3rd Edition Rules

[Paul M]

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.

[MWadwell]

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......) 

[Paul M]

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.

[procyon]

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.  

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?

[Paul M]

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.

[sloanjh]

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

[MWadwell]

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.....

[MWadwell]

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.

[sloanjh]

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....

[Paul M]

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.

[procyon]

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.

[Paul M]

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.

[MWadwell]

I've megasnipped procyon's post - to avoid turning this discussion into a novel....  (well, any more then what I've already done! )

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). 

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....

[Paul M]

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.

[procyon]

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.