StarFleet Battles

[john]

Campaign Updates

[cheethorne]

What happened to all of our threads and stuff? Why were they moved into the Archives?

Anyway. for an update, John and I finished one of our battles and we have only one left, which we will hopefully be able to complete in one week.

The rest of the big DN fleet vs. BCH fleet was a victory for Kevin, resulting in the destruction of a C7 (BCH), a D7D and a D6D, for a total of 9 victory points (5 for the major victory, 2 for the BCH, and 1 for each heavy cruiser). John's remaining D7D escaped the fight and was attacked by another of my fleets, but John was able to run away without taking significant damage, giving me another 2 victory points (2 for a minor victory).

[cheethorne]

Website Update:
homepage.mac.com/cheethorne/sfb/

General Updates:
* Added Frax Master Ship Chart.
* Updated 2.4 - Added the ISC and Jindarians to the ship construction lists.
* Updated Appendix D - Added the ISC and the Hydrans to the construction lists.
* Added missing information for Jason.
* Added victory point information for battles on Turn 17.

Notes:
Added some details for a few races, nothing major. Added the information for Jason from when he had to leave early and I added the victory points from the battles John and I fought.


Player Updates:
* Added missing planetary system information for all planets.
* Added base information to each player's page.

Notes:
I finally got around to updating all of the moon / asteroid belt information for the planets that we have found so far, which I have been meaning to do for a while now. Also, I've added information about all of the bases that everyone has, most of which can't move. This should help people keep things in mind.


Campaign Rules - v10.1.5:
* Updated 3.3.6 - Local defense and police ships can be used on protect mission to defend the resource / base that generated them and they can be used to defend merchant marine ships.
* Updated 4.2 - An individual CU is allowed to violate the Fleet Limits and Command Rating limits but only with attrition units.
* Updated 4.8 - Clarified how attrition units that carry other attrition units operate and fighters can no longer use Sortie Movement into, out of, or through nebula hexes unless carried by other units.
* Updated 6.4.3 - The accessory rules now specifically state where Sortie groups from support missions and different hexes draw their accessories from and how drones for bombardment missions are paid for.

Notes:
Since we made a bunch of new rules regarding police ships and local defense ships, we forgot to add in their ability to perform protect missions. Certain combinations like your primary with a star base protected by local defense level II and police level II would be too large to fit into a single group without allowing for protect missions. I made the change for CU's exceeding the command limit with attrition units because without this certain ships could never move (or ever be valid CU's), like CVAs, CVDs, and certain other large carriers. Also, I ran into some poorly worded rules about how accessories work when using the non-standard missions (ie. support and bombardment).

As before, I'll bring a copy of these rule changes for everyone to have and enjoy.

Next Week: We have turn 18.

[john]

Last week Kevin and I moved forces against each other.
Chris moved CUs down into (pending any blocking from Jason) Jason's space.
Jason launched a 1 turn raid.
I launched 2 four turn raids.
Andrew remains unresolved.

[cheethorne]

SFB Campaign Update:

John and I sorted out our battles for the next while. We have about three battles to resolve in total. One in hex 0216 (a nebula), and two in 1316 (the small planet where we fought last turn).

We started nebula fight last night and we got most of the way through it in 1.5 turns. We'll be able to finish it up next week and hopefully set up for the next fight. The fight started with the following forces:
Kevin: BCV (BCH carrier), CWS (scout), HDW (escort), DWA (escort), DND (destroyer), 6x INT
John: D5 (war cruiser), F5C (destroyer leader), 2x F5D (drone destroyers)

The next fight will be a fairly large fight between our fleets in 1316. We have announced the following forces:
Kevin: CA, HCW, CW, 2x DND (destroyers)
John: 2x D (heavy cruisers), D5 (war cruiser), F5 (destroyer)

Right now, we don't know what variants or what not we have in the opponent's fleets. Whatever survives of my above fleet will continue on against a fleet consisting of 2x F5 (destroyers, and an E4 (frigate).

[cheethorne]

SFB Campaign Update:
Last night we played the fight mentioned above and after one turn of fighting John ran away. The final fight of turn 18 that we know of had the my same fleet fight against another small fleet of John's (two destroyers and a frigate). John's fleet ran away.

For the moment John, Chris and I have decided to suspend the campaign. Jason has not shown up for weeks even though he was being attacked by Chris and Andrew has not checked in for quite a while. We are concerned of a lack of interest in the current campaign.

The current victory point standings, as of Turn 18 (which I will try to put on the website today) is as follows:
Andrew: 125
Chris: 113
Jason: 60
John: 96
Kevin: 157 (including 15VP from turn 18)

With the lack of interest from a majority of the players (John is not very interested in fighting more lop-sided battles against me), we are willing to call the campaign and look at what to do for campaign 11.

[cheethorne]

Campaign 11:
I think we have come to a sort of cross-roads with our campaigns. Our rules have very much improved and the current version of the rules that I am working towards (v11) does not have huge changes from what we played with in Campaign 10. Those rules, by and large, worked pretty well for what the game was trying to be. However, I think we have come to a place where what we are trying to do simply may be too difficult to reach.

We are trying to create a game that is both interesting and engrossing at the strategic level and the tactical level (with both being able to affect the other, so my successes in battle has an affect in the strategic world and my successes in the strategic world gives me benefits in battle). The problem we believe we have identified is that most players do not like fighting battles they know they'll lose, but where the strength of the respective fleets is such that damage or losses would be inflicted on the victor. For example, that last fight between John and I saw my fleet with around 900 BPV fight against John's fleet of around 650 BPV. There was no chance that I was going to lose that fight, but it is extremely possible that I would lose a ship and/or a number of fighters in the process of winning.

In these situations, which happen with varying degrees of regularity (nearly all of my fights against John were of this nature while none of the fights between Jason and Chris could be described this way), a hand waving arbitration leaves few people very happy (I generally feel I'd do better than most arbitration would dictate). One proposed idea to deal with these situations is to use Fast Combat Resolution for these fights (and really lopsided fights) and only put the ones on the board that are more closely matched (where no side is larger than 30% of BPV than the other side).

Another problem that can be seen in our campaigns is where players get distracted with the strategic elements vs. battles. Sometimes players seem to feel that the battles get in the way of exploration and empire building and other times players delay attacking each other for valid strategic reasons, but that leaves them doing nothing for months at a time while other players engage in war (such as with Andrew in Campaign 10 while John and I started a war with each other).

To address this last problem, I think we should remove the expansion / exploration aspects of our campaign rules and force players to attack each other every turn. We can maintain rules for projects, base building, fleet construction, even espionage, but with players being forced to attack each other, everyone has battles to do every turn against their neighbors, which is what we want in a war game.

[john]

I actually was inspired last night and came up with what I think will be a workable system for this. It required few new rules. I'll fine tune it over the week and present something next Tuesday.

Also, heard from Andrew today, he's going to be back this coming week or the following at the latest.

[cheethorne]

Just to be clear here, but is Campaign 10 over or not?

[john]

who knows, I'm guessing, but maybe we can decide this coming week. Especially if everyone is present...

[cheethorne]

I won't be able to make it tonight. My wife has parent-teacher meetings to go to tonight.

[john]

k, thanks for the heads up.

[john]

On vacation, not going to be at the store tomorrow for SFB.

[cheethorne]

Excited to play tomorrow.

Pick-up game, maybe duels, maybe free-for-all. How about command cruisers with around 170 BPV?

[john]

Cool, I'm up for duels. Also Jason and his buddy are going to be there. I guess they both want to play, but they want to keep the map, so I guess we are going to have to talk about the next campaign too.