"Playtest Battle Report (Chaos v. Imperial)" Topic

Pretty much what it says it is. With pictures.

My wife painted the Imperial fleet many moons ago, and I, the Chaos.

link

Forgive the moronic question, it's cheritable to give slack to a moron, but what is the rule set you're testing/creating battles for?

Doug

Mine. I complained one too many times about fast and simple rules, so I decided to write a set.

The rules are good, but I haven't had enough repetition to be able to tell if the scenarios (specifically the victory conditions) are balanced enough.

So, not quite ready for prime time. (That, and the written rules haven't gone through a review with the playtest group. This is the time of year when they're all having to work overtime.)

This battle was the first Fleet Engagement where the was a margin of victory calculated, and not just victory. The weird thing in this case is that the Imperials had more actual force left, but Chaos held the table. Logically, it should be a draw, which means that my break point for margin of victory might be wrong.

So, Fleet Engagement is your working title, or just this scenario?

I suspect we've talked about it before, but there have been SO many home-rolled of late, some damn good at that, that this would hardly be the first confused question for me.

Your charity is most appreciated. ;->=

Doug

Interesting. Look forward to seeing the public release when you get it polished up.

This battle was the first Fleet Engagement where the was a margin of victory calculated, and not just victory. The weird thing in this case is that the Imperials had more actual force left, but Chaos held the table. Logically, it should be a draw, which means that my break point for margin of victory might be wrong.

Without knowing the scoring system this is just a guess, but

A) An 8% of the total point value for the game as a margin seems a little low for even a marginal victory.

and

B) Maybe the escorts shouldn't give out full VP when destroyed? If they're intended to be expendable as screens for the larger ships, maybe their value in VP should be lower than their cost (which should reflect their combat value)?

Doug —

Fleet Engagement is the scenario. Or, rather, the root of this particular scenario tree — there are really two scenarios hiding there. This one was the running entry version, which leads to a knife-fight. The one I've got set up on my table right now is a set-piece with a gas giant and three moons. Set-pieces have an extra turn to develop, and the gas giant will make maneuver a bit more complicated than simply controlling measure.

We might have talked about it when I posted the first "playtest fleet" post, but the game has changed a little bit since then. There were a couple of mechanics that took too much time, and got streamlined.

The game is currently titled "Jump War", which is not great — but better than the first title, which was "Purple Fuzzy Starships".

Rich —

A) I'll be the first to admit that the numbers I've chosen are wild guesses. This is one of the reasons I'm playtesting. My objective is to generate as many "marginal victories" as draws and "stunning victories" together. Once I have a big enough sample size, I'll shift things around a bit.

B) Escorts are currently worth 50-70 points, while destroyers are 200-400 and cruisers are 500-800. Given that each class is designed to cripple the class immediately inferior to it in one turn — and that escorts don't really have a "crippled" state — I think the numbers are about right. The Choas escorts lost in the first turn were about 270 points, while the Imperial destroyer alone was 352.