Just an idea on the small vs. large ship thing: What if small/war hulls are discounted as in F&E? The F&E discount is:

COMPOT -> Cost
7 -> 5
6 -> 4
5 -> 3
4 -> 2.5

For campaign rules I'm working on, which uses BPV-based cost vice F&E-style EP, I'm using a 2/3 multiplier for these hulls. (Conversely, I'm using a 3/2 multiplier for SC2, to reflect the fact they're much more expensive in F&E...)

This, in combination with a derivative of the F&E Battle Group rules (in brief, 3 SC3 [but not CA-size] and 3 SC4 ships count as 5 ships for command purposes), gives a reason to build and use smaller ships.

For example, five CR slots can have 5 CAs (40 COMPOT, build cost 40) or 1 CWL, 2 CW, and 3 DW (40 COMPOT, build cost 27).

By Paul Colburn (Innocentb) on Tuesday, December 21, 2004 - 01:31 am: Edit

I just joined this forum a short while ago and I was contemplating running a campaign (of sorts) via On-line. I thought about this at work today when I should have been working.

The premise is a very terminal, very defined, very structured, very limited SFB campaign where those who are good in actual battle tactics (as well as economics) are rewarded. But the campaign map itself is very, very, small.

You start with 4 primary races, Fed, Kzinti, Rommy, and Klingon. They each get 4 planets (just four) in maps of space that have maybe 8 or 10 hexes in diameter. Their total economic production is (at most) 25 bpv (per turn) on the home planet and 10 bpv at each of the other three planets. Then add some mid-major races. Give the Gorn 3 planets and a total of 40bpv production per turn. Add a Lyran and a Hydran with 2 planets each (35 bpv per turn.) Have their controlled "space" be no more than 6 or 7 hexes in diameter. So that is seven players. Then add a Tholian in the dead center of the map surrounded by the Fed, Kzinti, Klingon, and Rommy. Give them exactly one hex and a planet that makes 25 bpv.

Then set up victory conditions. Depending on how large or small you start, varies your victory conditions. Assume the major races must meet the most stringent conditions (get to a total of 100 bpv production per turn) or something to that effect. Have the Tholian have the easiest path to victory since their scope and scale is very limited.

No fast patrol ships. Allow the Fed, Kzinti, and Hydran 2 fighter designs. Allow the Rommy, Gorn, and Klingon one fighter design. Limit the Klingon to just 5 size class 4 designs. Limit ship variants to just 4 size class 4 ships for the Feds and Rommies. Kzintis only get three size class 4s to choose from. Gorn, Lyrans, and Hydrans get just two size class 4s. Tholians can build just destroyers. Everyone (Tholians included) can build just one size class 3 design (war cruisers if you want) and no one gets size class 2s.

Kzintis get speed 20 drones. Feds and Klingons get speed 12 drones. Give the 4 major races 700 bpv in start up ships. Give the Gorns 500. Limit the Hydran and the Lyran to 400 bpv. Give the Tholian 250 bpv and surround his planet with webs.

The referee (me) randomly pops in with an Andromedan Cobra or maybe an Orion or two to have some very limited interaction. Just to mix things up and keep it interesting.

Anyway, each turn you get your bpv to start building ships. But you can only build ships at one of your planets, (the one with the base station in orbit, your home planet.) So you must "transport" bpv from your other planets and store the bpv in the cargo boxes of the ships as they move from planet to planet. If your ships move offensively towards another race, you must transport lifesupport and fuel in the cargo bays of your ships (certain mathematical minimums depending upon what ships are in the task force.)

The purpose behind limiting things so much is to motivate player interaction (with one another) and combat. Have a turn be one week in REAL TIME and you all submit orders to me (in secracy) as to what you are doing with your turn's bpv and where you are moving your ships. I look at all the orders, and I determine if any of your ships will run in to one another and if comabt takes place. Then I notify the players involved and you have one week of time to resolve the conflicts here with the On-Line gaming system.

So what ends up happening is you each have really tiny empires and you fight all the combat using SFB rules and NOT F&E rules. Scaled down to this level (with drastically limited space to operate, numbers of ships, and designs) you can actually do this in real time.

If anyone is even remotely interested, just email me at innocentbystanderboston (at) yahoo (dot) com and tell me which race you would like to play. If we can get seven or eight players, I'll design a gif image of a map and mail it out ot all of you (or maybe I'll set up a silly free website someplace) and send you all links. Resolving the combat though is up to you.

By Paul Colburn (Innocentb) on Tuesday, December 21, 2004 - 01:34 am: Edit

Oh might I add, that the Major races have space of 10 hexes, I mean F&E hexes where movement into and across one of those hexes may take a "turn" (one week) as that space is quite large.

It's just a very small tiny map by F&E standards.

By Jude Hornborg (Von_Nasty) on Tuesday, December 21, 2004 - 02:12 am: Edit

Sounds interesting, Paul. I would suggest putting this announcement in the General Discussions thread though. If you need a Lyran or Gorn player, I might be interested, although a turn every week might be too much, depending on how often fleets interact.

By Paul Colburn (Innocentb) on Tuesday, December 21, 2004 - 03:02 pm: Edit

Jude,

I might move it there tonight (or at least copy these posts.) You are the second person who has already expressed some interest in playing. I got an e-mail from someone else.

I'll get into more detail tonight. But the concept behind this campaign is to scale things WAY DOWN to a very minimal level, small enough that the eight players can actually resolve these conflicts with the On-Line Client, and turn things around at a rapid pace. I'd rather the commitment on the part of the playes be small as to keep interest high enough that the campaign can be played to total resolution. So I will go into more detailed victory conditions later.

And if it doesn't seem balanced, we can change things up a bit.

By Jude Hornborg (Von_Nasty) on Tuesday, December 21, 2004 - 04:08 pm: Edit

Yes, I like the minimalist approach of your campaign. However, I still think that one week may not be enough time to schedule and play every battle. This is just based on observing other campaigns and tourneys...where 2 weeks is typically the norm, and there are still delays.

By Gary Bear (Gunner) on Tuesday, December 21, 2004 - 04:37 pm: Edit

Paul,

Another person and myself are doing something very similiar using a set of rules based, in part, from the Campaign Designers Handbook. The FCR (Flexible Command Ratings) really bring "fleets" down to a manageable size. (No way to get S8 11-ship fleets.)

We are using a custom Cyberboard Gamebox to handle our strategic movement and economic development. However, unlike you, we have no hidden strategic movement being used.

By Seth Iniguez (Sutehk) on Tuesday, December 21, 2004 - 06:54 pm: Edit

What year did you have in mind, for ship availability?

I'm not sure I agree with the idea of limiting the types of SC4 ships so severly, most campaigns people tend to ignore SC4 ships and build cruisers and war cruisers. For the hydrans, they can take one HB and one FUS armed SC4, and thats it? So KN and LN, but no frigates? No scout or leader varients? I don't think that SC4 ships need to be discouraged, I think that with open production they should be encouraged.

By Paul Colburn (Innocentb) on Wednesday, December 22, 2004 - 02:18 pm: Edit

Moving this to General discussions thead to get 6 more players....

By Seth Iniguez (Sutehk) on Friday, December 24, 2004 - 09:54 am: Edit

Which topic are you in? I can't find anything?

By Paul Colburn (Innocentb) on Monday, December 27, 2004 - 01:43 pm: Edit

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas ths weekend.

Seth,

I moved it to general discussion but someone moved it off for whatever reason. I don't know where they put it. No matter.

Everyone,

There are now three that are interested in this campaign. We need 5 more. I am keeping things in this campaign very light, very tight, and very focused so that everyone will stay interested and will actually want to PLAY these battles on-line. That said, the choices of ship designs (that everyone can choose from) will most likely be up to you. I do this because each of you have a certain style of ships that you want to play. (I'm not going to force the Romulan player to play my third favorite ship, the War Eagle, if he prefers SparrowHawk-A light cruisers. They are played COMPLETELY differently in combat.)

Everyone pays the ECONOMIC cost in bpv to build ships, not military cost. If you want a freighter (and many of you may), you pay the higher cost.

Klingons get one size class 3 design and 4 size class 4 designs. They may NOT choose a design after year 168. No Stasis Field Generators (yet.) So sorry. Speed 12 drones. You may use Type-I or Type-IV drones. You may choose 1 fighter design and you can use warp booster packs. No fast patrol ships.

Romulans get one size class 3 design and 3 size class 4 designs. They may NOT choose a design after year 170. You may have Gladiator-1 fighters (4 bpv each, 1 F-torp and NO phasers) but may developer other fighters. You can have warp booster packs. No fast patrol ships.

Feds get one size class 3 design and 3 size class 4 designs. I don't know about the "year" limitaions yet. I'll know tonight. Speed 12 drones, but you may use type-I or type-IV drones. You may have two fighter designs but you may NOT have f-14s (yet.) Too powerful. You may have warp booster packs. No SWACs, don't even ask. Too powerful.

Gorns get one size class 3 design and 3 size class 4 designs. I don't know about the "year" limitaions yet. I'll know tonight. You get one fighter design. You may have warp booster packs. No fast patrol ships.

Kzintis get one size class 3 design and 3 size class 4 designs. I don't know about the "year" limitaions yet. I'll know tonight. You get one fighter design and you get warp booster packs. You get speed 20 drones. You may have type-I or type-IV. No fast patrol ships.

Hydrans get one size class 3 design and 2 size class 4 designs. I don't know about the "year" limitaions yet. I'll know tonight. You get two fighter designs and you get warp booster packs. No fast patrol ships.

Lyrans get one size class 3 design and 3 size class 3 designs (as they get NO fighters.) I don't know about the "year" limitaions yet. I'll know tonight. Sorry, no fast patrol ships.

Tholians get just one class 3 design and one class 4 design. That is it. They don't have a year limitation but they do not get ANY Neo-Tholian designs. No fighters either. Home planet starts all engagements surrounded by at least one layer of anchored web, two layers of anchored web if the Tholian player chooses so.

By Paul Colburn (Innocentb) on Monday, December 27, 2004 - 01:45 pm: Edit

On a turn?

At the beginning of every turn (which is simultaneous for all the races) you get all your turn's bpv. A "turn" is three weeks in REAL TIME. This will give you guys 3 weeks of game time to resolve any combat you may have with each other. Surely, that will be enough time. Schedule your encounters with each other (that I will announce in secracy to the people involved) at your leisure.

Feds, Romulans, Klingons, and Kzintis start with space covering 10 parsecs each. They each have 4 planets each in their own separate parsec, (one home planet and 3 additional planets.) All home planets start at a rate of 25 bpv of production per turn. All satelite planets produce 10 bpv per turn. Total current production of these races is at 55 bpv/turn. These races start with 700 bpv in total ships at the beginning of the game.

Gorns start with space covering 7 parsecs and 3 planets. Home planet produces at a rate of 25 bpv per turn. Two satelites produce at 10 bpv per turn for total production of 45 bpv.

Lyrans and Hydrans start out relatively weak. They each only have space covering 5 parsecs and just two worlds. The satelites produces at 10 each and the home planets at 25 bpv each. Total production per turn is 35 bpv.

Tholians hae one parsec and just one planet that produces 25 per turn. Don't lost your LAST planet or it is the end of your game!

By Paul Colburn (Innocentb) on Monday, December 27, 2004 - 01:46 pm: Edit

What to buy, how to store it, and where to build it?

Remember, the planets make the bpv, not your empires. You guys are playing SFB, not Risk, where you can take your 5 army production from holding the North American continent and place them all collectively on Alaska. If your race name does not rhyme with the word "Bolian" then your turn's bpv appears all over the place. This causes tremendous logistical problems as you sometimes need to get the bpv (or what you have created by spending it) from one spot to another. Thank goodness all ships have cargo space.

Well, Feds, Kzintis, and Klingons needs drones. You can build them on ANY planet and they can be shuttled up from a planet to ANY ship and stored as cargo. A single cargo box on ANY SHIP can store (as cargo) 20 spaces for drones (10 type-IVs or 20 type Is, you do the math.) You can move these drones to your racks in space, but NOT in combat. This process takes HOURS, not seconds. To build a single, speed 12, type I drone costs .5 bpv. To build a single, speed 12, type IV drone, costs .67 bpv (or 3 for 2 bpv.) A single type I speed 20 drone costs .67 bpv. A single type IV speed 20 drone costs 1 bpv each. These are relatively cheap, as they can be made anywhere. If the cargo box holding these drones is "hit" in combat, there go all your drones (but these drones wont have their warheads active so there will be no further damage.)

Pseudo torps are even easier. They can be built on any planet for any fake warhead strength. You can store 10 pseudo torps in a single cargo box. Once again, thes can be moved to the torp launchers (only one per launcher) but NOT IN COMBAT as the process takes hours not seconds. They cost 3bpv each, regardless of strength. Lose the cargo box in combat, and you lose the bpv.

Fighters can also be built on any planet. Planets may have an INFINATE amount of fighters based at their surface for which to protect the planet. You are limited ONLY by your economies and your choices. Fighter may NEVER travel outside of the parsec they are in UNLESS they are being transported by another ship. If they are stored as CARGO in a bargo box, you may pack 3 fighters (plus their armement) in a single cargo box. You may move these fighters from cargo to ANY shuttle bay in any of your ships within your fleet (at that location) but NOT in combat. This process will take hours, not seconds. If you lose that cargo box in combat, you just lost up to three fighters. Ouch.

See why cargo boxes are valuable? Internals really hurt in this campaign as cargo hits come early and often. PROTECT YOUR CARGO! You might want to dedicate ships JUST for cargo for these purposes.

All planets may build base stations. Every home world starts with just one base station in orbit of your planet, 20,000 kilometers above the surface. You may dedicate bpv for building a base station but until ALL the bpv for construction is at the planet together, the station is considered under construction, non-operational, and utterly defenseless.

Only planets that have a working base station may build a size class 4 or size class 3 ship. So if you lose your base station, you may NOT build another ship until you first build a base station. Moreover, you may build only one size class 3 or two size class 4 ships at one time (per base station.) You may have up to 6 base stations per planet, but I doubt any of you will ever get to that point. Although a planet may not have a base station, it can contribute towards construction of a new ship. In order to so this, you must SHIP the bpv to the planet with the base station building the ship. BPV is then "dedicated" at the beginning of your turn and stored in cargo boxes, upt o 5 bpv per box. For example: Klingon player is building a nasty D5 war cruiser at his home planet. He needs 110 bpv (or so, I don't remember the cost) to complete construction. Home planet only builds 25 bpv per turn. But he wants built quicker than 5 turns (or 15 weeks.) He wants it now. Well two of his other planets that make 10 bpv each just happen to be 2 parsecs away from his home world. Moreover, they each have a small ship to deliver the goods to the home planet. Since they are two parsecs away, it will only take two turns to get the bpv there (more on that later.) So he dedicates ALL of the bpv at those two planets for D5 production, he packs the bpv into two cargo boxes (as you may store up to 5 bpv of cargo PER cargo box) and sets sail for the home planet. Two turns later (barring any nasty encounters) they arrive simultaneously to deliver the goods and that D-5 is 20 pbv closer to completion. Simple as that. You all know what happens when you lose those cargo boxes in combat.

Transporter bombs cost 4 bpv each. Yup, that is costly. You may store 10 T-bombs per cargo box. The warheads are NOT active so if your cargo box takes a hit, you lost the T-bombs but no further damage. Since the warheads are inactive while in cargo, you may not use these t-bombs in battle and can ONLY activate them if there is space available on your ships 12 T-bomb shuttle space.

All-purpose Shuttles can be stored in cargo boxes just like fighers, 3 per box. Getting them OUT of the cargo boxes is handled the same way as fighters. Shuttles cost 2 bpv each to build.

FLSC units are the MOST important item you can build in the game. Without these, you have no fleet and no game. These can be built anywhere (on any planet) and are shipped in cargo exactly the same way all the above items are. FLSC units are one bpv each. Just 3 FLSC units fill an entire cargo box. SO what IS an FLSC unit? FLSC unit stands for Fuel-Life-Support-Compensation unit. Basicaly, its the gasoline, the k-rations, and the payroll for the ship. We will go into great detail on movement and how it relates to FLSC units in the next post.

Repair units cost 1 bpv each and are stored up to 3 per cargo box. If your ship is crippled (more than half of your SSD boxes colored in), you will need them. This may seem highly unfair and totally unreasonable, but to keep things simple, just one Repair unit repairs one SSD box to 100% effectiveness (phaser 3 or R-torp.) It's all the same. This can NOT be done in combat the way Dam Con can, as it takes hours not seconds. You do not need to be at a base station to do the repairs.

Cargo boxes are not multi-purpose. You must store ONLY one type of item per box. If you have 6 different boxes, you can transport six different items, but only each of those items can be stored in each cargo box.

By Paul Colburn (Innocentb) on Monday, December 27, 2004 - 01:48 pm: Edit

Movement:

Everyone knows how to move ships in combat. To keep things simple, you all move up to one full parsec per turn. So all your ships can travel one parsec every three weeks.

I hear some groans. That is not fair! Some ships travel much faster than others. Those ships could never keep up! Thank goodness the referee (that is me) came up with FLSC units. These impact the cost of travel and impact the cost of simply keeping a slower ship in existance.

How many FLSC units does it take to keep a ship in EXISTANCE? Simple math. Count all the Warp Power on a ship (damaged or undamaged), multiply by the movement cost, then divide by 10. That is how many FLSC units you need to have ON THAT SHIP every turn to keep it from mutinying and you lose it forever. (Then the referee gets it to play with it. Hee hee!) Example: a slow War Eagle consumes 2 FLSC units per turn. 1 (movement cost) times 20 (warp power) divided by 10. That equals 2 FLSC units per turn (or 2 bpv per turn just to keep your War Eagle.) A faster D-5 and a Sparrowhawk-A (which a War Eagle would never be able to keep up with in battle) cost 1.6 FLSC units per turn or .67 times 24 which equals 16 divided by 10. So the fast ships are cheaper to maintain and keep. A Fed CA would cost 3 FLSC units per turn (1 movement cost times 30 warp divided by 10.) Be aware of the FLSC units. You do not want to being a deep attack into enemy territory and not have enough FLSC units to feed, power, and pay your people.

More rules coming tonight.

Crippled ships may NEVER leave the parsec they are in until they are repaired. You must spend repair points to fix them where they are, or, you must deliver repair points to them where they are stranded.

By Paul Colburn (Innocentb) on Monday, December 27, 2004 - 02:22 pm: Edit

E-mail went out to all who are interested.

Gorns get 500 bpv to start. Lyrans and Hydrans get 400 bpv each to start. Tholians have to make do with 250.

Victory conditions vary from race to race (for the smaller empires, you need not conquer a single planet to win), but the minute a Home Planet is captured, the game is OVER. The one who captures automatically wins and everyone else loses. Do not lose your home planets.

By Seth Iniguez (Sutehk) on Monday, December 27, 2004 - 03:22 pm: Edit

Questions:

1) Do varients count as a ship slot? For example, if the Klingon player picks D5s, do they get to take varients?

2) Are shuttlecraft purchased at economic bpv? If so, they should be 1/2 combat bpv, or 1 point for an admin.

3) I don't understand the "all ships have cargo space" statement? Are you adding cargo to ships SSDs, or is there some "innate" cargo ability for ships?

4) Regarding cargo boxes, they can only hold one type of item at a time, but once the item is removed, they can hold a different type, right? The rule kinda sounds like they have to be "designed" to store one item.

5) Please confirm if any optional rules are in use, and if any standard rules are not in use (other then the obvious, like SWACs and SFGs).

6) Once complete, will all rules be compiled in to one document, so we don't have to wade through several pages and posts?

Comments:

Speed 12 drones are type II and V. Ships have much less TB storage these days (4 for SC3, 2 for SC4).

This format will probably result in all war cruisers, since there is no room for more then 1 type of SC3 ship.

Why are such divergent years available on fighters and seeking weapons in use? Warp booster packs are Y180, at which point fast drones should be in general service, but Feds and Klinks have moderate speed drones? I would not recommend deviating from the historical deployment timing, as it could create balance issues. Fighters aren't historically ever able to outrun drones, but they can easily in this campaign, allowing them to bypass defences more easily.

It appears that a fleet would require the support of a cargo ship to hold its FLSCs, and that a single succesful raid against the freighter would result in the entire fleet disbanding the next campaign turn. Perhaps that is alleviated by some ability of ships to store their own supplies, but it seems a bit extreme as is. Perhaps ships should just operate under some sort of restriction if they are under supplied, like poor crew and half warp power until supplied.

I'm not sure if you will get 8 players very soon. In the past, I haven't seen that many people interested in a campaign unless it starts going for awhile. I'd recommend starting with 4 players are so, but keep the other races under GM control until a player takes them over.

By Les LeBlanc (Lessss) on Monday, December 27, 2004 - 04:18 pm: Edit

Everyone pays the ECONOMIC cost in bpv to build ships, not military cost. If you want a freighter (and many of you may), you pay the higher cost.

The higher cost on a fighter is the COMBAT cost, economic is left side combat right side.

Paul Colburn you have a web page for the campaign rules up yet?

By Paul Colburn (Innocentb) on Monday, December 27, 2004 - 04:33 pm: Edit

Victory Conditions:

As I said earlier, you must never lose your home planet. So if one of the heavies (Kzintis, Rommies, Feds, or Klingons) pops the little Tholians like a zit, the game is over. It doesn't matter what else is happening ANYWHERE. These campaigns must have an end point to make it worth playing. Okay so what if a home world is attacked and defeated by multiple people at the same time?

As they saying goes in Highlander, "There can be only one." Whoever is lucky enough to do the absolute last point of "Excess Damage" on the last existing defending ship, base, or shuttle/fighter, is the winner. It does not matter if the final battle has 20 attacking ships in space and the one who does the last bit of damage had only one ship there, if you were the one responsible of destroying the last ship (or base station, whatever is LAST) you win. Be aware of that people when you fight unified attacks. You can form alliances and so whatever you want (you are in charge), but in the end, only one person wins and everyone else loses as badly as the one who just lost their home planet.

There are many ways to win and end this campaign. MANY. Capturing home worlds are just one way. If at the begining of any turn (beginning means BEFORE you have spent any bpv), your empire has exactly DOUBLE (or MORE) the bpv productivity you had at the beginning of the game, you win. The game ends right there. It's over! So how can you increase bpv? There are two ways: you may capture planets. You capture them from other players. To capture a planet, you need only have a single war ship (shuttles do not count) in orbit of another player's planet and that player has NO defending ships or bases remaining. The planet instantly "Capitulates" since it does not wish to be relentlessly bombarded from space with drones, plasma, disruptors, or photons. The planet is then "yours." What is more, you get all the spoils. If there are any drones, bpv, FLSC units, repair Units, Pseudo torps, shuttle, or fighters (if the defening player is so moronic NOT to launch them into orbit for defense) they are yours. You get the planet and all the spoils. Well done. Capture a "home planet" and you win the game. If you are among many people capturing that planet, refer to the paragraph right above this one. The second way to double your bpv is through infrastructure. At the beginning of any turn, you may dedicate bpv growth. Okay, so what is bpv growth? Well, you trade 5 bpv that you get now for a 1 bpv increase next turn. So if your race name doesn't rhyme with "bolian" you have a satelite planet that makes 10 bpv. You decide one turn to not build ANYTHING with the 10 bpv it produces, (no drones, not FLSC units, no nothing) and you go total infrastructure. You trade all 10 bpv in for future growth. Then next turn (provided you still have the planet) that planet now builds 12 bpv. Simple math. Okay, so given this, you theoretically do not even have to fight ONE BATTLE to win this game if your opponents simply let you "grow." Consider the following example: Tholian player takes his intial 250 bpv and buys three 80 bpv size class 4 destroyers and 10 FLSC units. Turn 1, he takes all the 25 bpv he makes and buys 25 more FLSC units bringing him to 35 FLSC units total. The three destroyers each consume .8 FLSC units in orbit of the home planet, all the while, maintaining the web. He now has 32.6 FLSC units remaining. Turn 2 he dedicates all 25 bpv for infrastructure. Destroyers do not move but consume another 2.4 FLSC units leaving him with 30.2 FLSC units. Turn 3 all 30 bpv go to infrastructure. Tholians are not attacked and the destroyers gobble up another 2.4 FLSC units leaving 27.8 units. Turn 4, 35 of the 36 bpv go to infrastructure, 1 bpv goes to FLSC and the destroyers keep maintaining web. There are 26.4 FLSC units remaining. Turn 5, 40 of the 42 bpv goes for infrastructure, and you all continue to ignore the ever strengthening Tholian as he has more FLSC units than he will ever need to win. Turn 6, he takes the 50 bpv and flushes it down the toilet and waits. Guess what? He has begun the turn in ownership of his home planet and has doubled his economy. He wins the game. Wasn't that fun?

So, at the beginning of every turn, each of you will be notified about the economic productivity of each other. That part of the game is NOT secret. At the BEGINNING of the turn, you KNOW how much bpv your opponents are making on EACH of their planets (just not WHAT they are spending that bpv on or WHERE they eventually intend on spending it if they plan to move it.) Moreover, you do NOT need to have even one ship defending your planets. So long as no one attacks them (or the referee doesn't come by with an Orion Raider or an Andomedan Cobra) you have the planet and you continue growing wealthy from it.

Other conditions?

If the Tholian captures (not destroy, captures) 2 or more size class 3 ships, he wins. If the Hydran or the Lyran capture 3 or more size class three ships, they win. If the Gorn captures 4 or more size class 3 ships, then at the end of his turn, he wins. In these circumstances, you do NOT have to keep the ship safe and shound to get credit for the "capture." You may at the beginning of your next turn, convert it to YOUR technology and add it to YOUR fleet. (Nice.) The major races may not use these scenarios for victory conditions. If one of the four majors captures just one planet (and holds it) from each of the other 3 major empires, and keeps all three to the end of the turn, then he wins.

By Paul Colburn (Innocentb) on Monday, December 27, 2004 - 04:37 pm: Edit

Seth and Les, I'll get to your questions tonight. Those are excellent questions.

Siege!

You can lay "Siege" to another planet. Assume that your fleet has access to sufficent FLSC units to keep it in a parsec away from home for some amount of turns. Then, there is no reason why you can't both peacefully co-exist in the same parsec if your enemy chooses NOT to engage you. This brings about several situations: #1) You can park a fleet of any number of ships right near a planet and if it's defending ships choose not to engage you (and you choose NOT to engage the planet) then the planet is under Siege. The planet still belongs to your enemy since the enemy has ships defending itself and the planet has no reason to "Capitulate" to you yet (and the enemy contiunes to produce bpv), but you could (at anytime) try to conquer it. Or, your enemy could fly out from the planet to engage you. Or, you could both just sit there. Either way, you are there and so is he. This adds tremendous value in this campaign as it allows you to "park ships" in a parsec that you might believe will have an impact at determining the victory conditions of the game. Moreover, you can "intercept" and "engage" ships that are leaving the planet or going to the planet. You are there. You make a difference.

By Paul Colburn (Innocentb) on Monday, December 27, 2004 - 06:58 pm: Edit

What races do you guys want for primary? I'd like to fill ouot the Feds, Klingons, Kzintis, and Rommies right now if I can.

Seth,

I have the house to myself tongith as my wife and baby are on vacation for a couple of days. I'm joining them Wednesday night which gives me sometime to do some quality work. I will aswer and address each of your questions/concerns.

Les,

I just created a freebie website. Here it is...

http://innocentbb.tripod.com/

It's a major work in progress, I know. All I did is copy all the content I typed here so that everyone could refer to the website. Please excuse all the pop-ups. I'll be adding a "map" at some point this week identifying where everyone is. If we can get one more player then we can roll with the Mid-Majors and I'll play the Tholians in "neutral" mode. Just don't let me win if I do that.

This way we can (as Seth said) add players as interest grows. I'll pimp the campaign tonight on SFB-On-Line.

By Jude Hornborg (Von_Nasty) on Monday, December 27, 2004 - 07:19 pm: Edit

I'll take Romulans if you need to fill the main 4 first. If we get 5+ people, then I'd like to play Lyrans. I'm flexible though (as long as I don't have to play Kzintis).

By Ian Whitchurch (Ian_Whitchurch) on Monday, December 27, 2004 - 09:47 pm: Edit

I'll run Klingons, and I'll even promise not to take the D5 or it's variants.

Ian Whitchurch

By Les LeBlanc (Lessss) on Monday, December 27, 2004 - 11:16 pm: Edit

With a real browser there are no popups.
Any reason why the text is limited to the left 1/3rd of the page?

By Seth Iniguez (Sutehk) on Monday, December 27, 2004 - 11:33 pm: Edit

I had thought I picked Klingon as my first pick, but can't find email. Since it looks like you were still looking for players for that race, I would play Hydrans as my first pick. If you end up needing somebody to play one of the top 4, I'll play Fed.

By Francois Lemay (Princeton) on Tuesday, December 28, 2004 - 08:21 am: Edit

Paul, I'll take the KZ .

What year is the campaign starting in ?
Re design limits,
Is the KZ, CA ,CC BC, CS considered one design or variants ?

What about the KZ CVS ? Are carriers allowed in this campaign?

Seems like SC 2 ships are not allowed ?

What is the biggest base station we can build ?

Is vision radii being used ? Scouts would be usefull then .