CorSecEng | 12 Mar 2014 6:35 p.m. PST |
So I've had an idea for a game floating around in my head for a while. It's a serious departure from the normal and focuses more on formation and slugging away with missiles then direct fire. Think Honor Harrington meets The Lost Fleet. I'm thinking more along the lines of basing it off a modern carrier fleet instead of the more traditional WWII battleship slug fest model. A carrier or command ship would be the center of the formation and if you don't protect it then it dies fast. I have some of the mechanics laid out and it will probably include fighter rules as well. It will also be asymmetrical turns. I have a few fears. To be frank it might just be boring with ships moving very slowly. The command ship is the center of the fight but it isn't designed to pump out the real damage. That job will be for faster cruiser and the goal is a game that plays cat and mouse with the cruisers chucking out missiles that take 1-3 turns to hit the other formation. They will be slow and it will be hard to hit the escort ships but devastating if they get past the picket and strike a capitol ship. I have plans for several types of missiles and escort ships. Even bombing runs on the smaller escort ships to punch holes in the enemy formation. My hope is that it will be a very fluid game with a lot of reactions going on and some high level strategy. More like siege warfare then the traditional line of ships smashing into each other. Again this is only conceptual at this point but I'm wondering if it has legs and if I should dedicate some of my very limited time resources to fleshing out the idea into something that can be playtested. |
MacrossMartin | 12 Mar 2014 7:08 p.m. PST |
It could make for a very tactically challenging model. So essentially, the task is to destroy your opponent's big, lumbering command ship. If so, then said command ship must be replete with advantages / resources that the lesser elements require to complete their mission tasks. I.e., refuelling, reloading ammo, C3 control. What if the command ship is the only part of the fleet with a living crew? All the other ships – from cruisers all the way down to fighters – are drones, controlled by hundreds- even thousands – of operators on board the command ship? This gives a personal focus to the task, and a rationale for the command ship being the highest priority. Kill it, and game over, man. It has real possibility, in a boardgame sense. I don't see people juggling fleet lists to get the most out of their forces, but there's overtones of Ogre in the idea, which I think could really work. |
MrHarold | 12 Mar 2014 7:15 p.m. PST |
Reminds me of something like Ender's Game. |
CorSecEng | 12 Mar 2014 7:52 p.m. PST |
Well the idea is that the larger ship is MUCH larger. So like dreadnaught class with the only other ships being cruiser or less level. Similar to a modern carrier group. They are the projection of power in the area. Lumbering beasts that only meet on the field of battle when they are trying to stop another force from landing troops or making it to a colony to defend it. It is the mother ship. It is massive because it's a moving military base. It supplies the fleet. Repairs ships. It also launches sorties for recon, resupply, and protection detail. It controls a sector and the only way to remove the threat is to meet it in open combat. I had planned to include a few forced withdraw mechanics as well. These ships don't die and in space you don't just chase people down. Lost Fleet kinda covered this. If I break contact and both our accelerations are similar then you'll never catch me. It really covers the roles of Navy, Air, and Land forces in a region. I kinda picture smaller nations having one such fleet and maybe 2 or 3 colonies. The US would maybe have 2 or 3 max. There could be an alternative game play mode were your raiding supply chains and stuff. Just the smaller ships chasing each other around but that might be a supplement or something like a short campaign phase. If you dedicate 4 light cruisers to convoy duty and your opponent dedicates 6 to raiding then you loss several shipments that turn and roll for fleet losses/damage. These ships can't participate in any major fleet engagements and are down for repair or replacement for x number of turns. With several turns progressing before the big guys enter engagement range. Sorta like a pregame setup to determine number of ships and deployment locations. Of course I'm just brainstorming here. |
kidbananas | 12 Mar 2014 9:19 p.m. PST |
Doesn't Jim Wallman have a game like that on his Universe website? |
Toaster | 12 Mar 2014 9:41 p.m. PST |
I'll say it sounds like it could have promise. But what will be the reason for that model and not fielding a couple of battleships that can shrug off the cruisers and head for the command ship, in the real world that's driven by the disparity in ship and aircraft speeds. If you have a ship design system people will attempt to break the game and you will need something to force your model or at least make it a viable option. Robert |
Lfseeney | 12 Mar 2014 9:42 p.m. PST |
Sounds like a new look at it. How can I help? |
CorSecEng | 12 Mar 2014 10:25 p.m. PST |
Well considering I'm probably not going to include any rules for turret style weapons. My rational is that those style of weapons cannot reach the vast distances required by space combat. Similar to how The Lost Fleets is and they can only fire weapons on their pass through due to range. Battleships don't work with the game because they die from the incoming missile fire. You bum rush me and I'll just dump a few kinetic rods into your bridge. We are talking like 5-15 missiles on the table at a time. Maybe a lot more. Each missile will have stats for maneuverability, Armor penetration and Damage. So a kinetic missile is very low maneuverability but super high armor pen and damage. They are tungsten rods with limited one time use jets. So they don't track during flight but can burst into a target. In other words move your big ships out of the way or they will never dodge them. They also take a ton of damage to destroy. Other types like cluster ones that spray bomblets to damage escorts and more run of the mill cruise types. The goal is a rock, paper, scissors kinda thing. Mix in flights of bombers, interceptors, and fighters. Each specialized in attacking ships, taking down missiles, or attacking other fighters. Ships can roll to react to incoming missiles or fighters. Damage is an opposed roll situation. 2 phases. Roll to dodge and then roll an armor save. If both fail then you take the damage value of the attack. If it meets exceeds the threshold then you blow up but a damage of more then half is a crit roll that takes out critical systems that affect stats. Aim is something with a very small amount of book keeping and lots of stuff going on. Your just not going to be moving ships a lot. Like the big carrier will probably move 1-2" per turn max. Smaller escorts moving more like 6" or so. Maybe 2 or 3 movement types. Like free movement for small corvettes and fighters but some sort of template system for the various ship sizes. |
Dynaman8789 | 13 Mar 2014 3:40 a.m. PST |
Sounds interesting to me. Tweaking the parameters should be enough to handle any problems if they come up. You might want to try and limit sightings somehow – you know an enemy ship is out there but till you get close enough you don't know what it is – sort of like GDW's Star Cruiser game (which this game sounds similar to in some ways) |
TheBeast | 13 Mar 2014 5:02 a.m. PST |
Just to ask, and I've not digested all the posts yet, are you familiar with AoG's B5 Fleet Action, and the non-B5 version 2, Turning Point? Definitely focused on formations. Doug |
Gaz0045 | 13 Mar 2014 5:06 a.m. PST |
The command ship should give targetting info and C3 etc to the escort and strike vessels
..also a large search/targetting array for finding the enemy in the vast vacuum voids
.. |
Rothgar | 13 Mar 2014 6:18 a.m. PST |
Sounds interesting. I'd help with play-testing. |
SouthernPhantom | 13 Mar 2014 7:23 a.m. PST |
Intriguing. I always enjoy seeing a departure from the traditional battleship model; it seems like you're channelling the Rocketpunk Manifesto's 'constellation' idea. Have you thought about using a mixture of lasers, kinetics, 'kitty litter' screens, and other scientifically 'hard' (plausible) weapons? It would be really neat to see a legitimately serious look at interplanetary combat. (I focus on the 'littorals' of planetary orbit.) |
Aldroud | 13 Mar 2014 8:53 a.m. PST |
Reminds me a lot of combat described in Downbelow Station and other Company Wars novels by CJ Cherryh. You have a big mother ship and parasite outriders. Drop the outriders for fast maneuvers and the big mother commands&controls. Also has a big can of whupass when necessary. I'd say make the game a vector-style one that maintains momentum. Then you can get all kinds of fun things done with weapons. Missiles are great. Have multipe types – laserheads, contact weapons, sand casters. Laserheads rip apart a target within X inches with bomb pumped x-ray lasers. Contact weapons are hellishly destructive, but you have to aim 'em just right and hope the enemy can't dodge/ change vector enough. Sand casters are an area denial weapon. When they detonate, they cover a space of X inches. Fly through it on the next turn, N number of dice damage; turn after that N-1 dice, etc etc until the cloud dissipates. If you can work in a Z-axis that's intuitive and easy, I'd love to come down to the coast and try it out. |
Aldroud | 13 Mar 2014 8:54 a.m. PST |
Oh, and no fighters. I love the cinimatics, but realisticeally, anything smaller than a PT boat is just chum or an organicly guided missile anyway. |
CorSecEng | 13 Mar 2014 12:09 p.m. PST |
I had some notes on possibly replacing the fighter wings will smaller PT boat style attack craft. Something designed for 3-5 people but with a specific mission design. They would also be short range only. @thebeast I have not played either of those games. @gaz that is kinda the idea but I'm not sure it will be a mechanic per say but just another justification for having such a large ship be the focus of the fleet. The missiles will have a few different types and maybe a few specialized for different factions. As a manufacturer of telescoping flight stands the Z-axis is intriguing but it adds a ton of complexity. So does vector movement. Again I'm after a game with very little book keeping. No movement plotting or damage tracking. Just some tokens for crits and a stat sheet for the various ships. I might find a way to do it with dials or something but the goal isn't to sell stands with it (just a bonus :) So I'm hesitant to do anything that requires specialized stands. |
SouthernPhantom | 13 Mar 2014 5:04 p.m. PST |
I use a platform called the 'striker', filling exactly the role you're talking about. They're effectively heavy bombers in space, with a crew of two to ten. (Mine probably operate differently because of some in-universe constraints, but the concept stands) |
evilmike | 14 Mar 2014 5:52 p.m. PST |
Sounds like the old 'Battlerider' concept in Travellers High Guard. Basically you have a jump tender that carries a squadron of non-jump battleships (aka battleriders)
..and battleriders have more guns and armor compared to normal battleships since they have no jump drives requiring large fuel tanks. Of course, if the jump tender dies, the whole battlerider squadron in stranded in whatever solar system they are in
. |
Daricles | 14 Mar 2014 6:14 p.m. PST |
I'd recommend taking a couple steps back. Before you get too involved in designing your rule set decide who your target audience is. Are you designing a game for Grognards, the beer & pretzel crowd or semi- retired Grognards like me whose gaming time has evaporated due to family and professional responsibilities? Next decide how long you want a typical game to last and how much prep time is required before you play. Once you know the answers to those questions you'll know what level of complexity you should be shooting for, which will have a big impact on the game mechanics you design. Personally, I used to be a hard core Grognard with an engineering background and a penchant for detailed, complex rule systems. Nowadays, my friends and I just don't have the time for that anymore. If I can't teach my gamer friends a game's rules in 15 minutes or less and we can't finish a complete game in a few hours or less the game won't get played at all. Those factual realizations heavily influenced the design of my BvB game and led to broad abstractions of what started out as far more complex game mechanics. |
EJNashIII | 14 Mar 2014 8:24 p.m. PST |
I agree with Daricles in his greater concept of playability. I too run into the time/headache factor caused by the real world. On the more mundane side, why would you have fighters and a carrier? In space, visual range is basically unlimited, so the carrier cannot be screened or hidden. The basic concept of a carrier task force in the wet navy is that the carrier stays over the horizon out of sight and the bomber planes bring the pain while the fighters try to keep the opposing bombers out of range of finding your carrier. Likewise, in space weapon range is likely pointless. If you can get a 100,000 ton starship to another star, you can get a missile there too. In space, the big ship can just blast the other big ship as soon as they come out of what ever faster than light drive system idea is used. So, what makes the small planes better as weapon platforms? In reality, small ships in space are not necessarily faster like for the wet navy. They obviously cannot carry as many weapons. They cannot hide in the clouds, They cannot necessarily out range a bigger ship, etc. So, what makes them special? I do like the drone idea above. At least you have a reason for a "command" ship to house the living beings. So, I think I'm saying work out a believable "why" if you are going to start a design premise on a tactical disposition. It should seem to be the only logical tactic or your players will become irritated that their "better" tactic cannot be used. Coolness only takes you so far. They must embrace it because nothing else is logical to them. |
EJNashIII | 14 Mar 2014 10:10 p.m. PST |
It also occurred to me that the cool factor might even be the golden reason back story. The carriers are like the bleachers of a stadium. The carrier/battleships could just go at it, but the society has matured past that and has clear rules of war that limit mindless violence. Savages use antimatter bombs and frag worlds. Like knights or Samurai of old, the elite space pilot takes their brightly painted fighters out to decide the fate of countless worlds. In some ways isn't this the ideal behind the $30 USD million dollar modern carrier jet fighter? |
Daricles | 15 Mar 2014 9:34 a.m. PST |
It is very common for people to have serious misconceptions about how difficult and complex it is to "fire" objects between interplanetary bodies. We tend to oversimplify the problem and imagine that the two objects are a vast but fixed linear distance apart and think we can point our B.A.I.S.G. (Big Ass Interplanetary Space Gun) directly at the target and blast away then wait long enough for the rounds or missiles or whatever to arrive on target. We often forget that interplanetary objects are in constant motion relative to each other and that somewhat complex calculations regarding transfer maneuvers and specific launch windows are required to send objects between interplanetary bodies. In reality, you may have to wait months for a launch window before you can even launch at an enemy spaceship that drops into orbit around Saturn before you could even fire missiles that could arrive at Saturn from Earth. Will the enemy Spacecraft even still be there? Those same spacecraft can easily evade your missiles on their way to earth without wasting reaction mass be simply varying their acceleration rates throwing your missiles intercept calculations off. More than likely, any enemy spacecraft capable of interstellar travel will carry far more fuel for maneuver than any missile can. Here is a link to a basic discussion of stellar flight mechanics at NASA link that shows how complex space flight really is. Saying you could blast the enemy ships as soon as the dropped out of FTL is pretty far from the truth. |
Lion in the Stars | 15 Mar 2014 10:06 a.m. PST |
Under "realistic" space combat (Every once in a while I hang out on the Rocketpunk Manifesto), the only time smallcraft make sense is in the crowded "littorals" of orbit. Otherwise, a 'fighter' needs 4x the fuel of a missile carrying the same payload because the fighter needs to accelerate to it's attack speed, bring itself to a stop relative to the carrier, then make a return to the carrier and stop at the carrier. There's just no sane reason to have manned fighters in open space combat, when an unmanned missile bus with the same fuel load is 3x more effective (or more). A missile bus could close twice as fast and have significant jinking, too. What it looks like "realistic" space combat will be is akin to the Japanese preWW2 cruiser doctrine, with Long Lance torps being the primary weapon of the ship. Other weapons are still carried, but those are mostly defensive weapons (to stop the Long Lances) and/or shore bombardment weapons. And actually, if you're going to do bomb-pumped laser heads, don't forget that you can also make nuclear shaped-charges (it's an offshoot of the ORION pulsed-nuke "rocket" drive research). I'm talking about directing 85% of the warhead's energy into a narrow cone of space. Tungsten, which has an Atomic Number (aka Z) of 74, spreads out in a 22.5deg cone. That's pretty lousy for an offensive weapon, but it'd probably work pretty well as a defensive shield. Lower Z-number elements make for a narrower cone, and a thinner layer of your "self-forging projectile" narrows the cone even more. Lithium is the lowest Z option that's still a solid. Like knights or Samurai of old, the elite space pilot takes their brightly painted fighters out to decide the fate of countless worlds. In some ways isn't this the ideal behind the $75 USD USD million dollar modern carrier jet fighter? Fixed the pricetag, and no, it's not. Carriers will still get attacked *because* they are the primary threat. If you sink a carrier, all those aircraft cease being a problem. Not to mention the massive hit to the opponent's national prestige. Though that is exactly what the USAF wants you to believe. |
CorSecEng | 15 Mar 2014 10:53 a.m. PST |
The Lost Fleet is as close to realistic as I've ever read without being horribly boring. However that game would be really boring unless you abstracted it into a card game (Yes I considered something like that) Yes the distances you can engage at are vast but there will quickly develop a common practice centered around the sweet spots of the tech involved. No sense staying out of optimal range when both sides can't hit each other effectively. The missiles I'm considering are more like drone fighters with massive payloads. Preprogrammed evasion and attack patterns to aid in getting close to the enemy ship and hitting it. Some are smaller or split into tiny elements to strike individual targets. Others are massive chunks of dense material designed to penetrate a space ship the size of New York City from the moon. As for the scope of the game, I really want a game that is fun and takes very little book keeping but is short. The first few turns will be boring but the idea is that the your moving a bunch of smaller elements instead of racing big ships across the table in long lines and rolling dice to see who got lucky. It becomes strategic and each class of ship has a distinct purpose. |
Daricles | 15 Mar 2014 11:51 a.m. PST |
To clarify, my response was limited to the idea of engaging enemy units across vast distances as soon as the dropped out of FTL and not an argument for or against fighter craft, but I'll play devil's advocate for fighter craft for a minute: Firstly and perhaps most importantly, space fighters are cool and fun! Especially if they are space pirate fighters. ;) Secondly, we need to nail down the capabilities of the fighters, the carriers and the missiles before we can argue the merits of the fighters. For example, if the fighters are jump or FTL capable the arguments change drastically. Even Lion's assumptions are narrowly crafted. The fighter could instead maneuver to a launch position, stop, destroy the enemy and then wait for the carrier to come and pick the fighters up. If the goal was to occupy the area of engagement no more fuel is necessarily needed than for the missile attack alone. Perhaps the fighters are needed to provide guidance and detection for the missiles. Why carry expendable guidance packages on each missile if you can use a reusable launch vehicle instead? There may well be economically and tactically feasible reasons to use fighters as launch platforms in space. That's what modern air fighters have become, though we are headed more and more toward UAVs in that role. When was the last time a fighter engaged in a gun fight? I suspect it doesn't happen much any more. |
Daricles | 15 Mar 2014 12:18 p.m. PST |
CorSec, the sheer variety of unit and weapon types you are describing and the level of detail you are shooting for seem to be at odds with your goal to eliminate book keeping and streamline play. From your description so far, I am imagining a lot of time and book keeping to design and equip a fleet before gameplay even begins and a steep learning curve before a player can balance a particular fleet composition against any other typical fleet composition. When I think of no book keeping and quick and easy gameplay I imagine something more like no more than three unit types: Big ships, little ships, and fighters. No more than two types of weapons: direct fire and missiles. A single opposed die roll for combat (maybe using different numbers of dice or different die types to distinguish slightly different weapon capabilities) rather than armor and damage penetration values with dodge rolls and armor saves. And fixed fleet compositions for the sides that may vary from pre-defined scenario to pre-defined scenario instead of designing your own ships and building your own fleet. That may not be what you have in mind, but what you've described so far seems to be at odds with itself. |
CorSecEng | 15 Mar 2014 4:29 p.m. PST |
Ship design isn't book keeping. At least not to me. I don't want to write down complex moves and plot turn after turn and take damage that I tick off of boxes. That is book keeping. A preassembled stat sheet with a simple damage system. Think Tomorrow War. The squad is either lightly wounded or critically wounded or dead. You only need to keep track of the critically wounded and lightly wounded guys just have a few negatives. So cruiser A rolls to evade a cruise missile armed with a nuke. They do an opposed roll. The defender losses. The Nuke has an armor penetration of 5 and the cruiser has an armor value of 4. So it penetrates and the attacker rolls his firepower check. He rolls and less then half the damage value of the cruiser causing light damage. That cruiser now has a -1 to movement and evade. Those can stack. If he gets more then half then the cruiser takes a critical hit and rolls to see what major system is taken out. Drives, fire control, or life support something like that. If he gets more then the damage value then the ship breaks apart and is destroyed. Thats just spit balling but its close to what I have in my head as far as shooting goes. Still not sure what to do about ammo and movement but the ship stats will be easy. Maneuverability, Armor, and Hull Points. Movement is calculated off of maneuverability or it might need a speed value as well. Then it lists stats for the missiles it carries and secondary weapons like flak or some other special abilities to add some flavor. Thats about it for the ship cards. Similar to Firestorm Armada that way. This way your only tracking light and critical damage with tokens and those will stack till the ship dies. Eliminates the need for rolling on charts and if you penetrate the armor then your at least causing some damage and it will show the next time you try to hit that ship. Movement is complicated because I want to keep the token count down but still have something like vector movement. I don't want to use dice or anything to track speed. Still rolling that around my brain. Its really an abstract of the actual combat so I might have to give up vector movement for a more fluid system that will reduce the complexity and make the formation movement easier. Again aiming for something about as complex as TW or FSA but with a distinct style of play and something that will appeal to fans of Harrington or The Lost Fleets and depart from the battleships in space model. As for the variety of weapons, it's really not going to be that complex. Maybe 4 types of missiles tops in the final build with a few strike boat types and the ship classes just have min/max stats and maybe different movement types. |
Daricles | 15 Mar 2014 6:54 p.m. PST |
Ah. I understand better now. If you want short, fast paced games you need to minimize the number of combat steps and die rolls required to resolve combat. Have you considered simplifying combat by leaving out the firepower check? One hit and you are lightly damaged, two hits you are critically damaged, three you're destroyed. Stack one -1/-1 counter for each hit. That eliminates a stat and a die roll and accomplishes most if not all of what you want to represent. You could also consider abstracting combat to a single die roll instead of separate dodge and armor penetration checks. Instead of assigning penetration values to weapons and armor values to ships and comparing them you could assign weapons and ship classes a d4, d6, d8 etc. For example, let's say cruisers roll a d6 in combat, heavy cruisers roll a d8 and dreadnoughts a d10. Conventional missiles might roll a d4 while nukes roll a d8 or d10. Why not let the one die roll represent the combined effects of all of your defensive efforts? Don't get me wrong, the system you describe is workable and certainly simpler than say SFB, but still farther along on the complexity scale than I prefer nowadays due to the constraints I have on my gaming time. Whatever you decide, the concepts you are exploring are interesting and worth developing further. |
Toaster | 16 Mar 2014 2:09 a.m. PST |
Have you looked at Colonial Battlefleet and its Man vs Machine supplement? Take 2 Cylon (sorry Cyborg) forces and you should have almost the exact game your describing (except vector movement) and it's already balanced for the guy who wants to bring in the battleships. Robert |
Aldroud | 19 Mar 2014 8:59 a.m. PST |
I've been thinking about how you can incorporate a z-axis state and still make the game fluid and easy to run. Fix all course changes in both the xy-axis and z-axis to 30 degrees. This will give you a finite number of possible combiniations for direction. You can then workout a table of results. That table could easily be a wheel-style calculator. Player puts down his desired course heading. "I want to change course 60 degrees to port, 30 degrees negative Z." Consult the wheel and get the position the base of the ship will have moved to and the number of inches/cm/whatever the flying stand has to contract/expand. |
Echoco | 24 Mar 2014 3:07 a.m. PST |
I did a similar game. Maneuver units are squadrons with mixed ship types. I use Demon World hex base for squadron/formation. It has officers name on them since each squadron was supposed to represent ships under a specific squadron commander. My ships are called Frames and there are no DDs, CCs, BBs, FFs or CVs just frames of several variants. Frame Is and IIs with subtypes. Generally Frame Is can carry 2 payloads and IIs can carry 3. Stats are speed, DEF and Special ( ECM, sensors, command mod ) . Payloads are 3 types of missiles, heavy ( anti-frame ) , light ( frame/missiles ) and swarmers ( very short range very effective against missiles ) . Little book keeping, dice pool are used to indicate what payload each frame is carrying, red = hvy, green = lgt and white = swarmers. Special mods take up one payload space. Damage is always on closest ship in target squadron then the next closest. Command Frame ( always in the middle ) is in most cases the third to take damage. After each round of shooting there's usually some repositioning going on. If a squadron looses all of its command modules/frames ( usually there's only one ) it's drifting dead and can be captured by the winner after the battle. The game isn't so much a space combat game but management of the payload you have in each squadron. Carry too many hvy missiles and your ships can't defend itself. Too many lgt/swarmers and you wouldn't be able to kill anything and end in a draw ( a waste of resource ) . Good strategy was to overload target DEF with lgt until he's out of PD then send in the few hvy to kill some Frames. Most squadrons retreat after some loss because loosing a command Frame is too great a risk. This was a campaign game where command mods are rare other Frames are not. Officers gain experience and are irreplaceable, so if a command Frame is killed that squadron is gone forever. |