Where it says that damage will be spread evenly over damaged ships, "evenly" means proportionally to the mass of the ships affected, not the same amount of damage to each ship. Note; mass, not number of hull boxes.
The reason for adjudicating it this way is that this way, no damage goes to waste. If the same amount of damage was done to each ship irrespective of size, the individual helpings would probably be big enough to knock out small ships entirely with damage left over (and thus not applied to anything); meanwhile the bigger ships would barely be scratched.
As an extreme case, picture a task force which consists of one very large ship 200 mass) and a cloud of 19 couriers (5 mass). It attacks planetary defences and takes 100 points of hull damage. Each ship takes five points of hull damage. The couriers have a single hull box each and are evaporated five times over. The battlewagon is barely scratched. If the damage is spread proportionally, the couriers are still evaporated in all likelihood, but the battlewagon also takes very heavy damage, which is more reasonable, if not exactly fun for the owner.
Monday 21 May 2007
Sunday 20 May 2007
rule clarifications
1. At different spots in the rules it says a normal move is two hexes and three hexes. It's two. I wrote three because I spazzed out on ordinal versus cardinal numbers. The intent is that in normal travel you can skip over a single intervening empty hex if you start and end the move in a system.
2. Seeing off an isolated scout from a system is not enough of a victory to give you plus 1 in attacking planetary defences.
3. Because it's too much trouble to calculate for the added "realism", combat damage to a fleet does not count against its notional points total for attacking system defences. Actual ship losses do; you can only count the points values of ships you choose to commit to the fight (remember,it's open to you not to commit ships which might be completely destroyed by hull damage in the event of a defeat). Handwaving rationalisations: a) the dice roll models a lot of things, including morale, which counts the ships, not whether they're broken b) that much loose energy probably damaged lots of things apart from the original targets.
4. Freighters, if any of you have them, cost 10% for maintenance just like everything else does. For those of you who say, but they should be cheaper than warships to run, they are; you haven't put any weapons in them, they presumably have less powerful drives, and I'm not billing you for crew factors in the first place. 10% of a cheaper ship is less money. Cowboy up.
5. If any of you want to use heavy missiles, the ones in MT are fine, other designs can be raised with me in the normal way and either blessed or damned on my whim and or the force of your argument.
6. Although it may not feel like it in practice, one underlying assumption in the campaign is that news travels no faster than starships. This has all kinds if implications, all of which were intended, so before you ask a question about, for example, coordination and communication, ask yourself how it's affected by the fact that there is no communication system faster than a courier boat.
2. Seeing off an isolated scout from a system is not enough of a victory to give you plus 1 in attacking planetary defences.
3. Because it's too much trouble to calculate for the added "realism", combat damage to a fleet does not count against its notional points total for attacking system defences. Actual ship losses do; you can only count the points values of ships you choose to commit to the fight (remember,it's open to you not to commit ships which might be completely destroyed by hull damage in the event of a defeat). Handwaving rationalisations: a) the dice roll models a lot of things, including morale, which counts the ships, not whether they're broken b) that much loose energy probably damaged lots of things apart from the original targets.
4. Freighters, if any of you have them, cost 10% for maintenance just like everything else does. For those of you who say, but they should be cheaper than warships to run, they are; you haven't put any weapons in them, they presumably have less powerful drives, and I'm not billing you for crew factors in the first place. 10% of a cheaper ship is less money. Cowboy up.
5. If any of you want to use heavy missiles, the ones in MT are fine, other designs can be raised with me in the normal way and either blessed or damned on my whim and or the force of your argument.
6. Although it may not feel like it in practice, one underlying assumption in the campaign is that news travels no faster than starships. This has all kinds if implications, all of which were intended, so before you ask a question about, for example, coordination and communication, ask yourself how it's affected by the fact that there is no communication system faster than a courier boat.
Saturday 19 May 2007
Savasku; an overdue rant Slightly revised
You'd never know it to look at me, but all I really want is for people to get along. And to do what I tell them, of course, but that's only because people would all get on so much better if they just left the thinking to me. Thinking just seems to lead most people towards discontentment. Why not leave that burden to me? I'm miserable to begin with.
Because of the rather peculiar way my mind works, the usual outcome of me trying to get everyone to agree is that they all reach an instant consensus on how much they hate me and would like me to shut up. Well, at least they agree on something, but what I'm usually trying to do when I start an argument is put the opposite point of view in the hope of putting some balance into things.
There's been such a lot of negativity about Savasku that my natural impulses have rather obscured my own reservations. In the face of people getting excited about how awful the Savasku are, I naturally tended to try to calm them back down again.
I'm actually not that happy about the Savasku. The presence of Savasku in a game is an instant buzz kill, and that rather gets in the way of what I hope to do in a game.
Firstly, everyone hates and fears the Savasku because they seem absurdly powerful. Now, I'm not fully persuaded that they are, but I can't deny that perception is powerful here, and I haven't been able to make much headway in persuading anyone to the view that Savasku are no more worrying than anything else is. So just putting SV on the table tends to create bad energies, and that's not a happy thing. At the moment, what I'd really like to see is an SV force getting a really serious ass kicking, on the basis that letting some of the air out of their cockroach looking tires would cheer everyone else up and make them less jumpy.
Secondly, they bring distrust and paperwork in their wake. Every turn, the SV player has to work out how much of his energy budget is going to what, and he has to get the calculations right and then get a second group of calculations right (I'm already tired to having to tell people how many dice a given amount of energy turns into at whatever range). When players are feeling jumpy and negative to begin with, this is a real recipe for friction and more unhappiness. So I don't much like that aspect of the scaly little horrors. Someone playing the SV has to be very much on top of his game, know his ships backwards and forwards and be especially nice to make up for the fact that he's starting out annoying just by being an SV. Lawrence would have been a good SV player, come to think of it. All in all, they're a bunch of work and what's in it for the rest of us? The SV players might think I'm being unfair; I'm certainly being unpleasantly negative. But this is something which I think needs to be articulated; it's there and it needs to be worked through a little bit. I'm not saying that working it through will make it easier to deal with, but I want to hostility to go where it belongs - don't hate the player, hate the game. We'll all need to be more patient, and the burden's going to fall disproportionately on the SV players.
That out of the way, here's what I think about them in game terms.
Firstly, the superpowers are oversold. Yes, they can all fire a billion dice and accelerate off the table while spinning round their own axes, but not simultaneously. If they're making significant position changes, they aren't using significant firepower. If they're using significant firepower, they're coasting. If they're running their shields, they typically lose a quarter of their energy per shield. They can't be powerful in all senses at once, so they can be outmanoeuvred.
Secondly, is a power generator a system which has to be given a system check when a row of biomass boxes gets destroyed? If so, Savasku are suddenly vulnerable. Taking out the first row of hull boxes knocks out the first generator automatically; if the other three are then system checked, there's a fifty fifty chance one of them will fail. A Savasku ship with only two power generators is pretty screwed. Apart from anything else, it typically doesn't have enough energy to run its FTL drive and get out of the combat. SV players will argue that the power generators shouldn't be subjected to system checks; but there's nothing in the rules which I can see that specifically exempts them. And the rules do specifically permit their repair, which suggests that they're a system, rather than something built into the mass. To be hard headed about it, if the system can be repaired I think it should be threshold checked in the normal way. Adding to my inclination to take this line is the fact that uniquely the Savasku don't have core systems, so they don't have to worry about THOSE checks.
Thirdly, that power requirement is more brutal than the critics acknowledge. If a non Savasku ship gets three rows of hull boxes shot off, it's hurting, but with a lot of luck it might still be able to disengage and what systems are still undamaged can be run at full effectiveness. And there's usually a couple of crew boxes left to repair vital systems with. If a Savasku ship has three rows of hull boxes gone, it's down to a quarter of its power, can't run its FTL, can't manoeuvre, and can't fire at anything like full effect with whatever weapons it still has. And its ability to repair itself is badly shot; to repair anything it has to burn power equivalent to the mass of what it's fixing. (which means that if it wants to repair the FTL, it first has to repair the second power generator - and doing that will take all the power it's got) And that's assuming that the SV ship hasn't been burning through its own biomass getting things done; if it's done any fighter generation or pod launching, a SV ship with three rows of hulls gone is in very bad shape indeed. In practical terms, once a Savasku ship loses even the first row of biomass, the clock's ticking in a way that it isn't for human ships.
Fourthly, stinger nodes are VERY annoying. It's not just that they can pump out any arbitrary amount of energy you put through them, it's that they have three arcs. In practice, most SV ships don't need anything like as many stinger nodes as humans need beam weapons, and an efficiently designed one would have about half as many as the Fleet Book II designs have. Luckily, the only active SV player used off the book designs and is wasting mass on weapons he doesn't use in practice. Because I think the real bottleneck is the energy requirement, I tend to view this feature as annoying rather than unfair.
Fifthly, although I've decided that replacing expended biomass will cost money, which drives up the cost of being SV a little over that of being non-SV (because a number of SV functions use up biomass that don't use biomass in other races, notably repair and ADFC), I'm still a little bothered that the protean nature of biomass lets SV replace things more cheaply than anyone else can. This is a campaign issue rather than a rules issue; have I set the price of running an SV fleet fairly vis a vis the price of fleets which can't, for example, replace their fighters by having a nice lunch. Actually, that's a particularly serious issue. Expended biomass currently replaces at 1 credit per box. It only takes one biomass to make a fighter. So the credit cost of fighter losses for SV is one per. For anyone else it's a minimum of three for a generic fighter directly equivalent to the SV one. Hmmm. That can't be right. Suggestions welcome.
In the same thought you might like to consider this question: Should SV players be able to pre-load the drone wombs? As things stand, SV players have to make a decision to generate fighters and then launch them the following turn. Does this stop them from deploying fighters before the battle begins? Since I've rewritten the entry and attack rules slightly to make it clear that people are not popping out of FTL and straight into combat (in most cases!), it seems to me that any fleet could do elementary housekeeping exercises like popping out its fighters as it makes the approach. Perhaps popping fighters ahead of the engagement should be another thing you can spend initiative points on.
Pre-loading the drone wombs can be seen another way, however; what if you buy your ship, immediately fill the wombs, and then use a standard repair operation to replace to the biomass at the beginning of the next turn? This would let an SV player with the largest carrier they have potentially launch three flights of four squadrons, or even four if he didn't mind knocking his biomass down to a mere eight boxes. One thing I don't think it could do is allow the SV player to run what amounted to an in-game biomass refuelling option, by relanding the fighters to replace lost biomass. Biomass which gets shot off stays shot off. My inclination is to point out that by replacing the biomass while keeping the fighters onboard, the SV vessel is overweight and straining its engines, which is either illegal or dangerous, depending on whether I want to just rule the idea out or amuse myself with arbitrary damage rolls.
Finally, I am still of the view that the SV are not underpriced for what you get. The individual systems are often cheaper than their non-SV equivalents, but behind all of them is the need to pump an awful lot of money and mass into power plants. A SV ship has 10% of its mass in the M drive node, 10% of its mass in the FTL drive and 20-25% of its mass in power generators. That's 40-45% of the total mass in overhead before you decide on weapons and hull boxes. A human ship with an acceleration of 6 has 10% in FTL and 30% in M-drive. And everything it's got works all the time at full capacity. If you decide to run a big SV ship at a constant acceleration of 6 and switch on its shield generator, its firepower starts to converge pretty noticeably to where a non-SV ship would be. They can be taken out. I'm not claiming it's easy, but it's doable.
New versions of Rules 17 and 18; Attack and retreat
17 Attacking systems which have fleets in them
17.1 Philosophy.
The GZG rules cover the tactical aspects of battle, and are written on the assumption that the forces are aware of each other and that at least one side is committed to action. They also assume that the opposing forces have completed their jump into the system and are in a combat formation. The GZG rules DO envisage players jumping straight into combat, but make it very risky. The following rules cover the operational aspects of engagement between jumping into system and moving to tactical engagement.
17.2 All strategic moves must give the destination of the task force and its posture for arrival.
17.2.1. Stand off; fleet will manoeuvre for advantage until it elects to withdraw, is attacked, or changes its orders to attack after assessing the situation
Fleets on Stand Off orders do not attack against either fleets or planetary defences, and do not count as interdicting the system if they are still present at the end of the turn.
17.2.2. Attack; fleet will attack what it finds on arrival; first attacking other fleets on attack orders (attack posture is readily distinguishable from stand off because active sensors are switched on), then other fleets on stand off orders, then planetary defences.
Attack orders give +1 to initiative rolls
17.2.3. Withdraw if contested; fleet will withdraw if any hostile mobile forces are present in the system. If only planetary defences forces are present, a fleet in "withdraw if contested" may remain, and change its orders to attack following recon of the defences. Fleets on Withdraw if Contested bug out as soon as they detect mobile opposition but may pick up some data on what's there.
17.4 If all fleets are on Standoff, each player chooses a fresh tactical posture secretly, repeating as necessary until one way or another the system has no more than one fleet in it. Alternatively, players can leave their fleets in place in standoff mode at the end of the turn. Maybe you'll get reinforcements and the other guy won't. Who knows?
17.5 Once at least one force is committed to attack orders, combat becomes likely. Other players must decide immediately whether they're sticking around or trying to disengage. Check for range; roll 1 d6 and add 6. This gives the distance between task forces in feet. If the distance is too big for both forces to be on table simultaneously, disengagement is automatic. Otherwise forces go on table and disengagement is fought out. If one force is big and slow and the other small and fast, this may be adjudicated quickly without formality.
17.6 Before ships are put on the table, force commanders should make an unambiguous note of formation and speed. Formations can be as dispersed as you like. However, if you left your last system under fire, you must use the speed and formation you had at the moment you hit the FTL button.
17.7 All fleets not disengaged under 17.5 dice for initiative. Highest initiative is assumed to have the drop on the others; note that an attack order makes you more likely to have the initiative. Player with the initiative gets half the difference (rounded down) in the dice rolls to use in making his initial dispositions more useful to him. Anyone rolling a 1 arrives from FTL and has to put up with being in formation 6 inches apart from the moment of arrival. Essentially they've shown up much later than everyone else.
17.8 Relative positions on table. Top of the table (Brian's end, if that helps), is equivalent to top of the campaign map. The bottom is equivalent to the bottom. Task forces enter the table from the side equivalent to the hex side they move through to enter the hex on the campaign map.
17.9 Players with higher initiative will be able to make between zero and two changes in their dispositions. These can be used to change the point of entry on the table (one point per edge segment) the separation between opposed forces (one point per foot in either direction) or to split the formation. No matter how that goes, all fleet begin facing in towards the centre of the table
18 Departing under fire
18.1 The standard rules in Full Thrust for FTL'ing out apply. Executive summary, six inch spacing between ships, no use of manoeuvre drive and no weapons fired during the run-up to departure. The rules say that shields can be left on during this process. The firing up of the FTL drive is apparent during the previous move, and the blink out happens half way through the normal move.
18.2 Your departure takes the place of your normal move in the next strategic turn. This is also the case with recce units sent into a system which elect to leave after looking around. Immediately write down your destination; that's where you're going to be in a week. You arrive at your destination travelling in the same formation, spacing and speed that you had when you left the last hell hole.
18.3 You can try FTL ing while under fire, or you can try to build up enough distance to do it safely. Disengagement is not automatic; there is no real edge to the table, so getting off the table does not get you out of trouble. The first step to disengagement is to get out of weapons range of the enemy. This is considered to be the distance at which the enemy can't get more than one dice on you per working gun or 36 inches, whichever is less. At that point, check relative speed and the thrust of the poorest accelerating ship in each fleet. It should be clear cut whether the separation is going to increase or shrink. If not, roll one d6 each. If the disengager gets higher, he gets away, otherwise the pursuit continues. Plus one on the dice roll to whichever side has the highest acceleration in its poorest accelerating ship.
17.1 Philosophy.
The GZG rules cover the tactical aspects of battle, and are written on the assumption that the forces are aware of each other and that at least one side is committed to action. They also assume that the opposing forces have completed their jump into the system and are in a combat formation. The GZG rules DO envisage players jumping straight into combat, but make it very risky. The following rules cover the operational aspects of engagement between jumping into system and moving to tactical engagement.
17.2 All strategic moves must give the destination of the task force and its posture for arrival.
17.2.1. Stand off; fleet will manoeuvre for advantage until it elects to withdraw, is attacked, or changes its orders to attack after assessing the situation
Fleets on Stand Off orders do not attack against either fleets or planetary defences, and do not count as interdicting the system if they are still present at the end of the turn.
17.2.2. Attack; fleet will attack what it finds on arrival; first attacking other fleets on attack orders (attack posture is readily distinguishable from stand off because active sensors are switched on), then other fleets on stand off orders, then planetary defences.
Attack orders give +1 to initiative rolls
17.2.3. Withdraw if contested; fleet will withdraw if any hostile mobile forces are present in the system. If only planetary defences forces are present, a fleet in "withdraw if contested" may remain, and change its orders to attack following recon of the defences. Fleets on Withdraw if Contested bug out as soon as they detect mobile opposition but may pick up some data on what's there.
17.4 If all fleets are on Standoff, each player chooses a fresh tactical posture secretly, repeating as necessary until one way or another the system has no more than one fleet in it. Alternatively, players can leave their fleets in place in standoff mode at the end of the turn. Maybe you'll get reinforcements and the other guy won't. Who knows?
17.5 Once at least one force is committed to attack orders, combat becomes likely. Other players must decide immediately whether they're sticking around or trying to disengage. Check for range; roll 1 d6 and add 6. This gives the distance between task forces in feet. If the distance is too big for both forces to be on table simultaneously, disengagement is automatic. Otherwise forces go on table and disengagement is fought out. If one force is big and slow and the other small and fast, this may be adjudicated quickly without formality.
17.6 Before ships are put on the table, force commanders should make an unambiguous note of formation and speed. Formations can be as dispersed as you like. However, if you left your last system under fire, you must use the speed and formation you had at the moment you hit the FTL button.
17.7 All fleets not disengaged under 17.5 dice for initiative. Highest initiative is assumed to have the drop on the others; note that an attack order makes you more likely to have the initiative. Player with the initiative gets half the difference (rounded down) in the dice rolls to use in making his initial dispositions more useful to him. Anyone rolling a 1 arrives from FTL and has to put up with being in formation 6 inches apart from the moment of arrival. Essentially they've shown up much later than everyone else.
17.8 Relative positions on table. Top of the table (Brian's end, if that helps), is equivalent to top of the campaign map. The bottom is equivalent to the bottom. Task forces enter the table from the side equivalent to the hex side they move through to enter the hex on the campaign map.
17.9 Players with higher initiative will be able to make between zero and two changes in their dispositions. These can be used to change the point of entry on the table (one point per edge segment) the separation between opposed forces (one point per foot in either direction) or to split the formation. No matter how that goes, all fleet begin facing in towards the centre of the table
18 Departing under fire
18.1 The standard rules in Full Thrust for FTL'ing out apply. Executive summary, six inch spacing between ships, no use of manoeuvre drive and no weapons fired during the run-up to departure. The rules say that shields can be left on during this process. The firing up of the FTL drive is apparent during the previous move, and the blink out happens half way through the normal move.
18.2 Your departure takes the place of your normal move in the next strategic turn. This is also the case with recce units sent into a system which elect to leave after looking around. Immediately write down your destination; that's where you're going to be in a week. You arrive at your destination travelling in the same formation, spacing and speed that you had when you left the last hell hole.
18.3 You can try FTL ing while under fire, or you can try to build up enough distance to do it safely. Disengagement is not automatic; there is no real edge to the table, so getting off the table does not get you out of trouble. The first step to disengagement is to get out of weapons range of the enemy. This is considered to be the distance at which the enemy can't get more than one dice on you per working gun or 36 inches, whichever is less. At that point, check relative speed and the thrust of the poorest accelerating ship in each fleet. It should be clear cut whether the separation is going to increase or shrink. If not, roll one d6 each. If the disengager gets higher, he gets away, otherwise the pursuit continues. Plus one on the dice roll to whichever side has the highest acceleration in its poorest accelerating ship.
The Philosophy of this Blog
The written word is a pesky thing. Misunderstanding abounds whenever people communicate, but the written word throws up special challenges, all of which come down to people reading things without getting any balancing feedback. So they read what they see, and you're not there to fine tune your words to their concerns. If I was talking to you all, I'd be able to see your expressions and your feet shifting and you reaching for heavy objects, and well, I'd change the tone or explain what I really meant, or well, flat out lie. Like people do. Writing stuff for the blog, I don't have the sense of what the eventual readers will be preoccupied with when they finally read my words, and from this, sadness and recrimination can flow.
So it seems like an overdue idea to put down some ground rules about the editorial voice here. Rules is probably too strong a word; it's not as though every post will come with a heading and a sarcasm level warning.
But that said, posts are going to fall into the following rough groups
Rules and rulings; Rules will deal with purely campaign issues. I had thought that the campaign rules would be locked by now, but they're still evolving a little, and I suppose I'm going to be tinkering all the time. Rulings will deal with collisions between the canonical GZG rules and the campaign framework - the GZG rules were primarily written to govern tactical engagements and sometimes it's going to be necessary to add some wording glue to fasten them into the bigger frame. I know I have a tendency to pronounce all this as the word from on high, but in reality I am a kindly tyrant and will listen to anyone who has a better idea. So if a ruling or rule appears which you think is unfair, stupid, unnecessary or directly against something in the GZG rules, email me, put in a comment or raise it with me when you see me.
Cogitation; there are a lot of posts put up which simply think aloud about things. As we play through the games, it strikes me that weapon system X is worth talking through. It might be that weapon system X is your most favourite thing in the world. In which case, your love should be stronger than my scorn. If I find myself thinking aloud about something, it's just my opinion; until I put up a rule, you have nothing to worry about. Your own views could be just as interesting as mine, and that's why there's a commenting system; use it. There's been a tendency for cogitation to shade into ruling; I will be resisting this in future.
Status reports; When something happens, I'm going to try to put a note of it on the blog. This is going to involve reporting on screw-ups, and occasionally pointing out that they WERE screw-ups. Cowboy up, people. I am not going to be mocking you for spite, and I'm not going to be taking sides, but victory goes to the guy who makes the fewest mistakes and how on earth am I going to report on that without mentioning those strokes of anti-genius from which we're all going to learn so much?
Guff; UN press releases, bad jokes and pure whimsy are going to pop up when i have the energy to do them. Disrespectful things will be said about player forces. We're all adults here, so don't make me spell out the obvious.
Finally a word about the peculiar objectives and ruling structures of this campaign and blog.
The campaign proper is a two headed step child, having come out of a semi-drunken confab between John and me earlier in the year. We wanted a structure into which we could fit interesting Full Thrust battles, and we decided to aim for a campaign which could run itself once it was set up - that way both of us would actually be able to play in it. This was a must-have a) so that we could have some fun and b) so that we'd have enough actual players to get a decent dynamic in the game. We figured on a joint umpirate, reckoning that it was unlikely that both of us would be under attack in any given engagement, so we could resolve any arguments using an outsider to any given fight.
The initial rules were written collaboratively, with me doing the initial drafting and John weeding out idiocy. This continues to be my preferred approach to writing the rules; most of the rules and rulings are arrived at collectively, after some measure of discussion between us. There's rather less collectivity when the rule involves an issue that affects John directly, and it should be taken that when I pronounce on something in that area I am doing it after hearing submissions from all parties, or alternatively, from none of you.
However, what goes up on the blog is first and foremost my responsibility; if you have an issue with it, it's my fault not John's, because I do the typing and the posting. And even where John has had an input into a rule, he has little control over how I choose to express the thoughts.
The overarching philosophy of the blog and campaign is that it's supposed to be fun. And it's not fun if people are cranky and out of sorts. So I encourage feedback. If you're annoyed with something I've said, tell me about. If I'm wrong, you have the right to expect me to admit it and redress the balance.
Normal programming will now resume.
At phenomenal expense
Our production will now have a new special guest star
Fresh from sell out engagements in Las Vegas, Monte Carlo and the People's Community Hall, Mombasa, I bring you Frank Walsh, who takes over from Con in the previously quiescent Savasku lands in the middle of the board. It wasn't easy to get Frank on board. I had to send a whole text message. But that's how much I love my players, each and every one of them.
This isn't quite as much of an all done deal as I'd like it to be. Frank is going to have to cook up his forces and I think it's expecting too much of him to be looking to see fully worked out fleets popping up on the coming Monday. But after that we should be able to shake the dynamic up somewhat.
Con will be joining us eventually, I hope. Similar worlds to the ones he's just graciously vacated will magically appear at some edge of the map. Who's going to have new neighbours? It will be a dice roll. Mind you, the way things are going, that still gives a fifty fifty chance that Con and Eddie will be neighbours given the way that Eddie has pretty much spread over three sides of the map.
In entirely unrelated news, there will, as earlier advertised, be newer, prettier, simpler and less controversial rules on LEAVING systems. The entering systems rules will be subjected to a very minor clarification.
At the same time that these are posted, I hope to put up a summary of the current state of play in financial terms, which I need to do to inform Frank of what he's getting into, but which will be interesting for everyone, except whoever happens to have the most money and planets. Traditionally whoever has become the leader of the pack in multiplayer games hates to have this pointed out to people, so I will preface this by saying that it's a terrible burden being stronger than anyone else. Weirdly, leaders never welcome suggestions that the rest of the players lighten this burden, so none of you are to interpret me as suggesting this for a moment.
And as a fitting to cap to all of this, I will have something to say about the pestilence of the age, the Savasku. Specifically, I will be cogitating on whether there's a campaign issue arising from the fact that biomass is cheap as chips compared to everything it mirrors in the non-organic world. I don't expect to make any hard and fast ruling about it, but there's something there i want to try to tease out.
And an availability announcement; I'm going to be in TRIM (dear god have mercy) on Monday 28 May, and you will somehow have to stumble through your evening without me.
Fresh from sell out engagements in Las Vegas, Monte Carlo and the People's Community Hall, Mombasa, I bring you Frank Walsh, who takes over from Con in the previously quiescent Savasku lands in the middle of the board. It wasn't easy to get Frank on board. I had to send a whole text message. But that's how much I love my players, each and every one of them.
This isn't quite as much of an all done deal as I'd like it to be. Frank is going to have to cook up his forces and I think it's expecting too much of him to be looking to see fully worked out fleets popping up on the coming Monday. But after that we should be able to shake the dynamic up somewhat.
Con will be joining us eventually, I hope. Similar worlds to the ones he's just graciously vacated will magically appear at some edge of the map. Who's going to have new neighbours? It will be a dice roll. Mind you, the way things are going, that still gives a fifty fifty chance that Con and Eddie will be neighbours given the way that Eddie has pretty much spread over three sides of the map.
In entirely unrelated news, there will, as earlier advertised, be newer, prettier, simpler and less controversial rules on LEAVING systems. The entering systems rules will be subjected to a very minor clarification.
At the same time that these are posted, I hope to put up a summary of the current state of play in financial terms, which I need to do to inform Frank of what he's getting into, but which will be interesting for everyone, except whoever happens to have the most money and planets. Traditionally whoever has become the leader of the pack in multiplayer games hates to have this pointed out to people, so I will preface this by saying that it's a terrible burden being stronger than anyone else. Weirdly, leaders never welcome suggestions that the rest of the players lighten this burden, so none of you are to interpret me as suggesting this for a moment.
And as a fitting to cap to all of this, I will have something to say about the pestilence of the age, the Savasku. Specifically, I will be cogitating on whether there's a campaign issue arising from the fact that biomass is cheap as chips compared to everything it mirrors in the non-organic world. I don't expect to make any hard and fast ruling about it, but there's something there i want to try to tease out.
And an availability announcement; I'm going to be in TRIM (dear god have mercy) on Monday 28 May, and you will somehow have to stumble through your evening without me.
Developments in Savasku space
Glammed up version may follow, but Con has made contact and is still swamped for the next little while. He's agreed to turn his domains over to someone more active while I set up an area from which he can issue forth spreading fear and terror all around him at some point in the future.
Who takes over the areas is a puzzle. Suggestions are welcome. Frank has first call, but I don't know if he's in a position to take up the ball running like this. I thought about using the area to let people who didn't have a fleet in play have something to play with, but that's going to be a bit of a pain for the theoretical owner....
Who takes over the areas is a puzzle. Suggestions are welcome. Frank has first call, but I don't know if he's in a position to take up the ball running like this. I thought about using the area to let people who didn't have a fleet in play have something to play with, but that's going to be a bit of a pain for the theoretical owner....
Your attention is directed to changes
Made in the posts about Nova Cannons and Cloaking Fields.
Your attention is particularly directed to the last sentence of the post about Cloaking Fields, which is reproduced here for convenience:
In practice, this whole area of the campaign rules will be revisited in detail tomorrow, assuming that there's actually still going to be a campaign.
Your attention is particularly directed to the last sentence of the post about Cloaking Fields, which is reproduced here for convenience:
In practice, this whole area of the campaign rules will be revisited in detail tomorrow, assuming that there's actually still going to be a campaign.
Thursday 17 May 2007
The depressing news about the edge of the table
No more edge of the table. If - for example - a carrier moves itself to a position two feet off the edge of the table, everything else gets moved back up the table as necessary to get the carrier back on. In most cases that should be all that's necessary.
This is driven by a couple of things, but mostly by the campaign imperatives for quiet withdrawals. You're withdrawn in campaign terms only when you FTL out without interference; you don't get to leave the table and say Wey-Hey, you can't catch me now. You're in normal space until you do the FTL thing.
This is driven by a couple of things, but mostly by the campaign imperatives for quiet withdrawals. You're withdrawn in campaign terms only when you FTL out without interference; you don't get to leave the table and say Wey-Hey, you can't catch me now. You're in normal space until you do the FTL thing.
The terrible truth about Cloaking Fields (with edits)
Have you seen the price of those things? Not quite 10% of the ship's mass and costing twice the mass of the ship.
It has been drawn to my attention that Fleet Book 1 halved the price of Cloaking Fields and slightly upped the mass (it was 1 mass for every ten of the ship and with Fleet Book 1, it's 10% of the mass and 10 credits per mass). Still the most expensive system money can buy, mind you.
Because doing the moves after the fact seems more annoying than it should be, we're suggesting that in future the move be plotted out on hex paper. Suitable hexpaper will be provided.
This suggestion is being made because it's easier, not because I think otherwise people would cheat. It actually gives the cloaking player a slight edge over just writing out orders, because he can see the track properly instead of trying to visualise it in his head.
The working assumption in these parts is that mistakes will be made, people will screw up or make faulty assumptions, and that no-one's going to be either perfectly accurate or perfectly good mannered under pressure. It is assumed that no-one's wilfully breaking the rules. If I thought people were cheating, I wouldn't be playing with them in the first place. So please read suggestions with that in your mind.
We like, but will not enforce, the charming notion that people in cloak ought to leave the room.
Because it's funny.
We're wondering about the campaign impact of cloaking devices, because they make disengagement a little too easy; a force equipped with this technology can never be brought to battle on unfavourable terms. Which is really the only way you ever want to bring someone to battle. This could seriously unbalance the campaign by allowing anyone with cloaking devices to swagger around picking only the fights he's guaranteed to win, and we're not immediately sure we know what the counter to it might be.
The tactical impact is kind of two edged. Witness John's ability to chunk out pretty much half his hull mass in fighters while Eddie was cloaked and in no position to do anything about it. You DO forfeit the tactical initiative. On the other hand, what difference does it make if you're not going to fight at all?
There's an unanswered question about cloaking devices and FTL
I have been told that this question is, in fact, answered by the rules.
; I am ruling here and now that you can't have both switched on at the same time.
Handwaving explanations will involve references to the requirement with FTL that you switch off all kinds of other systems and to the slight insanity of going into hyperdrive when you can't see the universe you're leaving. The game explanation is simpler; once you can FTL in and out in cloak, there's not really much left for anyone to do. It's still open to players to say that they're heading off out of sensor range with their cloaking device, which would have the same net effect, but see the next post, which will be about the edge of the table that we're not going to be having any more.
In practice, this whole area of the campaign rules will be revisited in detail tomorrow, assuming that there's actually still going to be a campaign.
It has been drawn to my attention that Fleet Book 1 halved the price of Cloaking Fields and slightly upped the mass (it was 1 mass for every ten of the ship and with Fleet Book 1, it's 10% of the mass and 10 credits per mass). Still the most expensive system money can buy, mind you.
Because doing the moves after the fact seems more annoying than it should be, we're suggesting that in future the move be plotted out on hex paper. Suitable hexpaper will be provided.
This suggestion is being made because it's easier, not because I think otherwise people would cheat. It actually gives the cloaking player a slight edge over just writing out orders, because he can see the track properly instead of trying to visualise it in his head.
The working assumption in these parts is that mistakes will be made, people will screw up or make faulty assumptions, and that no-one's going to be either perfectly accurate or perfectly good mannered under pressure. It is assumed that no-one's wilfully breaking the rules. If I thought people were cheating, I wouldn't be playing with them in the first place. So please read suggestions with that in your mind.
We like, but will not enforce, the charming notion that people in cloak ought to leave the room.
Because it's funny.
We're wondering about the campaign impact of cloaking devices, because they make disengagement a little too easy; a force equipped with this technology can never be brought to battle on unfavourable terms. Which is really the only way you ever want to bring someone to battle. This could seriously unbalance the campaign by allowing anyone with cloaking devices to swagger around picking only the fights he's guaranteed to win, and we're not immediately sure we know what the counter to it might be.
The tactical impact is kind of two edged. Witness John's ability to chunk out pretty much half his hull mass in fighters while Eddie was cloaked and in no position to do anything about it. You DO forfeit the tactical initiative. On the other hand, what difference does it make if you're not going to fight at all?
There's an unanswered question about cloaking devices and FTL
I have been told that this question is, in fact, answered by the rules.
; I am ruling here and now that you can't have both switched on at the same time.
Handwaving explanations will involve references to the requirement with FTL that you switch off all kinds of other systems and to the slight insanity of going into hyperdrive when you can't see the universe you're leaving. The game explanation is simpler; once you can FTL in and out in cloak, there's not really much left for anyone to do. It's still open to players to say that they're heading off out of sensor range with their cloaking device, which would have the same net effect, but see the next post, which will be about the edge of the table that we're not going to be having any more.
In practice, this whole area of the campaign rules will be revisited in detail tomorrow, assuming that there's actually still going to be a campaign.
The awful truth about Nova Cannons (with added edits)
Now that we've seen a shot fired in anger by a Nova Cannon, it's time to set a couple of things straight for their future use.
Because the designers never really intended them to be used seriously, the rules aren't up to the usual standard of clarity. So here's how I see it working in the future:
1. A Nova Cannon firing is pretty much the only thing you do during the turn; no use of the engines, weapons, or even shields. By implication I take that to mean that switching on the cloaking device is also off the agenda; you'll have to wait till next turn to do that.
2. The Nova projectile, annoyingly, sticks around for three rounds. During which time it moves. The first turn is easy enough; the projectile moves 6 inches straight ahead, detonates, and then cuts a swathe two inches wide and 18 inches long; anything even touched by that has a very bad hair day.
3. The conundrum which isn't really addressed by the rules is, what happens during the second and third rounds. The projectile moves in each round, with its zone of death getting bigger, but less dangerous, in each turn. The question is, does it move during the movement (in which case, when?) or during fire. John and I have decided, in the interests of sanity, that it moves during the fire phase. This is primarily to avoid the headache induced by potentially having to work out WHEN a ship might have moved through the path of the projectile if it moved during the movement phase (and thus work out whether it would have been in the path during the exact moment when the template was on that point). So after movement is completed, and before other firing takes place, the projectile does its thing.
Surprise news: I re-read the rules, and the above is actually what they say. I am Boris and I am INVEEEENCIBLE. I'd be even more invincible if I'd seen that the first time I looked at the rules.
Second edit; it ought to be clear to one and all that nothing in this post, or indeed in any other post, is intended to stomp on the Full Thrust rules where these already cover the situation and are clear. The campaign rules are intended to address the campaign structure and where necessary to clear up areas where we've discovered the rules don't quite cover something.
Talking it through over a beer with John, I concluded that a Nova Cannon would make a great weapon in a small ship which had nothing else, but is a complete bust with a large ship, because it really doesn't have the potential to do much damage to an adversary that still has the ability to manoeuvre and in order to use it, you have to switch off every other offensive and defensive system in the ship, which means that to use the Nova Cannon, you have to waste all the other points you put into the ship. From which it follows, why bother putting anything else on the ship in the first place?
It has been pointed out to me, amid much else, that the ship has to weigh at least 40 mass before you're allowed to put a Nova Cannon into it. Where's the fun in that?
The original rules said that a Nova Cannon could only go into a capital ship, and the threshold for a capital ship was 40. This doesn't seem to be changed anywhere else, though the ship design system has changed to the point where the Capital ship distinction no longer really exists the way it used to. And when Capital still meant something a Nova cannon weighed 16 and you could only have 50% of the weight of the ship dedicated to weapons. But this is all detail. And I'm sure it's all wrong anyhow.
Because the designers never really intended them to be used seriously, the rules aren't up to the usual standard of clarity. So here's how I see it working in the future:
1. A Nova Cannon firing is pretty much the only thing you do during the turn; no use of the engines, weapons, or even shields. By implication I take that to mean that switching on the cloaking device is also off the agenda; you'll have to wait till next turn to do that.
2. The Nova projectile, annoyingly, sticks around for three rounds. During which time it moves. The first turn is easy enough; the projectile moves 6 inches straight ahead, detonates, and then cuts a swathe two inches wide and 18 inches long; anything even touched by that has a very bad hair day.
3. The conundrum which isn't really addressed by the rules is, what happens during the second and third rounds. The projectile moves in each round, with its zone of death getting bigger, but less dangerous, in each turn. The question is, does it move during the movement (in which case, when?) or during fire. John and I have decided, in the interests of sanity, that it moves during the fire phase. This is primarily to avoid the headache induced by potentially having to work out WHEN a ship might have moved through the path of the projectile if it moved during the movement phase (and thus work out whether it would have been in the path during the exact moment when the template was on that point). So after movement is completed, and before other firing takes place, the projectile does its thing.
Surprise news: I re-read the rules, and the above is actually what they say. I am Boris and I am INVEEEENCIBLE. I'd be even more invincible if I'd seen that the first time I looked at the rules.
Second edit; it ought to be clear to one and all that nothing in this post, or indeed in any other post, is intended to stomp on the Full Thrust rules where these already cover the situation and are clear. The campaign rules are intended to address the campaign structure and where necessary to clear up areas where we've discovered the rules don't quite cover something.
Talking it through over a beer with John, I concluded that a Nova Cannon would make a great weapon in a small ship which had nothing else, but is a complete bust with a large ship, because it really doesn't have the potential to do much damage to an adversary that still has the ability to manoeuvre and in order to use it, you have to switch off every other offensive and defensive system in the ship, which means that to use the Nova Cannon, you have to waste all the other points you put into the ship. From which it follows, why bother putting anything else on the ship in the first place?
It has been pointed out to me, amid much else, that the ship has to weigh at least 40 mass before you're allowed to put a Nova Cannon into it. Where's the fun in that?
The original rules said that a Nova Cannon could only go into a capital ship, and the threshold for a capital ship was 40. This doesn't seem to be changed anywhere else, though the ship design system has changed to the point where the Capital ship distinction no longer really exists the way it used to. And when Capital still meant something a Nova cannon weighed 16 and you could only have 50% of the weight of the ship dedicated to weapons. But this is all detail. And I'm sure it's all wrong anyhow.
Tuesday 15 May 2007
I'm not going to let you do this
But it's a funny idea
Savasku biomass tankers. You make a ship with no weapons or systems of any importance, and a huge amount of biomass. And then you fly it in behind the main force; when one of the ships in the main force gets low on biomass, the tanker comes in and does an inflight refuelling operation to reload it.
It's nuts, but I don't see how it does any violence to the spirit of the rules.
Nonetheless you're forbidden to try it.
Savasku biomass tankers. You make a ship with no weapons or systems of any importance, and a huge amount of biomass. And then you fly it in behind the main force; when one of the ships in the main force gets low on biomass, the tanker comes in and does an inflight refuelling operation to reload it.
It's nuts, but I don't see how it does any violence to the spirit of the rules.
Nonetheless you're forbidden to try it.
State of play
For brevity's sake:
It's the end of strategic turn 1 of economic turn 2.
Con's Savasku remain quiescent, and there's some restlessness about that.
Eddie and John have clashed in Colin's system at F6. Colin took one horrified look at the forces arrayed against him and decamped. Eddie and John then had a battle of sorts; after an initial exchange of fire, Eddie's forces went cloaked for six turns, while John tried to manoeuvre for position. When Eddie lifted his concealment, he was more or less where he'd begun, though his carrier had fallen back behind the main force so far that it was about two feet off table. John was a little more than two feet in front of him and had spent the intervening period chunking out thirteen groups of fighters. For game purposes what happened next was that John sent all the fighters in against one dreadnaught on the end of Eddie's formation, lost a few to Eddie's limited number of interceptors, and then pressed home the attack through largely ineffective PDS fire, doing a total of 25 points of damage. Which was not quite enough to make Eddie check for systems failure. There was then another exchange of gunfire, with John's four vessels handing out a lot of damage and Eddie's main weapons doing a lot less. Eddie fired the Nova cannon just to see what would happen, and then recloaked to cover his withdrawal.
John dithered for a moment and then decided to attack the system defences, which at 5000 points are probably the strongest in the game. He lost.
Nett result.
Colin has bugged out to unspecified parts. Eddie has bugged out to unspecified parts, nursing heavy hull damage to one of his units. John has bugged out to unspecified parts nursing 500 points of damage and feeling pretty darned sorry for himself. Colin is still in possession of F6.
Other things of note; well, the second phase of the Eddie/John fight featured an aborted dogfight between 13 groups of John's fighters and 12 groups of Eddie's. Eddie got so pulverised that I decided to rewind the turn, partly because of the fact that it was a dogfight meant that no-one could fire PDS into the furball to thin out the Savasku fighters a bit. Eddie was fielding 4 squadrons of heavy interceptors and eight of heavy torpedo fighters, and I think he had felt that his losses would have been more manageable than they were.
It doesn't really work that way. In a dogfight, statistically, normal fighters will lose 4 fighters per squadron; assume that the dice scores are evenly distributed, then the 4 and the 5 will nail one each and the 6 will get another two. Heavy fighters ignore the 4, and so take three casualties. Interceptors do wicked execution; the five and six kill two each, and the three and the four do one each, so statistically an interceptor group will completely wipe out a normal squadron, and nearly wipe out a heavy. On the other hand torpedo fighters will knock out one fighter per squadron engaged; it just doesn't work to use them against other fighters.
Nova cannons; we spent a lot of time trying to figure out when they fire. We have concluded that they fire in the ship fire phase (not in the missile phase) and keep moving in the fire phase (not the movement phase) of the two succeeding turns. When you combine this with the other restrictions, they're not a hugely useful weapon against a target capable of any kind of manoeuvre (though Eddie admitted that he had one because a nova cannon masses less than a B6).
It's the end of strategic turn 1 of economic turn 2.
Con's Savasku remain quiescent, and there's some restlessness about that.
Eddie and John have clashed in Colin's system at F6. Colin took one horrified look at the forces arrayed against him and decamped. Eddie and John then had a battle of sorts; after an initial exchange of fire, Eddie's forces went cloaked for six turns, while John tried to manoeuvre for position. When Eddie lifted his concealment, he was more or less where he'd begun, though his carrier had fallen back behind the main force so far that it was about two feet off table. John was a little more than two feet in front of him and had spent the intervening period chunking out thirteen groups of fighters. For game purposes what happened next was that John sent all the fighters in against one dreadnaught on the end of Eddie's formation, lost a few to Eddie's limited number of interceptors, and then pressed home the attack through largely ineffective PDS fire, doing a total of 25 points of damage. Which was not quite enough to make Eddie check for systems failure. There was then another exchange of gunfire, with John's four vessels handing out a lot of damage and Eddie's main weapons doing a lot less. Eddie fired the Nova cannon just to see what would happen, and then recloaked to cover his withdrawal.
John dithered for a moment and then decided to attack the system defences, which at 5000 points are probably the strongest in the game. He lost.
Nett result.
Colin has bugged out to unspecified parts. Eddie has bugged out to unspecified parts, nursing heavy hull damage to one of his units. John has bugged out to unspecified parts nursing 500 points of damage and feeling pretty darned sorry for himself. Colin is still in possession of F6.
Other things of note; well, the second phase of the Eddie/John fight featured an aborted dogfight between 13 groups of John's fighters and 12 groups of Eddie's. Eddie got so pulverised that I decided to rewind the turn, partly because of the fact that it was a dogfight meant that no-one could fire PDS into the furball to thin out the Savasku fighters a bit. Eddie was fielding 4 squadrons of heavy interceptors and eight of heavy torpedo fighters, and I think he had felt that his losses would have been more manageable than they were.
It doesn't really work that way. In a dogfight, statistically, normal fighters will lose 4 fighters per squadron; assume that the dice scores are evenly distributed, then the 4 and the 5 will nail one each and the 6 will get another two. Heavy fighters ignore the 4, and so take three casualties. Interceptors do wicked execution; the five and six kill two each, and the three and the four do one each, so statistically an interceptor group will completely wipe out a normal squadron, and nearly wipe out a heavy. On the other hand torpedo fighters will knock out one fighter per squadron engaged; it just doesn't work to use them against other fighters.
Nova cannons; we spent a lot of time trying to figure out when they fire. We have concluded that they fire in the ship fire phase (not in the missile phase) and keep moving in the fire phase (not the movement phase) of the two succeeding turns. When you combine this with the other restrictions, they're not a hugely useful weapon against a target capable of any kind of manoeuvre (though Eddie admitted that he had one because a nova cannon masses less than a B6).
Tuesday 8 May 2007
The Campaign Rules Consolidated and revised to 20 May
The Campaign Rules Proper
Full Thrust Campaign
1. Strategic Space
1.1. Hexagon of hexes, 6 hexes on a side.
1.2. Planet present in any given hex on 1-3 on 1d6.
1.3. On a roll of 1, planet is on a “charted route”. Roll 1d6 and charted route points out of that hex side, linking to the nearest world in that direction. If there is no world within four hexes or the stub goes off the edge of the field, roll again. At end of planet generation, all charted route stubs are linked up to create the charted routes through local space.
2. Player worlds
2.1. Each player dices for starting world location in turn.
2.2. Once each player has a starting world, each rolls a d3 and adds 4. This gives the number of additional worlds. These worlds are assigned sequentially - each player in turn chooses a world which they already own, and rolls one d6. The nearest unoccupied world in that direction is added to their empire.
2.3. This process continues until all players have claimed all additional worlds. Any left over are neutral and can be squabbled over. Neutral worlds can be attacked all out, or scouted by single light elements, which will allow the scouting player to find out the local level of development/likely opposition without risk. Because this is not a game with a neutral umpire, scouting reveals the worth of a system to all players. Any other approach was either too much trouble or involved too much trust.
3. Player world income
3.1. Income is in ship construction points, because that’s all it’s going to be used for, although the decision can be justified by the “fact” that the FT rules actually equated construction points to megacredits.
3.2. Income is 3d5 x10
4. Neutral world income
4.1. On 1-2 the world is unsettled - no income; on 3-4 2d6 x 10; and on 5-6 3d6 x 10.
4.2. This roll will only be made when a player attacks the world or scouts it.
5. Turns
5.1. One strategic turn is a week. A single jump takes one strategic turn.
5.2. 6 strategic turns is an economic turn. Each economic turn, each world under your control generates the indicated income.
5.3. The campaign is envisaged to have two speeds; when it's in the foreground of attention for the club, it should move at a rate of at least one economic turn per Monday evening. At other times, it should move at a rate of one strategic turn per Monday evening.
6. Starting forces
6.1. Starting capital for military spending is 10 x total planetary income. Up to 4000 can be spent on ships (Your citizens won’t stand for reckless military capital spending). This is sufficient to buy 40 standard destroyers, 20 light cruisers, 10 battlecruisers or 6 capital ships.
6.2. Remainder can be used to
6.2.1. buy spare parts in advance. Pre-positioned spares cost 75% of the normal cost of installed systems but must be pre-positioned on a specified world at the beginning of the economic turn in which they’re acquired. It is not necessary to specify what kinds of parts are pre-positioned; in effect you have spent the money on setting up a naval base. This can be replenished from income, but only at locations specified at the start, only to the levels set at the start, and replenishments only become available in the following economic turn.
6.2.2. or spent on planetary defences (for the effect of this spending, see below, undefended worlds). Any points spent here are added to the system's Inherent Defence Points. Because this has a multiplier effect, this is a one-off expenditure which can only be done during set up.
6.2.3. or simply kept as reserve cash.
6.3 Loose cash can be spent on whatever you choose from the beginning of economic turn 2. (When it can be assumed that everyone will be able to claim to their people that they're in a just war). There is no credit, so if you don't have enough cash to do repairs, they don't happen. It's entirely up to the players to decide whether they want to use their spare money to buy more ships or to have cash on hand to make major repairs.
7. Maintenance
7.1. Fleet maintenance costs 10% of construction cost of currently deployed units per economic turn. This covers fuel, salaries and consumables. Expended ordnance (Missiles, SMPs, MKPs, Kravak scatterguns and what have you) costs over and above this at 50% of the ordnance build price. Ships obtained at a discount still incur maintenance costs based on the full list price.
7.2. Players may elect to reduce this spend.
7.3. Fleets constructed to save money can be maintained for 7.5% of their construction cost. To meet this criterion, all ships in each size class must be identical, there can be no more than five size classes in the entire navy, and all task groups must be structured on similar lines. Size classes are the standard FT2 codes like DD CL CH and so on. In essence, there can be only five kinds of ship in the entire fleet.
7.4. Players can opt to cut fleet maintenance to 5% but will make all damage checks at one level worse than normal.
8. Movement
8.1. It takes on jump to enter an empty hex from any other hex. It takes one jump to move between any two worlds not more than two hexes apart (ie, you can jump over an intervening hex between two systems). (This simulates the difference between travelling between known neighboring worlds and moving through uncharted empty space. Actually it just makes it easier to move around as long as you don't mind getting in a fight, but a handwaving explanation is always needed for seeing off quibblers)
8.2. Travel along a charted route takes one week between any two points on the route unless interdicted by hostile forces occupying an intermediate point on the route.
Charted routes work through a combination of the natural curvature of local space and infrastructure in the systems they link. So new routes are unlikely to appear and the planetary governments along the routes have the ability to cut the power to the infrastructure and stop people travelling through. Interdicting fleets also have the ability to disrupt routes by shooting up the infrastructure (any damage is superficial; handwaving explanations on request, the real reason is that I can't be bothered writing yet another set of rules for replacing things you can't afford to fix).
Fleets actually in FTL mode are inaccessible both to fleets in normal space and to other ships using FTL.
A fleet in FTL mode using a charted route which is interdicted for any reason will stop at the last friendly system before the blockage.
Fleets arriving in system using a charted route have a plus 1 on their initiative roll (finally, some point to those routes between neighboring systems!)
Interdiction happens because an attack on a system has failed to result in a decisive outcome one way or the other. It follows that in order to interdict a system, the interdicting player must have had enough strength to mount an attack in the first place. A task force smaller than that is driven off by the planetary defences. A task force smaller than that which quibbles about this rule is blown to bits. By the S'''''wat, if necessary.
9. Conquest
9.1. Defeating an opposing fleet in a planetary system will lead to immediate combat with system defences. See below
9.2. So that there can be no argument about this later, a fleet counts as defeated if it is destroyed, is driven off or elects to leave the system.
9.3. Conquering a system makes no difference to the money coming out of it; rationalise this by imagining that the conquerors are less scrupulous than the original owners when it comes to grinding the peasantry down.
10. Attacking system defences
10.1. Where there is no opposing fleet present, the incoming player must defeat the local system defences.
10.2. As a convenient abstraction, Inherent Defence Points are assumed to be identical to the planetary income. Multiply Inherent Defence Points by 10 and compare with the points value of the incoming fleet. The incoming fleet gets +1 on the combat dice roll for every multiple of the defence points value it has; so if the incoming fleet has three times as many points as planetary defences have, the invaders get +2. The invading fleet gets a further +1 if it has defeated a defending fleet prior to the attack on the system defences. The fleet gets -1 if it has fewer points than the system defences. A fleet must have at least 50% of the strength of the system defences to mount an attack at all. (Because otherwise you would all just send in one scout ship after another hoping to roll a 6 eventually. And that would be wrong.)
10.3. Roll 1 d6.
10.4. On a natural or modified 6, the planetary defences surrender.
10.5. The planetary defences are assumed to take damage as a result. Roll 1 d5; on a 2, they are completely destroyed. On a 3, Inherent Defence Points are reduced to one third. On a 4, IDPs are reduced to two thirds. On a 5, the defences are effectively intact. Replacing planetary defences is expensive and time consuming. It will cost five times the IDP to replace losses and take one economic turn per third of the defences being replaced.
10.6. On 2-5, the system is interdicted for that strategic turn, with both sides tied up in indecisive skirmishing. Any planet which is interdicted at the beginning of an economic turn provides no income. This is the only way in which a system can be interdicted; if your force is too weak to engage the planetary defences, or you choose not to engage them, then you're obviously not aggressive enough to intimidate the private sector.
10.7. On a 1, the incoming fleet is repulsed taking damage equivalent to the planetary income. This damage need not be specifically allocated unless the incoming fleet finds itself in combat with another force before the next economic turn.
10.8. If the player finds himself in combat before he repairs the damage or elects not to repair all damage in the next economic turn (in other words, if it becomes necessary to evaluate damage before it can be deemed to be repaired), damage is allocated simply by dividing the Inherent Defence Points of the repulsing system by three; this number of hull boxes is knocked off the repulsed fleet, spread evenly over the participating ships. Where this results in a complete row of hull boxes being stripped out, system checks follow. This may well result in a much bigger repair bill than expected. Serve you right for scrimping and thinking that was just a minor leak in the intercooler.
11. Repair
11.1. Damage can only be repaired in a system from which you have drawn income this economic turn and which you still hold. For avoidance of doubt, this means that if you conquer a system just before an economic turn should start and remain there, you can draw the income and carry out repairs in the first strategic turn of the new economic turn. It's unfair, but it's equally unfair to everyone and it encourages people to attack, which is usually considered to be a good thing.
11.2. The general rule is that repair to combat damaged systems is charged at the same price as the original construction of the system.
11.3. Exceptions to the general rule on costs
11.3.1. Pre-positioned parts have already been paid for and are installed for free by your engineering staff.
11.3.2. Parts can be stripped from identical ships in the same task force and installed for 10% of the normal cost.
11.3.3. Parts can be stripped from other ships (including captured enemy vessels) and installed for 20% of the normal cost; but these parts will always test for damage at one level worse than original specification parts. To forestall quibbling, organic vessels are assumed to have individual DNA type signatures and will have rejection issues with bits grafted on from other vessels. Captured parts can be used only if they are functionally identical to the part being replaced. For avoidance of doubt, this expressly bars installing alien weapon systems in human vessels (and vice versa) and installing weapon types other than those originally installed in the weapon station.
11.3.4. Combat damaged systems which were repaired during combat have been jury-rigged and at least have to be recalibrated; during refitting roll 1 d6 for any such system. On a 1-3, the part has passed inspection. On 4-6 it needs to be completely replaced.
So as to forestall arguments, combat repair attempts end when you a) FTL out of the system or b) send in the marines to mop up after your successful action. Scotty has to go and have a lie down, and the deputy engineers work to rule without his inspiring leadership.
Because otherwise you would claim that you'd spent a whole week making combat repair rolls as you travelled around. I shouldn't have to explain that I'm not remotely patient enough to put up with that.
11.4. Minor repairs take a week. Major repairs take two weeks. Major repairs involve any weapon or drive system with a number higher than 3 (Including wave guns, nova cannon and anything generally weird), all core systems, the FTL drive, simultaneous repair to more than one hangar bay and level two shielding or any system equivalent to that Doubling the speed of repair doubles the cost.
11.5. Crew replacement was an issue but was considered not to be worth the bookkeeping.
Damaged Savasku biomass costs 2 pts to replace, just like it cost to build in the first place.
Expended biomass costs 1 pt to replace, on the grounds that it's more similar to expended munitions in other people's ships.
a simple piece of news on repair costs; the repair costs of core systems were never made clear; it's one third of the cost of the keel of the ship, in the unlikely event that you ever find yourself in the position of repairing one.
12. Capture
12.1. Anything left drifting in a system after a battle is considered to be captured by the victorious fleet. Boarding is not covered well by the rules and is not worth the extra trouble to worry about.
12.2. Captured vessels can be rebuilt, stripped or sold on.
12.2.1. Rebuilding is only practical where at least two rows of hull boxes remain intact and and at least three of the five major systems (three core services, main drive and FTL drive) have not been completely knocked out. Rebuilding is done at normal costs. If the vessel is not a type already in service with your fleet, add 20% to repair costs.
12.2.2. Useful parts can be stripped out and reused subject to the repair rules above. What is left is effectively useless and has no resale value
12.2.3. The capture can be sold on as is to unscrupulous scrap dealers for 10% of construction cost per intact row of hull boxes.
13. Construction
13.1. Ships can be built in game time at a rate of 100 pts per week per keel laid down. Alternatively, they can be bought on the open market at the beginning of each economic turn, but only from the designs in the Fleet Books or on designated websites. Any one navy can be designated as an ally, and their designs are available at 20% off. No-one can be allied in this sense outside their species (you would need alien crews to operate the ships, and alien crews are not available on the open market).
13.2 When construction begins, the umpire should be told the design mass of the ship and the vessel type. As construction continues, the umpire should be notified of what's been added on. Subsequent changes to construction will be billed under Rule 16; essentially this means that if you've half built a heavy cruiser, it's probably going to cost you quite a bit more to change it at the last minute into an escort carrier.
14. Abstracted battles
14.1. To speed things up, battles between task forces can be carried out in any manner that the engaged parties decide on. It may prove convenient to run a battle on hex paper with counters in the margins of something else. Players are encouraged to be imaginative. (But see 13, below).
15. Task groups and pre-battle recce
15.1. Strategic movement is by task group. Each task group gets one counter on the strategic map. A task group can be as many or as few ships as the player wishes. When a player has two or more task groups together in the same location, he may re-organise freely. Task groups may be split up at any time. Players are required to maintain a record of what each counter represents.
15.2. Each fleet gets one dummy counter per capital unit (BB, SDN, CVA, CVH, CVL). All other counters used for strategic movement must represent at least one ship. (to forestall the inevitable complaints - fleets with a lot of capital units will have relatively few light units to use for recce and masking; fleets with few capital units will have LOTS of light units).
15.3. The composition of a task group will not be known to opponents until after it is contacted. The rules in FT2 will be used to govern scouting and spotting of the enemy. Read them, and consider the use of weasel boats and decoys at appropriate costs.
15.4. Movement each turn is pre-plotted and simultaneous. In the case of arguments over legality of movement, whichever umpire is not involved will decide the issue. Email move notifications, when necessary should be sent to whichever umpire is less likely to be affected by the move - this way the umpire's knowledge of the move is less likely to have any impact on his own plans.
16. Weird races and weirder weapons
16.1. Anything listed in the Full Thrust rule book, in either of the two fleet books, More Thrust or the GZG website (at present this covers only two UNSC weapon systems) is considered standard. Any ship designed using only these sources and utilising the technology of only one race is considered standard. Standard parts and ships can be repaired anywhere.
16.2. Everything else is considered non-standard, and can be used only with the prior approval of the umpires at game start and after notification to all other players. Players may, for the purpose of subterfuge, clear and notify technologies they do not intend to use, but should be mindful that the umpires have limited patience and will simply disallow requests of all kinds once they start to feel put upon. Approval is likely in the case of the following designs already documented on the web: UNSC, IJN, New Israel, Arab League, OUDF. On a case by case basis, some of these ship designs may be deemed standard when used by that player; this will only happen if the entire fleet is constructed in that design idiom. Non-standard weapons will never be deemed to be standard, not least because very few non-standard weapons have been fully play-tested to the stage where points values are reliable. A list of links to (probably) acceptable websites is appended to these rules.
16.3. Non-standard ships and equipment can be repaired or replaced only through pre-positioned stocks or at your capital. Anything not indigenous to the technology used in the majority of the fleet construction costs 20% more to install (and thus consequently to repair) and can only be repaired or replaced through pre-positioned stocks or at your capital. Thus, players choosing (for example) to install K-guns in otherwise human fleets will be penalised for doing so.
Oceanic Union Defence Forces and the Islamic Federation
Both fleets use modular weapons fits which can readily be swapped out. These should be costed as ship construction, not spare parts. So they count towards your 4000 pt cap on initial ship construction. They do not attract maintenance costs while not in use. They have to be placed in pre-designated locations. It takes a week to swap in a module. You can't swap two modules into a ship at the same time. Where the simplified fleet rule for maintenance is being used, the benefit is not suspended simply because module swaps have led to more than five distinct ship types, so as long as no more than five hull designs are being used at any one time.
Ships in your fleet can be refitted with other weapon systems at your option. Where the new system is of a similar type and of identical mass, this is treated as a repair and billed accordingly. Where the system is a different type or a different mass, add 20% to cost to take account of the structural changes required. Beams, grasers, pulse torpedo launchers and PDS systems are similar types of weapon to each other. Missile launchers are similar to missile racks. And so on. Hangars aren't similar to anything else, but uniquely can simply be replaced with something else (a single something else) at repair cost (not vice versa). Hull boxes are not similar to anything else, for those of you thinking about weakening your hulls to add more systems.
Refitting can never exceed the design weight of the ship. The design weight of the ship is chosen at the point when it is first constructed and cannot be exceeded for any reason subsequently.
It is open to constructors to make the design weight bigger than the actual weight at launch; but drives must be bought for the design weight of the ship, and deliver that performance. For clarity, that means that you can make a ship with a design weight of 100 and and an actual weight of 80; the FTL drive must weigh 10, and the M-drive will weigh 5 for every point of thrust you want to have. If that weight of M-drive would give the ACTUAL build weight of the ship a higher Thrust, this can optionally be used in combat, but the drive will be subjected to a system check whenever it is used at that Thrust.
Logistics ships
Players can construct freighters from any available capital in order to move pre-positioned parts or other useful things (like fighters) from one place to another. Such ships do not count against the initial 4000 pt cap on military vessel construction, as long as they are not armed with anything more than 1 PDS or class 1 beam per 10 hull boxes.
Freighters can be as stupidly big as you choose. If they're big enough, they can carry actual starships. Mind you, if someone does this, they've either won or they're about to lose.
Subsequent conversion of cargo spaces into fighter hangers or weapons racks costs 20% more than normal (because the engines cannae take it without extra strengthening brackets).
Freighters don't manoeuvre better when they're empty than when they're full. It wouldn't be economical.
17 Attacking systems which have fleets in them
17.1 Philosophy.
The GZG rules cover the tactical aspects of battle, and are written on the assumption that the forces are aware of each other and that at least one side is committed to action. They also assume that the opposing forces have completed their jump into the system and are in a combat formation. The GZG rules DO envisage players jumping straight into combat, but make it very risky. The following rules cover the operational aspects of engagement between jumping into system and moving to tactical engagement.
17.2 All strategic moves must give the destination of the task force and its posture for arrival.
17.2.1. Stand off; fleet will manoeuvre for advantage until it elects to withdraw, is attacked, or changes its orders to attack after assessing the situation
Fleets on Stand Off orders do not attack against either fleets or planetary defences, and do not count as interdicting the system if they are still present at the end of the turn.
17.2.2. Attack; fleet will attack what it finds on arrival; first attacking other fleets on attack orders (attack posture is readily distinguishable from stand off because active sensors are switched on), then other fleets on stand off orders, then planetary defences.
Attack orders give +1 to initiative rolls
17.2.3. Withdraw if contested; fleet will withdraw if any hostile mobile forces are present in the system. If only planetary defences forces are present, a fleet in "withdraw if contested" may remain, and change its orders to attack following recon of the defences. Fleets on Withdraw if Contested bug out as soon as they detect mobile opposition but may pick up some data on what's there.
17.4 If all fleets are on Standoff, each player chooses a fresh tactical posture secretly, repeating as necessary until one way or another the system has no more than one fleet in it. Alternatively, players can leave their fleets in place in standoff mode at the end of the turn. Maybe you'll get reinforcements and the other guy won't. Who knows?
17.5 Once at least one force is committed to attack orders, combat becomes likely. Other players must decide immediately whether they're sticking around or trying to disengage. Check for range; roll 1 d6 and add 6. This gives the distance between task forces in feet. If the distance is too big for both forces to be on table simultaneously, disengagement is automatic. Otherwise forces go on table and disengagement is fought out. If one force is big and slow and the other small and fast, this may be adjudicated quickly without formality.
17.6 Before ships are put on the table, force commanders should make an unambiguous note of formation and speed. Formations can be as dispersed as you like. However, if you left your last system under fire, you must use the speed and formation you had at the moment you hit the FTL button.
17.7 All fleets not disengaged under 17.5 dice for initiative. Highest initiative is assumed to have the drop on the others; note that an attack order makes you more likely to have the initiative. Player with the initiative gets half the difference (rounded down) in the dice rolls to use in making his initial dispositions more useful to him. Anyone rolling a 1 arrives from FTL and has to put up with being in formation 6 inches apart from the moment of arrival. Essentially they've shown up much later than everyone else.
17.8 Relative positions on table. Top of the table (Brian's end, if that helps), is equivalent to top of the campaign map. The bottom is equivalent to the bottom. Task forces enter the table from the side equivalent to the hex side they move through to enter the hex on the campaign map.
17.9 Players with higher initiative will be able to make between zero and two changes in their dispositions. These can be used to change the point of entry on the table (one point per edge segment) the separation between opposed forces (one point per foot in either direction) or to split the formation. No matter how that goes, all fleet begin facing in towards the centre of the table
18 Departing under fire
18.1 The standard rules in Full Thrust for FTL'ing out apply. Executive summary, six inch spacing between ships, no use of manoeuvre drive and no weapons fired during the run-up to departure. The rules say that shields can be left on during this process. The firing up of the FTL drive is apparent during the previous move, and the blink out happens half way through the normal move.
18.2 Your departure takes the place of your normal move in the next strategic turn. This is also the case with recce units sent into a system which elect to leave after looking around. Immediately write down your destination; that's where you're going to be in a week. You arrive at your destination travelling in the same formation, spacing and speed that you had when you left the last hell hole.
18.3 You can try FTL ing while under fire, or you can try to build up enough distance to do it safely. Disengagement is not automatic; there is no real edge to the table, so getting off the table does not get you out of trouble. The first step to disengagement is to get out of weapons range of the enemy. This is considered to be the distance at which the enemy can't get more than one dice on you per working gun or 36 inches, whichever is less. At that point, check relative speed and the thrust of the poorest accelerating ship in each fleet. It should be clear cut whether the separation is going to increase or shrink. If not, roll one d6 each. If the disengager gets higher, he gets away, otherwise the pursuit continues. Plus one on the dice roll to whichever side has the highest acceleration in its poorest accelerating ship.
Full Thrust Campaign
1. Strategic Space
1.1. Hexagon of hexes, 6 hexes on a side.
1.2. Planet present in any given hex on 1-3 on 1d6.
1.3. On a roll of 1, planet is on a “charted route”. Roll 1d6 and charted route points out of that hex side, linking to the nearest world in that direction. If there is no world within four hexes or the stub goes off the edge of the field, roll again. At end of planet generation, all charted route stubs are linked up to create the charted routes through local space.
2. Player worlds
2.1. Each player dices for starting world location in turn.
2.2. Once each player has a starting world, each rolls a d3 and adds 4. This gives the number of additional worlds. These worlds are assigned sequentially - each player in turn chooses a world which they already own, and rolls one d6. The nearest unoccupied world in that direction is added to their empire.
2.3. This process continues until all players have claimed all additional worlds. Any left over are neutral and can be squabbled over. Neutral worlds can be attacked all out, or scouted by single light elements, which will allow the scouting player to find out the local level of development/likely opposition without risk. Because this is not a game with a neutral umpire, scouting reveals the worth of a system to all players. Any other approach was either too much trouble or involved too much trust.
3. Player world income
3.1. Income is in ship construction points, because that’s all it’s going to be used for, although the decision can be justified by the “fact” that the FT rules actually equated construction points to megacredits.
3.2. Income is 3d5 x10
4. Neutral world income
4.1. On 1-2 the world is unsettled - no income; on 3-4 2d6 x 10; and on 5-6 3d6 x 10.
4.2. This roll will only be made when a player attacks the world or scouts it.
5. Turns
5.1. One strategic turn is a week. A single jump takes one strategic turn.
5.2. 6 strategic turns is an economic turn. Each economic turn, each world under your control generates the indicated income.
5.3. The campaign is envisaged to have two speeds; when it's in the foreground of attention for the club, it should move at a rate of at least one economic turn per Monday evening. At other times, it should move at a rate of one strategic turn per Monday evening.
6. Starting forces
6.1. Starting capital for military spending is 10 x total planetary income. Up to 4000 can be spent on ships (Your citizens won’t stand for reckless military capital spending). This is sufficient to buy 40 standard destroyers, 20 light cruisers, 10 battlecruisers or 6 capital ships.
6.2. Remainder can be used to
6.2.1. buy spare parts in advance. Pre-positioned spares cost 75% of the normal cost of installed systems but must be pre-positioned on a specified world at the beginning of the economic turn in which they’re acquired. It is not necessary to specify what kinds of parts are pre-positioned; in effect you have spent the money on setting up a naval base. This can be replenished from income, but only at locations specified at the start, only to the levels set at the start, and replenishments only become available in the following economic turn.
6.2.2. or spent on planetary defences (for the effect of this spending, see below, undefended worlds). Any points spent here are added to the system's Inherent Defence Points. Because this has a multiplier effect, this is a one-off expenditure which can only be done during set up.
6.2.3. or simply kept as reserve cash.
6.3 Loose cash can be spent on whatever you choose from the beginning of economic turn 2. (When it can be assumed that everyone will be able to claim to their people that they're in a just war). There is no credit, so if you don't have enough cash to do repairs, they don't happen. It's entirely up to the players to decide whether they want to use their spare money to buy more ships or to have cash on hand to make major repairs.
7. Maintenance
7.1. Fleet maintenance costs 10% of construction cost of currently deployed units per economic turn. This covers fuel, salaries and consumables. Expended ordnance (Missiles, SMPs, MKPs, Kravak scatterguns and what have you) costs over and above this at 50% of the ordnance build price. Ships obtained at a discount still incur maintenance costs based on the full list price.
7.2. Players may elect to reduce this spend.
7.3. Fleets constructed to save money can be maintained for 7.5% of their construction cost. To meet this criterion, all ships in each size class must be identical, there can be no more than five size classes in the entire navy, and all task groups must be structured on similar lines. Size classes are the standard FT2 codes like DD CL CH and so on. In essence, there can be only five kinds of ship in the entire fleet.
7.4. Players can opt to cut fleet maintenance to 5% but will make all damage checks at one level worse than normal.
8. Movement
8.1. It takes on jump to enter an empty hex from any other hex. It takes one jump to move between any two worlds not more than two hexes apart (ie, you can jump over an intervening hex between two systems). (This simulates the difference between travelling between known neighboring worlds and moving through uncharted empty space. Actually it just makes it easier to move around as long as you don't mind getting in a fight, but a handwaving explanation is always needed for seeing off quibblers)
8.2. Travel along a charted route takes one week between any two points on the route unless interdicted by hostile forces occupying an intermediate point on the route.
Charted routes work through a combination of the natural curvature of local space and infrastructure in the systems they link. So new routes are unlikely to appear and the planetary governments along the routes have the ability to cut the power to the infrastructure and stop people travelling through. Interdicting fleets also have the ability to disrupt routes by shooting up the infrastructure (any damage is superficial; handwaving explanations on request, the real reason is that I can't be bothered writing yet another set of rules for replacing things you can't afford to fix).
Fleets actually in FTL mode are inaccessible both to fleets in normal space and to other ships using FTL.
A fleet in FTL mode using a charted route which is interdicted for any reason will stop at the last friendly system before the blockage.
Fleets arriving in system using a charted route have a plus 1 on their initiative roll (finally, some point to those routes between neighboring systems!)
Interdiction happens because an attack on a system has failed to result in a decisive outcome one way or the other. It follows that in order to interdict a system, the interdicting player must have had enough strength to mount an attack in the first place. A task force smaller than that is driven off by the planetary defences. A task force smaller than that which quibbles about this rule is blown to bits. By the S'''''wat, if necessary.
9. Conquest
9.1. Defeating an opposing fleet in a planetary system will lead to immediate combat with system defences. See below
9.2. So that there can be no argument about this later, a fleet counts as defeated if it is destroyed, is driven off or elects to leave the system.
9.3. Conquering a system makes no difference to the money coming out of it; rationalise this by imagining that the conquerors are less scrupulous than the original owners when it comes to grinding the peasantry down.
10. Attacking system defences
10.1. Where there is no opposing fleet present, the incoming player must defeat the local system defences.
10.2. As a convenient abstraction, Inherent Defence Points are assumed to be identical to the planetary income. Multiply Inherent Defence Points by 10 and compare with the points value of the incoming fleet. The incoming fleet gets +1 on the combat dice roll for every multiple of the defence points value it has; so if the incoming fleet has three times as many points as planetary defences have, the invaders get +2. The invading fleet gets a further +1 if it has defeated a defending fleet prior to the attack on the system defences. The fleet gets -1 if it has fewer points than the system defences. A fleet must have at least 50% of the strength of the system defences to mount an attack at all. (Because otherwise you would all just send in one scout ship after another hoping to roll a 6 eventually. And that would be wrong.)
10.3. Roll 1 d6.
10.4. On a natural or modified 6, the planetary defences surrender.
10.5. The planetary defences are assumed to take damage as a result. Roll 1 d5; on a 2, they are completely destroyed. On a 3, Inherent Defence Points are reduced to one third. On a 4, IDPs are reduced to two thirds. On a 5, the defences are effectively intact. Replacing planetary defences is expensive and time consuming. It will cost five times the IDP to replace losses and take one economic turn per third of the defences being replaced.
10.6. On 2-5, the system is interdicted for that strategic turn, with both sides tied up in indecisive skirmishing. Any planet which is interdicted at the beginning of an economic turn provides no income. This is the only way in which a system can be interdicted; if your force is too weak to engage the planetary defences, or you choose not to engage them, then you're obviously not aggressive enough to intimidate the private sector.
10.7. On a 1, the incoming fleet is repulsed taking damage equivalent to the planetary income. This damage need not be specifically allocated unless the incoming fleet finds itself in combat with another force before the next economic turn.
10.8. If the player finds himself in combat before he repairs the damage or elects not to repair all damage in the next economic turn (in other words, if it becomes necessary to evaluate damage before it can be deemed to be repaired), damage is allocated simply by dividing the Inherent Defence Points of the repulsing system by three; this number of hull boxes is knocked off the repulsed fleet, spread evenly over the participating ships. Where this results in a complete row of hull boxes being stripped out, system checks follow. This may well result in a much bigger repair bill than expected. Serve you right for scrimping and thinking that was just a minor leak in the intercooler.
11. Repair
11.1. Damage can only be repaired in a system from which you have drawn income this economic turn and which you still hold. For avoidance of doubt, this means that if you conquer a system just before an economic turn should start and remain there, you can draw the income and carry out repairs in the first strategic turn of the new economic turn. It's unfair, but it's equally unfair to everyone and it encourages people to attack, which is usually considered to be a good thing.
11.2. The general rule is that repair to combat damaged systems is charged at the same price as the original construction of the system.
11.3. Exceptions to the general rule on costs
11.3.1. Pre-positioned parts have already been paid for and are installed for free by your engineering staff.
11.3.2. Parts can be stripped from identical ships in the same task force and installed for 10% of the normal cost.
11.3.3. Parts can be stripped from other ships (including captured enemy vessels) and installed for 20% of the normal cost; but these parts will always test for damage at one level worse than original specification parts. To forestall quibbling, organic vessels are assumed to have individual DNA type signatures and will have rejection issues with bits grafted on from other vessels. Captured parts can be used only if they are functionally identical to the part being replaced. For avoidance of doubt, this expressly bars installing alien weapon systems in human vessels (and vice versa) and installing weapon types other than those originally installed in the weapon station.
11.3.4. Combat damaged systems which were repaired during combat have been jury-rigged and at least have to be recalibrated; during refitting roll 1 d6 for any such system. On a 1-3, the part has passed inspection. On 4-6 it needs to be completely replaced.
So as to forestall arguments, combat repair attempts end when you a) FTL out of the system or b) send in the marines to mop up after your successful action. Scotty has to go and have a lie down, and the deputy engineers work to rule without his inspiring leadership.
Because otherwise you would claim that you'd spent a whole week making combat repair rolls as you travelled around. I shouldn't have to explain that I'm not remotely patient enough to put up with that.
11.4. Minor repairs take a week. Major repairs take two weeks. Major repairs involve any weapon or drive system with a number higher than 3 (Including wave guns, nova cannon and anything generally weird), all core systems, the FTL drive, simultaneous repair to more than one hangar bay and level two shielding or any system equivalent to that Doubling the speed of repair doubles the cost.
11.5. Crew replacement was an issue but was considered not to be worth the bookkeeping.
Damaged Savasku biomass costs 2 pts to replace, just like it cost to build in the first place.
Expended biomass costs 1 pt to replace, on the grounds that it's more similar to expended munitions in other people's ships.
a simple piece of news on repair costs; the repair costs of core systems were never made clear; it's one third of the cost of the keel of the ship, in the unlikely event that you ever find yourself in the position of repairing one.
12. Capture
12.1. Anything left drifting in a system after a battle is considered to be captured by the victorious fleet. Boarding is not covered well by the rules and is not worth the extra trouble to worry about.
12.2. Captured vessels can be rebuilt, stripped or sold on.
12.2.1. Rebuilding is only practical where at least two rows of hull boxes remain intact and and at least three of the five major systems (three core services, main drive and FTL drive) have not been completely knocked out. Rebuilding is done at normal costs. If the vessel is not a type already in service with your fleet, add 20% to repair costs.
12.2.2. Useful parts can be stripped out and reused subject to the repair rules above. What is left is effectively useless and has no resale value
12.2.3. The capture can be sold on as is to unscrupulous scrap dealers for 10% of construction cost per intact row of hull boxes.
13. Construction
13.1. Ships can be built in game time at a rate of 100 pts per week per keel laid down. Alternatively, they can be bought on the open market at the beginning of each economic turn, but only from the designs in the Fleet Books or on designated websites. Any one navy can be designated as an ally, and their designs are available at 20% off. No-one can be allied in this sense outside their species (you would need alien crews to operate the ships, and alien crews are not available on the open market).
13.2 When construction begins, the umpire should be told the design mass of the ship and the vessel type. As construction continues, the umpire should be notified of what's been added on. Subsequent changes to construction will be billed under Rule 16; essentially this means that if you've half built a heavy cruiser, it's probably going to cost you quite a bit more to change it at the last minute into an escort carrier.
14. Abstracted battles
14.1. To speed things up, battles between task forces can be carried out in any manner that the engaged parties decide on. It may prove convenient to run a battle on hex paper with counters in the margins of something else. Players are encouraged to be imaginative. (But see 13, below).
15. Task groups and pre-battle recce
15.1. Strategic movement is by task group. Each task group gets one counter on the strategic map. A task group can be as many or as few ships as the player wishes. When a player has two or more task groups together in the same location, he may re-organise freely. Task groups may be split up at any time. Players are required to maintain a record of what each counter represents.
15.2. Each fleet gets one dummy counter per capital unit (BB, SDN, CVA, CVH, CVL). All other counters used for strategic movement must represent at least one ship. (to forestall the inevitable complaints - fleets with a lot of capital units will have relatively few light units to use for recce and masking; fleets with few capital units will have LOTS of light units).
15.3. The composition of a task group will not be known to opponents until after it is contacted. The rules in FT2 will be used to govern scouting and spotting of the enemy. Read them, and consider the use of weasel boats and decoys at appropriate costs.
15.4. Movement each turn is pre-plotted and simultaneous. In the case of arguments over legality of movement, whichever umpire is not involved will decide the issue. Email move notifications, when necessary should be sent to whichever umpire is less likely to be affected by the move - this way the umpire's knowledge of the move is less likely to have any impact on his own plans.
16. Weird races and weirder weapons
16.1. Anything listed in the Full Thrust rule book, in either of the two fleet books, More Thrust or the GZG website (at present this covers only two UNSC weapon systems) is considered standard. Any ship designed using only these sources and utilising the technology of only one race is considered standard. Standard parts and ships can be repaired anywhere.
16.2. Everything else is considered non-standard, and can be used only with the prior approval of the umpires at game start and after notification to all other players. Players may, for the purpose of subterfuge, clear and notify technologies they do not intend to use, but should be mindful that the umpires have limited patience and will simply disallow requests of all kinds once they start to feel put upon. Approval is likely in the case of the following designs already documented on the web: UNSC, IJN, New Israel, Arab League, OUDF. On a case by case basis, some of these ship designs may be deemed standard when used by that player; this will only happen if the entire fleet is constructed in that design idiom. Non-standard weapons will never be deemed to be standard, not least because very few non-standard weapons have been fully play-tested to the stage where points values are reliable. A list of links to (probably) acceptable websites is appended to these rules.
16.3. Non-standard ships and equipment can be repaired or replaced only through pre-positioned stocks or at your capital. Anything not indigenous to the technology used in the majority of the fleet construction costs 20% more to install (and thus consequently to repair) and can only be repaired or replaced through pre-positioned stocks or at your capital. Thus, players choosing (for example) to install K-guns in otherwise human fleets will be penalised for doing so.
Oceanic Union Defence Forces and the Islamic Federation
Both fleets use modular weapons fits which can readily be swapped out. These should be costed as ship construction, not spare parts. So they count towards your 4000 pt cap on initial ship construction. They do not attract maintenance costs while not in use. They have to be placed in pre-designated locations. It takes a week to swap in a module. You can't swap two modules into a ship at the same time. Where the simplified fleet rule for maintenance is being used, the benefit is not suspended simply because module swaps have led to more than five distinct ship types, so as long as no more than five hull designs are being used at any one time.
Ships in your fleet can be refitted with other weapon systems at your option. Where the new system is of a similar type and of identical mass, this is treated as a repair and billed accordingly. Where the system is a different type or a different mass, add 20% to cost to take account of the structural changes required. Beams, grasers, pulse torpedo launchers and PDS systems are similar types of weapon to each other. Missile launchers are similar to missile racks. And so on. Hangars aren't similar to anything else, but uniquely can simply be replaced with something else (a single something else) at repair cost (not vice versa). Hull boxes are not similar to anything else, for those of you thinking about weakening your hulls to add more systems.
Refitting can never exceed the design weight of the ship. The design weight of the ship is chosen at the point when it is first constructed and cannot be exceeded for any reason subsequently.
It is open to constructors to make the design weight bigger than the actual weight at launch; but drives must be bought for the design weight of the ship, and deliver that performance. For clarity, that means that you can make a ship with a design weight of 100 and and an actual weight of 80; the FTL drive must weigh 10, and the M-drive will weigh 5 for every point of thrust you want to have. If that weight of M-drive would give the ACTUAL build weight of the ship a higher Thrust, this can optionally be used in combat, but the drive will be subjected to a system check whenever it is used at that Thrust.
Logistics ships
Players can construct freighters from any available capital in order to move pre-positioned parts or other useful things (like fighters) from one place to another. Such ships do not count against the initial 4000 pt cap on military vessel construction, as long as they are not armed with anything more than 1 PDS or class 1 beam per 10 hull boxes.
Freighters can be as stupidly big as you choose. If they're big enough, they can carry actual starships. Mind you, if someone does this, they've either won or they're about to lose.
Subsequent conversion of cargo spaces into fighter hangers or weapons racks costs 20% more than normal (because the engines cannae take it without extra strengthening brackets).
Freighters don't manoeuvre better when they're empty than when they're full. It wouldn't be economical.
17 Attacking systems which have fleets in them
17.1 Philosophy.
The GZG rules cover the tactical aspects of battle, and are written on the assumption that the forces are aware of each other and that at least one side is committed to action. They also assume that the opposing forces have completed their jump into the system and are in a combat formation. The GZG rules DO envisage players jumping straight into combat, but make it very risky. The following rules cover the operational aspects of engagement between jumping into system and moving to tactical engagement.
17.2 All strategic moves must give the destination of the task force and its posture for arrival.
17.2.1. Stand off; fleet will manoeuvre for advantage until it elects to withdraw, is attacked, or changes its orders to attack after assessing the situation
Fleets on Stand Off orders do not attack against either fleets or planetary defences, and do not count as interdicting the system if they are still present at the end of the turn.
17.2.2. Attack; fleet will attack what it finds on arrival; first attacking other fleets on attack orders (attack posture is readily distinguishable from stand off because active sensors are switched on), then other fleets on stand off orders, then planetary defences.
Attack orders give +1 to initiative rolls
17.2.3. Withdraw if contested; fleet will withdraw if any hostile mobile forces are present in the system. If only planetary defences forces are present, a fleet in "withdraw if contested" may remain, and change its orders to attack following recon of the defences. Fleets on Withdraw if Contested bug out as soon as they detect mobile opposition but may pick up some data on what's there.
17.4 If all fleets are on Standoff, each player chooses a fresh tactical posture secretly, repeating as necessary until one way or another the system has no more than one fleet in it. Alternatively, players can leave their fleets in place in standoff mode at the end of the turn. Maybe you'll get reinforcements and the other guy won't. Who knows?
17.5 Once at least one force is committed to attack orders, combat becomes likely. Other players must decide immediately whether they're sticking around or trying to disengage. Check for range; roll 1 d6 and add 6. This gives the distance between task forces in feet. If the distance is too big for both forces to be on table simultaneously, disengagement is automatic. Otherwise forces go on table and disengagement is fought out. If one force is big and slow and the other small and fast, this may be adjudicated quickly without formality.
17.6 Before ships are put on the table, force commanders should make an unambiguous note of formation and speed. Formations can be as dispersed as you like. However, if you left your last system under fire, you must use the speed and formation you had at the moment you hit the FTL button.
17.7 All fleets not disengaged under 17.5 dice for initiative. Highest initiative is assumed to have the drop on the others; note that an attack order makes you more likely to have the initiative. Player with the initiative gets half the difference (rounded down) in the dice rolls to use in making his initial dispositions more useful to him. Anyone rolling a 1 arrives from FTL and has to put up with being in formation 6 inches apart from the moment of arrival. Essentially they've shown up much later than everyone else.
17.8 Relative positions on table. Top of the table (Brian's end, if that helps), is equivalent to top of the campaign map. The bottom is equivalent to the bottom. Task forces enter the table from the side equivalent to the hex side they move through to enter the hex on the campaign map.
17.9 Players with higher initiative will be able to make between zero and two changes in their dispositions. These can be used to change the point of entry on the table (one point per edge segment) the separation between opposed forces (one point per foot in either direction) or to split the formation. No matter how that goes, all fleet begin facing in towards the centre of the table
18 Departing under fire
18.1 The standard rules in Full Thrust for FTL'ing out apply. Executive summary, six inch spacing between ships, no use of manoeuvre drive and no weapons fired during the run-up to departure. The rules say that shields can be left on during this process. The firing up of the FTL drive is apparent during the previous move, and the blink out happens half way through the normal move.
18.2 Your departure takes the place of your normal move in the next strategic turn. This is also the case with recce units sent into a system which elect to leave after looking around. Immediately write down your destination; that's where you're going to be in a week. You arrive at your destination travelling in the same formation, spacing and speed that you had when you left the last hell hole.
18.3 You can try FTL ing while under fire, or you can try to build up enough distance to do it safely. Disengagement is not automatic; there is no real edge to the table, so getting off the table does not get you out of trouble. The first step to disengagement is to get out of weapons range of the enemy. This is considered to be the distance at which the enemy can't get more than one dice on you per working gun or 36 inches, whichever is less. At that point, check relative speed and the thrust of the poorest accelerating ship in each fleet. It should be clear cut whether the separation is going to increase or shrink. If not, roll one d6 each. If the disengager gets higher, he gets away, otherwise the pursuit continues. Plus one on the dice roll to whichever side has the highest acceleration in its poorest accelerating ship.
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