Sterling,
I'm going to pass onthis campaign but will fly as Captain if you need some.

Cheers
Frank

By Sterling Clifton (Usmc_Admiral) on Tuesday, June 07, 2011 - 01:14 pm: Edit

UPDATED
Race - Status - Player
Andromedan Invaders - NPC Random Encounter - N/A

Carnivon Horde - Available - None

Gorn Confederation - Taken - Troy Williams (Jungletoy)

Hydran Kingdom - Taken - Drew Klenotic (Tillek)

Interstellar Condcordium

Jindarian Caravans - Available - None

Klingon Empire - Available - None

Kzinti Hegemony - Taken - Josh Driscol (Gfb)

Lyran Democratic Republic - Taken - John Smith (Johnsmith)

Lyran Star Empire - Taken - John Coleman (Aligato)

Orion Syndicate - Taken - Sterling Clifton (Usmc_Admiral)

Paravian Marauders - Available - None

Romulan Star Empire - Available - none

Seltorian Tribunal - Available - None

Tholian Holdfast - Available - None

United Federation of Planets - Taken - Majead Farsi (Devil)

Vudar Enclave - Taken- Jacob Karpel (Psybomb)

Wyn Star Cluster - Available - None

By Peter Thoenen (Eol) on Tuesday, June 07, 2011 - 02:16 pm: Edit

Just to ask Sterling, what prevents you, as the GM, from abusing privileged information given you are also a player (Orion). Not saying you would do it on purpose but hard to avoid that inherent conflict .. or is somebody else GM'ing this?

By stephen l. caswell (Artiumas) on Tuesday, June 07, 2011 - 03:15 pm: Edit

i guess i will tke the klingon's

By Sterling Clifton (Usmc_Admiral) on Tuesday, June 07, 2011 - 03:17 pm: Edit

UPDATED
Race - Status - Player
Andromedan Invaders - NPC Random Encounter - N/A

Carnivon Horde - Available - None

Gorn Confederation - Taken - Troy Williams (Jungletoy)

Hydran Kingdom - Taken - Drew Klenotic (Tillek)

Interstellar Condcordium

Jindarian Caravans - Available - None

Klingon Empire - Taken - Stephen (Artiumas)

Kzinti Hegemony - Taken - Josh Driscol (Gfb)

Lyran Democratic Republic - Taken - John Smith (Johnsmith)

Lyran Star Empire - Taken - John Coleman (Aligato)

Orion Syndicate - Taken - Sterling Clifton (Usmc_Admiral)

Paravian Marauders - Available - None

Romulan Star Empire - Available - none

Seltorian Tribunal - Available - None

Tholian Holdfast - Available - None

United Federation of Planets - Taken - Majead Farsi (Devil)

Vudar Enclave - Taken- Jacob Karpel (Psybomb)

Wyn Star Cluster - Available - None

By Josh Driscol (Gfb) on Tuesday, June 07, 2011 - 03:57 pm: Edit

I also think that Im going to have to pass on the player spots, the strategic game looks to be more than I really want to handle.

But I would be interested in helping with battles if I have the time.

The Kzinti Hegemony is now available for another player.

By Jason Langdon (Jaspar) on Tuesday, June 07, 2011 - 07:54 pm: Edit

Just to ask Sterling, what prevents you, as the GM, from abusing privileged information given you are also a player (Orion). Not saying you would do it on purpose but hard to avoid that inherent conflict .. or is somebody else GM'ing this?

Ive GMd and played before, and its fine when you make your movement decisions before anyone else submits their orders. The bigger problem is also running a number of the other empires as NPCs. That would be a pretty massive task.

Sterling, would it be right to say that this game is like F&E but the battles are played out using SFB?

By Sterling Clifton (Usmc_Admiral) on Tuesday, June 07, 2011 - 11:38 pm: Edit

Josh Driscol (Gfb): The strategic map will be smaller than you think.. basically the F%E map but on what I feel is a better scale.. each hex is 1 light year rather than 500.

Jason Langdon (Jaspar): What prevents me from cheating is three fold; A). I follow my religion pretty strictly, and it forbids dishonesty, cheating and mistreatment of other people. B). I was raised by my parents with a similar philosophy. C). Playing a game is no fun if its nto challenging. Being a douche-bag, and using GM knowledge to cheat would mean i wipe the floor with you. That MIGHT be fun for a little bit if i was a bag guy, but even then players would quit and then I'd have no one to cheat against and no game, so no fun that way either.

The NPC empires will be basically me number crunching to make sure their economies stay running, unless you attack them. Attacking them means they fight you.

No I used the Federation and Empire rulebook to structure my rule-set, 95% of the rules however are different. But it is the truth to say that this game is about strategic victory, with tactical battles being a means to that end.

By Jason Langdon (Jaspar) on Wednesday, June 08, 2011 - 12:01 am: Edit

How much SFBOL combat do you see happening? And how much of the game will be played out in the decisions we make?

If there isnt much SFBOL then I can probably play. But the window of time when I am up, and most other players are up (and playing SFB) is limited, and Im already in another campaign and a tournament.

By Sterling Clifton (Usmc_Admiral) on Wednesday, June 08, 2011 - 01:01 am: Edit

Jason Langdon (Jaspar): I see as much SFBOL as you want, or as little as you want. The game will run until there is a winner or we have no more interested players.

The more aggressive you are, the more battles your actions will generate.

By Sterling Clifton (Usmc_Admiral) on Wednesday, June 08, 2011 - 01:02 am: Edit

ERRATTA (sp?) Units take 1 turn per 50 BPV to build. Read as, a shipyard may construct 200 BPV worth of unit per calendar year.

By Sterling Clifton (Usmc_Admiral) on Wednesday, June 08, 2011 - 05:01 am: Edit

Placement of all star systems nearly complete... LDR, Vudar, Seltorian, and Lyran left to be placed.

By Sterling Clifton (Usmc_Admiral) on Wednesday, June 08, 2011 - 01:18 pm: Edit

Freighters carry 5 BPV/Credits per cargo box. Non Freighters carry 1 BPV/Credits per cargo box. These values are halved for Orions. and Triple for Andromedans.

By John Coleman (Aligato) on Wednesday, June 08, 2011 - 07:03 pm: Edit

Sending this for Lucky Coleman he wants in and will sign up later tonight if a race is still open.

By Sterling Clifton (Usmc_Admiral) on Wednesday, June 08, 2011 - 07:25 pm: Edit

Lucky can have any race he wants that's still open.. there's like 8 open.

Update: I am currently physically making the map on my graphic editor.

By Sterling Clifton (Usmc_Admiral) on Wednesday, June 08, 2011 - 11:35 pm: Edit

UPDATED
Race - Status - Player
Andromedan Invaders - NPC Random Encounter - N/A

Carnivon Horde - Available - None

Gorn Confederation - Taken - Troy Williams (Jungletoy)

Hydran Kingdom - Taken - Drew Klenotic (Tillek)

Interstellar Condcordium

Jindarian Caravans - Available - None

Klingon Empire - Taken - Stephen (Artiumas)

Kzinti Hegemony - Taken - Josh Driscol (Gfb)

Lyran Democratic Republic - Taken - John Smith (Johnsmith)

Lyran Star Empire - Taken - John Coleman (Aligato)

Orion Syndicate - Taken - Sterling Clifton (Usmc_Admiral)

Paravian Marauders - Available - None

Romulan Star Empire - Taken - Lucky Coleman

Seltorian Tribunal - Available - None

Tholian Holdfast - Available - None

United Federation of Planets - Taken - Majead Farsi (Devil)

Vudar Enclave - Taken- Jacob Karpel (Psybomb)

By Sterling Clifton (Usmc_Admiral) on Wednesday, June 08, 2011 - 11:46 pm: Edit

UPDATED
Race - Status - Player
Andromedan Invaders - NPC Random Encounter - N/A

Carnivon Horde - Available - None

Gorn Confederation - Taken - Troy Williams (Jungletoy)

Hydran Kingdom - Taken - Drew Klenotic (Tillek)

Interstellar Condcordium

Jindarian Caravans - Available - None

Klingon Empire - Taken - Stephen (Artiumas)

Kzinti Hegemony - Available - None

Lyran Democratic Republic - Taken - John Smith (Johnsmith)

Lyran Star Empire - Taken - John Coleman (Aligato)

Orion Syndicate - Taken - Sterling Clifton (Usmc_Admiral)

Paravian Marauders - Available - None

Romulan Star Empire - Taken - Lucky Coleman

Seltorian Tribunal - Available - None

Tholian Holdfast - Available - None

United Federation of Planets - Taken - Majead Farsi (Devil)

Vudar Enclave - Taken- Jacob Karpel (Psybomb)

By John Smith (Johnsmith) on Friday, June 10, 2011 - 12:17 am: Edit

Is it your intention that BBs and 1x CCs move approx 6x as fast as FFs?

Are there any disadvantages to expeditionary fleets?

Tugs resupply 1/2 a fleet based on what? BPV? Ship count? Does it matter how large a fleet is? I presume it must have cargo pods on it?

Repair cost seems very harsh, with the rule as is I think you'll see a lot of battles with damaged ships. If this is what you want, that's fine, just wasn't sure if you considered it.

Income generation seems a little complex. Also, on a strictly moral note, why is the only non-mining way to generate your own income slave trading? How about farming, manufacturing, research, etc instead. Or just a blanket "production infrastructure" income?

407.22 lists drones, shuttles, ppts, etc as things you spend money on. How much do these cost?

407.23 repeats 407.22, but has a different heading. What did you intend to type here?

407.24 is this one turn or two turns? Do you realize players will be spending most of their early income (which won't buy many ships) to increase their effective year (i.e. when it's most cost efficient to do so). I would strongly recommend you keep tech advancement tied to actual year.

I see nothing in economics about refits or conversions.

Waaaay too many classes of shipyards. Why make it so complex? Also, half the ships are missing identifiers. I for one don't know the names ship classes, and honestly won't bother to ever figure them out. Please use the standard designations.

502 is going to make things impossible to play on SFBOL, to say nothing of the dangers of tech sloshing.

503 has a lot of ambiguity. What size are the shipyards, the base allocation is confusing (I really recommend not playing with SBs, especially when using standard CR), are there any restrictions on restricted ship classes, etc?

Racial bonuses: wow, don't like these at all. Some are confusing, and there's serious inequality between them.

Operator stuff: didn't bother to read it, but it's more than i want to deal with in a campaign.

By Kerry E Mullan (Nomad17) on Friday, June 10, 2011 - 02:09 am: Edit

Sterling as well a couple questions on just some basics.

For builds: so for a shipyard to build say Heavy cruisers that costs 2200 bpv to build one? As well it'll take 11 years to build one? As well the only way to build said dock is by having a shipyard already there of that size or larger? ie I see no route to building other shipyards.

So basicallly other than initial shipyards you will never see any others built.

As well 20 ish classes for ship builds? Why not just go to a simpler system ie just as simple as SC4/SC3/SC2 docks would minimize a lot of the extraneous record keeping which doesn't seem wanted by anyone.

The whole slave/animal etc route for $ what is up with a GM tax? I mean it is bad enough the entire thing is a route to make money but is there some kind of tax purveyer that has ultimate control to siphon off money here? As well care to define it a little better? ie if I whack an opponents planet I can sell their whole population for $ and big dollars-which won't be usable for the next 15 turns as it takes 5 to get it back into my capital and the carrying ship only carries 50 bpv per trip so having 3 frieghters do so means I will recover all after 15 turns. Seems like a ton of bookkeeping here for just generic income generation.

Economically there seem to be huge holes in just maintaining any kind of fleet much less repairing any kind of fleet. Ie for repairs what exactly is meant by "after normal repairs"? Are you implying just the normal CDR repairs or campaign turn repairs per D9, D17, etc?

As well the implication then is that building ships will be taking 2-5 turns or more so as soon as contact is made and battles start coming with any kind of regularity a single poor battle can basically cause an individual empire to fold as it won't have any defending ships for many turns to come?

I mean it basically is stating start with 3 K in ships which is prob 3-5 fleets and hope you don't lose any ships as dead ships mean you can't replace them before your empire has died. Am I missing something here?

By Sterling Clifton (Usmc_Admiral) on Friday, June 10, 2011 - 09:45 am: Edit

John Smith (Johnsmith)& Kerry E Mullan (Nomad17): Thank you for pointing these things out. This was a first draft.

John Smith (Johnsmith):"Is it your intention that BBs and 1x CCs move approx 6x as fast as FFs?"
Yes. Scientifically, the reason larger ships move slower in the ocean is because of the mass*acceleration equation requires more energy to move more mass. So a larger ship with the same size engine will move slower because the same amount of energy to move more mass. And since this increases exponentially, bigger shisp require exponentially larger engines, which isn't possible. Also more mass equals more drag which also slows bigger wet navy ships down.

However, in space; A There is almost no drag, and B, the Alcubierre metric's "warp buble" that encase a vessel using warp drive, removes the Newtonian requirement for exponentially more energy. 6 times the energy to warp space time equals 6 times the movement speed of the warp bubble encasing the vessel. Therefore, the ship moves at 6 times the speed.

John Smith (Johnsmith): "Are there any disadvantages to expeditionary fleets?"
Yes. First you can only have 2. Second, they move at half speed, I was sure I added that part. I guess not, after all it IS a first draft.

John Smith (Johnsmith): "Tugs resupply 1/2 a fleet based on what? BPV? Ship count? Does it matter how large a fleet is? I presume it must have cargo pods on it?"
I've never used tugs, so I'm unsure as of their operations. Help on this issue would be nice.

John Smith (Johnsmith): "Repair cost seems very harsh, with the rule as is I think you'll see a lot of battles with damaged ships. If this is what you want, that's fine, just wasn't sure if you considered it."
Yes, I considered it. In real life most navies have a hard time keeping a repaired ship alive to get it back to port, then they have to commit resources, manpower, energy, and money... and a considerable amount of time to repair it. Consider this., in WWII, when MOST navies and militaries were at their height, it took the USA (the only economic super power at the time) 2-4 months to repair a capital vessel and have it battle ready again. I made it cheaper AND quicker than real life to repair and re-field vessels. However I'm thinking now that maybe only vessels 51% or more damaged vessels need be repaired?

John Smith (Johnsmith): "Income generation seems a little complex. Also, on a strictly moral note, why is the only non-mining way to generate your own income slave trading? How about farming, manufacturing, research, etc instead. Or just a blanket "production infrastructure" income?"
I've decided income per planet will be.. ((Population/1,000,000)*10) BPV per season. However, I'm up for adding MORE ways like slave trading (I also had servant trading as well), to increase economy generated by planets above the base limit.

John Smith (Johnsmith): "407.22 lists drones, shuttles, ppts, etc as things you spend money on. How much do these cost?"
Same as they do in SFB.

John Smith (Johnsmith): "407.23 repeats 407.22, but has a different heading. What did you intend to type here?"
I have no idea anymore. Lol.

John Smith (Johnsmith): "407.24 is this one turn or two turns? Do you realize players will be spending most of their early income (which won't buy many ships) to increase their effective year (i.e. when it's most cost efficient to do so). I would strongly recommend you keep tech advancement tied to actual year."
It should say that you halt all other production for two turns, aka 2 seasons, to up your tech year by 1 year. I understand a lot of people will do this, however... in real life, the more resources, money, time and manpower put to military or technological research, usually means you develop said technology faster.

John Smith (Johnsmith): "I see nothing in economics about refits or conversions."
These would cost w/e they cost in SFB. They must be done in at a SB or shipyard. I thought about this AFTER writing what rules you've seen.

John Smith (Johnsmith): "Waaaay too many classes of shipyards. Why make it so complex? Also, half the ships are missing identifiers. I for one don't know the names ship classes, and honestly won't bother to ever figure them out. Please use the standard designations."
Yes, I agree. I already had this discussion about shipyards. there were so many because in rel life vessels can only be built at shipyards and drydocks designed to build them. However, I have decided to lower the number to 6.
BBs, SC 2, SC 3, SC 4, SC 5, and SC 6.

John Smith (Johnsmith): "502 is going to make things impossible to play on SFBOL, to say nothing of the dangers of tech sloshing."
Not really. For technology boxes, you just need to make a note in the notes section of any battle you play, and make sure its recorded in the campaign notes. However, we should probably limit it to captured ships to be easier to track and play with.

John Smith (Johnsmith): "503 has a lot of ambiguity. What size are the shipyards, the base allocation is confusing (I really recommend not playing with SBs, especially when using standard CR), are there any restrictions on restricted ship classes, etc?"
Every faction gets 1 SB per capital world. 1 SC 3 Shipyard per capital world, and either 1 BATS, or 2 BS per 3 worlds (for every 3 inhabited worlds you pick either a BATS or 2 BS) inhabited by that faction.

John Smith (Johnsmith): "Racial bonuses: wow, don't like these at all. Some are confusing, and there's serious inequality between them."
I put these in as a way to try and balance the Federation's natural economic bonus. Also F&E and SFB say the Andros move must faster in strategic movement. I was trying to show that in writing, and like I said balance the Fed;s economy.

John Smith (Johnsmith): "Operator stuff: didn't bother to read it, but it's more than i want to deal with in a campaign."
I have that there for 3 reasons. 1, its realistic, it happens in real wars. 2. A couple of the players really liked it, and I LOOOVE it. It's just there in case players want it. If the majority of you don't we will remove it.

Kerry E Mullan (Nomad17): For builds: so for a shipyard to build say Heavy cruisers that costs 2200 bpv to build one? As well it'll take 11 years to build one? As well the only way to build said dock is by having a shipyard already there of that size or larger? ie I see no route to building other shipyards."
Actually turns are seasons so that'd be 11 seasons, aka 2.75 years.
However I'm making it 6 shipyards instead of 21.

Kerry E Mullan (Nomad17): "The whole slave/animal etc route for $ what is up with a GM tax? I mean it is bad enough the entire thing is a route to make money but is there some kind of tax purveyer that has ultimate control to siphon off money here?"
I added taxation to make it more economically sound to sell servants rather than slaves... but hey.. if we just make it a people market, then no tax.

Kerry E Mullan (Nomad17): "If I whack an opponents planet I can sell their whole population for $ and big dollars"
Yes.

Kerry E Mullan (Nomad17): Which won't be usable for the next 15 turns as it takes 5 to get it back into my capital and the carrying ship only carries 50 bpv per trip so having 3 frieghters do so means I will recover all after 15 turns. Seems like a ton of bookkeeping here for just generic income generation."
No... it take 1 turn to build a freighter. Each freighter can carry (cargo boxes*5) (subject to change upon hearing advice from all players) BPV.
So you have 3 worlds build 1 freighter each at a time, or 1 planet build 3 (taking 3 turns). And then whatever profit from selling the population can be used at the planet shipped to when it arrives. Aka planets with shipyards can build ships; Planets can build more freighters; planets without mines, shipyards, ect., can buidl them upon receiving the freighter.


Kerry E Mullan (Nomad17): "Economically there seem to be huge holes in just maintaining any kind of fleet much less repairing any kind of fleet. Ie for repairs what exactly is meant by "after normal repairs"? Are you implying just the normal CDR repairs or campaign turn repairs per D9, D17, etc?"
1. I hadn't set how much ships require to maintain because I wanted to hear from all the players on this first.
2. Normal repairs means, on the phase in which is normal to repair damaged vessels within the already written rules on player turn phases.

Kerry E Mullan (Nomad17): "As well the implication then is that building ships will be taking 2-5 turns or more so as soon as contact is made and battles start coming with any kind of regularity a single poor battle can basically cause an individual empire to fold as it won't have any defending ships for many turns to come?"
I don't see this happening I think the starting locations are far enough away.. AND there are a LOT of defenses for capital systems.. AND if a player doesn't properly manage setting up colonies and economic maintenance... then just like real life, doesn't' that faction deserve death? Just like a company who fails to run a good enough business model, and its competition drives them out of th market place.

Again its 100 BPV per season, per unit. So that's what 3.5 seasons to build a B10. However, I;m goign to swithch this to 50 (or 25) per seasons so it takes 7 (or 14) seasons to build a B10... That's 1.75 (or 3.5) game years to build a B10.

To ALL: keep the questions and ideas flwoing, its helping me refine my rules.

By Kerry E Mullan (Nomad17) on Friday, June 10, 2011 - 02:36 pm: Edit

Sterling a lot of my ?s were with the understanding of your statement that shipyards can build 50 bpv per season or 200 per year.


Hence for a 2200 bpv dock it would take 11 years to complete meaning by the time it is done your empire just died around 2 years ago.

For repairs you need to link what exactly is available ie in SFB terms. ie noting that there is a cost associated with it when you do not note any route to repair within the rules means there is no way to repair other than by your specific poorly worded route.

In other words if I want to build a repair ship it will make it outa my home dock in what 2 years of game time if it can repair a cruiser? As you have limited ship docks then that means for the first 2 years of game play I build a cruiser, a couple SC4 ships, a couple freighters and most of a repair ship?

This is due to our starting system(I assumed a 4 star system ie 4 docks) being the only route to build things.

Overall it seems like the build ability will extremely limit any kind of interaction and make any conflict extremely dangerous as you just cannot repair or build anything fast enough.

So it looks like the campaign is set-up to have like 2 fleet battles and then wait 2 years while each side replaces ships and tehn recommense battles. Or in the off case that one side either gets lucky, is more skilled, or takes a riskier approach and is able to dominate in a battle the losing side has no time to get a replacement fleet in place before the dominant fleet reaches the home starsystems where serious longterm damage occurs.

I mean this may be fine for the player races who have no idea of where the map is, but how can the GM fairly not use his knowledge of where things are?

As of now you errattaed the build at 50 bpv per season so building ships will be extremely slow as most ships are taking 2-6 seasons. With no ability to build other docks-unless you cargo em with some 15+ freighters after 11 years of building it as your home star systems, the game seems to be stressing searching for other planets/resources until you reach other powers where the game then implodes after any kind of a battle, due to no way to have further ships come in to help.

I would recommend that you redo the whole build schedule to increase build availability. I will use a dock as a construction dock aka where ytou build ships at. My recommendations is something along the following:

All docks can build up to their size class or smaller. Docks themselves can be built by any tug one season per SC(aka SC4- 1 season SC 3-2 seasons SC 2-3 seasons)

Large dock 450 bpv Any SC 2 or smaller ship builds at 150 bpv/season
Med Dock 300 bpv per Any SC3 or smaller builds at 150 bpv/season
Small dock 150 bpv per Any SC 4 or smaller Builds at 100 bpv/season

Note my interpretation of the build bpvs is specific ie as it stands this means a SC2 dock gets a DN every otehr season a SC3 dock builds most CAs in 1 season but some more exxpensive SC 3s in 2. A SC 4 dock builds most SC4s in a season but the more uber ships in 2.

ie this would allow faster ship production so more ships would be available for battles as well allow for docks to produce their size or smaller so the hydrans could do things like use a small dock to produce 10 ftrs/season if needed.

Docks themsleves should be able to be built somewhat quickly as well s if you start exploring the need for docks away from the home starsystems is necessary.


As for a lot of defenses for capital systems, yeah that may be true but any tholian will mangle whatever defenses you have as well most 12 ship fleets will seriously hurt any starbase if not kill it(especially if no fleet is around to protect it).

As for the starting locations being far enogugh away you mean to state with 15 players there are 20 some hexes between the next player for each player? ie with 6 hex supply my assumption was the next player would be in the 6-8 hex range which is what with in a year of possible contact?


If the campaign is just being set-up for a paper pushing exercise on not building stuff and just talking crap about what you can do? Where an actual battle is not probable to occur ever?

By Jacob Karpel (Psybomb) on Friday, June 10, 2011 - 06:50 pm: Edit

I have to agree. It's just going to go too slow as written. I like a lot of the base concepts... but also remember that this is based around the battles, ultimately.

I'm going to go ahead and withdraw for now. Between the raw defensive power of the Vudar and the difficulty of assembling fleets and repairing, I wouldn't have to worry about anything getting to me.

By John Smith (Johnsmith) on Saturday, June 11, 2011 - 04:59 am: Edit

I think you need to lose the focus on realism in favor of making a good set of campaign rules. Realism is a detriment to good rules, IMO. For instance, the movement thing is completely broken as it is now. That great a disparity forces people into specific (large) ship classes or be outmaneuvered.

By Josh Driscol (Gfb) on Saturday, June 11, 2011 - 09:07 pm: Edit

Yeah man shoot for playability and enjoyment over realism. The idea is to generate fun SFB battles I think. Any campaign specific rule that's supposed to be keeping it realistic is just going to complicate things from a playability standpoint. Id suggest maybe redesigning some of these rules to adress the very real concerns your prospective players have.

By Sterling Clifton (Usmc_Admiral) on Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 11:32 am: Edit

Alright then, I will redo he movement system; adjust speed setting, and I'll change the build and repair systems to be MUCH faster.

every faction gets its home/capital/founding systems

ship yards will be built like tugs as you said. Multiple tugs can build a base faster.

the galaxy is 98.9 (rounded to 100) thousand light years in diameter. I placed the factions home star systems in the real life location of said stars, or i the direction and distance they are by canon. Each campaign hex is 1 light year. I mad the galaxy 100 hexes by 100 hexes being 1tousad lys each. Each of then are scaled to 100 by 100 10 LY hexes, and these scaled to 1 hex per light year.