Supposedly, these are "absolutely needed" for the ISC scenario and "would be nice to have" for free campaigns.

Having read Chuck's proposal, I'm just really wondering if (a) these can work and (b) if they are needed at all. Allow me to explain in the next two posts.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 - 11:24 am: Edit

Chuck's system works based on the theory that there is one "turn" (no player turns, but a number of player actions in each SoP step). For example, in operational movement:

Player A moves one stack of ships and everybody else does reaction if they want. (Just exactly how many ships are in a stack is something he and I are discussing, but the point is that it starts in one place and all goes to another place by the same route, possibly dropping off pin-offsets along the way.)

Player B moves one stack of ships and everybody reacts if they want, except that ships which reacted or op moved earlier don't get to react again.

Player C moves one stack of ships and everybody reacts if they want, except that ships which reacted or op moved earlier don't get to react again.

Player A moves one stack of ships and everybody reacts if they want, except that ships which reacted or op moved earlier don't get to react again.

Player B moves one stack of ships and everybody reacts if they want, except that ships which reacted or op moved earlier don't get to react again.

Player C moves one stack of ships and everybody reacts if they want, except that ships which reacted or op moved earlier don't get to react again.

Player A moves one stack of ships and everybody reacts if they want, except that ships which reacted or op moved earlier don't get to react again.

Player B moves one stack of ships and everybody reacts if they want, except that ships which reacted or op moved earlier don't get to react again.

Player C moves one stack of ships and everybody reacts if they want, except that ships which reacted or op moved earlier don't get to react again.

Player A moves one stack of ships and everybody reacts if they want, except that ships which reacted or op moved earlier don't get to react again.

Player B moves one stack of ships and everybody reacts if they want, except that ships which reacted or op moved earlier don't get to react again.

Player C moves one stack of ships and everybody reacts if they want, except that ships which reacted or op moved earlier don't get to react again.

Player A moves one stack of ships and everybody reacts if they want, except that ships which reacted or op moved earlier don't get to react again.

and so forth until nobody has anything they want to move. MY PROBLEM is how the hell do you keep track of what has already "moved/reacted" and thus cannot do it again? The only practical way I can see is to use an LSM and put all of the ships unable to further move/react into one stack with a blank counter on top and everything still eligible to move/react in a separate stack in the same hex without such a blank counter.

This does not sound like something really practical to play, and it use would be limited to the few who have an LSM.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 - 11:25 am: Edit

I should note that I have left out a LOT of details from Chuck's system as the PROBLEM of keeping track of what moved and what hasn't yet is adequately illustrated by the data I did post.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 - 11:31 am: Edit

Now, supposedly, we need the three-player (which works more or less the same with more than three players) because of this "problem" which Chuck points out (this is a copy and paste from his document):
==================
The traditional two-player model really breaks down when trying to apply it to multi-player games.

Using the traditional Player A followed by B followed by C, etc. devolves into a game where one players becomes the target of choice because the traditional game flow no longer applies.

Example
Player A goes first and looks for weaknesses in Players B&C;
"A" chooses to attack "C" and launches a major effort;
"C" commits his only reserve;
“A” retrogrades his cripples because he operationally moved his units -- “C” cannot retrograde his non-carrier cripples;
"A" ends his turn and sets his only reserve to dissuade "B" from attaching him;
"B" sees "C" has many cripples from the previous battle and that “C” does not have a reserve to counter his efforts and notes that "A" does have a reserve in position;
"B" attacks a weakened "C" and causes even more damage to "C" and does not take as much back as a result;
"B" ends his turn and sets his only reserve to dissuade "A" from attaching him knowing now that "C" is in no shape to mount a counter attack after his attacks;
"C" has no choice but to regroup and moves to get his ship to repair locations;
"C" ends his turn and sets his only reserve to protect from either an "A" or "B" attack;

Turn X+1
"A" again attacks a weakened "C"....repeat above…

The last player to move in the traditional system gets pummeled under these kinds of conditions and does not have the ability or the resources to fix excessive cripples or hold territory.
==========
but I seriously question if this is the case in the ISC thing. In an ISC scenario you have Feds in fed territory, Klingons in Klingon territory, and ISC in a slightly expanded neutral zone. Everybody had a "scenario objective" (victory condition) which means NOBODY "decides whether to attack A or B" but everybody does what it takes to win the scenario.

Maybe it's the case in a non-historical free campaign, but I don't see it being a big deal with ISC War, and I don't see a need to spend two years screwing with a 3-player rules set before we design the ISC War product. I don't think it would be good for F&E to wait three years for the next expansion.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 - 11:51 am: Edit

Did Chuck have any play test data?


I had proposed a system thatno one seemed to dislike but never got any real feedback.

However, this is about Chucks proposal so I won't discuss it further except that I'd like to discuss it at some point before ISC War gets designed if Chucks plan is a no go.


My first impression of Chucks rules was exactly that which SVC stated. Keeping track of moved units can be hard enough as is.

This from my VERY limited experience (microscopic compared to Chucks).

By F. Michael Miller (Fmm) on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 - 12:03 pm: Edit

I seem to remember a game called "Godsfire" with vast amounts of counters (nothing like F & E, though) where there was a similar Move/react system. Stacks of counters were turned to face North before any movement, and East after movement. It was relatively icky.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 - 12:33 pm: Edit

Loren: Email me a brief executive summary.

By Alan De Salvio (Alandwork) on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 - 12:40 pm: Edit

Everyone alternating moving one stack in an endless sequence sounds cumbersome, and not F&E. Three potential solutions: an initiative system (fixed, rotating, bidding, random, whatever); post-combat retrograde capability for all units involved in combat; and greater reserve capability, but limited use to each battle hex. But I see no way to really help Chuck's player C - this is true in every game (and reality) where two gang up on one.

You only need a three player (really a three side) ruleset when there are more than two antagonistic sides. The current playtest ISC scenarios do not fall in to this category, as the ex-coalition and ex-alliance members cannot interact by scenario rule and hence are not antagonistic, so the scenarios are the ISC versus the rest of the galaxy (or a subset thereof).

However, my "dream" ISC conquest scenario (campaign) is every man for himself, including the ISC against everyone, where the ISC become a third antagonist in the late Y180s. We all seem to have asked for this campaign at one point or another in some form. A fully free campaign (that includes the ISC) can of course have even more than three antagonistic sides, clearly up to 8 in theory (9 with Andros), but that has been a possibility from the beginning, right?

Bottom line is the Gorn and Romulans are in big trouble in the loose ISC scenario under simple galactic conquest victory conditions (where the ISC are trying to collect capitals), so simply forbid a latecomer from winning using those victory conditions, or simply forbid ISC from attacking a planet or base at a planet in a capital hex (allows them to pin). The Gorn and Roms do benefit from the toughness of a late capital system with all PF pdus and an Xstarbase or two - perhaps we can duplicate the history after all.

By Jim Cummins (Jimcummins) on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 - 01:31 pm: Edit

Just an idea off the top of my head but wouldn’t a fixed rotating initiative help alleviate the pick on C problem. Where the cycle would be A-B-C, C-A-B, B-C-A, then repeat. This way if A and B gang up on C, C then has two turns sequentially to re-group.

By Jimi LaForm (Laform) on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 - 02:13 pm: Edit

There are many multiplayer games where the movement orders alter (ala Jim cummins suggestion) so that should solve the 'gang up on player C' idea.

As for remembering which stacks have moved. I don't think that is a problem because we already have thousands and thousands of units and dozens if not a half-hundred stacks that we 'remember' which have moved and which have not. Of course if player A has 'forgotten' which have already moved they can just ask player B or player C for a count of which stacks haven't yet moved.

By Robert Padilla (Zargan) on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 - 02:28 pm: Edit

Well if the Feds are not allowed to leave Fed space, the Klingons can not leave Klingon space, etc, then the ISC should never be facing the situation of multiple empires jumping their forces. Perhaps that's part of the ISC scenario?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 - 03:16 pm: Edit

Not really. In ISC sector scenarios, the Feds and Klingons can raid into each other's space. the ISC tries to "react" to the raids to stop them or at least reduce the size of the raid to the point that the raiders won't raid anyway.

By Douglas E. Lampert (Dlampert) on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 - 04:24 pm: Edit

Stack at a time moves tends to devolve toward one unit at a time moves as each player tries to move LAST by doing a bunch of meaningless moves first. Every game I know of that uses such a system has a chance of random turn end starting after some number of moves (or after one player passes) to avoid this.

Free-for-all rules are HARD but like SVC I'm not convinced they are needed for ISC War. What does need to happen is people need to actually play some three way battles since A attacks B and C reacts in is likely enough to need rules given a long confused border. I don't remember the current rules for that in any detail but IIRC they were broken.

By Robert Padilla (Zargan) on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 - 04:33 pm: Edit

So how it would work is that, for example, the Federation and Klingons still want to fight each other. However the ISC has other plans and will try to stop them. Neither the Federation or Klingons want to fight the ISC forces (and would not want to help each other to pin the ISC forces), and the ISC would never side with either the Federation or Klingons. So in that case we should never see two players jumping on the third. Would that be more of a correct statement?

By Ken Burnside (Ken_Burnside) on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 - 05:21 pm: Edit

A system I've seen from another game:

Player order rotates, as Jim Cummins indicated.

A,B,C, C,A,B, B,C,A, etc.

Each player has a hand of cards and a "refresh rate", how many cards per turn you can draw.

For units within distance X of a capital or command node (call it 12 hexes), you move N hexes (6 in F&E, I'd suppose).

To move a unit that starts out farther than "distance N" from a capital, you have to spend a card, which is placed face up.

To move a unit in reaction to someone else's, you have to spend a card that's of higher value than the one your opponent spent. If they didn't spend a card, their card has a value of zero.

In general, the refresh rate gave a bonus card for moving first, and moving last in the sequence cost you a card (on average, you had the same number of cards.)

Any cards left unused at the end of the turn are kept for next turn, modulo the hand size you can keep.

Both hand size and refresh rate are race/government specific variables. A variant of this is to increase the minimum value of a card needed to give a movement order, in relation to distance from a capital or command node.

Not sure if this is directly applicable to F&E, but perhaps it'll spark an idea for someone else. (It directly contradicts a lot of bedrock F&E assumptions, if I recall them correctly.)

For the mechanism that I saw used, it was a deck of playing cards, with aces valued at one, Jacks at 11, Queens at 12, and Kings at 13, with a suite tiebreaker (Clubs beats Hearts, Hearts beats Spades, Spades beat Diamonds, Diamonds beat Clubs.) The number of units to move was somewhere around 4 to 16 per side, hand size had a range of 4-7, and most nations could draw 1-2 cards at the start of each turn.

The drawback of this is that it encourage card counting, and hoarding high value cards. It did result in three to six player games with a pretty dynamic feel.

By Sean Dzafovic (Sdzafovic) on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 - 05:38 pm: Edit

My take on multi-player...

1) Initiative is determined by a random chit draw (I think I "borrowed" this concept from Shogun and Risk 2250). Each player receives 2 initiative chits per turn. Players must "ante up" at least one chit for the initiative draw, but may bank chits for later turns when they think they may "need" to win initiative. The player winning the draw chooses the order they want to play in, then a second chit is drawn, and that player chooses. And so on until one player is left and they get everyone else's leavings as to turn order.

This can also be used as a balance factor by giving a weaker player more chits per turn.

2) Next, reserves are secretly determined for all players.

3) Phasing player (ie: player with initiative) does economics, builds, repairs, etc.

4) Phasing player moves. All non-phasing players then choose whether or not to move reserve fleets. If a reserve is pinned, but the attacker fails to force it to move from its hex, it retains its reserve status.

5) Phasing player does retros/strats, then can assign additional reserves. A given reserve counter may only be assigned in step 2 or 5, but not both. If a reserve has been assigned in step 2, but remains unmoved, it is still available for a later player phase in the turn. This allows players to build reserves from new builds/repairs.

The "gang-up" problem is not really solvable through the sequence of play, but through the scenario design. In the case of a Klingon-Fed-ISC scenario, the Klingons and Feds should make piles of VPs by attacking each others forces/bases/planets, but little from ISC targets. The ISC should make alot by engaging Klingon or Fed fleets, but not for widespread destruction of Klingon or Fed bases/planets (possible exception of bases which can reach opposing territory). After all, the ISC are there to strongarm everyone into playing nice, but not cause widespread destruction. Meanwhile the Feds and Klingons see the ISC presence as a barrier to acheiving their objectives. This should limit the tendency of the Klingon and Feds to beat on the ISC, since they gain less for their efforts than targeting the heinous enemy on the other side of the neutral zone.

By Tim Losberg (Krager) on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 - 05:57 pm: Edit

the problem with the A,B,C, C,A,B, B,C,A, etc. method is that you get "Super Turns, 2 turns in a row.. so in the first round C can Attack B, force reserves, then attack again where the reserves are not... then A also attacks B and B is truley screwed..

By Kevin Howard (Jarawara) on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 - 06:22 pm: Edit

Douglas had an important idea:

"Stack at a time moves tends to devolve toward one unit at a time moves as each player tries to move LAST by doing a bunch of meaningless moves first. Every game I know of that uses such a system has a chance of random turn end starting after some number of moves (or after one player passes) to avoid this."

I was going to post the same problem - that each player does meaningless, 1 ship moves to draw out all the possible moves of the other players, then have a bonanza of final moves. Great for the player with the most ships!. I did not have a solution to that, either; however, Douglas does.

If I knew the turn could end at any time, I would want to move my ships early on in the turn process or risk having them sit idle for the turn. In order to prevent me from taking advantage of that by simply sitting pat and setting reserves when the turn ends abruptly, I think the 'set reserves' function should be part of the move system as well. Each 'move impulse', I decide if I wish to move a stack or set a reserve. Presumably I would set reserves near the end of my moves, but if I wait too long, I miss out on that too.

Each turn would have to have quite a few 'move impulses', and how to determine the correct number before the variability of possible abrupt end kicks in... I don't know.

By Jimi LaForm (Laform) on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 - 06:38 pm: Edit

Moving one unit at a time is not a problem in the real game, so why would a 3 player game be different?

The answer is it would not. If your enemy moves one unit at a time then let them. Let the puny ships in, pin out the big ones, You'll get one round at the important point with your fleet vs his frigates/destroyresr and one round at the reactgion point of his ships vs your equal ships.

This worry is being overthought I think

By Scott Tenhoff (Scottt) on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 - 07:32 pm: Edit

Jimi, the problem is with those that build "hordes" verses quality.

The person with 60FFs, 30CWs, and 10DNs verses 41FF, 41CWs and 10DNs (same EP cost). It's a differance of only 8 ships, but it illustrates the tactic of hordes verses quality.

By Scott Tenhoff (Scottt) on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 - 07:43 pm: Edit

---

Quote:

SVC said:
I'm just really wondering if (a) these can work and (b)if they are needed at all.

---

By Jimi LaForm (Laform) on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 - 07:44 pm: Edit

okay... so if player X has 8 more than player Y, it still doesn't matter... if player X is active it doesn't matter if he moves one at a time or if he moves one at a time. The best that player Y could do is pin out all but 8 ships regardless if player X moves one at a time or the whole stack. Conversely if player Y is the active player and is outshipped by 8 it matters not if he moves one at a time or the whole stack cause if player X wants to pin him out he can.

We are all long time players of this game and every single game their is the option of moving one ship at a time or entire stacks.

By Lawrence Bergen (Lar) on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 - 08:20 pm: Edit

Multi-player battles have been played in EB. The original game is broken if the order is simply converted to a repetative A-B-C (-D-E whatever) system. In a game of victory points and economics one player race/side (doesnt matter which) would logically become the clear and easy 'target'. They'd be easy to take provinces/planets (VP + Econ) from as well as keeping infrasturcture alive and well (VP).

The 'target' race/side would become easier to attack through expended reaction moves and the lack of reserve units usually because someone else already attacked them on a prior turn. The ISC campaign needs to add a third side civil wars may require even more sides so these rules need to work with 3,4,5+ players.

It would be seem to require some sort of simultaneous movement (like SVC posted above) or some methods of re-establishing RESV fleets. This second option allows for some magical movement if a ship has already moved either operationally, by reaction, or by RESV on a previous turn. This is of course illegal currently and would disrupt things if it were changed unless there is some method not yet devised to do so. There was some proposal in the past for designating additional limited RESV fleets (not sure on what they were called) but this may be a partial answer.

Even if you devolve it into some form of two sides (in this case) the ISC moves, the original races (Coaltion and Alliance forces) all move together you'd still have issues stemming from combat (who attacks whom in a particular hex?) and retreats (once the battles resolved where does everyone go? Who gets priority?)

Alliances (ie Political rules) will also need to be discussed as in if two races/factions (Civil Wars) decide to formally ally their turn would then have to become simultaneous (ala Klingon/Lyran/Rom) like in the original game.

Yeah, I'd say these are going to be rather important and very necessary rules to hash out. I volunteer to help in whatever manner I am needed.

By Jason E. Schaff (Jschaff297061) on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 - 09:08 pm: Edit

Random (sleep-deprived) thought:

What if, insteadd of moving "stacks", players rotated moving "hexes" until no one wanted to move anymore?

In otherwords, player A picks a hex and conducts all desired operational movement by units in that hex. Once he declares that hex finished, none of his other units in that hex may conduct operational movement until the next game turn. Reaction and reserve movement would still be permitted from that hex. Player B then picks a hex and conducts opmoves by his units there, followed by player C, and then back to player A for a new hex. Might solve the "dribble ships out one at a time" problem.

Cheers,
Jason

By Jimi LaForm (Laform) on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 - 09:14 pm: Edit

In the EB scenario we created we have an alternating move order and it worked just fine for a many sided game.