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Sorry steve, I was going tomdo that in the other posting today.

By fred liza (Fredl) on Tuesday, May 17, 2011 - 12:45 pm: Edit

Ok, posted a full list at the main topic for app development. Hopefully the comments are taken as intended for improving the app.

http://www.starfleetgames.com/discus/messages/12032/26678.html

Fred

By William T Wilson (Sheap) on Wednesday, April 08, 2015 - 03:41 am: Edit

Have a potential new player. He's played quite a bit of Axis & Allies, so at least he's used to a wargame that takes all day. I talked to him about FC, SFB, Marines, and F&E; he decided SFB seemed the most appealing, so we're going to try that, and if he doesn't like it, maybe we'll try Marines or F&E.

Here's the progression I'm planning to use. I'll give him the Federation CC+. He's not a big Trek fan, but the Fed is still very recognizable, and photons are just complicated enough (but not too complicated) to be interesting. Speed 20 drones everywhere.

Game 1. Opponent: Federation CC+. Play with EAFs face up, as an obvious training academy scenario. Rules in use: Movement, HET, phasers, photons, fractional accounting. WS-1. Probably play 2, maybe 3 turns. Learn basics of movement and firing. Fractional accounting is in use, but probably won't come up too much.

Game 2. Opponent: Klingon D6. Rules in use: All of game 1, plus drones, tractors (for drones only), ADDs, reserve power, reinforcement, and overloads. WS-3. Learn dynamics of different types of weapons and power management. The CC+ actually outguns the unrefitted Klingon in drone firepower, so I might take the drone rack part of the B-refit (but not the shields).

Game 2B. He probably hasn't seen the episode, but we might stop and play "Sabotage!" here, giving him the Klingon. The purpose of this would be for him to get a feel for the "other side" and how to use disruptors. Adding manned shuttles and wild weasels, but not scatterpacks or tractoring ships, because those make it pretty much an instant win for the Klingon (as if it isn't enough of one already).

Game 3. Opponent: Kzinti CA (or maybe BC, depending on how good he is turning out to be). Rules in use: Game 2B, plus scatterpacks, heavy drones, wild weasels, and suicide shuttles. WS-3 (two shuttles prepared!)

Game 4. Opponent: Gorn CA (or BC). Rules in use: Game 3, plus plasma torpedoes, envelopers, transporters (H&R raids), damage control, and tractoring the enemy ship. WS-2. Could give him the Gorn in this one, if he's tired of the Feds and wants to get hands-on experience with plasmas.

Game 5. Scenario: "Surprise Reversed." Rules in use: Game 4, plus cloak, mines & T-bombs (not hidden), and mid-turn speed changes. Good introduction to multiple ship engagements, where most of those multiple ships are barely more than targets.

Game 6. Scenario: "The Coming of the Meteor." Rules in use: Game 5, plus EW and EM. This is a great scenario for making use of mid-turn speed changes and EW, but one in which the Federation is in very little danger of actually getting blown up. The CC+, with rear-firing phasers, should be in substantially better shape against the Klingon than the basic CA, which has a huge blind spot the Klingon can exploit while the Fed is busy playing in the strongman competition.

Game 7. Scenario: "The Pirates Go For Big Game." Introduction to Orions and real multiple-ship battles. Might do something to the balance, my experience is that the pirates should win this.

Game 8+. Whatever looks fun. PFs, fighters, the other races, special drones, whatever.

Thoughts? Comments?

By Norman Dizon (Normandizon) on Wednesday, April 08, 2015 - 04:14 am: Edit

Hi William. Here are a few suggestions which you can adopt or ignore as you wish:

1) You may want to consider using the Cadet Ships from the Training Manual. There is a whole variety of Cadet Ships and they are all simple, small, and easy to manage.

2) If it were me, my goal would be to try to foster A Deep Appreciation for the intricacies of Star Fleet Battles. Many new players just close and Alpha Strike. Then they don't appreciate anything about the game. Show the new player the Tactical Side and "How" to win. To me, its not just a matter of throwing a bunch of rules at the new player; that won't necessarily foster a "Deep Appreciation" for SFB.

3) I would proceed according to the new player's Learning, Comfort, and Enjoyment Level. You may want to go from Game 1 to Game 8 in progression, but the new player might have a great time at Game 2 and want to stay there for a while. Or maybe some questions come up during Game 3 or 4. Don't rush it and only proceed to the next stage if the player wants to and feels they are ready.

It's great you have a new player, but one of the things I am always very careful of with new players is not scaring them away with the size of the rulebook. All the rules can be overwhelming to a new player. Instead, I focus on fostering a "Deep Appreciation" for SFB by explaining the Tactics involved in each game. Later, the player discovers all the various empires and all the different ship types, all of which require their own Tactics, and then the "Deep Appreciation" really sets in.

By William T Wilson (Sheap) on Wednesday, April 08, 2015 - 06:32 am: Edit

I think the best thing about the eMRB is that it isn't nearly as scary as the paper rulebook! My laptop is the same size no matter how many pages of rules are on it.

I will probably pass on the cadet game. The rules are different enough that the new player ends up learning the cadet game instead of the real game, then he has to forget everything and basically start over.

I definitely agree that although learning the rules is important, you have to preserve the fun factor. As far as learning the tactical side... open to suggestions on how. I mean, I'm happy to discuss tactics, but realistically, new players just sort of don't get it, until suddenly they do. There are a lot of basic principles you can explain, like... coming in with turn mode satisfied so you can always present a new shield, or rearm turns vs. attack turns, or weapon power efficiency vs. reinforcement, or early vs. late turn engagement, but really you just sort of... have to get it. Which takes about thirty games, realistically.

The real question, to me, is whether to use small ships (frigates or destroyers) or cruisers. The advantage to cruisers is that everything (except ph-3s and transporters) costs 1 point, so fractional accounting is minimized. My new player will be able to do the math, but having lots of fractions is still a drawback. Frigates, on the other hand, are smaller and there is less to do. I honestly find that the number of boxes on the ship is almost irrelevant to the difficulty, so cruisers are likely actually easier to learn. If you don't know how photons work, it doesn't matter if you have two of them on your ship or four, it's equally confusing. The only real drawback to the cruisers is that damage allocation takes longer. I'm pretty fast with damage allocation at this point, but he won't be.

There is another factor at play, one which I am trying to avoid. When I learned the game, we started with frigates, and it was easy; the fractions barely mattered, and the ships and the game were both pretty fast. That was a pretty big group with four new players and three or four experienced ones. The first few games I was happy just to be playing, but after about five games those of us that were new were well and truly sick of frigates and, perhaps more to the point, I was also tired of playing basically the same scenario over and over (grab the dilithium). Instead of playing more interesting scenarios we just ended up with ship inflation and so pretty soon we ended up with free for alls where everybody had dreadnoughts instead. Nowadays I can only dream about having a gaming group with eight people in it and thinking back I am so sad we wasted that one playing the lamest imaginable scenario every single week.

Starting with cruisers, and playing scenarios instead of just duels, is intended to avoid that pressure. After all, if you have a "real" ship to start with, you're less likely to experience ship envy. On the other hand, if you're used to cruisers the smaller ships might not seem interesting; if you start with an E3, everything looks like an upgrade.

But then, lots of the fun scenarios are based around cruisers. You can scale them down - some of them anyway, but my experience with that has been rather mixed.

By Jean Sexton (Jsexton) on Wednesday, April 08, 2015 - 11:15 am: Edit

I started with a cruiser and found that there was a lot to do. The next game I forced the teacher to use a frigate (as did I) and I enjoyed it far more. Less energy to allocate, fewer weapons to track, and fewer weapons shot at me made it easier to focus on learning the basics. Had the lessons continued, I'd have progressed to bigger ships.

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandor) on Wednesday, April 08, 2015 - 05:35 pm: Edit

The only thing i can add to the above. Is that I have found it a lot easier and more fun for the newbie if i can find 2 such and pit them against each other as I play controller and second officer for both.

By Randy Blair (Randyblair) on Wednesday, April 08, 2015 - 05:55 pm: Edit

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Quote:

The only thing i can add to the above. Is that I have found it a lot easier and more fun for the newbie if i can find 2 such and pit them against each other as I play controller and second officer for both.

---

By Joe Corsaro (Captainavante) on Tuesday, July 07, 2015 - 12:34 am: Edit

>

Did that today and it worked real well. Fed CA vs Klingon D7 with cadet rules. For the next few scenarios they will see nothing but speed eight drones and no horrifying plasma torpedoes. They understood it was the tip of the iceberg and to really utilize the systems they were happily blowing of each others ships they would have to read up on them. Just fun to be involved in the game again.

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandor) on Tuesday, July 07, 2015 - 04:49 am: Edit

If they are real game players. They will be asking things like. "Is there any way i can do a 360% turn?"
Are there faster drones these speed 8 just suck.

By Joe Corsaro (Captainavante) on Tuesday, July 07, 2015 - 10:35 am: Edit

Not really, unlike real game players I think they both realized making a 360% turn would leave them pointing in the same direction as before.

As I explained various aspects of the game I did touch on things like HET's and better drones, and how their first game was really just the tip of the ice burg.

I think understanding the energy allocation sheet, the impulse chart, ship ssd's and the basic maneuvering and firing of their ships is great for the first game, and as real game players they both wanted to know afterwards where to buy a copy of the rules.

By Norman Dizon (Normandizon) on Tuesday, July 07, 2015 - 12:07 pm: Edit

I think it's great to ease new players into the game slowly. To me, that's what the Cadet Manual was all about. Every chapter it introduced something new and built upon what was already taught.

But personally, I like to stress the "Why?" for things along with going over the Rules. Right from the start, I stress Tactics with new players, so it sits in the back of their mind while they learn the Rules. The last thing I want after the new players have learned how to play the game is for them to simply close to Range 1 and fire an Alpha Strike every single game.

Just my thoughts on it. Great job, Joe!

By Ginger McMurray (Gingermcmurray) on Monday, November 21, 2022 - 05:03 pm: Edit

I like the idea of using PFs for a first game. There's still EA but it's truncated. You move at high speed and blast the crap out of your enemy so there's an adrenaline rush. They're fairly fragile so you learn how damage works and the games don't last too long.

By Stewart Frazier (Frazikar3) on Monday, November 21, 2022 - 06:31 pm: Edit

After PFs, go to frigates, similar power generation, similar weapons (plus 1-2 phasers), 50+% more internals ...