Speaking for myself, I think I like the first concept better as it brings the ISC and Andros in... but also I'm not sure I like the fact that the 2nd concept has that Doomsday Machine clock on it... but I'm open.

By Howard Bampton (Bampton) on Friday, September 04, 2015 - 11:24 am: Edit

Galactic Conquest has used the Andros in two campaigns- the mid 80s to mid 90s "General War" game ran all the way through Operation Unity. The aborted U3 (aka "Andro War") game had them. The current U5 game doesn't have them according to the GM. It does have a bunch of Omega empires however. As with other things in the SFU, some decisions are done for game balance. I would assume John Berg isn't using them in U5 because we are still trying to hammer down other issues (pre Fish Ships, we seem to have concluded that the WYN are unplayable, for example).

By Paul Scott (The_Rock) on Friday, September 04, 2015 - 02:58 pm: Edit

I am interested, but I rarely see interest the sort of campaign that I enjoy.

If SFB is the only gaming system we are using (as opposed to a mix of SFB and FedCom), I would love a campaign that had several set rounds, where results from prior rounds had influence on future rounds and where any one game did not involve more than say, 3-4 ships.

I ran a FedCom campaign like this - remotely - at Origins a few years ago. I built the setting in the early general war and it involved Kzinti Space with Feds, Kzinti, Lyrans and Klingons involved. One encounter was just a scout ship against a couple of cruisers. The only objective of the scout was escape. If the scout escaped, then reinforcements in a subsequent round were accelerated; if it was killed those reinforcements were delayed.

The thing I really enjoyed about it was that neither side knew the objectives of the other side and neither side knew the consequences of success on their own objectives.

If you were to run something like that, I would play. If there was interest in that sort of thing by you or other, I would be willing to design the campaign and run it.

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandor) on Friday, September 04, 2015 - 05:53 pm: Edit

Well i would not mind playing vs Andro's. Since peter wants the Romulans I am not sure what race i would play But still would enjoy. I would like small fleets.. so very few 10 ship battles... more like 3-4 ship battles... like a carrier group are a dreadnought and escorting ships and so forth.

By William T Wilson (Sheap) on Friday, September 04, 2015 - 09:24 pm: Edit

Well, do people like Paul's concept better than mine? Everyone so far that has chosen between my two concepts has liked the Pacification campaign better than the GW-Lite campaign, although a lot of it has to do with the promise of Andros as a major player instead of just as glorified monsters. But if people like Paul's idea (or some other not-yet-proposed idea) better then so be it.

Switching back and forth between SFB and FC depending on the size of fleets is an interesting idea, but I probably wouldn't be in favor. It would require all players to be familiar with both systems. I know Paul likes FC a lot, I wouldn't say I hate it, but I find SFB to be the superior game. There are also likely to be some rough edges as things change from one battle to the next based on the way things work in the different games. Overall, I would certainly prefer to just stay within SFB. I do not actually even have a subscription to FCOL and I do not really know anything about it. I feel like it is hard enough to get enough players and organize and keep a campaign going without bringing multiple game systems into the mix.

My thoughts based on what Paul has written here.
SFB's sweet spot may be in the 3-4 ship range, but there are good reasons to allow fleets to grow up to six or seven ships, which don't bog down the game much. I probably wouldn't want every battle to be that big, but I would probably not want every battle to be three or four ships either, as that starts to resemble a FedCom tournament more than an SFB campaign. I do agree that the giant fleet battles should be rare, if they are possible at all.

As far as Paul's concept itself goes, it seems like it has pros and cons; I'll try to be objective here but, after all, I do have competing concepts on the table.

In essence, this approach resembles the Captain's Game, or perhaps the PF Flotilla Commander's Game, more than it does the Admiral's Game.

On the one hoof, there's little if any economic or strategic side. In some ways (time investment, incentive alignment problems*) this would be a plus, but I feel like there's a lot of space in between a totally scripted campaign and one where the players spend more time bean counting than weapon shooting, where a streamlined strategic layer can live.

On another hoof, not knowing the enemy's objectives or even really your own would be a fun twist on the game. Fog of war becomes a real thing.

On the third hoof (being a sheap has its advantages), a totally scripted game can feel like being a pawn in somebody else's master plan rather than a first-class participant in the game.

Finally, on the last hoof, in a campaign you are usually looking at a situation where the core, if not all, of your ships generally are of common purpose and control, whereas here it sounds like the ships in each scenario would be drawn from the ether for that scenario and, while the battle outcome might influence what happens next, you may not see those ships again (and even if you do, you probably won't know it). This will, again, tend to disconnect the player from the game, because even if the battle is meaningful in some way, these aren't really his ships like they would be in a more traditional build-deploy-fight cycle.

Finally, balanced on my tail since I'm out of hooves, it probably is going to be easier for Paul to generate balanced scenarios since the game will have such an activist GM. I don't expect my concepts to generate a lot of really lopsided battles, but Paul's will likely do a better job in this department, and will also have a wider variety of scenarios (i.e. my concepts are probably not going to have a lot of the "rescue the scientists" or "cure the plague" type games. It is pretty much going to be about blowing the other guy up. The variety comes from where you are blowing them up, and how.)

Taken as a whole, what Paul has proposed looks like a totally playable game. It is, however, quite different from a traditional campaign (or at least, what has become traditional on SFBOL). My concepts are certainly not the usual explore & develop planets and then declare war kind of fare. But they are closer to what people are used to, in the sense that they are still admirals commanding fleets.

* Incentive alignment problems here means that the goals of the players and the goals of the game designer are not always in step. Players are trying to generate battles they can easily win, whereas the game designer is trying to generate battles that are fun to play. The same battle is rarely both at once. Generating battles that are reasonably fair, turn after turn, is not easy!

By Francois Lemay (Princeton) on Saturday, September 05, 2015 - 08:04 am: Edit

I have painfully come to the conclusion that I simply cannot participate in one more campaign when I can barely get my moves/orders done in the campaigns that I am already in.


Therefore I am withdrawing my enthusiasm from this campaign and will become a bystander on the sidelines following the action !

I will offer my services as Captain when my RL allows it.

Cheers
Frank

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandor) on Saturday, September 05, 2015 - 03:52 pm: Edit

I do understand about real life

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Sunday, September 06, 2015 - 06:43 am: Edit

Frank,
Thanks for being honest with us and yourself about how much you can take on.

By Majead Farsi (Devil) on Sunday, September 06, 2015 - 06:36 pm: Edit

I also am interested and do like the one with the ISC and Andros. Count me in if this goes ahead (Fed! as always)

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandor) on Sunday, September 06, 2015 - 08:30 pm: Edit

well now maybe i should play ISC in the ISC andro war are can I play a Jindarian caravan(s)?

By William T Wilson (Sheap) on Sunday, September 06, 2015 - 09:57 pm: Edit

Probably no Jindarians, unless as monster-like things. Also true for WYN, LDR, etc. It is pretty much the normal races plus Andros.

I was more or less planning to play the ISC myself, because they are the most likely to need to be nerfed halfway in. And in general I would rather nerf myself if it comes to that. I mean, if it turns out I can't make it GM-less, and I have to GM, then someone will need to be the ISC. But I would rather have a full complement of galactics. Also, nobody was really jumping up and down saying "I want the ISC!"

That doesn't mean you couldn't captain the ISC sometimes if you want. In fact, it's likely the ISC will need more than its share of hired captains just because the ISC will probably have about three times as many battles as any other race. Just by virtue of being everyone's enemy. Fortunately, this also means that, say, the Klingon player can fly the ISC (or Andros) against the Kzinti, without having any conflict of interest.

BTW. What I am thinking of for Andros goes a little like this. The Andros will spend most of the campaign trying to set up bases to function as RTN nodes. Most of the battles will be either Galactics stumbling over the bases, or Andros launching raids for more supplies. (Most of those raids will actually be in the form of "eliminate this squadron of ships so some off-screen bull snakes can load up the dilithium"). Sometimes the Galactics will stumble over an Andro base and fight. Meanwhile, the Galactics will keep trying to figure out how the RTN works. So the Andros need to do everything they can to prevent the Galactics from gaining that information. Once the RTN is discovered, the Andros are in trouble. If the campaign reaches Y195, the Darwin will return from the future and reveal th secret. Maybe, we can play Return of the Darwin to determine if the RTN is revealed or not.

Damage to the RTN slows the Andromedan progress. A well-tuned RTN speeds it. It also, of course, determines how easy it is for the Andros to redeploy their ships.

The Andromedan victory condition is to secretly construct a Desecrator starbase within the galaxy. Once this happens, the ITL opens up and the Andros conquer the galaxy.

The specifics of how easy or hard it is to build, find, destroy, and move Andromedan equipment are undefined at this time and will have to be simulated. I do know that the historical Andromedan arrival schedule of 1 Intruder, 1 Dominator, and a handful of Conquistadors per year is a nice starting point, but Dominators are a lot to handle if we are limiting fleet sizes and so it might end up being like 2xCOQ, 1xINT per year and one or two Dominators total over the course of the campaign.

TBH I think people are more excited about the Andros than anything else!

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandor) on Monday, September 07, 2015 - 10:18 am: Edit

Yes i would really like to play in the Andros game. That I think would be fun. Also it would be after the general war. This gives everyone a whole lot of advanced ships. A Few X-ships might be a consideration as well.

I understand about both the ISC as this is the pacification and Jindarains, So do I do Gorn are hydran as Peter wants the Roms. I want him to play so.. well i do have time.

By Pete DiMitri (Petercool) on Tuesday, September 08, 2015 - 01:27 pm: Edit

Greg,

In all fairness, if this game happens, I don't assume that I get the Romulans just because I said it first... that wouldn't really be fair.

My first picks are definitely Roms followed by Feds, but I'm sure that there will be a way to allocate races that have more than one person interested.

By William T Wilson (Sheap) on Tuesday, September 08, 2015 - 01:56 pm: Edit

So far nobody has shown interest in the Klingons, Lyrans, or Kzinti. Lots of people want the Romulans, Hydrans, and Feds.

It's still going to be another week before I even have preliminary rules ready, but once that happens I'll put out a poll for people to list their race preferences as well as the times they tend to have available. It is better if people have compatible schedules with the people they'll most often be fighting against and IMO that is equally important as who wants what race. Since we do have to be able to actually get the games played most of the time

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandor) on Tuesday, September 08, 2015 - 05:53 pm: Edit

We shall see how things go is all. I do want to kick some Andromedan BUTT. Are are they robots so i turn them into tin cans?

By Justin Royter (Metaldog) on Tuesday, September 08, 2015 - 08:52 pm: Edit

I can play klings for sure, or feds!

By Jon Berry (Laz_Longsmith) on Thursday, September 10, 2015 - 01:14 am: Edit

Hey Guys. Sheap pointed me here, saying you were looking for another player.

What am I getting myself into?

By William T Wilson (Sheap) on Thursday, September 10, 2015 - 01:19 am: Edit

Hopefully lots and lots of fun battles. Right now most of the interest is for the ISC campaign. General concept is that in the mid-180s, the ISC launches their pacification before everyone has decided to stop fighting, so most races, in addition to their traditional GW enemies, will also have the ISC to contend with trying to stop them from fighting. Also, Andromedans. Fleets will probably be approximately half sized, which seems to be SFB's optimal size.

Although races have not been parceled out to players yet, the Lyrans and Kzinti have drawn little interest so far.

By Ken Rotar (Sir_Krotar) on Thursday, September 10, 2015 - 08:32 pm: Edit

I'm seriously considering coming out of my semi-retirement from SFB to compete in the Platinum Hat Tournament. That means that I will need to get some practice games in, so if anyone is interested in playing, please contact me. Thanks.

By Jon Berry (Laz_Longsmith) on Thursday, September 10, 2015 - 10:34 pm: Edit

I can do Lyrans! I hope.

By William T Wilson (Sheap) on Friday, September 11, 2015 - 01:09 am: Edit

Nobody else has expressed interest in the Lyrans, so they should be available.

By William T Wilson (Sheap) on Friday, September 11, 2015 - 02:01 am: Edit

Hopefully more details coming Friday night or Saturday!

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandor) on Friday, September 11, 2015 - 06:08 pm: Edit

yes

By Justin Royter (Metaldog) on Friday, September 11, 2015 - 08:25 pm: Edit

pretty sure the Andros are plants that use robots..yep!

By William T Wilson (Sheap) on Sunday, September 13, 2015 - 06:04 am: Edit

There's a topic in the SFBOL campaigns section now, so further discussion should relocate.