5th frontier war board game revival?

[collins355]

Could go old school, and have a Referee - but we would have to be tricksy and find ways to keep them constantly engaged in the game...

Or just have an activation roll mechanic, like many wargames of today have to reduce the power of the all-seeing player-god. i.e. a good quality fleet with a good admiral might need to roll 4+ on a D10 to activate and jump whereas a poor quality fleet with a poor admiral might need 6+. Or whatever you deem appropriate target numbers.

 

[Sigtrygg]

The problem is what the fleet admiral is aware of, what the sector admiral is aware of, and how orders move between the two.

proposal 1 - the game focuses of the fleet admirals - they are given initial orders and act on them. On subsequent turns the fleet admiral is aware of what is happening at a range of jump 6 (an overlay may help with this). The fleet admiral must remain within the area dictated by the initial orders.
After a certain number of game turns the sector admiral may send out new orders to fleet admirals which take a cetain number of turns to arrive based on distance from sector HQ. (The warrant Norris happened upon allowed him to take over as sector admiral and thus move the sector admiralty closer to the action)

 

[Anstett]

Rough new thought.

Card based combat.

Player A fills out/selects cards for actions. Places them face down in the order of operations. Player B does the same.

Then based on bit of DM and a roll one player (Player B has a better tactician and wins) gets to pick up the card for the actions of player A, in the order of operations. Once the order is at a correct change over then the Player A picks up the action card from player B. A player can always pick up their own card to move it but only on the correct order of operations.

All face down so the other player does not know until revealed.
Player A lays down Tigress card in the Jewel spot, lays down 1 scout card each at three different systems (Narval, Quar, and Mongo).
Player B lays down three Corsair cards at Ninjar, and lays down two blank cards at Clan.

Player B during movement moves two of the Corsairs to Plaven, one to Quar, one blank card to Esalin.
Player A does not have any real knowledge to react to yet, just seeing rumors of movements.

Start reveal for the 1 week point with systems that have 'conflict' - Player B reveals the Corsair at Quar, Player A reveals their Scout at Quar. Resolution of the action.

Conclude resolution move to next week for movement, reveal, resolution.

Could have cards for all sides, tramp freighters leaving a system bringing news, etc.

Very fuzzy rough idea but it gives a chance to have game play hidden but not a requirement for a referee.

 

[Geir]

...starting to sound like a Play By Mail game... though that requires a referee of some sort. Would work better as a computer game with the program as the referee - that would even work as a solo game with against an AI opponent (as long as neither the opponent model or the referee model stars hallucinating random fleets appearing - "Sorry, an Ancients scout ship ate your battle squadron at Villis" or "that Vargr corsair fleet had puppies and turned the Aramis Trace into their chew toy")

 

[collins355]

Yeah, I thought the complaint was that the classic 5FW mechanic of plotting your orders in advance was "too much work" for modern gamers. I'm not sure adding a whole bunch more book-keeping addresses that issue.
I accept that the problem of the player (sector admiral) knowing what is happening across the whole board remains. This problem arises in nearly every board or miniatures game. The solution is to make it a computer game with hidden movement. Of course, usually in these computer games the AI "cheats" in order to provide you with a good opponent. So I'm not sure even that is an answer.

 

[Brianw]

The trick, I think, is finding a partner who knows more about boardgames than we do (not really our jam). As I say, discussions are being had - our objectives are that the game is modernised (in gameplay as well as components) while retaining its core, and that it is marketed properly (so it does not just drop off the face of the Earth - Traveller deserves better than that).



A bit unfair

I would reach out to Compass Games. They seem much more amenable to “outlying” ideas and don’t have the stupid ‘500 pre-orders before production’ thing that GMT has.

 

[Condottiere]

It would be Diplomacy.

Latency is a feature.

The closer the headquarters is to the action, the less there is.

I'd say long term preparedness, and careful placement of resources being key.

 

[enpeze2]

I would reach out to Compass Games. They seem much more amenable to “outlying” ideas and don’t have the stupid ‘500 pre-orders before production’ thing that GMT has.

yep. compass games is the correct way but its only a publisher. You have to get a game designer first. There are great cosim designers out there who know how to get combat and movement systems for scifi games right. If these are interested in a traveller game, I dont know.

The hottest tip for Mongoose is to ask Frank Chadwick, one of the original designers. Its still his baby, so maybe he can update the game to the current age. He does other updates of his old 80ties designs (eg third world war series for compass games and ETO for gmt) too.

 

[MarkAlexander]

What about something similar to the card deck in Memoir 44? The board is divided into left flank, centre and right flank. You can only activate your units in a given area if you have the right card, (drawn randomly). I recall several games when my mighty panzer units were completely useless because I had the wrong cards. Yes, you can still see the whole battlefield, but you can't issue orders to units if you don't have the cards to do so.

 

[enpeze2]

What about something similar to the card deck in Memoir 44? The board is divided into left flank, centre and right flank. You can only activate your units in a given area if you have the right card, (drawn randomly). I recall several games when my mighty panzer units were completely useless because I had the wrong cards. Yes, you can still see the whole battlefield, but you can't issue orders to units if you don't have the cards to do so.

There is already such a space combat game, Red Alert, from grandmaster Richard Borg produced by PSC in Britain. Not a bad game but somewhat strange in my opinion and only a tactical scope, like the other C&C games, not a strategic one like which would be need for the 5th frontier war.