I'd suggest that the economic cost will be more expensive but it balances the force multiplier effect of the AU...

How so? And more expensive than what? The 50% free fighters you mentioned? I wasn't sure what the 50% was a percentage of...

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, April 24, 2003 - 04:05 pm: Edit

Though I'm not sure how this would balance with the rest of the rules how about using the Economic cost of fighters for replacement of loses. If you want to upgrade the fighter you must pay full cost. However, you could replace a fighter with the same at eco cost then traid in the same fighter at full cost toward the new upgrade fighter.

Initially you would pay full battle BPV for the fighters when a carrier is purchased.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, April 24, 2003 - 04:06 pm: Edit

I created a campain map of sorts and sent it to SVC. I asked him to post it here but I haven't heard from him yet.

By David Kass (Dkass) on Thursday, April 24, 2003 - 05:01 pm: Edit

Sorry, I was rushed with that last post.

I meant to say that paying the EPV cost for (true) carriers/PFT to replace fighters would still be more expensive than just using ships and their "free" repairs (for low amounts of damage). But AU do have a force multiplier advantage. So having them be a more expensive, but more effective option will work.

Loren, thats exactly what I'd proposed back up at the beginning:-).

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, April 24, 2003 - 05:12 pm: Edit

Oh, gee, and I though I was being creative. D'oh.

By Geoff Conn (Talonz) on Friday, April 25, 2003 - 01:55 am: Edit

Ok, so you do think epv for replacement AUs for true carriers will be adequate David?

Loren, no maps here thanks. The whole point about this proposal is the simplest possible framework for creating scenarios with strategic background, and as designed a map is not needed.

By David Crew (Catwholeaps) on Friday, April 25, 2003 - 06:00 am: Edit

Geoff: The 50% fighter thingy comes from U1.23. Of course in YOUR campaign U10 you can overrule that if you wish.

The Hybrid carrier concept comes from FnE. There Hydran ships WITHOUT escorts pay less for fighters than those WITH escorts (on the assumption that carriers lose their fighters more). At any rate there is precedent in the SFU for treating Hydran Hybrids differently from Hydran Carriers for cost purposes.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Friday, April 25, 2003 - 12:55 pm: Edit

Geoff, did SVC send you a copy? If not I'll send it to you. Feel free to decline if you like. The map is not complicated and was worth the effort to use myself. But might you just take a look?

By Geoff Conn (Talonz) on Sunday, April 27, 2003 - 02:34 pm: Edit

I've looked at U1.23 and its not bad. I guess it is comparable to the level of free repair ships of the line are getting. And it could arguably make Hydrans playable without getting crippled by fighter costs.

David why would hybrids be treated differently? Both are true carriers, but only the carriers get escorts essentially.

Loren, no sign of it. Email it to me directly if you want comments on it seperate from this discussion and its not too big.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Sunday, April 27, 2003 - 06:20 pm: Edit

Oh, oops, I didn't send because I wanter to hear if you would look at it.

It's on its way.

By David Crew (Catwholeaps) on Sunday, April 27, 2003 - 10:23 pm: Edit

Treating Hybrids differently is a justification for a game decision. If you want to limit carriers because you don't like ATU's then that is a campaign design decision. What to do with the Hydrans though? Nearly all their fusion ships are carriers. Either you restrict Hydrans to Hellbore types, or relax your rulings on carriers OR take 'the third way'.

The third way is to treat Hydran Hybrid ship fighters differently from carrier fighters for cost purposes, or deployment limits or something. That way you limit carriers for everyone as you might wish, while allowing the Hydrans to have their Fusion ships. This is superior to a blanket Hydran exception because you still limit the massive Hydran ATU fielders - UH and CAV groups.

Any justification of treating Hydran Hybrid ships differently is just an in-game justification of a game design decision. The one used in FnE is that carriers are designed to have their fighters destroyed more often - so have to set up a larger manufacturing trail for their fighter supplies than the Hybrid ships. (Complete nonsense of course - but it works in FnE).

By Geoff Conn (Talonz) on Monday, April 28, 2003 - 12:20 pm: Edit

So with a 1 max carrier/tender to limit the focused AU motherships which rule for replacement fighters should be used....EPV or 50% free each turn?

And what about pfs? EPV for true tenders only?

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Monday, April 28, 2003 - 12:48 pm: Edit

I think EPV, in both cases, for true carriers and true tenders.

By mark means (Mjmeans) on Tuesday, April 29, 2003 - 04:53 pm: Edit

Here is option to consider for fighter replacements. Each true carrier can use U1.23 free replacements, but can only be used to bring the total fighters up to 50% of the carriers total fighter compliment. Hybrid carriers and true carriers beyond the 50% limit recieve free replacements per turn at a rate equal to the "spare fighters" number on the master ship chart. True carriers, hybid carriers, and casual carriers can choose to replace fighters faster by paying full combat value for the fighter.

So, a true carrier which looses all its fighters would be able to replace 50% of them for free and would have to wait several turns for spare fighters to trickle in. Effectively pulling the carrier to the back of the line as a reserve unit. If it is needed in battle prior to getting all the rest of its fighters, the remaing fighter compliment could be purchased at the full combat BPV.

This option would duplicate the effect of 50% Economic BPV to Combat BPV for instant replacements, but allow a carrier to be held out of battle for many turns to eventually recieve all replacements for free. It would also allow hybrid ships to recieve all replacements for free as long as they stayed out of battle. I am guessing that hybrid ships have a higher ration of spare fighters to regular compliment than a carrier does, which would allow the hybrids to resupply for free with less turns waiting.

One more thing. In order to avoid abuse, a carrier cannot recieve spare fighters to replace fighters transferred to another ship. Otherwise, a player might be inclines to transfer spare fighters off of 12 ships to resupply a badly stripped carrier for free without paying anything. The ships which transferred these fighters would have to get their replacements from the carriers resupply chain.

By mark means (Mjmeans) on Tuesday, April 29, 2003 - 05:06 pm: Edit

What happens if scenario is agreed upon and due to the die roll, one player doesn't have any remaining force cheap enough to meet the limit?

e.g. Players agree upon a duel at 65+6d6 and rolls all ones (71 BPV) and does not have any ships left cheap enough.

Could some fighters or PFs (without their carrier) be used if available?

What if nothing at all is available that does not exceed the BPV limit?

Oh!, just remembered I wanted to suggest changin eceonomics from 100 BPV every 4 turns to 25 BPV every turn. This would be more in line with turn based fighter replacements.

By mark means (Mjmeans) on Tuesday, April 29, 2003 - 06:28 pm: Edit

To prevent abuse in trading the capturing of enemy ships...

It seems logical that the reason for granting a higher victory level for a cpatured ship is for research potential. Based upon this, I have come up with the following:

For victory purposes ignore the fact that the ship is captured and instead use only the victory score based upon internal damage. The capturing player may choose one of the following options:

1. The ship is made a part of the fleet immediately. Normal repairs can be done. Apply the original U10 rules for special technology or converting weapons. Once in active duty in your fleet, you may NOT send the ship in for reseach below. The appropriate systems and control panels and shield frequencies have been ripped out and replaced with your own races systems.

2. Research to improve your own ships systems. Each general hull type or subtype with major outward differences can be researched only once. (e.g. Capturing a second CA has no additional research benefit after the first one.) This research takes 6 months and the ship is completely dismantled in the process and cannot be used. After the research is completed the capturing player recieves the capturing bonus BPV (200% of the original BPV of the ship minus what was scored during the combat) as a special BPV pool which can be used for installation of refits only.

3. Research to learn how to penetrate enemy shields. Each general hull type or subtype with major outward differences can be researched only once. (e.g. Capturing a second CA has no additional research benefit after the first one.) This research takes one year after which the ship is turned over to active duty within your fleet (already converted to your technology). From now on you use the leeky shields rule to penetrate the shields of all that enemies units. The leak rate starts at 1:8 and improves by 1 for each ship researched (if using x-ships by 2 for each x-ship researched) to a maximum of 1:2 (i.e. 1:8, 1:7, 1:6, 1:5, 1:4, 1:3, 1:2). Note that if using X-ships, x-ships leak at 1/2 the rate of non-x-ships.

By mark means (Mjmeans) on Wednesday, April 30, 2003 - 03:00 pm: Edit

The goals of the above post, which I believe are met, are:

Provide no victory for taking an enemy ship which surrenders. If an opponent surrenders a ship without taking internal damage, there would be no victory earned. Therefore there is no incentive to surrender ships back and forth. If player A wants to give a ship to player B he can do it strategicly or tactically but will not get any victory for it.

Since victory incentive is taken away from trying to capture a ship, provide another incentive. There is still and incentive to capture ships, and a disincentive to allowing your ships to be captured. I think the above options 2 & 3 do a good job toward this goal. Firstly, option 2 destroys the enemy ship so it would be unavailable to trade back. This option would likely be taken for a ship which was crippled prior to capture. Under option 3 above, the ship would be available after completing research to "trade back" but the disadvantage of allowing an enemy to do this research in the first place is harsh enough that a player is not likely to make a decission to surrender a ship lightly.

Some more options:

2.A. This research can only take place at a battlestation, the FRD or starbase. You could also limit the number of ships being researched at any one location to 1 each. Or one for each base science module, or some other limit. The ship is dismantled immediately upon turning it over for research and cannot be recaptured. However, if the FRD or SB is destroyed, the research is aborted and no benefit is recieved.

3.A. This research can only take place at a battlestation or starbase. The location where this research is being done is known. You could also limit the number of simultaneous researches like 2.A. If the BS or SB is attacked during the research period the enemy ship is parked near the station and "inactive". While it is inactive it does not count against command limits. The ship could be activated under the normal SFB rules but would be under the restrictions of a captured ship, except that the weapons are already unlocked. The builder of the ship automatically gets leeky sheilds at maximum rate 1:2 against the captured ship, since its shield frequencies are known.

3.B. The capturing player which has sucessfully employed shield research has the option of setting their weapons (prior to the start of the scenario) to use their learned technology to penetrate enemy shields, or keep the knowlege of exactly what flaws they have discovered in the enemy shields secret until more research can be completed, or until a more strategic time. One turn following this, the enemies shields are reset and all learned knowlege is voided. Each hull type can be captured and researched again. Or one turn following the battle enemy shields are rotated at the rate of 1 category per turn.

These additions would add an incentive to try to hit and run a base station to destroy one of your captured ships prior to research completion to prevent the enemy from taking any advantage.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Wednesday, April 30, 2003 - 04:29 pm: Edit

Geoff, did you get the e-mailed map? Thoughts?

By Ben Moldovan (Shadow1) on Thursday, May 01, 2003 - 01:06 pm: Edit

I don't think the leaky shield thing works. A race would just modify their shields or change the frequency or something like that.

By Geoff Conn (Talonz) on Friday, May 02, 2003 - 12:57 am: Edit

Fighter/PF replacement cost. I am leaning towards EPV right now because it rewards the use of FCR and other conveyance vessels by forcing the tracking of those units. U1.23 could certainly be referred to as an alternative.

Mark, hi! ltns.

What happens if scenario is agreed upon and due to the die roll, one player doesn't have any remaining force cheap enough to meet the limit?
Could some fighters or PFs (without their carrier) be used if available?

Yes, will have to write that in.

What if nothing at all is available that does not exceed the BPV limit?

He loses the challenge, and loses 50 vps.

Oh!, just remembered I wanted to suggest changin eceonomics from 100 BPV every 4 turns to 25 BPV every turn. This would be more in line with turn based fighter replacements.

Is this really necesary? I suppose it could easily be done but is the paperwork worth the gain? I'm undecided.

By Geoff Conn (Talonz) on Friday, May 02, 2003 - 01:17 am: Edit

Still thinking about how to deal with ship capture trades...want to avoid research though as a rule as outlined in my proposal. Tempting rules there Mark but outside the scope here.

Got the map Loren, very nice. Again though, this too is outside the scope of the proposal. I want the campaign to feel abstract, but not that abstract. (ie: allow the players to imagine the thrust and counterthrust of battle without putting it on a map which is obviouslly artificial)

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Friday, May 02, 2003 - 02:23 am: Edit

OK, that's cool. I may use it for something else. A the least it was good pratice using/learning my graphics packages.

By Geoff Conn (Talonz) on Sunday, July 13, 2003 - 02:58 am: Edit

Thread reexamined for possible use in league play with SFBOL v3.3. My only concern right now is actual implementation and probably a rule penalizing a player for having a ship captured to avoid the 'ship swap' loophole. Essentially something like double vp gain for the capturer, fine. But only full bpv gain for the taker, and full bpv loss for the loser. Still abuseable, but only for vps and that's pretty hollow.

Will likely post updated rules (everything discussed here already) shortly, barring any other issues popping up.

By Geoff Conn (Talonz) on Monday, July 14, 2003 - 07:18 pm: Edit

Deleted by author, formatting issues

By Stephen Cobb (Ghengiskhabb) on Tuesday, July 15, 2003 - 06:44 pm: Edit

Cool rules.....

Some questions about allies

-A joint challenge can only be made against joint defenders and not individual defenders? (True/False)
-A joint challenge occupies the challenges available to the allies (True/False)
-A joint defense occupies all of the challenges that can be made to the joint defenders (True/False)
-Allies are not required to use the joint challenge and can make independent challenges (True/False)