A brief headsup so that those of you who actually check your email can think about forces.
As morning dawns over the capital planet Auriq, the occupation forces are getting ready to leave with their ill gotten gains. It’s just another day in the continuing pillage of a resource rich, stability poor galactic dead end. It just happens to be the last day for the current bunch of looters peacekeepers. The home government has finally tired of the exorbitant cost of stealing everything that isn’t nailed down bringing stability in Auriq, and the troops are being pulled out. That happens tomorrow. Today the private sector is leaving. Despite their polite requests, the military has been just a little bit too busy holding the perimeter to provide an escort out and the private sector has been forced to engage Whitespace Intergalactic to provide a high quality market sensitive protective detail for the departing executives and their executive compensation package.
The upcoming game will model the departure of the convoy from Auriq, focussing on the slightly awkward moments between leaving Auriq orbit and coming under the umbrella of the Whitespace Intergalactic protection force, who’ve been unavoidably delayed in their arrival due to unexplained but presumably incredibly profitable circumstances “beyond their control”.
Players wondering about creating their own forces should keep in mind that it’s all about the loot, baby.
Roles will be assigned on the night. No-one should be planning to be assigned to anything particularly well meaning.
Scratch forces will be available for anyone who didn’t see this or didn’t cook something up. Those who cooked something else will be given an opportunity to reconfigure to their role as they see fit.
Since it’s no fun to get blown to bits early on through miscalculation and then have nothing to do, there’s a fiendish and simple plan in place to give anyone so unlucky something else to do.
The convoy will be DM controlled. The DM will try to avoid the temptation to turn it into Benny’s World of Blood, but a savvy player might keep in mind the DM’s known propensities.
Saturday 18 October 2008
Tuesday 14 October 2008
After Action Report; the McGuffin mini-campaign
No battle plan survives contact with the enemy, and equally no campaign design ever survives contact with the players. What I'd planned for was a scramble to board and then somehow keep control of a huge wallowing freighter making its way through a chokepoint of interstellar commerce. I'd written rules to cover boarding, and then I'd tried to cook up five mission profiles which would put the players at each others' throats for a couple of evenings.
I've always argued that you can tell a lot about how people really are by watching them do something with no real consequences. People will fake a lot if there's something at stake like money or sex, but give them a game with no money riding on it and all the extremes of their personalities will bubble to the surface, a process which is only very occasionally as pretty as it sounds.
The centrepiece of the whole mess was RMS McGuffin, which I had thoughtfully stuffed with 33 small warships before setting it on its way through pirate country. I armed the McGuffin in keeping with its size, and then added a detachment of marines and some close in weapons as insurance put in by the shippers.
The McGuffin was carrying a cargo of warships, so I could plausibly put in a force sent by the buyers to make sure they got their toys, and another one sent by their enemies to stop that. And then I added a group of pirates, out for the loot. What else might add to the fun? I needed to have enough stuff on table to keep five people busy. Well, you couldn't go wrong with MORE pirates, so I added another group. But just to keep it interesting, I made their objective slightly different - the second group was briefed to keep other pirates away. Finally, no conflict is ever complete without ineffectual bumblers.
I looked on it all, and found it good. The various forces should come in at different times and points, and all somewhat disorganised. Their objectives were at odds with each others, but not by so much that two or more players couldn't cooperate to clobber one of the others if he got too much of an advantage.
Just hold that contentment in your mind for a moment. That's long enough. That's about as long as mine lasted.
The well-meaning pirates started on table, lurking near the bottom of the map waiting for everyone else's plans to become apparent. The traditional pirates entered somewhat above them on the map and spread out to scout the area. The McGuffin plodded on, little knowing its fate. The Republic Navy beamed in from its home system well below the McGuffin and wondering why it never occurred to the high command to tell them where the McGuffin would be coming from. The Imperial Sudanese Navy came in behind the McGuffin moving at a well chosen pace that allowed them to catch up without overshooting. The UN came in between the Republicans and the Imperials moving flat out towards the McGuffin's entry point.
Well, it was already apparent that my cunning plan was showing leakage. The UN were in earlier than I expected them, and so were the Imperials. The two pirate players were well off the axis of the likely combat, and the Republic, which I'd hoped would be early, was in at exactly the same time as everyone else.
Most of the first evening was preliminary manoeuvre on the map. Some interesting lessons from that. For one thing, use the same scale on the map as you do on the table. For another, map movement actually works, but it's frustrating moving back and forth between the players looking at each map and trying to make sure no-one saw anything they shouldn't see. Next time I may print the map out on acetate so that I can just stack them all on top of each other and see what's on top of what. Finally, it may be pointless. Give the players a big enough area of operations and they'll use all, but as a corollary, they'll move fast on it so as to cover ground. And when they do that, they'll wind up moving too fast to engage each other.
So for the first evening, what happened was that the Republican Navy headed towards the McGuffin, the UN shot right past it at such a speed that the main force never really got back in the game, and the Imperial Navy closed with the McGuffin before opening fire and doing heavy damage from the outset. Meanwhile, the two pirate squadrons were off in the rough shaowing each other and trying to figure out where the action was. By the end of the second evening, the UN force had gotten off a couple of shots at the apparent aggressor (the Imperialists), the Imperialists had knocked a quarter of the McGuffin's hull boxes off while taking some punishment in turn from the concealed weaponry in Hold number 3 (I may have been over sporting in that regard - rather than shooting off all the ordnance as soon as the Imperialists closed, I elected to fire one system per arc per turn; if I'd fired everything at once, the Imperial commander would have got a very bloody nose, and the midgame might have been very different).
The second phase began with the Imperials coming under the guns of the Republicans, their natural enemies. The Imperialists displayed an admirable mission focus and kept firing on the McGuffin even while their ships took more and more fire from the Republicans. Slightly less admirable was the order to the fast picket which had used up its supply of missiles and was instructed to ram the McGuffin. The crew decided to seek paradise elsewhere and left the table rather than obey orders. While the Imperialists clobbered the McGuffin, and the Republicans shot all the light combatants off the squadron, the Imperialist commander had the brass balls to radio the UN commander and ask him to back off and not interfere with legitimate anti-smuggling operations. We may never know what happened in the rest of that conversation but for the remainder of the evening the UN player deployed an increasingly baroque splatter of explanations for why his vessels were never quite in position to engage.
It didn't take long for the McGuffin to be reduced to a drifting hulk; under the normal rules it would have just fallen apart once the Imperials shot off all its hull boxes, but there would have been no fun in that, so it was allowed to drift freely to see what the players might do to try to salvage it and nurse it to port. The Imperialists were effectively reduced to their main unit (the combo carrier/BDN Madinah) with the two cruisers and one destroyer still on table but effectively neutered. The Republican player kept firing steadily on the Imperials for as long as his guns would bear, but with diminishing effect as the one shot SMPs started to deplete (at this point, the inevitable complaints began that everyone else had been given better ships...). By this stage the two pirate squadrons had finally got into range of the furball and the roleplaying began in earnest.
At this point, I was laughing myself sick. The well meaning pirates made overtures to everyone but the UN, but somehow managed to emerge without a useful deal of any kind. The traditional pirates started trying to pick off the surviving Imperial cripples, while cheerfully making it clear that it was all about what they could salvage, not about a stand up fight. The well-meaning pirates checked the instructions from their shadowy backers, and made another attempt to make a deal. Then they squared their shoulders and to my astonishment opened up on the Republicans, the one group of people with whom they shared an objective. The Republican player rapidly discovered that there were plenty of players with problem ships, as the first serious exchange of fire knocked out two pirate ships. After another round of fire which saw the well-meaning pirates reduced to less than half their strength it was nearly midnight and I had to intervene, if only to find out what the well meaning pirates thought they'd just done. The expression of chagrin on the commander's face was worth the whole effort....
All in all, although nothing actually worked, I'm pretty pleased with how it worked out. People had things to do, and I have to say I always think the game has done SOMETHING right when we keep right on playing through the moment that we usually go to the pub.
The amazing thing was how little communication there was between the players. Nothing in the briefings had told anyone to maintain radio silence, and yet we were halfway through the second evening before anyone got serious about trying to negotiate or discover whether they had anything to negotiate about. The Republic and the well-meaning pirates were natural allies, and yet wound up hammering away at each other in the end game - simply because communication between them was sufficiently unclear that the well-meaning pirates didn't twig that the Republicans were the rightful owners of the cargo. That lack of communication was something I really hadn't counted on - I'd correlated the forces on the expectation that with one force on "exterminate" orders one on "pillage" and three on variations of "protect" there would always be a coalition available to prevent an unrelenting attack on the McGuffin to destroy it.
in fact, the one force that came closest to achieving its mission was the Imperials, who displayed alarming focus on mission. I'm still not sure whether the UN player was role-playing ineffectuality or just hamstrung by poor initial deployment, but the result was stereotypical UN - if we'd played a third night, the UN would have arrived just in time to write up the war crimes indictments and shake its head wearily at human folly. The traditional pirates were brilliant, although they didn't really achieve anything, they took no losses and might well have made a dollar on the scrap which was filling the system at the end. The Republicans were doggedly aggressive, and might well have been in a position to shepherd the McGuffin home depending on whether they could face down the pirates. Doomed, perhaps from the outset, by their determination to be reasonable, the well-meaning pirates are the force most to be pitied - they tried so hard to be reasonable, and then when it seemed that only desperate measures would let them achieve their objective (not getting killed by their backers for not trying hard enough) they got butchered through an easily avoidable misunderstanding.
Now, back to the drawing board.
Local Businessmen squadron; briefing
Pirate Squadron
Jardine Mathiesen have paid you a hefty fee up front with the promise of more to follow if you loiter in the A’den system for a couple of weeks and scare off pirates until the RMS McGuffin makes a transit. Ordinarily you’d laugh in their faces and take the cargo, but the money’s better than it usually is on these protection gigs and it came with a none too veiled threat about what might happen if the ultimate customers for the cargo got to hear about you letting the side down.
Point of entry; in system, just hanging around. Pick a location.
Likely opponents; The McGuffin for starters. The clients have made it pretty clear that the McGuffin is no ordinary freighter and that you should stay away from it if you don’t want to be blown out of the sky. You’re not sure how seriously to take this - why hire you if the ship can look after itself? But why take chances? The big worry is other pirates; you figure to chase them off before they can close. There’s no need to worry about government ships - if they were in the neighborhood, Jardine would have pulled the tax payer schtick and stiffed you in favour of a real navy.
Force
Either - your own design, or if you brought nothing:
2 x Ravager Carrier each with one fighter squadron and one heavy boarding launch (4 marine boxes, one armour one PDS count as heavy) 614
3 x Ravager Cruiser 609 1223
1 x Ravager Raider II/N 93 1316
4 Ravager Attacker 176 1492
Jardine Mathiesen have paid you a hefty fee up front with the promise of more to follow if you loiter in the A’den system for a couple of weeks and scare off pirates until the RMS McGuffin makes a transit. Ordinarily you’d laugh in their faces and take the cargo, but the money’s better than it usually is on these protection gigs and it came with a none too veiled threat about what might happen if the ultimate customers for the cargo got to hear about you letting the side down.
Point of entry; in system, just hanging around. Pick a location.
Likely opponents; The McGuffin for starters. The clients have made it pretty clear that the McGuffin is no ordinary freighter and that you should stay away from it if you don’t want to be blown out of the sky. You’re not sure how seriously to take this - why hire you if the ship can look after itself? But why take chances? The big worry is other pirates; you figure to chase them off before they can close. There’s no need to worry about government ships - if they were in the neighborhood, Jardine would have pulled the tax payer schtick and stiffed you in favour of a real navy.
Force
Either - your own design, or if you brought nothing:
2 x Ravager Carrier each with one fighter squadron and one heavy boarding launch (4 marine boxes, one armour one PDS count as heavy) 614
3 x Ravager Cruiser 609 1223
1 x Ravager Raider II/N 93 1316
4 Ravager Attacker 176 1492
Pirate squadron briefing
Pirate Squadron
Go, go, go.
Your source in Jardine Mathiesen has just told you that RMS McGuffin is on its way through A’den carrying the dream cargo of all time. 33 IJN strikeboats in mint condition, on their way to the wartorn Sudan system. If you move fast, you have the chance to lay hands on a supply of agile modern warships which will end your reliance on the jerrybuilt raiders you’ve been using for the past five years.
Your mission is to seize the McGuffin and get it back to base with cargo intact.
Point of entry: any except Gouanbou Kong or Novy Yoreki. Roll one red d6 and one black d6. Subtract the red score from the black. This is the number of turns before or after the arrival of the RMS McGuffin that you will arrive. Negative numbers are before the McGuffin, positive after (so ideally you’d like a red 6 and a black 1).
You MUST exit through the same jump node that you entered.
Expected opposition:
Your Jardine mole assures you that the freighter has no escort. There has been little anti-pirate activity lately, and the UNSC is rumoured to be refitting at its base at Novy Yoreki before undertaking a major sweep with heavy carriers equipped with dedicated boarding craft. Your main worry is that your mole has told other pirates and that you’ll have to fight them off. Government forces are unlikely to be an issue this far from main bases.
Force; Either your own force or the following
3 x Ravager Carrier + 2 Fighter squadrons, 2 heavy boarding launches (three marines, one armour box 2 PDS, count heavy), 2 squadrons of light boarding launches. 777 + 36 + 36 + 60 = 1009
5 x Ravager Attacker 220 1229
3 x Ravager Raider 258 1487
Go, go, go.
Your source in Jardine Mathiesen has just told you that RMS McGuffin is on its way through A’den carrying the dream cargo of all time. 33 IJN strikeboats in mint condition, on their way to the wartorn Sudan system. If you move fast, you have the chance to lay hands on a supply of agile modern warships which will end your reliance on the jerrybuilt raiders you’ve been using for the past five years.
Your mission is to seize the McGuffin and get it back to base with cargo intact.
Point of entry: any except Gouanbou Kong or Novy Yoreki. Roll one red d6 and one black d6. Subtract the red score from the black. This is the number of turns before or after the arrival of the RMS McGuffin that you will arrive. Negative numbers are before the McGuffin, positive after (so ideally you’d like a red 6 and a black 1).
You MUST exit through the same jump node that you entered.
Expected opposition:
Your Jardine mole assures you that the freighter has no escort. There has been little anti-pirate activity lately, and the UNSC is rumoured to be refitting at its base at Novy Yoreki before undertaking a major sweep with heavy carriers equipped with dedicated boarding craft. Your main worry is that your mole has told other pirates and that you’ll have to fight them off. Government forces are unlikely to be an issue this far from main bases.
Force; Either your own force or the following
3 x Ravager Carrier + 2 Fighter squadrons, 2 heavy boarding launches (three marines, one armour box 2 PDS, count heavy), 2 squadrons of light boarding launches. 777 + 36 + 36 + 60 = 1009
5 x Ravager Attacker 220 1229
3 x Ravager Raider 258 1487
McGuffin briefing
RMS McGuffin
Cargo; 33 strikeboats
Escort: none
You are the commander of the RMS McGuffin, a massive bulk freighter transiting the A’den system. For reasons that you’ve decided not to probe too deeply, Jardine Mathiesen have told you that 300 Mtons of “agricultural machinery” are urgently needed “to forestall famine” in the wartorn Sudan system.
Travelling with the “agricultural machinery” are the ugliest bunch of “agronomists” and “aid consultants” you’ve ever seen. They keep themselves to themselves and you like it that way. Nor have you asked them anything at all about the “crop survey scanners” which have been mounted in cargo bay three.
Point of entry to A’den: The Goanbou Kong jump node
Point of exit Paleo Khartoum jump node.
Likely opposition; you’re worried about pirates, but Jardine assures you that they’ve been paid off and will leave you alone. You’re also worried about the UN, who will probably arrest you if they board you and find out that the agricultural machinery is what you think it is. If a UN patrol shows up you plan to pile on the acceleration and pretend your radios aren’t working properly; if you can get to the jump node before they overhaul you, you should be OK. And you’re not too happy about the possibility that the combatants from Sudan might take an interest in you either.
Your vessel - see attached diagram.
Basic stats
Cargo 400 M in four holds
Passenger space 12
Hull boxes 60
M-Drive 2 10% mass 60
FTL 10% mass 60
4 PDS systems
2 Beam 1
2 Fire control
carried weapons 8
Total mass 600 tons.
12 crew factors
main cargo; 330 tons
Also carried
6 crew box equivalents of agronomists
25 ton “sensor package” in cargo hold 3 (aft, topside)
Sensor package contains
rl arc 1 fire control, 3 SMP 2 PDS (rear arc only)
rr arc 1 fire control, 3 SMP 2 PDS (rear arc only)
fl 2 SMP
fr 2 SMP
Cargo; 33 strikeboats
Escort: none
You are the commander of the RMS McGuffin, a massive bulk freighter transiting the A’den system. For reasons that you’ve decided not to probe too deeply, Jardine Mathiesen have told you that 300 Mtons of “agricultural machinery” are urgently needed “to forestall famine” in the wartorn Sudan system.
Travelling with the “agricultural machinery” are the ugliest bunch of “agronomists” and “aid consultants” you’ve ever seen. They keep themselves to themselves and you like it that way. Nor have you asked them anything at all about the “crop survey scanners” which have been mounted in cargo bay three.
Point of entry to A’den: The Goanbou Kong jump node
Point of exit Paleo Khartoum jump node.
Likely opposition; you’re worried about pirates, but Jardine assures you that they’ve been paid off and will leave you alone. You’re also worried about the UN, who will probably arrest you if they board you and find out that the agricultural machinery is what you think it is. If a UN patrol shows up you plan to pile on the acceleration and pretend your radios aren’t working properly; if you can get to the jump node before they overhaul you, you should be OK. And you’re not too happy about the possibility that the combatants from Sudan might take an interest in you either.
Your vessel - see attached diagram.
Basic stats
Cargo 400 M in four holds
Passenger space 12
Hull boxes 60
M-Drive 2 10% mass 60
FTL 10% mass 60
4 PDS systems
2 Beam 1
2 Fire control
carried weapons 8
Total mass 600 tons.
12 crew factors
main cargo; 330 tons
Also carried
6 crew box equivalents of agronomists
25 ton “sensor package” in cargo hold 3 (aft, topside)
Sensor package contains
rl arc 1 fire control, 3 SMP 2 PDS (rear arc only)
rr arc 1 fire control, 3 SMP 2 PDS (rear arc only)
fl 2 SMP
fr 2 SMP
Imperial Sudanese Navy Briefing
The Imperial Sudanese Navy
The treacherous enemy has finally found an arms dealer unscrupulous enough to sell it more than 30 of the deadly IJN Naginata class strikeboats. For the past three days your squadron has been shadowing the freighter carrying them. At last they’re going through the A’den system, giving you a perfect opportunity to capture the cargo for your own navy and let piracy take the blame.
Your mission; capture of the McGuffin. No witnesses can be allowed to escape. If capture is out of the question, destruction of the McGuffin will do.
Point of entry: the Goanbou Kong jump node, one turn after the RMS McGuffin (but see below)
Force: Either your own design or (if you brought no design)
1 x CVB Madinah class carrier/BDN 705 points with two standard fighter squadrons and two squadrons of 6 Marine landing craft (each is unarmoured and unarmed and carries a single Marine box; treat as fighter squadrons but with no secondary move)
2 x CP Sahaabah missile cruisers 434 1139
2 x DD Saladin 228 1367
2 x CT Shaulah 74 1441
1 CT Khabar 50 1491
Problems; maintainability on your heavy and poorly understood units. Roll 1 d6 for each Sahaabah CP. Roll better than the number of crew factors to enter with the light forces; otherwise entry for each ship is delayed by the difference between the roll and the number of crew boxes. The Madinah cannot enter till both Sahaabahs are in system.
Options; see attached sheet for rules governing heavy missiles. Choose loads now
For own design, roll 1d6 for all vessels, entering only if die roll is greater at least equal to crew factors. One turn delay for each crew box more than your dice roll. Ships with more than 6 crew factors enter with the last of the lighter vessels
Opposition:
The Republicans are obviously incapable of protecting the freighter or they would have sent an escort. They can be ignored. The UN will do nothing. You’ve heard the rumours of a supercarrier strike group being prepared to sweep the region, but these decadent mongrels lack the stomach for firm action or even for serious defence expenditure. Your only worry is the possibility that pirates may get in the way; destroy them if they show any sign of interfering.
The treacherous enemy has finally found an arms dealer unscrupulous enough to sell it more than 30 of the deadly IJN Naginata class strikeboats. For the past three days your squadron has been shadowing the freighter carrying them. At last they’re going through the A’den system, giving you a perfect opportunity to capture the cargo for your own navy and let piracy take the blame.
Your mission; capture of the McGuffin. No witnesses can be allowed to escape. If capture is out of the question, destruction of the McGuffin will do.
Point of entry: the Goanbou Kong jump node, one turn after the RMS McGuffin (but see below)
Force: Either your own design or (if you brought no design)
1 x CVB Madinah class carrier/BDN 705 points with two standard fighter squadrons and two squadrons of 6 Marine landing craft (each is unarmoured and unarmed and carries a single Marine box; treat as fighter squadrons but with no secondary move)
2 x CP Sahaabah missile cruisers 434 1139
2 x DD Saladin 228 1367
2 x CT Shaulah 74 1441
1 CT Khabar 50 1491
Problems; maintainability on your heavy and poorly understood units. Roll 1 d6 for each Sahaabah CP. Roll better than the number of crew factors to enter with the light forces; otherwise entry for each ship is delayed by the difference between the roll and the number of crew boxes. The Madinah cannot enter till both Sahaabahs are in system.
Options; see attached sheet for rules governing heavy missiles. Choose loads now
For own design, roll 1d6 for all vessels, entering only if die roll is greater at least equal to crew factors. One turn delay for each crew box more than your dice roll. Ships with more than 6 crew factors enter with the last of the lighter vessels
Opposition:
The Republicans are obviously incapable of protecting the freighter or they would have sent an escort. They can be ignored. The UN will do nothing. You’ve heard the rumours of a supercarrier strike group being prepared to sweep the region, but these decadent mongrels lack the stomach for firm action or even for serious defence expenditure. Your only worry is the possibility that pirates may get in the way; destroy them if they show any sign of interfering.
Republic of Sudan Navy Briefing
The Navy of the Republic of Sudan
Despite all your precautions, it seems that the warmongering enemy has learned of your purchase of vital weapons of self defence and dispatched a fleet of its terror wagons to destroy the peaceful and unarmed freighter carrying them. Intelligence suspects that the perfidious scoundrels will seek to blame the loss on pirates, so you have been dispatched to A’den to pre-empt the attack.
Your mission; protect the freighter and ensure its safe passage.
Point of entry to A’den; the Paleo Khartoum jump node. Roll one red d6 and one black d6. Subtract the red score from the black. This is the number of turns before or after the arrival of the RMS McGuffin that you will arrive. Negative numbers are before the McGuffin, positive after (so ideally you’d like a red 6 and a black 1). The McGuffin is coming in from the Gouanbou Kong node
Desired point of exit; the Paleo Khartoum jump node
Forces; Either your own design, or the following
2 CH Samurai 562
2 CL Arashi 406 1068
3 Bakemono SB with the main beam armament replaced by embarked marines (2 boxes) 165 1233
3 Ashigaru FF with the Class 2 beam replaced by embarked marines (2 boxes) 258 1491
Likely opponents
The perfidious imperialists, of course. And maybe pirates. And those useless do-gooders in the UN. Although the pirates are supposed to have been paid off. And the UN’s reportedly trying to raise the money to refit three supercarriers with class three grasers so as to finish off the pirates with overwhelming force. A likely story
Despite all your precautions, it seems that the warmongering enemy has learned of your purchase of vital weapons of self defence and dispatched a fleet of its terror wagons to destroy the peaceful and unarmed freighter carrying them. Intelligence suspects that the perfidious scoundrels will seek to blame the loss on pirates, so you have been dispatched to A’den to pre-empt the attack.
Your mission; protect the freighter and ensure its safe passage.
Point of entry to A’den; the Paleo Khartoum jump node. Roll one red d6 and one black d6. Subtract the red score from the black. This is the number of turns before or after the arrival of the RMS McGuffin that you will arrive. Negative numbers are before the McGuffin, positive after (so ideally you’d like a red 6 and a black 1). The McGuffin is coming in from the Gouanbou Kong node
Desired point of exit; the Paleo Khartoum jump node
Forces; Either your own design, or the following
2 CH Samurai 562
2 CL Arashi 406 1068
3 Bakemono SB with the main beam armament replaced by embarked marines (2 boxes) 165 1233
3 Ashigaru FF with the Class 2 beam replaced by embarked marines (2 boxes) 258 1491
Likely opponents
The perfidious imperialists, of course. And maybe pirates. And those useless do-gooders in the UN. Although the pirates are supposed to have been paid off. And the UN’s reportedly trying to raise the money to refit three supercarriers with class three grasers so as to finish off the pirates with overwhelming force. A likely story
UN Forces briefing
UN anti-pirate patrol
You wouldn’t have believed it if you had been told it in a bar, but your admiral briefed you twenty minutes ago that Jardine Mathiesen LG has sent an unescorted heavy freighter through the pirate infested A’den system carrying - of all things - 33 strike boats. You’ve been ordered to scramble your squadron into the system to escort the freighter and interdict any pirate attack on the freighter. You must leave immediately with whatever vessels in your squadron are fully crewed. Your mission is to ensure that the RMS McGuffin exits A’den safely. Failing that, the cargo cannot be allowed to fall into pirate hands.
Possible opponents; the area is a nest of pirates. Pirate vessels are more poorly armed and equipped than yours. Jardine Mathiesen don’t seem to have been completely candid about the contents of the ship, and they still haven’t told you the destination of the cargo. It’s entirely possible that it may become necessary to arrest the McGuffin and escort back to base. You may have to deal with resistance from the ship. Your instructions are unclear on how much force is permissible.
Point of entry to A’den; the jump node for Novy Yoreki. You have no idea where the McGuffin is going, but you know it’s coming in through the Gouanbou Kong jump node.
Available force Either your own force or the following
2 x Comet CVE re-equipped with Marine boarding craft (four craft per ship, each with two Marine crew and a single PDS armament) 2 x 362 724
1 x River I CH 328 1052
2 x Lake III DD 260 1312
2 x Hunter I FFH 188 1500
Readiness; Roll greater than the crew boxes for each ship on 1 d6. For each box more than your dice roll delay departure of that ship by that number of turns. If using your own force and any vessel has more than six boxes, those vessels enter only once all other vessels in your force have arrived on table
You wouldn’t have believed it if you had been told it in a bar, but your admiral briefed you twenty minutes ago that Jardine Mathiesen LG has sent an unescorted heavy freighter through the pirate infested A’den system carrying - of all things - 33 strike boats. You’ve been ordered to scramble your squadron into the system to escort the freighter and interdict any pirate attack on the freighter. You must leave immediately with whatever vessels in your squadron are fully crewed. Your mission is to ensure that the RMS McGuffin exits A’den safely. Failing that, the cargo cannot be allowed to fall into pirate hands.
Possible opponents; the area is a nest of pirates. Pirate vessels are more poorly armed and equipped than yours. Jardine Mathiesen don’t seem to have been completely candid about the contents of the ship, and they still haven’t told you the destination of the cargo. It’s entirely possible that it may become necessary to arrest the McGuffin and escort back to base. You may have to deal with resistance from the ship. Your instructions are unclear on how much force is permissible.
Point of entry to A’den; the jump node for Novy Yoreki. You have no idea where the McGuffin is going, but you know it’s coming in through the Gouanbou Kong jump node.
Available force Either your own force or the following
2 x Comet CVE re-equipped with Marine boarding craft (four craft per ship, each with two Marine crew and a single PDS armament) 2 x 362 724
1 x River I CH 328 1052
2 x Lake III DD 260 1312
2 x Hunter I FFH 188 1500
Readiness; Roll greater than the crew boxes for each ship on 1 d6. For each box more than your dice roll delay departure of that ship by that number of turns. If using your own force and any vessel has more than six boxes, those vessels enter only once all other vessels in your force have arrived on table
Friday 3 October 2008
The playing field
A’den; the venue
The system is uninhabitable, but through a freak of chance it contains five major jump nodes which allow hyperspace travel to fixed points elsewhere at a fraction of normal fuel costs. However, the presence of the nodes distorts local space to the point where normal jumps to other destinations carry much the same risk as trying to jump too close to a solid object of some kind.
Pirate activity in the system is a constant low level problem.
Drifting debris and radiation zones in the system are a navigation hazard, although the routes between the jump nodes remain clear through a mixture of occasional sweeps by specialist vessels and the side effects of the jump nodes’ distortion of local space.
The navigation hazards and generally uninhabitable nature of the system have led the major trading nations to conclude that there’s no practical way to maintain a base in the system, and their anti-piracy efforts are confined to convoy escort, occasional Q-ship operations and very rarely a punitive strike when shipping companies have started complaining loudly enough.
No permanent pirate base of operations has ever been identified and it is generally assumed that pirates are staging out of another system.
Practical effects
1. Going to FTL is at all times as hazardous as going to FTL with another ship within 6 inches
2. Movement within debris zones is dangerous - roll below your M-drive rating on one d6 or take a hit equal to your current speed divided by your M-drive rating
3. The corridors between the jump nodes (which will be clearly marked on the grand tactical map) have no debris at all.
4. The jump nodes are arranged in a rosette with each node 72 inches from its neighbor. Each player will be entering through a jump node, and will have some knowledge of where other key elements will start.
5. All movement at first will be on maps. I'm going to use small hexes on hex paper and everyone will need to be levelheaded about the slight fiddliness of counting small hexes on big sheets of paper. The fixed points of reference will be the jump nodes. Debris will be ignored during grand tac movement; commanders will be assumed to deal with it in the background.
6. Once it's clear that units are within detection range of each other, their relative positions will be translated onto the table, and debris will be placed randomly all over the place. (for the quibblers, I'll be putting down about fifteen irregular templates and they'll be placed by dicing locations - start at one corner, roll a direction dice and a d 20 for distance. Place a template, repeat) There's a pretty good chance that you could find yourself either in a template or pointing right at it with no way to swerve...
I'll be managing the initial arguments and running any non-player characters. As much as possible, squadrons will be assigned to the roles within the game to which they're best suited, much and all as it would amuse me to assign on the more entertaining basis of complete unsuitability. This is intended to be at most a two week mini-campaign with a certain amount of pre-battle manoeuvre and two to three serious multi-axis clashes. What it will actually turn out to be as much up to you as it is to me.
And one last thing
It should be fairly clear to you by now that this game will involve boarding and dispersed patrolling and might involve pirates. It will also involve the possibility of pre-game force attrition. So when planning your squadrons, keep in mind that you may need to split your force and that you might not be able to start the game with the full complement of ships you designed. And although you might well have some ideas of your own, I suspect that a force of two optimaxed superdreadnoughts is NOT going to be either much fun or much use.
The system is uninhabitable, but through a freak of chance it contains five major jump nodes which allow hyperspace travel to fixed points elsewhere at a fraction of normal fuel costs. However, the presence of the nodes distorts local space to the point where normal jumps to other destinations carry much the same risk as trying to jump too close to a solid object of some kind.
Pirate activity in the system is a constant low level problem.
Drifting debris and radiation zones in the system are a navigation hazard, although the routes between the jump nodes remain clear through a mixture of occasional sweeps by specialist vessels and the side effects of the jump nodes’ distortion of local space.
The navigation hazards and generally uninhabitable nature of the system have led the major trading nations to conclude that there’s no practical way to maintain a base in the system, and their anti-piracy efforts are confined to convoy escort, occasional Q-ship operations and very rarely a punitive strike when shipping companies have started complaining loudly enough.
No permanent pirate base of operations has ever been identified and it is generally assumed that pirates are staging out of another system.
Practical effects
1. Going to FTL is at all times as hazardous as going to FTL with another ship within 6 inches
2. Movement within debris zones is dangerous - roll below your M-drive rating on one d6 or take a hit equal to your current speed divided by your M-drive rating
3. The corridors between the jump nodes (which will be clearly marked on the grand tactical map) have no debris at all.
4. The jump nodes are arranged in a rosette with each node 72 inches from its neighbor. Each player will be entering through a jump node, and will have some knowledge of where other key elements will start.
5. All movement at first will be on maps. I'm going to use small hexes on hex paper and everyone will need to be levelheaded about the slight fiddliness of counting small hexes on big sheets of paper. The fixed points of reference will be the jump nodes. Debris will be ignored during grand tac movement; commanders will be assumed to deal with it in the background.
6. Once it's clear that units are within detection range of each other, their relative positions will be translated onto the table, and debris will be placed randomly all over the place. (for the quibblers, I'll be putting down about fifteen irregular templates and they'll be placed by dicing locations - start at one corner, roll a direction dice and a d 20 for distance. Place a template, repeat) There's a pretty good chance that you could find yourself either in a template or pointing right at it with no way to swerve...
I'll be managing the initial arguments and running any non-player characters. As much as possible, squadrons will be assigned to the roles within the game to which they're best suited, much and all as it would amuse me to assign on the more entertaining basis of complete unsuitability. This is intended to be at most a two week mini-campaign with a certain amount of pre-battle manoeuvre and two to three serious multi-axis clashes. What it will actually turn out to be as much up to you as it is to me.
And one last thing
It should be fairly clear to you by now that this game will involve boarding and dispersed patrolling and might involve pirates. It will also involve the possibility of pre-game force attrition. So when planning your squadrons, keep in mind that you may need to split your force and that you might not be able to start the game with the full complement of ships you designed. And although you might well have some ideas of your own, I suspect that a force of two optimaxed superdreadnoughts is NOT going to be either much fun or much use.
Monday's game; extra rules
Below, a consolidated and easy to print version of the extra rules which are going to be needed. The next post in the blog will give a piece of background about the arena.
1. Boarding
Boarding is necessarily simplified because I don't want to take all day over it.
1.1 Boarding combats
Boarding combats are dealt with during the repair phase and are considered to involve any ship which had a boarding element in contact with it at the end of the movement phase of that turn.
Each crew box/boarder box rolls a dice. boxes die on a 4 5 or 6, reroll on 6s. Last person to run out of crew boxes gets to keep the ship. Yes, boarding is scary powerful. The flipside is that it's not going to be particularly easy to get to that point and it will cost quite a bit to do it effectively.
Marines count as two boxes (consider it better weapons or better armour, but this all about simple - we're not playing Space Hulk here)
1.2 Boarding contact
Going to contact is adjudicated completely during the movement phase; PDS systems and fighters engage boarding launches as they move into range and can be engaged in turn by fighters and small craft (see 2 below). Using a PDS during boarding means it cannot be used in the fire phase. PDS fire CANNOT be used against a boarding craft once it's on the hull. Boarding requires contact between vessels; by all means send in a frigate as a boarding launch if you like, but don't try to suggest that you're sending out Marines in suits and jet packs from three inches out. Not possible. An actual ship will count as in contact if it can get to within one inch, because it will be tricky in practice to pick a speed which would allow for exact contact with the target.
1.3 Boarding speed
Boarding contact is automatic when boarders have the same speed and direction as the target. (This seems to me to be almost impossible to arrange in real life)
When the target and boarder haven't matched direction and velocity, roll more than the velocity difference on a d6 to manage a controlled collision. For each box of hull armour on the boarding craft, add another d6.
Velocity difference is calculated as follows - if the approach is through the front three arcs of the target, add the speeds of both vessels. If the approach is through the aft three arcs, subtract the target's speed from the boarder's speed.
The speed of a boarder is, in all cases, the number of inches it moved to make contact. So if you're using an actual ship as a boarder, use your listed speed for the turn. If you're using a dedicated boarding launch, you use the distance actually moved to get to contact, rounded up to the next inch. (I realise that this makes boarding launches far more flexible in flight than proper ships; that's my intention.)
1.4 Marine costs
A box worth of marines needs one hull box of mass devoted to it, whether in a boarding launch or otherwise. While passengers (and normal crew) are both free apart from the cost of the hull space to hold them, Marines are a little bit more useful and will cost one point each extra. Keep in mind that the real cost of marines on a boarding launch is much higher than purely defensive marines because a launch needs 1.5 times its own mass in hull boxes as a launch bay on the parent ship on top of its own construction cost.
1.5 Boarding craft costs
Standard cost for small craft is two points per mass carried. This is assumed to give you a craft with the same range as a standard fighter, no armour and no weapons. Weapons and armour can be added at normal costs of mass and points. If you add weapons, you need a fire control system just like on a real ship. I considered saying that without a fire control you could only fire the weapon straight ahead, but a) I can't face the arguments about straight ahead and b) you're always going to be flying straight at your alleged target, aren't you? If all you want to do is shoot up the defences on the way in, keep in mind that you can use a PDS to do that and a PDS doesn't need a fire control. Real weapons need a bit more.
If you want more flexibility in your launch, you have two choices; either build it as a tiny ship with hull boxes and drives, or apply the multipliers used for fighter points. Those multipliers will apply to the full cost of launch including any weapons and armour. So a heavy launch will cost 5/3 standard, a fast launch (36 inch move) will cost 4/3 and a long range one will cost 4/3. If you want more than one improvement, apply the heavy modification first, round up to a whole number and then apply the other. Heavy launches are just better protected against fire - they don't count as armoured for crashing into targets!
1.6 Weapon hits on boarding craft
Every hit knocks out one marine box (That makes every hit roughly equivalent to a normal hit without requiring too much thought). Armour will stop hits in the usual way. Heavy launches will ignore hits in the same way as fighters.
1.7 Prize crews
To run the captured ship at full effectiveness you need to have the same number of surviving "crew" boxes as the ship originally had. For simplicity's sake, the resource constraint is considered to be decision making human minds rather than skills sets - the ships are considered to have sufficient automation that a monkey could kind of run them, but not enough autonomy to know WHAT to do unless the monkey puts down the banana and gives an order. Ships systems are arbitrarily divided into weapons, drives and support. Support covers shields, PDS, and anything else which isn't clearly a weapon. You need one third of the original crew strength to run each of these, so it follows that if you only managed to get a prize crew on board of one third the nominal crew strength you're going to have to choose between running the guns or steering the ship. Two thirds, you can steer and shoot, but nothing else. It's worth keeping in mind that merchant ships have very few crew boxes (only 40% of a military ship of the same mass) and almost no weapons, so keeping a merchant underway will not require a huge number of marines.
2. Shooting up PDS:
Fighters and armed small craft can attempt to engage PDS systems on the way in.
Method A; shoot to kill within three inches the PDS can be engaged directly and eliminated on 6. (This means that the PDS will get off a shot)
Method B; suppressive fire; all weapons systems can be used to throw the aim of the PDS system; each hit cancels out one PDS hit
Tuesday 8 April 2008
Armour/shields
As might be expected, my random thoughts on Armour eventually triggered some long emails from my only serious rival for the post of "person who cares TOO much". Amid much thought provoking stuff, here's a thought:
ST uses shielding and armour for each aspect (otherwise how could you stick to genre and demand "All power to the forward shields Scotty").
Which leaves me wondering if it would be nice to have that as a thing to do; put all the power to the forward shields, or the rearward shields or whatever. We could all be mini-Savasku, juggling our power budget to where we needed it the most. Yeah, that's why we don't do it, because it would essentially suck.
Monday 7 April 2008
Thinking is dangerous
The latest thoughts from an earlier commenter, and my reply
On 1) I have a very different vision of the thing - if the attacking systems were accurate enough to throw a round down the hole they'd just made, we wouldn't be rolling for damage on systems, we'd just be picking the thing we wanted to knock out. In my view at the the kind of ranges we're talking about, the spread on a beam weapon bathes the whole ship in a warm and toasty glow, and burns through at some random point.
1) When fighting against beam weapons, you can't afford to leave a hole in your armour after it is damaged. The next shot will simply target the hole. So the armour has to be self-repairing in some way, and it will cease to function properly when mobile self-repair resources have all been used up.
2) If you think about it, you should be able to get a much better mass-performance relationship for armour that moves around in response to threats and damage, than from armour that remains static, once you get to the point of having really smart materials (a tech level or two ahead of where we are today). At the tech levels represented in Full Thrust, no one is going to be able to afford to waste mass budget on static armour.
On 2) it's superficially attractive until you start to think about it, then you ask how the armour can actually know where to go. All the energy systems are coming in at the speed of light - how can the armour possibly react fast enough? Smart's one thing, faster than relativistic is another!
Yet more thoughts on armour
On the way into work this morning I had some spare processor time left over from not falling under a truck and I think I figured out why the designers of FTII didn't bother with armour arcs - other than the obvious "too much like hard work" reason.
Guns are armour. From a purely practical point of view, you try to set up your firing solution so that you don't get too much return fire, so you try to come in at the target from an angle which doesn't expose you to the enemy guns. Which means that ships should, in the long term, getting fewer attacks from the direction in which they can put the most firepower. This is generally the front, and then the forward side arcs. Which is pretty much historically where armour gets concentrated too. So since the natural reluctance of your enemy to get shot at is having the same effect as more armour, why bother keeping track of it?
Just as well, mind you. I hate to think what twisted compromises and insanity would be needed to implement armour for different areas. You'd have to cut the price or up the effectiveness. Probably easier to up the effectiveness, at least until you get to very small ships like those ESU and NSL corvettes with a single hull box and a matching single armour box. It would make for a really awful optional rule; give people the option to convert each armour box into five boxes which could be parcelled out over the various arcs of the ship, each counting as a "proper" armour box for that arc only. It seems like a superficially fair and balanced idea until you stop and think about it. Then you realise that in practical terms, you'd find that people would armour the living hell out of their frontal arc and charge in all guns blazing, confident that it will take the enemy a long time to shoot through the frontal armour since it's effectively five times as thick as it should be. And really, not having armour on other aspects isn't that big of a deal if our own games are anything to go by. Of course, there would be some amusement to be derived from shooting up people like that with ignore-armour weapons.
There's also the irritation of trying to work out which arc you've been hit in, but we overcome the opposite problem without too much trouble. Still, none of it seems worth the aggravation.
Guns are armour. From a purely practical point of view, you try to set up your firing solution so that you don't get too much return fire, so you try to come in at the target from an angle which doesn't expose you to the enemy guns. Which means that ships should, in the long term, getting fewer attacks from the direction in which they can put the most firepower. This is generally the front, and then the forward side arcs. Which is pretty much historically where armour gets concentrated too. So since the natural reluctance of your enemy to get shot at is having the same effect as more armour, why bother keeping track of it?
Just as well, mind you. I hate to think what twisted compromises and insanity would be needed to implement armour for different areas. You'd have to cut the price or up the effectiveness. Probably easier to up the effectiveness, at least until you get to very small ships like those ESU and NSL corvettes with a single hull box and a matching single armour box. It would make for a really awful optional rule; give people the option to convert each armour box into five boxes which could be parcelled out over the various arcs of the ship, each counting as a "proper" armour box for that arc only. It seems like a superficially fair and balanced idea until you stop and think about it. Then you realise that in practical terms, you'd find that people would armour the living hell out of their frontal arc and charge in all guns blazing, confident that it will take the enemy a long time to shoot through the frontal armour since it's effectively five times as thick as it should be. And really, not having armour on other aspects isn't that big of a deal if our own games are anything to go by. Of course, there would be some amusement to be derived from shooting up people like that with ignore-armour weapons.
There's also the irritation of trying to work out which arc you've been hit in, but we overcome the opposite problem without too much trouble. Still, none of it seems worth the aggravation.
Sunday 6 April 2008
More thoughts on armour
And some more thoughts come in. As a further Rorschach test, ask yourselves whose mind works this way:
Alteratively, some types of armour on a ship dissipate the force of the attack throughout the whole of its structure. In some cases, it may be a unimolecular structure. In others, all the armour may be in a single quantum state, and react uniformly (as a superfluid might).
And some other types of armour may be able to do something similar to the kidshield thing. Some ships may be covered in nano-scale field generators, but only able to power a small share of them at a time. And damage may mainly be manifested in burning out redundancy in power distribution.
The Sa'Vasku may have a biological form of this, or may actually have semi-sentient kid-tiles rushing around to catch incoming fire, and patch up holes.
And perhaps some other bioship types may take damage analogous to shock, that is much more debilitating than the damage they take directly.
Thursday 3 April 2008
Armour; an explanation
And this just in; can you guess the source?
FT armour works on the kiddie shield principle. You know how in the movies an escaping badguy picks up a cute kiddie to use as a shield? Well, when your sensors register that your opponents weapons have locked on, all the armour tile modules are sent scurrying round to the expected point of impact like lots and lots of sacrificial kiddies (The armour may in fact be made from kiddies, but I'm not telling - that information is classified). As your opponent is not a clean cut movie hero, instead of holding his fire he just keeps blasting until there are no more kiddies between him and the target.
50% of pulse torpedo damage penetrates because it burns through kiddies really fast.
Kravak projectiles work because they incorporate Big Scary Angry Dog DNA that snarls as it comes in and scares away the kiddies.
Armour
The gathering momentum of Campaign Eddie has seen me reading a lot of draft rules of one kind and another. In the course of reading them, I got to thinking about Armour in FTII.
There's a funny thing that none of us have really thought about (or at least not talked about); weapons of all kinds are constrained to various arcs of fire. Armour isn't. It's completely homogenous, an even skin all over the ship. What got me to thinking about it was how you'd go about making a ship to ram another ship. Since the work is going to be done by the impetus of the ramship and perhaps the secondary explosion when the drive went up, what you'd really want, in abstract terms, would be something which would hold together till impact, and preferably go really fast right up until then. One version of that would be an engine with a bridge and a huge slab of armour in the front which would protect the engine and the control room right up until impact. I had this lovely picture in my mind of a sort of titanium mushroom with a vast flame of exhaust coming out of the stem.
And I realised that the standard FTII rules don't let you make something which would look like that. And I started to wonder why armour doesn't have arcs when weapons do....
There's a funny thing that none of us have really thought about (or at least not talked about); weapons of all kinds are constrained to various arcs of fire. Armour isn't. It's completely homogenous, an even skin all over the ship. What got me to thinking about it was how you'd go about making a ship to ram another ship. Since the work is going to be done by the impetus of the ramship and perhaps the secondary explosion when the drive went up, what you'd really want, in abstract terms, would be something which would hold together till impact, and preferably go really fast right up until then. One version of that would be an engine with a bridge and a huge slab of armour in the front which would protect the engine and the control room right up until impact. I had this lovely picture in my mind of a sort of titanium mushroom with a vast flame of exhaust coming out of the stem.
And I realised that the standard FTII rules don't let you make something which would look like that. And I started to wonder why armour doesn't have arcs when weapons do....
Thursday 24 January 2008
Formal hiatus
Given that Eddie has plans for a campaign and I've done so very little with this in the last five months, I think this campaign will be going on hiatus for the moment. Depending on what Eddie wants to do with his thing, I may use this blog as a way of tracking the evolution of that new campaign.
It's a testament to my startlingly limited outlook on life that I concentrated entirely on putting together a mechanical system for managing the logistics without giving any thought at all to back story. It was only when I read Eddie's much more richly imagined notion that I realised I'd never even thought about anything beyond the abstract.
It's a testament to my startlingly limited outlook on life that I concentrated entirely on putting together a mechanical system for managing the logistics without giving any thought at all to back story. It was only when I read Eddie's much more richly imagined notion that I realised I'd never even thought about anything beyond the abstract.
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