June 5th, 2020

I've completed (and revised) a 2014 project I started which was to write the rules for a SFB campaign that required researching technology, and therefore was inherently non-historical .

In many ways, this is a "SFB Civilization Building." You are creating your own race/culture, choosing one "ship design philosophy" (and therefore paralleling on of the major races in SFB/F&E).

The underlying conceptual foundation of the campaign was that "young galactic races" were being forcibly removed to their own "reservations" at the edge of the galaxy, and they were being given the most basic tech to start with. Their reservations could not be destroyed, so it would NOT be a 4x game of extermination. Upon this everything else needed to be built. Each race has a four hex reservation, with 3 planets and 5M population on each planet, with another 1M pop being delivered to anywhere they've explored and built, in increments of 100K.

One of the things I like about the better designed boardgames and wargames is the wide selection of tough choices that need to be made, and considering the trade offs of each choice. In the end, sometimes the right constraints make the choices more interesting, as long as they are meaningful choices. One thing I like in SFB is when a particular battle/scenario took place within a larger picture or campaign so the battle (and saving the ship) had meaning, where there were "real" stakes involved instead of having a "throw away" ship for an afternoon's entertainment. I also like the potential role-playing aspect that a campaign offers for those so inclined.

There is a political component to the campaign as well, which is why there is actually built with a "team structure;" more about that further below.

The campaign naturally starts "slow" as an exploration and civilization development game until races encounter each other. The slow start works as there needed to be time for each race to make their impactful technology choices, build their economies, and build their ships; therefore, the early game involved tech development, economic development, and exploration only. Starting from zero means starting with small freighters and going "up" from there. This could be described as "Phase I" of the campaign. Races need things to protect, so developing valuable trade routes and production planets are key.

Other key design choices include each hex had 4 systems to be explored, yet movement lanes between hexes needed to be mapped out; with some exceptions, there was no "free movement" in any direction between hexes, even within your own empire; if you didn't scout a safe route, you mostly couldn't travel it without significant risk. (Developing your empire effectively involved "safe road" building.) This means that initial contact, if empires started out hostile, would involve only a few limited initial "fronts."

Reserve Movement and Strategic Movement (as in F&E) is possible, but it has its costs. As a part of the strategic level of the campaign, there are 5 speeds: Freighter, Aux Warp, Std Warp, Aux Dash, Std Dash.

With races having specific economic production locations (to produce and to defend), I had to make another key design choice. "What type of game would this be?" Just a battle generator, an empire builder, a hybrid? That was the big question, as there were lots of small questions such as "If the economy would be based on planet production, then why would there be convoys (scenarios)?" I answered both by making economic production come from two sources, planets and trade routes, where buying the different type of ships to develop a trade route was as important as buying the different types of buildings to develop a planet. (As long as the empires were not too big, and the number of useful systems not to large, then it should be manageable, at least in the "early years.") Trade routes became important as planets not only produced cargo boxes, but also required "imports" in order to produce maximum research points and for the planets own production to be at peak efficiency.

The "strategic" companion to SFB, Federation & Empire, has an economic tracking component, and in order to implement various builds with various technology advancements, this campaign required there be an economic system to pay for new ships, technology, and other resources. Therefore I created a system that allows planets to be developed, where as the population grows, more diverse planetary buildings can be built on a planet so that the local economy can produce more from each building and building type, yet some of those buildings (and accompanying ships) need to be researched. Some SFB campaigns make this economy abstract or simplified, but I went with a more complex economy where eventually having one of each civilian building (or ship) type means maximum economic production if your population is large enough. At certain size populations, you need a specific mix of structures (and in-system ships) to produce economic and research points most efficiently.

One advantage to the potential complexity is that elements can later be simplified if needed or required to run the campaign. There are different types of players, some like the logistics as they know that it can be the key to success, a more powerful army that isn't supplied well can be weakened, while a small well supplied force can potentially win a battle of attrition against a larger dysfunctional opponent. Others find the challenge of growing an empire to be rewarding as a resource management game, you'll find these types playing the various Civilization games.

I proposed that each empire would be composed of 3 players, each having different responsibilities, yet all could jump in and fight any particular battle. This turned the campaign into a team game, and also made even more room for role-playing for those who want it. I broke up the responsibilities for each empire so that different types of players could do what they found interesting.
The breakdown is as follows, one for each of three players in an empire:

1. Internal Security Forces (ISF)
Responsible for half the economy (trade routes), police, national guard, training new ship crews, and planetary defense (space).

2. Fleet Command
Technology Research, all ships outside the "reservation" and non-ISF ships, fleet logistics.

3. Government
Responsible for half the economy (developing planets and their ground defense), and with control of the budget.

All three have/need a budget, but the government decides upon the final budget, and the players can spend their budget any way they would like. In some ways, each is playing a different game, but each can be called upon to fight an individual battle, raid, or encounter.

This SFB civilization building campaign is designed to provide a high level of flavor and immersive experience where you are playing YOUR race and not just the "Klingons" or "Gorn." The fact that you might not have access to all the rules if you didn't research them makes your race particularly "unique" as each team picks a "Design Philosophy" based on one of the allowed SFB races.

Please contact me if you would like to read the rules, see the tech charts, or even help me "playtest" certain components of the game (including the tech research rules).

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Monday, June 01, 2020 - 09:36 am: Edit

5 M isn't enough population to have the full range of tech. You need the professors, people to make the tools, people to use the tools to make the high tech stuff, people to use the high tech stuff...

I'd say 500M is more like a minimum.

By Stewart Frazier (Frazikar3) on Monday, June 01, 2020 - 06:16 pm: Edit

May want to benchmark the world pop for the Industrial Rev (~1830) and the Space Race (1970)/Information Age (1990) …

By Ken Kazinski (Kjkazinski) on Monday, June 01, 2020 - 09:24 pm: Edit

Aaron,

Looks very cool.

Ken

By Charles H Carroll (Carroll) on Friday, June 05, 2020 - 04:11 pm: Edit

Certainly interesting concepts. I have seen similar games played....without quite the division of control inside a Race that you seem to feel would work best. But hey...it could work.