I was thinking, now that we have a good selectoin of paramilitary and police ships, of a mini campaign set in a back water world during the andro invasoin-- the local police forces and whatever aid they could scrape up, are fighting an andro mining operation. The idea would be that it would be, as much as possible restricted to auxillary and police craft-- maybe a heavy police cutter as the "flagship" of the fleet, while the andro's are in a similar position. the front quite simply isn't important enough to deploy more up to date units.

The campaign would be fought out as several smaller engagements, with both side shaving to focus on resource management-- especially since ships are utterly irreplacable, while fighters can be replaced, albeit slowly and usually with something worse.
Does it sound doable and attractive? I'd have to figure out just how many ships each side might have and go from there.

By Glenn Hoepfner (Ikabar) on Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - 11:06 am: Edit

Charles, those are the kind of campaigns I've enjoyed where the little guys find themselves being the only guys.

By Charles Gray (Cgray45) on Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - 02:10 pm: Edit

Yeah-- and another point is, I've heard that there are a LOT of problems running "Big campaigns" for many gamers-- too much set up time, scenarios take a long time (though Fed Commander may be changing that). Smaller set ups create both a slower tempo of battle and (somewhat paradoxically) faster games.
It also to my mind eliminates the biggest annoyance i have in a pick up game, where someone starts sacrificing smaller shipos because there is no downside, other than the lost points, to the act. OTH, if it's a linked set of scenarios, and you can repair, but not replace, suddenly that "worthless" police carrier becomes... much more important to pull out when it starts getting chunked.

By Scott Tenhoff (Scottt) on Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - 03:08 pm: Edit

So are you talking like an Economy of Force with just Aux/Police/Guard units verses Andros?

Say a strategic map 4/3/2/1 big?

Like:
Fed: 8 POL, 2PV, 2FLG, LAC, 2SAC, SAV
Kli: 8 G2, 2G4V, 2G4, LAC, 2SAC, SAP
Andro: 2MOS, 2Python? 4GUN, 4CS, 20MWP

Maybe 2 "minor" planets in the "3" row with 6 fighters and 3 GBs, and the "Capital" in the "1" row with a full PDU w/ a full 12 fighters (heh).

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - 06:16 pm: Edit

Scott, your suggested forces are more than would be found in a single province... almost 2 provinces worth for each of the Federation and Klingons.

It might be wise to "lower" the scope somewhat and include some smaller ships.

call it a FLG, and 5-6 POL (of which ONE might be a PV or a or a SAV) and a LAC and 2 SAC. toss in some skiffs, a modular courier and a armed cutter and you have it.

cut the Klingons down to a similar size and let the Andromedan player "bid" for his forces from the list.

By Charles Gray (Cgray45) on Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - 06:49 pm: Edit

I was actually thinking even fewer-- and instead of a strategic map with a set goal, have "areas". The Andro's have more forces total, but they are nailed down defending various mining groups-- the andro "commander" has a quota of stuff to mine and he's not here to fight after all. (Once the great victory against the galactics is one, it's presumed that a dominator will be buy to tidy things up-- until then he's (or it) is more or less on his own).

The Galactic player has a few military police shiops, but most of them are auxillaries, like the armed cutters and Prime corvettes-- the presumption is that many of these were civilian ships that have been converted on scene with weapons shipped in. He also has a number of fighters/bombers (especially since it was established that bombers are easier to build then fighters and can and have been built on colony worlds). He can't replace ships, or only replace them very, very slowly, so he has to go looking for andro bases and disrupt thier operations, but do so without losing too many forces. (As to why he can't just wait-- we'll it's a backwater, but it IS a part of hte conflict, and every load of ore that isn't getting to the andro war machine is a load of ore that isn't going to be transformed into something big and nasty that mounts TR beams).
There's also the possibility of having one orion or so, (which honestly is where this idea got germinated-- I was thinking of writing a story from the view point of an orion mercenary commander hired by the feds to provide "stiffening" to the local forces), but that ship operates on it's own rules and can't be used all the time.

So the Andro's have the goal (primary) of continuing their mining operations while a secondar goal of destroying their enemies, and with no front line ships are at a bit of a disadvantage in open space engagements. The galactics have in some repsects more concentrated combat power (in open space a bomber/fighter force should be able to kill gun sleds, and the andro's have no displacement devices, which makes things...odd for them), but they can't just sit around-- they have to go in and disrupt the mining, which means having to spread out a bit more.
What do you think?

By Reid Hupach (Gwbison) on Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - 06:55 pm: Edit

Hey why just andros, this would be perfect for a small Orion force to be operating in an area.

The Galactic powers would have to guard convoys and small planets against deprevation by pirates.

Orion force
Sal
2 RC
3 LR
2 FT

and possibly if colony raiding is part, a Viking

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - 09:46 pm: Edit

Reid, go for it...write it up and post it to the scenario thread.

Might be a lot of fun.

By Charles Gray (Cgray45) on Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - 10:50 pm: Edit

So at a first blush you'd have the following "Areas of operation".

Planetary near space (the galactic home base).

Five Asteroid belt areas, where the main action would take place in.

Two "convoy areas" where both andro and galactic forces in transit to their respective main bases would be-- not certain if they should be open to combat.

Now, normally the best tactic would be for the galactic to try and clear each area with all of his forces, but I was thinking of tying victory points to the idea of "disrupting" mining operations-- he can't just pile on to one area because he may not find anything, and the andro mining operations are meanwhile going on uninterrupted in the other areas. Each turn would probably be about a week, assuming that there was no new construction (or what "construction" there was was actually uncrating fighters and assembling them).

By Charles Gray (Cgray45) on Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - 10:52 pm: Edit

Also, in searching for Andro bases, you have to find them-- but (and I'm not certain how to do this), the more discrete units you have looking the better the chance-- but if you then find them, that means that one of your units has come in contact with them, so the more "units" out looking the weaker the unit that finds them will be and the bigger chance it will be destroyed before the others can concentrate. (the assumption hwere is that if the andro's see one huge superstack of a half dozen warships with a fighter cap (ok, a half dozen police and civilian ships ) banging away with active sensors, they'll just shut down and they can see it a mile away-- several units looking dramtiaclaly increase the chance ot getting that "lucky hit".)

By Jim Cummins (Jimcummins) on Wednesday, January 24, 2007 - 09:40 am: Edit

Perhaps this is were the stealthy Orion comes in, sneaking around finding the mining outpost and selling the information to the galactic forces.

By Charles Gray (Cgray45) on Wednesday, January 24, 2007 - 06:19 pm: Edit

That's one possiblity-- perhaps having hte orion in a zone can either give you a +1 for all forces, or allow the Orion a chance to sneak in for a direct strke-- of course if you lose him you don't get another and he's probably, all in all, the most powerful warshipo in the force-- maybe something as deadly as a DW!

(In truth I'd figure there would be more "little guys" in the General war and after era-- as fleets get bigger and bigger, sending off lone cruisers is just begging to get them jumped and destroyed, so in a lot of places you either only have local forces, or an actual fleet flotilla-- nothing in between).

By Mark Drake (Drakester) on Sunday, February 11, 2007 - 10:56 pm: Edit

Great idea.I like using smaller ships myself for a qucik game.Perhaps have an OOB for each race so as to have more options of which side to play?

Also would like to see a generic-type scenario vs pirates as well.

Please post any scenario you come up with.

Thanks,
MD