| By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 12:39 pm: Edit |
We sell the sizzle, not the steak. Being able to play wisklix with starships would be a marketing coup in itself.
| By Michael Powers (Mtpowers) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 12:59 pm: Edit |
The conclusions being drawn here are kind of making me wonder why this topic got opened. People are, more or less, saying that they want HeroCLIX with the figures shaped like starships, and why would WizKids get ADB involved in that? If they wanted a Star Trek theme for their next HeroCLIX set, they would just go to Paramount.
| By Xander Fulton (Dderidex) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 01:10 pm: Edit |
Just a thought....you don't NEED to dismiss 'power cards' - CLIX gamers will already be familiar with card-management from the CCGs they tend to also play.
Have two wheels - shield and systems. Shield is...well, shields. 'System wheel' displays 4 stats at once (all dropped at once, obviously) - speed, heavy weapons, phasers, power. I'd say 'power' should max out at 4 - we don't want TOO complicated a system.
Anyway, for 'power' - each player has a stack of, say, 12 'action cards' per ship in their fleet (it would come in the box - each ship you buy has a mini with the CLIX base and the 12 cards to 'run' it). They would look very like the SFBF cards, I imagine, with ship-appropriate art on each. The player can pick as many of these cards to play in a turn as the ship has power - so a ship with '3' power can choose any 3 of the 12 action cards.
They'd be pretty basic. Stuff like:
- Fire heavy weapons (2 cards)
- Fire phasers (2 cards)
- Move
- Beam over boarding parties
- Jam enemy weapons
- Boost shields one level (over current dial level)
etc.
The idea with the '2 card' items is that, for example, the "Fire phasers" card can only be used to attack ONE target. If you play two of those cards, you can then attack two ships.
Stuff like that. Minimize the complexity - heavy weapons always fire forward, phasers always fire in all directions (heavy weapons that can fire aft would be a 'special ability' marked on the base)
Plus, that allows for the BIGGEST important thing in the system - *variation*. You can have ships with only 3 'hit levels' for systems (IE., three unique damage levels and the ship is lost). Tougher ships would have 6 or 8 'hit levels'. Tougher ships would have more 'power' to use action cards, and lose it slower.
Heck, maybe even "Command" ships (unique) or "Legendary" ships (rare) would get more than 12 command cards in their deck, or special abilities printed on the cards.
----------
The handy thing about cards is that you can, below the illustration on them, have a brief blurb explaining HOW they are used. ("Play this card to attack one enemy ship this turn" or somesuch)
This is a GREAT way to get player's noses out of the rulebooks and watching the table - they can just take a look at the cards in hand to get a reminded of how stuff works.
Anyway, just a couple thoughts...
| By Scott Tenhoff (Scottt) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 01:16 pm: Edit |
MPowers, the point would be that SFB/ADB has an established history, and Paramount is notoriously pricy when licensing Star Trek (see LUG Star Trek RPG from what I've heard). But that might of changed now that they've driven all of the franchise games into the ground, ie computer.
By conforming to SFB's Universe, they get a background and universe pre-made, and they don't have to wing-it to come up with something by themselves.
The attraction would/should be that they don't have to devote anyone to write up those kind of things, just develop some numbers for ships, then playtesting anything else nifty to make it fun and quick.
| By Michael Powers (Mtpowers) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 01:25 pm: Edit |
>MPowers, the point would be that SFB/ADB has an
> established history, and Paramount is
> notoriously pricy when licensing Star Trek...
But major portions of the SFU are based on Paramount's property, and I doubt they would simply let a Star Trek CLIX game slide by. The argument that SFU Klingons are based on stereotypical Russians while Paramount Klingons are based on stereotypical Japanese will not cut much ice in trademark court.
| By Andy Palmer (Andypalmer) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 01:58 pm: Edit |
Michael. The point is that ADB already has 3 things:
1. a Ruleset from which to base the CLIX game
2. a portfolio of thousands of unique ships
3. most importantly, an existing, neverending license with Paramount
| By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 02:05 pm: Edit |
ADB has the liscense to use the material in Franz Josephs book. If they can use it to make games, miniatures, models, and magazines, they can use it to make a Clix game. Andy is right on the money with the attraction. It's a pre-defined universe ready to go, tons of ships to make into minis, and it would have the weight of the Trek name behind it.
| By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 02:27 pm: Edit |
Michael Powers: You know so little about this. We have a license to do "games" and if we want to do a CLIX game Paramount has nothing to say about it. They just cash the checks. We don't need to explain anything about Klingons to a trademark court.
Mike Raper: While we do have the FJ license we have also had a Paramount license for two decades. One that doesn't expire and has virtually no approval requirements.
| By Marcin Radzikowski (Warchild) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 02:30 pm: Edit |
Oohh...SVC, I'd say you have a true "license to print money" for a SFB CLIX game...
| By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 02:45 pm: Edit |
As for a CLIX game, there are a couple of options.
1. Another company manufactures it, we sell it for them, take a commission, and send them most of the money. [We are negotiating such deals with four other companies now. I don't know if any of them would actually happen.] This clever plan means I don't have to worry about re-inventing the entire technology of clickybases.
2. During my copius spare time (maybe I'll give up on-line porn? it could happen!) I research and re-invent the technology to manufacture clickybases. I either find out that it only takes $10,000 for a boat load of them, or I mortgage the house, car, cats, and company to buy the quantity I was previously quoted. Then we do some kind of game design, sell the game, and maybe make money or maybe go out of business. If anybody really wanted to see this plan proceed, they'll have to find me a manufacturer for the stuff and convince met hat Wizkids patents don't stop us cold.
| By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 02:51 pm: Edit |
Sounds to me like there is really only one option, and that's number one. Very little investment of capital required for you, and you get the weight of Whizkids behind you in marketing and selling the thing.
| By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 02:57 pm: Edit |
I doubt they'd be interested in little old me and they'd just go deal with Paramount. But if they call up tomorrow and say "Lets make a deal. So many of your fans have called us, we just think it would be swell" then I guess we'll make a deal.
Seriously, don't call them YET. Other things have GOT to be done and I can't afford to be distracted.
| By Craig Tenhoff (Cktenhoff) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 03:18 pm: Edit |
Xander hit on what I was thinking of using Power Cards for. Power Management is one of THE things that makes SFB, SFB
A couple things that cause problems are the multiturn arming weapons, phaser capacitors, and batteries. But since most Clix games are use to marking their units with counter, this shouldn't be too much of a problem. Just have a couple counters handy or allow a player some extra cards.
The Big Clix Dials (the Mechwarrior ones) are 18 levels deep. The last being destroyed, that gives you a max of 17 different levels of damage. If each point of damage represents roughly 10 points of damage, that allows a ship with roughly 170 internals. How many does the B10 have again?
My rough idea for the base:
Heavy Weapon Fire Arc
4 Quadrants, each indicating a Phaser Modifier or Max Phasers allowed (representing Phaser Arcs). Quadrants more suited to non-hex play.
Near the 'Dial Window' for each weapon - Max Weapon Range
Unit Type (i.e K-E4)
Unit Points
Primary Dial (up to 18 different entries or Clixs):
Primary Weapon
Secondary Weapon
Phasers
Power
Secondary Dial (up to 6 different entries):
Shield Strength
For Example (this is very rough and from memory of the F5 so forgive me if I'm way off)
F5 - No Refits
Heavy Weapons (90' forward)
Quadrant 1 - Fwd: -1
Quadrant 2 - Starboard: 0
Quadrant 3 - Aft: 0
Quadrant 4 - Port: 0
(phaser power reduced forward due to RX phasers proving >50% of phaser power)
Movement 1/2 (one power gets you two distances of movement)
| Dial Item | Max Range | Dial Position 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
| Primary Weapon | 4 | 1$ | 1$ | 0 | 0 | *** | |
| Secondary Weapon | ## | 1* | 0 | 0 | 0 | *** | |
| Phaser | 3 | 1+ | 1+ | 1+ | 0 | *** | |
| Power | -- | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | *** | |
| Shield Dial | -- | -2 | -1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Dial Item | Max Range | Dial Position 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | |
| Primary Weapon | 6 | 2@ | 2@ | 1$ | 1$ | 0 | 0 | 0 | *** |
| Secondary Weapon | ## | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | *** |
| Phaser | 4 | 1% | 1% | 1% | 1% | 1% | 1% | 0 | *** |
| Power | -- | 7 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | *** |
| Shield Dial | -- | -3 | -2 | -1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | - |
| By Scott Tenhoff (Scottt) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 03:57 pm: Edit |
Just a little note, proping my brother up on his pedestal.... 
He's demo'ed/refed, a lot of CLIX games, so he has the background to be very familiar with them.
| By Michael Powers (Mtpowers) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 04:51 pm: Edit |
>Michael Powers: You know so little about this.
I figured such, and I'm glad to hear that I'm wrong, because I kept hearing about "we can't do (something) because of license issues". Having such a blank-check license to do things with the Star Trek property is an enormous advantage...
| By Kenneth Jones (Kludge) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 05:38 pm: Edit |
It's from the days when Paramount was simply trying to squeeze more blood from the ST turnip. They didn't really understand how valuable the property was.
Nowadays they probably look back on the ADB license as an example of how NOT to do a license.
Good thing Steve got there before they wised up
| By Scott Tenhoff (Scottt) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 05:42 pm: Edit |
It was before ST:NG came along (remember 25+yrs of SFB now).
That's why they were so 'giving'.
| By Xander Fulton (Dderidex) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 05:59 pm: Edit |
Craig:
Really, for the main (?18 level? wow!) wheel to track 4 stats is good, but a couple thoughts:
- Players shouldn't have to allocate power to movement, worry about power ratios and all that. That's no good - too complicated
- I'm thinking breaking the "heavy weapons" into primary and secondary weapons in ADDITION to the phasers is a little much.
Which is why I suggest the four stats be phasers, heavy weapons, speed, and power. Figure out what speed you want the ships to move for each approximate level of damage, and that's how fast it goes.
If you want to work movement allocation into the turn (and it's a good idea), I'd work that into the cards the ship is dealt. Maybe have 2 action cards each labelled "move 1/2 of total movement allowance" - each card letting you move 1/2 of the "speed" on the dial's current position. If you want to move your full allocation, you need to burn 2 action cards to do it.
The important thing (at least, IMHO) is that the action cards are NOT power allocation or power units.....although, in spirit at least, they fill that function in the game (they limit how much you can do in a turn - the hallmark of any good game is giving each player a LOT of options, ALL of which they want to do *NOW*....but they have to pick and choose which ones they CAN do)
(EDIT: Revised)
Really, I think having 5 action cards for a war cruiser (and light cruisers) is probably a good idea. Give a heavy cruiser 6, a command cruiser or BCH 7 and a DN or BB 8. DDs and FFs get 3 (2 is enough to move half their allowance and fire one type of weapon, or move full speed - with 3, they'd have another to do something else with, and lose with damage). Maybe these numbers need bumped up 1 or 2? Need to have enough points that the first damage to it doesn't CRIPPLE the ship, but really don't want players doing TOO much every turn.
Anyway, this kind of reflects the power situation on the different ships.
I didn't realize up to 18 levels could exist - that's great! BBs getting 18 would be perfect, just need to work out how many levels everyone else gets (3 for a DD before it's destroyed?)
| By Xander Fulton (Dderidex) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 06:02 pm: Edit |
One other thought - on multi-turn arming weapons.
This might simply be handled by having to play 'action cards' for that. Have a pair of "arm multi-turn weapon" (2) action cards and a special flag on the card showing that they can be stacked across turns.
This would allow a slight 'break' from SFB rules as they are (you could put the first photon card down on turn one, nothing on turn two, and another on turn three to finish it; or you could put both down on turn 1 - using 2 of your action slots)
But I think the 'fun' factor of that would work - spirit of the game is kept, it plays quickly, and 'works' with the rest of the system.
| By Scott Tenhoff (Scottt) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 06:13 pm: Edit |
You know, if Wizkids do like this idea, I think those kind of particulars should be worked out then (hopefully Wizkids would include SFB people as playtesters).
But shouldn't this thread really be about the feasability/appeal of a game like this should have, and would it be worthwhile?
| By Scott Tenhoff (Scottt) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 06:29 pm: Edit |
You know, a CLIX-system game doesn't have to be just Alpha, it could start with Omega-ships, then proceed from there.
Increaes interest in Omega and feel the waters of CLIX, before dumping the Alpha quadrant into it.
| By Craig Tenhoff (Cktenhoff) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 07:35 pm: Edit |
Xander,
the 18 level clixs are for the 1 1/2" bases. The smaller ones (the ones for Super Heros & Fantasy Figures have smaller dials (about 8 IIRC).
Right now, Mechwarrior has two weapon stats on each mech, a movement stat, an attack stat and a defense stat. Each stat can have a special ability (the special ability cards have over 30 attributes for the Mechs, and the Fantasy and Hero ones even more!).
Right now players are limited to X actions per Y points. Usualy its 1 action per 100, but the Mechwarrior is 1 per 150. That works within those game systems, because players are allowed to move and fire groups as 'formations', with some special abilities allowing moving and firing. Not sure if that would work in a SFB version or not.
Limiting it to four stats would work. Was just throwing out an idea I had thought of, a bit more advanced than the basic clix game
The secondary shield dial could help keep ships from being destroyed in one shot. It could regenerate one point per turn (I remember that nice feature in SFC , saved me from worrying about damage control all the time and let me play a LOT longer than I could've in SFB ).
The one thing with SFB has always been the decisions, but once you lock a ship into a certain speed with a certain damage potential, you've taken away alot of the options. Overload weapons or Move Fast, for example. Not sure how you can limit maneuverabilty on an open map. All the Clix games (except Crimsom Skies) use open movement with no turning restrictions. Again, if you use cards for maneuver restrictions, the complexity goes up.
| By Michael Powers (Mtpowers) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 07:40 pm: Edit |
Nobody outside of the SFB community knows what The Omega Sector is, but the entire free world can recognize the Starship Enterprise.
>But shouldn't this thread really be about the
>feasability/appeal of a game like this should
>have, and would it be worthwhile?
I think that it's quite feasible; "Battletech CLIX" certainly wasn't simplistic. "Star Fleet CLIX" could actually be simpler. But you have to balance simplicity and the options that detail gives you; if you only have four stats then it's tough to make things look different.
Again, if this game is too simple, then it's just like playing any other CLIX game. I think that the opportunity here is to take the "book-keeping" out of SFB. Your EAF and SSD are entirely replaced by the information on the click-base, along with a few charts. But that doesn't mean that you eliminate all the things that make SFB its own game (as opposed to a generic starship combat game with pieces that look like Star Trek.)
| By Craig Tenhoff (Cktenhoff) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 08:11 pm: Edit |
The other thing with Clix games is that they are usually not one piece on one piece, but small forces, battlegroups, or what not.
So a SFB Clix game would be looking at squadron to fleet sized battles.
That begins to complicate the X cards per ship thoughts, as players may become confused as to which ship has which cards, or has used which cards, etc, etc.
So going back to the Wizkids basic model.
Each turn you can take X actions per Y points.
As an action you can:
Move a Unit Double its Speed (almost all power to movement)
Move a Unit its Speed and Make a Normal Attack (Heavy Weapons or Phasers)
Make an Overloaded Attack (Double Heavy Weapons at reduced range, or Heavy Weapons and Phasers)
Reinforce Shields (Stop X damage on the next attack)
Charge Capacitors / Batteries (Allow a Phaser Attack / Defense in addition to a standard action on another turn) Need some way to mark this.
After taking your actions, any unit that didn't take an action regenerates one point on its shield dial.
Combat is Roll One D6 per damage point. A Roll > Range = Hit (or >= Range?) & one damage. Ranges could be in 3" increments = 5 SFB hexes. Each damage would be approximately 10 SFB damage.
I still don't have a simple way to handle turn modes and maneuverabilty 
Special Abilities would still be the various SFB Heavy Weapons, Maulers, Drones, P-1s, P-Gs, P-IVs (Need one of the Titan Bases for the BATS and SB ), etc.
| By Xander Fulton (Dderidex) on Thursday, April 07, 2005 - 09:15 pm: Edit |
Quote:Originally posted by Michael Powers (Mtpowers) on Thursday, April 07, 2005
But you have to balance simplicity and the options that detail gives you; if you only have four stats then it's tough to make things look different.
Quote:Originally posted by Craig Tenhoff (Cktenhoff) on Thursday, April 07, 2005
So going back to the Wizkids basic model.
Each turn you can take X actions per Y points.
As an action you can:
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