SOme odd thoughts for version 2.0 and in General

[Itkovian]

So while sitting in a five hour queue for the Blackwall tunnel this week I got to thinking about ACTA (Eventually after inventing new and interesting ways to kill the people who manage the traffic in London :wink: ) and a couple of ideas came to me.

Firstly hull values higher than 6, this ought to be rare, but is there any reason not to have it? Not sure which ships might be uprated to it, though Narn come to mind for some reason!

I rather liked the idea floated a while back of extracting the heavy beams from the Centauri and replacing them with various flavours of twin array. In fact I mused that in most ships the secondary close range beams might even be boresighted (After all if the Narn and EA beams are Centauri technology it makes sense) it's also make the Centauri closer to what appears on screen. Also of course the Vorchan needs a serious upgrade.

Finally the Mega-Campaign rules, at the moment it seems like fleets are able to hop from system to system redeploying at will. I was thinking it might be nicer if you had to assign ships to fleets that could move at the rate of one system a strategic turn. Also obviously only the home system or those with appropriate strategic targets could be used to build new ships.
Of course systems with no jump gate are only accessible by jump capable ships (Which would likely mean small reinforcement convoys being formed)

This would mean front line fleets that are steadily reinforced as the campaign goes on, and mean (I would think) more balanced fleets.

Just a few random ramblings, which I expect will be blown apart by SAP arguments in short order...

 

[Itkovian]

Just a sudden thought - has anyone ever played a Mega Campaign?

As my girlfriend is away for a while and I seem to be getting in a lot of games I may well be starting one this week.

Probably will use the amendments I suggested just to see

 

[H]

some nice thoughts. i would love to see a big campaign rules overhaul, As a Narn player, hull 7 would be awesome, but also a little harsh, some fleets would never get through it. It might have been somethign to try with the Ancients to be honest, but they missed the boat this time round.

 

[Silvereye]

Yes I have played a Mega-(perhaps Über)campagin over 23 (+ some hidden) systems, the players controlled four systems each. As well as the precense of minor NPC empires (controlling 1 system). It started off OK, but slowly bogged down as it was just too big and nobody had enough time. We started with 10 War points, plus 2 refits for the flagship.

Basically a ship could move between adjacent systems (via jump gate) as a part of its turn. A lot of ship time was spent on system and border patrol. First few turns were spent grabbing unoccupied systems and political posturing, as well as galactic exploration. We knew the route existed what empire controlled the destination, but not anything that what was in the system. Entering a system meant alerting system defences, so unless you knew the system you had to enter in open space or through the jump gate, which restricted your first Military target. Resources were awarded as normal, so we got a lot but needed it as fleets were spread very thin.

Was very good fun while it lasted though.

 

[Locutus9956]

Weve played a Megacampaign at our local club. It went quite well but I think it could do with some adjustments next time. We didnt use the rules exactly as per the book though (I altered the rules to limit peoples resources a bit to stop run away uber fleet building )

 

[Chernobyl]

yeah, I think to make a mega-campaign a bit easier to handle you'd need to limit the number of strategic targets in each system. Runaway RR's can be silly.

Chern

 

[Nomad]

We ran into the runaway RR issue big time in a previous campaign - with each player holding two or three systems with 8-10 targets apeice people were pulling in 100+ RR per turn. Also, evicting a fleet from such a system was practically impossible.

Restricting each system in a megacampaign to one or two targets would fix this - and playing out, say, the Narn-Centauri War of Retribution on the proper map sounds good.

 

[sidewinder]

I'd like to see rules for shields in version 2. not the stupid GEG either. The vorlons had actual shields and so did the abbai. Make it so EA is the only ones who have interceptor like they are supposed to, they invented the damn things after all.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

The Centauri have their own version, though, the Guardian Array.

Also, when did Vorlons have shields? I don't remember anything like that from the series. In Thirdspace the Starfury pilots are surprised by the Thirdspace Aliens' shields. If a race as well-known as the Abbai really had effective shields I'd expect the EarthForce pilots to be at least familiar with the concept.

 

[JayRaider]

Their evidence to support the idea that Vorlons have shields ( the Heavy Cruisers).
The episode was were Sheridan convinces Kosh to attack the Shadows. A Vorlon Cruiser is hit with a Shadow beam and what appears to be a shield diffuses it.
Thats the only time i saw it happen. 8)

 

[Target]

The Centauri have their own version, though, the Guardian Array.

Also, when did Vorlons have shields? I don't remember anything like that from the series. In Thirdspace the Starfury pilots are surprised by the Thirdspace Aliens' shields. If a race as well-known as the Abbai really had effective shields I'd expect the EarthForce pilots to be at least familiar with the concept.

Not have seen thirdspace recently but thought they were captured vorlon fighters and don't recall anything about shields been said just they seemed to shrugged the shots off and were told to be twice as accurate.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

No, they're not captured Vorlon fighters. The shields are clearly visible as bubbles of energy around the fighters.

 

[sidewinder]

The thing about the abbai having them is from B5 Wars. they are different shields, that vorlons use EM shields and the abbai use gravitic ones. Its just nice to actually have some major differences between the races other then looks. And give the omega its turreted lasers back.

 

[Balance]

My wish list for version 2.0:

2.0 needs to be the 'Got it right' edition. Whatever format it's published in, it really needs to have very few typos and no major unbalanced ships. I won't demand perfection, as it's not easy to remove all typos, but it needs to be close. I'd even be happy with Mongoose saying, "We aren't ready" and pushing 2.0 back to 2008 and releasing another Toy Book like Armageddon with bug fixes and new stuff for almost everybody within. Especially if it means 2.0 is a better game.

I'd like to see some wacky stuff tried like 2 damage point fighters. Fighters seem much better now, but I still don't know if the feel is quite right. As others have said, they don't want them to feel like disposable ordnance. still, this is all theoretical.

Continue the practice of minimizing ship-specific special rules. Consistent traits work much better in actual play.

If Mongoose is trying to take the approach of 'no sacred cows' for the rules extend that to the models, too. The only models that would be really difficult to change are those core from the show: Omegas, Hyperions, Sharlin, Primus/Secundus, etc.If there's a bad reaction from fans to a design either resculpt it or reinvent it, and note that the he old and new look are 'official.' I think the fans will accept this,e specially if we agree that certain designs need to be redone.

Consider splitting fleet lists like the EA received: Even adding variants, this might help prevent the EA looking like the game's 400 pound gorilla due to number of ships available. Centauri might receive a Old empire List, ann Emperor Mollari's Rule list, and an Emperor Cotto era list.

Perhaps as part of the above add a small selection of ships of lesser races that can be added to the LoNAW fleets at no penalty as well as used as allies for the ISA or others via the Duties tables. This could be a good way to add in lesser races without requiring an entire fleet be designed based of one or two images seen in an episode. It could also provide a basis to see who's interested in the fringe fleets like the Pak'ma'ra.

 

[tneva82]

Consider splitting fleet lists like the EA received:

Yeah! I'm great fan of this approach myself as well. Different fleets for different era's with different ship designs.

I would be interested for example at minbar list for last shadow war with ships mainly armed with antimatter weapons for example. Would be interesting variant to current beam heavy list and variants are never bad.

Finding logical opponents for that list would of course be hard(except for shadows of course!) but hey...Can't have everything right :wink:

 

[Alexb83]

I think a better tack for early Minbari would be to just release a campaign book for the earlier shadow war. Give them variants to the Tinashi and some other old classes, rather than any new models.

It'd also give you a chance to introduce some odd-ball races like the Soul Hunters, and give players opportunities to use the Ancients more. I can envisage some truly massive battles with raid level early Tinashis backed up by Vorlons and Ancients vs. Armageddon points worth of Shadows.

There's not much room for development of later-period Minbari. There are ships missing from the current fleet - pre-ISA whitestars (and later, ISA vessels as optional allies), Liandra cutters (again, pre-ISA).

A crusade era minbari fleet would need new models, really. Like SFOS says, the Sharlin hull is reaching its limits, and the Minbari should be starting by Crusade to exploit Vorlon technology for themselves. (their shipyards are, afterall, pouring out vorlon tech ships for the ISA)

 

[Lord David the Denied]

Surely the Vorlons and Shadows didn't come to blows directly in the last Shadow War? It was a big deal when the Vorlons came out to fight the Shadows at Sheridan's behest. They didn't mind smacking the younger races about, but they didn't fight each other. That was their deal, right?

 

[Alexb83]

This is a pertinent question, as Delenn puts it, in the 'last shadow war' - the penultimate one, at least, the Shadows were defeated by the Minbari and some other younger races with 'the help of some of the last of the remaining first ones' who then mostly left for beyond the rim.

She then goes on to point out that the Vorlons are some of those last remaining first ones, and that they are trying to hide who they are (as if the Shadows and their Allies didn't know?).

All a bit wierd - but I had always assumed that the Shadow war in the 1200s had been far larger than the one in the 2200s, and either the Minbari and Soul Hunters were far more powerful even then than we give them credit for, or the Vorlons were involved, or lots of the 'Ancients' before they mostly left.

 

[captainsmirk]

Well there don't seem to have been as many races around at that time, the Minbari and the Yolu are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head.

I doubt the Minbari could do beat the Shadows all by themselves, especially when even less advanced compared to what they are now. So maybe the Vorlons did have to fight, I mean the Minbari seem to have relatively little information about the war despite being a space faring race at the time...

I always thought the Shadows' and Vorlons' tactics were the wrong way round personally. If your trying to created conflict so that races can grow stronger do you really want to attack them yourselves when your massively more advanced they are? How do you expect them to win? And the Vorlons would surely have a better time by just obliterating the trouble makers with their firepower rather than letting the Shadow induced conflicts get out of hand.
In fact it would probably make more sense if both of them stayed out of sight and manipulated the younger races to fight/not fight each other...

Nick

 

[Burger]

Yeah the Vorlons and Shadows had it backwards. The Shadows attacked the younger races, which made them band together to defeat the greater threat, the opposite of the Shadows stated aim. And the Vorlons, by making everyone talk to each other and telling them to play nice, were just asking for fights to break out amongst them.