""Make It So" Starship Combat Game Now Available" Topic
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Visceral Impact Studios | 11 Jun 2015 11:23 a.m. PST |
We planned to do a formal announcement and start running ads here on TMP next week but we messed up on the release tool over at Wargame Vault. The system made it available now so, rather than trying to put the genie back in the bottle, our favorite forum gets a sneak peak! :-) Below is the WV summary, we hope you enjoy it!
link DESIGN AND FIGHT Make It So goes where no spaceship game has gone before! The game includes everything from agile frigates equipped with Quantum Torpedoes and Sub-Space Drone Racks to mighty capital ships with Fusion Cannons and Fighter Squadrons. Complete starship design rules treat starship hulls as more than "stuffed sausages". Budding space navy architects will need to carefully analyze the mobility, defensive, offensive, and logistical (yes, there are re-fueling rules!) advantages and disadvantges of various hull classes. Rules are also included for stealthy sub-space field generators and a variety of weapon and defensive sytems which bring rich rock-paper-scissor combat to starship battles. BOARDING ACTIONS AND PLANETARY ASSAULTS Victory is determined by far more than destroying enemy ships. Players battle for control of a planet and its surrounding moons too. Victory points are awarded for destroying and capturing starships, controlling the vital trans-light warp exclusion zones around a planet or moon, and for landing troops on planets and moons to secure them for your faction. NO TEDIOUS RECORD KEEPING The game system also does away with tedious written record keeping while also providing challenging tactical puzzles involving weapon and shield arcs and starship orders which determine maneuver and combat options. A single-sided Quick Reference Sheet with a Fleet Data Sheet on the other side is all a player needs to command his battlefleet. An elegant damage control and critical hit system using just a few markers provides deep combat result details without resorting to countless "ship record sheets" littering the tabletop. The game uses only 6-sided dice and all game markers are provided. TOTAL FLEXIBILITY: RULERS OR GRIDS Rules for using tape measures, a square grid or a hexagon grid are fully integrated into the rule text. Fleets usually consisting of 6 to 12 starships can do battle on a tabletop area as small as 36" x 36" or 90cm x 90cm. All game measurements are given in Tactical Units (TU) which is 2", 5cm, 1 square or 1 hex. |
Sgt Slag | 11 Jun 2015 1:07 p.m. PST |
I assume ships can be designed by players? I further assume the rules allow for any models to be used? The price is right, and I have a few sets of ship models I could pick up for peanuts, to get me started. Looking forward to hearing more about these rules. Cheers! |
Visceral Impact Studios | 11 Jun 2015 2:06 p.m. PST |
Yes and yes! :-) There's a sample fleet included with the game but also complete starship design rules and a blank fleet data sheet. And you can use any starships. Our collections include a wide variety of models from GZG, the first battlefleet gothic (when the ships looked more realistic) and several from the 80s that I'm not sure who made them. All range from about 1" to 4" long. We're especially proud of the design rules because they don't treat hulls like sausage casing into which you simply stuff systems. Hull performance varies with mass in areas such as speed, agility, fuel consumption, hard point number and type, etc. Weapons also are more or less valuable against a given target. For example, a Nova Torpedo hits harder than any other weapon but good luck trying to swat a frigate with it. The NT is best used against ponderous capital ships. Tachyon missles are speedy enough to pose a serious threat to nimble corvettes and destroyers but they can't penetrate the front shields of cruisers and capital ships. A decent number of particle cannons paired with area fire control systems can intercept missiles but that uses hard points and mass needed for offensive weapons. One of the interesting challenges in fleet design for the "formal" mission structure included with the game is balancing total force capability through fleet composition. The game's core mission structure assumes a meeting engagement and fight for control of a planet with up to two moons. Examples of things you need to consider when desiging your fleet of starships: - fuel requirements for the entire fleet…using tankers frees up warship mass but is more expensive and you need to protect the tankers - planetary assault troops…even if you don't intend to include assault troops in your force you need a plan to intercept enemy assault troops as landing them on the planet and its moons can determine victory or defeat - the rock paper scissors nature of combat…ships with sub-space field generators are a serious threat to capital ships but are expensive and very vulnerable to escorts armed with sub-space drone racks. - attack fighters can be dangerous in numbers but are vulnerable to particle cannons and easily killed by interceptors…interceptors are deadly to other fighters but not nearly as useful against starships - unlike a lot of games it's not as simple as "6 frigates equals 1 dreadnought"…it depends on how they're armed and their tactics…6 frigates fully armed with quantum torps and max speed/agility are a serious threat to a DN if they attack aggressively, hit the DN's flank and rear, and accept their losses. But against a phalanx of missiles they might not make it to their target. - A DN armed with the heaviest weapons, Fusion Cannons and Nova Torps, is the BEST sledge hammer to crack another DN…but armed that way a DN would have a tough time against a swarm of torpedo frigates. When designing a starship you can also ignore the mission play and just design ships for your own campaign. The rules include enough detail on interstellar travel that you could easily roll your own scenario based games. But if you do that we STRONGLY recommend that you design ships which meet the full autonmous fuel requirements (8 warps for warships and 24 light years for merchants). Otherwise the starship design balance breaks down as too much mass becomes available for other systems as fuel mass decreases. re: price we worked really hard to keep page count down and to be as toner-friendly as possible. It's space, so, the cover is dark…sorry! :-) But we included two versions of the Quick Reference Sheet…one dark for toner hogs like us and the other light for frugal gamers…the pages are color but VERY light on toner usage…we kept fluff and images to a minimum so you get as much hard infor and data as possible. |
BrianW | 11 Jun 2015 10:32 p.m. PST |
I picked up the rules, and am wondering if you are planning any campaign rules, or perhaps some more fluff regarding your universe? BWW |
Visceral Impact Studios | 12 Jun 2015 4:26 a.m. PST |
Definitely! We have fleet books for each of the major powers, the rim worlds, and the Dead Zone in the pipeline. The game was also designed explictly for campaigns which is how the interstellar travel rules were developed to such detail with distances between habitable systems, travel times, warp exclusion zones, fuel consumption, and even transport eddiciency. We also have a fluff book for the setting in preparation which will be available as "open source" sort of like the Star Wars background (ie fans will be encouraged to write fluff and materialof their own whether for our rule systems or other rule systems…they just can't charge money for it and their creations are also considered available to the community)? And we epic scale, tactical and skirmish ground combat rules in the works. |
Grignotage | 12 Jun 2015 8:25 a.m. PST |
Good looking stuff. I like the attention to campaigns. Well done! |
emckinney | 12 Jun 2015 10:18 a.m. PST |
Needs more proofreading. There were two obvious errors on the Starships page of the sample. I'm sure that the horrible aqua text color prints well, but many folks (like me) will only use this as a PDF. It's unreadable and wholly ugly. The orange needs to be rethought as well. Complete starship design rules treat starship hulls as more than "stuffed sausages". Budding space navy architects will need to carefully analyze the mobility, defensive, offensive, and logistical (yes, there are re-fueling rules!) advantages and disadvantges of various hull classes. Assuming that I've selected a given tonnage (say, 140 tons), what choices do I make that aren't "stuffing the sausage"? Obviously, if I put in more engines I go faster, but that's the case with almost all design systems, isn't it? Am I misunderstanding what you mean by "stuffed sausages"? the rock paper scissors nature of combat…ships with sub-space field generators are a serious threat to capital ships but are expensive and very vulnerable to escorts armed with sub-space drone racks. Does RPS drive a feet to a balanced approach, or is a balanced approach always the worst option? Many identify Full Thrust's central ship/fleet design probably as the Big Gun > Anti-Fighter > Soap Bubble Carrier > Big Gun RPS … but it's the (Big Gun OR Anti-Fighter OR Soap Bubble Carrier) >> Balanced Fleet problem that forces fleet designs into the RPS, and that tends to per-determine the outcome of a lot of battles. Note to the FT faithful: Please do not start a FT religious battle here. I am only using this as a starting point for an explanation of how Make It So handles this, regardless of whether or not this is an accurate description of how FT fleet balance actually works. |
BrianW | 12 Jun 2015 10:25 a.m. PST |
VIS, That's good to know. I keep thinking about buying starships, and your rules had me looking at them online (again!) last night. A question about the ship design process. Is the hull tonnage have anything to do with what can be put on board? For example, can a 100 ton hull only carry 100 tons inside it, or is that tonnage number only an indication of the empty hull's cost? It may be explained somewhere, but I'm still reading from the PDF. BWW |
Visceral Impact Studios | 12 Jun 2015 10:51 a.m. PST |
Hey Brian! The tonnage is also the limit of gear that can be installed. For example, a class 1B hull ranges from 109 to 148 tons. So it can include anywhere from 109 to 148 tons of gear. The mass of some systems (e.g. various warp drive systems) are determined by the starship class. So installing a speed 10 warp drive in a 1B hull takes up 12 tons of the available tonnage whether 109 or 148 or anything in between. Other systems (e.g. weapons) are fixed mass regardless of the hull. When starting to design a starship a good method is to start with the largest tonnage for a given class (e.g. 148 tons for a class 1B) and then subtract mass for warp drive speed, agilty, fuel, hull integrity, etc. If, after selecting all your desired system, you have mass left over you can just ignore for design purposes which reduces the cost of the starship or find ways to add more stuff such as marines or engineer teams. Hope that helps. It's explained (implied?) at the very start of the starship design section in which the rules state that the first step is to select a hull size. We probably could have been more explicit. We'll put out a free starship design example to help illustrate the entire process. Don't forget that in addition to the costs of the intenal systems the empty hull has a cost too. It's 1MCR per ton for warships and 0.5MCR for merchants. |
Visceral Impact Studios | 12 Jun 2015 11:26 a.m. PST |
Hello emckinney! Yeah, we struggled with the color choice, so your point is well taken and we'll definitely address it as that's excellent feedback. We tested the colors on androids, iphones, a windows phone, a few different PCs, and two different printers. The result was what we think (thought!) is a happy medium but some of the colors might be lighter on some devices than others. We'll take your advice and darken them up a bit and post a new file in the next day or two. THANK YOU!!! Re: the stuffed sausage comment I guess I'm dating myself a bit since I started playing starship games waaay back in 1979/1980 and beyond. I won't comment specifically on other designs since I don't think that's appropriate. But I can state quite emphatically that while building our starship design system we definitely ran into the "stuffed sausage" issue! The problem is that if certain starship attributes use a fixed percentage of mass per "performance unit" then you can get anomalies in starship design. The most obvious example is drive systems but even shields can cause similar problems. For example, our warp drive speed value options are 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12. This is the number of move points available to a starship for sub-light speed maneuvers and the distance a starship can "warp" in light years. Agility values are 1-4 and determine maneuverability and how well a ship evades enemy fire. At first we just used a fixed percentage relationship. But that meant a huge dreadnought could be as fast and as maneuverable as a tiny frigate and still have a MASSIVE advantage in available mass for various systems. That didn't make sense to us so we quickly ditched that approach. We then figured out a very clever algorithm that produced a sliding scale of mass per speed or agility value. Larger hulls trying to use higher speeds and more agility faced logarithmic increases in drive mass and cost. But that put an additional burden on the player to calculate the value. Finally, we broke our hull masses into 9 classes (IA through IIIC) and built tables which provide the mass and cost needed for a given performance capability. So the player can now just cross reference the hull with a desired value and see immediately how the mass and cost. Downside: less flexibility in terms of the relationship between system mass/cost and hull size. Upside: super fast and easy to use and easy to see "break points" in designs. Another upside was that we could tweak certain values to create incentives for hull choice. Thus cruisers got a discount in drive mass and fuel requirements that was much easier to capture (and more obvious) in a table than a calculation. There are other attributes such as hull integrity, shield strength, and weapon hard point number/weight that are driven by hull mass (e.g. class I starships only have light and light-medium hard points which mean they can't stuff a 36 ton fusion cannon into the hull even if the tonnage is available.) I should also note that our 9 class divisions correspond to the most popular starship model sizes available today. For example, IA is roughly a scout or corvette for most manufacturers, IIA is a light cruiser, IIIB is a battleship, etc. Using wet navy terms and those used by many manufacturers the translation is: IA scout/corvette IB frigate IC destroyer IIA light cruiser IIB escort cruiser IIC heavy cruiser IIIA battlecruiser IIIB battleship/light carrier IIIC dreadnought/heavy carrier If you look closely you'll notice some interesting break points in the design system that is driven by the "no stuffed sausage" approach and which would have been more difficult with an algorithm. For example, class IIIA starships can be as fast as class II but lack their maneuverability. They can mount the heavy weapons of a class III but their shield grid is limited to those found on class II starships. In other words, they're what has been thought of as a classic battlecruiser: fast enough to keep up with cruisers with superior firepower but lacking the defenses needed to stand against battleships and dreadnoughts. Light cruisers are the other "transitional hull" category linking escorts to cruisers. We justify all this based on Handwavium Physics: certain technologies face certain limits as they're scaled (happens in the real world so it works for us). We decided to use class number/letter designations since any given design might be something that doesn't have a traditional "wet navy" reference point. MY ANIME ASSAULT CARRIER For example, I designed an Assault Carrier that anime fans might be familiar with. It's a capital ship armed with lots of assault troops, short range/defensive weapons, and some fighters. It has terrible maneuverability but average speed for a capital ship. My Assault Carrier's mission is to surge forward towards a target planet or moon and disgorge its load of assault troops while surviving the likely enemy onslaught to stop it. It's sort of like a siege tower in spaaaace! It's pretty much useless against other starships but can usually lock up one moon or the planet in any battle. One time it got hammered by my son's fighter swarm during the approach and landed only half its assault troops due to a critical hit. But it was still just enough to take the moon's victory points at a 2:1 advantage. I should have used interceptors but went with attack fighters for use against torpedo-happy escorts. |
Visceral Impact Studios | 12 Jun 2015 11:44 a.m. PST |
forgot to mention…regarding rock-paper-scissors (RPS) it probably doesn't translate well to the Full Thrust model in light of our victory condition system which involves the control of warp exclusion zones and planetary assault. And since weapon loadout and capability is very different from FT that doesn't translate either. For example: you could arm a frigate as an escort killer solely with tachyon missiles and pulse cannons. It's going to terrorize anything from corvette to destroyer. But it's useless against a fresh capital ship. But arm frigate with 3x quantum torps, max speed and max agility and send it with a few copies of itself on a flanking maneuver against a dreadnought and the dreadnought is probably dead…unless the torpedo frigate flotilla runs into a flotilla of frigate hunter-killers or the dreadnought is designed to tackle escorts well by being armed with its own pulse cannons and tachyon missiles and maybe attack squadrons…but then the dreadnought isn't as effective vs other capital ships…these were designed to be tough choices and allow for different styles of play. So in "Make It So" the RPS game isn't limited to hull size. It also happens in weapon loadout within a given class (e.g. a capital ship can be configured to kill capital ships or be a frigate swarm's burial detail or a balanced design.) This also means that balance can occur at fleet or ship level. You can build a fleet of generalists/jack of all trades with diverse weapon loadouts. Or you can build a fleet of specialists that need to support one another. This goes to the campaign game potential. Just as in the real world, you can have ships designed for long range independent duty (balanced weapon and defenses with plenty of fuel) or something designed for "combined arms fleet ops" (specialists with less fuel since they rely on tankers). That also encourages gamers to develop colorful fluff for their designs. A "self defense force" will look and fight differently from an aggressive invasion force. Another issue goes beyond RPS. My son who favors CQB in land games built a fleet designed to fight mostly at close range run around trying to board enemy ships! My other son prefers longer range tactics with fighters and missiles. Both are viable and represent different tactics beyond RPS relationships. And I enjoy combined arms fleets with lots of different stuff and really enjoy planetary assaults (thus my assault carrier). Hope that helps! |
emckinney | 12 Jun 2015 4:34 p.m. PST |
Thanks, that makes a lot of sense. I was going to say that there were exploitable "cellophane" points on the size spectrum, like 148 tons, where one ship could be infinitesimally smaller than another, but be capable of much higher performance because it's in a different size class. Looking at your reply, I see that the larger ship would be able to mount qualitatively better weapons, not just slightly quantitatively more. Done correctly, that makes the cellophane irrelevant (or not very relevant). Hopefully, enough people will buy your game that someone will break the design system! :) |
Visceral Impact Studios | 12 Jun 2015 5:22 p.m. PST |
Very insightful!!! That's why we recommend starting at the max tonnage for a given class class which would be most efficient with respect to speed, agility, etc. By desiging up to the break points you get the most bang for your buck in many cases. OTOH the next higher class often provides defensive advantages (eg shields get better for that 1 extra ton). I agree that it will be fun to see how players try to break the system. It becomes sort of Darwinian in that respect. But as we release new mission structures and perhaps tweaks to the design rules solutions won't be easy (we hope!). Ideally the system will prove friendly to a variety of approaches. To ensure that we've done lots of tests (eg frigate swarms vs dreadnought, balanced vs specialists, etc.) That's also why the core game's mission structure isn't just "kill enemy ships". In the core rules you can win without killing a single enemy ship! But there's nothing like a wide variety of gamers pounding on a system. Rest assured we will listen closely to the community's feedback over time and make changes as needed. We can't promise to make every suggested change but when they're backed by a well reasoned position like yours you have our attention!!! ☺ |
boy wundyr x | 13 Jun 2015 1:15 p.m. PST |
Picked this up for my weekend reading, really like the fluff that's there, can really see some good small skirmish scenarios based on what we know so far. Still reading over the rules, not sure if I'd apply them to any established setting or use them for something new (like their own background). Some bits seem like they'd work well for Traveller, which is sort of my one outstanding setting that I need space rules for, though I already have one contender. Chris |
Visceral Impact Studios | 14 Jun 2015 5:07 a.m. PST |
The first scenario book will be focused on the trade routes between the New American Confederation/Coreward Rimworlds and the British Dominion/Federation of European Systems. The routes must cross the Great Rift which presents its own perils and many routes skirt the Dead Zone and thus face even more horrific threats from its denizens. The Great Rift is lower not only in over all stellar density but also has fewer inhabitable planets. Because of this the overall population density is lower, it's not as well explored as other areas, and this provides pirates and privateers opportunities to prowl well traveled trade routes and then escape to their well hidden bases. There's little that civilized nations can do except patrol the routes and convoy when possible. But many merchants can't afford to wait for convoy protection and some (smugglers) would rather avoid government contact themselves. So actions in this region tend to be between pirates/privateers and convoys, armed merchants, smugglers, and government patrols (and sometimes a starship might operate as all of the above!) Fleet actions occur when a major power seeks to punish excessive privateer activity by another power and this usually requires the capture of a refueling station. Otherwise the action is dominated by frigate and cruiser actions against similarly-sized pirates and smugglers. |
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