B5 Random Force Generation alpha ruleset

[BraveSirRobin]

Democratus's lament for ship rarities in his Ships of the Narn Regime thread is the kernel of inspiration for this idea, as is a love of the Battletech random forces tables.

This document is a alpha/proof of concept for a random force generation tool for Babylon 5: ACTA. The purpose of this tool is to provide a way to randomly generate fleet lists, with an eye towards campaign play. However, there is no reason why the bulk of this ruleset would not be applicable to one-off games as well. The purpose behind this ruleset is multifold. The biggest of these is to challenge the player by preventing him from possessing a fully optimized force. Second, it allows for the chance for less/hardly-ever fielded ships to see play. Third, it aims to make it more difficult to “buy down,” ensuring that hopefully some of the larger ships will see play. Fourth, there is an attempt made to make the probability of rolling a particular ship reflect the rarity of that particular ship in the fiction.

Please give it a read, and see what you guys think of the ideas in it. I'd really like to work on this further if it has merit. And if it does have merit, rest assured I'll be looking for suggestions to improve upon it.

http://www.mediafire.com/?fy426lzg89vgfva

 

[AdrianH]

First problem: what do Shadows do if the random FAP breakdown roll calls for Skirmish level ships?

Second problem: what do you do if the random ship table calls for a ship that you do not have? Either because you do not own the model at all, or because you're away from home and did not bring that model.

 

[H]

just out of interest, do you scour every single post looking for some way to complain/argue?
come on, give him some credit, he's trying!

 

[BraveSirRobin]

Nah, it's okay. That's the sort of stuff I'm looking for. I know there's places where the system is going to break down, or otherwise be very clunky. ISA and Psi-Corps with their Allies rules may be a bit odd, and races like the Shadows/Vorlons that more or less have one ship for each priority level would either have to have those tactical advantages on the table too, or just not use a random table.

As to the not having minis question, I was thinking most folks that were still playing would have access to the counters in one form or another, or at least to some ships from something else they could use as proxies.

Essentially, I'm just trying to provide another variation on the game for those that might want to spice things up. I'm intend for it to be something you could take all of, or just portions of, and use them as they suit you.

So again, if the idea has any sort of merit, say so. And if not, say so too. Because I'd much rather be painting things than working on something nobody really wants.

 

[Burger]

Although I can see the reasoning I don't like the idea of random ships. Partly because of the problems Adrian pointed out, but mostly because I like to choose ships based on the scenario and strategy I want to use. For example what if you have a blockade run, and you get 3 Rohrics?

Ship selection is a part of the strategy of the game IMO, just as much as selecting which strategic point to attack, where to deploy your ships, and which order to move/fire them in. The more you remove choice, the less strategy and skill becomes important, and the more it's just 50/50 luck who wins and loses.

For campaign play I might be a bit more tempted to use random ships, but only for the actual campaign fleet - as long as I can still choose which of my ships to use for each battle.

 

[BraveSirRobin]

@Burger

My fault for not making it clear, but I always intended for the campaign roster to be randomly selected, but the fleet for each battle in the campaign is picked as normal.

 

[Democratus]

Indeed. Campaign play is where this kind of thing really shines. Having to make due with whatever forces are sent by high command is the mark of a skilled commander.

Our last campaign was a case in point. The Centauri fleet consisted of exactly six types of ships (Primus, Sulust, Balvarin, Maximus, Vorchan, and Kutai). The EA: Early fleet consisted nearly entirely of five hulls (Hyperion, Avenger, Olympus Gunship, Sagittarius, Tethys Laser). And my Dilgar fleet never fielded a single base hull Jashakar or Ochlavita because the variants were better.

Every single battle was entirely predictable because we always showed up with what we felt were the best ships possible.

This is probably a good habbit for tournanment play, but it makes for boring campaigns after the 17th time you have faced a fleet with 4 Maximi.

A commander in campaign play should still be able to get specific ships he wants, but he has to pull some political strings to do it - making it more expensive. This means that when economics begin to get tight you start taking whatever you can get cheaply and do your best.

Not for everyone, but I think it would make for great storytelling.

BraveSirRobin, there is one note I'd like to give at this time. I don't think there is a need to use so many dice for each table. Bab 5 tends to use either 1d6 or 2d6 for it's rolls. And I think you can express the majority of your larger tables with just 2d6. It's a small thing, but I'm a fan of being consistent with the parent system.

In particular, this matters at the far end of the table primary table. Having to roll a 4 or 24 on 4D6 is extremely remote (1 in 648).

So, for example, the EA:EY chart at Raid could be 2D6 with the following results. They are slightly different but more or less close to the spread of results in your rolls.

2: Hyperion Command
3: Hyperion Pulse
4: Hyperion Missile
5: Avenger
6: Hyperion
7: Hyperion
8: Nova
9: Nova
10: Hyperion Missile
11: Hyperion Pulse
12: Explorer

Again, I really like your ideas. Just thought sharing some thoughts.

 

[BraveSirRobin]

Ship tables can be made to work with 2d6, as can the skirmish, raid, and battle breakdowns. That war level breakdown won't fit on a single 2d6 table however, as it has 16 possible results. I guess I could make it into two tables, but I'd like this to be as streamlined as most things in this game are. That was one of the principal reasons for 4d6 for the breakdowns in the first version. I'll have to think on that one. :?

 

[locarno24]

Ship tables can be made to work with 2d6, as can the skirmish, raid, and battle breakdowns. That war level breakdown won't fit on a single 2d6 table however, as it has 16 possible results. I guess I could make it into two tables, but I'd like this to be as streamlined as most things in this game are. That was one of the principal reasons for 4d6 for the breakdowns in the first version. I'll have to think on that one.

d66?

 

[AdrianH]

I quite like the idea of random fleets. They're probably more suited to basic games without scenarios, or those scenarios which are variants on the theme of "two fleets meet up and shoot at each other", e.g. Call To Arms, Annihilation and maybe Space Superiority. (Mind you, applying the system to Blockade might solve the problem of every blockade runner either being off the board before the blockader can shoot, or being something nearly unstoppable like a T'Loth. )

Different breakdown tables for different fleets might be an idea. Skew Shadow and Vorlon fleets towards larger ships (and eliminate Skirmish from Shadow fleets ); skew Drazi fleets towards smaller ships. ISA should be less likely to take Skirmish as one of their Skirmish ships is mediocre and the other is Unique.

For campaigns I'd prefer if the initial fleet was the player's choice but maybe use random allocations for reinforcements. If Central Command thinks it's worth fighting a campaign then it would be sure to send the best fleet to start with, but further ships would be whatever is available at the time depending on what other battles Central Command is facing elsewhere. However, the whole system is optional and the players in the campaign can agree how it will be used before starting to play.

Adding to the problem of which models people have, another factor is in-service dates. These are rarely observed in single games but more significant in campaigns. The randomly selected ship may not be available in the year of the campaign. One possible solution might be to move to the nearest ship in the table which is available, both physically and in service.

Regarding the number of dice used in order to get that many possible results, I'd suggest eliminating some of the results. Some degree of randomness in breakdown is fine, but if I rolled "8 Patrol" for a War point, I'd be really unhappy to the extent that it would probably ruin the game. In fact, if my opponent rolled "8 Patrol", it would probably ruin the game for me as well. Results which force you to take nothing larger than 2 PL's below should be very rare; results which force you to take nothing larger than 3 PL's below should be eliminated.

 

[locarno24]

I remember having something very similar to generate forces for Battleforce*.

Certainly the reinforcements in a campaign being random is a nice trick, and 'send whatever you have' is a very characterful plea for reinforcements.

Alternatively you could allow someone to buy a roll for 75% of the price; meaning they can still shell out the full cost to garuantee deployment of a Takata-class mine cruiser if they absolutely, positively gotta kill every fighter in low orbit** (or carrier/scout/assault ship/whatever).

Regarding the number of dice used in order to get that many possible results, I'd suggest eliminating some of the results. Some degree of randomness in breakdown is fine, but if I rolled "8 Patrol" for a War point, I'd be really unhappy to the extent that it would probably ruin the game. In fact, if my opponent rolled "8 Patrol", it would probably ruin the game for me as well. Results which force you to take nothing larger than 2 PL's below should be very rare; results which force you to take nothing larger than 3 PL's below should be eliminated.

I don't mind so much*** - but I agree that they should certainly be rare - Unless someone rolled very, very bizzare dice results I'd expect something like two thirds or more of the fleet's value to be spent on ships within one priority level either way of the priority level of the game.



* Essentially a large-scale version of Battletech
** Accept no substitute...
*** But then we play with the P&P redundancy rule as standard and I rarely use boresight-armed ships

 

[AdrianH]

Here's another suggestion for random breakdown:

For each FAP, roll 2D:
2-5: Break Down
6-8: No Change
9-12: Buy Up

Break down: by default this will be 2 FAP at 1 level down. The player has the choice to break directly to 3 FAP at 2 levels down, 5 FAP at 3 levels down, 8 FAP at 4 levels down or 12 FAP at 5 levels down. (If Shadows roll "Break Down" from Raid level, it must break directly down to 3 Patrol because they have no Skirmish ships.)

Roll again for one of the FAP's. If the result is Break Down, repeat the procedure. If it is Buy Up, it cancels the Break Down which got to this FAP.

Buy Up: Use another FAP which has not already been rolled for to add to this one and buy a FAP at one level higher. Roll again. If the result is Break Down, it cancels out the Buy Up; this FAP becomes No Change, and you get back the one which would have been used to buy up. If the result is Buy Up again, use as many FAP's which have not already been rolled for to pay for an even higher level FAP. Disregard "Buy Up" if there are not enough FAP's left to pay for the buy up.

For example, 5 points Raid:

Point 1: rolls 5, "Break Down", becomes 2 Skirmish. Roll again for one of them; it rolls 9, "Buy Up", which cancels the original "Break Down", so point 1 stays at Raid.

Point 2: rolls 4, "Break Down", becomes 2 Skirmish. Roll again for one of them; it rolls 7, "No Change", so point 2 becomes 2 Skirmish.

Point 3: rolls 5, "Break Down", becomes 2 Skirmish. Roll again for one of them; it rolls 3, "Break Down", and becomes 2 Patrol. Roll again for one of them; it rolls 10, "Buy Up", which cancels out the "Break Down" that led to Patrol level. Point 3 becomes 2 Skirmish.

Point 4: rolls 9, "Buy Up". Point 4 combines with point 5 to become 1 Battle. Roll again, it rolls 10, "Buy Up", but there aren't enough FAP's left to go up again. Points 4 and 5 become 1 War.

You can change the scores needed to get "Break Down" or "Buy Up" if you want to tweak the system to have more or less variation from the original PL. Shadows and Vorlons can add +1 to the original roll because they prefer bigger ships, Drazi can add -1 to the original roll because they prefer smaller ships, but the modifiers don't apply to secondary rolls. Another option is to allow the player to choose a +1 or -1 modifier before a roll is made.

 

[BraveSirRobin]

I'm really liking that idea. I had been working on simplified 2d6 breakdown tables, but I was still looking at having three (an average one suited for most races, a bottom-heavy one for races like Drazi, and a top-heavy one for races like the ISA).

This would mean only one table, and achieve more or less the same thing. The racial modifiers are in keeping with an ACTA style of doing things, and it makes for just one little table with all the racial modifiers. Nice.

That still leaves ship tables for each race, but those are pretty easy to do, comparatively, because nobody has more than eight choices in a given priority level.

When I get the chance, I'll try to put out a revision either late this week, or early next week incorporating everyone's suggestions. As it is, I'm kind of swamped, and can't work on it in the way I'd like to at the moment. Thank you all for your help and suggestions so far. You can bet I'll be asking for a second round .

 

[BraveSirRobin]

I've posted the first revision based on input people have made thus far. Now comes with three flavors of EA ship tables for people to play around with.
Obviously, there are still some things missing, like modifiers for some of the races, and entire ship tables for most of the races. But what do you all think of this version, as compared to the last. Is it approaching something you might consider using now?

Linky: http://www.mediafire.com/?7c9az3nh5is830a

 

[Greg Smith]

It would definitely be fun to try.

 

[AdrianH]

I've posted the first revision based on input people have made thus far. Now comes with three flavors of EA ship tables for people to play around with.
Obviously, there are still some things missing, like modifiers for some of the races, and entire ship tables for most of the races.

And the bit in the section "The Basics", specifically "Break Down", which should say that the player can choose to buy directly down to 3 FAP at 2 levels down, 5 FAP at 3 levels down etc.

Instead of re-rolling when an invalid ship is rolled (either due to ISD or because the player doesn't have it), perhaps take the next ship toward the centre of the table. For example, if I'm playing EA 3rd Age, get a Raid point and roll 4 = Avenger, I don't have a model of an Avenger so it goes to 5 = Hyperion instead. Or, if I roll 11 = Tantalus, I don't have that so it goes to 10 = Avenger but I don't have that either, so go to 9 = Nova.

I definitely intend to try the system out some time!