piece of fluff in the captial e-beam tree is just outright wrong as the range and damage of the Ec is less than the that of the E-whatever. The weapons are all essenially identical in terms of damage and range (given how short range the beams are) and the long range weapons are lots of dice rolls with little effect due to poor to hit numbers. It isn't quanititively true what I am saying but looking at the charts the only thing that springs out is that the beam weapons are ordered L-F-E in terms of best to worst due to the fact that L skip shields, while E take now 2 hits to do 1 shield point and then only skip so many A, plus cost more and are larger then L or F. F skips nothing and the range advantage is minimal at best. Develop L, ignore the rest if you are min-max type person otherwise it isn't going to matter much. The long range weapons are pretty much what you like as the differences are even more minimal.
For me I don't see any hook to get the player interested. I certainly can't see people getting passionate and arguing about weapon mixes.
I understand what you're talking about here, Paul. But I don't think that increasing costs solves any problems, though some of your suggestions I agree with.
I personally think that the root cause of the problem is any sort of aggressive population (and thus economic) growth. I know that supposedly Marvin believed that people didn't like the slow growth in pure ISF and changed that in SM2. However, it is that growth model that creates the economic explosiveness that you correctly point out. And I don't think that the problem with a broken economic model can be fixed by throwing bucketloads of band-aids at it. I think that the real solution is to attack the root cause of the problem head-on. However, in doing so, would people willingly accept that they'd have to give up any degree of quick growth as the price for solving the economic problem that so many seem to understand exists?
I agree with you that the root cause needs fixing. My suggestion is basically the one that CIV uses (corruption) to cause your empire to have increased costs as its size increases. The problem in SF economics is that the cost of running your empire increases very slowly (if at all) while your income grows essentially linear to size. This is where the problem comes from. A real empire runs into the problem that simple administration starts costing the world. Starfire has no "cost of empire" due to using a simple compound interest model coupled with extremely fast growth. Look at starslayer's and mine game and you can see the effect of dramatic reduction in growth and ship building speed.
I'm not advocating increasing the costs of things, that is the solution of GSF, it just pushes the can down the road. What I want to see is a "cost of empire" and removal of all the no maintenance objects in the game. I understand why that was done but it is a case of solving one problem and causing or exagerating another. The best solution is to start with a fresh approach to the economics in my view, but then the question is the balance between complexity and ease of play.
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It is a lot more than a lack of good fluff in GSF, though the one piece of fluff in the capital e-beam tree is just outright wrong as the range and damage of the Ec is less than the that of the E-whatever. The weapons are all essentially identical in terms of damage and range (given how short range the beams are) and the long range weapons are lots of dice rolls with little effect due to poor to hit numbers. It isn't quantitatively true what I am saying but looking at the charts the only thing that springs out is that the beam weapons are ordered L-F-E in terms of best to worst due to the fact that L skip shields, while E take now 2 hits to do 1 shield point and then only skip so many A, plus cost more and are larger then L or F. F skips nothing and the range advantage is minimal at best. Develop L, ignore the rest if you are min-max type person otherwise it isn't going to matter much. The long range weapons are pretty much what you like as the differences are even more minimal.
For me I don't see any hook to get the player interested. I certainly can't see people getting passionate and arguing about weapon mixes.
I don't disagree with what you're saying here. The differences between generations are very minor, and heck, the differences between the weapon types are small too. I think that you're probably right about L being the best. I know that Dawn Falcon has told me that L is his favorite (I think) but that he also likes developing E so that when he runs into someone who has strong defenses against laser-using races, he can switch over to E-armed ships and catch'em by surprise.
I agree with you that the root cause needs fixing. My suggestion is basically the one that CIV uses (corruption) to cause your empire to have increased costs as its size increases. The problem in SF economics is that the cost of running your empire increases very slowly (if at all) while your income grows essentially linear to size. This is where the problem comes from. A real empire runs into the problem that simple administration starts costing the world. Starfire has no "cost of empire" due to using a simple compound interest model coupled with extremely fast growth. Look at starslayer's and mine game and you can see the effect of dramatic reduction in growth and ship building speed.
I'm not advocating increasing the costs of things, that is the solution of GSF, it just pushes the can down the road. What I want to see is a "cost of empire" and removal of all the no maintenance objects in the game. I understand why that was done but it is a case of solving one problem and causing or exagerating another. The best solution is to start with a fresh approach to the economics in my view, but then the question is the balance between complexity and ease of play.
Honestly, I don't think that the solution you describe is a root cause fix. I see it as a band-aid. If the problem is growth, then it's grown that must be fixed. of course, you then do go on to talk about reduced growth. I think that the real solution needs to be something along the lines of no growth, or very low growth, perhaps on the order of 1% per year (or 0.1% per month).
Cralis has told me that one of the reasons that Marvin put in such high growth in SM2 was that players didn't like the nearly non-existent growth in ISF and supposedly wanted to see their colonies grow into large populations. But that explosive population growth produces explosive economic growth. Thus, I think that the game is better off accepting very low (or no) population growth as the price for maintaining a more reasonable level of economic expansion.
As for complexity and ease of play, I don't envision any of my potential ideas being any more complex than what exists now, and perhaps even less complex.
EDIT: One other option for tweaking growth that I probably wouldn't use, but is worth mentioning is requiring population growth to be based on PTU's rather than on PU's. I think that it's safe to say that in the PU/PTU model, PTU's are the real measure of population whereas PU's really are an economic measure. If growth were based on PTU's, players would see aggressive economic growth in colonial populations, and then start to see economic growth slowing when population are more mid-range (i.e. Small and Medium), and then growth much more slowly once populations become Large and Very Large.
But the cost of this model is that you'd have to convert each population's PU total to PTU's, apply growth, and reconvert back to PUs, which would be a serious pain in the arse for monthly growth and only slightly less so for yearly growth. But it would probably be one solution that would help curb explosive economic growth.
And it might also help reduce economic explosiveness to ban growth on non-habitable (i.e. Desolate and Extreme) worlds. And if in parallel with PTU based growth, this would ease the burden on the number of calculations needed during growth periods, if only habitable worlds could grow.
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Honestly, I don't think that the solution you describe is a root cause fix. I see it as a band-aid. If the problem is growth, then it's grown that must be fixed. of course, you then do go on to talk about reduced growth. I think that the real solution needs to be something along the lines of no growth, or very low growth, perhaps on the order of 1% per year (or 0.1% per month).
Cralis has told me that one of the reasons that Marvin put in such high growth in SM2 was that players didn't like the nearly non-existent growth in ISF and supposedly wanted to see their colonies grow into large populations. But that explosive population growth produces explosive economic growth. Thus, I think that the game is better off accepting very low (or no) population growth as the price for maintaining a more reasonable level of economic expansion.
As for complexity and ease of play, I don't envision any of my potential ideas being any more complex than what exists now, and perhaps even less complex.
EDIT: One other option for tweaking growth that I probably wouldn't use, but is worth mentioning is requiring population growth to be based on PTU's rather than on PU's. I think that it's safe to say that in the PU/PTU model, PTU's are the real measure of population whereas PU's really are an economic measure. If growth were based on PTU's, players would see aggressive economic growth in colonial populations, and then start to see economic growth slowing when population are more mid-range (i.e. Small and Medium), and then growth much more slowly once populations become Large and Very Large.
But the cost of this model is that you'd have to convert each population's PU total to PTU's, apply growth, and reconvert back to PUs, which would be a serious pain in the arse for monthly growth and only slightly less so for yearly growth. But it would probably be one solution that would help curb explosive economic growth.
And it might also help reduce economic explosiveness to ban growth on non-habitable (i.e. Desolate and Extreme) worlds. And if in parallel with PTU based growth, this would ease the burden on the number of calculations needed during growth periods, if only habitable worlds could grow.
I took a look at PTU growth in a spread sheet. It's amazing how well basing growth on PTU, rather than PU, curbs explosive growth! As you move up from one bracket to the next, relative PU expansion rates decline, though as you grow WITHIN a given bracket, the relative PU growth rate increases until you flip to the next larger bracket. I attribute this to the PTU to PU conversion (the part of the conversion that factors in the PTU's of the next lowest bracket into the conversion process) adding a little wackiness into the overall mix.
Using the Ultra pop table and a 20% yearly PTU growth rate, it took 11 years for a Medium to become Large, 15 years for a Large to become Very Large, and 12 years for a VLg to max out at 3000. (This is ignoring any floating PU caps, and no EL considerations.) I suspect that the reason for the Large's rather high time was due to its PTU conversion rate. I suspect that if its PTU conversion rate was tweaked a little, it'd be entirely possible to make it so that a Lg grew to a VLg in 11-12 years, same as Medium and VLg. Oh, and also, it took 8 year for a Small to grow to a Medium (assuming a minimum Small pop of 201 rather than 181). Again, I attribute this speed to the PTU conversion rate.
Of course, doing PTU based growth may be more of a hassle than some players are willing to put up with, if they're playing P&P. (With computer support, it's entirely invisible, of course.) However, I think that there's a way around it that's a bit less painful. It would involve having a separate PU Growth rate for each bracket that represented an average PU growth rate based on the actual PTU growth rate. That is, if one assumes a 20% yearly PTU growth rate (or about 2% monthly), for a Medium population that translated into average PU growth rate of about 6.55% yearly. Or 3.45% yearly for a VLg. Or 4.85% yearly for a Large. Or 12.3% yearly for a Small. (And 20% yearly for Settlements and below, since 1 PU = 1 PTU for those brackets.) Note that with this method, there is no built-in way to handle transitioning from one pop bracket to the next as is the case with strict PTU based growth. (And BTW, note that these are very rough numbers for the PU Growth rates.)
And another thing that could be used to limit growth on top of this is to get rid of free colonization PTU's. Force players to take PTU's out of their population to get new colonists. However, it's worth noting that this isn't as big a sacrifice as it may sound, particularly for a Very Large population. One might lose all the PTU's you need for colonists in the rounding during a PTU to PU reconversion after growth, given that each VLg PU = 500 PTU's in Ultra, or 450 PTU's in SM#2. Obviously, in populations smaller than VLg, with their lower conversion rates, rounding losses would produce fewer "excess" PTU's (i.e. due to FRD rounding).
Still, I think that isn't a bad thing. It would show that VLg pops can afford to give up population to colonization without any serious impact, whereas Large pops or smaller would feel an impact if they sent out colonists.
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EDIT: One other option for tweaking growth that I probably wouldn't use, but is worth mentioning is requiring population growth to be based on PTU's rather than on PU's. I think that it's safe to say that in the PU/PTU model, PTU's are the real measure of population whereas PU's really are an economic measure. If growth were based on PTU's, players would see aggressive economic growth in colonial populations, and then start to see economic growth slowing when population are more mid-range (i.e. Small and Medium), and then growth much more slowly once populations become Large and Very Large.
But the cost of this model is that you'd have to convert each population's PU total to PTU's, apply growth, and reconvert back to PUs, which would be a serious pain in the arse for monthly growth and only slightly less so for yearly growth. But it would probably be one solution that would help curb explosive economic growth.
PTU growth is a good idea, and as to the "cost" - Two words - PC Support.
I mean, seriously, when you can get Monopoly on the PC, why can't you get Starfire?
You can play Starfire online (through StarfireOnline) - why not modify that to enable single player gaming?
Spreadsheets are O.K. as a minimum, but if Steve can make SA into what it is - why can't a much smaller program be developed to handle the strategic side?
And it might also help reduce economic explosiveness to ban growth on non-habitable (i.e. Desolate and Extreme) worlds. And if in parallel with PTU based growth, this would ease the burden on the number of calculations needed during growth periods, if only habitable worlds could grow.
I don't have a problem with this....
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Starslayer and I apply growth at the per turn rate but use growth turns (in other words it is a factor of 10 slower). We don't allow colonization of asteroids. The growth rate of non-habitables is very low: 50 PU grow by 1.7 PU every 10 turns. We have both got full population home worlds but only by forcing growth have we been able to achieve medium populations on planets that have been settled 170 some turns. It costs nothing to break down PU to make new colonists, I've been doing it all over the place (including on smalls) as it generates significantly more population. The free ptu aren't really a major issue for a player race, only one race in our game has sufficient population centers to avoid PU breakdown. We could have had medium worlds sooner but only by shipping population to them...something neither of us could afford to do until say the last 50-70 turns.
Our income is well behind what Steve or Kurt achieved in the same time. We have had also halved ship construction rates and for the last 20 turns have cut the rate of tech advance in half. It has led to a very different expansion then is typical. We have both had pauses where we consolidated, and frankly when it takes 3+ months to get colonists to a world you start slowing down your expansion. The CFN costs start to become increasingly steep.
Yes just increasing costs is a band aide solution but I only recommend it if you are going to stick with the existing model. I'd rather see a new model that avoids all the mess the at the moment is in the game. As Matt says "computer support." The only thing I don't want to see is some sort of convoluted economic model like victoria 2, that would not be good....but just about anything else would be an improvement.
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Starslayer and I apply growth at the per turn rate but use growth turns (in other words it is a factor of 10 slower). We don't allow colonization of asteroids. The growth rate of non-habitables is very low: 50 PU grow by 1.7 PU every 10 turns. We have both got full population home worlds but only by forcing growth have we been able to achieve medium populations on planets that have been settled 170 some turns. It costs nothing to break down PU to make new colonists, I've been doing it all over the place (including on smalls) as it generates significantly more population. The free ptu aren't really a major issue for a player race, only one race in our game has sufficient population centers to avoid PU breakdown. We could have had medium worlds sooner but only by shipping population to them...something neither of us could afford to do until say the last 50-70 turns.
I have to admit that I like the idea of having to break down PU's into PTU's to get colonists. It forces the players to decide between maximizing growth at home or colonization.
The only "free" PTU's I like are the ones that FRD rounding at growth time might cause to be lost due to that rounding. I have no particular problem with using those rounding loss PTU's for colonists.
Our income is well behind what Steve or Kurt achieved in the same time. We have had also halved ship construction rates and for the last 20 turns have cut the rate of tech advance in half. It has led to a very different expansion then is typical. We have both had pauses where we consolidated, and frankly when it takes 3+ months to get colonists to a world you start slowing down your expansion. The CFN costs start to become increasingly steep.
Paul, i have to admit that I'm not really a fan of slowing things down. I like the faster action. Of course, I'm not really a fan of the CFN either. I'm really old school in that regard. :D (But don't worry. In spite of not being a fan of it, the chances that I'd dump it are slim to none.)
Yes just increasing costs is a band aide solution but I only recommend it if you are going to stick with the existing model. I'd rather see a new model that avoids all the mess the at the moment is in the game. As Matt says "computer support." The only thing I don't want to see is some sort of convoluted economic model like victoria 2, that would not be good....but just about anything else would be an improvement.
Well, I suppose it depends on what one means by "existing model". I tend to think that the very nature of PU/PTU economics changes drastically when pop growth is based on PTUs (either directly or inferentially, i.e. using PU growth #'s that reflect PTU growth #'s). Growth in smaller pop brackets can be rather quick and but it slows as populations move up thru the brackets. The underlying growth rate of the PTU's may remain constant, but the PU/PTU conversion factor causes PU economic expansion to slow down seriously as the conversion factor increases.
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We break down PU to make PTU all the time (or so I would assume for Starslayer), the 10 free ptu you get for a very large world is a drop in the bucket. Even the 100 free ptu for a max sized world isn't sufficient when I go to push my people out, and breaking down a PU isn't a big deal (loss of 2 MCr income compared to gaining 100+ MCr). As for small populations for worlds that are poor or very poor I break them down all the time and shove the people out to the moons. But it took us well over a 100 turns to reach the point where we even had a shot at making a medium population world by forced growth and those to me are worth more as places I can pull 3 PU from to give me 150 PTU for further expanision after letting them grow a few times. Getting 1 PTU free per turn is ok but it doesn't break anything. It is possible this is different in ultra or something but 3rdR free ptu growth is basically icing on the cake.
We wanted a game that played more like the Stars At War and less like the typical Starfire game, as we have done two campaigns before that and we have lots of experience with exploading economic growth.
As for the model...what I mean is that the whole of starfire is based on a compound interest growth formula. The only question is your "rate of return" that you stick in the interest part of the formula. Every investment yields an automatic positive return. The only brake on the system is maintenance costs and that doesn't work particularily well (as Kurt's and Steve's mega-economies can attest to). It is possible to do it in our game (the RM and the Squids both had issues) but that is because our technology was not slowed down right from the start and our tech level is high for our income. I would prefer to see an economic system that is divorsed from a pure MCr economy. But the trick to that is balance...I like a lot of things in Steve's Aurora that way.
The CFN...I first played Starfire with the 2nd edition rules for empire building and had my own freighters. The issue with the CFN is that it is again something that facilitates rapid, easy and cheap expansion of the empire. More to the point it makes it so you settle every rock you find (why not?). It also allows for too many other things (movement of mines, dsb, supplies, etc). Why the colonization rebate is there is a good question. It is a good idea as it minimizes one form of book keeping (logistical book keeping) but it has the effect over time of producing a large and extensively settled empire which generates a book keeping nightmare if you are doing this with a spread sheet, and of course if you look at the above statement generates a further driver to the compound interest growth terms.
I understand why Marvin did these things because for the games he likes they are probably net benificial but in longer running campaigns the effect is death by bookkeeping, death by fleet growth, and death by the economy getting to the point that MCr costs are just not relevant to player decision making. Even implementing those things Steve was trying out in SFA (mine laying systems and supply lines) makes a big difference in terms to keeping stuff under control.
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I am very happy with the growth rates, and ship building times. Prototyping though takes allmost too long, usually a war is over before your prototype hits .. and then you still ahve to build more than 1 of the class. Research slowdown was needed, else, you sually had gained a TL by the time the prototype was done.
Actually, once my homeworld hit 3200 I rarely had broken down PU and just used the free PTU. I gained a second center by amalgenation, but it's in such a deadend location it's usually one turn further away from allmost everywhere. :(.
Seems Paul is far more busy colonising moons. I just went for trice his number of survey fleets and hunted habitables, but 3+ turns to deliver colonists now lead to a consolidation phase for the empire, where I now pile people on worthwhile benigh vr's to make them medium and pay attention to the internal fortification of my gains.
Also noteworthy is that shared populations between partners are much more viable in this game as I started developping some between NPC's and then adopted this for the Thebans and their partner recently. As you sure won't fill up even a benign world in along time, two small populations allmost double the income from the world. (Though it's only in the last 10 turns I really started doing this at all)
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However, I think that there's a way around it that's a bit less painful. It would involve having a separate PU Growth rate for each bracket...
This is what Steve does in Aurora - large population worlds have a much lower growth rate than small worlds. OTOH, I think Steve's algorithm is even more drastic at cutting growth rates for large populations than just using PTU. Using the algorithm PTU_N+1 = (1+rate)*PTU_N gives straight exponential growth in the PTU. Using PU_N+1 = (1+rate)*PU_N gives FASTER THAN EXPONENTIAL growth, since the first few PTU count for more PU as you go to higher brackets. Steve's algorithm is PTU_N+1 = (1+rate(PTU_N))*PU_N, where the rate function goes down as population goes up. If you made it a step function (i.e. only dependent on which PU bracket the population is in) then it shouldn't add much complexity for paper+pencil folks to apply, and you can tune the steps to whatever you want.
John
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This is what Steve does in Aurora - large population worlds have a much lower growth rate than small worlds. OTOH, I think Steve's algorithm is even more drastic at cutting growth rates for large populations than just using PTU. Using the algorithm PTU_N+1 = (1+rate)*PTU_N gives straight exponential growth in the PTU. Using PU_N+1 = (1+rate)*PU_N gives FASTER THAN EXPONENTIAL growth, since the first few PTU count for more PU as you go to higher brackets. Steve's algorithm is PTU_N+1 = (1+rate(PTU_N))*PU_N, where the rate function goes down as population goes up. If you made it a step function (i.e. only dependent on which PU bracket the population is in) then it shouldn't add much complexity for paper+pencil folks to apply, and you can tune the steps to whatever you want.
John
Yes, if one does direct PTU growth, the PTU growth rate is steady at whatever the yearly or monthly rate is. But the overall perceived PU economic growth rate does decrease as you jump from one bracket to the next. Off the top of my head, the perceived PU growth rate for colonial pops (assuming a 20% yearly PTU growth rate) would be 20% yearly for OP-Sttlmt pops, but for VLg pops it would be something on the order of 3.45%. Of course, I can't say how truly mathematically or statistically accurate that 3.45% number is, since all I did was use a simple spreadsheet analysis where I applied 20% yearly PTU growth and converted PTU's to PU each year until the pop exceeded the max size. Then I averaged each of the yearly perceived PU growth rates to get the 3.45% number.
But for game purposes, I think that it'd be better to stick with whole number rates for the PU growth rates by bracket. And if using whole numbers and assuming (for arguments sake at the moment that the PTU growth rate was 20%), the yearly growth rates by bracket would look like this: OP-Sttmnt=20%, Small=12%, Medium=7%, Large=5%, VLg=3%.
It does then beg the question about what to do when growth causes PU totals to cross to the next larger bracket. I'm hesitant to say just leave it as is, because I suspect that some people might intentionally try to game the system to get a slightly higher growth rate by shipping off the PTU's that were just enough to cause the PU total to jump brackets. The way to convert those overage PU's (oPU) is to do this: oPU * (rate_1/rate_2) to get the proper number of PU's above the max of the previous bracket, where rate_1 was the conversion rate of the previous pop bracket and rate_2 is the conversion rate of the new pop bracket. The math is easy enough, at least for me. But it's not exactly dirt simple, and not exactly a particularly satisfying solution. :-\ But the only simpler solution I have to bracket jumping is to say that when you bracket jump thru growth, rather than perform some annoying calculations, you just set your new PU total to the min PU value of new pop bracket. But this could be really annoying if your planet had a PU total very close to the of the smaller bracket and growth was going to put the PU total well above the min of the larger bracket.
I suppose that this is what happens when you try to change the "proper" process down to simpler. You lose some of the inherent accuracies in the proper method.
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We break down PU to make PTU all the time (or so I would assume for Starslayer), the 10 free ptu you get for a very large world is a drop in the bucket. Even the 100 free ptu for a max sized world isn't sufficient when I go to push my people out, and breaking down a PU isn't a big deal (loss of 2 MCr income compared to gaining 100+ MCr). As for small populations for worlds that are poor or very poor I break them down all the time and shove the people out to the moons. But it took us well over a 100 turns to reach the point where we even had a shot at making a medium population world by forced growth and those to me are worth more as places I can pull 3 PU from to give me 150 PTU for further expanision after letting them grow a few times. Getting 1 PTU free per turn is ok but it doesn't break anything. It is possible this is different in ultra or something but 3rdR free ptu growth is basically icing on the cake.
We wanted a game that played more like the Stars At War and less like the typical Starfire game, as we have done two campaigns before that and we have lots of experience with exploding economic growth.
As for the model...what I mean is that the whole of starfire is based on a compound interest growth formula.
Well, that's sort of what you're going to get when growth is based on a percentage of the current base's total. It's going to compound no matter what. The only question is how fast. I'd say that SM#2 was clearly way too fast, and even GSF/Ultra is still too fast. Also, I think that there's also the underlying question about whether "growth" in the game is population growth or economic growth. The SM2 and Ultra both call the rule "population growth", but PU's really aren't a measure of population, but of economic output. In truth, the PU (Population Unit) should be called an EU (Economic Unit). And that's where the problem lies. So-called population growth is actually economic growth because the growth is applied to PU not PTU, the true measure of population. And even at 1% per month, that's about 10% per 10-month year, which in real terms would be pretty darned explosive economic growth, I think. Add to that fact that with the PU/PTU conversion factor, the underlying PTU growth is absolutely staggering in larger populations.
This is why I think that the true root cause solution is to base population growth on PTU, whether directly or indirectly. Colonial populations would grow very quickly, but mid-size pops would see their economic growth slowing, and Large-ish pops would see their economic growth hitting far more reasonable (and slow) levels.
The only question is your "rate of return" that you stick in the interest part of the formula. Every investment yields an automatic positive return. The only brake on the system is maintenance costs and that doesn't work particularly well (as Kurt's and Steve's mega-economies can attest to).
It doesn't help that a number of things in 3rdR (and later versions) don't have to pay any maintenance, such as ship yards, machine shops, automated weapons, and so forth.
And no maint on automated weapons (mines, DSB's, etc.) provides no limit on their usage. With maint on AW's, you'd probably only emplace them in times of need. But without maint, there's no penalty for just dumping them out there.
Also, I don't see how one produces an uncertainty of return on the investments without seriously complicating an already complex game. For example, I suppose that one could have some sort of stronger version of the IEPP (ISF rule 19.03.05) that didn't hit until after the colonial population had been established on the world for a random number of turns. But if colonial populations were getting wiped out by deadly local diseases, thus destroying the investment, it might only encourage players to care more about other investments, rather than take the risk. And of course they're not going to invest in something with a negative return unless there's one darned good reason to do so that's not economic. And I'm not too sure how many players would think that it was fun to have one of their colony worlds wiped out in this way. And since the idea of this and any game is to have fun, I'm not entirely sure that it's something that should be a required rule. Optional? Perhaps, but not required.
The CFN...I first played Starfire with the 2nd edition rules for empire building and had my own freighters. The issue with the CFN is that it is again something that facilitates rapid, easy and cheap expansion of the empire. More to the point it makes it so you settle every rock you find (why not?).
I'm not certain about what you really mean by "why not?". "Why not?" because doing so is a good, relatively inexpensive investment. Or "why not?" because you think that colonizing such "rocks" should be a good thing on its own merit?
I can see that an argument could be made that making the colonization of every "rock" isn't necessarily a good thing. Perhaps colonization costs for Desolate and Extreme worlds could be increased. But of course there will be a tipping point beyond which it will not be cost effective to engage in colonization of such "rocks", or at least the ROI will be so high that players won't want to spend the money on such colonization efforts.
Of course, I also think that SM#2 made the cost and ease of colonizing all those "rocks" so much easier and less expensive that it became a reasonable strategy to do so. Of course, I think that a reason for this was that Marvin was trying to make a conscious effort to create an alternate growth strategy to exploration and seeking out trade partners, in part because the "exploration to seek out trade partners" strategy can be rather random, since you have no control over when and how often you'll encounter NPR's in general and friendly NPR's in particular. OTOH, the colonize every rock strategy creates a LOT of separate populations that have to be tracked which seems like a real nightmare for a p&p gamer (particularly all those separate little OP's in Asteroid Belts).
Also, I always like the "go forth and explore" strategy because it inevitably lead to wars, which to me seemed like the entire point of the game.
It also allows for too many other things (movement of mines, dsb, supplies, etc).
Agreed. The CFN and Mines/DSB bug me in particular. I'm no military historian, but it seems to me that mines don't get transported and laid by civilians. That's a job for military personnel, and Imperial FT's. And requiring military FT's would put a bit of a dampener on mine-laying since you'd have to actually build your own mine-layers and move them to wherever you need the mines laid.
Why the colonization rebate is there is a good question.
Paul, I think that the reason for the rebate is to make the CFN a better deal than using Imperial FT's for colonization. I think that if one built some imperial FT's and compared the results vs CFN costs, you'd find that Imp FT's are probably a slightly better deal than the CFN for colonization UNLESS the rebate exists.
It is a good idea as it minimizes one form of book keeping (logistical book keeping) but it has the effect over time of producing a large and extensively settled empire which generates a book keeping nightmare if you are doing this with a spread sheet, and of course if you look at the above statement generates a further driver to the compound interest growth terms.
Something that bugs me about the CFN is that it's 8 pages of rules to simulate what you wouldn't need any additional pages of rules to cover if one just used imperial FT's in the first place. If one uses Imp FT's all the existing rules for pretty much everything handle what needs to be handled for one's "military transport command" to run. But with the CFN, you need additional rules to SIMULATE what Imp FT's do without added rules.
People complain about feature creep and increased page counts. Well, the CFN is a good example of those two things.
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Of course, I also think that SM#2 made the cost and ease of colonizing all those "rocks" so much easier and less expensive that it became a reasonable strategy to do so. Of course, I think that a reason for this was that Marvin was trying to make a conscious effort to create an alternate growth strategy to exploration and seeking out trade partners, in part because the "exploration to seek out trade partners" strategy can be rather random, since you have no control over when and how often you'll encounter NPR's in general and friendly NPR's in particular. OTOH, the colonize every rock strategy creates a LOT of separate populations that have to be tracked which seems like a real nightmare for a p&p gamer (particularly all those separate little OP's in Asteroid Belts).
Also, I always like the "go forth and explore" strategy because it inevitably lead to wars, which to me seemed like the entire point of the game.
The problem is, that in the pre-SM#2 games, "Go Forth and Explore" was the only winning strategy. The winner was the player who found (and befriended) the most NPR's in the shortest amount of time - which really led to economic growth!
The SDS made a number of changes (i.e. reduing the colonisation costs, adding the penalties to higher political states, made colonisation easier through the introduction of the CFN) to make "Stay at Home" a viable strategy for those empires that got trapped in pockets.
Agreed. The CFN and Mines/DSB bug me in particular. I'm no military historian, but it seems to me that mines don't get transported and laid by civilians. That's a job for military personnel, and Imperial FT's. And requiring military FT's would put a bit of a dampener on mine-laying since you'd have to actually build your own mine-layers and move them to wherever you need the mines laid.
I agree with the idea, but can see a little bit of a double standard.
Missiles are carried by merchant ships, and the only difference between a DSB and a missile, is that after a missile is unloaded, is is then grabbed by another ship - whereas the DSB is left there and turn on.
I agree that the rule change would be a good idea - but I can see arguements about double standards.....
Something that bugs me about the CFN is that it's 8 pages of rules to simulate what you wouldn't need any additional pages of rules to cover if one just used imperial FT's in the first place. If one uses Imp FT's all the existing rules for pretty much everything handle what needs to be handled for one's "military transport command" to run. But with the CFN, you need additional rules to SIMULATE what Imp FT's do without added rules.
People complain about feature creep and increased page counts. Well, the CFN is a good example of those two things.
Hehe - here I'm going to disagree.
My first exposure to starfire was reading ISF - and when I got to the part where everything had to be shipped (missiles, mainteance, colonisation, income, etc.) I can remember thinking "what a paperwork nightmare".
Having no CFN would mean doubling the number of ships (in the creation of the IFN), and tripling the number of ship movements (as afterall, quite a bit of the military ships are sitting still watching WP's, etc.).
While the CFN has made the rules larger, they have also dramatically decreased the paperwork overhead of running a game.... Which to me, is well worth it.
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The problem is, that in the pre-SM#2 games, "Go Forth and Explore" was the only winning strategy. The winner was the player who found (and befriended) the most NPR's in the shortest amount of time - which really led to economic growth!
The SDS made a number of changes (i.e. reducing the colonisation costs, adding the penalties to higher political states, made colonisation easier through the introduction of the CFN) to make "Stay at Home" a viable strategy for those empires that got trapped in pockets.
I'm not entirely sure that I agree with "made colonisation easier through the introduction of the CFN", though I agree with the others. I think that one could reduce colonization costs without the CFN being a factor or the reason for those reduced costs.
As for "Stay at Home" being a viable strategy, I think that I'd put it a little differently. If the empiers that aren't bottled up are aggressively colonizing, how is "stay at home" really any different from what the other guys are doing? The difference with the change is that one can fairly argue that the Stuck at homes have something they can be doing while they're bottled up, but it's not really an "alternative" strategy if those who aren't bottled up and expanding are also doing it. Of course, that may be a bit of a semantic argument.
I'm no military historian, but it seems to me that mines don't get transported and laid by civilians. That's a job for military personnel, and Imperial FT's. And requiring military FT's would put a bit of a dampener on mine-laying since you'd have to actually build your own mine-layers and move them to wherever you need the mines laid.
I agree with the idea, but can see a little bit of a double standard.
Missiles are carried by merchant ships, and the only difference between a DSB and a missile, is that after a missile is unloaded, is is then grabbed by another ship - whereas the DSB is left there and turn on.
I agree that the rule change would be a good idea - but I can see arguments about double standards.....
Let's say that you have a munitions depot on your homeworld, and a frontier system with a WP that connects to a known hostile. I could see civilian FT's carrying the mines/DSB's to a CFN facility in the frontier system, but the mines/DSB's should be transferred to actual minelayers who transport and lay them near the "hostile" WP, since it's a potentially dangerous area.
Regarding missiles, actually, it could be the same thing. They could transport the ordnance from a nice safe depot to another safe depot, but the CFN shouldn't be meeting an imperial fleet in hostile space for remunitioning. That should be the job of a Imperial munitions FT.
So, there really doesn't need to be any double standard. The CFN should only be transporting munitions from CFN depot to CFN depot.
Hehe - here I'm going to disagree.
My first exposure to starfire was reading ISF - and when I got to the part where everything had to be shipped (missiles, mainteance, colonisation, income, etc.) I can remember thinking "what a paperwork nightmare".
Having no CFN would mean doubling the number of ships (in the creation of the IFN), and tripling the number of ship movements (as afterall, quite a bit of the military ships are sitting still watching WP's, etc.).
While the CFN has made the rules larger, they have also dramatically decreased the paperwork overhead of running a game.... Which to me, is well worth it.
I guess that I'd rather move virtual ships (Imperial FT's) than double-virtual ships (CFN FT's). And I'd rather manage ships (Imp FT's) than pools of H and Q.
It's a philosophical thing for me. Starfire is a game about ships, so i want to move ships, not manage amorphous pools of holds and quarters.
As for the CFN and size of the rules, that's the entire point about feature creep. A feature has been added that you like. But there are obviously going to be other features that have been added that other people like. You like the benefits of the CFN as you see them. Other people may like the benefits of more highly detailed system generation, for example. Or galactic oddities, or random events, or NPR gov't/racial types, or unusual races, or crew grade, or graded leaders.
Different people have different tastes. But if I were to go seriously minimalistic, I'd end up ticking off a lot of players who like all those features. Some stuff that people do like or would like could easily be put in a separate "Advanced Players" book, particularly if it's content that currently doesn't exist in 3e. But stuff that's already in 3e could be very difficult to cull out of the rules, due to all the existing cross references, which I've already mentioned.
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It does then beg the question about what to do when growth causes PU totals to cross to the next larger bracket. I'm hesitant to say just leave it as is, because I suspect that some people might intentionally try to game the system to get a slightly higher growth rate by shipping off the PTU's that were just enough to cause the PU total to jump brackets. The way to convert those overage PU's (oPU) is to do this: oPU * (rate_1/rate_2) to get the proper number of PU's above the max of the previous bracket, where rate_1 was the conversion rate of the previous pop bracket and rate_2 is the conversion rate of the new pop bracket. The math is easy enough, at least for me. But it's not exactly dirt simple, and not exactly a particularly satisfying solution. :-\ But the only simpler solution I have to bracket jumping is to say that when you bracket jump thru growth, rather than perform some annoying calculations, you just set your new PU total to the min PU value of new pop bracket. But this could be really annoying if your planet had a PU total very close to the of the smaller bracket and growth was going to put the PU total well above the min of the larger bracket.
I suppose that this is what happens when you try to change the "proper" process down to simpler. You lose some of the inherent accuracies in the proper method.
I think this paragraph goes to the heart of Matt's comments about "is the rule really necessary". I actually considered this factor when I made my post, and I intentionally left it out because it falls under the "So What" principle, i.e. "So what if there's this particular glitch - will it have a substantive effect on the game". And the reason I think this one goes to the heart is that the effect is smaller than the approximation errors that have already gone into the game mechanic in question. Before I worried about band crossing, I would be much more worried about things like climate, economic strength, or even natural variation on population growth. If one were designing a computer version, one could use the "exact" formula (but even then, I would argue that it consumes programmer time that could be more valuably spent elsewhere). In a paper and pencil game intended to appeal to a large audience, it is much more important that the method for calculating the new value be absolutely dead simple than that mild exploits such as the one you described exist, especially if those exploits could be reinterpreted as government responding to the wishes of the people (population grows faster because people like less crowded planets, so start shipping people off-planet when the population reaches a certain threshhold).
I guess what I'm trying to say is that the Starfire community has a lot of people who enjoy these sort of detail-oriented calculations (I include myself in this category). I agree with Matt (or was it Paul) that if the game is going to have broad appeal as a paper and pencil game, the tendency to cater to this constituency through complex, detailed rule sets must be resisted. If, on the other hand, the intent is to go after this constituency, then it has to come with the realization that the player community might be to small to support the game from an economic standpoint.
John
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I think this paragraph goes to the heart of Matt's comments about "is the rule really necessary". I actually considered this factor when I made my post, and I intentionally left it out because it falls under the "So What" principle, i.e. "So what if there's this particular glitch - will it have a substantive effect on the game". And the reason I think this one goes to the heart is that the effect is smaller than the approximation errors that have already gone into the game mechanic in question. Before I worried about band crossing, I would be much more worried about things like climate, economic strength, or even natural variation on population growth. If one were designing a computer version, one could use the "exact" formula (but even then, I would argue that it consumes programmer time that could be more valuably spent elsewhere). In a paper and pencil game intended to appeal to a large audience, it is much more important that the method for calculating the new value be absolutely dead simple than that mild exploits such as the one you described exist, especially if those exploits could be reinterpreted as government responding to the wishes of the people (population grows faster because people like less crowded planets, so start shipping people off-planet when the population reaches a certain threshhold).
I also think that one could argue that perhaps the PU/PTU style of economics may be a bit too complex for a p&p game except for the most detail oriented players. Maybe a simpler, more abstracted model that would be better suited to p&p would be better. One that relied on simpler calculations. But it should be noted that a simpler, more abstract economic model might also not support things that PU/PTU does. Incremental colonization, for example. Or at least incremental to the level of detail that the PTU supports. Something to think about.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that the Starfire community has a lot of people who enjoy these sort of detail-oriented calculations (I include myself in this category). I agree with Matt (or was it Paul) that if the game is going to have broad appeal as a paper and pencil game, the tendency to cater to this constituency through complex, detailed rule sets must be resisted. If, on the other hand, the intent is to go after this constituency, then it has to come with the realization that the player community might be to small to support the game from an economic standpoint.
John
I'd add to those last couple sentences that one has to realize that the people who are committed to supporting Starfire within SDS and volunteering their time to do so are going to tend to be people who probably lean more towards the more detailed game than the simpler game. And those people many not have it in them to want to give their time and efforts to support the type of game that they themselves wouldn't enjoy.
SO now it's sort of a 3 edged sword. ;)
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I'm not entirely sure that I agree with "made colonisation easier through the introduction of the CFN", though I agree with the others. I think that one could reduce colonization costs without the CFN being a factor or the reason for those reduced costs.
Oh I would - with the pre-SM#2 rules, you had to individually track all of the IFN ships, and schedule it so that the required amount of H and Q arrive within the required time frame. With SM#2, it is a lot simpler and easier. This is one (of the few ;D) cases where more rules equals simpler play (as opposed to more rules = more complexities).
As for "Stay at Home" being a viable strategy, I think that I'd put it a little differently. If the empiers that aren't bottled up are aggressively colonizing, how is "stay at home" really any different from what the other guys are doing? The difference with the change is that one can fairly argue that the Stuck at homes have something they can be doing while they're bottled up, but it's not really an "alternative" strategy if those who aren't bottled up and expanding are also doing it. Of course, that may be a bit of a semantic argument.
Either I missed your point (likely), or I think you missed mine. With agressive colonisation, you can get ROI's of around 5 to 10%. However, if you are stuck in a limited number of systems, your ROI is only going to be in the order of 3% - which means that in the long term you will lose.
So, to avoid the "stay at home" player from giving up (as they know that they are going to lose), the ROI for the "stay at home" strategy had to improve.
I agree with the idea, but can see a little bit of a double standard.
Missiles are carried by merchant ships, and the only difference between a DSB and a missile, is that after a missile is unloaded, is is then grabbed by another ship - whereas the DSB is left there and turn on.
I agree that the rule change would be a good idea - but I can see arguments about double standards.....
Let's say that you have a munitions depot on your homeworld, and a frontier system with a WP that connects to a known hostile. I could see civilian FT's carrying the mines/DSB's to a CFN facility in the frontier system, but the mines/DSB's should be transferred to actual minelayers who transport and lay them near the "hostile" WP, since it's a potentially dangerous area.
Regarding missiles, actually, it could be the same thing. They could transport the ordnance from a nice safe depot to another safe depot, but the CFN shouldn't be meeting an imperial fleet in hostile space for remunitioning. That should be the job of a Imperial munitions FT.
So, there really doesn't need to be any double standard. The CFN should only be transporting munitions from CFN depot to CFN depot.
But the problem is, that at the moment the CFN can operate in contested systems. For your idea to work, you would need to outlaw the CFN working in contested systems.
I guess that I'd rather move virtual ships (Imperial FT's) than double-virtual ships (CFN FT's). And I'd rather manage ships (Imp FT's) than pools of H and Q.
It's a philosophical thing for me. Starfire is a game about ships, so i want to move ships, not manage amorphous pools of holds and quarters.
I agree - Starfire is for moving ships - but I don't want to be bogged down tracking every little FT in the empire - that grows old quickly. I know it's subjective, (as you pointed out below), but my attention to detail ends before I get to that level of detail.
As for the CFN and size of the rules, that's the entire point about feature creep. A feature has been added that you like. But there are obviously going to be other features that have been added that other people like. You like the benefits of the CFN as you see them. Other people may like the benefits of more highly detailed system generation, for example. Or galactic oddities, or random events, or NPR gov't/racial types, or unusual races, or crew grade, or graded leaders.
Different people have different tastes. But if I were to go seriously minimalistic, I'd end up ticking off a lot of players who like all those features. Some stuff that people do like or would like could easily be put in a separate "Advanced Players" book, particularly if it's content that currently doesn't exist in 3e. But stuff that's already in 3e could be very difficult to cull out of the rules, due to all the existing cross references, which I've already mentioned.
There are features that make the game simpler (i.e. the CFN), and there are others that make the game more complex (i.e. tidelocking). I know it's a subjective issue, but I'm all for keeping the game simple and easy to play - as I would prefer to spend my time fighting battles then getting bogged down cross-referencing tables ....
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By "Why Not?" I mean simply "why not colonize everything you can colonize?" Every investment in colonization you make, even a moon 12 transits from your homeworld yields a postive income shift the turn after it is emplaced. Since every investment yields a positive outcome why not make every such investment that you can? The arguement against it is only "you could have done something else with a better rate of return." And that is a weak argument unless you have a functional crystal ball as you never know what the future will bring. I have been investing in moons mainly to build up supply chains for my exploration forces, unless Starslayer was refering to my secondary colonization...as all rich or better rocks in my systems tends to get colonized relatively soon after I build up 170 or so PU on the habitables.
It is compounded in Starfire as a lot of things as you said, and I agree completely, have no maintenace costs. The results is an explosive growth in DSB-L, IDEW, Mines, and Pods. The fact that we have to have mine layers, mine tenders, colliers, missile resupply ships, etc has dramatically changed our game. Steve's rules he was experimenting with at the end of SFA were a good step forward. Weber's TFN for example had a massive support capacity, and a huge investment in bases compared to any typical starfire campaign. Also diverting income into building support ships also reduces fleet sizes as yard space, money, and maintenance funds are therefore reduced.
I don't understand why you think the economics of starfire are complex. Could the game be simplier? Colonize, invest in IU whatever you like in both cases your economy grows. There is nothing to economics in starfire it is just compound interest growth. That is the problem with the economic system/model. There is, as I said before, no "cost for empire" so it produces a brain dead simple economic system. Matt is also correct SM2 changed it from "befriend the most NPRs" to "find the habitables soonest." It is why I would like a different model rather than trying to fix something that is at its heart unfixable (as the math is what it is). We stress tested the starfire economy in our München campaigns, Starslayer as one of the SMs can comment better but higher growth then I bother with is easily achievable.
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I meant the secondary rockball colonisation.
The need for Minelayers, colliers etc. sure changes things. It defenitely backfired on a fleet or two went they forgot supply ships.
I eprsonally though would just use the mine laying rules as written, but needing a ship in place (not the cfn). Mineracks etc. (especially as they can't store mines in SFA) just added a bit too much aditional complexity even though they are a neat idea.. when you have to replace them with H and then adjust build costs... a bit of a hassle.
The Munich campaign collapsed when battles started taking several days, most peoples economies were between 500k and a million, and the main NPR antagonist hit over 2 million .. all in turn 75. All those ex, ct, and astreoids managed to hit the limitations of the acess database, on top, and I was getting glitches when advancing turns etc, and the database hit 300 MB pre-compression.
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I meant the secondary rockball colonisation.
The need for Minelayers, colliers etc. sure changes things. It definitely backfired on a fleet or two went they forgot supply ships.
I personally though would just use the mine laying rules as written, but needing a ship in place (not the cfn). Mineracks etc. (especially as they can't store mines in SFA) just added a bit too much additional complexity even though they are a neat idea.. when you have to replace them with H and then adjust build costs... a bit of a hassle.
Mineracks? Minelayers are really just freighters with some tractor beams, nothing particularly exotic.And the idea behinnd requiring the use of actual minelayers is to force players to build those actual minelayers and provide for the capacity to lay minefields where and whenever needed, and not be able to depend on the miraculous CFN to do it, particularly when laying mines really isn't a civilian's job.
The Munich campaign collapsed when battles started taking several days, most peoples economies were between 500k and a million, and the main NPR antagonist hit over 2 million .. all in turn 75. All those ex, ct, and astreoids managed to hit the limitations of the acess database, on top, and I was getting glitches when advancing turns etc, and the database hit 300 MB pre-compression.
A number of points. I'd say that a big part of it is that SM#2's growth is vastly too fast, at 25% yearly PU growth for medium pops and above, 50% yearly PU growth for Small pops or below on habitables, and 25% yearly PU growth even on non-habitables. And on top of that add in a TLF that may be too generous. That's certainly a formula for hugely explosive economic growth, particularly when everyone is probably colonizing every little rock in sight.
Also, I realize that being able to colonize every little rock in sight represents an alternative strategy, but it's also a formula for much great complexity when you have to start tracking gazillions of those little rocks' outposts and colonies, not to mention allowing growth on all of those rocks. And in a p&p game, adding gazillions those little rocks to track doesn't seem like a good thing to me. I mean, sure, in theory, it provides a nice, afforable alternative strategy for the empire that's blocked from further exploration. But it seems that in practice, it also creates a massive p&p paperwork nightmare. And even eventually a nightmare for a database as well.
As for the poor database, colonizing all those rocks (and in particular the huge numbers of rocks, 5 per AB sys hex, in Asteroid Belts) certainly doesn't help keep down the number of records that the DB was having to track. And By "ex" I assume you mean EX as in EXplorer type vessels. And yes, when you have a set of survey rules that limits the number of "X" to 1 per ship, it drives the game towards building a great number of the smallest hulls you can build to be survey ships, which only places more stress on the DB.
Also, I'd think that having to track crew grade for every single ship in existence wouldn't be good for the storage capacity of the DB either. Personally, I've never used the crew grade rules because I never wanted to track my ships individually, until absolutely necessary. If I had 30 ABC-class DD's in a given fleet, they were just a single line item in the fleet "30 ABC DD's", not 30 separate line items. The only time that i'd track individual ships was when they were damaged and had to head back to a shipyard for repairs. But after being repaired, the DD became part of the collective pile of DD's of that class. I've always thought that crew grade was one of the most gawd-awful rules in 3rd edition, and vastly worse than personnel points. (PP's were always relatively easy to manage to me, in comparison to crew grade.) I also found that when fleets were large, having to pay attention to each ship's grade in a fleet's vast array of ships was another pain in the arse.
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Without digging back for quotes...
I agree that economic growth is the self destruct button for all the Starfire games I have ever been aware of. (Ok, other than players moving away...)
Pop growth does it in 4e on, while treaties did it for 3e. Regardless, folks start getting more income for no increase in expenses either way.
To me, that mechanic, right there - is the problem.
We have a bunch of house rules in our game to address those issues and keep them from shutting down our games. But it is a pretty hefty book. And I don't say they are for everybody.
What I would say is - any solution needs to address the problem. It needs FIXED. Not adjusted.
We have several ideas we went through. Some have worked well. But they represent very fundamental changes to the games. VERY. And I don't know that everyone would like them.
To illustrate.
Military treaties. Pretty much the same for us as they have always been. Friends are friends. Folks that aren't - aren't.
Trade treaties. BIG difference for us. We give no income bonus. You heard me. None. What you get is a bonus to your economic research for the trade of ideas and goods. The civies are doing the buying and selling. The governments are getting taxes and tarriffs to pay for customs, etc. No net income. But a bonus to your economics. And as you get higher in EL, stuff gets more expensive, maint goes up, etc.
You also need trade treaties to trade tech between the races.
For colonization it is much more difficult to transfer to another game.
Our sys gen is biased toward smaller stars, and I make sure there is only about 1 hab per 40 systems.
Yes - 40...
And in addition to maint to keep a fleet going - you need a port. A spaceport. And the number of HS it can support is what it can hold (the old 40HS). It can support that level of fleet for 2StMP. Ships in addition to that or beyond the range of the SP cost x3 maint. So you can ship a massive fleet in to defend a distant system. But you need to have a bunch of MC on hand to cover it or it will start to suffer failures from lack of maint.
And those SP cost maint also.
You can also only have one SP per 20PU FRD.
And we hated the old 'freebie, million thick' minefields.
My players and I rejoiced when 4e got rid of them.
One of the best moves ever to me.
We also cut pop growth to 1% per 10 turns.
Cuts down on refiguring every turn that you get otherwise with 4e.
Combine the scarcity of good colonization, expense of keeping the fleets, along with a few other rules (like we require an ICC for each pop over settlement [with a maint cost for it] or income doesn't increase past 180PU, SA and RDS cost maint even without PDC placement, colonies farther than 4StMP from an ICC have NO net income -but you still want them to get an SP to support your border fleets, etc...)
Along with our limit on population growth - it makes getting bigger far more difficult. It becomes a juggling act of can you afford to lose your PTU (none free in our games) to a border system that won't generate income but will cut the cost of your border defenses - and will take you two months of CFN cost to emplace...or do you need them closer to a sector capital to try and pad your income somewhat so you can expand that direction...
As I said. It is a lot of rules we have put together to get a game we like. At turn 400 my wife has the largest economy of any player with an effective income of about 50,000 MC supporting three carrier task groups, an independant cruiser group, two commerce interdiction groups, two fast carrier groups, three survey groups, and a couple dozen escort carriers covering her commerce lanes. She has 3 habitables after this span of turns and an 'empire' that spans nearly a hundred systems.
Not bad for P&P, but it has taken a lot to get our game to this point.
But the problem is, that at the moment the CFN can operate in contested systems. For your idea to work, you would need to outlaw the CFN working in contested systems.
It won't in 4e plus. And I missed out on SM2 for games so we went from tracking your own to 'the CFN won't go there'. Never ran into this issue.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that the Starfire community has a lot of people who enjoy these sort of detail-oriented calculations (I include myself in this category). I agree with Matt (or was it Paul) that if the game is going to have broad appeal as a paper and pencil game, the tendency to cater to this constituency through complex, detailed rule sets must be resisted. If, on the other hand, the intent is to go after this constituency, then it has to come with the realization that the player community might be to small to support the game from an economic standpoint.
John
I'd add to those last couple sentences that one has to realize that the people who are committed to supporting Starfire within SDS and volunteering their time to do so are going to tend to be people who probably lean more towards the more detailed game than the simpler game. And those people many not have it in them to want to give their time and efforts to support the type of game that they themselves wouldn't enjoy.
I agree with the statements I italicized.
All of the detail junkies - are old hands. They have gotten a solid base and are looking to expand it.
And most of those writing the rules - are real old hands (sorry... I include myself with this) that have often taken this to amazing levels.
But I am probably the biggest exception. I have kids that I enjoy teaching Starfire. And I want them to be able to play it with their friends when they move away. Or maybe their kids some day.
But I have no illusions that this is going to happen if the only rule set they have to hand out is 400+ pages.
Matt is a sharp fella. He has a long history with Starfire. And it sounds like Solar gave his 'page shock'. Folks who have no history have almost no chance.
Which is why I am a HUGE proponent of creating a smaller ruleset. And why I have been willing to put in the time to create the Quick Start Rule sets to get folks to play tactical battles without the 400 page books. And why I have canvased anyone who knows anything about Starfire to get ideas for what can be done to fix its problems.
Also, I'd think that having to track crew grade for every single ship in existence wouldn't be good for the storage capacity of the DB either. Personally, I've never used the crew grade rules because I never wanted to track my ships individually, until absolutely necessary.
We like it.
But we also don't have fleets with anywhere close to that number of ships. Ok, maybe my wife does.
But she has also built up her fleets over hundreds of turns. And several of those ships have histories that long.
Same for all the players.
And we all like the fact that the old hands are far better at fighting than a ship two months out of the yards.
It helps with the RPing of it. And it makes the ships even more dear to the players. It makes them far less likely to do the 'die to a man' type of battle that is so common on table tops. They will work to save a fleet instead of just expend it like a numbers game.
My wife has hand drawn counters for some of the ships that have been around for hundreds of turns. That way she can tell what group is what on the large system maps at a glance instead of a mass of red or blue counters.
And on the occasion when a battle costs her a ship she has had for hundreds of turns, and fought dozens of battles with - it often sits on the table for days until she can finally bring herself to put it away for the last time.
You can't get that in a 'fluff-less' and 'grade-less' game.
So, we like grade.
But to learn the game - no, it is not necessary.
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By "Why Not?" I mean simply "why not colonize everything you can colonize?" Every investment in colonization you make, even a moon 12 transits from your homeworld yields a postive income shift the turn after it is emplaced. Since every investment yields a positive outcome why not make every such investment that you can? The arguement against it is only "you could have done something else with a better rate of return." And that is a weak argument unless you have a functional crystal ball as you never know what the future will bring. I have been investing in moons mainly to build up supply chains for my exploration forces, unless Starslayer was refering to my secondary colonization...as all rich or better rocks in my systems tends to get colonized relatively soon after I build up 170 or so PU on the habitables.
It is compounded in Starfire as a lot of things as you said, and I agree completely, have no maintenace costs. The results is an explosive growth in DSB-L, IDEW, Mines, and Pods. The fact that we have to have mine layers, mine tenders, colliers, missile resupply ships, etc has dramatically changed our game. Steve's rules he was experimenting with at the end of SFA were a good step forward. Weber's TFN for example had a massive support capacity, and a huge investment in bases compared to any typical starfire campaign. Also diverting income into building support ships also reduces fleet sizes as yard space, money, and maintenance funds are therefore reduced.
I don't understand why you think the economics of starfire are complex.
I was talking about the relative complexity of PU/PTU process as opposed to the EVM/REI process. I think that the old ISF EVM/REI process was simpler. That's what I meant.
Could the game be simpler?
Absolutely. Don't worry about PU growth every month, or every 10th month. Don't worry about PU/PTU conversions. Those would make the basic economic process simpler, like it was in ISF.
Colonize, invest in IU whatever you like in both cases your economy grows. There is nothing to economics in starfire it is just compound interest growth. That is the problem with the economic system/model. There is, as I said before, no "cost for empire" so it produces a brain dead simple economic system.
I don't buy into the need for a "cost of empire" argument. To me the true root cause is utterly out of control economic growth due to basing that growth on PU's rather than PTU's, within the existing PU/PTU model. This was not a problem with the EVM/REI model. To me, "cost of empire" is just one gigantic band-aid for failing to fix the true root cause (PU-based growth) and a number of existing lesser problems (no maintenance on things like SYD's, mines, etc.; R&D being based on fixed costs rather than percentages of an empire's total economy). ((Though the lack of maint. on mines is more a problem of not controlling the number of active mine fields an empire has than it is about being a constraint on the empire's economy.)) I think that if these real problems were fixed in some way, there'd be little need for a "cost of empire" band-aid.
Matt is also correct SM2 changed it from "befriend the most NPRs" to "find the habitables soonest." It is why I would like a different model rather than trying to fix something that is at its heart unfixable (as the math is what it is). We stress tested the starfire economy in our München campaigns, Starslayer as one of the SMs can comment better but higher growth then I bother with is easily achievable.
Ah, but I don't think that the root causes of the problem are unfixable. One just has to recognize the true root causes and then have a willingness to fix it or come up with a replacement that removes the problem(s).
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well, from that last one came the current game played by Paul and me. Growth cut significantly, no asteroid colonisation, half research. Id does wonders.
The Minelayers and Mineracks where items Steve had added to the SFA database, and wich are used for the minelaying. I think I copy + pasted them into the rules, else, I will have to check alter and paste them here. Unfortunately, SFA didn't fully support them (as in 'make them carry mines').
Basically, the current game is using most of the ideas we developped after the economy explosion one (except the 'SM pregenerates all systems and makes sure no habitables are closer than 4 smtp to each other'... too much hassle for me.. some other Sm can do that).
And I think it has found a good balance and works.
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The growth is 10x faster than the game clock. Each turn economically is a year while each turn militarily is a month. That is one part of the problem. The other part of the problem is that everything returns a positive income one turn after emplacement. This leads very quickly (or quickly, or eventually) to the simple fact that the "rich get richer faster and faster." This was addressed in part with GSF by increasing the costs of ships and a few of the other costs limiting the amount of money left over to use for economic expansion, but all it does is kick the can down the road. What starslayer and I did (based on Wolfgang's ideas and our experience with SM2 economics) was to slow down growth dramatically, removing the factor of 10. Fundamentally that is what you are talking about with PTU growth. It took us almost 170 turns to get from the normal start population to 3200. Our growth rates are 7.5% for high growth, 3.5% for medium growth, and 2.3% for low growth and the growth is only every 10 turns. It will take something like 170 turns for a medium to grow to a large.
This is pretty much ISF's growth rate (give or take a factor of 2). Probably too slow for lots of people.
But at the end of the day the issues are not dealt with, and are still present. Slowing growth just pushes the point where you fall off the cliff down the road.
As I said earlier this is the problem the people who made Civilization on the computer ran into. Their solution was "corruption." Sword in the Stars deals with it by introducing a colonization cost that can be extreme and makes you think about if you can even afford a colony in that system at this point in time. To me you need to introduce something that makes the player think about if colonization of system x is worth while doing. This goes back to my "why not?" comment. Currently there is no reason to not colonize every rock you find. If growth is by PTU it will still pay to colonize every rock and especially every asteroid belt you can lay your manipulating digits onto. What limits real empires is the simple cost of maintaining them, the administrative overhead...and this is what is utterly missing and the result is the rich get richer faster and faster. High growth rates just ensure you hit that cliff relatively soon...Steve and Kurt both hit it around turn 70 or so if not sooner.
As everything in starfire is about the MCr, then as MCrs become more plentiful research becomes a joke (cost is a non-issue), fleet sizes explode, AW numbers explode, IU and colonization explode, book keeping explodes and fun implodes (in my view). Marvin's fix in GSF was to kick the can down the road by increasing costs and reducing income growth, problem solved for the kind of games he likes. Your solution is the same as the one starslayer and I adopted, but all three don't fix anything they just kick the can varying distances down the road.
As the economic model is nothing more than compound interest growth, you get compound interest growth. That to me is the root cause of the problem and nothing avoids it except changing the model.
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The growth is 10x faster than the game clock. Each turn economically is a year while each turn militarily is a month. That is one part of the problem. The other part of the problem is that everything returns a positive income one turn after emplacement. This leads very quickly (or quickly, or eventually) to the simple fact that the "rich get richer faster and faster." This was addressed in part with GSF by increasing the costs of ships and a few of the other costs limiting the amount of money left over to use for economic expansion, but all it does is kick the can down the road. What starslayer and I did (based on Wolfgang's ideas and our experience with SM2 economics) was to slow down growth dramatically, removing the factor of 10. Fundamentally that is what you are talking about with PTU growth. It took us almost 170 turns to get from the normal start population to 3200. Our growth rates are 7.5% for high growth, 3.5% for medium growth, and 2.3% for low growth and the growth is only every 10 turns. It will take something like 170 turns for a medium to grow to a large.
This is pretty much ISF's growth rate (give or take a factor of 2). Probably too slow for lots of people.
Paul, I think that we're looking at slightly different ways of doing a similar thing here, slowing down growth. I suppose that I have a significant semantic gripe with the fact that "growth" in the PU/PTU model is called "population growth" and yet it's not applied to the actual measure of population (i.e. the PTU), but to the measure of economic output (i.e. the PU). The rules can call it the PU, population unit, 'til the cows come home. But the reality is that it is an Economic Unit, not a population unit.
As for "Probably too slow for lots of people", I'm sick of the hypocrisy of these same people (probably) also complaining about how economies explode and the game becomes unplayable after a certain length of time. HELLO!!!! It's because of that freaking growth!!!! (Not yelling at you, Paul!) If players want the game to remain playable even after many, many turns, growth has to be much slower!!! That's all there is to it!
But at the end of the day the issues are not dealt with, and are still present. Slowing growth just pushes the point where you fall off the cliff down the road.
In a sense, yes that's true. Yes, you can start with just Earth and end up with an unplayable Galactic Imperium. That doesn't concern me overly much. I'd be mroe concerned over whether one could play 100 or 200 or 500 turns without the game collapsing of its own weight. Also, I'm a bit concerned that it should remain playable as a p&p game after many turns.
Starslayer's comment from 4am this morning about how the SFA database overloaded by turn 75 due to excessive records for various things, like outposts and colonies on all those rocks, etc. was a bit of an eye-opener for me. If Steve's SFA database gets overloaded that quickly, that's telling me that there's too many darn little colonial populations floating around. And from a p&p perspective, it must be many, many times worse.
So it makes me seriously question whether colonization of nearly so many "rocks" should be encouraged. I realize that it was made more attractive as an alternate strategy for stay-at-homes, but I suspect that nearly everyone is colonizing lots of those rocks, and particularly Asteroid Belts where there are tons of those little rocks to put OP's on. But I'm beginning to think that for the sake of long term game play, colonization of these rocks needs to be seriously reconsidered.
Maybe end AB colonization, but increase the AB bonus to planetary incomes in the system in return. Maybe say that each moon is worth +1% point to the ABB, or alternatively just apply a flat bonus number (5% or 10% perhaps) to cover all moons (and not bother counting how many there are). Of course, as with the existing ABB, this overall bonus wouldn't exist until there's a sufficiently large population in the system to create an in-system CFN. An advantage to doing all of this that I can see is that you wouldn't have to worry about the record keeping for a gazillion OP's and colonies on moons or asteroids. You'd just get a solid bonus to planetary incomes.
I don't think that I'd stop colonization of those "rock" planets. There aren't nearly as many of them as there are moons and asteroids. And besides, one can hardly exploit a system's moons and asteroid belts if there's no habitable planet to put people on. So there has to be some places to colonize if you want to get a Asteroid and Moons Bonus. Of course, since the bonus is a percentage of the income of actual planets, if there's no habitable planet in the system and you've colonized some Type O2 (or Type B barren) planet, you won't get nearly as much from the bonus as you would from colonizing the actual rocks. But no solution will be perfect. At least this one would have the benefit of reducing the number of records for moons and asteroids that have to be tracked.
Anyways, that's just some off the cuff thinking...
There are of course other areas that we've both mentioned where there are things that don't help economic matters as they should or could. No maint on SYD's, the ISF R&D costs, no maint on mines and DSB's, and so on. Those things could easily be fixed.
Well, that's enough for this post... :)
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Current game we are doing a 'no asteroids colonising', and it works well.
Other idea, from a bookkeeping point for PnP .. what if Asteroids just count as single population, multiply # of system hexes containing asteroids by 80 and have this as a flat population limit (generates no surplus PTU, and only counts as outposts for detection etc. purposes?), and consider them evenly distributed amon all hexes?
I had been thinking today about maybe.. charge a flat 5 or 10 MCr per population as bureocracy, and then a rate of say 1 MCr per 100 PTU .. but that would make v. large not attractive, and maybe not discourage rockballing enough. Maybe stagger the 1 MCr per 100 PTU by environement... all that buerocracy.
vl 4.5 MCR for a PU over 1600 PU.. maybe too expensive, as the income from 2 PU + 1 IU is not weighting this up.
asteroid.. 10 MCr + 0.5 .. makes rockalls less interresting as an investment, but still after 10 PU they are in the positive.
I guess.. ideas to play around with, simulatinga governement buerocracy overhead.
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Current game we are doing a 'no asteroids colonising', and it works well.
Other idea, from a bookkeeping point for PnP .. what if Asteroids just count as single population, multiply # of system hexes containing asteroids by 80 and have this as a flat population limit (generates no surplus PTU, and only counts as outposts for detection etc. purposes?), and consider them evenly distributed amon all hexes?
Yes, I'm well aware of this, since it's how Ultra does it, though at only 20 PU per LM of orbit of the Asteroid Belt. And while this isn't a bad idea, were I to consider banning moon colonization for the reasons stated in the previous post, I'd feel rather obliged to do the same for Asteroid Belts and replace their income with a bonus to planetary populations, similar to the existing ABB, but beefed up.
I had been thinking today about maybe.. charge a flat 5 or 10 MCr per population as bureocracy, and then a rate of say 1 MCr per 100 PTU .. but that would make v. large not attractive, and maybe not discourage rockballing enough. Maybe stagger the 1 MCr per 100 PTU by environement... all that buerocracy.
vl 4.5 MCR for a PU over 1600 PU.. maybe too expensive, as the income from 2 PU + 1 IU is not weighting this up.
asteroid.. 10 MCr + 0.5 .. makes rockballs less interesting as an investment, but still after 10 PU they are in the positive.
I guess.. ideas to play around with, simulating a government bureaucracy overhead.
Honestly, I'm not a fan of these bureaucracy and corruption ideas. Sorry.
As for discouraging "rockballing", I think that if I get to that point, I'd rather just ban them and replace their income with an income bonus to planetary populations in the same star system, because a big reason to dislike colonizing all those rocks to me is less about the income and more about the excessive record keeping that is required. Think about it. If you have an asteroid belt at 120 LM with 5 OP's per AB sysHex, that's a total of 300 outposts for that one belt alone. YIKES!!!
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Oh I would - with the pre-SM#2 rules, you had to individually track all of the IFN ships, and schedule it so that the required amount of H and Q arrive within the required time frame. With SM#2, it is a lot simpler and easier. This is one (of the few ;D) cases where more rules equals simpler play (as opposed to more rules = more complexities).
But remember, Matt, you are combining two different things in your comparative analysis: the ISF colonization system and the use of Imperial FT's vs. the SM#2 colonization system and the CFN. Of course, the former is more difficult ... because you're having to deal with the ISF colonization system. It's not a straight apples to apples comparison. ;)
Either I missed your point (likely), or I think you missed mine. With aggressive colonisation, you can get ROI's of around 5 to 10%. However, if you are stuck in a limited number of systems, your ROI is only going to be in the order of 3% - which means that in the long term you will lose.
So, to avoid the "stay at home" player from giving up (as they know that they are going to lose), the ROI for the "stay at home" strategy had to improve.
I think that you did miss my point. I was trying to say that whatever actions the stay-at-home players is doing with aggressive colonization, the exploring player may be doing as well, depending on the outcomes of his own explorations. The exploring player is not denied the use of the stay-at-home's strategy, just because he can still explore. Oh, he might not pursue it quite as aggressively, but he can do it if he chooses, though he might come back at a later time and start backfilling the less profitable rocks when the most profitable ones have been filled up.
Having said that, I'm starting to think that all this colonizing of moons and asteroids has become detrimental to the game. When SFA can't go beyond 75 turns because all the colonization of such rocks (as well as other extremely numerous small items) is filling up the database, one can only imagine how horrifying it is for the p&p player. So, as I wrote in other posts, I'm starting to think that the best way to alleviate the paperwork load is to get rid of colonization of moons and asteroid belts and replace it with a "Moons and Asteroids Bonus", similar to the current Asteroid Belt Bonus, only more substantial. And it'd only exist when there was an in-system CFN in a system (perhaps at some reasonable minimum level). This would cut down on moon/asteroid population records immensely.
But the problem is, that at the moment the CFN can operate in contested systems. For your idea to work, you would need to outlaw the CFN working in contested systems.
Not necessarily. Maybe only require that the CFN not be able to make deliveries to ships in open space or to lay mines. Make it so that they're just moving from "port" to "port". Though, yes, it might be necessary to think about the CFN operating in contested systems.
I agree - Starfire is for moving ships - but I don't want to be bogged down tracking every little FT in the empire - that grows old quickly. I know it's subjective, (as you pointed out below), but my attention to detail ends before I get to that level of detail.
I guess that my attention to detail runs out when I have to pay attention to moving Holds and Quarters and not FT's.
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Just a small side note, SFA was helped in reaching it's limits by the startup setting in the campaign (2 3200 PU world per player), and 8 player empires and 3 even larger NPR's and alot of smaller NPR's ny turn 75. The players and 2 NPR's had incomes at 700 thousand, 1 NPR had run into 2 million income..
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Just a small side note, SFA was helped in reaching it's limits by the startup setting in the campaign (2 3200 PU world per player), and 8 player empires and 3 even larger NPR's and alot of smaller NPR's ny turn 75. The players and 2 NPR's had incomes at 700 thousand, 1 NPR had run into 2 million income..
I guess someone wanted to play a rather high powered campaign! ;)
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*nod* It was a continuity campaign, starting at HT 5 etc. Just resetting the empires to one system, and reducing the chance for NPR's by a lot. And allowing more people to join in.
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Trade treaties. BIG difference for us. We give no income bonus. You heard me. None. What you get is a bonus to your economic research for the trade of ideas and goods. The civies are doing the buying and selling. The governments are getting taxes and tarriffs to pay for customs, etc. No net income. But a bonus to your economics. And as you get higher in EL, stuff gets more expensive, maint goes up, etc.
You also need trade treaties to trade tech between the races.
Isn't part of the idea of trade income to provide a balance between friendly treaties and military conquest?
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Isn't part of the idea of trade income to provide a balance between friendly treaties and military conquest?
Shoe, I'm not sure what you mean here. Could you explain in more detail?
I have to say that there seems to be something wrong with trade treaties that don't provide any trade income. Also, without the trade income, I can see where some players might take the attitude that if they aren't getting any $$$ out of the treaty, they might as well just conquer the NPR.
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I put up the idea of replacing the moon colonies with an income bonus a long time back when I was still on the starfire board. Consider a 100 hex asteroid belt under SM2...that is 500*16 or the same as a 3200 population planet...and at max population that produces 2000 PTU of growth population every 10th turn once each asteroid is filled. I've got systems with 3-4 astroid belts plus a lot of moons in the current games...they would be economic powerhouses in basic SM2 economics.
I am glad to see you are now understanding what I am saying about rock ball colonization. It is death in a GSF campaign, as tracking all that PU (or EU if you wish) growth, not to mention just tracking them was making it impossible to do it easily with Excel spreadsheets. They have a much stronger limitation on the number of lines on a single sheet, but just scrolling through them all was enough for me. I stopped my GSF solo game from book keeping issues. The lack of computer support prevented any use of the GSF rules in München as neither of the SMs wanted to track by hand (or spreadsheet).
My feeling is that a rock planet should be able to support a settlement sized population if desolate and a colony if extreme.
The use of EX as explorers is something I have never done, to my detriment in every game. To me sending unarmed flys out to explore makes no sense whatsoever. Those ships would surrender instantly if confronted by a single armed CT and they all have detailed information on the way back home. But this is role playing and not min-maxing...and for min-maxers they are ideal. I would limit the size of a ship that can mount an X to a CT (and I am not fond of CTs), and I like the stuff Steve did with the Xi and Xc as they make larger ships more useful for exploring. After one battle with 250 CTs I basically told Starslayer "never again." I believe I fell asleep while we were fighting that one out...but that was just too many ships for fun. I would also change the combat system to make bigger ships far more effective combat wise (longer ranged and more powerful weapons)...making it more like wet navy combat where larger ships mount heavier guns that the lighter ships can't match.
The second München campaign was the continuation of an earlier campaign that ended at TL4 or TL5. That was why it was so "high powered" we were just skipping the parts we did before. But those two campaigns did a massive stress testing on the economic system. I tended to have "the most organized navy" but one of the lower or lowest incomes...largely due to my not using small ships for exploration. My exploration fleets in the current campaign were a huge early game expense and they explored slowly, so the trend continues. I favor investment in moving people to moons over IU as people grow but IU don't.
As Procoyn suggests with his various house rules you need to have additional "costs" to limit size of the empire or slow its expansion otherwise bigger is just better. I would go with some sort of fixed cost to have an emplaced population in a system (100 MCr or something like that, and some sort of increase depending on how far from an ICC it was). This means that single outpost system might cost you money for a long time but it may be strategically worthwhile to do it. Plus removing all the no-maintenance objects...I think everyone is in agreement over this one. For a P&P campaign not to collapse due to bookkeeping you have to keep the colonization and fleetsizes down to something managable. How big that is will be subjective.
On PP those were intended to control fleet sizes...and the effect of removing them was a massive expansion in fleet sizes. It was a case of removing a bookkeeping issue (PPs) and producing a much worse bookkeeping issue (expanding fleet sizes). Or again the road to hell was paved in more good intentions.
The minerack thing if implemented properly was a good idea of Steve...not giving it cargo capacity...makes it annoying. But it hinders using the CFN to throw down huge road blocks. The same with the supply rules, those forced me to colonize rock ball systems to build up a supply corridor before I could push my fleets out more a few times.
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Shoe, I'm not sure what you mean here. Could you explain in more detail?
One reason for trade in 4x games is to provide somewhat of a balance between military conquest and peaceful exploration. Moral factors rarely apply to players, who will look on things on a purely utilitarian basis... if it's way more valuable to your empire to conquer, you conquer. Trade income provides a reason (other than military difficulty) to not conquer everything in sight.
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One reason for trade in 4x games is to provide somewhat of a balance between military conquest and peaceful exploration. Moral factors rarely apply to players, who will look on things on a purely utilitarian basis... if it's way more valuable to your empire to conquer, you conquer. Trade income provides a reason (other than military difficulty) to not conquer everything in sight.
Ok, that's what I thought you meant, and I definitely agree.
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I put up the idea of replacing the moon colonies with an income bonus a long time back when I was still on the starfire board. Consider a 100 hex asteroid belt under SM2...that is 500*16 or the same as a 3200 population planet...and at max population that produces 2000 PTU of growth population every 10th turn once each asteroid is filled. I've got systems with 3-4 asteroid belts plus a lot of moons in the current games...they would be economic powerhouses in basic SM2 economics.
I am glad to see you are now understanding what I am saying about rock ball colonization. It is death in a GSF campaign, as tracking all that PU (or EU if you wish) growth, not to mention just tracking them was making it impossible to do it easily with Excel spreadsheets. They have a much stronger limitation on the number of lines on a single sheet, but just scrolling through them all was enough for me. I stopped my GSF solo game from book keeping issues. The lack of computer support prevented any use of the GSF rules in München as neither of the SMs wanted to track by hand (or spreadsheet).
The one legit alternative for asteroid belts is to handle them like in GSF/Ultra, as a single unified population, one population record per belt rather than dozens or hundreds. But having said that, I also have a problem with the level of population that the game is assuming that AB's can handle in the first place. Since I see these AB populations more as "mining camps" than full blown outposts, I have a very hard time seeing anything more than a single PTU (i.e. 50,000 people) per "outpost". I tend to think that those enormously populated ABs are horrifying, particularly when one also allows them to grow and grow at SM#2's highly inflated rate.
(And, BTW, I take no credit for thinking of (potentially) using a bonus to replace moon and asteroid belt colonization.)
Also, I realize that removing Desolate and Extreme Moon and Asteroid belt colonization might put a crimp in the "Stay at Home" strategy. But having the vast numbers of records associated with moon and Asteroid populations puts an even larger crimp in the entire game for everyone, though most particularly for p&p players.
My feeling is that a rock planet should be able to support a settlement sized population if desolate and a colony if extreme.
Actually, this is similar to the standard set forth in ISF rule 15.06.02. Of course, the ISF rule makes no differentiation between planets and moons, only speaking about "system bodies". It was SM#2 that reduced the max size of Desolate and Extreme populations to Colony and Outpost.
Anyways, I'd already intended to let Type O2 (i.e. Type B) planets have a max pop of Settlement and Type O1 (i.e. Type H) planets have a max pop of Colony.
The use of EX as explorers is something I have never done, to my detriment in every game. To me sending unarmed flys out to explore makes no sense whatsoever. Those ships would surrender instantly if confronted by a single armed CT and they all have detailed information on the way back home. But this is role playing and not min-maxing...and for min-maxers they are ideal. I would limit the size of a ship that can mount an X to a CT (and I am not fond of CTs), and I like the stuff Steve did with the Xi and Xc as they make larger ships more useful for exploring.
You won't get argument from me about the EX hull type. I despise them. And like you pointed out, they're a min-maxer's dream. But I tend to approach the game more from a role-playing perspective. Of course, given the current nature of 3E surveying tech systems and rules, it's entirely understandable to want to do surveying with as many of the smallest survey ships as possible. The rules force that attitude onto players. They basically give you no choice if you want to at least try for even a modicum of efficiency in surveying.
And I think that the root cause of the problem as it currently stands is the 1 Science Instruments system per ship rule. So long as that remains the norm, the rules will drive the player to building the least expensive ship possible to wrap around the single "X".
After one battle with 250 CTs I basically told Starslayer "never again." I believe I fell asleep while we were fighting that one out...but that was just too many ships for fun. I would also change the combat system to make bigger ships far more effective combat wise (longer ranged and more powerful weapons)...making it more like wet navy combat where larger ships mount heavier guns that the lighter ships can't match.
Yeah, you're describing the "problem" of swarm ships. The problem is that again, the way the rules are currently structured, there are few biases that favor larger ships (more space for things like defensive systems and electronics) and some that favor smaller ships (higher speed, quick to build). But at the most basic level, 1 point of damage is still 1 point of damage regardless of size.
One minor way to tweak things in favor of the larger ships is to change the per hull space costs of warship hulls to a flat rate. That is, X Mc per HS, regardless of warship type. (Carriers would probably pay a higher rate, but that rate would remain the same across all carrier hull types.) Another minor thing would be to enhance the value of useful electronic tech systems, but also increase their size so that they become more difficult for smaller ships to use. Command datalink and Improved Multiplex would be examples of this, as they are too large to be mounted by swarm ships. Of course, they also exist at TL's where swarm ships are less of a concern because the ultimate anti-swarm technology already exists ... fighters.
On PP those were intended to control fleet sizes...and the effect of removing them was a massive expansion in fleet sizes. It was a case of removing a bookkeeping issue (PPs) and producing a much worse bookkeeping issue (expanding fleet sizes). Or again the road to hell was paved in more good intentions.
I never found tracking PP's to be a big deal. I think that tracking crew grade is immensely more onerous, because it forces you to track each ship individually, something I'd never do. Sort of like the difference between ISF/SM#2 tracking each asteroid belt OP individually vs Ultra tracking the entire asteroid belt as a single pooled population. This is also a reason why larger fleet sizes was never as big an issue for me, because I never tracked crew grade and never tracked ships individually. I hate the crew grade rule with a passion because I think that it only serves to create a paperwork nightmare and slows up combat when you have to modify die rolls for all those annoyingly non-average ships. I won't remove the rule because I know that some people like it. But that won't stop me from loathing it with a burning passion.
Back to PP's. I should note that to the best of my recollection, about the only time when PP's were a serious issue was when there was a need to build an invasion army. PCF armies were (unsurprisingly) rather personnel intensive, and having to build such an invasion army could prevent one from manning newly built warships for a short time. But, of course, that was the point of the PP rule, to put some constraint into the game.
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Treating the belt as a single population is as good as solution as possible so long as you can actually emplace populations in them. How many PU you allow per hex is something playtesting would allow adjusting for.
The stay at home strategy is doomed to fail anyway so why do you want to bother trying? The value of a single NPR trade treaty is so extreme that there is no compensation for it with "stay at home." If you are bottled up you have lost. The game is about exploration luck, just like pretty much any 4X game is. Finding a good habitable earlier than another player gives you a boost that is hard to catch up with. To make stay at home viable the chance of a war with an NPR would have to be sufficiently high to make the current exploration strategies foolish. Otherwise expanding as fast as possible to find the best realestate to settle as soon as possible is the only "winning" strategy. Kurt showed this one time in one of his games when an NPR with I think a 3-star system quickly determined that they could not even defend themselves against the Terran Empire. In our game the RM's leader is pulling his non-existant hair out simply because the Theban economy beats his...and he has a tech advantage and heavily populated systems and has been spending 10000 MCr or so per month on economic expansion...but quantity has a quality of its own.
The problem with one X per ship was solved by the UTM with its Xi and Xc systems. They allow you to use bigger ships to survey efficiently.
I would also support a single cost per hull space. But I would change construction/combat from the way it is now.
PPs existed to limit the fleet size, but since I never played with them I've no idea how well they worked but I'd suspect better than no limit but maintenace.
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The theban survey fleets are 2 CA with 3 Xc each, a probing FG with an Xc, and a supply DD with x and boatbays for a cutter swarm for planetary survey.
They alsomount a few weapons, and provide a pool of 18 trained CA's in a clinch :) The EX survey fleets didn't survve beyond the CA prototyping. Best use of EX is the J'rill EAV, and even there 10 HS ES are better as they have defenses...
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Treating the belt as a single population is as good as solution as possible so long as you can actually emplace populations in them. How many PU you allow per hex is something playtesting would allow adjusting for.
Well, IIRC, how Ultra handles the individual populations within a pooled asteroid belt is simply to evenly distribute the PU throughout the belt when necessary (i.e. when a hostile alien force enters the star system). Otherwise, you just treat them as a single population. As For population limits, in Ultra it's 20 PU per LM of the AB's orbit, which roughly works out to about 2 OP's per sys hex in the orbit. Of course, at ISF's level of 5 OP's per sys hex, you'd be looking at 50 PU per LM of orbit.
Honestly though, AB populations have always seemed grossly too high to me. Seriously, with a full OP being 800,000 people in SM2, allowing 4M people per sys hex of the AB orbit seems off the charts ridiculously high to me. I'm thinking that 1 PTU (5.000 people) per system hex of the AB seems far more rational to me. Of course, at that level, no asteroid belt would ever be an economic powerhouse, which might not be particularly popular.
The stay at home strategy is doomed to fail anyway so why do you want to bother trying?
Well, I think that some people would say "to keep players from quitting once they discover that they've become bottled up". Of course, I think that one way to mitigate the chances of becoming bottled up is to reduce the chances of 1 WP star systems. An empire gets bottled up for 2 reasons (usually working in concert): 1) too many 1 WP star systems and 2) NPR's blocking your use of a WP. #1 is something that can be adjusted. #2 not so much.
The value of a single NPR trade treaty is so extreme that there is no compensation for it with "stay at home."
Yes, but that doesn't mean that the value of trade treaties cannot be adjusted so that they're not quite so economically potent. And yes, there is no compensating alternative for the Stay at Home. The Stay at Home only has one option: colonize every rock he possesses and hope that another race finds a closed WP into his cul-de-sac and helps him out. (Not much of a fallback strategy though...)
If you are bottled up you have lost. The game is about exploration luck, just like pretty much any 4X game is. Finding a good habitable earlier than another player gives you a boost that is hard to catch up with. To make stay at home viable the chance of a war with an NPR would have to be sufficiently high to make the current exploration strategies foolish. Otherwise expanding as fast as possible to find the best real estate to settle as soon as possible is the only "winning" strategy.
I think that Stay at Home is a strategy that is forced upon the player rather than one which one chooses willingly. Regardless, your observations here are correct. A way to mitigate the strategy of aggressive exploration (from the Stay at Home's PoV, that is) is to increase the chances of newly discovered NPR's being hostile. More hostile NPR's slows down exploration since you don't want to risk starting multiple wars. And even if you don't have any wars currently under way, you might be a bit more circumspect in your exploration if you feel the need to have a strong reaction force close to every exploration group. There are probably other reasons I've overlooked as well.
The problem with one X per ship was solved by the UTM with its Xi and Xc systems. They allow you to use bigger ships to survey efficiently.
This isn't true for Xi. Xi is just a better version of X with the same 1 installation per ship limitation. So long as only one Science Instruments installation, regardless of how good, is allowed per ship players will always seek to put it on the smallest, cheapest to maintain hull possible. The way to stop that is to allow for multiple Science Instruments installations per ship.
However, I've always had a problem with the underlying logic of how carrying multiple X (ignore potential generations for the moment) would work. If X only has a given range and allowed you to "sweep" a path when traveling thru the system collecting data, how would carrying multiple installations allow you to sweep a wider path? Of course, combining X with Long Range Sensors does increase the width of one's sweep. However, that does not change the fundamental problem of 1 X per ship causing players to min-max their designs to the smallest, cheapest hull possible.
The UTM's Xc system does allow for multiple installations per ship, but it doesn't explain how it accomplishes this. When a ship mounting 1 Xc conducts its WP survey sweep (that's 5 times more effective than X), exactly how does mounting a second ship change what the survey ship is doing? What's so special about Xc that carrying a second one effectively doubles the width of the ship's WP survey sweep?
I have one idea for a possible solution for how a ship could effectively appear to mount multiple installations of X (ignoring generations for the moment). The Survey Pinnace. The survey pinnace wouldn't really be able to process the data it collects. It'd be more of an extension of the survey ship's own science instruments, and should be required to be based on the survey ship, rather than another ship. Each survey pinnace would add +1 SP/StMP of WP surveying. The survey pinnace would have no significant cargo or passenger capacity, since it would essentially be one big sensor package. It would also take up significant amount of space on its mother survey ship (i.e. 2 or 3 HS for its boat bay), which causes the survey ship to effectively appear to mount multiple installations of X. One issue that I'd have to examine with this idea is whether or not it is cost effective compared to the dirt cheap, low tech solution, cuz if it's not, it won't be worth the trouble.
EDIT: I'm open to (pseudo-science) suggestions as to why a survey ship could use more than one installation of Science Instruments. Right now, I am at a loss to explain how it might be possible. For example, if a ship is carrying a version of X that allowed him to sweep a path that was 3 sys hexes wide, how would a second instance of X with the same reach do anything but collect the same data for the same "sweep" a second time? It is of course possible to come up with versions of X with a wider "sweep" (i.e. collect more survey points per StMP).
This is why I suggested the possibility of a survey pinnace. While it technically is not another instance of X on board the survey ship, the SPN is essentially a flying sensor and takes up space on the survey ship, thus representing a virtual second (or third or fourth, etc.) instance of X on the parent survey ship.
EDIT 2: It also occurs to me that there would be a problem interfacing the smallcraft movement of a "survey pinnace" with the StMP based movement of a survey ship while surveying for WP's. It's probably not unsolvable, but it is a potential issue.
I would also support a single cost per hull space. But I would change construction/combat from the way it is now.
I'm curious what sorts of construction and combat changes you are thinking about.
PPs existed to limit the fleet size, but since I never played with them I've no idea how well they worked but I'd suspect better than no limit but maintenance.
The PP rule isn't particularly complex. A population may generate 1 PP per month for each EVM (ignoring any "industrial investment EVM's"). And generally speaking, each ship requires 1 PP per hull space (ignoring armor, holds, and bulkheads). Fighters require 1 PP per Ftr in flight crew. HT PCF's require 8 PP per PCF.
And given that ISF populations didn't grow particularly fast, you really needed to get out there any find T/ST's where you could colonize to to increase your empire's number of PP producing EVM. Oh, and of course, TL advancement would increase your number of PP producing EVM as well. Of course, you could also colonize the rockballs to get more PP producing EVM, though of course rockball colonization is rather pricey in ISF. (Interestingly, while ISF rockball colonization is rather pricey, the investment looks to pay off rather nicely at you move up thru the TL's, and they certainly can supplement your T/ST worlds' PP producing EVM's quite nicely.)
Also, while you could go forth and seek out all those nice juicy trade allies to get more money, all those trade MC's didn't give you any more PP's to man the ships that the trade MC's might allow you to build or maintain.
And now that I think of it, I don't think that I'd say that the PP rule limited the size of your fleet so much as it could limit the size of growth of your fleet, since "fleet growth" would be related to how many PP's you could produce monthly.
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As far as asteroid belt populations go, there is no reason for them to be particularily large assuming there is no need for anything beyond the orbital smelters needed to process the raw rock. They alread give a +10% bonus to the system income. It is a question of playtesting really, so far as I can see. You have two boundries and just need to iterate around to find a happy medium. If you don't like big numbers then set the limit to be 1 PU per hex (or LS or whatever) and see what that gives for economics versus tracking. But it is also possible to justify a large population since space for the habitates and such isn't an issue (there will be lots of hollowed out asteroids).
"Stay at Home" to me is just that. You mothball your fleet and plow your money into rocks and tech. I think it is non-viable from the get go. If you get pocketed then you have to go to war as a player race or else buy open space from an NPR or other player, because colonizing rock balls will never compensate for another player who can both colonize rock balls but also the significantly better rate of return habitable worlds and has the chance to find NPRs to trade with. This is an economic situation that the pocketed player can never get around except by conquest. The Canon Cartel in our game is in a pocket and since they are peaceful they have been content to remain so, but clearly their economics isn't advancing like the still growing races.
A trade treaty is a +10% increase in your income in general unless the economies are grossly different then it is only one side that gets +10%. That is a nice boost. You could play with the percentage to make it smaller but you would again have to play test it to see where it becomes less incentive to trade then to conquer.
The only thing that makes the current "send forth hordes of unarmed flys into the great dark unknown" foolish and hence stops it dead is when that results more often then no in a horde of alien ships following the bread crumbs back to your home system and crushing you like the bug you are. It is absolutely insane to send them out without even armed escorts but most people if they escort them at all send along some paltry amount. They do it because the chance you encounter a hostile NPR is virtually nil. The risk is non-existant and the reward is huge so people follow it. To stop it you have just have to change that. The trouble is then the first player to make peaceful contact wins the game I guess...unless you win the war with the NPR and gain a nice planet then the occupation income probably exceeds the value of trade treaty. Then you are back to Dan's GFFP or varients there of for that.
I would just say that EX can't mount X and be done with it.
Xi is 2 HS and that in an EX is a tight squeeze, it makes more sense for Xi to use a bigger ship, especially as you want Xr on board as well. And I don't think a EX can do it...Xi, Xr is 4 spaces, Qs, H is 2, Ix2 is 2 and that is 8 and you have only 7 spaces...you could with Xi, Qs, H, Ix2 = 6 HS but that leaves you blind...and you carry either a S or a (BbS) or Hs and (BbT) for a cutter I guess...doesn't make much difference. Xi is more suited to putting on a CT or FG.
Why do you want a Pseudo-Science explaination for a game which is based on making rules and then trying to shoehorn some garbage babble ontop of it? But anyway here is your pseudo science explaination: Xc can be used together as each Xc expands length of the gravametric baseline array to a greater distance to give you more senesitivity to changes in the gravaton flux and enables you to sweep a larger area around the ship.
It depends on how you define what an X is and how it works. Doubling the number of sensors and increasing the computers and scientists on the ship is going to make things go faster regardless of how they work exactly. The rules are written in the way they are I believe to prevent people exploiting them via "clever rules lawyer munch-kin" strategies rather than because they were consistantly thought out starting from what the system was and how it would work and deriving what the rules are from that.
There are issues with the 50 EX with X anyway. For a good part of time the ships will be basically sitting on top of each other and the 50 Ships won't survey any faster than 6, 12 or 18 ships initially. They have to starburst quite some distance from the WP before there is sizable separation between each ship. And depending on where the entrance WP is in the system the utility of a lot of ships would be lost till quite late in the process. This means the survey is already abstracted considerably so allowing multiple Xc per ship is hardly a big issue compared to allowing 50 ships to generate 50 pts per STMP. There should be a considerly smaller limit on the survey points that increases per STMP surveying (this would effectively slow down surveys but also make the 50 ship swarm not so cost effective).
The point of PPs was to generate a non-MCr based limit on either absolute fleet sizes (which it must do at some stage) or fleet expansion. It also probably made it more senisble to concentrate you crew into bigger ships. The real issue is that with the compound interest growth economy, you get a compound interest growth fleet size and that again to me impodes the fun. In the second münchen campaign my last battle was well over 100 ships on my side alone and that is pretty much unplayable. I kept having trouble tracking which counter was which ship, and marking damage off the right ship in my listing and so forth. Crew grade is far less of an issue (though it compounds the problem) then sheer unadulterated weight of paper. A computer based battle map and resolver would save so much work it is beyond my understanding why Marvin is not pushing for one (even if for GSF+ starfire only). Aide de Camp or a similiar electronic board game system would be ideal. Steve's battle resolver works but it lacks a map/counter movement component. Attack Vector Tactical with its 3D movement and full newtonian system is something to play out but starfire is just chits on a map and should be much easier to program.
As for changes I would redo how ships are designed. I would break weapons into small, medium and heavy. Up to the DD you can mount only small, CL and CA can mount medium and BC and larger can mount heavy. Small weapons do less damage and have a shorter range then, medium. Medium weapons do less damage and have a shorter range than heavy. Each hull would have a limited number of turret hardpoints, and otherwise would have to use either bay or spinal mountings. Spinal mounts have longer range/higher damage then bay mounts but a more restricted arc. Bays are limited to side arcs, turrets give you 360 (less blind spot). But nothing smaller than a CL can mount a turret and it has only a single such mount. This introduces a lot more tactics into the game, currently the ESF and as you say 1 pt is 1 pt regardless if it from a ES or a ML.
I would also change a bit how the ships are designed lumping a lot of the electronics into the Bridge (a new system) and removing electronics from the sheet, they would just add to the basic cost of the ship. A hull space would cost a hull space (or possibly only slowly increase to reflect more powerful reactors on the ship). And look into how the engines are assigned by generation to make higher tech level ships perform better than lower tech level ones, basically a lot of what is done in GSF to balance stuff tech wise I would not do. Higher tech should be better, if you are flying fokker tri-planes and I have P51 mustangs I don't see why I should not fly circles around you.
Fighter weapons would be limited to missiles when it comes to ship killing damage. Point defence really needs a good look at. You have to decide what you want right from the start. The same is true of missile weapons. The key point is to make for interesting battles and choices by the player. How big should a launcher be? How much space for a magazine? How many missiles per magazine? But to my way of thinking point defence and missiles are the two sides of that coin, and they will develop in stages as each side tries to beat the other. Missiles will become increasing effective, and point defence increasingly able to stop them.
The trick is balancing this to keep the system itself functional up to 30-50 ships a side. So that means not adding too much complexity. But adding in weapon arcs and such brings back some tactics which so far as I can see left starfire a while back. The ESF and shoot til it pops is what most battles seem to be, and that for me is boring as all sin. GSF doesn't do anything to change that, infact it makes things worse with the homoginized weapons, short ranges and lousy chances to hit...much dice are rolled and little happens. I'd like to see maneuver come back and options that give the players some interesting things to try. What I want to avoid is going as complex as SFB or AVT. But I would like some more complexity as that brings with it increased tactical options...the trick is in the balance.
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As far as asteroid belt populations go, there is no reason for them to be particularly large assuming there is no need for anything beyond the orbital smelters needed to process the raw rock. They already give a +10% bonus to the system income. It is a question of playtesting really, so far as I can see. You have two boundaries and just need to iterate around to find a happy medium. If you don't like big numbers then set the limit to be 1 PU per hex (or LS or whatever) and see what that gives for economics versus tracking. But it is also possible to justify a large population since space for the habitats and such isn't an issue (there will be lots of hollowed out asteroids).
As I believe you said earlier, asteroid belt colonization, and quite frankly almost all non-habitable world colonization, is about establishing mining operations. And I’m very hard pressed to believe that mining operations (plus a fair amount of support personnel) in an asteroid belt would require tens of millions of people. Allowing that many PU’s (and people) seems more like a way to allow players to build up a huge population in a non-habitable environment. And I’m of the opinion at the moment that if there’s a place where there’s a chance of a significantly sizable population on a currently non-habitable world, it should be on Mass 2 or 3 Type B (i.e. O2) planets, since they will probably be the closest to habitable conditions of any non-habitable worlds in the existing array of options.
"Stay at Home" to me is just that. You mothball your fleet and plow your money into rocks and tech. I think it is non-viable from the get go. If you get pocketed then you have to go to war as a player race or else buy open space from an NPR or other player, because colonizing rock balls will never compensate for another player who can both colonize rock balls but also the significantly better rate of return habitable worlds and has the chance to find NPRs to trade with. This is an economic situation that the pocketed player can never get around except by conquest. The Canon Cartel in our game is in a pocket and since they are peaceful they have been content to remain so, but clearly their economics isn't advancing like the still growing races.
No argument from me here.
I would suggest though that I’d think that a good Spacemaster would never let a player race get “pocketed”, even if it required fudging the # of WP die rolls in some new star systems to make sure that player races never run out of outbound WP’s.
A trade treaty is a +10% increase in your income in general unless the economies are grossly different then it is only one side that gets +10%. That is a nice boost. You could play with the percentage to make it smaller but you would again have to play test it to see where it becomes less incentive to trade then to conquer.
Just to be picky, in ISF it is 10% of the smaller trade partner’s economy. And given that player races are often, if not usually, the larger trading partner, the trade monies will usually be less than your total economy.
As I expect that you’re aware, in GSF/Ultra there’s more than one level of trade treaty. There’s Restricted Trade, Limited Trade, and Free Trade, with increasingly better trade bonuses at each level. And IIRC, ISF’s trade treaty numbers are similar to the numbers for “Limited Trade”.
The only thing that makes the current "send forth hordes of unarmed flies into the great dark unknown" foolish and hence stops it dead is when that results more often than not in a horde of alien ships following the bread crumbs back to your home system and crushing you like the bug you are. It is absolutely insane to send them out without even armed escorts but most people if they escort them at all send along some paltry amount. They do it because the chance you encounter a hostile NPR is virtually nil. The risk is non-existent and the reward is huge so people follow it. To stop it you have just have to change that. The trouble is then the first player to make peaceful contact wins the game I guess...unless you win the war with the NPR and gain a nice planet then the occupation income probably exceeds the value of trade treaty. Then you are back to Dan's GFFP or variants thereof for that.
I agree that making NPR’s be hostile more often is necessary to put some disincentives into blindly exploring without proper military backup.
As for the first player to make peaceful contact winning, etc. I’m not entirely sure that there’s much that can be done with that. If trade treaties are made less profitable, it probably only increases the incentives for players to be more conquest oriented.
In truth, I’ve long thought that if you’re playing in a serious multi-player head-to-head Starfire campaign, one of the best ways to reduce the random luck factors in exploration is to simply not play with NPR’s. It may seem extreme, but NPR’s are always a bit of a game-changer, whether positively or negatively. Without them in a multi-player campaign, the players can get down to exploring and colonizing and trying to seek each other out without the risk of NPR’s being like a treasure chest with either a bomb or a pot of gold hidden within it.
Regardless, I do think that there are some things that can be done to mitigate some of these things. Nuclear or anti-matter bombardment of a populated world should seriously damage that world’s economic output, and after enough damage, make the planet completely uninhabitable. That would put a crimp in GFFP. And as I said above, increase the chances of NPR’s being hostile to mitigate uncontrolled, blind, unsupported exploration.
I would just say that EX can't mount X and be done with it.
Or just get rid of EX’s altogether. ;)
But that doesn’t really solve the problem.
Xi is 2 HS and that in an EX is a tight squeeze, it makes more sense for Xi to use a bigger ship, especially as you want Xr on board as well. And I don't think a EX can do it...Xi, Xr is 4 spaces, Qs, H is 2, Ix2 is 2 and that is 8 and you have only 7 spaces...you could with Xi, Qs, H, Ix2 = 6 HS but that leaves you blind...and you carry either a S or a (BbS) or Hs and (BbT) for a cutter I guess...doesn't make much difference. Xi is more suited to putting on a CT or FG.
Let me point out here that it’s long been my intention to get rid of Q and maintenance Hold requirements. The problem is that frigates and smaller hull types always have to use Q and H’s that are not scaled properly to their needs. So after careful consideration, I decided that the best way to deal with the problem is to simply get rid of the requirement for explicit crew Q’s and maintenance H’s. They will become innate features of the hull. Each hull will be assumed to have enough life support capacity for the ship and its crew, and enough maintenance capacity for 1 month of maintenance for the ship.
Why do you want a Pseudo-Science explanation for a game which is based on making rules and then trying to shoehorn some garbage babble on top of it? But anyway here is your pseudo science explanation: Xc can be used together as each Xc expands length of the gravimetric baseline array to a greater distance to give you more sensitivity to changes in the gravaton flux and enables you to sweep a larger area around the ship.
Perhaps the use of the term “pseudo-science” was ill-advised. I was looking for a logical reason why a ship could mount more than a single X installation. If one assumes that the first X is going to be only able to “sweep” a path of a given width of space, how can the second X do anything but sweep the exact same path? That is, if X is only capable of detecting WP gravitic data 1/2 LM around the ship (i.e. a 1 LM sweep), how can the second X do anything other than the same thing? And if that’s the case, a second X is redundant. For a second X to have any value, it has to be able to detect data that the first one can’t in some way.
Bah. Perhaps the solution should come in a different form. But it has to be remembered that the “1 X per ship” is a powerful economic incentive. Alternate solutions need to be able to compete economically with the dirt cheap solution.
It depends on how you define what an X is and how it works. Doubling the number of sensors and increasing the computers and scientists on the ship is going to make things go faster regardless of how they work exactly.
Actually, Paul, I disagree with this assumption that more X per ship will speed up things. There’s a minimum amount of “time” (StMP) in which a WP survey can be completed. And allowing more X per ship would really just serve to reduce the number of ships required to achieve a completed survey as quickly (and cheaply) as possible within that timeframe.
The rules are written in the way they are I believe to prevent people exploiting them via "clever rules lawyer munch-kin" strategies rather than because they were consistently thought out starting from what the system was and how it would work and deriving what the rules are from that.
Yes, I believe that that’s often true. And it’s probably more true of follow-up versions of the rules since the writer would have a feel for how the initial version was being “rules-lawyered” and would be making adjustments to correct it.
There are issues with the 50 EX with X anyway. For a good part of time the ships will be basically sitting on top of each other and the 50 Ships won't survey any faster than 6, 12 or 18 ships initially. They have to starburst quite some distance from the WP before there is sizable separation between each ship. And depending on where the entrance WP is in the system the utility of a lot of ships would be lost till quite late in the process. This means the survey is already abstracted considerably so allowing multiple Xc per ship is hardly a big issue compared to allowing 50 ships to generate 50 pts per STMP. There should be a considerably smaller limit on the survey points that increases per STMP surveying (this would effectively slow down surveys but also make the 50 ship swarm not so cost effective).
If I’m not mistaken, the minimum “time” for a WP survey limit of 3 StMP contains the assumption that for a while, survey ships will have to “starburst” away from each other to get into an efficient survey pattern.
The point of PPs was to generate a non-MCr based limit on either absolute fleet sizes (which it must do at some stage) or fleet expansion. It also probably made it more sensible to concentrate you crew into bigger ships. The real issue is that with the compound interest growth economy, you get a compound interest growth fleet size and that again to me implodes the fun. In the second münchen campaign my last battle was well over 100 ships on my side alone and that is pretty much unplayable. I kept having trouble tracking which counter was which ship, and marking damage off the right ship in my listing and so forth. Crew grade is far less of an issue (though it compounds the problem) than sheer unadulterated weight of paper.
Crew grade is a major issue to me because I positively hate the idea of having to track each individual ship individually. Having to keep an individual record for each ship is a waste of time. If I have 30 Tiger class BC’s, I want to keep only a single record for those 30 BC’s so long as they are all identical and undamaged. The only time I want to need to track ships individually is when some are damaged and are temporarily different from their sister ships. But once repaired, they can go back to being generic ships with the pool of 30 BC’s.
As for PP’s we’re in agreement. But as for whether PP’s limit absolute fleet size, in ISF it doesn’t. There’s no rule that in any way uses PP’s to place a hard limit on fleet size, only the rate of growth of fleet size.
As for changes I would redo how ships are designed. I would break weapons into small, medium and heavy. Up to the DD you can mount only small, CL and CA can mount medium and BC and larger can mount heavy. Small weapons do less damage and have a shorter range then, medium. Medium weapons do less damage and have a shorter range than heavy. Each hull would have a limited number of turret hard points, and otherwise would have to use either bay or spinal mountings. Spinal mounts have longer range/higher damage than bay mounts but a more restricted arc. Bays are limited to side arcs, turrets give you 360 (less blind spot). But nothing smaller than a CL can mount a turret and it has only a single such mount. This introduces a lot more tactics into the game, currently the ESF and as you say 1 pt is 1 pt regardless if it’s from an ES or a ML.
To a certain degree, these ideas exist in Ultra. You have small, medium, and large weapons. They’re just termed “regular (unstated), Capital, and Heavy. Ultra also has firing arcs (Forward, Rear, Sides, and Turreted [all minus blind spot where applicable]) that are based on the size of the weapon relative to the size of the mounting ship. Kinetic weapons are more limited in the firing arcs due to the nature of the weapon, while missiles don’t worry about blind spots since they can re-orient themselves after launch.
In the Ultra firing arc model, if you take a capital Force Beam and try to mount it on different ships, you’d find that for a very small ship, it’d probably have to have either a forward or rear firing arcs, while for a larger ship, it could be turreted.
What you’re describing sort of fits into the Ultra model, where “spinal” weapons are Ultra’s Forward (or Rear) FA and “bay” (could also be called broadside) weapons are side FA. Of course, Ultra’s firing arc limitations aren’t too terribly restrictive unless the weapon is kinetic, or rather large while the hull is rather small. To fit more closely into the paradigm you describe, the Ultra FA limitations would need to be more restrictive.
A problem with the paradigm you describe is that it doesn’t mesh with the tech systems as they currently exist in 3E. That is, there are only standard and Capital sized weapon mounts. And the Capital weapon mounts represent technological upgrades over the standard weapons, rather than merely upsized versions of the standard technology. To fit into your paradigm, something like the Capital Force Beam would need to be available at the same time as the initial Force Beam technology, rather than being an upgraded technology. This would really throw a monkey wrench into the entire weapons mix. I won’t say that it’s impossible, but it would really require a significant re-think of a number of things relating to beam and kinetic weapons.
For example, is the “standard” 4 HS L and F the “small” sized weapon you describe? Or is it the mid-size weapon? Also, right now, cap beam weapons (obviously) have an advantage in range over standard sized weapons of the same general type, but are not necessarily as good on a HS for HS basis at short ranges. For your paradigm to work, it would seem that the larger sized weapon would need to have the advantage at all ranges over the smaller weapon.
I would also change a bit how the ships are designed lumping a lot of the electronics into the Bridge (a new system) and removing electronics from the sheet, they would just add to the basic cost of the ship.
I don’t think that all electronics systems should be in a Bridge system for the simple reason that they’re not. Oh, there may be control panels for those electronic systems on the bridge, but I think that the really important parts of those electronics systems (i.e. their emitters, computers, and so forth) are elsewhere and can take up considerably more space than the ship’s bridge.
As for a Bridge system itself, I know that some people would love it while others don’t care one way or the other. It seems to me that for the people who’d love it, the primary driver seems to be that they want to have a system on the control sheet for the Bridge so that they can say “The Bridge has been destroyed”, when it gets hit.
A problem that I have with a Bridge system from a practical game design point of view is that it’s another system that should need to be scaled to the size of the ship, like quarters and maintenance holds. And as such, it’d be another system that would be a pain for the smallest ships (FG and below) since they’d probably need something that was one half HS or smaller to be appropriately scaled, while a capital ship might arguably need more than 1 HS of Bridge to properly support the ship. There is a flipside argument here however. Since ships are giving up the requirement to mount crew Q and maintenance H, they’d have the freed up HS to require a Bridge, even for the smallest ships. And loss of the Bridge system could have severely detrimental effects to the ship (i.e. loss of life support, loss of innate sensors, death of graded admiral on flagships without CIC, etc.). However, I fear that that would only serve to give players a reason to go “bridge hunting” with precision weapons, like Needle beams, and close range battles might turn into mutual bridge massacres. So honestly, I’m not really hot on Bridge systems, though I could make it work if I felt the need.
A hull space would cost a hull space (or possibly only slowly increase to reflect more powerful reactors on the ship). And look into how the engines are assigned by generation to make higher tech level ships perform better than lower tech level ones, basically a lot of what is done in GSF to balance stuff tech wise I would not do. Higher tech should be better, if you are flying Fokker tri-planes and I have P51 mustangs I don't see why I should not fly circles around you.
It sounds like you don’t like generational increases to be quite so mild, and would prefer that they be more significant. That’s entirely do-able and a very 3e perspective. And this is a perspective that should seem to hold true of other places where generational upgrades occur. That is, upgrades should be significant rather than merely incremental, because minor incremental improvements can be, well, boring.
Fighter weapons would be limited to missiles when it comes to ship killing damage.
I know that you have a gripe with fighters and energy weapons. And I won’t say that you’re wrong, per se. But if what I’m doing is going to remain true to the 3E official history as presented in the scenario books and novels, doing away with fighter mounted energy weapons isn’t really possible, at least not without a retcon which might not be viewed favorably by other 3E fans. Still, I’m not 1000% unalterably opposed to the idea.
Point defense really needs a good look at. You have to decide what you want right from the start. The same is true of missile weapons. The key point is to make for interesting battles and choices by the player. How big should a launcher be? How much space for a magazine? How many missiles per magazine? But to my way of thinking point defense and missiles are the two sides of that coin, and they will develop in stages as each side tries to beat the other. Missiles will become increasing effective, and point defense increasingly able to stop them.
Argh, you did it again. What about PD do you think needs looking at? What problem do you believe exists with PD? Is it too good? Or is it the die rolls? Something else?
I have to admit that I’m a fan of 3e missile combat, and don’t like what GSF/Ultra did with so few missiles per launcher. If you’re going to have very few missiles per launcher, then those missiles should have considerably more damaging basic warheads. But that’s not really the Starfire way.
The trick is balancing this to keep the system itself functional up to 30-50 ships a side. So that means not adding too much complexity. But adding in weapon arcs and such brings back some tactics which, so far as I can see, left Starfire a while back. The ESF and shoot til it pops is what most battles seem to be, and that for me is boring as all sin. GSF doesn't do anything to change that, in fact it makes things worse with the homogenized weapons, short ranges and lousy chances to hit...much dice are rolled and little happens. I'd like to see maneuver come back and options that give the players some interesting things to try. What I want to avoid is going as complex as SFB or AVT. But I would like some more complexity as that brings with it increased tactical options...the trick is in the balance.
Paul, different people have different tolerances for larger fleet battles. Some prefer smaller sized fleets, while others don’t mind larger fleets. I personally wasn’t bothered by larger fleet battles. But then again, I never used crew grade rules. I would often use averaged results rather than roll out every weapon, just to speed things along. I certainly never used that “no automatic hit” rule.
Still, I do see what you’re saying. And you’re right; trying to include more interesting elements into the mix, while avoiding increased complexity is a difficult balancing act.
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Again, not going digging for quotes.
And a disclaimer.
When we were still using 3eR for my family's game - everyone was starting out and this was where the economic explosion had started to occur.
When we reset to GSF, we also started the 'revisions' that would slow it down for us.
Now, on to the question of 'why no cash for a trade treaty?'
You say if it didn't pay - you would just conquer.
That is still an option in our game. You just have to be willing to risk it.
The fact I am the full time SM means that a lot of our game doesn't follow the normal Starfire progression.
Most NPRs aren't very big in a 'normal' SF game. A system or a couple. And usually not a major challenge to a player race.
But we try hard to keep the player race's incomes small. When my wife was around turn 250 ish, her income was around 25k MC. Getting into a war when that is your whole income is something you look hard at.
Add in that I generate the NPRs, and it becomes even more risky. I don't have a problem sitting down and generating an NPR that is larger than the players. The first one they met (Honaw) was nearly 5x the players income at the start.
Approx half the races that the players have encountered have been larger than they are. That makes you wary of 'lighting them up' because you would like some extra cash from tribute.
You also only get the bonus to EL research from a Trade treaty (larger bonus with better treaty). So you may get tribute with conquest. But you will still plod along at the same old pace. A race with a handful of trade treaties may move up the EL ladder twice as fast as one without.
In a game spanning hundreds of turns, moving up the EL ladder twice as fast is pretty appealing. It means you will get an advantage far faster than an opponent.
But it gets you no cash in our game. You just get better, quicker. Not richer, faster.
But I have yet (in 4e+) to encounter a game that imploded because the players got more and cooler toys to play with... ;)
And as for tracking individual ships, that is again a matter of size.
We keep our games small. My wife has THREE fleet carriers.
Keeping track of them individually isn't much of a hassle.
Their heavy escorts consist of 9 BCs, 21 CAs, and 9CLs - spread out over three fleets.
Again, not a huge list of ships at one page per fleet.
We also split our 'empires' into sectors. With one hab per 40ish systems, it is just easier. The players have decided it is far easier to maintain the records for (say) three 'sectors' of 15k MC each, 30ish systems, and their fleet - than for a single empire of 100 systems and three fleets plus the attendant flotilla of support vessels.
The big picture of a player empire is hard to keep track of spread over a dozen pages if you try to do it all at once. But three sectors of 4 pages each isn't to bad to coordinate.
Kind of like doing 90 push ups. It is a lot easier to do 30 push ups, at three different times - than to do all 90 at once.
They do keep a central log for research and such, but construction, movements, etc are dealt with by sector.
But again, this is how my players like to keep track of things. If you have a hab every 4 to 6 systems (or so), then this would never work.
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And on the issue of multiple Xc...
you haven't spent much time dealing with radio telescope arrays...
In this case, the more antennae in the array, the better your ability to fix distant signals.
Perhaps the same can be said of X.
The little X is like a simple radio set. It can 'hear' the WP's transmission and needs to work to fix the site of the transmission.
But Xc is like the array. It can have lots of receivers that can not only pick up far fainter 'transmissions', but fix their location from farther away.
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The Xc is something like a towed sonar array. In principle in a normal X you put one sensor at the bow and the other at the stern and you use the length of the ship as you baseline to measure things. With Xc you use an extanded boom to make that baseline larger, this gives you both more sensitivity (hense the higher pts per STMP) but also greater reach. As multiple Xc systems effectively mean you extend longer and longer booms you gain increased reach. This is not pseudo science but real science. A BB due to its longer hull length would have better and more accurate sensors then a shorter ship, and its weapons fire would be correspondingly more accurate.
On asteroid populations, while I don't see why you would stick millions of people in asteriods in a belt (or for that matter what they would do) I only said it was possible to have a substantial belter population. At the end of the day a population on mars (an O2 world) would be easier overall to sustain and be more sensible but technologically there isn't an real reason you could not put a lot of people into the belt. For the game it is the difference between "can" and "should" essentially. It can be justified but it should be avoided to have large populations in the belt.
The question of head to head competive games (I tend to think of them as PvP games) these are going to be short and small so removing NPRs and pre-generating the universe as the SM makes a lot of sense. But so far as I ever understood these were the games Marvin was targetting in his rule changes. It is a vastly different game from what Starslayer and I are playing right now (or Kurt or Steve did) and the balance point on things is different. Kicking down the road solves most problems in a short PvP game, as the game will be over the moment the other players sort out that one player has an insurmountable lead unless they band together and take him on en mass.
I have no problem restricting EX to J'Rill EAV. None what so ever. I have exactly 4 EX in my empire...they are diplomatic couriers.
Removing Q and H isn't necessarily a bad idea. H is valuable for ships that need to carry excess maintenance supplies, and yes that is something that happens often if you have something like Steve's supply rules in effect. My point on electronics is that most of these things aren't really that big. A Hull space is a huge amount of volume based on the numbers I saw one time in the old starfire board, the mass of a starfire ship is actually immense (as the density of a lots of the components has to be greater than water), and things like Multiplex targetting, ECCM and ECM, plus a large number of the other electronics things are no where near that sort of volume. I would assume that ECM is build into engine rooms, Mx is just extra computer capacity or a few more seats in the bridge etc. In all these cases I would assume 0 space and just make them add to the hull cost. Even things like extra antennas etc are just not going to add up to a single HS (1000 m3 or something like if memory serves). It is very hard to justify things like CC, CIC, and Mi-x being as large as they are. These are clearly there to "balance" the game rather than because it is sensible the system is so large...4000 m3 for a flag bridge? It is part of my make some things simplier to allow for complexity elsewhere. The Bridge is not required, but it would be nice to have as a place to say ok, now the ship fights with a penalty.
As for the changes: I am not trying to make it fit with 3rdR. I would throw out the entire starfire combat system as to me it suffers from the whole a HS is a HS and any weapon can fit on anything that can carry it...so you can put a Fc on a CT. I was going more for either real wet navy or else something like Renegade Legion Leviathan. A BB mounts weapons that outrange and out damage any lesser ship. You can't compensate by having 100 HS of CTs because the BBs weapons both are longer ranged and more powerful then the CTs popguns just the same way that a WW2 DD outside of a torpedo attack would not threaten a heavier ship. I'm not talking about a different combat system not some house rules. We use the house rule that only a BC or larger can mount a capital weapon in our game.
As for crew grade, that is icing on the cake when you are doing a warp point assault with 100 ships in your fleet. You have to track each ship individually anyway and if it is green or crack or average doesn't make so huge a difference to that task. It is harder to remember that that counter there can only move 4 hexes, and that ship there is badly scragged then it is to sort out if the ship has a crew grade of green, or average as it is written on the ship sheet anyway. The complexity of crew grade is a pain to deal with in an Excel spread sheet not anywhere else. It also differenitiates the NPRs a lot when the have elite crews or poor crews. You gain much more with crew grade then it adds to complexity in my view.
Fighting 100 ships a side battles are simply put time consuming, and unfun. I've been there, done that and have more than a few tee shirts. After 30 ships Starfire breaks down. It is a lot of work tracking the damage, applying the damage, remembering which counters can move what etc. You can argue that 50 per side is doable and I won't say anything against it as that is just personal preference but 100+ ships a side is not fun, it is tedious and a chore simply due to book keeping. If a computer was handling this crap it would be different but for a game where I need to flip through 8 pages of ship sheets to find the correct one it becomes rapidly less than enjoyable. The OH CRAP that is the wrong ship...how much damage did I just give it? event happens at least once a battle. There is a good reason that most of the Stars at War scenarios are of a certain size, that size is playable. ISW4 scenarios are generally just not.
I'm not sure what I did with point defence. In GSF I mentally called it "pointless defence" as the chance to intercept was so low that you were more or less better off with just more passives. The 3rdR system is a bit too good, and things like Dz and the changes to Dx were not thought out properly when you see that they are as good any more as the Dxz systems or why the Di wasn't changed to be also datalinked. I would also go back to Dx for anti fighter use is just 2 shots of a Di (why not do it that way?) and I would look very strongly at the Dcx and Dcz anti-fighter charts as I think they are too effective. I would make Dcx shoot twice on the Dc chart and Dcz I would improve the to hit chance slightly. But for pure missile intercepts the 3rdR base numbers are too high by 1 (something I've said ages ago) so we use the -1 to PD option in SFA. As far as missiles go, I don't like the change made to the SBM it should never be less effective than the lower tech CM and I don't like the stretch of the SM2. Adding numbers to the end without making the middle more effective is not sensible. GSF is a dissaster as I consider "effective range" where you have a 6 to hit and that is the best you get. Rolling lots of dice and doing nothing isn't a good combat system in my view (what GSF long range combat vrs point defence boils down to). As I said the missiles should improve incrementally and the point defence should do the same...and there should always be a point where one or the other system is leading or they are in balance before one side or the other takes a lead again. I like how GSF made crew grade modify the total number of shots (rather than the overall intercept number) though. In many way I see a lot of the stuff done with missile warheads too much an attempt to "balance" things that sensibly aren't balanced...in real life missiles get better targeting, better warheads, better speed, improved this or that and all they do is cost more. It isn't like you either get x or you get y you actually eventually get both. Technological advances are rarely "balanced" they just are.
While you may not like crew grade it is a factor in a real military battle. It is the reason the Royal Navy dominated the seas for so long. It is why real militaries spend outrageous amounts on training simulators and live fire excersizes. Removing it from the game takes away more than it produces by simplification. I would also add a rule that says so long a ship is not directly engaged in a turn (pre-designating fire) then it functions at one higher crew grade. This would make battles less shoot on one till it pops and then change to the next target and more like regular naval engagements where you engage all enemy ships you can and double up only if you outnumber the enemy.
But I am talking about a new combat system model at the end of the day not small changes to existing system. House rules Starslayer and I are using, Proycon has his own that seem to work well, and I know others have done the same. One of the strengths of starfire with a SM is that you can do your own techs (living ships, etc) and that so long as you keep "god mode" under control you can do some pretty neat stuff with the system. At the end of the day I would like to keep the parts that make the system work well (straighfoward combat mechanics, simple and easy to work with ship construction rules, the detailed but easy to use ship layout) and just add in tactical options beyond the ESF and shoot til she pops. In my view to do that you need to make the BB a battleship...not something that 100 HS of smaller ships equals but something that only another BB equals. I don't know if such a thing is possible or if possible would even be popular but RL Leviathan had a lot of good ideas (just it required a fairly complex spread sheet to design ships) along these lines. To me where the starfire (and SFB and any number of other such systems) combat system fails is where basically there is a weapon "F" and the difference between ship type 1 and ship type 2 is just how many F's it carries. Things like FASA's Star Trek Bridge Simulator did a much better job than SFB ever did because they had different phasers/disrupters/torpedoes on different types of ships. The best example I can give for why I thnk this is bad way to design a system is the case in Steve's campaign where a single Rigillian DD with HET destroyed was it 100 Bug BBs? Doesn't really matter if it was 3 DDs or 1 DD or 50 or 100 BBs but that was just absurd to me. But this is just pie in the sky dreaming on my part.
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procyon, it seems to me that what you're describing is some sort of technical assistance treaty, not a real trade treaty.
As for your points on Science Instruments ...
And on the issue of multiple Xc...
you haven't spent much time dealing with radio telescope arrays...
In this case, the more antennae in the array, the better your ability to fix distant signals.
Perhaps the same can be said of X. The little X is like a simple radio set. It can 'hear' the WP's transmission and needs to work to fix the site of the transmission.
But Xc is like the array. It can have lots of receivers that can not only pick up far fainter 'transmissions', but fix their location from farther away.
I'll have to give this a little thought. You make a good argument for justifying multiple X (regardless of generation or type) per ship.
It should be remembered that since SM#2, WP surveying doesn't fix the locations of WP's until after the entire survey is complete.
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Steve's battle resolver works but it lacks a map/counter movement component. Attack Vector Tactical with its 3D movement and full newtonian system is something to play out but starfire is just chits on a map and should be much easier to program.
I would have added the map and movement too but at the time Marvin had a deal with a 3rd party (can't remember the name of the company) to create starfire software and I was forbidden from adding tactical movement because he didn't want SA in competition. The Aurora tactical map is actually the intended Starfire tactical map :)
Steve
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Paul,
Rather than reply point by point to your previous post, I think I’ll move on to some other areas to get your perspectives. (And obviously, anyone else should feel free to chime in…)
What do you think of the old pre-SM#2 ISF EVM style of economics with its relatively non-existent population growth?
I understand the impact of trade in imperial incomes in ISF. I’m more curious about what you think of general EVM/REI model vs. PU/PTU model. I have to admit a certain fondness for the simplicity of the EVM model, although I’m not terribly fond of the REI aspect of the model because of the considerable impact of luck on a world’s GPV.
What do you think of colonization within the EVM model vs. colonization in the PU/PTU model?
Please ignore the fact that pure ISF didn’t have a CFN. There’s no reason why the CFN rules couldn’t function to support an ISF style of colonization.
For people who like the idea of a slower game, one might think that the emplacement time concept in ISF colonization would be appealing. OTOH, I can see the value in being able to more incrementally emplace a colonial population in the PU/PTU model.
And one last question.
What do you think of the “rolled RP” R&D model (used in ISF) vs. the “purchased RP” R&D model (used in GSF/Ultra) as the means for determining completion of an R&D project?
Note that I’m not talking about tech trees, etc. I’m only talking about the mechanism by which completion of an R&D project is determined.
That’s all for now.
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What do you think of the “rolled RP” R&D model (used in ISF) vs. the “purchased RP” R&D model (used in GSF/Ultra) as the means for determining completion of an R&D project?
Note that I’m not talking about tech trees, etc. I’m only talking about the mechanism by which completion of an R&D project is determined.
Personally, I'm a fan of a mixed model. You get x number of RP per facility/colony/scientist/teddy bear/etc. and when you reach a certain threshold you roll for a chance to succeed. Preferably a decent chance. 75%+. If you wish to roll early (before the threshold) you can, but at reduced chances of success.
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What do you think of the old pre-SM#2 ISF EVM style of economics with its relatively non-existent population growth?
I understand the impact of trade in imperial incomes in ISF. I’m more curious about what you think of general EVM/REI model vs. PU/PTU model. I have to admit a certain fondness for the simplicity of the EVM model, although I’m not terribly fond of the REI aspect of the model because of the considerable impact of luck on a world’s GPV.
I never had a real problem with it. I used it in my first starfire empire game (which was play by snail mail). In the empire construction rules of Ad Astra's Squadron Strike they have oscillating income. So your income may grow, then shrink then grow. The problem with the REI is that is would either grow or not change, it should have been random. I would propose rolling on a chart that bell curves the results rather than using a straight random roll. So you roll 2d10 and look on the chart and your REI stays the same, increases by +1 to +3 or decreases by -1 to -3. That would simulate actual economics of growth and recession a lot better. Yes it is random and yes is sucks to be in a recession...but there you go. This would allow you to simulate war economies better (a temporary REI bonus) and other possible things.
What do you think of colonization within the EVM model vs. colonization in the PU/PTU model?
Please ignore the fact that pure ISF didn’t have a CFN. There’s no reason why the CFN rules couldn’t function to support an ISF style of colonization.
For people who like the idea of a slower game, one might think that the emplacement time concept in ISF colonization would be appealing. OTOH, I can see the value in being able to more incrementally emplace a colonial population in the PU/PTU model.
ISF had the CFN, you could pay a certain fee and move stuff freely around your empire. I felt Imperial Freighters were a better deal though. If you use the ISF model then non-habital colonization pretty much never happens since you have to reduce your income (remove EVM), and wait for 3 months or so before you both re-grow it and get money from your outpost you just settled. The costs were also extremely high if I recall correctly.
But I have never played a game using it so my opinion is just from glancing throught the rules...it would change things significantly is about all I can say.
What do you think of the “rolled RP” R&D model (used in ISF) vs. the “purchased RP” R&D model (used in GSF/Ultra) as the means for determining completion of an R&D project?
Note that I’m not talking about tech trees, etc. I’m only talking about the mechanism by which completion of an R&D project is determined.
I like the R&D model in GSF a lot. The rolled model would work if you changed it from a fixed value to one that was say 20+5*TL_of_item so S at TL1 is 25 RP for completion, and F at TL4 is 40 RP for completion. I would also make some items harder (F, Rc/CM, other game changing systems). The rolled model otherwise fails from the costs becoming increasingly not relevant.
The only thing I don't like about the GSF R&D mechanics is all the "Threat Reaction to the Threat Percieved From Our Perception of the Threat" modifiers. Those should only be there if a SM is available to judge if they are applicable otherwise they complicate the situation for little value. My Excel spread sheets had rather complex formula in them just to account for these things.
One of the things in GSF I'm whole heartedly behind is the changes to the tech development. I found it much better done then the standard ISF way, which has always struck me as poorly implemented. The cost of EL research (the chart in ISF) has never made any sense. The first 4 levels are probably the "most expenisive" of all of them as they cost a significant fraction of your available MCr. The periods where the cost to research stays fixed but your economy is growing don't make any sense either. The costs of the individual tech systems is also poorly related to anything, it seems random if something is expensive or not.
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I never had a real problem with it. I used it in my first starfire empire game (which was play by snail mail). In the empire construction rules of Ad Astra's Squadron Strike they have oscillating income. So your income may grow, then shrink then grow. The problem with the REI is that it would either grow or not change, it should have been random. I would propose rolling on a chart that bell curves the results rather than using a straight random roll. So you roll 2d10 and look on the chart and your REI stays the same, increases by +1 to +3 or decreases by -1 to -3. That would simulate actual economics of growth and recession a lot better. Yes it is random and yes is sucks to be in a recession...but there you go. This would allow you to simulate war economies better (a temporary REI bonus) and other possible things.
Paul, the REI, as described in ISF, wasn’t something that should have been able to go down. The REI “measures the efficiency with which the planet’s population makes use of its resources” (quoted directly from ISF rule 15.03.01). That doesn’t sound like a factor that should go down to me … a population suddenly getting less efficient at making use of its resources?
And the REI was not a measure of economic health or conditions. Thus, there was no reason for it to try to simulate it. And even if it did, your suggestion is far too random with variations that are far too great to do a reasonably fair job of simulating economic ups and downs.
I actually wrote up an idea for "economic health" (EH) a couple of years ago, wherein the die roll modifiers were based on whether your imperial economy's health had gone up, down, or leveled off. If the economy's EH had declined, the die roll modifiers was a -1, slightly increasing the chance of a continued economic decline. And vice-versa if the economy was growing. And if the economy had leveled off, the die roll modifiers were neutral. There was also a modifier for being at war. There was also a modifier for getting a new trade treaty (+1) or losing one (-1).
Ahh, I found my notes on the idea. At the end of each month, you rolled 1d10 against the Upswing/Downswing table. The Upswing/Downswing Table was:
1 or less: -2 (strong downswing)
2-3: -1 (mild downswing)
4-7: 0 (no change)
8-9: +1 (mild upswing)
10 or more: +2 (strong upswing)
Then you'd apply that result against the Economic health table. (I chopped out some rows to shorten it.)
EH#: Economic Status: EH%
EH1: Depression: 80%
EH2: Deep Recession: 85%
...
EH5: Normal: 100%
...
EH8: Strong Upswing: 115%
EH9: Economic Boom: 120%
The result of the U/D table was applied to the EH#. Example: if you had an U/D result of +1, you'd go from "strong upswing" to "Economic Boom", with a change in the economy of 115% of normal to 120% of normal.
The general idea of this EH concept was to create a bit of a natural rhythm of ups and downs to an economy. Also, the swing was limited from only 80% of normal to 120% of normal, so that variation shouldn't be too, too severe. And the EH% is applied across the entire empire, not on a planet by planet basis.
Regardless, this is an idea that I'd consider for an optional rule, not a regular one.
As for the REI, I’d probably replace it with the Mineral Factor concept (i.e. Very Rich to Very Poor, and percentages ranging from either 50% to 150% as in SM#2, or 60% to 140% as in Ultra), though I’d have to rescale the actual EVM values themselves.
ISF had the CFN, you could pay a certain fee and move stuff freely around your empire. I felt Imperial Freighters were a better deal though. If you use the ISF model then non-habitable colonization pretty much never happens since you have to reduce your income (remove EVM), and wait for 3 months or so before you both re-grow it and get money from your outpost you just settled. The costs were also extremely high if I recall correctly.
But I have never played a game using it so my opinion is just from glancing through the rules...it would change things significantly is about all I can say.
Well, yes, ISF had the "IFN", but I don't think that you could use it for extra-system colonization. I just read thru the IFN and colonization rules, and it does not state explicitly that the IFN may not be used for colonization, but there are some strong implications (like the IFN only being allowed between worlds where both had functional spaceports, something a virgin colony world likely wouldn't have). The IFN is explicitly allowed to be used for in-system colonization, though the cost is unclear.
And yes, non-habitable colonization was pretty nasty, since "desolate" colonization was 6x the base emplacement cost and H requirement, and "extreme" colonization was 9x. And yes, at those costs, non-habitable colonization looked unattractive, though I'm not so sure it was quite as bad as it seemed. Oh, it was probably rather bad for outposts, but once you got the population up to colony status, even an O1/O2 could be pretty productive, if you could get a half-decent REI. Also, because the costs are high, it does put more of a dampener on rockball colonization.
And yes, the rule requiring the host population to temporarily give up some EVM was a pain. Frankly, it seems to me that larger populations establishing OP's and Colonies shouldn't see even a blip on their economic production from losing so few people (relatively speaking).
I like the R&D model in GSF a lot. The rolled model would work if you changed it from a fixed value to one that was say 20+5*TL_of_item so S at TL1 is 25 RP for completion and “F” at TL4 is 40 RP for completion. I would also make some items harder (F, Rc/CM, other game changing systems). The rolled model otherwise fails from the costs becoming increasingly not relevant.
I agree that the way that 4e determines the target RP and scales it to TL/SL is good. As for adding in some “difficulty factor” for game changing systems, of course it’s do-able, though I’m not entirely sure if it’s wise.
OTOH, even in Ultra, there’s a bit of a difficulty factor in its R&D that goes by the name of “Critical Project”. In the “bought RP” model, a critical project requires two successful completion die rolls in separate months. And particularly bad rolls can have rather painful results.
The only thing I don't like about the GSF R&D mechanics is all the "Threat Reaction to the Threat Perceived from Our Perception of the Threat" modifiers. Those should only be there if a SM is available to judge if they are applicable otherwise they complicate the situation for little value. My Excel spread sheets had rather complex formula in them just to account for these things.
The “counter” to weapons seems very individual. Sometimes, it’s a new defensive system. But sometimes, it’s a copy of the weapon itself on the theory that if I can’t develop a defense against it, I’d better be able to respond in kind.
In general, I suspect that the general ISF-style Perceived Threat concept would work sufficiently well enough.
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REI is just a factor that is multiplied by your EVM to determine your income, it always increases (eventually) and calling it "efficiency" is a bit odd. Efficiency increase doesn't lead to increased economic performance last I checked. Certainly it isn't going to jump from 2 to 12 just because you went up a tech level. If you don't like my scaling that is what play testing is about but my point was economies don't always grow which is what the ISF REI change per tech level rules produce. SM2 doesn't even try to simulate economics cycles it is just always expanding.
I can't really comment on the EVM model...I used it in my snail mail game, it was ok, but so far as I recall only habitable colonies really paid off. It certainly was vastly different from SM2. I would personally change the model to something based on "factories", "farms", and "mines" and avoid an economy that is purely money. Any time I see game economics that is modeled by a single commodity (HOIx IC, Starfire MCr, etc) it always ends up being gamed by people in ways that just break it. But such systems are harder to design. I don't think they are harder for the player to use but they are much more complex for the designer to deal with.
I'm not sure what exactly the CFN was capable of, probably you could not use it for "first in colonization" but after that it should have been possible. I used the 2nd Edition rules so I'm sure there were changes, I only recall thinking that 10% was more than what the maintenance on my freighter fleets were, and there was no big deal to making up regular routes that moved MCr around.
Well in the Stars at War the KON had a hellish time developing the Rc/CM system which is why I would make these things more expensive time and MCr wise. The knots in GSF were a good way of doing this, but for a ISF based system I would just increase the required RP total. Why should it be easy to get a system that is going to completely change how battles are conducted? The tech research rules in ISF are among the worst parts of the game. I have never been able to fathom why they exist in the form they do.
The problem with "percieved threat" is that unless the cost increase becomes largely not relevant as time goes on. Steve used the tech purchace rules to develop fighters ahead of time without blinking an eye. About the only rule I see a need for it one for developing captured technology. I'd just drop the whole threat reaction stuff.
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procyon, it seems to me that what you're describing is some sort of technical assistance treaty, not a real trade treaty.
Perhaps....
But with our trade deficit, it isn't like we are making money off of trade. But we do gain some other things.
And if you think China didn't gain in technology from 'trade' with the US....
Along with a bunch of third world nations...
This is what I was trying to model. Most of the $ from trade goes to 'non-governement' entities.
But the tech will be incorporated into your base economy - which is why we give a bonus to EL (or TL) research.
Not any particular item/SL research, just the EL (or TL) of the race.
We also didn't want the added cash piled into the economies...
And my favorite part of the ISF rules for pops and income was the increase with TL.
Our biggest issue is that an EL1 outpost with 20PU in 4e+ makes the same as an EL40 outpost with 20PU....
Never have liked that. But haven't tried to fix it as it would likely increase incomes - and we didn't want that.
But if the pops grow slowly and have lower income amounts (like in ISF), then the TL increase would be ok (ish).
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And my favorite part of the ISF rules for pops and income was the increase with TL.
Our biggest issue is that an EL1 outpost with 20PU in 4e+ makes the same as an EL40 outpost with 20PU....
Never have liked that. But haven't tried to fix it as it would likely increase incomes - and we didn't want that.
Procyon, the problem you're referring to is that the pop caps for OP's and Colonies, etc don't have the pop caps that increase with EL like the major population brackets do. This is only an issue for non-habitable worlds, since habitable world populations would merely "EL grow" into the next bracket. Also, while one could create one's own floating pop caps for those colonial level populations easily enough, the problem is that if you have a lot of them, you're putting yourself in a position where you are going to have to update those PU caps every EL increase, and worse, you're going to have to continue to do growth on those many tiny populations.
Frankly, this is a problem with the EL Growth model. Oh, ELG has some things to be said for it, but the issue you've outlined is one of the negatives. That is, because of the hard PU caps, non-habitable pops don't see any increase in income from an increase in EL. That said, it is possible to get benefit from ELG growth even on those bodies, but it involves a LOT of work. What you have to do is to move a few PU's off of each of these colonial level pops prior to the next EL increase (maybe shift them to an Asteroid belt in the same system). What you've then done is to create enough room for the world to absorb the ELG increase. But it's a pain in the arse!!! And actually costs you money to gain the benefit.
But if the pops grow slowly and have lower income amounts (like in ISF), then the TL increase would be ok (ish).
It's actually worth noting that the EVM model is similar to Ultra in that the increases you see with an EL increase are effectively "EL Growth" in each world's EVM. It's just that the mechanism for making it happen is a little different in ISF.
Procyon, actually it's a little hard to say that incomes are lower in ISF. There are some different things going on. Individual planetary incomes are higher on a per world basis against comparable worlds (by TL and pop size). But there is probably somewhat less colonization of the "rockballs" (i.e. non-habitable worlds, particularly moons and asteroids), due to the greater expense of rockball colonization. And because natural growth is glacially slow, in ISF, you don't see any colonial populations growing into Medium, Large or Very Large. The largest player race colonial population you'd likely see is a Small. So for player race population incomes, overall they'd probably be lower, though the homeworld will almost certainly be an economic powerhouse. As I'm sure you've heard, trade income with NPR's is where player races get a lot of additional income in ISF, but that's tweakable.
I have to admit that I always liked not having to micromanage my worlds' GPVs, other than perhaps buying some "industrial EVMs". Your worlds' GPVs stayed pretty static, except when your EL/TL increased, and then you'd have to readjust your GPV to account for the new EVM and roll for new REI's. But on the whole, it didn't occur all that often, so it wasn't a big deal. It was clean and simple, and didn't require constant micromanaging.
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REI is just a factor that is multiplied by your EVM to determine your income, it always increases (eventually) and calling it "efficiency" is a bit odd. Efficiency increase doesn't lead to increased economic performance last I checked. Certainly it isn't going to jump from 2 to 12 just because you went up a tech level. If you don't like my scaling that is what play testing is about but my point was economies don't always grow which is what the ISF REI change per tech level rules produce. SM2 doesn't even try to simulate economics cycles it is just always expanding.
I won't disagree that the jumps in ISF's REI were rather ridiculous. As for economics not always growing, true, but it's just a game with an intentionally simplistic economic model. I'm not expecting a professional economist's economic model. And frankly, I'd find having an imperial economy that had to deal with semi-realistic economic upturn and downturn rules quite annoying. I'd probably ignore such rules in favor of having nice, clean, and simple economic rules with constant GPV's that I didn't have to micromanage every month.
But clearly different people have different tastes and tolerances.
I'm not sure what exactly the CFN was capable of, probably you could not use it for "first in colonization" but after that it should have been possible. I used the 2nd Edition rules so I'm sure there were changes, I only recall thinking that 10% was more than what the maintenance on my freighter fleets were, and there was no big deal to making up regular routes that moved MCr around.
I remember feeling the same way about using ISF's IFN. Unlike some people, I had no problem with building Imperial FT's and using them.
Well in the Stars at War the KON had a hellish time developing the Rc/CM system which is why I would make these things more expensive time and MCr wise. The knots in GSF were a good way of doing this, but for a ISF based system I would just increase the required RP total. Why should it be easy to get a system that is going to completely change how battles are conducted? The tech research rules in ISF are among the worst parts of the game. I have never been able to fathom why they exist in the form they do.
How about remembering that it's a simple-ish game with simple rules. Heck, the R&D rules are all of 2 pages long!!! Could they be better? Sure. But like I said before, perhaps something like the Critical Project rule could be applied to something like Rc/CM, where 2 successful die rolls are required for project completion, not just 1. And the chances for a serious failure are greater with greater negative effeccts.
The problem with "perceived threat" is that unless the cost increase becomes largely not relevant as time goes on. Steve used the tech purchase rules to develop fighters ahead of time without blinking an eye. About the only rule I see a need for it one for developing captured technology. I'd just drop the whole threat reaction stuff.
I'm not as bothered by you by the PT rules, though I think that perhaps they need a close re-examination to make sure that they're not being abused.
As for costs, IIRC, didn't SM#2 make some changes to R&D costs? IIRC, EL Research was changed to a startup cost of 30% of GEV and a monthly cost of 10% of GEV, which is better than those flat rates (except perhaps in the early TL's). I don't remember if it made similar changes to development costs.
Regardless, I full intend to change the R&D costs to get away from the flat rates.
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Procyon, actually it's a little hard to say that incomes are lower in ISF. There are some different things going on. Individual planetary incomes are higher on a per world basis against comparable worlds (by TL and pop size). But there is probably somewhat less colonization of the "rockballs" (i.e. non-habitable worlds, particularly moons and asteroids), due to the greater expense of rockball colonization. And because natural growth is glacially slow, in ISF, you don't see any colonial populations growing into Medium, Large or Very Large. The largest player race colonial population you'd likely see is a Small. So for player race population incomes, overall they'd probably be lower, though the homeworld will almost certainly be an economic powerhouse.
As I'm sure you've heard, trade income with NPR's is where player races get a lot of additional income in ISF, but that's tweakable.
I added the emphasis.
And you are right. The chance to grow lots of pops on every little rock is pretty poor.
Expensive. Takes a lot of time. And isn't going to grow very far unless your game lasts a LOOONG time.
Trade was the big income. Find friends - get rich.
But for us - finding friends just boosts you TL research....
So....
You wouldn't get runaway incomes. Your homeworld will increase in income pretty well, but that will be the only major increase.
We did toy with the idea of reinstituting this mechanic in our games when we went from GSF to Ultra.
But decided not to as it would have required rewriting a LARGE number of house rules. And making the jump from GSF to Ultra looked like it was going to be enough work.
Adjusting Ultra to modified ISF was more than we wanted to bite off before we got to playing.
But the idea was appealing. If you had no income from trade in an ISF economy - the runaway economic spiral would definitely slow down.
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I added the emphasis.
And you are right. The chance to grow lots of pops on every little rock is pretty poor.
Expensive. Takes a lot of time. And isn't going to grow very far unless your game lasts a LOOONG time.
Trade was the big income. Find friends - get rich.
But for us - finding friends just boosts you TL research....
So....
You wouldn't get runaway incomes. Your homeworld will increase in income pretty well, but that will be the only major increase.
There are a few other ways to control trade incomes.
1. Reduce the percentages used to determine that income.
2. Increase the chances of new contacts being hostile, thus increasing the risk to aggressive explorers.
3. Place limits on the amount of trade income, such as saying that an empire's trade income cannot exceed its (internal) imperial income.
Those are 3 right off the top of my head. There may be others.
We did toy with the idea of reinstituting this mechanic in our games when we went from GSF to Ultra.
But decided not to as it would have required rewriting a LARGE number of house rules. And making the jump from GSF to Ultra looked like it was going to be enough work.
Adjusting Ultra to modified ISF was more than we wanted to bite off before we got to playing.
But the idea was appealing. If you had no income from trade in an ISF economy - the runaway economic spiral would definitely slow down.
If you had no income from trade in ISF, you were really hosed because colonization's ability to greatly enhance your income was limited. With some luck, you might find some empty T/ST's and build up some Small pops.
Without trade, the only other major ways to greatly increase your income would have been to find some really friendly NPR's to amalgamate into your empire, or conquest.
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There are a few other ways to control trade incomes.
1. Reduce the percentages used to determine that income.
2. Increase the chances of new contacts being hostile, thus increasing the risk to aggressive explorers.
3. Place limits on the amount of trade income, such as saying that an empire's trade income cannot exceed its (internal) imperial income.
Those are 3 right off the top of my head. There may be others.
These could be options.
And we do use #2. Kind of....
As SM - the players don't meet lots of friendly races....
We just wanted very limited incomes to keep the game manageable.
We don't want 100 ships on a side battles. The best way to do that was to make it nearly impossible to afford them.
If you had no income from trade in ISF, you were really hosed because colonization's ability to greatly enhance your income was limited. With some luck, you might find some empty T/ST's and build up some Small pops.
Without trade, the only other major ways to greatly increase your income would have been to find some really friendly NPR's to amalgamate into your empire, or conquest.
Yep. That's pretty much it.
And so far, in all our turns, no one has managed to amalgamate a race. My wife has come close...
So it boils down to conquest.
Which in our game, is a very risky proposition.
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SM2 introduced a minimum cost for EL research. For the first four tech levels you will be above the limit to trigger it, and those first 4 tech levels are the most expensive in the game, 1000 MCr to a TL1/2 race is a substantial fraction of their income. But I was speaking of the item research costs and for those after some point the cost increase becomes largely not relevant. Steve must have paid 200,000 MCr or so to develop fighters early. But his income was at that point nearly 1,000,000 MCr.
As for the "simplistic" economic model...frankly this is a matter of taste and preference but such models inevitably end up min-maxed, if for no other reason than it is easy to do so. Once this happens then either every player employes such min-maxing or else you end up behind economically (and that means you have lost). This removes options from the players. That is why I would rather have a system that is more complex for the designer but offers the players options. I don't think that it is more difficult for the player to deal with a "mixed economy" than a "MCr" economy but it is much harder to min-max a system with multiple variables, and in general the chance of an extreme deviation from a multi-variable optimization is reduced. It is why D&D with its trivial characteristics leads rapidly to, as the TV Tropes site says: "One Stat To Rule Them All" and other such things you can find there. To avoid that you need to bring in some design complexity. A professional economist is a good idea and one if I was serious about a game design I would start with. 4X games (or any RTS) are ultimately management games (they aren't strategic, strategic thought takes a few seconds) and having the core of the game (its economic model) be abusable leads to the game quickly becoming stale.
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SM2 introduced a minimum cost for EL research. For the first four tech levels you will be above the limit to trigger it, and those first 4 tech levels are the most expensive in the game, 1000 MCr to a TL1/2 race is a substantial fraction of their income. But I was speaking of the item research costs and for those after some point the cost increase becomes largely not relevant. Steve must have paid 200,000 MCr or so to develop fighters early. But his income was at that point nearly 1,000,000 MCr.
Yeah, it was like about 30% for startup, and 10% for the monthly fee for EL research. But there's no reason that the same concept couldn't be applied to tech item development as well (just as is done in Ultra). Though I should say that paying 20% of your income to develop a tech system using PT development is a pretty darned hefty cost and seems quite "relevant" to me.
As for the "simplistic" economic model...frankly this is a matter of taste and preference but such models inevitably end up min-maxed, if for no other reason than it is easy to do so. Once this happens then either every player employs such min-maxing or else you end up behind economically (and that means you have lost). This removes options from the players. That is why I would rather have a system that is more complex for the designer but offers the players options. I don't think that it is more difficult for the player to deal with a "mixed economy" than a "MCr" economy but it is much harder to min-max a system with multiple variables, and in general the chance of an extreme deviation from a multi-variable optimization is reduced. It is why D&D with its trivial characteristics leads rapidly to, as the TV Tropes site says: "One Stat To Rule Them All" and other such things you can find there. To avoid that you need to bring in some design complexity. A professional economist is a good idea and one if I was serious about a game design I would start with. 4X games (or any RTS) are ultimately management games (they aren't strategic, strategic thought takes a few seconds) and having the core of the game (its economic model) be abusable leads to the game quickly becoming stale.
Regarding complex vs simple, I prefer a simpler model because I don't want the focus of the game to be on micro-micro-managing of an empire's monetary system, and worrying about whether to move a tiny handful of PTU's here or there. I prefer a higher level view, because I don't want to get dragged down into the weeds. Also, too much micro-micro-managing in the economic system to me moves the focus of the game away from where I like it ... more on building ships, moving ships, exploring, meeting NPRs, and fighting whatever wars pop up.
But as we've both pointed out, it's a matter of taste. And we simply (pardon the pun) seem to have different tastes as to complexity when it comes to the game's economic system.
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If you do it without even thinking about it then it is not relevant. 20% for a game changing system like fighters isn't even anything you spend a second thought on. It becomes relevant when you have to save money for 3 turns to afford it and think about if it is worth doing in the first place.
As I said, the player isn't likely to have any more difficulty managing an economy with more than MCr, it is the game designer who suffers the complexity. I don't like games that end up being min-maxed and then you have to do stuff I don't think is sensible just to stay competive. Whether that is heavy IU investment, exploring with EXs, or whatever...when I have to do "insert thing" else I am dooming myself then a game has "epic failed" for me. There should not be one true path to sucess.
The starfire combat system is actually extremely good that way, no matter how wacky the combination is, you can make it work. Unfortunately there are some combinations that don't work for some generic tasks (WP assault, WP defence) that are critical to the game.
But to me, what is important is not "simplicity" or "complexity" but player choice. An easily min-maxed, gamed, exploited or manipulated system, regardless of how complex or simple it is, is what I am against.
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If you do it without even thinking about it then it is not relevant. 20% for a game changing system like fighters isn't even anything you spend a second thought on. It becomes relevant when you have to save money for 3 turns to afford it and think about if it is worth doing in the first place.
As I said, the player isn't likely to have any more difficulty managing an economy with more than MCr, it is the game designer who suffers the complexity. I don't like games that end up being min-maxed and then you have to do stuff I don't think is sensible just to stay competitive. Whether that is heavy IU investment, exploring with EXs, or whatever...when I have to do "insert thing" else I am dooming myself then a game has "epic failed" for me. There should not be one true path to success.
The Starfire combat system is actually extremely good that way, no matter how wacky the combination is, you can make it work. Unfortunately there are some combinations that don't work for some generic tasks (WP assault, WP defence) that are critical to the game.
But to me, what is important is not "simplicity" or "complexity" but player choice. An easily min-maxed, gamed, exploited or manipulated system, regardless of how complex or simple it is, is what I am against.
Paul, I guess that we have very different outlooks.
I think that paying 20% of one's income to develop a single tech system is extremely "relevant". 20% is 20%. In the example you cite, if there's a problem, it's not that Steve paid 20% (i.e. 200K MC) to develop fighters. Rather, perhaps it's that he had an income of a million MC.
And for me it is about the game having simplicity (to a degree). I could make Cosmic be full of "player choice". It could have "player choice" coming out its ears. And it might end up being a rulebook that was over 500 pages long that a lot of people wouldn't bother opening due to its size. At some point, one has to say "enough's enough" and take a stand on the game not becoming too bloated with "player choice" features. Ultra is over 370 pages long. Solar is over 420 pages long. I don't think that I aspire to creating a rule book that reaches those lengths, though it's possible it would happen in spite of my best efforts. Boring weapons aside, you sound like someone who'd like Ultra or Solar because they have bucket loads of "player choice" with long optional rules sections, etc.
As I said, i think that we have very different outlooks. I view Starfire much the same way as Dave Weber did ... as a wargame. I'm not interested in a Starfire where the point of the strategic game is my empire's balance sheet and the order of battle is little more than an expense on that balance sheet. That sounds really boring to me.
Also, Paul, please don't take anything I've said above as hostility. As I said, we clearly have different points of view on Starfire. But there are areas where we do agree, and I always appreciate your comments. If I've taken a long time to reply to your last post, it was because I didn't want to sound hostile.
Moving on...
BTW, I agree about that TRPTD. PT is one thing. It's simple enough. (See a weapon of a higher TL. Develop it yourself.) But that TRPT thing is bogus to me because some of the counters (in SM#2) are really not obvious ones (at least to me). And even in Ultra, I can't fully agree with the counters. GB's as a "counter" to fighters? Really? Fighters should be the counter to fighters, or in 3e, Di or AFM's. GB's should only be viewed as a counter if your race can't use fighters for some reason that's sort of outside the purview of the game's rules.
TRPTD requires a judgement about what the appropriate counter tech is, and quite often, I think that the supposed counter simply isn't particularly obvious. I mean, why should Overload Dampeners be an obvious counter to E-beams? Are there any other beam weapons that have a similar energy siphoning defensive tech that would lead one to think that "O" is such an obvious counter? If anything, it seems to me that the more obvious counter to E-beams is better shields. The only reason that "O" is an "obvious" counter is because we know that it's on the list of tech systems.
Regarding PTD, I think that it should actually be more difficult and take more time than it is in ISF. The difference in TL's should be reflected in how long it takes to develop. And if anything, it should probably take more time to do PTD, depending on the TL diff, than regular development, because of the TL difference issue.
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When your income is in around one million you can spend 200,000 of it to develop a game changing technology without blinking. Consider that to do TL2 research your race is investing 1000 MCr, and that is around 33% of your income (2000 PU*1.25*1.1*1.1), and likely leaves you with peanuts to spend on other things (less than 1000 MCr). Whereas that 200,000 for fighters leaves you 800,000 MCr still left to spend, even with a maintenance of 500,000 that is still 300,000 to spend. At this point the starfire economics no longer has a brake. You would have to do something like Kurt did with his fortifiy every system with a major population to see an effect. This is pretty much what Weber's TFN did. They have a massive investment in defences judging by the bases you see near planets in scenarios.
This is not done in starfire campaigns because it is pointless (bases can't defend the planet) and expensive. It is not optimal. To remain competetive in starfire you can't deviate signficantly from the optimal. This is what I mean by player choice. This isn't a rules question, you can't add rules that give player choice. You are talking about options such as racial characteristics or bonuses. I am talking about if it is possible to suceed at the game without using EX's for your survey fleets, or massively investing in IU, or building solid defences etc. Starfire is a wargame, Imperial Starfire is a management game. ALL RTS (real time strategy) games are management games. They all have to do with optimizing spreadsheets (even if you can't see the spread sheet). Strategic thought takes a few seconds, managment takes hours.
Starfire the tactical game gives you the player choice. You can design your ships as you like, and for the most part if you adapt your tactics to your design you will be sucessful. The exception is when you hit a tactical situation you can't adapt to. Engaging Rc armed BCs with F armed BCs in a deepspace battle isn't going to work no matter what tactical wizardy you employ. I've played battles with utterly random ships and made them work even if my first reaction to the ship was "oh my god." But even so there are just limits depending on the type of battle...assaulting a warp point with only Rc armed ships isn't so easy...
Where player choice vanishes is with the Empire State Formation and the Shoot On One Target Till She Pops tactics. This removes manuever from the game, basically reducing it to a 1D combat system. The Empire State Formation and the fact an F is an F independant of it is on a CT or a BB also reduce the effect of player choice. If you have a BB and the other person has 6-8 CTs it is a hard call who will win. Even if the BB wins it will be a cripple. This is the same thing that happens in most games which have ablative defenses and a limited weapon selection. Starfire magnifies this with the construction rules that make those CTs cheaper to build, faster to build and less expensive to maintain.
The single currency economy in the economic side of starfire limits player choice in the extreme since a system like this is easy to optimize, and there is virtually no chance that you get multiple optimizatoin paths. This completely restricts players, you no longer can choose to not follow the optimized route or else you will fall behind. Just look at the difference between Starslayer's economy and mine in our game. I've seen this in not only starfire but also games such as HOIx where I nearly banged my head on the wall in frustration over the damned "optimizers" who would come on about how the one true path was doing x. As far as I am concerned when this happens a "strategy" game has failed, and failed epically to use modern internet parlance. The only way to avoid this is to have an economy that has at least a modicum of complexity to it since optimization of a 3 variable function is more likely to result in different solutions then a single variable function. But this complexity does not hit the player, nor does it require 100 extra pages of rules it hits the game designer who has to deal with the balancing and so on that goes into the game system.
Look at the economics in Victoria or Pride of Nations. Both use similar ideas, Victoria is an utterly incomprehensible mess and the other is much more straightforward to deal with. But a strategy game needs strategic input, to keep the player engaged you need to be challenging them with "strategic" choices regularily. Starfire does not because well there isn't any reason to "not" do things if you can afford them. Most decisions in starfire (Imperial starfire or the 4X part) doen't take thought. See a habitable, colonize it. See an open warp point explore it. Meet an NPR, talk to them. Can communicate, offer trade. Have trade, work up to amalgamation. Keep fleet costs as low as possible to maximize you colonization money, as money early is better than money later.
In the München game we even had people trying to break the economics by devious means. One person basically had no fleet until they developed SDs...but by that time they had a massive economy to invest in them. I've seen pretty much every thing you can do to the economy. Starslayer is the better person to talk about what the one true path to economic dominance is, as doing that offends my sensibilities too much.
The main input into strategy in stafire is the random exploration. How the warp points connect. But at least with ISF's tech system there is no strategic thought involved. GSF at least requires you to think about how you use your breakthru's and such.
At the end of the day player choice isn't about optional rules, it isn't about more rules, it isn't about complex rules it is about giving the player viable options to choose from within the existing rules. Whenever you can say "you only need to build x" then the game has failed to provide this. That ultimatly leads to the player becoming bored and not playing the game. Chess has survived for as long as it has, because within a very simple rule set is a lot of player choice. For every opening there exists a good number of things you as the opponent can do to counter it, and the number of openings is large. Starfire has one, and only one economically viable start, if you deviate from that you will fall behind economically outside of having much better exploration luck.
The only way to keep a simple one variable economy under control is to do all the things Proycon mentions. You have to keep the available money to be spent each turn small to encourage the player to balance each possible expense against the other. Either you reduce income growth, or you increase costs but the key point is that the amount of money to be spent has to be controlled. My opinion is that a more varied economy can work at giving the player both more choices in how to develop but also functions to make the balancing act more interesting to the player. It also adds "strategic value" to systems if they are the sole source of agent yellow that you need to build your deathrays of doom or whatever. I don't see that such a thing necessitates 100 extra pages of rules.
And no I'm not a fan of too many optional rules. Most of the time they are just another way to min-max your way forward. If you are going to put in optional rules and whatever then they need to add to the game experience. I started playing Avalon Hill's Squad Leader so I have a different view on the value of rules perhaps but still I am dubious I would be interested in Solar or Ultra or Extragalactic or whatever just because it has lots of optional rules.
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Actually, the production difference is not that great if you substract me amalgenating a 34k income NPR about 2 dozen turns back. That 3 SMTP colonisation distance wall is a very hard brick...
Well, I have ´Battletech: Objective Raids in my bookshelf. Interresting book for the emrcenary and industrial minded, as it lists the company and wich world it is based on for the manufacture of every single component used in building your mech. Well, any component ever mentioned in prior sourcebooks. So Raid a world and put the producer of said mechtype in dire troubles by say... keeing his reactor shipment from ariving.
But it's abit complex for a game of starfire without computer support. But if you ahve to build factores for your weapons etc, and then have to ship them to your shipyards, then you really can make use of commerce raiding and resource denial. especially if some components needs mineral resources wich are scarce on most planets. and then you have planets all over your empire who are suddenly economic viable, and wich need to be protected and guarded and developped even though they are not in a vital warp junction etc.
Ok, enough toying with ideas... but it sure would make a gamechanger when that raid through the closed wp would not only hit 150 PU of hostile setlement (yawn), but also your only source of forcebeamium crystals... *panic*
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Two things:
1) I thought Paul's analysis was exquisite.
2) One thing he didn't touch on: What is the purpose of the strategic game (4X) relative to the tactical game? Is the purpose of the strategic game to give a framework for generating "realistic" OOBs and victory conditions for tactical battle setups? Or is it intended as the primary game, i.e. are people primarily competing in a 4X game with the tactical battles a more sophisticated/detailed version of putting human tactical choices into battles (such as the "Assault/Probe/Defend/Delay" choices in Halls of Montezuma)? The answer to this question tells a designer where he wants to focus on giving players a richness of decision making (the primary game) and where he wants to focus on minimizing the time required to move forward (the secondary game). And if the designer wants the answer to be "both", then he still needs to worry about satisfying players who might be interested in one aspect or the other and don't want to be bored with micro-managing the aspect of the game in which they are uninterested. I actually think that this is the place where optional rules belong - to put in place an alternate mechanism that simplifies the game mechanics, so that people who are uninterested in that aspect of the game can simply cut it out and replace it with a plausible abstraction.
The best example I can remember of "strategic in support of tactical" is Red Storm Rising on the computer (which is available on one of the abandoned software sites). You would move your submarine on the strategic map to set up the starting conditions for a tactical battle with Russion TG.
An example of "tactical in support of strategic" is Sword of the Stars. One of my frustrations with this game was that, once your empire got big, it used to take a huge amount of time to wade through all the tactical battles to advance to the next turn. I think it would have been very nice in this game to be able to auto-resolve battles, so that the 4X part of the game didn't drag to a halt.
Another interesting example of this is Stars!, which has the AI play both sides of the tactical battles while allowing the player to watch (and fast-forward if uninterested). Another game that handled this well was Star Trek: Birth of the Federation, which allowed you to give general tactical orders for each tactical turn, after which the AI would resolve the detailed orders and combat for each ship.
John
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I would just say that EX can't mount X and be done with it.
Sorry, I was away on holidays for a fortnight.
Another way to limit the use of EX(X), is to make them more vunerable to the using empire.
If (for example), they were more likely to surrender and fail the data dump roll (due to the higher numbers of civilian scientists on board), and had a higher chance of containing system data of the area, you'd quite quickly see people avoid using EX(X)'s as widely as they do....
The point of PPs was to generate a non-MCr based limit on either absolute fleet sizes (which it must do at some stage) or fleet expansion.
Just to raise a point - when was PP ever a limit? Someone mentioned hitting the limit once, when needing to raise a planetary invasion force. My point, is that having rules for a limiting system (PP), when the limit is rarely ever reached is a waste of space and time - space in the rulebook, and time for the player to check every turn whether they have hit it or not.
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I added the emphasis.
And you are right. The chance to grow lots of pops on every little rock is pretty poor.
Expensive. Takes a lot of time. And isn't going to grow very far unless your game lasts a LOOONG time.
Trade was the big income. Find friends - get rich.
It wasn't just the finding friend part.
Using the pre-SM#2 ISF, with the slow population growth, often the only source for colonists was the homeworld, and once you have colonised those close by planets, the multi-turn colonisation convoys makes colonisation unrealistic. But, using the pre-SM#2 ISF, pretty soon you will find an alien race that will fall over itself to ally (and eventually amalgamate) with you - providing another source for colonisation (and income).
This changed in SM#2, both by the introduction of PTU/PU to "stage" the colonies growth (i.e. not needing to get the required H/Q onto the desired planet within a tight time frame using the IFN - instead being able to do it a couple of PTU per turn as you can afford to), by the increase in colony growth rate (allowing older colonies to start being sources for newer colonies), and by increasing the hostility of NPRs (making them less likely to become amalgamated with you).
Where SM#2 fell down, was that they didn't make the NPR's big enough. By the middle of the game, you are large enough that if you run into a NPR, and the First Contact roll goes against you - as they are a single system empire, you can quickly conquor them.
What I would do, is to allow them to be multi-system, with a comparible economy. This would result in players less likely to go to war with them.
Of course, this also has the problem that it makes the game more susceptible to chance.....
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On asteroid populations, while I don't see why you would stick millions of people in asteriods in a belt (or for that matter what they would do) I only said it was possible to have a substantial belter population. At the end of the day a population on mars (an O2 world) would be easier overall to sustain and be more sensible but technologically there isn't an real reason you could not put a lot of people into the belt. For the game it is the difference between "can" and "should" essentially. It can be justified but it should be avoided to have large populations in the belt.
(Sighs) There is a problem in reducing the population sizes in the belt. This is somewhat painful for me to point out (as I would prefer to remove them entirely) - but a cul de sac empire will need something to spend it's money on - and if O2/O1/AST colonisation is eliminated/reduced, an empire unable to expand (i.e. no WP's) is going to have nothing to spend it's money on.....
To me where the starfire (and SFB and any number of other such systems) combat system fails is where basically there is a weapon "F" and the difference between ship type 1 and ship type 2 is just how many F's it carries. Things like FASA's Star Trek Bridge Simulator did a much better job than SFB ever did because they had different phasers/disrupters/torpedoes on different types of ships. The best example I can give for why I thnk this is bad way to design a system is the case in Steve's campaign where a single Rigillian DD with HET destroyed was it 100 Bug BBs? Doesn't really matter if it was 3 DDs or 1 DD or 50 or 100 BBs but that was just absurd to me. But this is just pie in the sky dreaming on my part.
I believe it was three (HET) armed destroyers, and they destroyed ~40 F armed BB's.
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Actually, the production difference is not that great if you substract me amalgenating a 34k income NPR about 2 dozen turns back. That 3 SMTP colonisation distance wall is a very hard brick...
Well, I have ´Battletech: Objective Raids in my bookshelf. Interresting book for the emrcenary and industrial minded, as it lists the company and wich world it is based on for the manufacture of every single component used in building your mech. Well, any component ever mentioned in prior sourcebooks. So Raid a world and put the producer of said mechtype in dire troubles by say... keeing his reactor shipment from ariving.
;D Well, not every single component.
I put together a sheet (I didn't own a PC at the time), which listed every single mech type, and where each of the components were manufactured. There were a few missing items (as in some mechs did not have a associated reactor manufacturer, or fire control system, etc.)
I will admit it - I am anal.... :-[
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The trouble the book had was that they eally just plunked down the raw data, and didn't bother maiking something like said sheets avaiable for the people reading it. It sure would have upped the quality of the product.
Given though how even in our times people manage to spread out manufacture of weapons, I find it really a bit strange that no one is producing knockoffs of every component somewhere.. (as with the AK 47... you got models of that from a lot of countries)
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Another way to limit the use of EX(X), is to make them more vulnerable to the using empire.
If (for example), they were more likely to surrender and fail the data dump roll (due to the higher numbers of civilian scientists on board), and had a higher chance of containing system data of the area, you'd quite quickly see people avoid using EX(X)'s as widely as they do....
Or a) just get rid of the damned EX's and b) change Science Instruments systems to make larger ships more economically viable.
The way the current rules surrounding X are, the only economically viable solution is to put the single "X" you're allowed to use on the absolutely smallest, cheapest ship possible. And if EX's didn't exist, it'd just end up being Escorts.
Just to raise a point - when was PP ever a limit? Someone mentioned hitting the limit once, when needing to raise a planetary invasion force. My point, is that having rules for a limiting system (PP), when the limit is rarely ever reached is a waste of space and time - space in the rulebook, and time for the player to check every turn whether they have hit it or not.
I think that the real problem with the way that PP's were implemented was that there was no actual limit on fleet size. PP's only limited the rate of fleet size growth, since you could only raise 1 PP per EVM. But there was no limit on the maximum total of PP's you could have in your military at any given time.
If the PP rule was changed to provide such a hard limit, it could provide the limit on fleet sizes that people claim to want.
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It wasn't just the finding friend part.
Using the pre-SM#2 ISF, with the slow population growth, often the only source for colonists was the homeworld, and once you have colonised those close by planets, the multi-turn colonisation convoys makes colonisation unrealistic. But, using the pre-SM#2 ISF, pretty soon you will find an alien race that will fall over itself to ally (and eventually amalgamate) with you - providing another source for colonisation (and income).
I'll readily admit that multi-turn non-habitable colonization is fairly unrealistic (and don't have a problem with this). But I'm not so sure that I'd say that that's so for habitables. They're worth the trouble. Of course, given ISF's overly friendly NPR's, perhaps that does contribute to thinking that multi-turn habitable colonization isn't worth the trouble or expense. But I'd think that if those NPR's were more hostile, one would have to re-assess the value of colonizing those empty habitables.
This changed in SM#2, both by the introduction of PTU/PU to "stage" the colonies growth (i.e. not needing to get the required H/Q onto the desired planet within a tight time frame using the IFN - instead being able to do it a couple of PTU per turn as you can afford to), by the increase in colony growth rate (allowing older colonies to start being sources for newer colonies), and by increasing the hostility of NPRs (making them less likely to become amalgamated with you).
I agree that a more incremental model of colonization has its merits. But I also have to admit though that I prefer the EVM macro style of economics to the PU micro style. I liked the fact that my GPV's weren't constantly changing month after month. it was nice to be able to concentrate on the part of the game I really cared about. Designing and building ships for The Fleet. Exploring. Finding new friends or new enemies. And so forth.
I'm not interested in being an accountant in the Imperial Colonization Bureau and having to track all those tiny little groups of colonists all over the empire. I liked the ISF all-at-once model of colonization. If I want an outpost or a colony, get the FT's in place, load'em up, send'em off to their new world. And then move on to the next thing. No worrying about managing and tracking any streams of penny packets of colonists to grow those new populations.
And you speak about growth rate, but it's that very growth rate that's the bane of the game. It's that population growth rate which is the absolute root cause of out of control economies in SM#2 (at least out of control GPV's). Slam that growth rate down HARD and you fix that vector of the overall problem.
As for more hostile NPR's, that works for me. Big time. ;D
Where SM#2 fell down, was that they didn't make the NPR's big enough. By the middle of the game, you are large enough that if you run into a NPR, and the First Contact roll goes against you - as they are a single system empire, you can quickly conquor them.
What I would do, is to allow them to be multi-system, with a comparable economy. This would result in players less likely to go to war with them.
Of course, this also has the problem that it makes the game more susceptible to chance.....
I think that part of the assumption is that by you start reaching that point, you should be running into other player races, at least in multi-player games. But yes, if one is playing solo, it might be an issue. Of course, when I played solo, I wouldn't have only a single "player" race. I'd usually have 3 or 4.
Regardless, having the ability to include multi-system NPR's would be nice. Of course, it does tend to add to the rules mass. :P
(Sighs) There is a problem in reducing the population sizes in the belt. This is somewhat painful for me to point out (as I would prefer to remove them entirely) - but a cul de sac empire will need something to spend it's money on - and if O2/O1/AST colonisation is eliminated/reduced, an empire unable to expand (i.e. no WP's) is going to have nothing to spend it's money on.....
I've probably said this before, but in a spacemastered game, I'd have strongly suggested that the SM should make every effort to not let player races get stuck in cul de sacs, even if he'd have to quietly add a WP or 2 to a system that his sysgen die rolls said was an otherwise dead end system. And of course, if the game is a solo one, you could just do it for yourself.
As for Asteroid Belt colonization in particular, that's not a good enough reason to continue to allow it at the same level is in ISF. At least not to me.
Anyways, I've moved on from nothing but a bonus for moons and AB's in a more subtle direction to deal with the problem.
I believe it was three (HET) armed destroyers, and they destroyed ~40 F armed BB's.
Good grief. What did those DD's do? Use their 2 point speed advantage (and better turn mode) over the BB's to always try to sit at range 16, the max rage for HET lasers, but 1 outside the max range for Force beams? I don't see any other way for the DD's to do this. I'm just guessing, but it also sounds like the DDs' race probably had a TL advantage, since if they were about equal, the BB's race could have mounted Fc's instead of F's and that would have changed the outcome entirely. The DD's HETs would have probably run for it, as they'd have been out-ranged by 4 tac hexes.
And BTW, this incident probably also points to a weakness of the traditional movement model of Starfire. If pulsed movement had been used in this engagement (I assume it wasn't), it probably would have been very, very difficult for the DD's to always stay in the 1 tac hex range band (at 16 tH) where they could hit the BB's and the BB's couldn't hit back.
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Or a) just get rid of the damned EX's and b) change Science Instruments systems to make larger ships more economically viable.
The way the current rules surrounding X are, the only economically viable solution is to put the single "X" you're allowed to use on the absolutely smallest, cheapest ship possible. And if EX's didn't exist, it'd just end up being Escorts.
And we'd end up with ES's replacing EX's - with a net change of almost ( :)) zero.
If you want to move away from the min-max survey designs (i.e. place a single X on the smallest ship possible), then you need to make an non economic reason for it - which was why I mentioned making the survey ships more likely to be captured and provide survey data on your empire. To avoid that, more people would end up turning their survey ships into warships - which tends to make them DD sized.
I think that the real problem with the way that PP's were implemented was that there was no actual limit on fleet size. PP's only limited the rate of fleet size growth, since you could only raise 1 PP per EVM. But there was no limit on the maximum total of PP's you could have in your military at any given time.
If the PP rule was changed to provide such a hard limit, it could provide the limit on fleet sizes that people claim to want.
True - but with the current SM#2 population growth rate, the limit would only apply in the start of the game. By the middle of the game, the allowable fleet size is more bound by the size of the economy then by the size of the population.
That is why I think the PP rules are a waste of effort, as the real problem is the population growth rate.
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Ok, enough toying with ideas... but it sure would make a gamechanger when that raid through the closed wp would not only hit 150 PU of hostile setlement (yawn), but also your only source of forcebeamium crystals... *panic*
Sounds more like an utter bore, than a game changer to me. The minutiae of micro economics do nothing for me. And not only having to pay attention to PTU's but then mines of ores and crystals and such would bore me to tears! :'(
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I agree that a more incremental model of colonization has its merits. But I also have to admit though that I prefer the EVM macro style of economics to the PU micro style. I liked the fact that my GPV's weren't constantly changing month after month. it was nice to be able to concentrate on the part of the game I really cared about. Designing and building ships for The Fleet. Exploring. Finding new friends or new enemies. And so forth.
Why not have your cake and eat it too?
Incremental colonisation (i.e. PTU/PU), with a fixed base income per population size. I.e. all populations between 250 and 400 PU are “Small”, and have a fixed EVM of 300.
I'm not interested in being an accountant in the Imperial Colonization Bureau and having to track all those tiny little groups of colonists all over the empire. I liked the ISF all-at-once model of colonization. If I want an outpost or a colony, get the FT's in place, load'em up, send'em off to their new world. And then move on to the next thing. No worrying about managing and tracking any streams of penny packets of colonists to grow those new populations.
Heh – it’s funny. I don’t have a problem keeping track of all of the “penny packets of colonists”, but I hated tracking all of the IFN freighters. Different horses I suppose….
And you speak about growth rate, but it's that very growth rate that's the bane of the game. It's that population growth rate which is the absolute root cause of out of control economies in SM#2 (at least out of control GPV's). Slam that growth rate down HARD and you fix that vector of the overall problem.
I agree.
I think that part of the assumption is that by you start reaching that point, you should be running into other player races, at least in multi-player games. But yes, if one is playing solo, it might be an issue. Of course, when I played solo, I wouldn't have only a single "player" race. I'd usually have 3 or 4.
That assumes that all PvP contact is going to result in warfare.
I can remember one campaign, where there were 4? 5? Players, and no PvP initiated combat – the fighting started when NPR’s that were allied to players went to war.
Regardless, having the ability to include multi-system NPR's would be nice. Of course, it does tend to add to the rules mass. :P
Yeah – which is a masive bummer…..
I've probably said this before, but in a spacemastered game, I'd have strongly suggested that the SM should make every effort to not let player races get stuck in cul de sacs, even if he'd have to quietly add a WP or 2 to a system that his sysgen die rolls said was an otherwise dead end system. And of course, if the game is a solo one, you could just do it for yourself.
True – but also consider NPR’s, as a NPR stuck in a cul de sac isn’t going to be much of a challenge….
As for Asteroid Belt colonization in particular, that's not a good enough reason to continue to allow it at the same level is in ISF. At least not to me.
I don’t see a need for AB colonisation – as long as there is a replacement.
For example, a replacement may be that you can buy IU in excess of the 50% PU limit – but that they only provide 50% of the benefit…..
Good grief. What did those DD's do? Use their 2 point speed advantage (and better turn mode) over the BB's to always try to sit at range 16, the max rage for HET lasers, but 1 outside the max range for Force beams?
Yep.
I don't see any other way for the DD's to do this. I'm just guessing, but it also sounds like the DDs' race probably had a TL advantage, since if they were about equal, the BB's race could have mounted Fc's instead of F's and that would have changed the outcome entirely. The DD's HETs would have probably run for it, as they'd have been out-ranged by 4 tac hexes.
The Rigellian DD’s did have a TL advantage – but it was more down to ship design limitations then tech limitations (i.e. the Bugs could have mounted longer ranged weapons, but they were a pure assault design caught away from the WP).
And BTW, this incident probably also points to a weakness of the traditional movement model of Starfire. If pulsed movement had been used in this engagement (I assume it wasn't), it probably would have been very, very difficult for the DD's to always stay in the 1 tac hex range band (at 16 tH) where they could hit the BB's and the BB's couldn't hit back.
Well, even with pulsed movement, it wouldn’t have made any difference to the final outcome. Due to the speed advantage of the DD’s, when they lost initiative, they would have just moved out of range – and when they later won initiative they move back into range.
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Why not have your cake and eat it too?
Incremental colonisation (i.e. PTU/PU), with a fixed base income per population size. I.e. all populations between 250 and 400 PU are “Small”, and have a fixed EVM of 300.
I'll think about it, but I suspect that there are a number of ways that the rules lawyers could twist it around badly, if it wasn't carefully conceived.
Re: coming down HARD on growth ...
I agree.
I guess that the question then is what constitutes "coming down hard on growth". I personally never had a problem with ISF's effective no growth model.
That assumes that all PvP contact is going to result in warfare.
I can remember one campaign, where there were 4? 5? Players, and no PvP initiated combat – the fighting started when NPR’s that were allied to players went to war.
Good grief! I can't imagine a PvP campaign where the players didn't want to go to war against each other. It almost sounds like a devious SM conspired to get the ball rolling!
True – but also consider NPR’s, as a NPR stuck in a cul de sac isn’t going to be much of a challenge….
I suppose that it depends on the situation, etc. I'm not entirely sure whether every NPR should be a challenge. But if the SM felt that the player did need a challenge, he could always arrange for 1-2 of those miraculous WP's to suddenly get added to the NPR's system data sheet.
On another level, this is arguably a symptom of a mild to moderate problem with the number of WP's tables in the sysgen rules. Maybe having only a single WP in a system should be much more rare. It would go against the canonical history, but it could help out the game itself.
OH! Another option that might be viable could be for the SM to use one of the Ultra oddities ... a nearby star system that was close enough to get to through deep space as a way to find a way out of the cul-de-sac. One of those options places the "nearby" star system 10-40 StMP distant. 2.5 to 10 months of deep space travel. (During which, your ships should have to be carrying all of their own maintenance. No allowing the CFN to miraculously catch up and keep them in supply.)
I don’t see a need for AB colonisation – as long as there is a replacement.
For example, a replacement may be that you can buy IU in excess of the 50% PU limit – but that they only provide 50% of the benefit…..
That's an interesting thought. Or rather at double the cost (which does double the ROI).
Another one might be to allow such races to exceed the population limits in other locations. And again, perhaps, at an increased cost.
The purpose of the increased costs would be to make such investments highly dubious for people with other options, but allow those without those other options (i.e. those in a cul-de-sac) to have something in which to invest, even if it's a bad investment.
But even so, such a race would still fill up those locations and find themselves in the same bind.
Yep.
The Rigellian DD’s did have a TL advantage – but it was more down to ship design limitations then tech limitations (i.e. the Bugs could have mounted longer ranged weapons, but they were a pure assault design caught away from the WP).
Ooooops. Now the rest of the story comes out. The Bugs built BB's with weapons with shorter ranges but more short range punch, but they got caught deep space by an enemy with longer ranged weapons, more speed, and a better turn mode. It sounds to me as if the Bugs were hoist by their own petard, as it were.
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there are a number of ways that the rules lawyers could twist it around badly, if it wasn't carefully conceived.
You will always have that.
If someone wants to game the game, instead of play the game - they will. Not much you can do about it.
But they miss out on what the fun is really about.
Good grief! I can't imagine a PvP campaign where the players didn't want to go to war against each other.
Then you are completely alien to the games my family plays.
They may conspire against each other on many occasions, but out right war is fairly rare and has always been limited to fueding over a planet or systems.
Other than the occasional 'commerce raiding' by the oldest girl - the players tended to work together in our games to deal with the 'nasty old SM...' ;D
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I'll think about it, but I suspect that there are a number of ways that the rules lawyers could twist it around badly, if it wasn't carefully conceived.
True – but all that would need to be changed from the existing SM#2 rules would be the economic calculations (and a simple change at that - replacing the PU with a fixed number).
The colonisation/costs/etc. rules would remain unchanged.
Re: coming down HARD on growth ...
I guess that the question then is what constitutes "coming down hard on growth". I personally never had a problem with ISF's effective no growth model.
I did – as it forced people into the “find friends” strategy with NPRs – after all, without population growth you cannot colonise too far from your homeworld (and so colonisation dies).
My preference would be to come down hard on Large and Very Large population grown, and moderately on Medium population growth. I would leave all of the other population growth alone.
That way, colonies grow to the size to support new colonisation (i.e. medium populations), without becoming economic powerhouses…..
Good grief! I can't imagine a PvP campaign where the players didn't want to go to war against each other. It almost sounds like a devious SM conspired to get the ball rolling!
Nah – just a bunch of conservative players.
I suppose that it depends on the situation, etc. I'm not entirely sure whether every NPR should be a challenge. But if the SM felt that the player did need a challenge, he could always arrange for 1-2 of those miraculous WP's to suddenly get added to the NPR's system data sheet.
On another level, this is arguably a symptom of a mild to moderate problem with the number of WP's tables in the sysgen rules. Maybe having only a single WP in a system should be much more rare. It would go against the canonical history, but it could help out the game itself.
OH! Another option that might be viable could be for the SM to use one of the Ultra oddities ... a nearby star system that was close enough to get to through deep space as a way to find a way out of the cul-de-sac. One of those options places the "nearby" star system 10-40 StMP distant. 2.5 to 10 months of deep space travel. (During which, your ships should have to be carrying all of their own maintenance. No allowing the CFN to miraculously catch up and keep them in supply.)
I would like to see the number of WP’s per system increase slightly – as my feeling is that it is too low.
I can’t remember the statistical calculations (on average number of WP’s/system, as well as the odds of a 1 WP system, 2 WP system, 3 WP system, etc.), and so I can’t provide anything more then a feeling about this though….
That's an interesting thought. Or rather at double the cost (which does double the ROI).
Another one might be to allow such races to exceed the population limits in other locations. And again, perhaps, at an increased cost.
The purpose of the increased costs would be to make such investments highly dubious for people with other options, but allow those without those other options (i.e. those in a cul-de-sac) to have something in which to invest, even if it's a bad investment.
But even so, such a race would still fill up those locations and find themselves in the same bind.
True – but it would take time, and allow them to build up (slightly), giving them the chance that they may be able to break out…..
It would also allow them to pay the increase R&D costs (as the tech levels go up).
Ooooops. Now the rest of the story comes out. The Bugs built BB's with weapons with shorter ranges but more short range punch, but they got caught deep space by an enemy with longer ranged weapons, more speed, and a better turn mode. It sounds to me as if the Bugs were hoist by their own petard, as it were.
Yep.
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the players tended to work together in our games to deal with the 'nasty old SM...' ;D
Heh - you sound proud of that.
Nowadays the PC crowd would frown down on someone who made their kids paranoid about them.... :)
Me - I'm a believer of the "You may not love me, but you will obey me" school of thought. (Or as Bill Cosby said in one of his standup routines - "I brought you into this world, I can take you out of it....." ;D)
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True – but all that would need to be changed from the existing SM#2 rules would be the economic calculations (and a simple change at that - replacing the PU with a fixed number).
The colonisation/costs/etc. rules would remain unchanged.
It wouldn't be quite so simple as that. The point I made about rules lawyering is that I wouldn't want a person to just dump 1 PTU on a world and think that they could get the Outpost EVM for that. it would given them no incentive to keep adding PTU's to the world, if that world had a max population of Outpost. I think that the minimum number of PTU's would have to be AT LEAST equivalent to the midrange value of PTU's for that pop bracket, and perhaps a bit higher (67%? 75%?).
I did – as it forced people into the “find friends” strategy with NPRs – after all, without population growth you cannot colonise too far from your homeworld (and so colonisation dies).
I actually have been thinking about toning down the ISF growth times to more reasonable levels. Honestly though, i never worry about growth rates for outposts and colonies. If we're talking about a habitable world, I wouldn't stop until I reached Settlement, maybe even Small. And if we're talking about non-habitables, then growth isn't a part of the equation.
My preference would be to come down hard on Large and Very Large population grown, and moderately on Medium population growth. I would leave all of the other population growth alone.
That way, colonies grow to the size to support new colonisation (i.e. medium populations), without becoming economic powerhouses…..
That's understandable, and pretty much around what I was thinking. You can colonize a world up to Small with some effort, and reach Medium within a playable amount of time (40 system turns?). But that Large may be reachable in a longer campaign, and VLg probably almost not at all.
I would like to see the number of WP’s per system increase slightly – as my feeling is that it is too low.
I can’t remember the statistical calculations (on average number of WP’s/system, as well as the odds of a 1 WP system, 2 WP system, 3 WP system, etc.), and so I can’t provide anything more then a feeling about this though….
Part of the problem is the numbers of Starless Nexuses and Red Dwarf stars, since they're the ones with the big negative modifiers. (Or perhaps the modifiers themselves...) Regardless, it's easy enough to tweak these things to try to increase the numbers of 2 and 3 WP systems, and reduce the number of 1 WP systems.
True – but it would take time, and allow them to build up (slightly), giving them the chance that they may be able to break out…..
It would also allow them to pay the increase R&D costs (as the tech levels go up).
Actually, this isn't a concern. There will be no flat fee Research or Development costs. They'll all be based on percentages of imperial income. So even if this poor NPR was stuck in a cul-de-sac, they'd be able to afford their R&D as well as the big and nasty major player empire.
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You will always have that.
If someone wants to game the game, instead of play the game - they will. Not much you can do about it.
But they miss out on what the fun is really about.
True on most counts. That said, my point about being careful still stands. You don't want to make it too easy for them. Like I said in my post to MattW, you don't want to let anyone place a single PTU on a world and get an EVM that's all out of proportion to the investment, to that single PTU. The minimum number would need to be high enough to justify calling the population an "outpost" and giving it an outpost's EVM.
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It wouldn't be quite so simple as that. The point I made about rules lawyering is that I wouldn't want a person to just dump 1 PTU on a world and think that they could get the Outpost EVM for that. it would given them no incentive to keep adding PTU's to the world, if that world had a max population of Outpost. I think that the minimum number of PTU's would have to be AT LEAST equivalent to the midrange value of PTU's for that pop bracket, and perhaps a bit higher (67%? 75%?).
Well, when you consider that we are trying to discourage small colony sites (i.e. eliminating growth for hostile outposts/colonies, reducing AB population limits, etc.), then a simple way to eliminate the above rules lawyering, is to make a rule that Outposts produce no income, and that only Colonies or larger produce income. That way you need at least 17 PU to produce income.
And when you factor in other changes (such as the lack of population growth for hostile outposts), this will result in Outposts only being formed for one of two reasons:
1) As stepping stones to large populations;
2) For specific purposes (i.e. military sensor post, communications post, etc.)
I actually have been thinking about toning down the ISF growth times to more reasonable levels. Honestly though, i never worry about growth rates for outposts and colonies. If we're talking about a habitable world, I wouldn't stop until I reached Settlement, maybe even Small. And if we're talking about non-habitables, then growth isn't a part of the equation.
Due to the need for secondary colonisation sites, I would wait until at least Medium populations before slowing down the population growth rates.
But I would keep some population growth rate for Large and Very Large populations, as otherwise the initial starting colony becomes a single basket that the biggest part of your economy is sitting in…..
Part of the problem is the numbers of Starless Nexuses and Red Dwarf stars, since they're the ones with the big negative modifiers. (Or perhaps the modifiers themselves...) Regardless, it's easy enough to tweak these things to try to increase the numbers of 2 and 3 WP systems, and reduce the number of 1 WP systems.
O.K.
Actually, this isn't a concern. There will be no flat fee Research or Development costs. They'll all be based on percentages of imperial income. So even if this poor NPR was stuck in a cul-de-sac, they'd be able to afford their R&D as well as the big and nasty major player empire.
But wouldn’t the percentage rise as the TL rises?
Or would you propose that there is a flat fee regardless of the TL being researched?
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Well, when you consider that we are trying to discourage small colony sites (i.e. eliminating growth for hostile outposts/colonies, reducing AB population limits, etc.), then a simple way to eliminate the above rules lawyering, is to make a rule that Outposts produce no income, and that only Colonies or larger produce income. That way you need at least 17 PU to produce income.
And when you factor in other changes (such as the lack of population growth for hostile outposts), this will result in Outposts only being formed for one of two reasons:
1) As stepping stones to large populations;
2) For specific purposes (i.e. military sensor post, communications post, etc.)
I suppose that this is possible.
What I had in mind was (using the Ultra pop numbers) this. If an OP is 1-20 PTU and a Colony is 21-60 PTU, I'm thinking that in this model, you'd have to emplace at least 15 PTU to achieve Outpost status, or at least income producing Outpost status. As for Colony, you;d then have to increase to about 45-50 PTU's to become an income producing Colony.
Honestly, though this isn't doing much for me. Once again, it comes down to the annoyance of tracking all those pesky PTU's. Having to know how many PTU's all your outposts and colonies and settlements have, so that you can know how many more you need to get produce income at that level or to jump to the next level. It's just too micro for my taste.
I think that the problem here is that I'm an old school pure ISF guy who grew up enjoying a simpler strategic game of Starfire and I'm dealing with 3e fans who often grew up playing the SM#2 modified version of ISF. And I just don't find that micro level of granularity in the economics and colonization appealing or interesting. It doesn't bother me to have to scrounge together the FT's and money to do colonization, rather than sending off the colonists in dribs and drabs. Regardless, don't think that I'm nuking this line of thought. I'm just venting my general distaste for this general level of economic granularity that I'm generally not fond of in SM#2 (and Ultra, etc.)
Due to the need for secondary colonisation sites, I would wait until at least Medium populations before slowing down the population growth rates.
I think that the first serious slowdown occurs between Small to Medium. Below that, pop growth is probably fairly quick, though I'd think that it's more likely that players won't want to wait for OP's to grow into Colonies, or Colonies into Settlements. As I think I said before, I think that they'll absolutely take habitable pops all the way up to Settlement without a second thought. Perhaps even Small, though that may be less of a guarantee.
And BTW, if by "secondary colonization sites" you mean secondary colonization source populations (i.e. other than the homeworld), I'm not all that sympathetic to the idea of having to keep growth high enough to produce these secondary source pops just so that there are colonization pop sources ever 4 StMP. I can understand why non-habitable colonization may be too expensive beyond that 4 StMP threshold, but habitable colonization should be worthy of doing considerably far beyond that.
But I would keep some population growth rate for Large and Very Large populations, as otherwise the initial starting colony becomes a single basket that the biggest part of your economy is sitting in…..
There is "some" pop growth. I just don't think that most players are going to play campaigns that are long enough to see a Small grow into a Medium AND then see that Medium reach Large status. You have to remember that pop growth is the root cause of the economic explosiveness problems. I don't think that having a bunch of Mediums and Smalls is too big of a problem. It's when you start seeing Large's and VLg's show up that things really get out of control.
But wouldn’t the percentage rise as the TL rises?
Or would you propose that there is a flat fee regardless of the TL being researched?
I want to do away with the both the flat hard set numbers for both TL Research and tech system Development and replace them with a fees that are based on a percentage of your empire's income. Obviously, the base percentage for TL Research would be much higher than for tech item Development. And this doesn't take into any sort of acceleration like Crash, Perceived Threat, Assisted, and so forth. But it will all be based on percentages of income so that the smallest empires can afford to do research, and the largest ones will be paying more. But frankly, I'm thinking that the percentage will be the same, regardless of TL.
I'm also thinking that there will be a couple of categories, Critical Projects and Hazardous Projects, which will increase cost, time, and risk of the projects. Critical projects are meant to be the "game changing" tech systems, like fighters, cap missiles, anti-matter warheads, etc. Hazardous projects are those that are particularly dangerous, like anti-matter, X-ray Laser detonation chambers, laser buoys, etc. As you can see, anti-matter warheads are both critical and hazardous projects.
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Actually, this isn't a concern. There will be no flat fee Research or Development costs. They'll all be based on percentages of imperial income. So even if this poor NPR was stuck in a cul-de-sac, they'd be able to afford their R&D as well as the big and nasty major player empire.
I normally don't comment on Starfire since I've not played in a decade, but with percentages... Consider say... the US researching something with 10% of its GNP. Then consider Honduras researching the same item with their GNP. Both are dedicating 10%, but I'd think the US would get the research done faster just because of the extra money and manpower that their 10% brings in. Unless you have something up your sleeve that addresses this?
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I normally don't comment on Starfire since I've not played in a decade, but with percentages... Consider say... the US researching something with 10% of its GNP. Then consider Honduras researching the same item with their GNP. Both are dedicating 10%, but I'd think the US would get the research done faster just because of the extra money and manpower that their 10% brings in. Unless you have something up your sleeve that addresses this?
That's a fair point, Erik. But is Honduras too small to have a large enough base of scientific knowledge to make much headway? Remember how in ISF Small pops when they may have been allowed to do R&D tended to have to it more slowly because they didn't have a large enough scientific community.
But at the same time, remember that allowing smaller NPRs to be as efficient as larger empires is probably more of a game balance thing than a realism thing. Otherwise, we'd have the 'rich getting richer faster' problem popping up in various ways within R&D. And if smaller single system NPR's can't keep up with empires when it comes to R&D, they'll end up being even less of a challenge than they are already.
But ya know, in old pure ISF, what happened probably would have semi-accurately represented what you described, when smaller NPR's may have found developing multiple tech systems, or even some of the hideously expensive higher TL ones a serious burden on the small economies, whereas some economic juggernaut like Steve's Rigelians would just shrug off the cost of some expensive high TL dev projects as chump change.
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What I had in mind was (using the Ultra pop numbers) this. If an OP is 1-20 PTU and a Colony is 21-60 PTU, I'm thinking that in this model, you'd have to emplace at least 15 PTU to achieve Outpost status, or at least income producing Outpost status. As for Colony, you;d then have to increase to about 45-50 PTU's to become an income producing Colony.
If that’s the way you’d prefer to do it, then I’m happy with it.
I just thought it easier to have all outposts producing no income (with the reasoning that they are only just self-sufficient, and producing no surpluses for export) – as it is easier to write a simple rule then one with “ifs” in it.
Honestly, though this isn't doing much for me. Once again, it comes down to the annoyance of tracking all those pesky PTU's. Having to know how many PTU's all your outposts and colonies and settlements have, so that you can know how many more you need to get produce income at that level or to jump to the next level. It's just too micro for my taste.
re: “too micro” – and yet you are happy to track and send orders to every IFN FT….. :)
I’m the opposite – I find that an spreadsheet works well for populations and so makes it very easy, but tracking all those pesky FT’s to be a chore.
I think that the problem here is that I'm an old school pure ISF guy who grew up enjoying a simpler strategic game of Starfire and I'm dealing with 3e fans who often grew up playing the SM#2 modified version of ISF. And I just don't find that micro level of granularity in the economics and colonization appealing or interesting. It doesn't bother me to have to scrounge together the FT's and money to do colonization, rather than sending off the colonists in dribs and drabs. Regardless, don't think that I'm nuking this line of thought. I'm just venting my general distaste for this general level of economic granularity that I'm generally not fond of in SM#2 (and Ultra, etc.)
:)
I think that the first serious slowdown occurs between Small to Medium. Below that, pop growth is probably fairly quick, though I'd think that it's more likely that players won't want to wait for OP's to grow into Colonies, or Colonies into Settlements. As I think I said before, I think that they'll absolutely take habitable pops all the way up to Settlement without a second thought. Perhaps even Small, though that may be less of a guarantee.
O.K. Here’s what I’ve calculated for the various population growth rules (Note: that for all of the calculations, I started with an Outpost of only 2 PU):
Standard ISF
Outpost -> Colony in 60 turns
Colony -> Settlement in 60 turns
Settlement -> Small in 120 turns
Small -> Medium in 180 turns
Medium -> Large in 360 turns
Large -> Very Large in 660 turns
Total Time = 1440 turns
SM#2
Outpost -> Colony in 60 turns
Colony -> Settlement in 30 turns
Settlement -> Small in 30 turns
Small -> Medium in 20 turns
Medium -> Large in 30 turns
Large -> Very Large in 30 turns
Total Time = 200 turns
Using PTU (as suggested by Crucis on 2nd October) – with 25% growth rate for medium+ populations (i.e. as per SM#2)
Outpost -> Colony in 60 turns
Colony -> Settlement in 30 turns
Settlement -> Small in 50 turns
Small -> Medium in 70 turns
Medium -> Large in 100 turns
Large -> Very Large in 110 turns
Total Time = 420 turns
I’m very happy with the idea suggested by Crucis to do population growth in PTU, as that drops the growth rate considerably (tripling the time it takes to go from Small onwards, and doubling the overall time it takes to go from a small outpost to a Very Large Population).
Even if the population is “pushed” to Small (i.e. 151 PU) to help growth along, changing from PU (where it took 80 turns to go to Very Large) to PTU (where it now takes 280 turns) has a dramatic effect.
In retrospect, I think that it is a brilliant idea.
And BTW, if by "secondary colonization sites" you mean secondary colonization source populations (i.e. other than the homeworld), I'm not all that sympathetic to the idea of having to keep growth high enough to produce these secondary source pops just so that there are colonization pop sources ever 4 StMP. I can understand why non-habitable colonization may be too expensive beyond that 4 StMP threshold, but habitable colonization should be worthy of doing considerably far beyond that.
The problem is, that once you breach the 8 StMP limit, the ROI starts to favour IU over colonisation.
Using the best case (benign planets), and taking into consideration that PU grows (while IU doesn’t) – once you reach 12 StMP, it isn’t worth colonising Poor/Very Poor planets (with Very Poor becoming a bad investment at 8 StMP).
Using Harsh planets, only the richest are the best at 12 StMP, through to it not being worth your while to colonise Very Poor planets at 4 StMP. Hostile is slightly worse then Harsh.
So if you eliminate the ability of colonies to support colonisation (through reduced population growth), then it isn’t economically feasible to place colonies more then 3 months travel from your homeworld – resulting in very small empires, and the use of genocide as a defensive weapon (i.e. if yousend in raids to kill off all of the enemies populations within 4 StMP of the border, then their ability to secure the border area becomes very difficult).
There is "some" pop growth. I just don't think that most players are going to play campaigns that are long enough to see a Small grow into a Medium AND then see that Medium reach Large status. You have to remember that pop growth is the root cause of the economic explosiveness problems. I don't think that having a bunch of Mediums and Smalls is too big of a problem. It's when you start seeing Large's and VLg's show up that things really get out of control.
I agree – which is why I’m pointing out that if you go to PTU growth, that addresses the problems of too many Large/Very Large populations (and so income).
Having said that though, I do see a need to have “normal” population growth to allow planets to gow to Medium size – to allow them to be used as sources of colonists.
I want to do away with the both the flat hard set numbers for both TL Research and tech system Development and replace them with a fees that are based on a percentage of your empire's income. Obviously, the base percentage for TL Research would be much higher than for tech item Development. And this doesn't take into any sort of acceleration like Crash, Perceived Threat, Assisted, and so forth. But it will all be based on percentages of income so that the smallest empires can afford to do research, and the largest ones will be paying more. But frankly, I'm thinking that the percentage will be the same, regardless of TL.
O.K.
I'm also thinking that there will be a couple of categories, Critical Projects and Hazardous Projects, which will increase cost, time, and risk of the projects. Critical projects are meant to be the "game changing" tech systems, like fighters, cap missiles, anti-matter warheads, etc. Hazardous projects are those that are particularly dangerous, like anti-matter, X-ray Laser detonation chambers, laser buoys, etc. As you can see, anti-matter warheads are both critical and hazardous projects.
Ahh – make sense.
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On the bug BBs they were the left over bits of a fleet, the Rigillians had destroyed their long range weapon armed ships but had exhausted their fighters/missiles or whatever they were using at the time to do it. They had the 3 DD's left, the bugs had 40 assault BBs. There was no hoisting on petards. The bugs suffer from a dramatically slowed down research speed and the Rigillians were out teching them seriously. You can see the difference this makes in Kurt's games where the Bugs are equivillent tech level to the "player" that is considerably harder. In Steve's game the bugs and Rigillians both started at HT1 but the Bugs were only about half the tech level of the Rigillians at this time (HT4 or 5 Bugs vrs HT7+ for the Rigillians).
I could say this shows the problem with specialist ships, but for warp point assaults in particular the game all but demands you build specialist assault ships. If you want to go the full specialized fleet route that is your choice as a player, I think there is some justification for it, and there is equally justification against it. My objection is that 3 DD's should not be able to destory 40 BBs regardless of whatever the situation is. I also am absolutely certain the game was not played out, Steve just looked at the 1 hex range bonus, the 2 MPs and improved turn mode and said they won. Likely this is the case but at least a part of me says there should be a way to bring the DDs under fire since 1 hex isn't that huge of an advantage. Contionously closing on the DDs probably doesn't work but splittting the fleet of BBs in 3 groups and manuevering around should hem in the DDs...maybe not though. But still it isn't a result that I like, and it is the result of a basic set of design choices that I would not make given a choice in the matter.
On the time to growth, the home rules that we are using at the moment make forcing a planet to medium economically sensible. The Drakes may have started it first, but pretty much everyone joined in. Also growth to max sized settlement is a rarity. In general growth on the way to settlement only happens due to when it discovered and when colonization starts, delivery of 156 PTU to the target is the general way that planets become small. That means nothing to small might take anywhere from 6 turns to 1 turn depending on the size of the economy in question. I certainly took longer with poor or very poor worlds but even now I am settling out to 13 transits. The Drakes know of several (for them hostiles) they haven't settled just due to me using the spending guidelines. But we are at Turn 182 and my maximum population outside of my home world is 430 PU. But my homesystem is only 25% or so of my economy.
But it is the growth from small to very large that fuels the economic meltdown in a SM2 game. 80 turns is a reasonable time for a game and that means by turn 100 you could well have 5+ very large worlds in your emprire. I also don't blame the economic model for generating the results it is designed to produce (intentionally or not) since the math is the math. I just think that attempting to "correct" the behavior of model that is functioning in a WAD fashion is more complex and generates more rules and requires constant maintenance to deal with exploits then making a more complex model. But I don't think it is neccessary to go to the level of worrying about where each screw in each ship is coming from.
In our München game we didn't have much player versus player conflict since realistically it was better to trade with them and we almost all had NPRs that were bigger threats on our borders. In the current game the SC trades with the Thebans but also fortifies all points of contact (eventually). PvP conflict arrises mainly when there is a compelling economic argument for it (or if the person playing is just bloody minded). I've seen it in a smaller board game...actual combat starts only when "peaceful" expansion opportunities comes to an end. I think that is what confuses me the most about Dominions II...the AI I believe agressively attacks you even though there are better choices around...I just know I do absymally poorly in that game. But I think it is a lot like "King of Dragon's Pass" in that you have to work out how a lot of stuff works to deal with the game properly.
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On the bug BBs they were the left over bits of a fleet, the Rigillians had destroyed their long range weapon armed ships but had exhausted their fighters/missiles or whatever they were using at the time to do it. They had the 3 DD's left, the bugs had 40 assault BBs. There was no hoisting on petards. The bugs suffer from a dramatically slowed down research speed and the Rigillians were out teching them seriously. You can see the difference this makes in Kurt's games where the Bugs are equivillent tech level to the "player" that is considerably harder. In Steve's game the bugs and Rigillians both started at HT1 but the Bugs were only about half the tech level of the Rigillians at this time (HT4 or 5 Bugs vrs HT7+ for the Rigillians).
This double population growth with a corresponding half tech advancement thing probably works out ok in the PU/PTU model where "population" growth is really economic growth. But if true population growth were used, i.e. growth applied to the actual population measure, the PTU, I'm thinking that the Bugs would be screwed in the 2x population growth/50% tech advancement rule, since their economy wouldn't be growing at anywhere near a doubled rate.
I'm gonna have to remember that for later...
I could say this shows the problem with specialist ships, but for warp point assaults in particular the game all but demands you build specialist assault ships. If you want to go the full specialized fleet route that is your choice as a player, I think there is some justification for it, and there is equally justification against it. My objection is that 3 DD's should not be able to destory 40 BBs regardless of whatever the situation is. I also am absolutely certain the game was not played out, Steve just looked at the 1 hex range bonus, the 2 MPs and improved turn mode and said they won. Likely this is the case but at least a part of me says there should be a way to bring the DDs under fire since 1 hex isn't that huge of an advantage. Continuously closing on the DDs probably doesn't work but splittting the fleet of BBs in 3 groups and manuevering around should hem in the DDs...maybe not though. But still it isn't a result that I like, and it is the result of a basic set of design choices that I would not make given a choice in the matter.
Oh, there's no doubt that specialist ships can have problems if they are caught unsupported and away from the battlefield for which they were specifically designed. In this case, it was probably a poor decision to use regular F rather than Fc, since Fc would have given the ships a bit more reach. At least enough that they could have prevented the DD's from ripping them to shreds as they did.
On the time to growth, the home rules that we are using at the moment make forcing a planet to medium economically sensible. The Drakes may have started it first, but pretty much everyone joined in. Also growth to max sized settlement is a rarity. In general growth on the way to settlement only happens due to when it discovered and when colonization starts, delivery of 156 PTU to the target is the general way that planets become small. That means nothing to small might take anywhere from 6 turns to 1 turn depending on the size of the economy in question. I certainly took longer with poor or very poor worlds but even now I am settling out to 13 transits. The Drakes know of several (for them hostiles) they haven't settled just due to me using the spending guidelines. But we are at Turn 182 and my maximum population outside of my home world is 430 PU. But my homesystem is only 25% or so of my economy.
I can understand you not wanting to colonize those hostile worlds so aggressively, given that hostiles have a max pop in SM#2 of only Settlement. I won't say that they're not worth the trouble, since I don't know the other details. But with a cap of Settlement, they're little better than a Desolate O2 planet (IIRC).
But it is the growth from small to very large that fuels the economic meltdown in a SM2 game.
Of course. I don't particularly concern myself with growth for outposts, colonies, and settlements, because I assume that players will be increasing their populations thru colonization, and not waiting for growth to drive the population up to Small and Medium and so on.
80 turns is a reasonable time for a game and that means by turn 100 you could well have 5+ very large worlds in your empire. I also don't blame the economic model for generating the results it is designed to produce (intentionally or not) since the math is the math. I just think that attempting to "correct" the behavior of model that is functioning in a WAD fashion is more complex and generates more rules and requires constant maintenance to deal with exploits then making a more complex model. But I don't think it is necessary to go to the level of worrying about where each screw in each ship is coming from.
What do you mean by "functioning in a WAD fashion"? What's "WAD"?
In our München game we didn't have much player versus player conflict since realistically it was better to trade with them and we almost all had NPRs that were bigger threats on our borders. In the current game the SC trades with the Thebans but also fortifies all points of contact (eventually). PvP conflict arises mainly when there is a compelling economic argument for it (or if the person playing is just bloody minded). I've seen it in a smaller board game...actual combat starts only when "peaceful" expansion opportunities comes to an end. I think that is what confuses me the most about Dominions II...the AI I believe aggressively attacks you even though there are better choices around...I just know I do abysmally poorly in that game. But I think it is a lot like "King of Dragon's Pass" in that you have to work out how a lot of stuff works to deal with the game properly.
Paul, I guess that my experience is that I'm used to more bloody minded players, people who wanted to go forth and conquer the galaxy as it were. ;D
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The bugs were only HT4 or HT5 (I believe they were 5) and Fc is HT8, the Rigillians were HT7+ (I think they were base HT7 but had a number of HT8 systems, most importantly fighters). The bugs were looped not due to bad design but mainly due to being so seriously out teched. The Rigillians it must be remembered had ECM at this point. So the bugs were fighting uphill on the tech curve and had only "quantity has a quality of its own" working for them. You see the huge difference the fact that the eaters are the same tech level as the other races makes in Kurt's games. Even in the official history the TFN was higher tech then the bugs, although the books give no indication that the bugs were slow to research things. They developed the GB exceptionally quickly...though why they didn't develop the SBMHAWK pod is beyond my understanding. Possibly they felt the GB was the same as the pod I guess.
The drakes have a spending limit on colonization and IU that I respect. They are a military anarchy and spend most of their money on ships and defences rather than colonies. So they have left a few outlier systems lie fallow. The fact is Hostile worlds are much much much better than an O2, and this is because of two things. The first is with 150 PU plus 75 IU you have a relatively easy to achieve industrial base in the system that nets you an income that guarentees the in system CFN is present. The second and most important is they produce a good supply of PTUs that are available to be seeded into the system. The Drakes have only 5 or 6 ST worlds (benign to them) so most of their income comes from hostiles, and in these systems every chunck of rock has an outpost or colony. A hostile and a habitable in a system is a nice bonus since the growth PTU remove the need for you to break down PTU in the habitable to start the moon colonies so it grows faster. There is a huge difference in the economic output of a pure moon colony system and one with a hostile planet present.
WAD is "working as designed" and since the economic model is compound interest growth, and it delievers compound interest gowth it is "working as designed."
It isn't that we weren't agressively conquoring the universe. I was being called in as guest admiral regularily. It is just that a war with a player or trade with a player? One sucks money away from your growth the other adds to it... Not much thought required.
We did have a Player vrs NPC+Player battle due to treaties. It was a nice set up with a map upstairs and down and the SM's updating them (at the system scale) and Franz suckered me but good, plus I didn't realize that the fleet had 3 CC ships (I didn't see them in the ship list I was given...around 20 pages of ships). Had I known that, the battle would have proceeded and defeat in detail would have occured but since I had to wait for CDs to arrive, we ended up with a negotiated settlement and everyone left the system happy. The suckering was when he sent in unarmed ships that I could have engaged but there were enough of them that I declined an even number battle and just shadowed them...since no one would send in unarmed ships to a war zone...I gotta admire the chutzpha there while kicking myself for the opportunity I missed. I can understand the british admiralties rules on engaging the enemy regardless...but this was both another player and an NPC's forces. I felt good about not loosing the NPRs fleet, but rather irritated by not spotting those 3 CC ships as I could have intercepted Franz's main attack piecemeal with my full fleet had the communication delay not been so bad. Still it was one of the most enjoyable starfire times I had since it was played with real fog of war and on the system level. A level of the game that is mostly ignored, and real fog of war makes a huge difference. Scouting and counter scouting become considerable more critical and decisions are a lot harder to make the less information you have to base them on.
However there were at least 3 big bads, or 1 big bad and 2 bads...no make that 3 bads. I had an incursion of the tyranids at one nexus, while the other nexus had the HT15+ race. The tyranid threat caused me to settle for a NI with one NPR whose battle fleet I smashed in a 100+ ship WP assault but I needed those ships moving so didn't invade and conquor rather just said...don't bug me again else you won't be so lucky. I had more nexus's then I could believe. There was a AI race (the big bad) and a J'Rill race plus the "bugs" (the tyranids) and well Starslayer as one of the DMs could comment more. Basically enough threats that taking on a player when there was no reason to made no sense.
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Well, the Tyranids were slowly exhausting themselves against an NPC wich kept optimising it's designs. There was a system. NPR 1 send in it's fleet. tyranids smashed them. Then NPR send it's fleets in, smashed the tyranids, retreated for repairs. Tyranids went in, got weakened against NPR 1 by smashing them. NPR 2 went in, smashed the tyranids.. repeat...
The Hive Mind was discovering more contact points with Franz than they could defend, and Franz was serriously an oponent for them all on his own. His asteroid forts sure bottled them up. The build up untill they felt safe to attack took too long.
That left The Core... the machine race. They smashed everything wich didn't surrender, and amalgenated races who proved willing to. Anything smahed got processed into J'Rill boxes, and send out as J'rill fleets to survey more of the universe than the Core could afford to fortify. and they fortified seriously.
Anyway, The Core was designed to tacle anyone.. anywhere... they had 2-3 times the economy of a player race, had allies, had an immense fleet with viscious ship designs... taking them down would have been a very big fight.
The TL 15 race was in the end not that dangerous, as they simply had a money issue building up their economy after maintainance and minutions had been covered. :(. They could hurt, but numbers would have just worn them down a lot.
I think a game with the economies we currently have, with spread out empires, would work a lot better.
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The bugs were only HT4 or HT5 (I believe they were 5) and Fc is HT8, the Rigillians were HT7+ (I think they were base HT7 but had a number of HT8 systems, most importantly fighters). The bugs were looped not due to bad design but mainly due to being so seriously out teched. The Rigillians it must be remembered had ECM at this point. So the bugs were fighting uphill on the tech curve and had only "quantity has a quality of its own" working for them. You see the huge difference the fact that the eaters are the same tech level as the other races makes in Kurt's games. Even in the official history the TFN was higher tech then the bugs, although the books give no indication that the bugs were slow to research things. They developed the GB exceptionally quickly...though why they didn't develop the SBMHAWK pod is beyond my understanding. Possibly they felt the GB was the same as the pod I guess.
A. I was given the impression in a previous post that the Bugs were of a higher TL than 4 or 5. Hence my comment about Fc.
B. Bugs and SBMHAWK: The working premise was that the Bugs had no sense of personal self-preservation and thus had no pressing need to develop SBMHAWKs rather than use specialized assault ships. From a racial perspective, that premise may work, but it seems to fail when one considers the cost in wasted ships, MC, and ship building time for those ships. SBMHAWKs would have simply been more efficient.
The drakes have a spending limit on colonization and IU that I respect. They are a military anarchy and spend most of their money on ships and defences rather than colonies. So they have left a few outlier systems lie fallow. The fact is Hostile worlds are much much much better than an O2, and this is because of two things. The first is with 150 PU plus 75 IU you have a relatively easy to achieve industrial base in the system that nets you an income that guarantees the in system CFN is present. The second and most important is they produce a good supply of PTUs that are available to be seeded into the system. The Drakes have only 5 or 6 ST worlds (benign to them) so most of their income comes from hostiles, and in these systems every chunk of rock has an outpost or colony. A hostile and a habitable in a system is a nice bonus since the growth PTU remove the need for you to break down PTU in the habitable to start the moon colonies so it grows faster. There is a huge difference in the economic output of a pure moon colony system and one with a hostile planet present.
That's a good point you make that I'd overlooked. Even though quite small compared to the titans of economic production that are Larges and VLg's, even a Hostile Settlement is going to have some growth. And given SM#2's prodigious growth rates, that means that you're gonna have a nice amount of PTU's to use to colonize the local star system's rockballs.
As for the comment about ST's, yes, given the 4-to-1 split between T's and ST's, it's hardly a surprise that Hostile Settlements represent such a large portion of the Drakes' income. But for game balance purposes, it'd probably be better if the T/ST split was 2 to 1, rather than 4 to 1, at least within the current HD model used by both SM#2 and Ultra.
WAD is "working as designed" and since the economic model is compound interest growth, and it delievers compound interest gowth it is "working as designed."
"working as designed". Got it. Thanks.
It isn't that we weren't aggressively conquering the universe. I was being called in as guest admiral regularily. It is just that a war with a player or trade with a player? One sucks money away from your growth the other adds to it... Not much thought required.
Yeah, not much thought required for me either. ATTACK!!!! :P (Assuming that I'm not otherwise engaged in other conflicts already...)
We did have a Player vrs NPC+Player battle due to treaties. It was a nice set up with a map upstairs and down and the SM's updating them (at the system scale) and Franz suckered me but good, plus I didn't realize that the fleet had 3 CC ships (I didn't see them in the ship list I was given...around 20 pages of ships). Had I known that, the battle would have proceeded and defeat in detail would have occurred but since I had to wait for CDs to arrive, we ended up with a negotiated settlement and everyone left the system happy. The suckering was when he sent in unarmed ships that I could have engaged but there were enough of them that I declined an even number battle and just shadowed them...since no one would send in unarmed ships to a war zone...I gotta admire the chutzpah there while kicking myself for the opportunity I missed. I can understand the british admiralties rules on engaging the enemy regardless...but this was both another player and an NPC's forces. I felt good about not loosing the NPRs fleet, but rather irritated by not spotting those 3 CC ships as I could have intercepted Franz's main attack piecemeal with my full fleet had the communication delay not been so bad. Still it was one of the most enjoyable starfire times I had since it was played with real fog of war and on the system level. A level of the game that is mostly ignored, and real fog of war makes a huge difference. Scouting and counter scouting become considerable more critical and decisions are a lot harder to make the less information you have to base them on.
Yeah, that sort of battle of maneuver and such doesn't happen all that much in Starfire since so many battles happen at WP's. And I guess that it's a shame because there really is a lot of potential for some great deep space battles and operational level maneuvering and deception and such in the game.
However there were at least 3 big bads, or 1 big bad and 2 bads...no make that 3 bads. I had an incursion of the tyranids at one nexus, while the other nexus had the HT15+ race. The tyranid threat caused me to settle for a NI with one NPR whose battle fleet I smashed in a 100+ ship WP assault but I needed those ships moving so didn't invade and conquor rather just said...don't bug me again else you won't be so lucky. I had more nexus's then I could believe. There was a AI race (the big bad) and a J'Rill race plus the "bugs" (the tyranids) and well Starslayer as one of the DMs could comment more. Basically enough threats that taking on a player when there was no reason to made no sense.
Makes sense. I'll agree that if you're already well involved in a number of conflicts, there's no sense in looking for more trouble.
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Weber's bugs made a number of decisions that made absolutely no sense. Not having their fleet CLs use military engines, not developing the SBMHAWK pod, probing through a warp point that otherwise the enemy would not have localized once they were pushed back on that system, building defences on the WP rather than just towing them there...probably others...why they probed Alpha C is beyond me (find out it is a major system with a single CL and then go back for a full fleet)...did they actually do anything smart in any of the books?
The drakes also rely heavily on trade, but their homesystem (since it is the trade point for most of their treaties) is also expectionally heavily fortified, and crewed with elite crews. It is the that crew grade that makes their otherwise absurd ship designs not quite so laughable. Their SD will have 8 Rc and 8 Wa for example...once they get It, Zi and Dz deep space engagements against them will be nightmares.
Hmmm on "Attack" the point was we had 6 players if memory serves and two of them duking it out would have resulted in the other 4 pulling ahead since the player on player war would have stagnated into a mutual destruction orgy unless there was some curious warp point linkages. What Starslayer describes for the Tyranids would likely have happened...fleet A smashes fleet 1 but is hit by fleet 2 which is caught by fleet B and so forth. The sole advantage the players would have gotten was improved crews and admirals. Overall in this situation...it is very hard to see where the advantage in "Attacke" over "trade" comes from. If you could quickly hit the other player to take them down...that would have been a huge boost but...you would have needed to know that was a high chance before the start of the war... Outside of a closed WP into their home system or near to it I don't see how you could do it. Plus the big bads were big and bad and we all knew that, which was a huge dis-incentive to such things.
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Heh.. well, one big bad.. the others were mostly medium bads. The tyranids had troubles, and were getting outteched. The hive mind was doing well but had develloped too many points of contact with an equal foe. The high tech guys like I said had a shoe string economy... the J'rill fleets (all three of them) were induvidually too weak at the point, but good for being nuisances due to J and Jc.
An the Core had a problem of a different sort. Spread out a lot... but I am not sure anyone would have been willing to play out any of the battles around their come systems. They rivalled Kurts eaters in terms of fleet sizes and economy, but where the highest tech race in the game beside the T15 guys.. and they were busy developping T11 systems.
alas, the game became too big.. We originally had 8 player races, the biggest all were beraching 800k income. The bugs also had that, the core had 2 million. ervyone settled every crummy rock they could find up to 16 transits away.. (asteroid belt colonisation became a no-no from that experience).
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Weber's bugs made a number of decisions that made absolutely no sense. Not having their fleet CLs use military engines, not developing the SBMHAWK pod, probing through a warp point that otherwise the enemy would not have localized once they were pushed back on that system, building defences on the WP rather than just towing them there...probably others...why they probed Alpha C is beyond me (find out it is a major system with a single CL and then go back for a full fleet)...did they actually do anything smart in any of the books?
I mostly agree with you, PaulM. I think that a lot of it has to be considered literary license. The probing action seems the most strategically stupid.
Their ship designs were intentionally specialized from the beginning. However, I think that one thing that I wish could have been changed was that I'd have liked to see the Bugs be a bit more adaptable to more flexible design changes after it became clear that their uber-specialized fleet designs were cutting it against the Alliance's more balanced designs, particularly regarding ships armed for shorter ranged combat. Their shorter range combat ships would have been better served to have had more of a mixed armament with some Wa or Wc missile launchers to provide a longer reach and/or some AFM launching capacity.
The drakes also rely heavily on trade, but their home system (since it is the trade point for most of their treaties) is also exceptionally heavily fortified, and crewed with elite crews. It is the that crew grade that makes their otherwise absurd ship designs not quite so laughable. Their SD will have 8 Rc and 8 Wa for example...once they get It, Zi and Dz deep space engagements against them will be nightmares.
Sounds rather like the Zarkolyans from ISW4 with those mixed missile launcher armaments.
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An the Core had a problem of a different sort. Spread out a lot... but I am not sure anyone would have been willing to play out any of the battles around their come systems. They rivaled Kurts eaters in terms of fleet sizes and economy, but where the highest tech race in the game beside the T15 guys.. and they were busy developing T11 systems.
alas, the game became too big.. We originally had 8 player races, the biggest all were reaching 800k income. The bugs also had that, the core had 2 million. Everyone settled every crummy rock they could find up to 16 transits away.. (asteroid belt colonisation became a no-no from that experience).
Guys, I'm curious what you think would be a way to make it less desirable to colonize "every crummy rock" around? I want to avoid anything overly complex.
At the moment, I've been considering making a serious reversal of the Ultra Mineral/Environment value table, where habitable VP-VR values have an incremental difference of 20% points and Extremes have a difference of only 10% points. I've been thinking of creating much wider differentials between VP and VR on the various Desolate and Extreme worlds to make the richest such bodies very, very desirable, and the poorest such bodies very undesirable. And for habitables, I was thinking of reducing the increment from 20% points to 10% points, making the differential between VP and VR rather less. This would reduce the impact of survey luck regarding to habitables much less, and increase it for non-habitables higher. Of course, habitables would always be worth much more simply because they can grow, and non-habitables wouldn't. But it might make non-habitables less predictable and cookie cutter-ish.
Also, AB's wouldn't be automatically rich. Rather I'm thinking that they should roll for their mineral wealth like any other world, except that they'd get an automatic 1 bracket increase for being an AB. That is, a Poor AB would get bumped to Normal, or a Rich one would get bumped to VR.
I'm also thinking of grading mineral wealth for non-habs based on planetary type, not merely Desolate/Extreme, and making Type H (Hot) Mercury-like bodies particularly wealthy any and Type F (Frozen; mostly Ice zone moons and AB's) less mineral wealthy; with Type B (Barren) (old O2) worlds being somewhere in the middle.
Like I said above, the goal is to make non-habitables either much more desirable, or much less desirable. And in doing so, decrease the economic incentive to colonize every rock ball in sight by making the poorest ones far less attractive. On the flipside, I realize that in this one dimensional economic model, even if VR Type H's were worth 300% of normal, it's still just money and in the end it's not enough to make someone want to fight over it.
Comment away...
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Well, an asteroid belt allready delivers a +10% income modifier. why not leave it at that? I would put asteroids at a mineral value of normal.
The really big economic factor comes from the fact that a good belt can hold more PU than any habitable.. and now have a system with multiple belts.. wich also get the 10% multiple times. A five belt system can get over 40k income, belts alone!
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Well, an asteroid belt allready delivers a +10% income modifier. why not leave it at that? I would put asteroids at a mineral value of normal.
The really big economic factor comes from the fact that a good belt can hold more PU than any habitable.. and now have a system with multiple belts.. which also get the 10% multiple times. A five belt system can get over 40k income, belts alone!
I have no problem with there being no rockballs to colonize in asteroid belts. But I'd rather not have all belts have the same Ast. Belt multiplier. I think that their value should differ by relative location (i.e. environment) and overall mineral wealth (i.e. Poor to Very Rich).
It just seems too cookie cutter for all belts to be assumed to be equally valuable. It is simpler. But if really, really simple was the goal, then why bother with mineral values for non-habitable bodies (or habitable planets, for that matter) at all?
I realize that MattW is usually concerned about the stuck-at-homes, and would be concerned about losing AB's as an option for them. However, it's always seemed to me that those AB's are never used for stay-at-homes only. If they're sufficiently profitable, everyone will colonize them. And the paperwork issue isn't resolved. So I tend to think that the best option is to simply not allow AB Colonization (ABC). However, a significant down side here is that without ABC, there's a lot of income potential lost for systems that don't have habitable planets.
Hmmm, I've just has a minor epiphany on the topic. I'm going to have to give it some thought before I discuss it further.
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O.K. Here’s what I’ve calculated for the various population growth rules (Note: that for all of the calculations, I started with an Outpost of only 2 PU):
Standard ISF
Outpost -> Colony in 60 turns
Colony -> Settlement in 60 turns
Settlement -> Small in 120 turns
Small -> Medium in 180 turns
Medium -> Large in 360 turns
Large -> Very Large in 660 turns
Total Time = 1440 turns
SM#2
Outpost -> Colony in 60 turns
Colony -> Settlement in 30 turns
Settlement -> Small in 30 turns
Small -> Medium in 20 turns
Medium -> Large in 30 turns
Large -> Very Large in 30 turns
Total Time = 200 turns
Using PTU (as suggested by Crucis on 2nd October) – with 25% growth rate for medium+ populations (i.e. as per SM#2)
Outpost -> Colony in 60 turns
Colony -> Settlement in 30 turns
Settlement -> Small in 50 turns
Small -> Medium in 70 turns
Medium -> Large in 100 turns
Large -> Very Large in 110 turns
Total Time = 420 turns
Matt, I'd remove the times to build up to Settlement. That sort of growth seems rare to me. Even Settlement to Small may not be worth it. If growth is relatively slow, then there'd be a LOT of incentive to colonize yourself up to Small to save time. And in a PU/PTU model, it could be worth it to try to drive it up to medium, or close enough to let growth finish the job.
I’m very happy with the idea suggested by Crucis to do population growth in PTU, as that drops the growth rate considerably (tripling the time it takes to go from Small onwards, and doubling the overall time it takes to go from a small outpost to a Very Large Population).
Even if the population is “pushed” to Small (i.e. 151 PU) to help growth along, changing from PU (where it took 80 turns to go to Very Large) to PTU (where it now takes 280 turns) has a dramatic effect.
In retrospect, I think that it is a brilliant idea.
I think that it's only as brilliant as one's patience and willingness to accept such a slow economic growth rate. It *does* solve economic explosiveness...
The problem is, that once you breach the 8 StMP limit, the ROI starts to favour IU over colonisation.
Using the best case (benign planets), and taking into consideration that PU grows (while IU doesn’t) – once you reach 12 StMP, it isn’t worth colonising Poor/Very Poor planets (with Very Poor becoming a bad investment at 8 StMP).
Using Harsh planets, only the richest are the best at 12 StMP, through to it not being worth your while to colonise Very Poor planets at 4 StMP. Hostile is slightly worse then Harsh.
So if you eliminate the ability of colonies to support colonisation (through reduced population growth), then it isn’t economically feasible to place colonies more then 3 months travel from your homeworld – resulting in very small empires, and the use of genocide as a defensive weapon (i.e. if you send in raids to kill off all of the enemies populations within 4 StMP of the border, then their ability to secure the border area becomes very difficult).
I guess that this is a problem I have with too strict a use of ROI's in the colonization decision making process within the game, and not enough just playing out the "story" of your empire.
Tonight, I've been thinking of a different "setup" model for how one could do the game. The way the various rules (i.e. the CFN, the percentages of Benigns/Harshs/Hostiles, etc.) configure things, there's a lot of pressure to really pay attention to colonizing and expanding in 4 StMP shells and seemingly being unable to see beyond these 4 StMP shells. This might be important in a smallish game galaxy in a PvP game. But I wonder if in a less competitively charged game (or even a solo game) in a large game galaxy, whether a different "configuration" could work to produce a more interesting, less cookie cutter style of game.
Let me outline what I was thinking. First of all, this idea is mostly meant for a large game galaxy of hundreds of potential star systems, not a small galaxy of perhaps 10-20 systems per player.
1. Hold the number of T/ST's the same, but radically change the ratio of Benigns, Harsh's and Hostiles so that Benigns were quite rare (perhaps 5%), Harshs were moderately common (perhaps 25%), and Hostiles were very common (70%).
2. Reduce the number of NPR's to the levels used in Ultra.
One could accomplish a somewhat similar thing by simply reducing the number of habitables overall. But in doing so, you lose a LOT of lesser growing populations that could help feed colonization without everything coming from the homeworld. But by keeping overall habitables the same, but making Benigns rare, you seriously cut down on those explosively large populations and create a situation where those Benigns are precious finds.
Yes, this situation would create a lot more exploration luck. But I think that it'd create a lot more mystery and uncertainty. And with NPR's being rarer, hopefully the changes don't turn the setup into one that favors trade treaties over exploration and colonization. (Of course, you're not going to get the trade treaties without first finding NPRs and friendly ones at that...)
I'm sure that some peoples' first instinct will be to say that the first person to find a Benign or a NPR to be a Partner will win the game. But remember that I said up front that I think that this setup is probably better suited to solo games or less competitively charged games, rather than for players who are looking for every little fleeting advantage and who would resign when they discover that another player has found that advantage, like it was a game of chess. I think that this setup would be good for players who want to see their game's "history" play out for the fun of it.
And in this setup, one could probably get away with a rather considerable PU growth rate, since there wouldn't be all that many Benigns around to get out of hand.
Anyway, comments?
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Just a couple of points.
1. Growth up to a small is pretty much not worth discussing. 156 PTU will be dropped on any habitable to get it to small, only in the case of SM2 rates of population growth would someone consider only putting 100 PTU in place and taking 20 turns to grow it it small. And I question seriously the sense of that except when you are at the start of the game and income strapped. This reduces Matt's times to VLarge to 80 turns under SM2 and 280 turns under PTU growth plus anything from 1 to 10 turns to reflect the build up of the initial population. With slow growth it becomes more an more sensible to target planets for further growth from small to medium via additional colonization.
2. I don't see how you can change the distribution of benign, harsh and hostile as you suggest. The increase in ST would just make people play ST races more often. A better solution is just to reduce the catagory of benign to: HI of target planet is equal to HI of homeworld is benign, else it is harsh.
3. You aren't solving anything with the changes you are just kicking the can down the road. The economic system remains compound interest growth, there is but a single comodity to be min-maxed and all other conditions remain the same. GSF did the same thing with just increasing the costs of ships. The economic melt down will still eventually occur.
4. Changing the value of the planets/moons wealth. I'm not sure what you are trying to accomplish. You can do it, but the point is colonizing anything is worth more money next turn. All you are doing is changing the rate of return. The rate of return is always positive so there is never a reason to not do so, except that another economic investment might bring a higher rate of return. But it doesn't change the fact that first you colonize the VR, then the R, and last the N (in-system colonization of moons) there is rarely any reason to not do this. Asteroid belts allow huge populations, under your system depending on the distribution of REI values they would even be more valuable, a 100 LS VR asteroid belt would be an economic powerhouse. A better way to deal with this is to bell curve the results so you can make outliers (VR or VP) more rare. Generally you gain a lot in smoothing things out and in control when you go from a linear probability to a curved one.
5. Starslayer can comment on the chance we are down to for finding an NPR...it is pathetically low and we still run into them.
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Just a couple of points.
1. Growth up to a small is pretty much not worth discussing. 156 PTU will be dropped on any habitable to get it to small, only in the case of SM2 rates of population growth would someone consider only putting 100 PTU in place and taking 20 turns to grow it it small. And I question seriously the sense of that except when you are at the start of the game and income strapped. This reduces Matt's times to VLarge to 80 turns under SM2 and 280 turns under PTU growth plus anything from 1 to 10 turns to reflect the build up of the initial population. With slow growth it becomes more and more sensible to target planets for further growth from small to medium via additional colonization.
Yep, agree with pretty much everything here... I couldn't really imagine emplacing so few PTU to form a Settlement that would require TWO growth cycles to complete, though I suppose that it might depend on what inherent benefits reaching Small conferred. I probably would place at least enough to ensure that only 1 growth cycle was required to bump up to Small, and then probably only do it in months 8 or 9 so that the wait was short. But that's a bit too much rules-lawyerly for my taste, and something that I'm not too fond of in the PU/PTU style of economics.
Regardless, looking at Matt's times makes more sense when one starts with Small pops. And yes, with slow growth, it does make a lot of sense for a player to use colonization to push Small pops up to Medium. And given the fact that the increased PTU/PU conversion factor increases the effective colonization cost for such an effort, I can see where one might only make this sort of push only up to the point where you know that a single growth cycle will bump the population into Medium. But I also have to admit that I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of being able to do this so easily.
2. I don't see how you can change the distribution of benign, harsh and hostile as you suggest. The increase in ST would just make people play ST races more often. A better solution is just to reduce the catagory of benign to: HI of target planet is equal to HI of homeworld is benign, else it is harsh.
Requiring HI-homeworld to equal HI-target_world would produce a percentage of 10% Benigns, with the % of Harsh's and Hostiles mostly dependent on the breakdown of T vs. ST. In SM#2 it's 4-1 T to ST. In Ultra, that ratio is 2-1 for legit reasons. And I see no reason to not allow players to play ST races, as long as doing so doesn't confer a Gorm-like ability to get resist drive field radiation and gain an extra point of speed.
As for how one might gain the environment distributions I suggested, there are ways. One way would be to introduce a somewhat more complex model for HI and HD that took into account various habitability factors, such as gravity, hydrographic percentages, chirality, average temperatures, etc.. Some players would enjoy it, others not so much.
Another way is to go in the opposite direction and presume that habitability is too complex for so few factors to encompass and to do away with HI's and directly roll for Benign, Harsh, or Hostile against a lookup table. (Factoring in T vs ST in this model can be tricky, but probably not insurmountable.) The upside (or downside, depending on one's PoV) to this model is that it inserts a lot more uncertainty and mystery into habitability. For example, two races might both see planet A as Benign, and then see planet B totall differently, one seeing it as benign and the other seeing it as hostile. And this would be chalked up the underlying complexity of habitability factors that a single number (i.e. HI) could not fully represent. And with a rolled HD, you're able to manage what percentages you want to be Benign, Harsh, and Hostile rather easily.
3. You aren't solving anything with the changes you are just kicking the can down the road. The economic system remains compound interest growth, there is but a single commodity to be min-maxed and all other conditions remain the same. GSF did the same thing with just increasing the costs of ships. The economic melt down will still eventually occur.
Yes, that's a given. But I still hold that there's no perfect solution. And the setup model I presented above is a way to reduce the amount of money and reduce economic explosiveness, without even touching growth rates yet. But strictly speaking, the concept of the setup model isn't entirely about economics. It's a way to play a larger game galaxy with economics overwhelming the game, but also a way to change the game from being configured in a way that's so driven by gaming the rules instead of playing the game.
4. Changing the value of the planets/moons wealth. I'm not sure what you are trying to accomplish. You can do it, but the point is colonizing anything is worth more money next turn. All you are doing is changing the rate of return. The rate of return is always positive so there is never a reason to not do so, except that another economic investment might bring a higher rate of return. But it doesn't change the fact that first you colonize the VR, then the R, and last the N (in-system colonization of moons) there is rarely any reason to not do this. Asteroid belts allow huge populations, under your system depending on the distribution of REI values they would even be more valuable, a 100 LS VR asteroid belt would be an economic powerhouse. A better way to deal with this is to bell curve the results so you can make outliers (VR or VP) more rare. Generally you gain a lot in smoothing things out and in control when you go from a linear probability to a curved one.
First of all, the chances that I'll allow asteroid belts to possess huge populations are slim to none. And Slim already left town.
Secondly, I thought that I was rather plain in what I wanted to accomplish. To make some moons much richer and other much poorer so that the richer ones became much more desirable to seek out and colonize, and make the poorer ones far less desirable to colonize. If a VR moon has a mineral value of 150% or 200% or 400%, while a VP moon has a mineral value of 50% or 20%, how far down the priority list for colonization do you think that that VP moon is going to be? Yes, I agree that even that moon would have a positive ROR. But if it's so far behind far richer ones, it will be hard to justify colonizing it unless you're desperate for colonizable real estate.
Thirdly, while I agree with the fact that a stronger bell curve would make the outliers more rare while smoothing out the middle results, that's not exactly what this idea is trying to accomplish. It's just the opposite. The idea is to use the economics of mineral wealth to make some moons (i.e. the poor and very poor ones) less desirable to colonize than before, by making the VP/P ones poorer and the R/VR ones richer.
5. Starslayer can comment on the chance we are down to for finding an NPR...it is pathetically low and we still run into them.
Well, of course you do ... at a lower rate. ;)
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Apparently ultra has a completely different system of moon REI over SM2, because in SM2 you can't end up below normal. So an O1 moon at normal gives you and REI of 60%. If you lowered moons to 20% or something then people would not colonize them until the filled up the rest of the system and maxed out their IU. At this point it becomes worth colonizing them not for their value (which is nearly non-existant) but because they can support IU. I would rather just do away with moon colonies and use them (and astroid belts) as income modifiers to the planet populations, and introduce economic technologies. But the economic technology is also pointless in a sense that they become "must haves" and in that sense not so good an idea...probably better to introduce them where they are tailored to your development strategy, which requires there be a few development strategies. This is why I just don't like the current simplistic model, it is more complex to "fix" then a better model is to set up.
If you don't want asteroid populations as Starslayer says just don't allow them. You already get +10% system income per belt. There could be other benifits to the belt as well (increased SY speed as per ISF, free sensors, etc) if you wanted to add those in. The actual belter population would be not much more than 1 PU per hex anyway (50,000 people mostly concentrated at the smelters/refineries) using typical SciFi thematic logic.
In general it might be easier to treat O2, O1 and asteroids seperate from habitables. Just give them a Q, H and emplacement cost that is fixed, that generates a fixed PU value and be done with it. No growth possible, except in the case of O2 moons or planets where this value could be increased by upgrading the outpost to a colony or settlement (planet only). But again at a fixed Q, H and emplacement cost for a fixed PU value gain. This basically is like the ISF system. What values you want to set then you have a lot more control over. Personally I might be tempted to treat planets seperatly from moons as in these cases you likely will have population growth and just let them grow naturally. But again now you add complexity and a balance issue.
I don't follow where your numbers of T to ST are coming from, but it has been too long since I looked at ISF's system generation scheme. If you make ST more common then people will play ST races as opposed to T races since that gives them more planets to colonize. Currently if you are playing a ST race you need some compensation, we gave Franz the Gorm ability to use tunners longer than a regular race, but if you did what you suggest then you would need to give people playing T race some sort of incentive or "everyone" will just play what gives the biggest benifit.
How you determine if a planet is benign or harsh is up to you. But if you stick with HI as it exists now then the best you get is 10% benign (HI_homeword = HI_target: benign). To go to 5% then you need to add in a second value that is 50% satisfied, or effectively double the number of possible HI values to 20. Basically I don't see how you can do this without adding in more rules (to system generation) and complexity. It isn't clear how ST worlds would work since they currently are all considered benign to a ST race (at least in SM2), that would likely have to change.
Ultimately I'm not sure what you are really aiming for in changes to ST/T and Harsh/Benign ratios. Better would be to look at stellar type tables and adjust the number of yellow, white and orange stars as those are the ones with the best life zones. Decrease the chance of a star being one of these and you reduce the number of habitables. A planet is habitable if it is a rock world in the life zone of a star, and your idea of a matrix of habitability is exactly what you get with HI but only without HI, which means that you need to store it for each race and re-roll for each new race in the game. Again adds complexity and brings nothing that HI doesn't give you in the first place since for different races the same planet already can be have the same or a different habitability level.
It would be easier over all to break HI into different numbers: Temperature, Atmosphere, Bio-Hydrosphere. Each is assigned a different value 0-9. This means your chance of a benign, if that requires all 3 are inside of 2 of your homewolds value, is 0.5*0.5*0.5 =12.5%...if you say within 1, then it is 0.3*0.3*0.3 =3% or identical 0.1*0.1*0.1= 0.1% You can make the derivation of these values as simple or as complex as you like.
My comment on NPRs should be "even though the chance of encountering them has been lowered to a level of pathetically small we have a lot of them in our game." I think we may have cut the number we started with in half. Starslayer knows better but it has to be down to a few percent chance....but there are that many chances it routinely gives us new races.
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I normally don't comment on Starfire since I've not played in a decade, but with percentages... Consider say... the US researching something with 10% of its GNP. Then consider Honduras researching the same item with their GNP. Both are dedicating 10%, but I'd think the US would get the research done faster just because of the extra money and manpower that their 10% brings in. Unless you have something up your sleeve that addresses this?
Just a quick comment - while the costs are listed as "R&D", my belief that a lot of the cost is actually not R&D. Instead it is factory re-tooling, replacing obsolete equipment, etc.
A comparable historical event is the advent of steam engines. The development of a reliable steam engine was relatively cheap. But the cost to retool all of the factories, ships, transportation, etc from water/wind/animal/human power to steam power is what costs the most.
So to use Eriks analogy of Honduras and the US, while the R&D costs for both would be the same amount, the retooling costs (which I believe would be the bulk of the R&D costs) would be much greater for the US then for Honduras.....
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Just a quick comment - while the costs are listed as "R&D", my belief that a lot of the cost is actually not R&D. Instead it is factory re-tooling, replacing obsolete equipment, etc.
A comparable historical event is the advent of steam engines. The development of a reliable steam engine was relatively cheap. But the cost to retool all of the factories, ships, transportation, etc from water/wind/animal/human power to steam power is what costs the most.
So to use Eriks analogy of Honduras and the US, while the R&D costs for both would be the same amount, the retooling costs (which I believe would be the bulk of the R&D costs) would be much greater for the US then for Honduras.....
That makes sense... Calling it just R&D tends to stretch the believablity a wee bit. :)
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That makes sense... Calling it just R&D tends to stretch the believablity a wee bit. :)
Erik, it also sort of illustrates the subtle difference between TL Research and EL Research. EL Research entails much of what Matt describes, while TL research tends to represent more of the military hardware side of things. 3E presumes that EL and TL go hand in hand, while 4e doesn't.
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Apparently ultra has a completely different system of moon REI over SM2, because in SM2 you can't end up below normal. So an O1 moon at normal gives you and REI of 60%. If you lowered moons to 20% or something then people would not colonize them until the filled up the rest of the system and maxed out their IU. At this point it becomes worth colonizing them not for their value (which is nearly non-existant) but because they can support IU.
Ultra still uses an REI die roll, where O2 worlds get a +3 die roll mod and O1 (in Ultra, it's O1 and O3) worlds get a +5 die roll mod. Where Ultra differs from SM2 is that a) the mineral content value percentage and the environment percentages are merged together into a single "mineral/environment value" (MEV) percentage, and b) those MEV's for Desolates and Extremes average about 95% for Desolates and about 90% for Extremes. And even in Ultra, you can't end up below "Normal".
As for if I lowered it to 20%, well that's sort of the point. And they might not colonize them even then, if there were richer moons in nearby systems that were better investments. And now that I think of it, another way to impact Extreme environment colonization is to increase the colonization costs themselves. One can hit the ROR by decreasing income via mineral wealth or by increasing the cost of colonization. I'll have to look into that.
Also, another difference between Ultra and SM#2 is that Ultra only allows IU's to be placed on worlds with populations of Small or greater, whereas SM#2 has no such restriction.
If you don't want asteroid populations as Starslayer says just don't allow them. You already get +10% system income per belt. There could be other benifits to the belt as well (increased SY speed as per ISF, free sensors, etc) if you wanted to add those in. The actual belter population would be not much more than 1 PU per hex anyway (50,000 people mostly concentrated at the smelters/refineries) using typical SciFi thematic logic.
That's my general intention. I have to admit though that a down side to only using the ast belt bonus is that it requires the presence of the CFN and without a significant population in the star system, you can't get any value out of the belt. 1 PU per sys hex or 1 PU per LM of the AB's orbit (with a merged population for economic/population purposes) is a reasonable solution within a PU/PTU model, but not so much within the old pure ISF EVM/REI model.
In general it might be easier to treat O2, O1 and asteroids separate from habitables. Just give them a Q, H and emplacement cost that is fixed, that generates a fixed PU value and be done with it. No growth possible, except in the case of O2 moons or planets where this value could be increased by upgrading the outpost to a colony or settlement (planet only). But again at a fixed Q, H and emplacement cost for a fixed PU value gain. This basically is like the ISF system. What values you want to set then you have a lot more control over. Personally I might be tempted to treat planets separately from moons as in these cases you likely will have population growth and just let them grow naturally. But again now you add complexity and a balance issue.
Oh, I've assumed no growth being possible on non-habitable worlds from the start. No growth was allowed on non-habs in ISF. And dealing with growth on non-habs is a significant paperwork issue every 10th turn in SM#2. Don't allow any growth on non-habs and one paperwork issue gets dealt with.
I agree that fixed size colonization requirements for non-habs is an option, and yes that does tend to make it very much like ISF. And a big part of me finds that attractive. However, there's also a lot of people who apparently like being able to colonize in an incremental manner. And if you look at the cost of emplacing a full size outpost or, worse, a colony, compared to the economy of a player's homeworld early in the game, one might find that emplacing a colony was just too expensive.
I don't follow where your numbers of T to ST are coming from, but it has been too long since I looked at ISF's system generation scheme. If you make ST more common then people will play ST races as opposed to T races since that gives them more planets to colonize. Currently if you are playing a ST race you need some compensation, we gave Franz the Gorm ability to use tunners longer than a regular race, but if you did what you suggest then you would need to give people playing T race some sort of incentive or "everyone" will just play what gives the biggest benifit.
In ISF, in the biosphere, mass 2 Type T planets occur on a roll of 26-85% (60% points) and mass 3 Type ST planets occur on a roll of 86-00% (15% points). Hence a 4-1 T to ST ratio.
And in Ultra T's occur on a roll of 26-75% (50% points) while ST's occur on a roll of 76-00% (25% points). Hence, the 2-1 T-ST ratio in Ultra.
In Ultra, this is done so that when you apply HD's, you get an even 33% split between Benign, Harsh, and Hostile, regardless of whether the planet is T or ST. For T's if HD is 2 or less, Benign. If more than 2, it's Harsh. And if the target planet is ST, then it's Hostile. And for ST races, all ST's are Benign, and the Type T target planets are split 50/50 between Harsh and Hostile. This creates the even 33-33-33% distribution of B/Ha/Ho regardless of whether one is a T or ST race. The model is arguably bland and cookie cutterish, but it's also simple and effective at making T's and ST's equally attractive for players.
As for needing to give T or ST races some special benefit, I don't see any such need if one used a model like the one Ultra used to produce an equitable distribution of B, Ha, and Ho habitable environments for T/ST planets.
How you determine if a planet is benign or harsh is up to you. But if you stick with HI as it exists now then the best you get is 10% benign (HI_homeword = HI_target: benign). To go to 5% then you need to add in a second value that is 50% satisfied, or effectively double the number of possible HI values to 20. Basically I don't see how you can do this without adding in more rules (to system generation) and complexity. It isn't clear how ST worlds would work since they currently are all considered benign to a ST race (at least in SM2), that would likely have to change.
I agree that in the current HI model, if Benigns require HI-HW = HI_TargetWorld, then yes, you'd end up with 10% Benigns. That by itself isn't a big deal. My problem would be that the harsh and hostile distribution wouldn't be satisfactory. I think that the general idea works best if Hostiles represented about 60-70% of all T/St environments, Benigns represented 5-10%, and Harshes represented what remained. A 60-30-10 split wouldn't be bad in my view, if one was trying to stick with a single d10.
And yes, bringing ST's into the mix is problematical. The simplest way to do it would be to merge T and ST into a single type, and move on from there. But if kept separate, it becomes more difficult to achieve anything like a 60-30-10 or a 70-25-5 split without some statistical gymnastics (and quite likely more complexity). Not to mention that there's something traditional about keeping ST's separate from T's.
Ultimately I'm not sure what you are really aiming for in changes to ST/T and Harsh/Benign ratios. Better would be to look at stellar type tables and adjust the number of yellow, white and orange stars as those are the ones with the best life zones. Decrease the chance of a star being one of these and you reduce the number of habitables.
Reducing the # of habitables doesn't produce the same result as changing the ratio of B/Ha/Ho's (BHH). Changing the BHH ratio doesn't reduce the number of planets that can have growing populations. It does decrease the number of Benign planets with the potential for Large and VLg populations (i.e. the planets with large incomes and produce large numbers of colonists), while (if one used the SM#2 pop caps) having more Ha/Ho populations (instead of the Benigns) means that you have a lot more populations capped at Medium and Settlement levels (along with smaller incomes and fewer colonists). But even if capped, those worlds can still serve as source populations for colonization, just not at the same output level as a Large or VLg population.
However, if the overall # of habitables is reduced, there are no lesser Ha/Ho source populations, and you end up with all habitables being far rarer. Of course, some people might like that result, but some wouldn't. And I'm thinking that with the changed BHH ratio, you still have a playable number of habitables to work with, even with low max pop caps. Also, survey luck becomes more pronounced since there are fewer overall hab's, whereas survey luck is changed with the changed BHH ratio, but it's only Benigns that are less common (Hostiles would become much more common, and Harshes would be close to about the same or a little less common).
I think that the changed BHH ratio is a more playable option than reducing the overall # of habs via the star type table. Mind you, I actually did consider that latter option first. But when the first option occurred to me, I realized that it was a less onerous option on game play, though it might be a bit trickier to implement. (Obviously, tweaking the Star Type table is about as easy to implement as it gets. Fewer White and Yellow stars and more Red and Red Dwarfs, and you'll have a lot fewer habitable worlds.)
A planet is habitable if it is a rock world in the life zone of a star, and your idea of a matrix of habitability is exactly what you get with HI but only without HI, which means that you need to store it for each race and re-roll for each new race in the game. Again adds complexity and brings nothing that HI doesn't give you in the first place since for different races the same planet already can be have the same or a different habitability level.
I wouldn't say that. I disagree about it bringing "nothing". I've had a few people wishing for a more detailed habitability model. They'd like a habitability model with multiple factors. I have to admit that I only have mild interest in it however. It's more interesting to look at than use for me.
Anyways, as I said in the previous post, I think that the simpler model is to not bother with Hab Indexes at all, and go to directly die rolling for Hab Differentials or rather the environments those differentials equate to, with an underlying assumption that a single dimensional HI is too simple to encompass the complexities of determining habitability. What would happen in this model is that when you surveyed a T/ST, you'd roll 1d10 or 1d100 against a new table that would have the various environments broken out with the desired percentages. And there'd likely be a modifier in the case of a T race surveying an ST world or vice-versa. The modifier would be large enough to guarantee a result of no better than Harsh. Harsh would be an acceptable result on the theory that races that are borderline T/ST on the T side might find some ST worlds more palatable than some T worlds, and vice versa for some some barely ST races. The tricky part with such a table is to try to end up with a distribution of percentages for T races that's the same as for ST races. And it's tricky because T's and ST's don't occur in the same numbers, since if they did, it wouldn't be a problem.
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I have to admit to being baffled. I'm not sure if it is because we are discussing 3 seperate situations simultaneously or if it is due to my lack of psionic abilities.
As far as habitablity goes my suggestion of splitting a single HI into 3 values (or however many tickles your fancy) allows you to tailor habitability as you wish. It has the advantage that it is a fixed value you only need to generate once. There is also a conisiderable amount of freedom that you get as you can define benign, harsh and hostile depending on particular conditions. It also allows you to have races with better adaptability (such as for example the bugs) or worse adaptability. Basically it gives a lot larger amount of play space to muck about in. It also could avoid the need for T and ST worlds. There are just one type of world and what we call ST is a planet with an exotic atmophere for example.
For a more realistic system you start with determining gravity, determine temperature (modified by star type and orbit distance), determine hydroshpere (modified by temperature) and lastly detrmine atmosphere (modified by all previous things). Again I would use a bell curved result rather than a flat roll. This would tend to generate ST worlds only when you hit extremes. Also mineral wealth of the planet could be affected by gravity (denser planets are dense for a reason).
As for moons, one thing is that their very existance adds a lot of complexity to the game and brings remarkably little. I would strongly suggest removing them as actual objects (except for the tactical game) and replacing them with an economic modifier or else a single line. So in the case of a single line for G and I planets you would roll up the number of moons and record it. Then roll a bell curve to generate a mineral wealth value, add it to 100+10*moons to determine a final multiplier for that planet. Then allow either a fixed amount of PU per gas or ice giant or else that fixed value with a per moon bonus. This simplifies the book keeping for PnP games especially. Otherwise each gas giant take 1+number_moons lines which starts to add up very fast. This reduces a system with 8 gas giants with an average of 4 moons from 40 lines to 8 lines. The point is there is no need to track which moon has the population as they are realistically easily able to live in one place and operate a mine somewhere else. Basically treat the moons and gas giant a single development area such as was done in Mass Effect.
I'm of two minds about the above suggestions with respect to the moons though because I don't like over simplying things as I think it takes away from the game. But quite honestly I rarely look at the details of systems that much. It only comes into play infrequently, and only if you are using the system level (itself rarely used). It would also allow for the development of industrial technologies that might make sense for "stay at homes" ...a technology that expands the number of PU you can install on moons for example. It would be of not much interest to an expanding race but a pocketed one would probably feel it worth the investment. But on the other hand one reason that a game explodes is that just tracking the system details becomes an issue (especially with excel where scrolling up and down becomes bothersome quickly when each system takes over 20-30 lines on average) and any simplification there is a good one.
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I have to admit to being baffled. I'm not sure if it is because we are discussing 3 separate situations simultaneously or if it is due to my lack of psionic abilities.
It's always possible that we're having a mis-communication, Paul. ;)
As far as habitability goes my suggestion of splitting a single HI into 3 values (or however many tickles your fancy) allows you to tailor habitability as you wish. It has the advantage that it is a fixed value you only need to generate once. There is also a considerable amount of freedom that you get as you can define benign, harsh and hostile depending on particular conditions. It also allows you to have races with better adaptability (such as for example the bugs) or worse adaptability. Basically it gives a lot larger amount of play space to muck about in. It also could avoid the need for T and ST worlds. There are just one type of world and what we call ST is a planet with an exotic atmosphere for example.
I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “There is just one type of world and what we call ST is a planet with an exotic atmosphere”. Are you suggesting that ST planets be kept as Mass 3 planets, but be considered uninhabitable to some degree, due to the “exotic atmosphere”? Or are you talking about merging Mass 2 Type T’s and Mass 3 Type ST’s into a single larger type? It would help if you were a little more verbose on this point.
I do understand that advantages that merging T and ST bring, since you no longer have to worry about balancing them. But the flip side is that they are sort of traditional within the game. It also begs some questions.
Do Mass 2 and Mass 3 remain the same but Type T planets encompass both? Or is Mass 3 made different and no longer a habitable range for the larger set of habitable (and merged) T/ST races? And if they are no longer considered habitable, are they then desolate or possibly even extreme? Might they even be sort of like Type V planets (maybe not as hot as traditional Type V’s, but possibly having extremely dense and deadly atmospheres) and thus deadly environments for T races? And how common should they be? Or just perhaps merge the existing M2 and M3 ranges as is, and not worry about anything larger.
There are a lot of questions that come to mind when one starts thinking about merging the M2 T and the M3 ST types.
For a more realistic system you start with determining gravity, determine temperature (modified by star type and orbit distance), determine hydrosphere (modified by temperature) and lastly determine atmosphere (modified by all previous things). Again I would use a bell curved result rather than a flat roll. This would tend to generate ST worlds only when you hit extremes. Also mineral wealth of the planet could be affected by gravity (denser planets are dense for a reason).
One of the problems you encounter when you start breaking Habitability into realistic factors is that those factors become less amenable to being wrapped around, as is done with the generic HI as is done in Ultra. In Ultra, an HI of 10 is 1 away from an HI of 1. This is really good for game balance, but not at all realistic. But back to what you're discussing.
Gravity is obvious and straight forward.
I'm not entirely sure that Temp would be quite so modified by star type (though obvious White stars are hotter than Red Stars). The Biosphere itself represents a min and max temp range for planets to possess liquid water (hence the alternative term, Liquid Water Zone or LWZ). So any planet at the inner boundary of the LWZ should arguably have essentially the same average temp. The real key to ave temp is the relative position with its star's LWZ, where planets on the inner boundary would be hotter, in the middle would be average, and at the outer boundary would be cooler. But this is made a bit tricky because all LWZ's aren't of equal width in terms of LM's of orbit, i.e. Red Stars have a narrow LWZ while White Stars have a wide LWZ. The simplest way to handle this would just be some sort of look up table of the various values.
Hydrosphere is also straight forward. Not sure why ave. temp would need to be added into the HS. It seems to me that just having an Ave Temp factor means that it's already being factored in.
I'm not entirely sure that an atmosphere factor is needed. It seems that it is going to be a derivation of gravity, temp, and hydrosphere, and assumed to be of an O-N composition.
A couple of factors that you left out are axial tilt, which would affect the severity of the seasonal changes, and chirality, which, IIRC, is a complex thing defining the relative biochemical makeup of life on the planet.
Honestly though, while this sort of increased realism is interesting to think about, I think that it adds a new level of complexity to the mix that some people wouldn't really appreciate. It may be cool for the people who like greater sysgen details and players who like to write stories who might also appreciate greater detail for habitable planets. But I'm not sure that the average player would appreciate the greater detail.
As for moons, one thing is that their very existence adds a lot of complexity to the game and brings remarkably little. I would strongly suggest removing them as actual objects (except for the tactical game) and replacing them with an economic modifier or else a single line. So in the case of a single line for G and I planets you would roll up the number of moons and record it. Then roll a bell curve to generate a mineral wealth value, add it to 100+10*moons to determine a final multiplier for that planet. Then allow either a fixed amount of PU per gas or ice giant or else that fixed value with a per moon bonus. This simplifies the book keeping for PnP games especially. Otherwise each gas giant take 1+number_moons lines which starts to add up very fast. This reduces a system with 8 gas giants with an average of 4 moons from 40 lines to 8 lines. The point is there is no need to track which moon has the population as they are realistically easily able to live in one place and operate a mine somewhere else. Basically treat the moons and gas giant a single development area such as was done in Mass Effect.
What you’re describing is pooling moons on a planet by planet basis. It’s also possible to pool moons across the entire star system by environment type (i.e. Desolate vs. Extreme). Each has its own advantages.
Clearly the advantage of a D and E pool is greatly reduced record keeping. An advantage of pooling by planet is that one can gain the advantage of a population’s innate sensors. Given how close moons are to their planets compared to the system scale, it really doesn’t matter all that much what moon has the population, if you’ve only colonized a single moon. It only becomes a bit of an issue when you start dropping to lower ranges (interception or tactical scale).
I'm of two minds about the above suggestions with respect to the moons though because I don't like over simplifying things as I think it takes away from the game. But quite honestly I rarely look at the details of systems that much. It only comes into play infrequently, and only if you are using the system level (itself rarely used). It would also allow for the development of industrial technologies that might make sense for "stay at homes" ...a technology that expands the number of PU you can install on moons for example. It would be of not much interest to an expanding race but a pocketed one would probably feel it worth the investment. But on the other hand one reason that a game explodes is that just tracking the system details becomes an issue (especially with excel where scrolling up and down becomes bothersome quickly when each system takes over 20-30 lines on average) and any simplification there is a good one.
I understand what you mean by over-simplifying things. The problem is that people colonize tons of moons, particularly in star systems with a habitable planet to be the source of colonists. And lots of colonized moons means lots of individual records to be tracked.
But I have a question. What do you mean by “industrial technology”? Could you give me some examples?
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I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “There is just one type of world and what we call ST is a planet with an exotic atmosphere”. Are you suggesting that ST planets be kept as Mass 3 planets, but be considered uninhabitable to some degree, due to the “exotic atmosphere”? Or are you talking about merging Mass 2 Type T’s and Mass 3 Type ST’s into a single larger type? It would help if you were a little more verbose on this point.
I really don't have much problem with pooling T/ST (M2/M3 worlds) into one 'catagory', and just randomly rolling if your race finds it habitable.
You could easily have a high mass world (M3) with low density and hence a large radius - that would have Earth like gravity. It could also have an Earth like atmosphere. Or a heavy atmosphere. Or maybe almost none.
As an example - Venus has about the same gravity as Earth, with an atmosphere over 90 times as dense. Even if the temp difference is ignored, it would be like going a mile down in the ocean pressure-wise. Hard to consider that comfortable.
And Titan is a moon of Saturn with a surface gravity about the same as Luna, but has an atmosphere about 1.4 times as dense as Earth's. But the fact it is several hundred degrees colder would make it unpleasant also.
You will likely run into the same issues with exoplanets. Big ones that look nothing like home - but feel like it. And ones that look just like home - but would be nearly impossible to survive. (Just take Earth with N-O and add a few percent of chlorine to the atmosphere. Would be rather unpleasant if the world is covered in toxic fumes and soaking in bleach...)
So a random roll looks good to me.
But I would skip the fifteen different rolls for the environment. If you don't want to track 4 moons for a gas planet, why would you want to track that many issues for each habitable? In the end it boils down to 'I can live here' or ' I can't live here'.
And from experience, cutting down the number of habitables and spacing them out does a pretty good job at curtailing growth. If the closest if 10 systems away - it takes time and $ to colonize. And if it is marginal, you will spend a fair amount to get your next colonization site going.
Anything that eats money helps cut down the 'rampant economy' issue.
But in the absence of an SM to moderate it - it would profoundly exagerate the luck issue. If you survey the wrong line while someone else didn't in a competative game - you are toast.
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On the question of M2 and M3, frankly the M3 exists only because you made a roll on a chart and got a ST world in the first place. So if you make a roll on the planetary gravity chart and get something on the high side you get the same result, if eventually you end up with a dense atmosphere then you have a "ST world." Look up any SF RPG they generally have a more detailed way of generating the planetary environment. My point is that if you have 3 numbers then you have playing room. It isn't I can live here or not, it is how often can I find places I really like, and how ofen do I find places I would rather not inhabit even though I can. Races can have different happy ranges, as I say the Bugs could be set to inhabiting a large variety of worlds or another race could be limited to a restricted range of gravities.
At the end of the day the function g = f(x) is simple, but it also is easy to maximize and you are darn limited in what you can do to it. h = f(x,y,z) is a more complex function and has more or less guarrenteed multiple maximums, and gives you lots of playing room. My point is if you want to stick with a system that is "I can live here" then you can just stay with the current HI system and adjust only the relative chances of finding habitable worlds, the chance such a habitable world is going to be benign, and the relative distribution of worlds in the universe. The point with g and h applies to pretty much everything, and you have to make on a case to case basis a choice between simplicity and complexity based on what they add to the game. What I think doesn't help a game is when things become simplistic.
Competitive games are decided by when people decide they can't win. At that point they stop playing in my experience which is limited I admit but I don't think I'm far off the mark here. So rules for those games are going to be different then semi-cooperative type games or solo games. The competitive games more than anything hinge on exploration luck (hence all of Marvin's strange rules to mitigate it in the early game). But ultimately they are their own subset of starfire games and play vastly differently. I would honestly think they require a SM and pre-generated universe.
My suggestion on consolidating moons is just to reduce book keeping while keeping the point to the detailed system design. I rather doubt many battles are fought near gas giants anyway so the interception and tactical levels rarely come into play. Starfire doesn't make defending territory a priority unless you are discussing your homeworld. You can see it in Steve's Rigillian campaign...people abandoned colonists to their fate without a single thought routinely. Patrolling by military units is almost never done. So putting a lot of effort into detailing the colonies of gas giant moons seems effort not worth while doing. For EXCEL and PnP games it is an important consideration how many lines a system takes and keeping that number at a sensible value is worth doing I think.
Industrial technology is specific technological advances that are not about ships but are about industrial/economic advances. Things like a technology that allows the max population of an 02 world to be settlement level, or one that enhances the population limit of moons, or reduces the cost to emplace PTU on hostile worlds, etc. These are harder to balance, as I would avoid making them something that is a "must have" but make them something you might be interested in one game due to the way exploration luck went your way but not in another game where you had better luck with habitables. But this is a personal taste thing as I find starfire lacking significantly in the "empire building" aspect. I don't feel I'm doing anything but shoving PTU around, I would like more things involved in actual empire infrastructure, plus more "industrial technology" options. But again I don't want them to become "must haves" as that is counter productive (and you might as well just consider them lumped into EL research). But they would be a way of allowing your race to specialize a bit more and making them unique. MOO and MOO2 had such things. I have to admit that the whole way EL was factored into the economy in GSF is a bit odd, it is I guess a way of limiting colonization of non-habitables since they are pretty much pointless under its system (or become a lot more like IU in SM2). But my experience with GSF was limited so I may be out to lunch here. Anyway Starfire's empire building aspects don't realy scratch my builder itch would be a fair assesment.
As for communicating this is the internet...we are by definition communicating poorly.
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On the question of M2 and M3, frankly the M3 exists only because you made a roll on a chart and got a ST world in the first place. So if you make a roll on the planetary gravity chart and get something on the high side you get the same result, if eventually you end up with a dense atmosphere then you have a "ST world." Look up any SF RPG they generally have a more detailed way of generating the planetary environment. My point is that if you have 3 numbers then you have playing room. It isn't I can live here or not, it is how often can I find places I really like, and how often do I find places I would rather not inhabit even though I can. Races can have different happy ranges, as I say the Bugs could be set to inhabiting a large variety of worlds or another race could be limited to a restricted range of gravities.
At the end of the day the function g = f(x) is simple, but it also is easy to maximize and you are darn limited in what you can do to it. h = f(x,y,z) is a more complex function and has more or less guaranteed multiple maximums, and gives you lots of playing room. My point is if you want to stick with a system that is "I can live here" then you can just stay with the current HI system and adjust only the relative chances of finding habitable worlds, the chance such a habitable world is going to be benign, and the relative distribution of worlds in the universe. The point with g and h applies to pretty much everything, and you have to make on a case to case basis a choice between simplicity and complexity based on what they add to the game. What I think doesn't help a game is when things become simplistic.
I have to admit to being hesitant to doing a multi-vectored habitability process, because while it appears to appeal to you (and a number of other people I know over on the SDS board), there are probably at least an equal or greater number of people who would prefer to stick with the simpler model, whether it’s because the extra detail does nothing for them or they are concerned with page count or some other reason.
I will also admit that the idea of a multi-vectored habitability process is definitely interesting. But I’m also a bit of a sysgen geek, and this sort of thing will always pique my interest, though that is often not enough to make me want to use the idea. (And I do have some ideas for how to make such a habitability process work in a relatively simple manner.)
One problem that does exist with using a multi-vectored habitability process is that almost by definition it’s going to be more realistic. And “more realistic” models are probably NOT going to work with any sort of game balancing wrap-arounds. So any values at the extremes of any of the factors are going to be relatively unbalanced compared to middle of the scale values.
Industrial technology is specific technological advances that are not about ships but are about industrial/economic advances. Things like a technology that allows the max population of an O2 world to be settlement level, or one that enhances the population limit of moons, or reduces the cost to emplace PTU on hostile worlds, etc. These are harder to balance, as I would avoid making them something that is a "must have" but make them something you might be interested in one game due to the way exploration luck went your way but not in another game where you had better luck with habitables. But this is a personal taste thing as I find Starfire lacking significantly in the "empire building" aspect. I don't feel I'm doing anything but shoving PTU around, I would like more things involved in actual empire infrastructure, plus more "industrial technology" options. But again I don't want them to become "must haves" as that is counterproductive (and you might as well just consider them lumped into EL research). But they would be a way of allowing your race to specialize a bit more and making them unique. MOO and MOO2 had such things. I have to admit that the whole way EL was factored into the economy in GSF is a bit odd, it is I guess a way of limiting colonization of non-habitables since they are pretty much pointless under its system (or become a lot more like IU in SM2). But my experience with GSF was limited so I may be out to lunch here. Anyway Starfire's empire building aspects don't really scratch my builder itch would be a fair assessment.
Here are some ideas that I just threw together for possible “Indy tech”.
The first bunch is all in the same vein, increasing max populations for certain locations/environments.
* Type F worlds: start by allowing no colonization, then allow outposts, then later colonies.
* Type H planets: start allowing only outposts, then colonies, and then eventually settlements.
* Type B planets: start by allowing colonies, then settlements, then small pops.
* Type B moons: start by allowing outposts, then colonies, then settlements.
* Hostile environment habitable planets: start at colony, then allow settlements, then small pops.
* Harsh environment habitable planets: start at small pops, then allow medium pops, then eventually allow large pops.
The next idea is to have an increasing level of industrialization, as represented by the percentage of IU’s allowed to be built on a planet. The starting point would be below, perhaps well below the standard 50%, but increase every so often, perhaps in increments of 10% points. (I think that within this idea, IU’s would not be allowed to be sold, nor would they be allowed to be purchased in excess of whatever the current percentage cap may be.)
Another idea could be an industrial tech that improves mineral extraction technology, effectively increasing mineral values for non-habitable worlds only. And this may be best done for each type of non-hab body (i.e. H, B, or F), since it seems like that the type of mining and the conditions of each will impact the industrial tech advancements needed to effect an improvement in extraction technology. (I’m very hesitant to allow this sort of increased mineral value upgrade for habitable worlds since it would have a much greater economic impact.)
I don’t know if it’d be better to require these things to be developed like any other tech systems, or have them tied to specific EL/TL’s when the capability would just appear. I’m tempted to require the player to make the choice to invest in the development, a) to make them pay for it, and b) to let them make the choices of where to invest their industrial development megacredits.
Also, I’m thinking that the various improvements will always come for worlds with the least hostile environments first. That is, the potential for an upgrade for Harsh max pops would come before an upgrade for Hostile max pops. Thus, upgrades for anything to do with Type F bodies will always be last.
I’m not too keen on the idea of allowing for the reduction in cost for certain types of colonization, mostly because I’m hesitant to create any “decreased cost” indy tech.
Also, if you have any other ideas for indy tech, fire away. This is a new idea for me, and it’ll take me a bit to think of new ideas.
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On the question of M2 and M3, frankly the M3 exists only because you made a roll on a chart and got a ST world in the first place. So if you make a roll on the planetary gravity chart and get something on the high side you get the same result, if eventually you end up with a dense atmosphere then you have a "ST world." Look up any SF RPG they generally have a more detailed way of generating the planetary environment. My point is that if you have 3 numbers then you have playing room. It isn't I can live here or not, it is how often can I find places I really like, and how ofen do I find places I would rather not inhabit even though I can. Races can have different happy ranges, as I say the Bugs could be set to inhabiting a large variety of worlds or another race could be limited to a restricted range of gravities.
At the end of the day the function g = f(x) is simple, but it also is easy to maximize and you are darn limited in what you can do to it. h = f(x,y,z) is a more complex function and has more or less guarrenteed multiple maximums, and gives you lots of playing room. My point is if you want to stick with a system that is "I can live here" then you can just stay with the current HI system and adjust only the relative chances of finding habitable worlds, the chance such a habitable world is going to be benign, and the relative distribution of worlds in the universe. The point with g and h applies to pretty much everything, and you have to make on a case to case basis a choice between simplicity and complexity based on what they add to the game. What I think doesn't help a game is when things become simplistic.
My biggest problem with complex systems for determining planet habitability is that it adds a lot of complexity to a system with only three different results for habitables. Benign, Harsh, and Hostile. If you wanted the possibility for Desolate, Extreme, and Death in the habitables table, that would be fine. They are already covered.
But a game the in 3e or later editions is already 200-400+ pages of rules... adding more detail to something with 6 possible results sounds less than agreeable.
You can determine that it has 11.7 m/s^2 gravity, pressure of 2.1 atm, N 65-O 16-Fl 3-CO 15 atmosphere, 125K surface temp, 7% surface comp H2O, etc, etc,....
It is still going to be one of the 6 types of environments. If my players or I have a choice between 16 rolls to determine what a planet is, or just a couple - well, I only have so much time. And if a computer is doing it for you - you still only end up with one of 6 types, no matter how much extra data you attach to that environment. So why bother, other than for story purposes.
And if you choose to play a non-human race (which if you are SM, will likely be ALL your races), then you have to determine what a particular race is native to and can tolerate and then track all of that also. But in the end, why track a bunch of variables that all give only 6 results - if you can skip to the chase.
As a supplement, it could be a blast for a detailed campaign to know and track all that data. It would likely also have a completely different way to determine habitability than just having 6 different types. A bell curve modified by the various attributes could be cool.
Would I want to add that to any of the rules set. Nope.
If tracking 4 moons around a gas giant is too much work, this is way worse to me.
As for colonization and industrial tech, that area could use a huge overhaul. It has many issues.
But how to fix it without turning the rules into something resembling a library shelf is beyond me.
Competitive games are decided by when people decide they can't win.
I agree.
People who want to play it competatively... I have issues with.
You can complain about luck making it so you couldn't win - but what else is there? Would you prefer to say that you were dumber than the other guy.
In the end it is a game played with dice. Complaining about luck while rattling the dice in your hand seems rather hypocritical to me...
If you are complaining and don't like it - don't play that way or become a better sport.
Or better yet, find an SM and play along with the other players - instead of against them.
Has worked for my family for the last decade or so. We love it. (Ok, most days...)
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As for colonization and industrial tech, that area could use a huge overhaul. It has many issues.
But how to fix it without turning the rules into something resembling a library shelf is beyond me.
Sigh. ???
Please elucidate. I want details. What do you perceive those issues to be? I'm very curious.
I agree.
People who want to play it competatively... I have issues with.
You can complain about luck making it so you couldn't win - but what else is there? Would you prefer to say that you were dumber than the other guy.
In the end it is a game played with dice. Complaining about luck while rattling the dice in your hand seems rather hypocritical to me...
If you are complaining and don't like it - don't play that way or become a better sport.
Or better yet, find an SM and play along with the other players - instead of against them.
Has worked for my family for the last decade or so. We love it. (Ok, most days...)
I have no problem with players who want to play competitively. I do have a bit of a problem when the players lose sight of it being a game, and stop somewhat role-playing their empires. I guess that I don't like it so much when the players are playing the rules and not the game, and aren't enjoying the "history" that their empires create. I'm not sure that I like it when the rules have to be written to create such a perfect balance for hardcore PvP players that it loses sight of any semblance of role-playing the empires and enjoying the setting and so forth.
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There is a lot of detail in Starfires system generation chart that go to waste for the most part since the system level of play is rarely used and the STMP has basically cut out interest in where things are. As far as wrap around is concerned since players are restricted to a band 3-8 anyway if the NPR gets the short end of the stick so be it. I'd not bother with wrap around since it is nonsensical.
As I said right form the begining if all you want is a binary result then why change the HI system currently used; it gives you the binary result you want? Adjusting the stellar probability tables and how you define benign, and the planet type roll can give you a 10% benign rate and a de jour rate of the others. My point for a more complex system is it allows greater flexibilty in play as it can help make far more interesting and different bonuses for NPRs leading to the NPR being more unique.
Simple suggestions are changing how you define benign, changing to HI is 0 to 19, changing the H requirements based on HI difference.
As far as IU goes I treat is as EVM. It can't be sold (or put differently none of my races will do so). Personally I think it is just a silly way to avoid players keeping a warchest and encouraging you to spend every last MCr you make every turn. But whatever.
As for industrial technologies that is hard since the simplistic economics of starfire don't lend themselves to much other than changing population levels on planets. IU limits changes become a must have technology and that is what I want to avoid. But yes you have to pay for them, they don't come free. The represent an alternative to colonization of habitables, and so are for cases like a pocketed empire which would be able to remain competitive by investing in these technologies to enhance the systems they have. For some of them I would also have a use cost, so per planet you employ them on you also pay.
Possiblities would be: robotic mines: decrease Q requirements while increasing H requirements for PTU going to desolate and extreme environments.
Teleopted mines: requires orbital habitat, allows mining operations of V worlds. this is a complex sort of technology with a number of others required first.
Improved refineries: increase the mineral wealth modifier by +x% for a fee.
Orbital Habitat: a SS module that holds 1 PU worth of population. I'm not sure how big one of these would be. But it would be the stepping stone to exploiting V and possibly G/I worlds.
The problem with any of this is balance. It is opening pandora's box big time.
An easier suggestion would be to limit the amount of IU possible by EL so start at 25% and increase 5% every 2 EL (at EL 3: 30%, at EL 5: 35% etc). If you did this then you could add in a way to buy that increase early. So an EL 4 race could buy +5% or just wait. For me I would rather see IU as EVM in ISF than a bond fund as they are in SM2.
Still any of this is very dangerous in SF as at its heart it is an economic simulation and unless you test all these things fairly seriously you only just add in an exploit. I saw this with one game Starslayer was in that had a whole crapload of wacky technologies and virtually everyone of them made my GM sense tingle. As much as I find empire building in Starfire bland...the alternative is signficantly worse as out of control unbalanced tech probably will ruin the game.
Procyon on competive games and gamers. I agree with you. But I'm a role player even when I am playing a war game.
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There is a lot of detail in Starfire’s system generation chart that go to waste for the most part since the system level of play is rarely used and the STMP has basically cut out interest in where things are.
Paul, Paul, Paul. I hate when you do this. ;)
You tempt me with talk off issues and problems and such, and then don't follow through with details! :-\
As far as wrap around is concerned since players are restricted to a band 3-8 anyway if the NPR gets the short end of the stick so be it. I'd not bother with wrap around since it is nonsensical.
HI’s are limited to 3-8 in SM#2, but not in Ultra. Ultra has balanced things better by making T’s and ST’s occur in a 2-1 ratio (because Mass 2 planets occur on a die roll of 26-75% and Mass 3 planets occur on a roll of 76-100%), which means that the BHH ratio is a simple and clean 33%-33%-33% for both T and ST races. But while the T/ST BHH ratio balance is perfect, that doesn’t mean that the wraparound process is any less silly. It’s just convenient as a tool for Ultra’s highly balanced PvP rules.
As I said right from the beginning if all you want is a binary result then why change the HI system currently used; it gives you the binary result you want? Adjusting the stellar probability tables and how you define benign, and the planet type roll can give you a 10% benign rate and a de jour rate of the others. My point for a more complex system is it allows greater flexibility in play as it can help make far more interesting and different bonuses for NPRs leading to the NPR being more unique.
I realize that a more complex system has certain advantages and so forth. But the fact is that it will not appeal to a great enough cross section of players. There are players such as yourself and Cralis and to some degree myself, who have an appreciation for details in places. And then there are other players who don't really care. And then you have people who care about page count so much that they don't even want lots of optional rules included that more advanced players might enjoy using because those optional rules take up space, i.e. page count.
I happen to think that a place where the game is lacking is a total absence of any rules that describe NPR's. Not their governments. Their physical descriptions and perhaps more about their societies. I'm sure that there are some who would ask how that affects game play, and I'd say that perhaps it doesn't directly, but for players who role play their races it can add a lot of flavor to the gaming experience to know whether that NPR they just met has 2 arms or 4, is covered in skin, scales, or fur, and any number of other little descriptive details. We have NPR gov't types, but other than that, NPR's are boring faceless, formless entities, unless they happen to come from one of the gov't types that perhaps we can envision, like the Bugs, or Jrill (think Borg), or an AI race or robots. Such formless NPR's seem rather boring to me. But others would probably disagree, since NPR generation of this type does tend to involve a fair amount of die rolling to create unique results, unless one was content to use a simpler, cookie-cutter model. (And BTW, more detailed habitability does tend to work well with detailed NPR racial generation, since factors like gravity, etc. will affect those physical details.)
Simple suggestions are changing how you define benign, changing to HI is 0 to 19, changing the H requirements based on HI difference.
At the moment, I’m leaning towards merging M2 and M3, so that I can merge T and ST, so that I can then use a regular ol’ 1d10, but with Benign being HI_HW = HI_target_world (HI_TW), Harsh being HI_TW within 1 of HI_HW, and Hostile being all the rest. This would produce a 10%-20%-70% BHH ratio. To get any more granularity would require using a d20 (which has never been a part of Starfire) or d100.
As for changing the Hold requirements based on HD, that’s what pure ISF did.
I’m not sure of all the reasons the BHH paradigm exists within the SM#2 (or Ultra) rules. One obvious reason is the population caps. Another is colonization costs, though those wouldn’t be too difficult to adjust by HD for habitable worlds. There may be other rules where BHH comes up, but it seems that the big one is the population caps. And I suppose that one could have HD-adjusted population caps (probably linking HD to a percentage of max Benign population), but would it be worth the added complexity, though not particularly major.
Of course, another way to do this would be to come up with a couple more Habitable world environment types, so that there’d be one for each population bracket from Settlement to VLg; something like Benign (VLg), Moderate (Large), Harsh (Medium), Severe (Small), and Hostile (Settlement). And I could probably do a ratio of 1-2-2-2-3 for the 5 brackets. But I’d lean towards thinking that this might be going a bit overboard.
As for industrial technologies that is hard since the simplistic economics of Starfire don't lend themselves to much other than changing population levels on planets. IU limits changes become a must have technology and that is what I want to avoid. But yes, you have to pay for them, they don't come free. They represent an alternative to colonization of habitables, and so are for cases like a pocketed empire which would be able to remain competitive by investing in these technologies to enhance the systems they have. For some of them I would also have a use cost, so per planet you employ them on you also pay.
Well, some of the ideas already have a built-in “use cost”, like increased pop limits on non-habitables and increased IU limits, since you still have to pay to emplace the additional population or buy the additional IU’s. However, other ideas don’t have any “use cost” after the tech has been developed. But there are probably ways to create a “use cost”.
For example, with mining extraction upgrades (or upgraded refining), maybe rather than having the benefit be an increase in the mineral wealth percentage, instead perhaps allow IU’s to be purchased (under the assumption that non-habitables don’t normally allow IU construction, as is the case in the Ultra IU rules). This creates an inherent “use cost” if you have to buy the IU’s.
Teleopted mines: requires orbital habitat, allows mining operations of V worlds. This is a complex sort of technology with a number of others required first.
What do you mean by “teleopted mines”?
But regardless of what “teleopted” means, mining of Type V worlds would have to be amazingly profitable to justify the investment in technologies that could survive in a Type V’s atmosphere, not to mention the fact that so many other worlds with vastly less difficult environments exist for mining. Of course, I suppose that that’s the hook here. Mining of Type V’s would be very profitable.
Improved refineries: increase the mineral wealth modifier by +x% for a fee.
This is basically what I suggested with my mining technologies idea that improves extraction technologies.
Orbital Habitat: a SS module that holds 1 PU worth of population. I'm not sure how big one of these would be. But it would be the stepping stone to exploiting V and possibly G/I worlds.
I think that it’d be best to think of it more as adding 1 PTU of population, since in reality, the PTU is the REAL measure of population, while PU is actually a measure of economic output. It also happens that the PTU is of a fixed size, i.e. 50,000 people. This is where doing orbital habitats Starfire gets nasty.
One can only justify putting 50k people into 10 Q (i.e. 10 hull spaces) when one assumes that they’re in coffin-like cryo-chambers, and stacked like cord wood. In ISF, you could fit 50 personnel points into 1 Q. And since I assumed that 1 PP represented 10 people, that comes out to 500 people per Q. And even that sounds incredibly cramped for living space for a civilian population. I think if one drops it by a factor of 10 to 50 people per Q, it’s probably a reasonable working number. But then that means that you’d need 1,000 Q for a single PTU of population. Yikes!!!
Arguably, this might be a case where having such a known quantity as PTU makes it difficult to do Orbital Habitats on a playable scale, when a single PTU could require 1,000 hull spaces of Q’s (and 200 HS of Lh, if one assumed their requirement as per the 3E rules). And that’s just a place for them to live. It doesn’t include office space or industrial facilities or whatever.
On IU’s
An easier suggestion would be to limit the amount of IU possible by EL so start at 25% and increase 5% every 2 EL (at EL 3: 30%, at EL 5: 35% etc). If you did this then you could add in a way to buy that increase early. So an EL 4 race could buy +5% or just wait. For me I would rather see IU as EVM in ISF than a bond fund as they are in SM2.
As far as IU goes I treat is as EVM. It can't be sold (or put differently none of my races will do so). Personally I think it is just a silly way to avoid players keeping a warchest and encouraging you to spend every last MCr you make every turn. But whatever.
I agree with you on IU. I strongly believe that IU’s should be permanent.
As for how IU increases might occur, I think that I favor requiring them to be developed for a few reasons. One, I see this as an actual technology. The player is making a conscious decision to make the investment in upgrading his heavy industry technology. Also, I think that the previous “generational” upgrade should be a prerequisite for the next upgrade. Otherwise, a player might skip a “generation” or 2 of IU upgrades (say the upgrades to 30% and 35%) and then think that he could save some money and buy only the upgrade to 40%.
You mentioned in an earlier post about making decisions regarding empire building. If IU% upgrades are automatic, you lose the chance to make an empire building decision.
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On the topic of the system scale and the STMP.
The system scale is rarely used in Starfire probably because just about everything comes down to the empire state formation. This reduces the fight to a one dimensional clash. You are either holding distance, decreasing it or increasing it. Battles are fought by shooting till she pops, and the mathematics behind this sort of combat results in the destruction of the weaker force for little damage to the more powerful. So all told there is no "operational level" to starfire. And the operational level is the system scale maneuvers where you only know ships are there and you want to determine what they are and are worried about things like communications, scouting and counter scouting. This is a lot of what Weber's books involve. Try and find it in Steve's or Kurt's stories. As I said that time with the SMs and the two maps was about the most fun I had playing Starfire, because that was like a real command situation. But it is just outright missing in Starfire mostly. Skip past it to shoot till she pops, empire state battles of attrition that you can see the outcome of in many cases right from the start. If it wasn't that Starslayer doesn't play like this I would not play Starfire since those sorts of battle are personally boring. The fact that Kurt and Steve's games were solo games though probably is the main reason for the lack of operational level manuevers since they automatically know what the other side has and that tends to influence decision making.
As for STMP, the fact it simplifies moving ships around is good, but it also tends to make you ignore WP location, distances between them etc. I rarely if ever look at the map of the WPs, all I need to know is xblash-yblah-zblad is the chain and it is 2 STMPs from xblash to zblad. But the RM won the battle they did because their path between WP was much shorter than the path from the Buer homeworld to the WP. So they assaulted the WP a few days before the reinforcements arrived. Something you only get by counting hexes. For routine movments STMPs are good but when push comes to shove you will count hexes again. Basically STMP is something that removes you the player from looking at your empire. But it is hard to argue against it for routine ship movement. I think it is a good and useful tool but one that has a subtle draw back.
I lump STMP into a lot of the changes in SM2 that while saving bookkeeping efforts have other unintended effects on gameplay.
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On the topic of the system scale and the STMP.
The system scale is rarely used in Starfire probably because just about everything comes down to the empire state formation. This reduces the fight to a one dimensional clash. You are either holding distance, decreasing it or increasing it. Battles are fought by shooting till she pops, and the mathematics behind this sort of combat results in the destruction of the weaker force for little damage to the more powerful. So all told there is no "operational level" to starfire. And the operational level is the system scale maneuvers where you only know ships are there and you want to determine what they are and are worried about things like communications, scouting and counter scouting. This is a lot of what Weber's books involve. Try and find it in Steve's or Kurt's stories. As I said that time with the SMs and the two maps was about the most fun I had playing Starfire, because that was like a real command situation. But it is just outright missing in Starfire mostly. Skip past it to shoot till she pops, empire state battles of attrition that you can see the outcome of in many cases right from the start. If it wasn't that Starslayer doesn't play like this I would not play Starfire since those sorts of battle are personally boring. The fact that Kurt and Steve's games were solo games though probably is the main reason for the lack of operational level maneuvers since they automatically know what the other side has and that tends to influence decision making.
I'm not sure that I'd blame the lack of system scale maneuvering down to the ESF, although I suppose that one might think that the ESF may extend into the system and interception scales, where one or both sides are keeping their main fleet concentrated, with only scouts being detached. But still, I'm not sure that that isn't realistic to some degree. Admirals aren't going to want to risk splitting their forces unless there's one darned good reason for doing so, like trying to hit two inhabited at the same time as was done in The Shiva Option. In all honesty, I'm not sure how one can get players to try to use the system scale for anything more than seeking each other out for the sake of the tactical battle.
Oh, and what you describe as “operational scale” is essentially the range when both sides know of each others’ presence due to being detected at “presence” range on their long range sensors, which in 3E would be 6 system hexes or less.
As for “shoot til she pops”, you’re overlooking something important. A lot of players design their ships with a beam weapon as the final system on the control sheet. Are you going to say that opposing players are doing something wrong by finishing off enemy ships that are continuing to shoot at them? One way to reduce “shoot til she pop” is for players to stop putting weapons as the final system, because until they do, they have every legitimate and logical reason to continue shooting. And if even after players stop putting beam weapons as the final system enemies continue to shoot til they kill ships, you should use that to your advantage, since it means that they’re wasting shots against disarmed opponents rather than targeting active combatants.
As for ESF, part of me says that it’s up to the opposing player to come up with tactics to turn the ESF against itself. That said, I can see how the use of Ultra-like firing arcs could help out somewhat. But it seems like the only serious way that one could hurt the ESF tactic would be to have ships that are destroyed “blow up” and cause damage to all other ships in the same tac hex. Of course, the counter to this is that tac hexes are huge (75,000 km across). But if one is looking for a way to counter it, one also may have to accept a somewhat questionable idea. (I’d probably suggest an explosion strength based on the number of engine systems, so that smaller ships had smaller explosions and larger ones has larger explosions.) Honestly, though, I wouldn’t use such a rule because ESF just doesn’t bother me all that much, because I believe that it’s up to opposing players to find their own counter tactics, not for the game designers to do it for them.
As for STMP, the fact it simplifies moving ships around is good, but it also tends to make you ignore WP location, distances between them etc. I rarely if ever look at the map of the WPs, all I need to know is xblash-yblah-zblad is the chain and it is 2 STMPs from xblash to zblad. But the RM won the battle they did because their path between WP was much shorter than the path from the Buer homeworld to the WP. So they assaulted the WP a few days before the reinforcements arrived. Something you only get by counting hexes. For routine movements STMPs are good but when push comes to shove you will count hexes again. Basically STMP is something that removes you the player from looking at your empire. But it is hard to argue against it for routine ship movement. I think it is a good and useful tool but one that has a subtle draw back.
I lump STMP into a lot of the changes in SM2 that while saving bookkeeping efforts have other unintended effects on gameplay.
Yes, there is no substitute for knowing the exact distance that must be traveled when time is critical. But most players aren't going to know those distances or be able to get them without placing WP's on system maps and counting sys hexes, which is very time consuming and annoying. In my case, my personal sysgen program had this little feature in it that calculated the distances between all WP's in the system in sys hexes and LM using the Law of Cosines IIRC (I was doing this long before the article in SM#2 mentioned it).
And now that I think of it, it might be possible to create some charts that list out the distances between 2 WP's on the system scale, if one uses the assumption (used in Ultra) that WP distances from their primary are measured in full sys hexes, rather than LM's, and of course, that WP's only lay on radians. Of course, it would still mean that there'd be seven 30 x 30 tables (from 0 to 6 radians of difference, though the 0 and 6 radian diff tables may be unnecessarily due to the simplicity of the two situations). And tables of that size would almost certainly each require a page per table, maybe more.
An alternative for spreadsheet savvy players could be a simple spreadsheet app which could take as inputs the locations of 2 WPs (distance from star and radian) and output the distance between the two WP’s in sys hexes and LM’s. (FYI, knowing the distance in LM’s can be useful for more precise time measurements when sending time critical ICN messages.)
A gripe that I do have with STMP is that I think that there are some places where it is mis-used, such as planetary surveys, particularly habitable worlds surveys. StMP is strictly speaking a distance, 6 light-hours, IIRC. And yet hab worlds surveys use StMP as a TIME measurement … saying that you get X number of SP per STMP spend surveying the habitable planet. That’s complete BS. System body surveys should be conducted against a strict time measurement, days or weeks, and survey points earned on that basis. I also don’t like the grouped body surveys for a similar reason. Oh, I wouldn’t mind seeing moons orbiting a given planet being grouped together for survey purposes. They’re close enough that it seems to work out well enough for time-measured surveying.
But when push comes to shove, I don’t think that you can force players to use the more complex model, particularly since there’s hardly any value-add except in time critical situations.
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I do understand that advantages that merging T and ST bring, since you no longer have to worry about balancing them. But the flip side is that they are sort of traditional within the game. It also begs some questions.
Do Mass 2 and Mass 3 remain the same but Type T planets encompass both? Or is Mass 3 made different and no longer a habitable range for the larger set of habitable (and merged) T/ST races? And if they are no longer considered habitable, are they then desolate or possibly even extreme? Might they even be sort of like Type V planets (maybe not as hot as traditional Type V’s, but possibly having extremely dense and deadly atmospheres) and thus deadly environments for T races? And how common should they be? Or just perhaps merge the existing M2 and M3 ranges as is, and not worry about anything larger.
There are a lot of questions that come to mind when one starts thinking about merging the M2 T and the M3 ST types.
In the interest of simplicity, why not create them seperately (to the point of giving them HI’s) – and then ignoring what type (i.e. T/ST) of planet they are….
An example method. All T-type races/planets roll HI on a d10. All ST-type races/planets roll HI on a D10+5. When it comes time to determine habitability, the type of planet is ignored (i.e. T or ST), and only the HI matters.
You can justify it by stating that the for T races finding a benign ST, that the planetary formations (i.e. high altitude platea’s) make ideal habitable zones; and for vice versa, the T planet is incredibly dense, and has a higher gravity then normal.
But first decide what your desired outcome is (see below), before trying to determine how to determine the outcome.
One of the problems you encounter when you start breaking Habitability into realistic factors is that those factors become less amenable to being wrapped around, as is done with the generic HI as is done in Ultra. In Ultra, an HI of 10 is 1 away from an HI of 1. This is really good for game balance, but not at all realistic. But back to what you're discussing.
Gravity is obvious and straight forward.
I'm not entirely sure that Temp would be quite so modified by star type (though obvious White stars are hotter than Red Stars). The Biosphere itself represents a min and max temp range for planets to possess liquid water (hence the alternative term, Liquid Water Zone or LWZ). So any planet at the inner boundary of the LWZ should arguably have essentially the same average temp. The real key to ave temp is the relative position with its star's LWZ, where planets on the inner boundary would be hotter, in the middle would be average, and at the outer boundary would be cooler. But this is made a bit tricky because all LWZ's aren't of equal width in terms of LM's of orbit, i.e. Red Stars have a narrow LWZ while White Stars have a wide LWZ. The simplest way to handle this would just be some sort of look up table of the various values.
Hydrosphere is also straight forward. Not sure why ave. temp would need to be added into the HS. It seems to me that just having an Ave Temp factor means that it's already being factored in.
I'm not entirely sure that an atmosphere factor is needed. It seems that it is going to be a derivation of gravity, temp, and hydrosphere, and assumed to be of an O-N composition.
A couple of factors that you left out are axial tilt, which would affect the severity of the seasonal changes, and chirality, which, IIRC, is a complex thing defining the relative biochemical makeup of life on the planet.
I view this as putting the horse before the cart.
First point, we have no trouble imagining all of the sci-fi stuff in the game – why do we want to try and make this section of the rules “realistic” (especially when you consider that we have no real idea what planets of other solar systems are like). I wouldn’t even start considering the factors you’ve listed above, as they can be left undefined.
Next point, before you start looking at how you are going to determine the outcomes, determine what you want those outcomes to be. An example, before you discuss how many dice you’ll be rolling, and what type of die you’ll be using, determine what percentage outcomes you want in each category, and then see what system matches the outcome.
An example, there’s no point deciding to roll a single d10, if you have 20 different outcomes. Similarly, if you only have two equal outcomes, rolling a percentil die is overkill….
Honestly though, while this sort of increased realism is interesting to think about, I think that it adds a new level of complexity to the mix that some people wouldn't really appreciate. It may be cool for the people who like greater sysgen details and players who like to write stories who might also appreciate greater detail for habitable planets. But I'm not sure that the average player would appreciate the greater detail.
I’m really not in favour of overcomplications – K.I.S.S. is my favourite acronym.
What you’re describing is pooling moons on a planet by planet basis. It’s also possible to pool moons across the entire star system by environment type (i.e. Desolate vs. Extreme). Each has its own advantages.
Clearly the advantage of a D and E pool is greatly reduced record keeping. An advantage of pooling by planet is that one can gain the advantage of a population’s innate sensors. Given how close moons are to their planets compared to the system scale, it really doesn’t matter all that much what moon has the population, if you’ve only colonized a single moon. It only becomes a bit of an issue when you start dropping to lower ranges (interception or tactical scale).
I understand what you mean by over-simplifying things. The problem is that people colonize tons of moons, particularly in star systems with a habitable planet to be the source of colonists. And lots of colonized moons means lots of individual records to be tracked.
I think that pooling it by both planet and type is the easiest. (I.e. planet VII has a pool of 104 desolate PU, and 95 extreme PU.)
Rather then considering dozens of planets/moons, and hundreds of asteroid populations, you reduce it down to ~ a dozen pools…..
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As far as IU goes I treat is as EVM. It can't be sold (or put differently none of my races will do so). Personally I think it is just a silly way to avoid players keeping a warchest and encouraging you to spend every last MCr you make every turn. But whatever.
I would like to keep at least some ability of selling IU – to help out on the odd turn here and there when needing to run deficiet turns (i.e. when starting a lot of tech item R&D, or when responding to a dastedly alien attack).
However, I agree that the idea of being able to sell of huge chuncks of your economy silly. My preference would be to limit the amount sold to something like 20% of the amount of IU or something like a 10% increase in GDP from the sale of IU.
As for industrial technologies that is hard since the simplistic economics of starfire don't lend themselves to much other than changing population levels on planets. IU limits changes become a must have technology and that is what I want to avoid. But yes you have to pay for them, they don't come free. The represent an alternative to colonization of habitables, and so are for cases like a pocketed empire which would be able to remain competitive by investing in these technologies to enhance the systems they have. For some of them I would also have a use cost, so per planet you employ them on you also pay.
Possiblities would be: robotic mines: decrease Q requirements while increasing H requirements for PTU going to desolate and extreme environments.
Teleopted mines: requires orbital habitat, allows mining operations of V worlds. this is a complex sort of technology with a number of others required first.
Improved refineries: increase the mineral wealth modifier by +x% for a fee.
Orbital Habitat: a SS module that holds 1 PU worth of population. I'm not sure how big one of these would be. But it would be the stepping stone to exploiting V and possibly G/I worlds.
I like the idea of industrial technologies. Make them slightly worse then colonisation (to “encourage” exploration) but it gives a trapped empire some hope of being able to build their economy enough to be able to break of of the cul de sac…..
The problem with any of this is balance. It is opening pandora's box big time.
Agreed.
An easier suggestion would be to limit the amount of IU possible by EL so start at 25% and increase 5% every 2 EL (at EL 3: 30%, at EL 5: 35% etc). If you did this then you could add in a way to buy that increase early. So an EL 4 race could buy +5% or just wait. For me I would rather see IU as EVM in ISF than a bond fund as they are in SM2.
This idea has merit – although I would reduce the increase to ~3% per 2 EL (so that you are still getting benefits at TL10+).
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Battles are fought by shooting till she pops, and the mathematics behind this sort of combat results in the destruction of the weaker force for little damage to the more powerful.
The problem with the “shoot till they pop”, is that players have time to see the effect of their weapons before firing the next one.
This is incredibly unrealistic – for example, with missiles that are not light speed, when firing 20 missile boats, are you really going to have time to see how one alvo goes before firing the next???
A way to fix this would be to go with the Battletech method, and declare ALL weapon targetting before firing.
Another similar method is to combine the B’Tech method with the pulsed movement method. I.e. you break your fleet down into 10 parts. You then fire the fleet (alternating between the players as per normal) one part at a time, with all targetting declared before rolling.
As for STMP, the fact it simplifies moving ships around is good, but it also tends to make you ignore WP location, distances between them etc. I rarely if ever look at the map of the WPs, all I need to know is xblash-yblah-zblad is the chain and it is 2 STMPs from xblash to zblad. But the RM won the battle they did because their path between WP was much shorter than the path from the Buer homeworld to the WP. So they assaulted the WP a few days before the reinforcements arrived. Something you only get by counting hexes. For routine movments STMPs are good but when push comes to shove you will count hexes again. Basically STMP is something that removes you the player from looking at your empire. But it is hard to argue against it for routine ship movement. I think it is a good and useful tool but one that has a subtle draw back.
I lump STMP into a lot of the changes in SM2 that while saving bookkeeping efforts have other unintended effects on gameplay.
The problem is, that players (and SM’s) continue to follow the StMP method when they shouldn’t.
I mean, if a few hours is going to make a difference, then the SM should ask players to determine the real ETA for their ships rather then rounding to the nearest week…..
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As for “shoot til she pops”, you’re overlooking something important. A lot of players design their ships with a beam weapon as the final system on the control sheet. Are you going to say that opposing players are doing something wrong by finishing off enemy ships that are continuing to shoot at them? One way to reduce “shoot til she pop” is for players to stop putting weapons as the final system, because until they do, they have every legitimate and logical reason to continue shooting. And if even after players stop putting beam weapons as the final system enemies continue to shoot til they kill ships, you should use that to your advantage, since it means that they’re wasting shots against disarmed opponents rather than targeting active combatants.
It’s more than that.
The first 50% of a ships HTK is passives/non-essential systems. It’s not until you get past this, that you get to the “goodies” that allow a ship to fight effectively.
With this style of ship design, it is in the best interest of the opposing player to “shoot til she pops”.
As for ESF, part of me says that it’s up to the opposing player to come up with tactics to turn the ESF against itself. That said, I can see how the use of Ultra-like firing arcs could help out somewhat. But it seems like the only serious way that one could hurt the ESF tactic would be to have ships that are destroyed “blow up” and cause damage to all other ships in the same tac hex. Of course, the counter to this is that tac hexes are huge (75,000 km across). But if one is looking for a way to counter it, one also may have to accept a somewhat questionable idea. (I’d probably suggest an explosion strength based on the number of engine systems, so that smaller ships had smaller explosions and larger ones has larger explosions.) Honestly, though, I wouldn’t use such a rule because ESF just doesn’t bother me all that much, because I believe that it’s up to opposing players to find their own counter tactics, not for the game designers to do it for them.
ESF is (to be honest) a good practical idea for an admiral to use (aside from game mechanics) – the problem is that the game mechanics have the hex too big.
An example, is that modern day ship formations can be up to 100 miles across. But if we replcated this in a game, where a sea hex is 200 miles in diameter, then the modern day ship formation is going to look exactly like the ESF of Starfire.
Having said that, I personally don’t like seeing the ESF formation (despite believing that it is the best one under the current rules) – as it tends to devolve the battle into a 1-D system (that is based on range).
The problem is, that developing a counter to ESF is difficult, both from a game mechanic rule (for example, Crucis’s idea about engine explosions can be used offensively against ships trapped behind MF’s surrounding a WP), as well as tactically (as to split your forces raises the potential for defeat in detail).
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It’s more than that.
The first 50% of a ships HTK is passives/non-essential systems. It’s not until you get past this, that you get to the “goodies” that allow a ship to fight effectively.
With this style of ship design, it is in the best interest of the opposing player to “shoot til she pops”.
I won't disagree with this in the least Matt. I suppose that the one point to be said regarding those who put a single Force beam (a good option due to fairly long range) on the end of the control sheet is that even if the other player thinks that he's done enough to totally cripple the target ship, leaving barely a handful of systems left undamaged, so long as that single weapon sits on the end of the sheet, it's still a combatant.
But yes, if the first 50% of the HTK's are passives and non-essentials, you have to do a lot of damage to even start degrading a target ship's offensive capabilities, thus enhancing the need to "shoot til she pops".
ESF is (to be honest) a good practical idea for an admiral to use (aside from game mechanics) – the problem is that the game mechanics have the hex too big.
An example, is that modern day ship formations can be up to 100 miles across. But if we replicated this in a game, where a sea hex is 200 miles in diameter, then the modern day ship formation is going to look exactly like the ESF of Starfire.
I'm not sure how the size of the hex matters here. If the current tac hex (75,000 km) was reduced to 10,000 km or 1,000 km or less, couldn't players still use ESF? Of course, the smaller the hex, the less space there is in the hex. And I suppose other things start happening, like it becomes hard to turn in an ESF without bumping into each other's drive fields, or finding it hard to shoot out of the hex without friendly fire issues. For that matter, if ships are too close together, a single nuke or AM warhead might start damaging multiple ships other than the target with collateral damage.
Having said that, I personally don’t like seeing the ESF formation (despite believing that it is the best one under the current rules) – as it tends to devolve the battle into a 1-D system (that is based on range).
The problem is, that developing a counter to ESF is difficult, both from a game mechanic rule (for example, Crucis’s idea about engine explosions can be used offensively against ships trapped behind MF’s surrounding a WP), as well as tactically (as to split your forces raises the potential for defeat in detail).
That's a good point about an offensive use regarding ships trapped by a minefield. It would make it highly desirable to not send ships thru a WP until a path thru the minefield has been cleared. Of course, it would also make it more difficult to support the minesweeping ships while they do their work as well.
As for the splitting one's forces point, yes it does risk defeat in detail. But then again, that's what PaulM wants. He wants to see ESF ended to force battles of maneuvering. But one might argue that ESF is the tactic that one might use when they do NOT want to engage in a battle of maneuvering, perhaps because they think that their opponent has an advantage in that sort of battle, whether due to more maneuverable ships or he's simply better at fighting battles of maneuver.
Regardless, I don't really have any solid suggestions for rules mechanisms for hurting ESF. Exploding ships is a suggestion, but a weak one, since it assumes a rather humongous explosion in the 75,000 km tac hex. Another could be accidental friendly fire, and vice-versa enemy fire accidentally hitting the wrong target in an ESF. But I could see how this could be rather complex, annoying, and require a fair amount of rules to manage.
I have a thought. How much volume does a ship with its drive field up require? Yes, it could vary with the size of the ship (or base or SS). Then beyond, thinking of your wet navy formations, etc., how much spacing between ships is required for them to safely turn and have good fire lanes, etc.? If we could produce a number for the latter question, it might be possible to determine the maximum number of ships that could be allowed in a 75,000KM diameter volume of space. Of course, that number might be rather large and make the effort moot. But it is an interesting thought.
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In the interest of simplicity, why not create them separately (to the point of giving them HI’s) – and then ignoring what type (i.e. T/ST) of planet they are….
An example method. All T-type races/planets roll HI on a d10. All ST-type races/planets roll HI on a D10+5. When it comes time to determine habitability, the type of planet is ignored (i.e. T or ST), and only the HI matters.
You can justify it by stating that the for T races finding a benign ST, that the planetary formations (i.e. high altitude plateau's) make ideal habitable zones; and for vice versa, the T planet is incredibly dense, and has a higher gravity then normal.
Matt, I gotta give you credit, this overlapping T/ST HI's is one idea I didn't think of. I don't think that it can get me to my goal, but it is interesting.
One question that immediately comes to mind with it is ... are the HI's wrapping around or not? I'm tempted to think not only because with wraparound, your HI-1 and HI-15 would be one apart, and yet with overlapping, it seems that the clear intent is that the zone of HI's where there should be some habitability commonality is between HI's 6-10, rather than at the extremes.
Also, another problem is that to make this idea work, you'd probably need T and ST planets to be equally common. Otherwise, you can't ignore planet type when doing the HD. This is why I am strongly leaning towards merging T and ST ... the math of balancing the number of BHH worlds for both T and ST races is essentially impossible unless you do what Ultra did in making Type T planets exactly twice as common as ST planets. This, combined with wraparound HD's and the way that Ultra determines BHH environments, creates the perfect 33%-33%-33% balance.... except that Ultra's process, while simple and elegant, is also very unrealistic. Plus, your only choice is for a 33-33-33% BHH ratio.
The only other option I can see, which I mention in a previous post, is to do what SM#2 did and limit player races to Type T planets, and let ST race NPR's get the short end of the straw. And I'm not particularly fond of that option.
But first decide what your desired outcome is (see below), before trying to determine how to determine the outcome.
I view this as putting the horse before the cart.
My reason for considering merging T and ST has nothing to do with merely dumping the ST type for the sake of raw simplicity and losing a few lines out of the sysgen rules. No, I have a desired outcome in mind for the BHH ratio (BHH = Benign, Harsh, Hostile), and it's proven all but impossible to reach that outcome so long as T and ST remain separate types yet part of the "habitable planets" whole. My goal is to try to reach a BHH ratio of 10%-20%-70%, or 10%-30%-60%. I'm trying to reduce the number of Benigns relative to the total of all habitables.
I’m really not in favour of overcomplications – K.I.S.S. is my favourite acronym.
Really? I'd have never guessed. ;)
I think that pooling it by both planet and type is the easiest. (I.e. planet VII has a pool of 104 desolate PU, and 95 extreme PU.)
Rather then considering dozens of planets/moons, and hundreds of asteroid populations, you reduce it down to ~ a dozen pools…..
I've pretty much (99%) settled on my moon and Asteroid Belt pooling rules. I've actually written them...
L1.0x Moon Populations
The population capacity of all the moons of a given planet are pooled together, but not pooled with the planet’s own population. (In the case of a twin planet, the twin is considered a planet and not a part of the moon pool.)
L1.0x.1 All pooled moon populations have a PU/PTU conversion factor of 1.
L1.0x.2 A given planet’s pooled moons have a common REI rather than individual values for each moon.
L1.0x.3 The population of a moon pool fills up the innermost moon first before moving outward to the next closest moon and so on.
L1.0x Asteroid Belt Populations
Asteroid belt populations are placed on the belt’s planetoids. Planetoids are treated as moons of the same type for population purposes. And like moons, planetoid populations are pooled together by asteroid belt. That is, if there are two asteroid belts in a star system, there will be two asteroid belt planetoid pools.
L1.0x.1 All pooled planetoid populations have a PU/PTU conversion factor of 1.
L1.0x.2 A given asteroid belt’s pooled planetoids have a common REI rather than individual values for each planetoid.
L1.0x.3 The population of an asteroid belt pool is spread evenly amongst the planetoids in the pool.
A planetoid is a small moon-like body, also known as "dwarf planets" in current astronomical parlance. Ceres would be a planetoid for the purposes of these rules. I'm intending that there will be either 1d10/2 FRU (1-5) or 1d10/3 FRU (1-4) planetoids per asteroid belt (leaning towards 1-4). And as stated in the AB populations rule, planetoids are treated like moons for the purposes of the rule. In reality (at least within our own asteroid belt), the largest planetoid, Ceres, is smaller than the smallest moon that Starfire considers a moon. However, for game purposes, it's easiest to still treat planetoids as "moons" for population and pop caps purposes.
Lastly, I'm doing away with the asteroid belt bonus. All possible income derived from an asteroid belt will come from its population. The advantage here is that it will place asteroid belts in highly populated systems and those in uninhabited systems on a nearly even footing. The only advantage that the populated system would have is the ease of colonizing the asteroid belt in the first place.
I don't want to get into a long involved discussion on IU's in this reply (that will come later)... However...
I had been considering doing what Ultra did with IU's and only allow them to be built on planets with populations of Small or larger. HOWEVER... I've also been considering some ways to increase AB (or all non-hab's) income without increasing population. (I don't like the idea of having populations of hundreds of millions of people in asteroid belts. It really rubs me the wrong way.) It has occurred to me that if I allowed AB's (or all non-hab's) to build IU's, that would be a solid way to let them boost their income without increasing their populations. I've also been considering requiring IU's built in non-hab environments cost a little more. Maybe something like 35 MC for a Desolate IU and 40 MC for an Extreme IU. Enough to knock their ROR's back a little bit.
NOTE: There will be more related content on pop caps and IU's on the following replies...
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I would like to keep at least some ability of selling IU – to help out on the odd turn here and there when needing to run deficiet turns (i.e. when starting a lot of tech item R&D, or when responding to a dastedly alien attack).
However, I agree that the idea of being able to sell of huge chunks of your economy silly. My preference would be to limit the amount sold to something like 20% of the amount of IU or something like a 10% increase in GDP from the sale of IU.
Matt, I have a strong philosophical disagreement on the topic of selling IU's. Cralis have had some (very civil) knockdown drag outs on the topic. I am strongly against the selling of IU's. I feel that IU's are like the "industrial EVM's" from ISF ... permanent. I see them as permanent heavy industrialization that can never be sold. Oh, ownership might change, but the factories still remain ... as IU's contributing to the economy.
To me, what you're describing is more like some sort of financial instrument, like a bond. In theory, I have no problem creating "bonds". But it would have be understood that it's adding a bit more income into the game, as well as a few more lines of rules. The simplest way to do bonds might be to let them function like SM#2 IU's (call them BU's for Bond Units for the moment). Buy a BU for something like 30 MC or so. Get 1 MC of income for every BU. Only allow them to be sold at face value on growth months (i.e. every 10th turn). But also allow them to be sold in non-growth months at a 50% penalty, or only 15 MC per BU sold. The last two sentences would simulate the requirement for a bond reaching maturity before redeeming it for full value, or taking a penalty for early redemption.
As for how many bonds could be purchased, I'm thinking that the number should be relatively low (to prevent creating too much new income in parallel with IU's). Perhaps no more than 20% of a planet's local GPV (not counting bond income). And only planets with sizable populations, probably Medium or above, would have financial markets which would allow the sale of bonds to local governments. It could probably be even the sum of all Imperial GPV's, not including BU-derived incomes, which complicates the calculation unfortunately. (But the gov't own bond derived income shouldn't be turned around and used to increase its own bond buying capacity.)
I like the idea of industrial technologies. Make them slightly worse then colonisation (to “encourage” exploration) but it gives a trapped empire some hope of being able to build their economy enough to be able to break of of the cul de sac…..
My general idea for "Economic Technologies" is that they actually don't give you any extra money, per se. Rather they increase your capacity to increase income. Let me explain. (I prefer Economic Tech rather than Industrial Tech, because I have one portion of Eco Tech relating to IU's, i.e. "Industrial Tech".)
If an EconTech increases a world's mineral value, you've basically gotten extra money for almost nothing, except for the possible cost of developing that tech. But if you increase the IU cap on a world, you don't get any income from that until you actually build the additional IU's! Or if an EconTech allows extreme moons to increase their population cap from Outpost to Colony, you'd still have to pay the cost to move in the additional colonists. This is what PaulM calls a "use fee" in a previous post, and I like it. No getting something for nothing.
Note in reply #175 from October 30, 2012, 10:11:48 PM, I've listed out some potential Economic Tech ideas. I like the idea that you have to pay to develop them, like other tech. And I like the idea of "use fees" rather than getting the benefit without paying for it when you want to "use" it. (And it's possible that some of my ideas in reply #175 haven't kept up with my preference for use fees.)
This idea has merit – although I would reduce the increase to ~3% per 2 EL (so that you are still getting benefits at TL10+).
With this idea of IU's limits as an Economic Tech (in the case of IU's, it's "Industrial Tech"), I wouldn't assume that the existing 50% cap on IU's would hold true. I could see the starting cap on IU's being relatively low, perhaps 10-20%. But then with regular increases every 1-2 TL's, allowing it to exceed 50%, perhaps even to as much as 100% of PU at its peak.
You want to hear an off the wall idea, here's one... Rather than have a TLF as SM#2 uses (or the EL Growth that Ultra uses), just increase the IU cap by 10% for every TL. (I.e. The IU cap for a TL 1 race would be 10% PU, for a TL5 race it'd be 50% of PU, and so on.) The idea here is that economically when your EL/TL increased, you wouldn't see an increase in income ... what you'd have is the OPPORTUNITY to increase your income by investing in more IU's. Yes, to get the economic benefit of an increased EL?TL you'd have to pay money, but don't companies have to pay money to buy more advanced equipment and factories when technology improves?
Wow... it would take a while to absorb the new allowed IU's into the economy. If you had a population of 1000 PU, it'd be allowed 10% more IU's when the EL/TL increased. That'd be 100 IU, at a cost of 3,000 MC, or 3 full turns of GPU (not counting any mineral wealth, or the income from existing IU's). Or at a more reasonable pace, you could do buy 10 IU's per month for 10 months at a cost of 300 MC per month or 30% of the planet's income, not counting other factors.
Now it does occur to me that higher tech worlds would have the ability to "re-industrialize" (i.e. buy the new allowed IU's) faster than lower tech worlds, simply because they'd have more income from all the IU's from earlier EL/TL's. OTOH, there'd be no difference between rich and poor races of the same TL, since the basic cost of adding 10% more IU's is going to be the same. That is, a race with only 1,000 PU's is going to add 100 new IU's at a cost of 3,000 MC, while a race with 10,000 PU's is going to add 1,000 IU's at a cost of 30,000 MC. Same percentage of income, same time requirements. That is, 30% of your income would buy you all the new IU's in 10 turns, if that's how you chose to do it.
And it occurs to me that given the considerable cost of "re-industrialization", it'd be best if the cost of the EL/TL research went way down, perhaps to something like a nominal 1% of imperial income. This idea could be rather challenging for an empire at war. The nominal research fee is not a big deal, but once the EL/TL increased, you;d have to choose between paying for more ships, etc. and re-industrialization to increase your income, which at the current cost of 30 MC per IU, doesn't really pay off for 30 turns (meaning that you might be better off not re-industrializing until the war was over).
Hmmm.... interesting idea, not sure it's worth the trouble. I suspect that the bulk of rules required to support this idea would actually be not that great. But actually using this idea in practice may seem like a lot of work compared to getting your new TL enhanced income the instant your TL increased. OTOH, it may seem somewhat realistic insofar as you;d probably see a more gradual increase of income due to technological advance. And as a player, you'd have a choice where you wanted to increase the industrialization of your empire, if you really didn't want to invest in certain locations.
Anyways, just a raw and wild idea...
EDIT: BTW, it's occurred to me that this idea has a couple of underlying advantages.
1. In the TLF model, if you multiply IU income by TLF, it causes IU incomes to increase as TL increases. (It doesn't do this in Ultra, of course.) In this wild idea, IU incomes remain steady at 1 MC per IU regardless of TL.
2. Also in the TLF model, the per-PU return on colonization increases as TL increases. In this wild idea, it remains constant at 1 MC per PU, regardless of TL.
Just more food for thought...
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Matt, I have a strong philosophical disagreement on the topic of selling IU's. Cralis have had some (very civil) knockdown drag outs on the topic. I am strongly against the selling of IU's. I feel that IU's are like the "industrial EVM's" from ISF ... permanent. I see them as permanent heavy industrialization that can never be sold. Oh, ownership might change, but the factories still remain ... as IU's contributing to the economy.
Interesting. I have a different idea as to what IU represents…..
The base income an imperium receives is taxation. To me, IU represent direct ownership of a company (or collection of companies), and the income from the IU represents company profit/dividends.
You see, that is how some government investment here in Australia work. Whilst a majority of the governments income is from taxation, the government also receives dividends/profits from companies that it owns (such as telecom, water, electricity generation and supply, railways, tollways, waste treament plants, etc.)
And so, to compare the Australian model to Starfire, whilst it is possible to sell these government owned companies (i.e. IU), there is a limit on how much can be sold per turn (as there is a limited number of buyers that can afford to make such large purchases).
To me, what you're describing is more like some sort of financial instrument, like a bond. In theory, I have no problem creating "bonds". But it would have be understood that it's adding a bit more income into the game, as well as a few more lines of rules. The simplest way to do bonds might be to let them function like SM#2 IU's (call them BU's for Bond Units for the moment). Buy a BU for something like 30 MC or so. Get 1 MC of income for every BU. Only allow them to be sold at face value on growth months (i.e. every 10th turn). But also allow them to be sold in non-growth months at a 50% penalty, or only 15 MC per BU sold. The last two sentences would simulate the requirement for a bond reaching maturity before redeeming it for full value, or taking a penalty for early redemption.
As for how many bonds could be purchased, I'm thinking that the number should be relatively low (to prevent creating too much new income in parallel with IU's). Perhaps no more than 20% of a planet's local GPV (not counting bond income). And only planets with sizable populations, probably Medium or above, would have financial markets which would allow the sale of bonds to local governments. It could probably be even the sum of all Imperial GPV's, not including BU-derived incomes, which complicates the calculation unfortunately. (But the gov't own bond derived income shouldn't be turned around and used to increase its own bond buying capacity.)
I’m not in favour of “bonds” – as bear in mind that the cost of a single IU is small compared to a imperiums economy, for a planet it is relatively large.
And so the idea that companies/people are going to be rich enough to sell multiple bonds to the government a bit hard to believe…..
My general idea for "Economic Technologies" is that they actually don't give you any extra money, per se. Rather they increase your capacity to increase income. Let me explain. (I prefer Economic Tech rather than Industrial Tech, because I have one portion of Eco Tech relating to IU's, i.e. "Industrial Tech".)
I like this idea. In fact, the only problem with it is that I would like to see the bonus per TL reduced, so that it can be extended over more TL’s (i.e. the bonus continues up to TL 10+ - instead of finishing at TL5).
You want to hear an off the wall idea, here's one... Rather than have a TLF as SM#2 uses (or the EL Growth that Ultra uses), just increase the IU cap by 10% for every TL. (I.e. The IU cap for a TL 1 race would be 10% PU, for a TL5 race it'd be 50% of PU, and so on.) The idea here is that economically when your EL/TL increased, you wouldn't see an increase in income ... what you'd have is the OPPORTUNITY to increase your income by investing in more IU's. Yes, to get the economic benefit of an increased EL?TL you'd have to pay money, but don't companies have to pay money to buy more advanced equipment and factories when technology improves?
True. Another option.
Anyways, just a raw and wild idea...
Which has merit!
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I like this idea. In fact, the only problem with it is that I would like to see the bonus per TL reduced, so that it can be extended over more TL’s (i.e. the bonus continues up to TL 10+ - instead of finishing at TL5).
Yes, but don't assume that just because we might start with a lowish percentage for a IU cap that that cap must necessarily end at only 50%.
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Ok, enough toying with ideas... but it sure would make a gamechanger when that raid through the closed wp would not only hit 150 PU of hostile setlement (yawn), but also your only source of forcebeamium crystals... *panic*Strategic Resources are a great idea that I don't think will work at all outside a computer context. Civ5 and Distant Worlds are both good examples of the mechanics and maneuvers they can bring to a game. If you cant access the resources you need to compete, you might very well pull an Empire of Japan and go to war to get them. But keeping track of and generating said resources would be annoying, and more critically these resources can't start a war unless more than one person knows where they are. Soooo....
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With a PnP game you don't track number of minerals as is done in Aurora you have to do something based on either "have them" or "have them not" or else you base it on numbers. Or do something else such as bonuses.
Using "forcebeamium" as a example:
The binary approach:
To build and use force beams you need access to a planet with "forcebeamium" when you don't have that you can neither build nor use them.
The graduated approach:
Resource: Forcebeamium Locations: X-X-X-X (reads chart) can build and use forcebeams, check before battle per ship roll d10 on a 1 or 2 that many force beams are not operational due to insufficient amounts of the necessary critical resource.
Or whatever you like to do. It certainly makes some systems important. You can also do things like give bonuses. For example with 4 locations with Forcebeamium means on rolls of 1 add an extra point of damage to the hit.
Or mix and match to taste, or do something completely different and wild and crazy. It gives possibilities for trade, for war, for negotiations. Tracking how many tons of "Forcebeamium" ...uhm no not really a good idea.
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The ESF comes about in any game that treats a cruiser as a frigate with more of the same weapons. I first encountered it in Starfleet Battles. It is a way to min-max the system and it works. There is no argument against it since it is the optimal solution. It maximizes your firepower for no cost to you the player.
You can get rid of it not when you change hex sizes but when you change the weapons so that a force beam on a frigate isn't the same as a force beam on a battleship. Nothing else will remove it outside of some sort of damage from exploding ships (probably the rest of the ships should take penalties to fire since their sensors are probably a bit overloaded by the ships exploding around them).
"shoot til she pops" just means that you focus fire on a single ship and keep swapping targets as they blow up. This is contrary to actual naval practice where you engage every target possible and only double up when you outnumber the enemy. This is because un-engaged ships are significantly more effective then ones under fire. "shoot til she pops" also means ships either live or die and generally at most only one ship will be damaged. This renders moot most of the damage control/damage repair and other rules that are in starfire since they never get needed. It also means you don't need a fleet train or a lot of logistic support since you have at most 1 damaged ship. One thing I tended to do in the München campaign when playing an NPR that determined they were to loose was switch to firing on multiple targets to inflict any sort of damage since damaged ships are harder to deal with then destroyed ones. Another time the 25 Rc equiped shipss engaged the enemy muliple ships at a time since those damaged ships were less combat effective and I wasted less firepower in overkills even if the targeted vessels took two rounds to kill...so 25 kills ever 2 rounds rather than 12 kills a round. I frankly think that designating fire should be done before shootig starts since it is supposedly semi-simultaneous...and missiles are certainly in flight for a good part of the 30s turn.
A lot of this is personal taste to be sure. But if I want to fight two space control ships I would rather have a single space control ship not 50 frigates that just equals the fire power of one. I much prefer a system more like Leviathan where the smaller ships mounted lesser weapons then the larger not just fewer of the same weapon. A friend of mine did a bit of a rework to Leviathan to make even more interesting adding in penetration so making the choice of a lot of smaller weapons or a smaller number of more powerful weapons interesting in itself leading to different design options.
Starfire simply suffers from this as does SFB and Battletech to name other systems I am familier with but as a design choice it is the most common one. Starfire's main strength is that you can play out fleet engagement of easily up to 30-50 ships a side but when they come down to two counters on the map (or 4 if you split into missile and beam armed components) then you end up with a 1D game where you are doing either: holding range, increasing range, or decreasing range. No need for a map. When you basically can lump all ships into a supper ship and when you know that a ship is either going to live or die then you get rather than the ships "Stilleto", "Bowie", "Bayonet" ... "stilleto 001", "stilleto 002", "stilleto 003" it is hard to generate much enthusasum for naming something which is just going to get obliterated in a meat grinder.
To me starfire has a lot of rules that indicate the people creating it thought there shold be more than this to the games combat system.
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Yeah, a good point of modifiers. That is pretty much how it works in Distant Worlds and sort of how it works in Civ5. An income-percentage based research system might make a strategic resource which reduces those costs or times extremely valuable. You could have a durable hull material that reduces maintenance costs. etc. But it's still a problem that these things only engender conflict if multiple people know their locations.
The ESF comes about in any game that treats a cruiser as a frigate with more of the same weapons.
Nooo, I don't think that's right. Bigger guns wouldn't do a thing to change ESF. Formations are all about concentration of power, and ESF is the ultimate concentration of power, esp. when you have an advantage. The only things that break up ESF in any game are unit footprints, terrain, and weapons of differing ranges (once the fight is joined). The last can be minmaxed and usually is. Terrain is impractical in space p much. And the only way for unit footprints-in-space to mean anything that I can see are artificial penalties for grouping up.
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The ESF comes about in any game that treats a cruiser as a frigate with more of the same weapons. I first encountered it in Starfleet Battles. It is a way to min-max the system and it works. There is no argument against it since it is the optimal solution. It maximizes your firepower for no cost to you the player.
I’ve gotta disagree with you here. I don’t see that those two things are all that linked. If you want to say that there’s a link between ESF and firing arcs, I can see where there’s an argument to be made there. But not with ESF and “a weapon is a weapon”. At least not that I see.
You can get rid of it not when you change hex sizes but when you change the weapons so that a force beam on a frigate isn't the same as a force beam on a battleship. Nothing else will remove it outside of some sort of damage from exploding ships (probably the rest of the ships should take penalties to fire since their sensors are probably a bit overloaded by the ships exploding around them).
You are forgetting about firing arcs. Those would have some impact on ESF, though I don’t think that the ones used in Ultra are aggressive enough to seriously impact ESF except for the tiny hull types (i.e. FG and below).
Your point about explosions blinding sensors is an interesting one. And I think that one could say that you wouldn’t even need to require exploding ships to actually cause damage to other ships in the same tac hex to use this “blinding sensors” idea. OTOH, given the nature of the way sensors supposedly work in Starfire, I’m not sure if exploding ships would blind such sensors. Certainly, I doubt that blinding light would blind sensors that are designed to detect drive field emissions.
As for the “a weapon on a DD not being the same as a weapon on a BB” thing, that’s just not Starfire. It would completely change the nature of the game such that it would no longer be recognizable AS Starfire. I’m sure that that wouldn’t bother you, but I suspect that it might bother a great many other people, not to mention the fact that it would make the game somewhat more complex, since nearly every weapon, or at least beam weapon, would need to come in at least 3 different sizes. And that would just about triple the size of the to-hit and damage tables.
"shoot til she pops" just means that you focus fire on a single ship and keep swapping targets as they blow up. This is contrary to actual naval practice where you engage every target possible and only double up when you outnumber the enemy.
I’m sorry, but I have to seriously, seriously disagree with you here. For WW1/2 era naval combat, this sort of targeting was done for a very practical reason that would be completely moot in space-based warfare. Ships of that era used the splashes of their misses to re-adjust their aim. If multiple ships using fairly similarly sized guns were shooting at the same target, it’d be very difficult if not impossible to determine which splashes were linked to which ship’s guns. This simply wouldn’t be a problem in STARFIRE combat, and therefore not a reason for ships not to group their fire. So quite frankly, I see no reason NOT to gang up your fire, if that’s your desire.
Also consider that with modern anti-ship missiles, their destructive power is such that it takes very few of them to destroy a ship, as opposed to Starfire missiles, which require a lot of hits (with regular nuke warheads) to destroy even a moderately sized ship. The nature of modern naval combat actually encourages the spreading of fire, whereas the nature of Starfire combat encourages focusing one's fire.
This is because un-engaged ships are significantly more effective then ones under fire.
Again, I see this as more of a wet navy thing, though I wouldn’t totally discount it in space combat. For one thing, I suspect that aiming is entirely done by computer, and I doubt that the computer is going to be made more nervous by its ship being under fire. People will decide which ships to target. Computers will aim the weapons at the given targets.
"shoot til she pops" also means ships either live or die and generally at most only one ship will be damaged. This renders moot most of the damage control/damage repair and other rules that are in Starfire since they never get needed. It also means you don't need a fleet train or a lot of logistic support since you have at most 1 damaged ship.
I still hold that a major reason for “shoot til she pops” is ship design. As long as an enemy ship remains an active combatant (i.e. has an active weapon), there’s no legit reason to not be shooting at that ship. And if one sticks a beam weapon as the last system on the control sheet, “shoot til she pops” is only logical. Why waste fire trying to bash down a fresh enemy’s shields and armor when there’s another enemy ship that has no S or A and is still a threat?
I can tell you this… unless there’s a legit strategic reason to do otherwise, I’m not wasting fire on S and W when there are damaged ships still firing on me!!! Heck, even in the situation you describe below, where you have a losing fleet intent on inflicting damage, I still wouldn’t waste any fire on Shields, when there were ships whose internal systems were unprotected by S and A.
One thing I tended to do in the München campaign when playing an NPR that determined they were to lose was switch to firing on multiple targets to inflict any sort of damage since damaged ships are harder to deal with then destroyed ones. Another time the 25 Rc equipped ships engaged the enemy multiple ships at a time since those damaged ships were less combat effective and I wasted less firepower in overkills even if the targeted vessels took two rounds to kill...so 25 kills ever 2 rounds rather than 12 kills a round. I frankly think that designating fire should be done before shooting starts since it is supposedly semi-simultaneous...and missiles are certainly in flight for a good part of the 30s turn.
Requiring fire to be designated before starting the combat phase will just slow down the game further and make the game less and less playable for larger fleets. I won’t disagree that it could have a positive effect on the game, but at a very high cost. Too high a cost for many, if not most, players.
And if you were going to go this route, you should also require plotted movement or at least phased movement, rather than standard free movement. And what the heck, if using phased movement, maybe roll separately for movement initiative (right before the movement phase) and combat initiative (right before the combat phase). (Obviously, if using plotted movement, movement initiative is moot.)
And BTW, I would suggest that if you really like pre-plotted fire, there’s nothing stopping you from making it a house rule. But I don’t think that it would really work out well for the core rules.
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The ESF comes about in any game that treats a cruiser as a frigate with more of the same weapons. I first encountered it in Starfleet Battles. It is a way to min-max the system and it works. There is no argument against it since it is the optimal solution. It maximizes your firepower for no cost to you the player.
True. A real life analogy would be all aircraft armed with missiles of the same range, or all ships armed with missiles with the same range - which we all know isn't true.
What might be an idea to help break up the ESF, would be to add a bonus to either damage or effective range based on ship size.
I.e. a CT gets a -0 to the effective range, whereas a CL gets a -1 and a BB gets a -2 and a ML gets a -3, etc.
That way, you have a choice of sticking to ESF (and accepting that some of your ships are not at their optimal range), or splitting your ships up into smaller stacks (so that they are all at their optimal range).
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True. A real life analogy would be all aircraft armed with missiles of the same range, or all ships armed with missiles with the same range - which we all know isn't true.
What might be an idea to help break up the ESF, would be to add a bonus to either damage or effective range based on ship size.
I.e. a CT gets a -0 to the effective range, whereas a CL gets a -1 and a BB gets a -2 and a ML gets a -3, etc.
That way, you have a choice of sticking to ESF (and accepting that some of your ships are not at their optimal range), or splitting your ships up into smaller stacks (so that they are all at their optimal range).
Matt, could you explain what you mean by "effective range" in a bit more detail?
EDIT: Do you mean something like this: a BB shooting at a target that was 6 hexes away from its target would be effectively 4 hexes distant on the damage table (meaning that it'd do 2 points of damage rather than 1)? Or if it was at 17 hexes from its target, it'd have an effective range of 15 hexes and would do 1 point of damage instead of 0?
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Your point about explosions blinding sensors is an interesting one. And I think that one could say that you wouldn’t even need to require exploding ships to actually cause damage to other ships in the same tac hex to use this “blinding sensors” idea. OTOH, given the nature of the way sensors supposedly work in Starfire, I’m not sure if exploding ships would blind such sensors. Certainly, I doubt that blinding light would blind sensors that are designed to detect drive field emissions.
I don’t think, that once datalink is developed (and so ships can be in an entirely different hex), that blinding a ships sensors by an exploding ship is going to happen.
Having said that, see my idea below…..
I’m sorry, but I have to seriously, seriously disagree with you here. For WW1/2 era naval combat, this sort of targeting was done for a very practical reason that would be completely moot in space-based warfare. Ships of that era used the splashes of their misses to re-adjust their aim. If multiple ships using fairly similarly sized guns were shooting at the same target, it’d be very difficult if not impossible to determine which splashes were linked to which ship’s guns. This simply wouldn’t be a problem in STARFIRE combat, and therefore not a reason for ships not to group their fire. So quite frankly, I see no reason NOT to gang up your fire, if that’s your desire.
O.K., what about this idea.
While an exploding ship is too far away to blind a ship, when a missile explodes nearby, this created enough of a disturbance to a ships sensors/datalink, to cause a penalty to that ships offensive fire (i.e. if fired apon a ship suffers a penalty to hit on the same/next turn).
And if you were going to go this route, you should also require plotted movement or at least phased movement, rather than standard free movement. And what the heck, if using phased movement, maybe roll separately for movement initiative (right before the movement phase) and combat initiative (right before the combat phase). (Obviously, if using plotted movement, movement initiative is moot.)
What – someone who doesn’t use pulsed movement! :)
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Matt, could you explain what you mean by "effective range" in a bit more detail?
EDIT: Do you mean something like this: a BB shooting at a target that was 6 hexes away from its target would be effectively 4 hexes distant on the damage table (meaning that it'd do 2 points of damage rather than 1)?
Yep. A BB would be firing with either a different to-hit number and/or a different amount of damage per hit.
Using your example above, a CT would be firing at range 6 (with a to-hit of 8 and damage of 1 using F), while a BB would be firing at an effective range of 4 (with a to-hit of 9 and/or damage of 2 using F).
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Yep. A BB would be firing with either a different to-hit number and/or a different amount of damage per hit.
Using your example above, a CT would be firing at range 6 (with a to-hit of 8 and damage of 1 using F), while a BB would be firing at an effective range of 4 (with a to-hit of 9 and/or damage of 2 using F).
This seems similar to the benefit that OWP's, SS's, and PDC's get in Ultra.
Also, it seems to me that this benefit will vary by weapon. I won't write this idea off. It's interesting, though it does infringe on the very interesting benefits that Ultra did give to immobile "bases" (those benefits differed by base "type", i.e. OWP vs. SS vs. PDC).
EDIT: I just checked Ultra and its "base bonus" was a bonus strictly for LRW's. +5 to effective range for OWP's and SS's. +7 to effective range for PDC's. (There was also a smaller bonus for drive field down starships, and for ships using the Gt drive.)
I should also note that I'm not an anti-ESF crusader like PaulM seems to be. (I'm also not pro-ESF.) I'm willing to listen however. That said, I'm not sure that this idea would do anything to break up ESF. The way I see it at the moment, it would only be a way to give some small advantage to larger ships over smaller ones for beam weapons. It seems that this advantage is most felt at short ranges where damage increases quickly (and minor changes in effective range can quickly change damage) and at extreme ranges where the larger ship might gain some extra range on the weapon. Regardless, an interesting idea.
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This seems similar to the benefit that OWP's, SS's, and PDC's get in Ultra.
And this bonus may also be applied to these units as well (i.e. a BS0 received a -5 modifier, while a BS3 receives a -6, a BS5 receives a -7, etc.).
Also, it seems to me that this benefit will vary by weapon. I won't write this idea off. It's interesting, though it does infringe on the very interesting benefits that Ultra did give to immobile "bases" (those benefits differed by base "type", i.e. OWP vs. SS vs. PDC).
I should also note that I'm not an anti-ESF crusader like PaulM seems to be. (I'm also not pro-ESF.) I'm willing to listen however. That said, I'm not sure that this idea would do anything to break up ESF. The way I see it at the moment, it would only be a way to give some small advantage to larger ships over smaller ones for beam weapons. It seems that this advantage is most felt at short ranges where damage increases quickly (and minor changes in effective range can quickly change damage) and at extreme ranges where the larger ship might gain some extra range on the weapon. Regardless, an interesting idea.
I'm in two minds over this idea.
On one hand, I moderately dislike the ESF. On the gripping hand, I'm not in favour of this idea, as it is quite a change from 3e.....
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And this bonus may also be applied to these units as well (i.e. a BS0 received a -5 modifier, while a BS3 receives a -6, a BS5 receives a -7, etc.).
I'm in two minds over this idea.
On one hand, I moderately dislike the ESF. On the gripping hand, I'm not in favour of this idea, as it is quite a change from 3e.....
Yeah, if I was pushed for an opinion on it, I'd probably come down against it as well, Matt.
I suppose that this idea could be split in two. Right now, as I pointed out, there's a strong benefit at short range and one at long range. But perhaps it could be a long range only benefit? Or perhaps, like in Ultra, it could be an LRW benefit? Just tossing out ideas to see what sticks (if any).
The problem I see in this discussion is that we have (at least) two distinct groups of players. One group is willing to accept greater complexity to make the game "better" in their minds. And another group that wants to keep things reasonably clean and simple. I tend to favor the latter group, as I think you do. But Paul definitely seems like a member of the first group.
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"shoot til she pops" just means that you focus fire on a single ship and keep swapping targets as they blow up. This is contrary to actual naval practice where you engage every target possible and only double up when you outnumber the enemy.
I’m sorry, but I have to seriously, seriously disagree with you here. For WW1/2 era naval combat, this sort of targeting was done for a very practical reason that would be completely moot in space-based warfare. Ships of that era used the splashes of their misses to re-adjust their aim. If multiple ships using fairly similarly sized guns were shooting at the same target, it’d be very difficult if not impossible to determine which splashes were linked to which ship’s guns. This simply wouldn’t be a problem in STARFIRE combat, and therefore not a reason for ships not to group their fire. So quite frankly, I see no reason NOT to gang up your fire, if that’s your desire.
The reason that it was dangerous to leave an enemy ship unengaged in WW1/WW2 was it enabled it to fire on you without being troubled by your fire, even near misses by a nearly one ton shell will cause the receiving ship to move, potentially spoiling your aim. An example of this was where Beatty's battlecruisers at Jutland failed to engage Derflinnger for 10 minutes. Thus if you wished to carry the analogy into Starfire a ship not fired upon should have a to hit bonus. Probably not going to be a favorite of anyones :) .
Ian
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IanD hit the nail on the head. Ships unengaged fight better so you engage them. Missile fire is done somewhat differently since the math behind it (in the real world) is different. Read Fleet Combat and you will get the full meal deal explaination.
As far as complexity goes I am neither for it or against it. What I am against is a rule that doesn't add anything or detracts from the play regardless of if it is complex or simple. I would rather have complex rules that add significantly to the play of the game then have simple rules that end up causing the play to become boring or are hard to understand or implement. A lot of the changes in SM2 are designed to "simplify the game" and end up doing the exact opposite to that. My point is to give the players options by making more than one tactic or strategy viable. In starfire as it exists now if you play for min-maxed munchkin goodness there is pretty much only one economic strategy that works (or possibly two if you like GFFP) and tactically you end up with a pretty limited subset of the full set of possibilities (in GSF whatever you pick is likely to work so it makes the choice meaningless). Once people see this then the game becomes boring...and the only way to spice it up is to keep adding new fangled wierdness via different weapons. Essentially what SFB does. But a 1D space battle of the zerg versus the blob does not interest me. I also despise with a passion to be told how to play a game, which most of these simplified systems end up doing because they are so damn easy to min-max there inevitable ends up being one "right" way to play. At that point my interest in playing the game evaporates or as in HoIx I just tune out the people who claim to know the one true way to sucess and play the game the way I want to. But I started playing board games essentially with Starship Troopers and moved on to Squad Leader so my view of this is biased I am sure.
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Actually Ian I think a to hit-bonus for an untargetted ship is a wonderful idea...
Matt
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Ok, time for my 2c.. :)
In order to allow for a to-hit bonus for untargetted ships, you of course have to pre-allocate fire. So the turn phase would now be: Movement, Fire pre-allocation, fire resolution.
This defenitely will spread the love arpund and make for way more damaged ships than outright destroyed ones.
Small drawback though, with point defense as it is and datagroups, fire concentration for missiles defenitely is a must in order to saturate the point defense. (aka the sovjet missile swarm tactic in real life for dealing witha carrier group under aegis protection).
But it sure could be an interresting rule change. Not so good for those really, really big battles with 90 SD vs 120 BB. But for smaller games with smaller battles it could well be feasible. It defenitely works in battletech.
About weapon sizes. Paul and I ahve the rule in our campaign that capital weapons like Fc, HET are only allowed on BC and larger, making smaller ships more like escorts.
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About weapon sizes. Paul and I ahve the rule in our campaign that capital weapons like Fc, HET are only allowed on BC and larger, making smaller ships more like escorts.
Yes, I know. My problem with that rule is this: In WW1/2 era ships, heavy caliber guns weren't limited from being used on lighter ships due to any arbitrary "rule", but because of real issues. Like the force of the recoil during a broadside volley possibly being enough to flip the ship, or because the guns were simply too large to be physically mounted on the ship, or because the force of the guns firing would have torn the ship apart in some way. I just don't see those as being issues for capital beam weapons in Starfire, which is why such a limitation seems arbitrary to me. I suppose that a better argument could be made for cap missile launchers, though I'm not entire certain about that either.
I think that stronger arguments can be made for firing arc rules like those used in Ultra, where for beam weapons, the ship must be more than x3 the size of the weapon to be turret mounted, more than x2 the size of the weapon for a side mount, and ships that are only twice the size of the weapon or less, the weapon must be forward or rear arced (usually forward), i.e. a spinal mount. (The restrictions on kinetic weapons are a LOT more severe.)
Of course, these ratios aren't particularly aggressive, and particularly not for 3E where beam weapon sizes tend to be more cookie cutter than in Ultra. What I mean is that only an Escort (or EX) would be incapable of turret mounting the standard 4 hs beam weapon. I think that for 3E or Cosmic to get any real value out of this type of rule, the restrictions would need to be more aggressive, and it probably wouldn't hurt if the beam weapons weren't quite so cookie cutter in size since constant size makes for a constant result on the firing arc restrictions.
However, there are some people who wouldn't like the idea of beam weapons no longer being so constant in size. Partially out of tradition, but also in part out of what I see as a bit of laziness ... because they like the idea of plug and play with two standard sizes, i.e. 4 hs and 6 hs, since they don't have to mess up their ship designs if they want replace one type of beam weapon with another. Of course, if you stick with whole numbers for weapon sizes, there's a rather severe limit to how much variation in size you have to work with. Plus the fact that if one increased the size of a 4 hs weapon to 5 hs, you've decreased its overall effectiveness by decreasing the number of such weapons you can fit into a ship (by 20%) and questions of balance creep into the mix.
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In the interest of simplicity, why not create them seperately (to the point of giving them HI’s) – and then ignoring what type (i.e. T/ST) of planet they are….
An example method. All T-type races/planets roll HI on a d10. All ST-type races/planets roll HI on a D10+5. When it comes time to determine habitability, the type of planet is ignored (i.e. T or ST), and only the HI matters.
You can justify it by stating that the for T races finding a benign ST, that the planetary formations (i.e. high altitude platea’s) make ideal habitable zones; and for vice versa, the T planet is incredibly dense, and has a higher gravity then normal.
But first decide what your desired outcome is (see below), before trying to determine how to determine the outcome.
Matt, I tried making the above idea of ST's using an HI of 1d10+5 but it doesn't work. The math just doesn't work out. BUT... last night this idea caused variation of the idea to spawn in my mind.
As in Ultra, set the ratio of T's to ST's at 2:1 in the planetary mass table. THEN, assign Type T planets their usual 1d10 HI (i.e. 1-10), but assign ST planets an HI of 10 + (1d10/2) FTU, or 11-15. This means that the overall Habitability range is 1 to 15, with 1-10 covering 2/3's of the range and 11-15 covering 1/3 of the range, matching the 2-1 T/ST ratio.
Then when calculating HD's, you can ignore planet type and treat the HI range as a unified whole. And some Type T races could see some Type ST planets as Benign or Harsh, and vice-versa, depending on how wide the HD ranges were set. I think that this model probably works best if the Benign HD range is 0-1, the Harsh HD range is 2-3, and Hostiles are 4 or greater.
This model is NOT meant to be wrapped around, and there will be some imbalances at the extremes of 1 and 15. But the upper HI for T and the lower HI for ST are no longer extremes, since they are merged together in a way that preserves statistical balance of the environment types.
On a side note, this model might feel like it worked a little better if HI's were on a larger scale. The problem with the 1-15 scale is that HD ranges can easily swallow up the 5 point ST HI range. If the scale was 1-100 (1d100) for T's and 101-150 (100 + (1d100/2 FRU)) for ST's, it would feel like the scale wasn't quite so constricting, though statistically it'd really be the same.
What I mean by this is that on the 1-15 scale, if the HD ranges were 0-1 for B and 2-3 for Ha, then an ST race would be limited to HI's of 11 or 12 if it didn't want to lose any Benigns or Harshes off the upper end of the scale. This may make the ST HI's seem a bit restricted. But if you use a 1-150 scale, with similarly upscaled HD ranges of 0-10 for Benigns and 11-30 for Harshes, while you'd still be limited to the same amount of scale on a percentage basis, having an ST race "limited" to 101-120 might not feel quite so limiting (though it would be a bit of an illusion).
Also, one cannot fix these little imbalances by trying to use a full d10 scale for ST's because by using a 10 point scale for ST's you reduce each point in the scale to on 3.3% points, whereas 1 point on the 5 point scale represents 6.7% points, which exactly equals what 1 point on the 10 point T HI scale is when you split T/ST's 2:1. When both are using 10 point scales, any HD's that cross the T/ST boundary start becoming unbalanced when T HI points are worth 6.7% and ST HI points are worth 3.3%. The balance comes from keeping T HI points equal to ST HI points statistically speaking.
Regardless, I think that this idea has real merit, particularly for people who think that the wraparound model is unrealistic.