By Geoff Conn (Talonz) on Monday, February 25, 2002 - 02:29 pm: Edit


SFBOL Campaign, to appear with the full v3.0.

What would you want it to be?

Personally, at the very least, I want it to generate fleet (bpv) battles that mean something.

By L.LeBlanc (Lessss) on Monday, February 25, 2002 - 04:41 pm: Edit

K.I.S.S. ( Klingon imperial Space Services, Or keep it simple stupid)

Well this could be ALOT of different things.
For the first run I'd suggest keeping it to a specific border i.e. Fed Vs Klingon
Perhaps allow a "few" ships from bordering races to appear. <10% of the # of ships.
Keep the number of ships in a fleet small, say max fleet size of 4 ships? Largest base is a Battle station except the homeword.

Whoever is going to run it should have most of the say in design.

By Geoff Conn (Talonz) on Monday, February 25, 2002 - 07:48 pm: Edit

Well we could very possible have several types of sfbol campaigns going at at once, much like there are several different tourney types per year.

I don't think scenario size should matter as we should have a pool of players to pick from and they can stipulate what they want to play.

If they want to play 11ship fleets vs each other let them I say.

By Jonathan Perry (Jonathan_Perry) on Tuesday, February 26, 2002 - 09:58 am: Edit

Ye Gods!!

That's like asking us what we want in Module V. You have to give us some parameters to start from. What do YOU mean, Steve, when you speak of a campaign?

By L.LeBlanc (Lessss) on Tuesday, February 26, 2002 - 02:33 pm: Edit

What I want...

Something more complex than a simple set of scenarios that are loosely tied together.
Yet not so LARGE in fleet size that a moderate player won't be overwhelmed by the number of ships in a fleet.
A framework where Captains won't continually suicide attack with their fleets and there are economic consequence to losing a battle or territory.

I'd rather not see multiple empires be fought over because that would mean depending on too many people to keep up the records of the game and it's harder to recover if one of those players drops. Keeping it to A vs B with lots of people playing on one of the two sides means that if one particular player can't play this week another can.

Unlike a RAT tourney which takes 7 days to arrange then three weeks to play out we want one to two battles a week.

Ideally we'd have 2 to 4 people running the empire so that if one is swamped at work there is a fallback and the game make continous progress. To make sure lots of people get to play you have a 1st to arrive ready to play plays policy with a forced rotation if they were the captain of the last battle.

By Geoff Conn (Talonz) on Tuesday, February 26, 2002 - 03:59 pm: Edit

Ok what about this;

The Admirals Game

But base it off a historical campaign, like Cavalry, Tribune, Remus, the Invasion of the Federation/Hydran/Kzinti, etc.

Form players into the two sides, 1 player per race. Give each player a bpv # to form their initial fleets with. These Admirals decide where to allocate the ships for the battles. They also publicly draft Captains to fight for them here as needed.

Rough Example: Op Cavalry

Alliance (attacker) 1500 bpv
Fed 50%
Kzinti 30%
Gorn 20%
Tholian 10%

Coalition (defender) bases +750bpv
Klingon 60%
Lyran 30%
Orion 10%

I personally think there are too many bases in this campaign (base assault after base assault gets old real fast) so we could remove the starbases from the 2nd line for starters. I'd appreciate any F&E players view on how the Admirals Game setup with bases matches the F&E map, or is the Ad Game out of date?

By L.LeBlanc (Lessss) on Tuesday, February 26, 2002 - 06:39 pm: Edit

1 player per race
Minimum of 2 to prevent slackerism.
If the Primary does not take action by a set date time the secondary does.

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Tuesday, February 26, 2002 - 08:51 pm: Edit

Summary of previous posts about the subject:


David,
Part of the plan is to use a dynamically generated universe. So if a player needs to fight another player, they will need to play within 2 or 3 days (at max) or they will have been considered to have withdrawn from the field. I plan on basing some of the way things work on the way SFC's Dynaverse works. For example, you will start with a ship (I was thinking about a frigate) you would start to "explore the galaxy" as you meet up with people you can either fight to the death or one person can withdraw. As the players racks up victories (or finds certian things) they will rack up points and from there you can buy additional things (including upgrading the ship).
At least that is my initial thought. If someone has a better idea. Or has something specific that they would like to see done. Please speak up.

Paul Franz
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by Gregg Dieckhaus (Gdieck)
Posted on Friday, February 22, 2002 - 3:17 pm:


This definitely sounds like an advanced feature, but one that will require lots of work from Symbiotic and SFB Online staff.
This definitely sounds like something that should fall into the category of a "premium" membership. One that players would pay more for, but get more out of.
Gregg
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by Geoff Conn (Talonz)
Posted on Friday, February 22, 2002 - 4:13 pm:


I don't think so. Nominate 1/2 people as a moderator like a tourney overseer and give them a few months free membership, which costs SFBOL nothing.

Watch as this feature draws in the non-tourney players pushing up membership #s.

Paul, I think the dynaverse idea is interesting but best left to SFC. As pointed out, slackiness is a problem when 1 person is comitted to just 1 ship. In one of my campaign ideas, fleet battles would be generated by Admirals moving their fleets, fleets constructed from the Emperor's assignments. Battles would be played out by Captains taken from all those willing to play ships from X races in battle. This allows people to play more than 1 ship and more than 1 race from game to game. Limiting people to 1 'side' (Alliance, Coaliton, Other for example) might be one way to further team efforts and avoid any possible collusion.

Therefore the actual play of games would not be subject to slack assuming the pool of players is big enough. The bigger roles of Admiral and Emperor would be but these could be eliminated if the overseer generated battles instead. Or the often used solution of not having production/fleet movement take place when those leaders do not turn in their orders.

Suffice to say I have lots of ideas to put up for discussion on this matter.
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by L.LeBlanc (Lessss)
Posted on Friday, February 22, 2002 - 4:43 pm:


Paul you might want to pilfer some ideas from my Thunder dome campaign, and or three ship tourney. That reminds me I should finsih that revision rewrite on my campaign rules.

http://sfb1701.topcities.com/3Ships.htm
http://sfb1701.topcities.com/ThuderDome.html


http://sfb1701.topcities.com/CAMPAIGN.htm
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by Paul Scott (The_rock)
Posted on Friday, February 22, 2002 - 4:55 pm:


The sorts of campaign's being bandied about here would not be the kind I would be interested in. Anything the requires very short deadlines (less than a week) is not realistic for me to commit. I sort of envisioned something along the lines of that single ship campaign, where you take a ship and you get a series of missions, with campaign repair allowed in between. Something like that. IMO, campaigns of the sort that have Admirals and sections of space to conquor, etc., are best left to F&E.
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by Andy Palmer (Andypalmer)
Posted on Friday, February 22, 2002 - 5:35 pm:


Paul Scott is referring to something similar to the Captains Game (U2.0) which could ALMOST be done now on SFBOL 2.5.

The Carrier Group Campaign (U4.0) is another 2.5 option.

One easy to manage option would be THE ADMIRALS GAME (U3.0). While requiring the multiplayer ability of 3.0, the inbetween battles aspect would be easy to manage. The trick would be getting enough players to show at the appointed times
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by L.LeBlanc (Lessss)
Posted on Friday, February 22, 2002 - 5:39 pm:


., are best left to F&E." If you're interested in only doing dice rolls to resolve combat.

Slackerism will be a big problem so there needs to be a primary and secondary admiral for moving units purchasing etc.. and multiple Captains to pull upon to fight battles. Admiral Mon,Tue, Wed and Admiral Thursday, Fri, Sat, Sun. Rotate the active Captains list.

That way there is a fallback "in charge person" and if a specific Captain can't make it it quickly falls to another to fight the battle.}
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by David Kass (Dkass)
Posted on Friday, February 22, 2002 - 8:19 pm:


I wonder if a fairly abstracted campaign would work better. Say 2 (or more) races at war. There are a series of fixed defenses and a neutral zone. In some places the defenses have been breached, creating active sectors. In others they haven't creating static ones. With something like bi-weekly or monthly turns, a player could pick their sector (active, static, or even internal). Based on the sector type some number of encounters would occur (eg 3+ for an active sector, 1 for a static and none for an internal sector). In active sectors, fleets would expect to be organized to strike at deep targets.

Like this players could pick their level of involvement. A player patrolling a static sector would be defending the nation, trying to create a local superiority--when such were achieved (by some measure of kills/cripples or what not) the sector could become active and go on the offensive (and a new static sector appear...) Win a number of active sectors and the war is won...

If a player missed a battle in a static sector, consider it a loss (ie counting towards a cripple/kill for the side to gain an advantage). Similarly in an active sector (or if part of a fleet, tough--the ship didn't show), but players could be demoted and forced to patrol static sectors (I suppose static players who miss could be forced to take one or more turns of internal patrols).

By Geoff Conn (Talonz) on Tuesday, February 26, 2002 - 10:16 pm: Edit

2 per race, kinda Fleet and Vice Admirals?

Sure sounds good.

By Sam Clark (Tyranassam) on Sunday, March 03, 2002 - 07:33 am: Edit

Does v3.0 allow switching of control for ships? If you have multiple players on a side and the battle takes more than 1 session and one of the Captains can no longer play, will one of the other team Captains be able to take over those ships?

By Jonathan Perry (Jonathan_Perry) on Thursday, March 07, 2002 - 05:54 pm: Edit

Any movement/more thought on this?

By Geoff Conn (Talonz) on Thursday, March 07, 2002 - 06:39 pm: Edit

Well a # of people said they were interested but havn't put energy into the conversation as to what they want to see really.

I suggested a more open (build your own fleets) kind of Admirals Game Campaign but got little response so far.

Hard to guage interest based on that...are people willing to play whatever campaign someone moderates or would they prefer something else?

By L.LeBlanc (Lessss) on Thursday, March 07, 2002 - 11:52 pm: Edit

The problem is that this has Sooooo many permutations that there must be a large number of upfornt decision made by the programmer before the tiny details can be debated.

By Jonathan Perry (Jonathan_Perry) on Friday, March 08, 2002 - 09:33 am: Edit

Which is why I had asked SVC for some kind of guidelines/parameters when he started this. Too many ways this can go.

By Geoff Conn (Talonz) on Friday, March 08, 2002 - 02:48 pm: Edit

Less, if v3 has multiplayer, multiship ability that covers most of it right there. If we can utilize full bpv rules (ew, boarding parties, etc) and transfer ship control as well, what else do we need?

Jonathon, its up to us as players to outline what we want, and thus what this topic is for.

You guys still need to answer that.

By Matthew Galer (Idiot) on Friday, March 08, 2002 - 02:59 pm: Edit

personally, I'm pretty open to any campaign ideas.

I like the idea of the Admirals Game proposed above. Nice in that it has overall objectives, and is relatively short in time span.

I love the idea of taking some grand strategic game (F&E with modifications could be used) and having multiple command layers (supreme commanders responsible for economics, fleet assignments, sector commanders responsible for their sector/theatre of action, peons flying ships with no other worries than the current mission objective) with battles fought using SFBOL.

Of course that idea would require a) a core of very dedicated gamers (the commanders) for the long haul, b) a large pool of interested players, and c) a heck of a long time to complete. Ideally you would want even the peons to only fly for one race, but could extend this to also flying for allies. Commanders would almost certainly have to be limited to only the one race.

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Friday, March 08, 2002 - 06:49 pm: Edit

Matt,
I would be concerned about something on that large of scale. We tried that with PBEM Unity Campaign and it failed. Obviously, SFBOL is different in that you should be able to play alot more in a smaller period of time. But then you have the problem with scheduling teams to play together.

I personally like the idea of a never ending campaign that people can join anytime and be a part of. But also drop out when RL becomes an issue. (kinda like the F&E campaign at Origins this past year)

Paul Franz

By L.LeBlanc (Lessss) on Friday, March 08, 2002 - 08:59 pm: Edit

Geoff, he's talking about adding in ways to place bases and ships on a strategic map with economics turns, bpv generation, possibly double blind maps and lots of other goodies like that in addition to and beyond multiple ships players.

By Geoff Conn (Talonz) on Friday, March 08, 2002 - 11:04 pm: Edit

Less, you are talking F&E, with possibly a moderator.

Is that what you want?

I personally like the idea of a never ending campaign that people can join anytime and be a part of. But also drop out when RL becomes an issue. (kinda like the F&E campaign at Origins this past year)

What are we fighting for if it never ends then?

By L.LeBlanc (Lessss) on Friday, March 08, 2002 - 11:51 pm: Edit

No that is NOT what we are talking about, NOT F'n E.

CAMPAIGN as in not just a pick up scenario or a string or vaguely linked scenarios but a CAMPAIGN.

Where you collect bpv from the colonies in your possession, build ships at a location move them a set distance every turn and fight whatever it can intercept or strike. If your ship is damaged it retains that damage minus what it can repair itself until it physically moves to a place that can repair it.

We are talking about a framework where battles have a REASON for occuring, a past present future. Where fleets of ships aren't just thrown away in suicidal battles to the death.

The question is how detailed the records are going to be. Automatic free reloads of drones FTRs etc.. or purchased reloads? Automatic supply?
Are we fighting the entire strategic map or just a specific small section?
What kind of construction limits will be used? How the Empire fleet movements will be handled, games assigned, how absentee Captains will be prevented. How to keep it running at a constant clip.

Abstracted diplomacy and alliance or strict historical ones?

Yes I'm sure there will ALSO be small scenario campaigns in addition to this "Create your own universe" style campaign. They are two different animals though. This is NOT F'n E, or OP V, or mini cmapigns.

The reason most local home grown campaings fail is the paperwork involved. V3.0 Campaign, for lack of a better title, will automate this hassle. The second reason it fails is the small player pool and lack of player availability or time. Third reason is bad balance design. F'n E balance assumptions DON'T work in actual battle SFB. Fourth reason is the "he's losing" or "we don't like him" so lets gang up on him factor. Fifth reason is a losing player just wimps out and shatters the curernt power balance dynamic.

How will it end? Well run it ongoing in sections of say 10 or 5 years. Accumulate Victory points during the period.

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Saturday, March 09, 2002 - 08:35 am: Edit

Geoff,
I was thinking that the goal is to amass as much territory until there is a point in the "campaign" (probably when there is one player left or it is obvious that one player will win)that it needs to be restarted. Until that time new players can added to current overseers group or we could add another overseer that starts with a small teritory and an amount of BPV and go from there.

Les,
Obviously there will be some economics to the game. I was thinking about have a strategic map. With a number of "warp points" that will allow new ships to be delivered. Free reloads of expendables (drones and shuttles). Things like MRS, GAS, fighters, PFs etc will need to be payed for. From the BPV that you get from each turn. You have a starting BPV maybe between 50 and 100 BPV per turn. You additional BPV based on you winning a battle (and the percentage that you won by using Standard Victory Points)

At least that is my idea. Obviously, there are alot of details to work out.

I am hoping to make Cyberbaron more of a mini-campaign device. In that each player has a set number of scenarios that they play. But I will move that discussion over to the CyberBaron topic.

Paul Franz

By L.LeBlanc (Lessss) on Saturday, March 09, 2002 - 09:09 am: Edit

I suggest Ftrs be paid for or else Hydrans will totally rule the roost, as in a real battle as opposed to F'nE abstracted ftrs, a St-II should kill a plasma(maybe even drone) FTR dead everytime, or at least be of MUCH greater combat value.
Hydran Ftrs ¹ Fed Ftrs ¹ Gorn Ftrs ¹ Klingon Ftrs ¹ Tholian Ftrs.

If drone users are only fighting drone users free drones is a good idea but a Kzinti CC at 135 and 20 to 30 bpv of drns vs a Gorn BC at 160 will after several battles be getting alot of "free combat bpv" in the form of drones. Free replacement speed 8's are one thing but free replacement speed 32's is another alltogether.

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Saturday, March 09, 2002 - 02:34 pm: Edit

You got a point there Les. It might be a good idea to make the players pay for drone upgrades just like WBPs. And that the player should have to pay for reloads after every battle that ship is in. We probably need to limit the amount of specialized drone. Probably, stick to the racial limitations.

But I want to make that e do not go overboard in that we get so bogged down with tracking things that it interferes with the campaign. For example, maybe have a rule that says that if a ship uses less than 1/3 the drone rack capacity in a battle then you get "free" reloads. While greater than 1/3 you need to pay to full reloads. Or possibly add the unused upgrades/commander options from a battle back into the general BPV pool? I kinda like that idea.

Question: how do we handle Commander's Options?

Paul Franz

By Geoff Conn (Talonz) on Saturday, March 09, 2002 - 07:48 pm: Edit

The reason most local home grown campaings fail is the paperwork involved. V3.0 Campaign, for lack of a better title, will automate this hassle.

Uh, where do you get this idea? V3 SFBOL will do no such thing. It will allow us to play BPV games, and that's it. You might as well wait for the F&E computer game if that is what you want.

By campaigns I think of the actual Campaigns from the SFB rulebook; Admirals Game, Captain's Game, Red Wyn Express, Carrier Strike, etc. Basically sections U and T from the rulebook. Although I am intrigued by doing the Emperor's/Admiral's/Captain's Sector game I've always wanted to do too.

Some people have already said they don't want economics at all, as that is related strongly to F&E/OpV.

BPV abstract campaigns are easy to do though, and Paul alluded to something like that in the above. Maps really aren't needed for that kind of game and are better left alone in fact.

Comanders Options: we used a CapOptions pool. You decide your options % ahead of time (0-15%) by paying that surcharge on every ship. Then each ship could spend that % on options before each game (assuming it was in supply inbetween games). Rather elegant I think.

By Andy Palmer (Andypalmer) on Saturday, March 09, 2002 - 08:47 pm: Edit

Perhaps do an SFC style campaign. By this I mean every player starts with a 100 BPV of a ship (this includes commanders options, fighters, etc.). Standard victory conditions are used to determine what BPV award is gained for a victory (this will need to be worked out). Standard D9.4 repairs are used between games and you could pay a fee for an overhaul (per Ux.x(?) rule). You can trade in your ship for a better one, getting 75% of the BPV for the trade in, minus the cost of any needed repairs.

This would allow players to play NK style games where each fight has meaning and where they'll be less fighting to the last engine box games. Games will need to be saved and sent to some Moderator who can track the remaining damage (after D9.4), BPV, etc.

This idea is still nebulous and needs a lot of ironing out, but what do you think?