BIG Games

[MongooseMatt]

Just wanted to float an idea out there, something that we were looking at during the Babylon 5 days.

CTA:SF allows you to play big fleet actions in a reasonable time scale. What about BIG fleet actions though? 20, 30, 50 ships per side? Would there be any interest?

In a nutshell, we would look to do two things;

1. Make squadrons actual single units rather than individual ships that fly and shoot together (so, you shoot at/with a squadron as a whole).

2. Simplify, well, just about everything. No crits (or, at least, not detailed ones), maybe reduced shield/damage scores, maybe no shield/damage scores, just a damage track (fine, superficial, heavy, critical, crippled, boom...). No Special Actions, etc, and so on.

Don't really foresee this being a huge set of rules, possibly just a handful of pages at the most in Battle Groups, perhaps with some new scenarios.

You get to play a 50 ship battle in the same time frame as a 10 or 20 ship game now. A 20 ship game in the same time as a 5 or 6 ship game. Worth our time, or leave it for now?

 

[H]

i'd rather see a consistent and stable ruleset, properly balanced and no need for more errata! than mega battles.
soprry if that sounds negative, but it's frustrating at the moment, without thinking someone will be developing another ruleset!

 

[phoenixhawk]

I would like to see something like that down the road. Most games do that sort of thing at some point once people start getting lots of minis and the point systems bog down using the current format. It sounds like fun and like you said, probably a small supplement or something, but not a replacement for existing rules or anything that diminishes the current ruleset in any way, just a new way to play. I'm for it! 8)

 

[Arch Lector Petrovski]

So maybe something that takes the form of a supplement; like ACTA:B5 Armageddon or GW's 40K Apocolypse? Sounds like a good idea, that way the main system can still exist as it is without any necessary tinkering and if people want to play ACTA:SF 'Armada' then they can do and if they want to play a normal game they can, that way 'Armada' would be a special or big occaision and would probably leand itself well to large scale multiplayer games more than tournaments or campaigns.

 

[locarno24]

So maybe something that takes the form of a supplement; like ACTA:B5 Armageddon or GW's 40K Apocolypse?

For my vote, yes and no.

A suplement, definitely. But Armageddon and Apocalypse were both something fundamentally different to what Matt's describing - a vehicle for adding super-heavy stuff (Brivoki/Nemesis/Neroon/Ancients/etc for B5 and Titans and War Engines for 40k). That's not the same as mega-battles, because you still weren't encouraged to play 20 point armageddon games (or whatever).

40K can cope with bigger games because there's virtually no off-table bookkeeping; a model is alive or dead, and a squad's damage status is instantly visible from the number of dudes left on the board. Playing a game with several dozen starships would require more-or-less the same thing. I'm all for a simplified critical system, even (in an extreme case) to a point of critical=dead (or at least whacking extra block of damage but no system damage). That way, if I have two or three full squadrons of D7s pac-man-ing it up the flanks, I don't have to track which two of them have lost one of their phaser-3's. Assume it fights at full effectiveness until 'destroyed', with the proviso that in a game of this scale, 'destroyed' can mean 'disabled and breaking contact'.

What's described is something more like the epic rule-set, or B5 fleet action. A fundamental down-scale to allow big, big forces.

I would really, really like to try something like this. My pet hate with fleet games has always been...well...the lack of a fleet. ACTA creaks with significantly more than (say) a dozen major ships per side , and this is one of the most streamlined rules-sets out there. BFG is about the same. B5 Wars and SFB, by comparison, both have collected rulesets that make playing a game with two ships a side a major logistical exercise.

Now I realise that's the point, they're meant to be detailed games, but after acquiring a copy of the SFB 'doomsday rulebook' I can honestly say I'm concerned for Jean and anyone else who has to work in or near the ADB archive shelves. You could concuss seals with a copy of the damn thing and it doesn't even have any background or fleet lists in it. It's all rules.

By comparison, (if I dare mention an example from The Franchise That Dare Not Speak Its Name), what if I want to play a game on the scale of Fortune Favours The Bold. Into The Fire. The Fall of Centauri Prime. Grievous' raid on Coruscant. Those really, really epic space battles with ships in the same numbers as infantry in Warhammer, Black Powder and Battlefield games?

Now that's not a rhetorical question. If someone genuinely knows a rule-set which supports tactical fleet battles of that size, let me know, because I don't. F&E sort of does, but that's a strategic game, not a clash of armadas.

I tried jotting something like this together with a friend a while back (ships had a single, short damage track, and sort-of-morale where damaged ships would fall out of formation and withdraw, and formations would become broken and no longer protect one another properly). The results weren't great but I'd love to see something like it done properly.

 

[Nerroth]

Sounds like an equivalent of the difference between the Admiralty Edition of Starmada and the more recent Starmada: Fleet Ops system. (I'm not familiar with what will be in the even more recent Nova Edition, or whether it integrates the Fleet Ops scale into the core ruleset or not.)

I'm not sure how comfortable I'd feel with a larger-scale system (for either A Call to Arms or Starmada) attempting to handle the SFU; the setting does include large fleets, but tends to have an in-universe historical limit on how many ships appear in a given battle group.

I can't say what kind of scale issues the Fading Suns/Noble Armada setting offers, but the RPG side of things at least seems to de-emphasise the size of battle fleets to be found across the known Jumpweb.

 

[McKinstry]

I like it!

50+ ships per side would be terrific looking but unless simplified, it won't ever reach a conclusion.

Consider the naval rules "Battlestations, Battlestations' where detail goes down but speed and volume of units that can be used goes way up.

 

[Da Boss]

I would be interested to see how it turns out but not mega excited......

 

[Finlos]

I would definitely like to see these rules at some point. It looks like the base rules are approaching stability so expanding on them would certainly be something I'm interested in reading. Besides, I'm likely to need them when I use ACTA to resolve my F&E game several years down the road!

Not that there's any shortage of material to port over from SFU to ACTA however. Still a number of empires and technologies we don't (yet!) have and that's before we leave the Alpha Octant. Besides, the Coalition still wants its' maulers! :twisted: :shock:

...

...

I suppose the Alliance still wants their carriers / escorts / fighters...

 

[AdmiralGrafSpee]

I for one love the scale of ACTA as is - it lets me play games with 6-8 ships per side in the same time I could have had a battle with 1 ship per side in SFB. That's quite a big change in the size of the battle already.

I would also prefer that mongoose/adb focus on adapting more existing ships from SFB into ACTA before moving onto another scale.

I also think the scale of the current miniatures is inappropriate for such large battles.

Now, if you did do a couple more supplements for ACTA (so we have Battleships, Escorts, Carriers, Hydrans, Lyrans, ISC, Andros, and WYN) and you made some fleet scale minis - then I'd be more than a bit interested in a larger scale game.

EDIT:
Oh and if you are going to do a Fleet scale game - I think I'd want more than a couple of pages of rules. I agree on simplifying ship stats and all - but it would be great to add a major command and control element to the game.

-Tim

 

[Ben2]

There are a number of ways to speed things up.

Squadron ships in squadrons of 3 for cruiser sized ships, but carrier groups topped out at 4 ships for CVAs. All on one card. One initiative role, one movement slot per squadron, have a bonus for squadron coherency to encourage people not to split their squadrons and shove them everywhere as singles.

For instance allow IDF for free on ships in the same squadron within coherency. This'll keep squadrons tight when drones are around.

It also allows you to group DNs with smaller escorts.

For fleet scale, ditch most special orders. I'm not sure crits could get simpler, but halving hull and shield values would make the game play quicker while retaining relative toughness. Obviously weapons would have to be redone (or would they, just get through ships twice as quick?).

I think well designed squadron sheets could save a lot of time. And if you were to do smaller scale ships (1/6000? 1/7000?) then you could bundle squadrons with a squadron sheet.

It's certainly interesting.

Matt, do you want to set up a little discussion group to do some rules grinding to see what can be stripped down? I'd love to get involved, but won't have the time until after the elections.

 

[Clanger]

Would be interesting with a big scale battle rules set. Have varying levels of Conflict with different games. A big mini's game like one proposed for Major Engagement and Battles. I can see with good Fleet size Campaign Rules as well.

I would like to expand that idea as well. I would like to see a BattleTech: Succession Wars type Board Game for Galaxy wide Race Wars. All the SFU Races represented. We all know that Galaxy Conquering is a favourite of most Gamers .

 

[gord314]

I would like to expand that idea as well. I would like to see a BattleTech: Succession Wars type Board Game for Galaxy wide Race Wars. All the SFU Races represented. We all know that Galaxy Conquering is a favourite of most Gamers .

Check out Federation and Empire http://www.starfleetgames.com/federationandempire.shtml by ADB.

 

[Clanger]

Update Federation and Empire to a nice looking game map (like Succession Wars) and throw in some nice looking playing peices (no counters) and I think you could be onto a winner.

 

[Rambler]

Clanger, you realise that you would be pushing 2000 piece just to start the General War right? Who could carry the game then without a forklift?

 

[sean_68333]

I'm really enjoying this rule set. I've had some concerns about the regular erratas, but I'm dealing with it. I love the idea of a rule set that lets you play large scale fleets. As long as the bookkeeping is kept to a minimum. I'd certainly be interested if you put some rules out for this.

 

[Sgt_G]

They simplified rules might be good. However, comma, I for one would like to have each ship as a separate unit, not one mini to represent three to five ships. If you want to fly they in squadrons of three or four, great, but each mini should equal one ship.

 

[Spence]

I really don't see why too many changes are needed.

The only thing that really seems to slow things down at all are tracking the criticals because of damage control and needing to know which weapon was disabled by said crit.

If you move by Squadron instead of individual ship and simplified criticals to be generalized you could easily go from control sheet to control card with multiple ships per card.

I am not a big fan of the idea of having one miniature represent multiple ships. Mostly because what is the point of calling it a 'major fleet action' if you still only have 10 mini's on the table?

But I would like to see a large fleet supplement. It could also contain alternate point cost values that take into account the changes in value that a vessel gains when operating as part of a fleet as opposed to independently or in small units.

 

[Da Boss]

The areas that slow the present game are in my opinion:

Defensive fire interaction
Too many and too complicated fire arcs

you'd probably want to drop or at least heavily simplify Special Actions and Criticals.

You should, IMO, be able to have simple rules and yet have one ship equal one model.

 

[Keeper Nilbog]

Have always tended to find in big games (of B5 at least), after the first few turns of engagement you really didn't need to simplify the rules much, as squadrons firing on a target tended to kill/cripple it. As the game gets more familiar to people, larger games should be quite easy -yhough as mentioned defensive fire will be a stumbling block.