Many have suggested doing a "clicky base" starship game. Maybe it could be done, maybe not. There are a lot of issues and I'm frankly kind of blind on this one since I know nothing about how they work or how to get them done. I don't know if the technology is pattented or if it could be produced in reasonable quantities.

One thought I had was to do a game with minis on those "chair" things with a die sitting in the chair to indicate your "power" and you could in effect us the die as the combat factor, rotating it as you take damage. But I vaguely understand that clicky base games have three or four or five factors on each character and the die would be only one.

By Andy Palmer (Andypalmer) on Wednesday, April 06, 2005 - 03:46 pm: Edit

My recommendation:

Contact Wizkidgames. Talk to them about the opportunity to be part of a clix game based on the Star Trek universe. Explain your licensing issues (which I'm confident can be worked around - powered by WizKids or somesuch). Work out the financials.

Then, give them 3 copies of everything and have them go off for 2-3 months to design a CLIX game based on SFB.
[This may seem like madness, but they are the experts at what works with CLIX gammes]

Have them present their idea to ADB and key staff members. Unless they totally got something wrong, you should have a working system.

Then, have them run the marketing plan - again, they're the CLIX expert. If they say booster packs will work best, don't argue just because your current SFB customer base will scream bloody murder - this game isn't for them.

By Michael Powers (Mtpowers) on Wednesday, April 06, 2005 - 04:20 pm: Edit

Actually...well, I realize what kind of response I can expect by suggesting that ADB do more work, but I think that the game system would look more like SFB and less like "generic starship combat" if ADB does the design work. Presumably if WizKids gave you the go-ahead, you could proceed to buy a bunch of CLIX stuff and figure out how the core mechanics work, and then design a starship system that's compatible with that and yet echoes SFB.

If nothing else, I like the idea of having Limited Production ships actually be Limited Production; like, every box has a War Cruiser, but a Battle Control Ship only shows up in maybe one out of every ten boxes. (And that's how you do Legendary Officers--they're just a ship with improved stats over the normal type.)

By Craig Tenhoff (Cktenhoff) on Wednesday, April 06, 2005 - 05:46 pm: Edit

Depending on the type of base used, some of the the Larger Clix figures have two dials (the massive ones have even more). A main dial for that reflects the combat stats (usually weakening as the piece takes damage) and a secondary dial, used for heat on the Mechs or Speed on the Aircraft.

The Wizkids site has examples of both types.

My rough thought on this would be:

1) Main Dial = SSD, with Primary/Secondary/Tertiary Weapon Damage, Power Points, Defense Value. Total of 5 values. We could get by with 4 values, since Defense Value was fairly arbitrary. These dials only have 18 positions, so each point of damage would be roughly 10-12 internals?
2) Secondary Dial = Shield Strength or Speed?
Some values are fixed (suce as speed multipler, weapon max range, weapon arcs, etc).

You have 1 card per X power points (say 5, but maybe 2 or 3). Each Card is either Power 1 point of weapons, move, reinforce shields etc.

So a Fed CA would get 7 Power Cards (at 5 power a card) to start with. It would take 1 power to power its Heavy Phasers (these would get a damage bonus), 2 to load Normal Photons, 3 to get 3 movement cards and 1 for shield reinforcement.

All but basic weapons (disruptors and P-2s?) would be treated as 'special abilties' and color coded on the dial.

This link shows the example from Crimsom Skies (Wizkids Airplane Game), which I think would probably be the model you'd want to use as the base for a SFB version, since its the larger base and has multiple dials.

http://www.wizkidsgames.com/crimsonskies/cs_article.asp?cid=37676

The 1/2" dials could be used for all the miscillaneous units from SFB, fighters, shuttles, drones, plasma, etc.

By Andy Palmer (Andypalmer) on Wednesday, April 06, 2005 - 06:10 pm: Edit

I think the cards for power is too complicated. AT MOST, I'd recommend "Ship X can move Y, fire all its weapons, and has 1 chit per turn that can be used for extra damage if within Z range or to reduce an enemy's attack by 1).

By Scott Tenhoff (Scottt) on Wednesday, April 06, 2005 - 06:59 pm: Edit

OOohh, a CLIX-based SFB might get rid of mobile terrain Drones once and for all. Becoming just a "Firepower" ability like a disruptor.

And if votes are taken, I'd like to voice that a "Fleet Box" would probably be the best way to market these, as who wants to play against the one guy that's lucky enough to get the Fed SCS group assembled.

By Michael Powers (Mtpowers) on Wednesday, April 06, 2005 - 07:23 pm: Edit

I was thinking something along the lines of...(now remember, I barely know anything about the CLIX games, so I might be totally off base, as it were, but here's my idea.)

There are three "classes" of ships; Dreadnought (DN & BB), Cruiser (BC, CA, CL, CW) and Destroyer (DD, FF, DW).

Your "wheel" has five stats. A Fed/Klingon/Kzinti would have Power, Phaser Battery, Heavy Weapons, Missile Racks, Tractor Beams. A Gorn starship might have Power, Phaser, Torpedoes, Transporters, Tractors; A Romulan would have Power, Phaser, Torpedoes, Cloak, Tractors. You have two separate "spindles", which show Hull and Shields. You also have slots; you can plug a "marker" into a slot to represent that a system is charged with power. (Different-color markers can represent different states; blue for standard loads, and red for overloads.)

Power is "X/Y", where X is engine power and Y is reserve power. Your average CA would have three points of power; one point would let it move 0"-8" during the turn. Destroyer-class ships get a free movement-only power point, over and above their current stats.

Phaser Battery is based on the SFB ship's phasers, it's a subjective combination of number and type. (for example, a Klingon D7 and a Gorn BC might have the same Phaser Battery score, since the BC has phaser-1, but the Gorn can't concentrate the phasers as well.) PB is a number, it's how many dice of Phaser Fire you roll. Heavy Weapons are similar, although there is a table that cross-references your current HW score and the range to say what the to-hit number is.

Torpedoes have to be charged with a variable amount of power; once they're charged, you launch a torpedo with a strength equal to your current Torpedo score time the amount of power. Torpedoes lose strength as they travel (and get shot by Phasers.)

Missiles are the drone racks. Again it's an "A/B"; the first is the number of Missiles the ship launches in a salvo, and the second is the Ammo Threshold. When you fire missiles, you roll a die; if you roll under the Ammo Threshold, your rack is empty and it takes one point of power to reload.

Cloak (and Web) are a "1" or a "0", indicating that a system is working or not.

Transporters let you beam Marines over to an enemy ship. They can damage things or try to capture it.

Tractors let you grab missiles and keep them from hitting you; you can even destroy a missile if you have two tractor beams to use on it. (You use two tractors to rip it apart.) You can also tractor an enemy ship; if you do that, then each of you needs to pay one extra point to move. The enemy can try to break the tractor beam by a die roll, modified by the difference between Tractor scores.

Shields go up or down as the game progresses; damage makes them go down, reinforcement (and repair) makes them go up. Hull goes down once the shields are gone; and after the Hull is gone, you start spinning the wheel.

A Fed CA might have stats like:

POWR-PHSR-HEVY-MISL-TRAC
3/1 4 4 1/4 2
3/0 3 3 1/5 1
3/0 2 2 1/6 1
2/0 1 1 0 0
1/0 1 0 0 0

A Klingon D7:

POWR-PHSR-HEVY-MISL-TRAC
3/1 3 3 2/3 2
3/0 3 2 2/4 2
2/0 2 2 1/5 1
2/0 2 0 0 0
1/0 1 0 0 0

A Kzinti BC:

POWR-PHSR-HEVY-MISL-TRAC
3/1 2 2 2/1 2
3/0 2 2 2/3 1
2/0 2 1 2/5 1
2/0 1 0 1/5 0
1/0 1 0 1/6 0

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 09:20 am: Edit

If I had any clue what MP was talking about I would be more impressed that I already am. Wow. Game design on the fly. Let me know how you get along with the chinese factories.

By Andy Palmer (Andypalmer) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 09:29 am: Edit

Michael (and others). I am sure that we could get together and design a CLIX game. However, I am a long time Battletech player and would never have designed the Mechwarrior CLIX game in the manner that WizKids did - these leads me to the conclussion that they would be the best ones to design this FOR THE TARGET MARKET. We would simply add too much details (and proven by the sanple designs already given).

Looking at the conversion from Battletech to Mechwarrior CLIX, a guess of mine would be:

1 dial is shields - represents a damage reduction number. Shield value gets downgraded by 1 (1 rotation, not necessarily 1 value) for each hit that penetrates.

Other, main dial is heavy weapons, phasers, speed, point defense and get downgraded (1 rotation) with hits.

CLIX already has some level of weapons arcs (a far simpler version than SFB).

I am not saying the above would be it, or even a workable design, but is merely my guess at the level of detail that "should" be in the final product.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 09:40 am: Edit

Pleading ignorance, here. What is a Clix game? I've never heard the term.

By Marcin Radzikowski (Warchild) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 10:08 am: Edit

Mike,

These are the collectible figure games. In a box you get an assortment of figures that have stats for the game. On the base of the figure is a dial that is used to keep track of these stats as your battle progresses.

Just go into any comic book store or game store and ask for them. The first ones were oriented for super hero figures and then a game based on Battletech came out.

I've never played them, but they do look interesting and are perfect for beginners. But, the whole business is based on collecting them like Magic cards or whatever other CCG is out there now.

Just go to WizKids Games and they have several based on this system.

By Michael Powers (Mtpowers) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 10:17 am: Edit

Andy: Well, what I'm thinking is that there are already "simple" CLIX games. What I'm trying to get here is a Star Fleet Battles CLIX game, not just a "starship combat that has a Star Trek theme" game. So you would have to have things like power management, tractor beams, reinforcing shields, Hull, seeking weapons versus direct-fire heavy; those are all things that are unique to SFB. Someone coming to the CLIX version from the tabletop version would see familar things and be interested, and say "gee everything from SFB is there, I should try it." Someone who was new to the game would see that "Star Fleet CLIX" was different enough from the other CLIX games to be new.

Although a question would be "are the sales of CLIX lines related to the complexity of the system?" If the more-complex CLIX lines are poor sellers compared to the less-complex ones, then going with a simple game would clearly be better.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 10:19 am: Edit

You wouldn't HAVE to have anything and it could just as easily be a "starship combat that has a Star Trek theme". whatever would sell best.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 10:27 am: Edit

If the goal is to simply expand ADB's customer base, then a simple "starship combat game with a Trek theme" might be just the way to go. Simple sells better, sells more, and in turn makes more money. And, it should attract at least some of the players to other ADB games, like FC or SFB. Sounds expensive, though, especially given the vast number of ships to pick from. I could easily see this taking over the majority of ADB's business time, if it took off.

By Marcin Radzikowski (Warchild) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 10:42 am: Edit

Mike,

But the SFU universe lends itself quite well to this type of product. The fact that there are so many ships is good. Just look at all the various expansion sets for all the CLIX games. You could have an intro set with Federation, Klingon, Romulan and Gorn ships to start. Then expansion sets for the base game, racial expansion sets, fast cruiser sets, CVA sets and fighters, PF sets, the list goes on.

The trick is to get the essential stats for the ships and design a simple, fun and quick playing game that will attract younger players. Kids love to collect stuff and I've seen parents shell out tons of cash for these CLIX games.

If this game took off, it would have to become an entire business by itself.

By Andy Palmer (Andypalmer) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 10:54 am: Edit

We also don't want to kill FC sales. By having the CLIX game simple and keeping FC in the "flavor of SFB without the complexity" niche, I believe ADB will sell more product to more people.

By Michael Powers (Mtpowers) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 11:00 am: Edit

>You could have an intro set with Federation,
>Klingon, Romulan and Gorn ships to start.

But I think that you would need enough detail for the ships to be different in ways beyond "one is 4-5 and the other is 5-4".

Although I am making the assumption that ADB would want to get something similar to SFB in a CLIX format. If they would just want a Star Trek-theme starship combat game, that's a different story, and "speed/phaser/defense/heavy/shields" is probably all the statistics you would need. Maybe you would also have a "hull durability" stat that works like the armor save from "Battlefleet Gothic"; every damage point that gets through the shields has to roll under the "hull durability" number to make the wheel turn.

By Chris Mannall (Cmannall) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 11:17 am: Edit

Michael Powers: If you import every tactical option from SFB into SFB-clix, then you've bought yourself a correspondingly large set of rules.

If the consensus is that SFB's customer base has pretty much reached its peak due to the complexity of the ruleset (this reasoning being the driving force behind the simpler Federation Commander), then coming up with "the most complex CLIX game yet!" seems to me a good way to shoot yourself in the foot.

You have to bear in mind that, what with both SFB and Federation Commander already in the mix, any other games (such as this theoretical CLIX game) have to be aimed at a *different* set of players. After all, hardcode as a lot of ADB's customers are, does anyone really need three different trek-flavoured starship combat games? I know I don't. For that reason, there's no point aiming the game at me - after all, I'm not going to be buying it, since my ADB-directed cash is more likely to go on building up the SFB mini collection or finally getting properly into F&E.

If there does end up being an SFB-CLIX game, then it needs to be aimed at the people who aren't buying SFB or even FC - that is, the attention-deprived who just want to move ships around without worrying about turn modes and so on, and certainly don't want to bother tracking how many drones are left in each rack.

By Nick G. Blank (Nickgb) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 11:27 am: Edit

Not that I'm really interested in a CLIX game (but the conversation is interesting), for a simple game the defense/shield should be the same stat.

I would do speed/shield/phaser/heavy weapon.

Do speed/phaser/heavy weapon stats on the clicky wheel as a series of decreasing stats to represent combat damage, put the shield power on the little spindle thingie that mechwarrior uses for the heat stat. (The reason being that even a damaged ship could repair its shields independantly of the rest of the ship.)

The way you make a given race's ships unique from other race's ships is the heavy weapon. All ships use the same rules for speed/shield/phaser. The heavy weapon rule is specific to each race.

Start with the classic photon/disruptor. Disrs are weaker, but fire twice as often. Build the other racial weapons from there.

Andros could have a PA spindle instead of a shield spindle, and would use a different rule.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 11:32 am: Edit

Of course if not Starship combat it sure might be a neat way to handle ground assaults!

By Dave Lebert (Waylander) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 11:48 am: Edit

One issue that I see as a possible problem is that most of the ships in SFB are extremely similar in shape within a race. There is little to distinguish a CL from a CLE from a CLD, etc. Part of the apply of the CLIX games is that you collect different minatures, not ones that all look the same but have different abilities.

By Craig Tenhoff (Cktenhoff) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 12:02 pm: Edit

Different Abilities can be simulated with different 'special abilities' on the damage wheel.

For example in Mage Knight (Fantasy Clix) there are usually three-four figures with the same sculpt. However, each figure has a different rarity, different point values, and different (or more) special abilities. The One Star Common Figure is a lot cheaper and weaker and has different stats than the Three Star Rare Figure.

So you could have a Common CL, an Uncommon CLE, and a Rare CLD. The figures would look the same (different paint scheme possibly), but the dials would have different stats (CL would have standard Phaser/Disrupter/Drone specials, CLE would have Phaser/Point Defense/Drone specials, and CLD would have Phaser/Drone/Sensor specials).

By Michael Powers (Mtpowers) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 12:11 pm: Edit

>Michael Powers: If you import every tactical
> option from SFB into SFB-clix, then you've
>bought yourself a correspondingly large set of
> rules.

But without importing options from SFB, you have HeroClix except that the figures are starships. My concern is that if there is too much simplification, then your game becomes too generic, and there's no reason to buy an entirely new set of figures just to play it. (And, as others have pointed out, you need detail just to keep all your ships from looking exactly the same...)

By Jeff Johnson (Jeffro) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 12:25 pm: Edit

>> Pleading ignorance, here. What is a Clix game? I've never heard the term.

Clix games are practically the only thing resembling a wargame that are being played and marketed today. It's pretty much the only type of game that is played on the tables at Cosmic Castle. You can even by them at Target and Walmart.

In the seventies we had micro-games (Ogre, Car Wars, and SFB all in their respective ziplock bags.) These grew up in the eighties but were replaced by Collectible Card Games in the 90's. CCG's have been replaced by Clix games more recently.

Does anyone know what state the CLIX market is in? It seems like there were a lot of CCG's that came on the scene just a little too late to cash in on it. (Of course, my hero Steve Jackson was not to late for that and rescued the company with the Illuminati CCG.)

I just wouldn't want to see this turn into another "Day Late and a Dollar Short" scenario.

By Andy Palmer (Andypalmer) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 12:33 pm: Edit

My concern is that if there is too much simplification, then your game becomes too generic, and there's no reason to buy an entirely new set of figures just to play it.

The new "figures" is exactly why many people will buy it. "Cool - a game with ships from Star Trek" People don't play CLIX for the tactical complexity - they make GW games look complex. They're fun, quick to play, and come with painted miniatures.