"What do you look for in Space Campaign Rules?" Topic

As I've spent most of my time on Silent Fury's main combat system, things like campaign rules and building a universe have been on the backburner, but I intend to include both. As part of the run up to developing campaign rules, I thought I'd go ahead and ask you guys who play entire campaigns (or don't, but you would if they had X) what people like to see in a campaign system for spaceship games.

silent-fury.com

I've been thinking about that for Pax Stellarum. I plan on releasing a Campaign Book in the future.

Somethings I'd like to have there:

- Empire Administration: dealing with insurgency on occupied planets. Managing wealth. Collecting taxes. Relation between level of taxes x civil rest. The more I collect taxes, the greater the risk a rebellion will take place on that colony.

-Replentishing the armada. Damage should be carried on from one game to the next. Players could use taxes collected to buy more ships and/or repair existing ones.

- Trade relations with neutral nations: I'd like to be able to forge comercial relation with third parties, selling something I produce that they don't, or simply offering him protection against our mutual enemies in exchange of (modest) monetary contribution. His simpathy towards me should be able to fluctuate in case I fail in keeping him from being attacked.

This would add loads of strategic possibilities for players. For instance, I could attack my oponent's ally to put him against my oponnent, leading it to withdraw from any pacts with him, or I could back insurgency on planets occupied by my oponent, etc.

Anyway, there are lots cool things one could have on a campaign ruleset.

You need to define your campaign scope.

Are you talking about a player taking one ship from battle to battle, its crew improving along the way (the captain's game)?

Or where a player must parcel out various ships from a fleet to different locations to meet possible threats (the admiral's game)?

Or something like what matgc83 mentions, with grand strategic and logistical mechanics (the emperor's game)?

I prefer the admiral's game, because it allows players to make strategic choices like where to send their fleets as well as tactical choices when those ships encounter foes.

The Emperor's game is pretty much out – I don't want a campaign to be unreasonably long or complicated, and since Silent Fury battles are small, fleets of the size that you'd expect in an Empire game don't fit well into Silent Fury battles. If I ever get around to making Silent Fleets I'll revisit the idea then.

I've been wavering between the Admiral's game and the Captain's game (Captain's game would follow a single task force of ships through a series of scenarios, Admiral's game is pretty much as described). I suppose it's possible to create both to suit different tastes – each Captain's game is pretty much it's own connected scenario book, so a more generic campaign system is the Admiral's game.

The ability to fight linked battles, with some reason for doing so.

Having to make strategic decisions on the placement of fleets to attack the enemy, and/or defend the home world/territory.

Deception, ECM/ECCM, etc.

Some simple rules for logistics, and vessel repair/replacement

A good, tactical space combat rules set, but that can be grafted on, if not present, if the other stuff is.

Taxation, relations, generating income, destroying the enemy's income, points values for vessels, fleets, and troops, morale, etc. would all be good too.

Back in the day I enjoyed Silent Death's campaign books. The best one was the Promethus campaign which was a series of battles. I think a non-linear system where the person with campaign initiative picks where the next battle is going to be is fun. My rule on campaign games no matter what they are is this – never have uneven forces in a battle. Wins or Losses affect the campaign and not the battles. That way someone who is losing can still win with skill.

Let's define the advantaged player as the one who won the last game session and the disadvantaged as the one who lost. Replace player with side for multiplayer campaigns.

Let's say the system has a bunch of scenarios that represent the opening moves – then some scenarios for the mid-game and finally 6 scenarios for the final battle with 3 representing a win for one side or a draw and the other 3 being a win for the other side or a draw. Of those three scenarios 1 is totally favorable to the side that manuvered the game to that point (chose of side of board, initiative 1st turn, enemy forces are scattered peicemeal, etc.) the second is balanced and the third is a fight for life, everything is against the advantaged side!

In the middle game you can have some really interesting objectives. For example you can have a battle over an asteroid that has a base with ammo and fuel. It belongs to the advantaged player. Lose it and you lose the easy win condition scenario. Gain it as the disadvantaged player and not only do you become advantaged you get to skip over a scenario.

I did this with a Star Wars Miniatures campaign and it was fun.

There used to be a board game called "Imperium" which was a good basis for a campaign.

* Minimal record keeping

* Abstract resources into a single "Recource" so you don't have to track handwavium and unobtanium x serparately

* No 'tech tree' to develop stuff; most cmapaign turns do not encompass years but rather days or weeks anyway

Most of these are the realm of 4X PC games. A pen and paper campaign needs to be simple to run and record

* Make it BENEFICIAL to engage in fights;
raids etc that allow a percentage of enemy RP to be taken or nullified; levelling up spaceships in battles; civilian productivity drops if no offensive raids
No trade that would encourage peace

After all, it is a wargame and the campaign should just provide a logical context for battles; with the logistic element providing incentive not to 'fight to the death' but to withdraw at sensible times

I'm dealing with the same problems as I try to work out a campaign ruleset myself here
link

Abstract resources into a single "Recource" so you don't have to track handwavium and unobtanium x serparately

Special resources, however, can be useful in making a particular locale important enough to be fought for, and Achilles' heels for those turtling.

Doug

Back a few years ago, we developed a stand alone boardgame called 'Conquest of the Galaxy' whose mechanics could be used for a campaign.

Well, there are really four levels of campaign game:

Captain's Game, where there's one ship (or a squadron of smallcraft) going through mission after mission during a deployment. Repair and resupply may-or-may-not happen between missions. More likely, there is some own-ship repair possible between scenarios, but the total amount of own-ship repair is limited. Same with resupply of any expendable weapons.

Admiral's Game, where the player needs to assign ships to complete missions, and the opponent may-or-may-not deploy ships to those locations. Note that you *could* use the Admiral's Game to generate missions for the Captain's Game. Generally, same problems of repair and resupply, but a ship doing shipyard repairs is not available for Admiral's missions.

Minister of the Navy's Game, where you need to decide what ships to build, where to assign them, etc. You don't get to decide the amount of the Naval Budget necessarily, just how to spend it.

Emperor's Game, where you need to deal with politics and taxes, rebellions, etc. Here, you decide the amount of the Naval budget and possibly how to spend it.

There is a new 4X boardgame out called Eclipse that is looking pretty good. Might be some ideas there.