Trillion Credit Squadron idea for SFB's
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Star Fleet Battles: SFB Proposals Board:
Other Proposals:
Trillion Credit Squadron idea for SFB's
About 25 years ago, when GDW was still supporting Traveler, they came out with an adventure book titled "Adventure 5, Trillion Credit Squadron."
The presmise of the book was simple, it gave a simplified (note I emphasize simplified compared to 'simple'!!!) system for building squadrons of ships for tournament games, player campaigns and for game masters to build fleets based on a set of criterial, including planets populations, taxation rates etc.
they alo allowed for higher prices to build a prototype ship, and discounts for "standardized" production that didnt monkey around with a class of ships.
My proposal (such as it is) is to add a economic system to SFB's for calculating the number of BPV's generated by a planet or planets for use in player campaigns.
This would be a "non historical" version that does not rely upon F&E, but would allow players to "build" their star fleet based on how big they build their economies.
the Federation, (having been noted in various places in Star Fleet History) having a "fatter economy" may indeed have an advantage in generating revenue from thier planets... command and control economies (such as thata used by the old USSR, China, Cuba and North Korea) have less efficient economies and thus might not be as able to pay for as big a fleet (depends on playability...)
Star Fleet battles already has most of such a structure in place in the form of BPV's... why not continue the economic side to the system and allow the home gaming groups more freedom in building their campaigns?
If you build it they will come.
Doesn't the Campaign Designer's Handbook already address these issues?
Only in the most vague possible terms.
Terry OCarroll:
Question... do you have access to the Campaign Designers Handbook?
If the answer is "yes" then you should know that MJC speaks truth.
If the answer is "NO"... I have to wonder about the intent of you last post.
I guess the proper way to go forward is to take Chris Proper's advice and actually construct a economic revenue structure for the BPV system.
Its a different approach than the way F&E does the same thing, and will yeld slightly different results...but it would make "Home Grown" campaigns somewhat easier to function.
CDH does have a number of suggestions on themes but no real statistical or data structure yet.
My initial "gut" feel for the trade off values that we need to use is 25 BPV's equal 1 F&E Econ point.
using that "yard stick" a minor world would be able to afford the equal of 1 Federation FF every 6 months (note I said "afford" not build...to build ships would require a slip way star base or ship construction facility of some sort...).
A major world, (with a F&E income of 5 EP's every turn would be able to afford 125 BPV's of "stuff" which roughly equates to a fully refited NCL (and drone upgrades) or a pre refit CA type hull.
using that guide, then each 5 to 7 hex province would yeild 2 EP per 6 months could build 50 BPV's worth of stuff.
I guess the best way is to build a table listing worlds, colonies and bases with a "income" contribution for how much BPV's they contribute to a empires revenues.
Once we have that, we could develop a list of modifiers for the races that are based on know characteristics...may be +2 for captilism and -2 for command and control type economies...maybe a -1 for social welfare/basket case economies(none of the empires in F&E would qualify for that, but there might be one of the Omega races that would...)
I'll have to think about that...
Guys,
As a veteran of several campaigns - some less successful than others - my two cents involve a question. What is the intent of the economic system? Is it to simulate an entire empire, ala F&E? Or provide a playable, fun campaign using SFB to resolve battles?
The two are not neccessarily the same thing.
For what its worth, from past experience, we learned that there is definitely a balance point in terms of system value vs. risk in defending it. In one campaign, nobody was willing to lose a FF over a planet, because the planet was only worth 25 EPV/turn... 1/3 the value of the FF.
Dale, good point and one that brings a nice "realistic" POV here.
I would respond with another question for you... should the econ system we "build" for this thng focus on one planet at a time or should it consider an entire star system?
I ask as we know from SFB's that "mixed" ownership star systems are rare... and flash points for combat incidents.
In a head to head campaign game that "only" looks at a single planet at a time, the decision not to fight might be reasonable.
what about a star system with 2 or 3 habitable planets, 3+ gas giants (like Jupiter) each with 12+ moons with populations on them, and an asteriod mining thing in an asteroid belt?
instead of a single planet that generates only 25 BPV per turn, you have to calculate the total income of the star system...and when all the units are added up, you might have several hundred BPV's at risk.... and letting an enemy secure a beach head on a planet where he can introduce bombers, fighters and PF's would be a "Bad Thing"(tm).
If it is a single planet system with no population and useable (or exploitable) resources, then no, it would not be worth fighting for.
IMO the decision needs to be in context.
The other thing is, any such "BPV" Econ system needs to be rather simple to apply as too much detail will make it unplayable... and if no one plays it, it isnt worth doing.
Jeff: You're right. When I said "planet", I really meant "system", but in our past campaigns, the 'assumption' was that each system only had one 'valuable' planet worth fighting over.
In our games, the ultimate importance was the "value" of the entire hex. I distinctly remember when Jeremy Gray fought Justin Howell over a newly-found planet. It was an Fed FF vs. Klingon F5 duel. The lack of ph-1s on the F5 was telling, and without even taking internals, the Klingons disengaged - unwilling to lose a 71 point frigate for a 25 point system. I might add that Jeremy was our most aggressive player - and he was flying the Klingon.
Hence, in later campaigns, we tried to increase the value of planets, in order to provide an incentive to fight.
I think the CDH lays out the skeleton. Fleshing it out is easily done. You just have to decide on a median value. Too low, and systems trade hands frequently as no one is willing to fight against even a slight disadvantage to keep the system. Too high, and the campaign can "domino" as one player gets an early jump and gobbles up some key systems.
No, I don't own the CDH. I thought you might be trying to reinvent the wheel. Obviously, I was wrong.
I am interested in this subject because I'd like to create a simple campaign system for FC.
Dale and Terry, I will have to pull out my copy of the CDH and lay ot a proposal that might make some sense...
A lot of the information we will need to "flesh out" a BPV econ system will have to come from F&
E.
Open question for any one who cares to share an opinion:
Does the 25BPV per 1 F&E Econ point sound reasonable to you?
take it another way, if we look at fall year 168 turn #1 of F&E, the 6 month inclome is 221 EP. if the 25 BPV per EP is "true" or "Correct" then the Federation 6 month worth of income works out to be 5,525 BPV. (simple enough calculation, its 221 * 25 BPV).
That makes the annual income (for 12 months) 11,050 BPV.
If we use the old Travel rules as a "frame work", IIRC you were allowed to build a fleet worth up to 10 years income (and some percentage had to be 1 tech level lower to reflect older designs...) I don't know yet if that makes any sense as 110,500 BPV's to pay for the star fleet and the accumulated ground bases and BATS and Star bases etc might push the total far beyond what the "budget allows.
I'll have to look at it in that context to see if it seems reasonable... we might have to change that "ten year rule" to reflect actual SFB's usage... but I have no idea wat the "real number" is or ought to be.
I just feel that what ever set of Econ rules we create should reflect Star Fleet Battles universe history.
I remember Trillion Credit Squadron.
My brother is/was something of a Treveller-phile and offerred to moderate it. I did the navy while a freind did the army andtwo other friends cooperated to create our opposition.
The enemy built a fleet centered around a Million-ton monster of a command ship.
My ships were mostly 50K ton light cruisers. I had two classes, one for combat and one for hit-and-run and commerce raids. I also expended for static system defenses as well as for ships that were 1/3 completed and 2/3 completed on the theory that we would need output from the shipyards before it was all over.
What threw the whole thing off was when my brother added esionage. We outspent our opponets 10:1, giving our spooks both a near-complete layout of the opposition fleet and ability to play merry hell with what they saw of us. I think my brother's favoite part was spinning this huge fiction of us as a mirror-reflection of their own fleet--only on steroids.
The war was over without ever firing a shot.
This could be a real mess....
Just by adding a Pirate player to steal economy from other players.
Of course the more he steals the stronger he gets.
I'm begining to go off the idea that ecconomic vaule is directly proportional to territory held in anything but the largest areas (an entire empire) and begining to think that if the battle heats up in your sector; the government will load you up with more money/ships, not less.
That being said, you'll probably need a "heat rating" to determine what ecconomic forces are applied. This a is a mixture of planets; recently lost or gained, ships recently; forced to disengage, take internal damage, be crippled or be destroyed. In this way no one planet is viewed as being worth X but rather Y planets must be defended and/or captured each campaign turn in order to keep your heat rating higher than the other guy and thus get enough ships to eventually overpower him. Copnversely destroying his ships will also drive up your heat rate and down with his total number of ships so opting for battles early does also have an advantage.
Equally you could use a history list. You get these replacement ships for your fleet on these dates irrespective of what you actually lost. If there is a war going on then you might get some mix of the two concepts as contracts to purchase get completed and you start ordering, makes up for your losses. You might have an additional period of time between getting an ordering just to create lag or even a have a random die roll thing, taking ships you ordered out of production for you and sending them to somewhere that needs it more whilst also having a die roll to recieve ships you didn't order if your "heat rating" is high enough.
"Of course the more he steals the stronger he gets. "
ummm no.. the more he steals the richer he gets but that doesn't mean that all of what he steals should get converted to what he can spend on ships.
Pirates in a campaign should never be allowed to grow to any REAL strength. If they do they are being played as an empire not as a monster scenario.
The thing is there shouldn't be a single pirate player. Or if there is, there should be plenty of NPC pirates for him to contend with.
Pirates have their own territories, alliances, rivalries. Properly done, you could end up playing two scenarios at once. One for the empires and a second shadow-game for the pirates.
The economic system for the pirate would have to take into account, the economic effects of the pirate's own activities. Too much piracy would reduce trade, in the same way that excessive taxation stunts economic growth. Then the pirate would have a large overhead (all the ships he's built) and has to pay the overhead out of reduced revenues. That's a bad business model. Like hunters who conserve game, pirates limit their activities so that they will have something to steal tomorrow.
...and deal with those pirates who don't think that way.
Well, Lets try to address some of these issues...
Reid, obviously there are no pirates!
Only honest merchants willing to negotiate with phasers and photon torpedos!! 
MJC: huhnnh?!?
Les, unless you are playing in a pirats variation of the captains game, I would think trying to balance out a scenario for a player controled pirate faction would be difficult.
One way to look at pirate operations is like looking at a "house of cards"
One could build an impressive structure with several decks of playing cards...but when it falls... if falls.
Piracy is not a subsistance form of life... it is hunter and hunted.
pirate cartels grow strong and intimidatae their rivals until the government steps in and "cleans house"... there are a number of famous pirates that ended up on the wrong end of a rope, a firing squad (or like black beard), killed in a boarding action.
maybe pirates need to pay an increasing maintanence fee for every turn to reflect increasing costs of living...(flosies, booze, accountants, body guards, funeral home expenses and perpetual caare at the cemetary of choice?
Not very realistic...but might be required to balance out the "successful pirates" in a campaign?
SFB is a tactical game.
Anything in the strategic/economic realm should either be F&E or house rules.
About 7-8 years ago, I was in a campaign that came up with an economic system that assumed it was much more expensive to build big ships, all out of proportion to BPV.
| move cost | ship | cost factor | typical BPV | typical cost |
| ftr | F-14 | 50% | 14 | $7 |
| 1/3 | FF | 50% | 70 | $35 |
| 1/2 | DD | 70% | 100 | $70 |
| 2/3 | NCL | 80% | 120 | $96 |
| 3/4 or 1 | CA | 100% | 140 | $140 |
| 1 1/2 | DN | 150% | 220 | $330 |
| 2 | BB | 200% | 325 | $650 |
1 DD or 2 FFs? Same cost
2 CAs or 3 NCLs? Same cost
A B-10 or (2 CAs and 4 NCLs)?
Do you want to scare your enemies or fight them?
Planets game in 4 sizes, small ($10), medium ($25), large ($50), and homeworld ($100)
I looked at the F&E order of battle for the federation, and I came up with a total split BPV count of 48,858/41,113 counting a bunch of different stuff... a short list of what I included:
| type | qty | BPV | Total |
| DN | 2 | 180 | 360 |
| CC | 6 | 137 | 822 |
| CA | 18 | 125 | 2250 |
| FF | 27 | 71 | 1917 |
| SC | 6 | 120/100 | 720/600 |
| TUG | 7 | 88/60 | 616/420 |
| CL | 9 | 98 | 882 |
| DD | 18 | 94 | 1692 |
| POL | 168 | 40 | 6720 |
| GSC | 10 | 142/122 | 1420/1220 |
| CVS | 2 | 142 | 284 |
| Star Base | 13 | 600 | 7800 |
| BATS | 34 | 200 | 6800 |
| Convoys | 104 | 113/42 | 11752/4368 |
| FRD | 3 | 200/50 | 600/150 |
| Mine Sweeper | 8 | 94/80 | 752/640 |
| FFE | 4 | 80 | 320 |
| DE | 2 | 96 | 192 |
comments. this is not the full list, i also included monitors, but I'm not sure of the actual number that F&E calls for...for some reason I had 6 down...but I think thats in error...
Convoys, listed 104... I figured with 13 star bases and 12 members of the Fed Council... so its just a WAG. each star base pairs with 1 major world and routes up to 4 out bound convoys to each BATS, and or minor world...and an in bound convoy reverses the course... that makes 52 out bound convoys and 52 inbound convoys for a total of 104. I'm sure there will be people thedisagree with me, but thats the "quick and easy guess" I'm making for this exercise.
Police cutters. says 168. that's what the Table of organization would call for if every BATS had 3, and each star base had 5 and 1 extra. I know that the "unofficial" number is 250+.
I am doing this to "see" if the trillion squadron standard of annual income times 10 years will approximate the total BPV "cost" of the fed fleet.
It does not.
if we "drop" the values of the convoys, and all the bases, some 26,000 points) we get to about 12,000 BPV... or about 1,000 PBV's "off" (about 8%)... so I guess the hypothesis is proved (sorta...)
The funding formula works for fleet units (like cruisers and destroyers) but the funding of bases will need to be handled in some other way... I guess we will have to think about that some more.
Jeff Tonglet:
I was typing when you posted, so I didnt mean to "ignore" your post....
I think the Economic system has to be "simple" so your 4 classes of planets works well, I think.
I was hoping to stick to the BPV scale as its been proven for what 30+ years?!? when we start messing with discounts based on ship size we might end up with some "odd" changes to the way things work.
I've always advocated the idea of using F&E prices, and allow a shipyard to build at a rate of one EP per month. A FF takes three months to build; a DN take 16 months. You need special rules for the Hydran fusion ships: they cost what they do, but take as long as their HB twins.
Garth L. Getgen
I was talking about the question of being in charge of some section of territory but not all. In such cases an sector commander who's beeing loosing lots of territory to the enemy will actually get more ships sent to his control, rather than fewer which is the natural result of loosing territory.
On sticking with BPV.
It depends on what you want and what you think.
A Fed CARa+ cost as much BPV as two FFGs but since two FFGs will have a hell of a time trying to defeat that CARa+, maybe BPV needs a little something else to make people puchase anything but an all NCA/BC/BCG fleet.
I think having something that makes buying frigate easier, will make for more reasistic fleets. You don't want to build a super fleet straigh to his capital kind of game.
On the subject of "super fleets" there are the rule s8.0 limits, or we could restrict it the way F&E does it...by having a single DN size slipway (or in the case of afew larger races, like the Federation or the Klingons, 2 such size class 2 slip ways.
Personnally, I think if we stick to the BPV /economic structure, we should also stick with the other printed rules in sfb's.
S8 should be considered (IMO) as fleet composition restrictions that are an outworking of the command limits of the ship commanding the fleet, thus no more than one third of your fleet may be DB vessels is just something you have to contend with when you assemble a fleet, the DN just can't handle more of `em.
Moving on, there was another feature to the Trillion Credit squadron procedure that I think might have some relevance to SFB's.
Namely that when the tournament was spcified, it included various factors, not all of which apply to SFB...but some do.
for example, the Traveler thing would list the tech level, the jump factor, the manuver limits (in "G" force factors) and the number of pilots that could be included in the force.
Obviously, SFB's has not jump drives or manuver (tactical) drives.... but we could develop other limits.
for example, if we were to establish the total "budget" (just as it has in the past been done for the Battle force X,XXX articles in Captains logs magazines) part of the procedure could include other limits...instead of specifying the number of pilots, why not specify the maximum number of PF's, fighters, and Admin shuttles that the force may contain...the players then being free to build a force that contains up to thata limit.
another limit might be to specify the number of boarding parties in the force... players could choose the ships, with the proviso that they may not exceed the number of BP,s that those ships contain.
Or we might limit the number of heavy weapons, that a givven force might have... the way that last one might work out would be subject to the S8.0 limits, that the force must be able to be commanded by the Command Rataing of thte "flagship" and thte forx must have "X" number of heavy weapons... how the player does it is his concern so long as it is a legal force under the rules.
Or the specified force might be intended for "Battle Field" CSAR (Combat Search and Rescue) operations that might require the inclusion of one or mor tugs for haling away the hulls of damaged ships frfom a battle zone.
Lots of options.
re:
Player-operated Pirates in campaigns
Here's what I've done:
Privateers
Players can, at their discretion, hire Orion ships as privateers to conduct clandestine scouting and raiding mission into other players’ territories. These ships are under nominal control of the player, with certain and significant limitations.
At the beginning of each season, a player may lease Orion ships up to 10% of that player’s yearly EP output. This limit is in total, and leases already in place count against said limit. The cost of the lease, per year, is 25% of the Privateer’s total combat BPV, including commander’s options. The player is responsible for the supply, maintenance and repair of any Privateer in his empire’s service. Further, any prizes captured by the Privateer will go first to said Privateer, and then to the empire player.
Specific classes of ships may be requested, but will be limited by available technology and what the local Orion cartel has on hand. Generally, Orion ship classes will lag behind the local Empire player’s tech level, but their other tech will generally match it.
Available optional weapons will depend on the local cartel; generally, cartels will correspond to the historical cartel structure. Players may specify that the ships mount domestic weapons, but may be required to pay for that weapon to be mounted. Commander’s options are at the discretion of the Privateer. Any cargo the Privateers carry (like, oh, supply points) will have to be provided by the leasing player.
Privateers are under severe and significant command limits – no group of Privateers operating together may exceed a total of three ships, of which no more than one may be of SC3 or larger. A SAL fully configured as a repair ship does not count against this limit. Fighters and INT/PF carried by the ships do not count against this limit. Note that this is not just a command limit for battles, but an operational limit and limits the number of Privateer ships that may operate in the same hex.
Privateers are, for most purposes, part of the player’s fleet - the player moves the ships on the map, receive contact reports, etc. Privateers will generate a contact for foreign units as normal, but the leasing player will not be revealed – they will be reported simply as Orion ships of the appropriate type. Any communication with these ships will go thru the GM in order to preserve the leasing player’s identity.
Privateers from the same Cartel will not fight one another, nor will they attack facilities owned by their home cartel.
------------------------------------------
This allows a Pirate player to have some fun, but does not create a monster
Perhaps add,
"Privateers ALWAYS attempt to disengage once crippled, or if they are facing a force XXX% larger than themselves..."