Opinions on variable Crew Quality

[SneakyPete]

Crew quality upgrades are definitely something to utilize during campaign play, but I was wondering how many players here use variable crew quality during stand alone battles. Also what are players opinions on how to ration points. I personally like it as it creates more variability in how tha game is played and in choosing ships.

Since different ships have different point values you can't really give out CQ points to spend based on fleet points played as someone who goes with more smaller ships will be seriously penalized. I have played several stand alone battles with a one for one point allotment, (if one ship gives up a point another can gain one) but I was thinking that that may be too generous and perhaps it should be gain one point for every 2 points given up. I found a 1 for 1 swap changed the ship dynamics quite a bit, although I did not feel it broke the gameplay. With a one for one allotment I can strip all my frigates of CQ and load up the capital ships. A DN with CQ6 is quite impressive. It can do a HET with a very good chance of passing, as well as repair most all Critical Hits in one turn with All Hands on Deck, or pass Take Evasive Action easily when under attack. The Frigates though become disposable when at a CQ of 2 or 3 as any crits are not likely to be repaired and quickly lead to escalations, but a Frigate is not likely to survive many crits anyway with its weak hull so it is not as big a penalty as it is a gain for the DN who often takes many crits before becoming crippled and can repair to fight unhampered in later rounds.

Of course you can also just play with letting one or two ships get a 1 or 2 point bonus which works pretty well. Anyway, like I said, I was curious as to what others are doing as I do not read much in AAR's here about people playing with CQ much.

 

[storeylf]

We found the random crew quality was a bit unbalancing, at least in small battles where there is less chance of the qualities balancing out (In one skirmish I had both my ships at 5, and one opponent had a 3 and a 2). With large numbers of ships it should start to average out more.

What we have done in points games, where we sometimes have spare points is allow purchasing an extra point of quality for some percentage of the ship cost (can't remember what we settled on, but about 20%).

 

[MongooseMatt]

I would say it is the only way to play. But that is just me

 

[katadder]

its quite possibly the worst thing to add to a one off game. totally unbalances the game before you even start.
its ok for campaigns in theory as you can level them but never use them in 1 offs or tourneys unless you want to give somebody a massive advantage for no points cost.

 

[Myrm]

It introduces a massive variable in a potentially unfair manner - pointless in a pick up one off game but a very handy tool for scenarios - where you could balance a few things off.

The concept of variable crew quality has a lot to add to the game though - so we have introduced crew variable skill in other ways.

One way was to roll as many dice as the smallest side has ships, note the scores and each side gets to assign those dice rolls amongst their largest ships as they see fit. Excess ships on the larger side have to be the smallest points value and always get 4s (we used this in B5 and ported it over). It means the smallest ships are always average but you cannot sink useless rolled numbers onto the useless ships if the opposition doesnt have the same option. The fact the parger ships often get the higher crew quality we felt reflected ship organisation.

Another was to start of everything at 4, the each side could if they wished promote one ship to 5 for demoting one to 3, or the other option being to instead promote one to 6, for demoting either 3 ships to 3 or 1 ship to 2.

That lets us play with crew quality variation but in a more balanced manner.

 

[AdrianH]

Since different ships have different point values you can't really give out CQ points to spend based on fleet points played as someone who goes with more smaller ships will be seriously penalized.

On the other hand, the player with more smaller ships might have an edge anyway - see the thread [ACTA:SF] Smaller fleets versus larger ships and initiative. The idea of using up a few spare points for better CQ does have some merit, in that it gives you something to do with said spare points.

Purely random CQ certainly has the potential to seriously unbalance a game. Perhaps if both players agree that one of them has been seriously disadvantaged this way, either re-roll the lot or allow the disadvantaged player an additional small ship. This does, of course, rely on both players being sporting enough!

As for the problem of moving CQ points from one ship to another, i.e. stripping the FF's to boost the DN's and CA's, this is not necessarily a problem because both players will be doing it. You could limit it a bit by making a 2 point boost cost a total of 3 points' reduction, so boosting a DN to CQ 6 means one FF goes down to CQ 2 and another goes down to CQ 3, or one FF goes right down to CQ 1!

 

[JohnDW]

The idea of total CQ points to hand out based on the point size of the fleet makes some sense. If a fleet is loaded up with a lot of cheap to build smaller ships, they may not have had enough training for the crew before the battle. Assuming that point size represents available resources, including ships and crews as resources, the ammount of well trained crew would be thinned out. Instead of needing 7 chief engineers you'd need 8 to 10 as an example, or skilled helmsmen, and other key positions.

We haven't played using random CQ yet, we've been defaulting ships at CQ4.

I do think there needs to be some 'small' upgrades available to spend those extra points on, it may open up more ship types people can choose at different point values, if they feel like they don't have to get it exactly at the point value.

 

[billclo]

I don't think it's a good idea in pickup battles/tournaments, but definitely nice for campaign play.

There may be some merit in the idea of allowing people to boost the CQ of some ships during setup for a pickup battle, IF both players agree.

I'd say +20% cost to go from a basic Crew Quality 4 to 5, and 50% more to go from 5 to 6. A CQ6 Fed DN for example, could be a really scary thing, repairing criticals with ease, evading seeking weapons more easily, and making low-risk HETs.

 

[storeylf]

If a fleet is loaded up with a lot of cheap to build smaller ships, they may not have had enough training for the crew before the battle. Assuming that point size represents available resources, including ships and crews as resources, the ammount of well trained crew would be thinned out. Instead of needing 7 chief engineers you'd need 8 to 10 as an example, or skilled helmsmen, and other key positions.

From an historical point of view, as a generalisation, during a war you would tend to get the veteran crews on the smaller ships. They are the workhorses of most navies. Large 'capital' ships have tended to be kept out of harms way ready for major operations, and whilst the crews may be well trained they tend not to get constant combat experience in the way smaller ships do. Smaller ships on the other hand will be the ones out constantly patrolling/raiding/escorting etc and doing the 'boring' stuff, but gaining more experience in the process.

 

[Greg Smith]

It would be a good way to spend those extra points when your fleet doesn't quite come up to a round number.

 

[McKinstry]

As John said, over the course of a conflict, the smaller ships develop veteran crews as they are always in demand while the big boys generally accrue experience at a much slower pace spending large chunks of time at anchor.

For my games, I use experience as a scenario balancer/extra point of interest but as with others, simply rolling in a small game can seriously unbalance things.

Whenever I can get the Romulans so that I can proceed to the painted, up and running stage, I want to use experience as a balancer or variable in a mass Snipe, Battlehawk, War Eagle v Federation FF,OCL, CA force with the Romulans having a fairly decent numerical and point advantage but the Feds having higher quality.

 

[nekomata fuyu]

Agreed that it would be good to have some for of cheap upgrades for using up loose points.
I was considering the idea of each faction having a list of upgrades mainly consisting of things like one shot advanced/experimental torpedoes/drones/etc, but CQ advances could also be in the list.

 

[SneakyPete]

I agree that random CQ bonuses are not a good idea, I did not mean variable to mean random when I started this thread, but that you could trade points up and down between ships introducing variability between ships.

As for buying points, a generally agreed upon value of what an upgrade would be worth in point value would be handy to have. (as an official update on this is unlikely)

I also think that AdrianH's idea of trading CQ between ships with the first point at a one for one value and a second point (above 4) at two for three helps make for good balance in gameplay. Like I said earlier a CQ6 DN is awesome and probably needs to come at a premium.

As for the posts about small ships would be the ones actually gaining more CQ in reality you must remember that officers start on small ships and move up to capital ships as they progress in rank, so a BattleCruiser or DN should have a complement of well trained officers. (Unlike a certain reboot of a popular series released a couple years ago)

 

[JohnDW]

Of course, I can see how random CQ for one-off battles can work as well. Rolling poorly, and rolling well for CQ can represent the availability of well trained crew for your empires ships, where as the points value represents the availability of material resources.

Every system so far seems to be good to me, just depends on how you want to play it with your friends. Set CQ, purchace CQ with points, trade CQ for CQ, random CQ, Random CQ for the fleet in general with re-assigning CQ to ships as you want before the battle.

 

[McKinstry]

As for the posts about small ships would be the ones actually gaining more CQ in reality you must remember that officers start on small ships and move up to capital ships as they progress in rank, so a BattleCruiser or DN should have a complement of well trained officers. (Unlike a certain reboot of a popular series released a couple years ago)

It was actually very rare in WW2 for a succesful destroyer captain to move up to a cruiser, much less a capital ship. Arleigh Burke, probably the premier US destroyer leader moved up to command destroyer squadrons and flotillas until he moved up to fleet staff. Successful cruiser skippers, assuming they and their ship survived, would equally just move up to squadron command and then a staff rank. Even the more rigid and linear IJN kept their premier surface leaders such as Tanaka in commands more likely to fight which meant cruisers and destroyers.

A really good skipper did have a shot at moving up by taking new construction but there were a ton of successful destroyer and cruiser skippers and relatively few new construction slots for capital ships. Even the US, by a huge margin the largest producer of new capital ships in the 39-45 range, offered only 10 battleship and 18 fleet carrier slots while they had 300+ destroyer slots. A huge number of DD crews and skippers could be considered crack while of the new US BB's, only North Carolina, Washington and South Dakota could make an argument for elite and that was primarily from experience, not the transfer of crews. For the IJN it was even slimmer with 2 BB's and 5 CV's really available as new construction berths plus the tendency of the captain to go down with the ship really hurt on the retaining experience scale.

 

[SneakyPete]

I guess I was mistaken, thanks for the information.

 

[Rick]

There are a couple of things to bear in mind when using ww2 as a guide - the first is the difference between a peace-time navy and a war-time navy. Chances are, in a peace-time navy, a competent captain might stay with one ship for most of his career, promotion being arranged slightly differently - whereas in a war-time navy, captains that showed promise as tacticians and leaders might well be advanced quickly into positions where they were needed. The second point is that ww2 only lasted 6 years (or 3 if American), so there wasn't a lot of movement within that short a time period (even in the Royal Navy - one of the largest pre-war navies and certainly one with most experience of warfare). Even Arleigh Burke (US Navy), during ww2, only moved from commanding a destroyer flotilla up to chief of staff of a carrier force (going from captain to commodore).

During a much longer period of warfare, there might be much more movement of officers between ships as they prove their competence (or otherwise) to their superiors.

 

[McKinstry]

Pulling this back to ACTA, I think it is a mistake to allow rules to load quality on the larger ships at the expense of the smaller. All things being equal, if Starfleet had 100 FF's and 8 DN's, I would expect the ratio of elite to regular crew to be higher among the FF's than the DN's as the FF's are out there running all sorts of missions while the DN's sit at starbase polishing brass.

Game wise, the cruisers and lighter are the core of most battles and the little guys if given high quality ratings can be deadly and not simply cannon fodder that you trade down to build a CQ6 dread.

 

[storeylf]

Bear in mind that CQs is not just officers, but the whole crew.

Many of the CQ checks are representing crew quality and not simply the presence of some uber officer. The captain may order IDF, but it's up to the competence of the crew to execute those orders in a fast moving environment.

CQ 4 is expected 'miltary grade', which I read as 'well trained'. 5 and 6 are Veteran and elite, those sort of levels sound much more representative of crews that have seen increasing amounts of real action, and not just played simulators where failure means extra toilet cleaning duty.

The random quality would be ok in larger games, where each player is rolling for say 10+ ships. the chances are that there is not going to be a huge discrepancy. At 2 or 3 ships, however, you may well see the veteran squadron take on the poor squadron, and that is not likely to be overly balanced if the ship points are equal.

One thing we have done is make civilains (freighters) etc always less than miltary grade, default to CQ 3.

 

[billclo]

How about this:

For use in a campaign game, use the following procedure to determine if the ship has a higher than usual crew quality.

A ship desiring to increase it's crew quality must expend a certain amount of XP based upon the size of the ship, and once this cost is paid, must roll a D6 and roll above it's current CQ.

Ship size XP expended to roll
FF/DD 1
DW/CL/CW 2
CA/NCA 4
BCH/DN 8
BB 16

This way, if you really insist you can have those high CQ large ships but they'll cost you dearly.

In a pickup game, how about +20% ship cost for Veteran, and an additional 50% cost for Elite?

One thing I saw in an old Play By Mail Game (Starfleet Warlord) was to give various Empires different traits. The Federation always started one crew quality level higher as default, reflecting better training. One could assume Fed ships start at Veteran Quality, or give a discount when rolling for CQ improvement.