New activation rule

[mollari_uk]

Yeah, after going through my idea and finding the problems I think moving by FAP does make a lot more sense now as you can't reserve your 3 biggest ships to move all at once.

My concern with that is that working out what 1 FAP is isn't that easy to do on the fly. I've been playing a while and still don't know it instinctively.

E.g. In a 5pt War game I could move 1 raid ship, then I move 1 skirmish ship....now....erm...what have I got left to move?

See what I mean? It's very hard for beginners. It used to take me ages to buy a fleet never mind working it out from turn to turn.

Find a way to make this easy and I think it's got merit.

 

[l33tpenguin]

And thats exactly something I've been mulling over myself! When I (either proposed the idea or reitterated it, I can't remember if its mine originally ) I knew that it would be difficult to figure out full FAPs on the fly.

I *don't* want the FAP to be resitricted to how you bought it, I.E. if you broke one FAP down to get X ships, then X ships would always move together. I would want a way that if you bought X ships with one and Y ships with another you could mix and match (easily) during the movement phase. I can see it causing a problem because of how FAPs break up.

 

[AdrianH]

What happens in movment by FAP if you don't have a ship at the game level? For example, 5 points Skirmish, Centauri have 5 Skirmish level ships, EA has two Raid and one Skirmish. Does the EA player move one ship for each ship the Centauri moves, meaning the Centauri effectively has two init sinks? Or does the EA player wait for the Centauri to move two Skirmish ships before moving a Raid ship?

OK, you could force the EA player to take Skirmish level ships, but now say it's Shadows facing the Centauri instead...

 

[mollari_uk]

One way to deal with this is you "pump" an FAP into a ship until it has enough to move and either you move that ship once it's "full" or you move it first but then skip the following rounds a you fulfill it's FAP requirement.

On paper this doesn't seem so bad and I think it favours buying up (which I'm in favour of)

Not sure if this raises more problems though?

 

[Dr Stubbsberg]

what about some way of equalising movement activations between sides; for example Player A has twice as many ships as Player B, therefore for each ship Player B moves, Player A has to move two ships. Then for the shooting phase you switch back to ship-by-ship firing (use 'ship' interchangably with 'squadron')

This seems like it would go some way to mitigating init sinking and boresight problems.

 

[nekomata fuyu]

A large part of the initiative problem is that faster reacting ships can choose to act slow to transfer thier initiative to a slower ship. Think of a Bin'Tak always being able to hold off ready to boresight just because all the Tethys move first. I'd say that a fix to initiative really needs to force the big lumbering ships to move first.

 

[Foxmeister]

I'd say that a fix to initiative really needs to force the big lumbering ships to move first.

Which can only happen if you change boresight to some kind of half sensible arc rather than a direct line otherwise you've just sent every lumbering, boresight reliant, ship in the game off to the scrap heap!

Regards,

Dave

 

[nekomata fuyu]

Unless (and probably even if) you fully change boresight to front arc, the big ships will need rebalancing. As I've said before though, initiative is such a central part of the game, and so broken, that fixing it is pretty much impossible without rebalancing ships. It's also generally agreed that larger ships are broken and need rebalancing anyway, so surely we may as well get initiative fixed properly, and then get the ships rebalanced.

 

[Banichi]

what about some way of equalising movement activations between sides; for example Player A has twice as many ships as Player B, therefore for each ship Player B moves, Player A has to move two ships. Then for the shooting phase you switch back to ship-by-ship firing (use 'ship' interchangably with 'squadron')

This seems like it would go some way to mitigating init sinking and boresight problems.

We tried something like this a while ago, and it seemed to work ok. But we only managed to get as far as playtesting it once. Oddly enough, espescally given the fact that both of us were pleased with the way the game went, we then forgot about it, and havn't tried it since :?. It might be worth giving another go.

Oh well, unless anyone has any bright ideas that's another one bites the dust!

We all must like this game to spend this much time, and brain power, trying to fix the bits that go clunk.

 

[l33tpenguin]

I would LOVE to see a speed based initiative (faster ships move last, slower first). I've more or less built one and it works... kinda. It works in theory, but slow ships need balanced.

If the initiative system was scrapped and a speed based one implemented THEN ships were balanced against the new initiative system, then problem solved! in theory...

 

[SylvrDragon]

I would LOVE to see a speed based initiative (faster ships move last, slower first). I've more or less built one and it works... kinda. It works in theory, but slow ships need balanced.

If the initiative system was scrapped and a speed based one implemented THEN ships were balanced against the new initiative system, then problem solved! in theory...

Very interesting idea. FedCom uses an initiative system that works just as you described, and it works very well for that game. It does add a more realistic feel to it. Biggest problem is, as you said, the slow ships. Or to be more precise, the big ships, which are already struggling against smaller ships as it is. I think this is an idea that has potential, but it would require a LOT of changes to be made to the ships.

 

[l33tpenguin]

I would LOVE to see a speed based initiative (faster ships move last, slower first). I've more or less built one and it works... kinda. It works in theory, but slow ships need balanced.

If the initiative system was scrapped and a speed based one implemented THEN ships were balanced against the new initiative system, then problem solved! in theory...

Very interesting idea. FedCom uses an initiative system that works just as you described, and it works very well for that game. It does add a more realistic feel to it. Biggest problem is, as you said, the slow ships. Or to be more precise, the big ships, which are already struggling against smaller ships as it is. I think this is an idea that has potential, but it would require a LOT of changes to be made to the ships.

My system is initiative + ship speed, activate in blocks of 6 (scores of 1-6, 7-12, 13-18, etc) then 'you move, I move'

It doesn't really require a lot of fix to big ships. Crit save would go a LONG way towards fixing them. Big ships just need to be worth their FAP. Right now, they aren't

 

[SylvrDragon]

My system is initiative + ship speed, activate in blocks of 6 (scores of 1-6, 7-12, 13-18, etc) then 'you move, I move'

It doesn't really require a lot of fix to big ships. Crit save would go a LONG way towards fixing them. Big ships just need to be worth their FAP. Right now, they aren't

Sounds like a good idea. It will need quite a bit of work though.

 

[l33tpenguin]

Sounds like a good idea. It will need quite a bit of work though.

Everything does

 

[katadder]

problem is the ships like g'quans and bin'taks would never get a boresight. and the differance with the fedcom system is every ship can go any of the the speeds, just requires more power.

 

[nekomata fuyu]

Speed seems to be the wrong thing to pick on to me. Just because a ship can move fast doesn't mean it can react quickly. Ideally, each ship would be manually allocated an initiative modifier, but as a generic way to dish out modifiers turn rate would make much more sense than speed.

The way I would try and put together a ship's initiative using turn rate would be as follows:
Turn rate modifier = 1 per 45° the ship can turn (so 1/45° = 1, 1/90° or 2/45° = 2, 2/90° = 4), or 6 for a SM ship.
Agile/Lumbering = +1 for Agile, or -1 for Lumbering.

Another option would be to add the ship's CQ (as I would say the skill of the crew would be just as important as ship speed or turn rate).
If you're using a system whereby the fleet initiative isn't rolled separately, the fleet's initiative should also be included for each ship.

 

[SylvrDragon]

problem is the ships like g'quans and bin'taks would never get a boresight. and the differance with the fedcom system is every ship can go any of the the speeds, just requires more power.

Boresight can be dealt with in other manners, such as TTT just to name one. And it's true that all ships can go the same speeds, but each fleet is "tuned" to certain speeds. An example is how the Feds operate best at speed 8, while the Klingons operate at 16. Sure the Feds could increase speed to match the Klingons, but they would fight much less effectively to do so and because of this they usually don't. FedCom also incorporates a ships maneuverability into the equation, which should be done here as well, which functions as a tie breaker in the cases of ships moving the same speed.

I don't know what all l33t has done as far as his system goes, but I know that what he stated here is just a basic outline for what he's working on. ^^

 

[katadder]

hmm my feds operate pretty well at speed 24, certainly surprises the opposition when come tanking in and unload the photons.

 

[SylvrDragon]

hmm my feds operate pretty well at speed 24, certainly surprises the opposition when come tanking in and unload the photons.

Yea, I'm sure that speed 24 is after a turn of loading those photons. Either that, or you don't overload them fully. I know how much energy those things suck out. lol

 

[OnlyTheShadowKnows]

Sometimes my cohort and I will, in a convention, use the movement rules from Battletech when one person is outnumbered by another... we break down how many more ships move in a given round.