Omega_Glory
Commodore
Yea I know....I still play too. Although these days I seem to design ships and scenarios for the game more than actually playing it. They're not official, but I have fun with em'.
What if Starfleet Battles evolved into TMP?
- Thread starter JamesSmith
- Start date
Ditching plotted movement made the games go a bit quicker.
SFB was good game but the slow pace of the game was hardly a good simulation of Trek starship combat. SFC had fast paced combat that felt more real.
Just the other day, someone told me that using the plotted movement option in SFB would actually speed things up for him, because he'd spend less time each impulse debating what to do.
I've only ever played SFB without plotted movement, so I don't know.
Marian
That's a problem with virtually all tactical games. Roleplaying game combat as well, which is evolved from tactical game combat.
As a gamemaster, I've always maintained that combat should go as close to real-time as possible. Otherwise, it ceases to be exciting.
With regards to SFB in particular, we've tried out games with no pre-plotting and with fewer impulses to speed things up. We also changed damage resolution to be waaaay faster.
Omega_Glory
Commodore
I have not played Commander yet. I might give it a try at the game convention in Denver this fall.
Actually, no. I assume you mean the 1 in 4 get through--that would speed up the game but not damage resolution. What we did was roll once and then have the shot destroy a bank of adjacent boxes before moving rightwards along the chart. So a hit on a "7" would destroy a bank of cargo before moving onwards to.. whatever is right of cargo.
Underlined systems still only suffered one hit.
The idea was to simulate the sort of thing you saw in TWOK where you'd shoot a warp engine and blow up the warp engine. It also meant you didn't have to roll 48 times after a plasma torpedo hit. Since most systems are broken into banks of 1 or 2, it works out pretty well. I suppose if that felt too egregious, you could limit it to 5 hits per system or something.
That sounds useful and reasonable - cool... Indeed, one thing that I didn't care for in SFB's damage allocation was how the damage was spread all over in dribs and drabs (unlike Reliant's port nacelle getting blown clean off as you mention). Another was the lack of directionality (other than ignoring weapon hits if the firer were out of its arc).
FASA's Trek combat game sort of addressed directionality with multiple hit charts depending on the incoming fire's angle, but that game had other problems (such as its shield rules). FASA's Leviathan game damage system seems something like what you describe for SFB:
It's a neat idea, but how do you determine which adjacent boxes are hit? Star Fleet Battles SSDs aren't laid out like Leviathan's component block.
Damage allocation used to be a drag when I first started playing; it was by far the slowest part of the game. But I'm playing with some SFB veterans now who make it go pretty fast. They roll three sets of different colored 2D6 and do three hits at a time, and they almost have the DAC memorized after so many years, so it doesn't take long at all.
Marian
Damage allocation used to be a drag when I first started playing; it was by far the slowest part of the game. But I'm playing with some SFB veterans now who make it go pretty fast. They roll three sets of different colored 2D6 and do three hits at a time, and they almost have the DAC memorized after so many years, so it doesn't take long at all.
Marian
Cool! I always wanted to play Leviathan. I have a source book for it. I like the Renegade Legion universe a lot.
Hey Wendell--do you have any more time for on-line gaming these days?
Whichever boxes are nearest the shield punctured.
Say, that's right - one theory is that one is supposed to play games, not just read them... The answer is "sort of"; I've PMed you.
Omega_Glory
Commodore
I use 8+ sets of dice....depending on whether or not the grandkids have been rooting around in my stuff.
For SFB damage allocation which was slow when you went into rolling large amounts of damage. Thus I had printed blank tables of 5x5 and just rolled 2 dice and write the total down in each window in succession. I had about 8 of these tables per page and thus I could fairly quickly roll out 400 points of damage consecutively and then go back and cross each one successively in order. It really streamlined the damage process and made damage resolution no longer tedious.
Concerning the damage coming in from a downed shield I would operate on the basis of marking off the closest damage roll in the line of fire and from that side. So if I have a hit coming in from the downed left shield, any hits that were both on the forward and aft hulls would be first marked off on the side facing the firing ship unless stated by the damage chart. So a hit on the aft hull from the left side would be scored on the left aft hull spaces before proceeding to score any more on the right side. I treated phasers the same way and if there were more than 1 phaser on that bank I would roll a die and let the die choose which phaser was to be marked off of that bank. That way if there was a phaser still yet to be fired, the player would not automatically have the option to keep the unfired phaser since this is combat. I think this added another layer of realism and forced the player to adjust his tactics and tempo of attack accordingly.
As far as running the 32 impulse chart, it can be abbreviated on the presumption that unless you intend to do anything next impulse plotted or not, you forfeit your chance to act that impulse. Pre-plotting was more of a way of proving that you were not excercising "me too" fire when someone decided to open up on you that impulse. So if it was not plotted for that impulse or for that impulse activity segment, you snooze...you loose. This I think forced players to be more pre-emptively proactively and weeded out alot of wasted time by forcing the players to quit hemming and hawing around and get serious. And thus a lot of stalling and delaying was cut out the game and running the impulse chart speeded up significantly. What before for us that would take 4 hours could now be done in 2 usually. It still would slow down when you got into the meat of the fighting when you had to start specifying what you were doing that impulse and when it came up in the impulse activity segment.
Concerning the damage coming in from a downed shield I would operate on the basis of marking off the closest damage roll in the line of fire and from that side. So if I have a hit coming in from the downed left shield, any hits that were both on the forward and aft hulls would be first marked off on the side facing the firing ship unless stated by the damage chart. So a hit on the aft hull from the left side would be scored on the left aft hull spaces before proceeding to score any more on the right side. I treated phasers the same way and if there were more than 1 phaser on that bank I would roll a die and let the die choose which phaser was to be marked off of that bank. That way if there was a phaser still yet to be fired, the player would not automatically have the option to keep the unfired phaser since this is combat. I think this added another layer of realism and forced the player to adjust his tactics and tempo of attack accordingly.
As far as running the 32 impulse chart, it can be abbreviated on the presumption that unless you intend to do anything next impulse plotted or not, you forfeit your chance to act that impulse. Pre-plotting was more of a way of proving that you were not excercising "me too" fire when someone decided to open up on you that impulse. So if it was not plotted for that impulse or for that impulse activity segment, you snooze...you loose. This I think forced players to be more pre-emptively proactively and weeded out alot of wasted time by forcing the players to quit hemming and hawing around and get serious. And thus a lot of stalling and delaying was cut out the game and running the impulse chart speeded up significantly. What before for us that would take 4 hours could now be done in 2 usually. It still would slow down when you got into the meat of the fighting when you had to start specifying what you were doing that impulse and when it came up in the impulse activity segment.
Omega_Glory
Commodore
For a while I used a 10 impulse system. What you did was divide your speed by ten and then extra hexes were added in on certian impulses. This lends itself to some interesting situations but speeds things up considerably.
That's an Akula class Destroyer from Klingon Academy. Think Saladin Class with an extra warp nacelle on top.
