Scenarios

Romulan Civil War, the only one they had, Rolandus vs the Republicans

WYN War of Return (why I had to add Kzinti rebels to the sheet the staff did)

Generic Kzinti civil War

Generic Lyran Civil War

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Wednesday, February 03, 2021 - 11:46 am: Edit

In the case of the Lyrans, would there be room for an historical scenario (or scenarios) dealing with the clashes surrounding the transition from the Dark Star County to the Democratic Dark Star County, and/or from the DDSC to the Lyran Democratic Republic? That might provide a useful tie-in to some of the LDR material over in Minor Empires.

Also, I somewhat recall there being an historical scenario covering that Lyran civil war which immediately preceded the Four Powers War. Perhaps such a scenario could be set up to link directly into the start of the 4PW scenario in the 2016 update to Fighter Operations, in that whatever losses inflicted would immediately carry over from one scenario to the next?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, February 03, 2021 - 01:21 pm: Edit

As for the LDR, I thought we did that, but if you mean the foremost/vs/enemy'sblood conflict over the LDR, we now have the counters for it, and it could be added in the product or caplog.

As for the other "scenario" you mention, I need references to what was published. If it's not an F&E Scenario, why not take a shot at writing it and let Ryan Opel clean it up for you?

By Douglas Lampert (Dlampert) on Wednesday, February 03, 2021 - 01:26 pm: Edit

For a generic cat civil war, I'd say that the reason to spread out needs to be in the economics and victory conditions rather than an artificially lowered command rating (I could see the rating being lower for a year or so at the start with the justification that both side's staffs are in complete disorder due to divided loyalties and people switching sides, but eventually, these are warships and fleets, they should act like they act).

For the main reason to spread out: I like that you're trying to conquer an empire, and even without attacking bases and planets, the bases and planets will care who's patrolling their space.

Maybe: During a civil war, planets each produce 1 income for a minor and 2 for a major for a side with a ship overhead during econ (the local administrators are mostly on a peacetime economy with a bit of extra stockpiling going on to provide a strategic reserve if someone else invades). Provinces provide one income to a side with an uncrippled ship in the province during econ (both sides can collect from the same province, see Tennessee during the American Civil War).

You collect VP equal to all income collected, if you ever manage an [fill in number] VP superiority then the other side immediately collapses and surrenders as they're ruler is obviously falling down on the job of controlling the empire and their subordinates switch sides.

The capital hex is treated as a single ordinary planet or base for combat.

There may be occasional big battles in open space at the capital, but otherwise you're mostly trying to hold provinces.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Wednesday, February 03, 2021 - 01:54 pm: Edit

The playtest scenario (6LH.0) Uneasy Lies the Crown in Captain's Log #52 is focused on the battles surrounding the DDSC-to-LDR transition.

Aside from that, I might have been thinking of the various Lyran Civil War scenarios posted (or at least proposed) over in this thread.

By Nick Samaras (Koogie) on Wednesday, February 03, 2021 - 02:31 pm: Edit

They Who Would be King from Starletter was the generic Lyran civil war scenario.

By Chuck Strong (Raider) on Thursday, February 04, 2021 - 11:45 am: Edit

Guys, when we have published factional fighting scenarios in F&E, we also included rules on fixed infrastructure like bases and planets going neutral at some point during the SoP or when the base was crippled. These same scenario rules also awarded CONTROL of the infrastructure or the territory to the victor of the hex battle. May I suggest reviewing the Romulan Civil War scenario rules from CL50 to see how that worked, before we ask ADB to reinvent the wheel?

I may also suggest to ADB that we include some sort of infrastructure neutrality rules in the final product so that we don’t have to include an extra page of these rules in every civil war scenario. We did published these kinds of rules for middle years logistics in a recent CL to reduce repeating rules in scenarios such as how provinces produce less and supply ranges are shorter.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, February 04, 2021 - 05:07 pm: Edit

I wonder if before the 4PW (if not during it) EW didn't exist, just threat warning and interception.

By Chuck Strong (Raider) on Thursday, February 04, 2021 - 05:22 pm: Edit

I think I see where you are going...but why would these scout ships ever be included in a battle line if not for EW?

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, February 04, 2021 - 06:23 pm: Edit

Just a suggestion, review the special sensor rules in Star fleet battles to determine what other special sensor functions are left.

IIRC scouts have several abilities that may not have been ported over to F&E.

Scouts, if I am remembering it correctly, allow a reaction zone of up to two f&e hexes, as opposed to just one hex for squadrons without a scout.

Admittedly, the EW is an important thing to have in F&E, but 4PW era should still have some need for scouts.

By Nick Samaras (Koogie) on Thursday, February 04, 2021 - 06:51 pm: Edit

Drone bombardment targeting as well.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, February 04, 2021 - 08:39 pm: Edit

Scouts are used for extended reactions.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, February 04, 2021 - 08:52 pm: Edit

It should be pointed out that the size (size class) of the scout appears to have zero correlation with extended reaction zone, meaning that small hull scouts (size class 4) could do the job at lower economic point cost.

More powerful scouts (with higher EW factors) (and better able to survive combat than frigate sized scouts) would likely become important during the General War.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, February 04, 2021 - 09:03 pm: Edit

History supports Jeff’s theory.

By Mike Dowd (Mike_Dowd) on Thursday, February 04, 2021 - 09:58 pm: Edit

Another factor Jeff, is that frigate (and destroyer) construction slips are almost always going to be far more numerous than cruiser slips. If you want combat hulls, why waste a cruiser hull on a scout platform in the middle era?

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, February 04, 2021 - 10:39 pm: Edit

Mike, hindsight is twenty twenty.

The Kzinti built a light cruiser drone variant that mostly died in the 4PW conflict. Off hand I can’t remember if any survived that war.

The Kzinti hegemony learned the lesson the hard way, only building frigate class drone ships in as large number as they could before the start of the General War.

Funny how the Klingons use of D6D DB ships didn’t fall into the same pattern that plagued the Kzinti CLD DB hulls during the 4PW.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Thursday, February 04, 2021 - 11:55 pm: Edit

That could help further explain why the Federation's Second Fleet thought it could get away with keeping all of the Byrd-class galactic survey cruisers to itself, despite convincing other parts of Star Fleet to help pay for them. As in, if the GSC's sensor suite would not have been an improvement over what the "border fleets" were already getting from the Hermes-class destroyer-scouts prior to the Four Powers War era, there would have seemed to have been less of a risk of the survey cruisers being recalled for operations away from the Survey Area.

For that matter, this could also help further explain why Star Fleet turned away from deploying a light cruiser-sized scout (R2.A20) in the Middle Years.


In the long run, dialing back the effectiveness of fleet scouts in prior time periods would also help keep the Vulcan "National Guard" ships from being too effective in a would-be Early Years module.

By Mike Dowd (Mike_Dowd) on Friday, February 05, 2021 - 12:01 am: Edit

Jeff, the CLD vs. D6D survivability issues could come down to doctrinal differences.

The D6D was (IIRC) primarily used for long range (strategic) bombardment, whereas the CLD was used in more of a long to mid-range tactical role, directly supporting a fleet with extra drone racks.

(Or at least that is what I managed to understand from the readings I did many years ago.)

By Richard Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Friday, February 05, 2021 - 12:18 am: Edit

D6Ds are destroyed by 26 points of directed damage, CLDs by only 20.

That probably was an issue.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, February 05, 2021 - 03:33 am: Edit

Non-historical scenario: Usurper with WYN fleet joins general war attack on Kzintis, normal scenario, Turn #1, but with an order of battle consisting of the fish/orion ships they had 18 years later. (If you use the historically available ships it isn't likely to amount to much with a couple of LRs.)

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, February 05, 2021 - 03:35 am: Edit

NOTE FOR RULEBOOK: WHAT ELSE YOU CAN DO WITH THE COUNTERS

1. Use them as extra ships for the empires involved.

2. Use them as #1 but use them for a force that is limited to serving in a particular area, such as Romulan forces on the Federation front or Lyran forces on the Hydran front.

3. Use them with an "elite ships" rule with some benefit for being "elite ships".

4. The puppet enclave rules
http://www.starfleetgames.com/discus/messages/37/25219.html?1408816397

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, February 05, 2021 - 03:49 am: Edit

Designer's notes, evolution of the countersheet.
-----
First version included all of the wyn cluster bound ships that could not be used in war of return but did not include Kzinti rebel ships actually used in war of return. The Kzintis were added by moving the cluster bound ships and the invasion of the cluster scenario to TacOps. Later, we eliminated the generic counters from the rebels and Lyrans in order to create enough Kzinti counters to handle revolts before the 4PW.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Friday, February 05, 2021 - 09:13 am: Edit

Alternatively, perhaps the WYNs could side with the Alliance, while the LDR and/or the Vudar join the Coalition. However, the WYN support would have its price: any Kzinti ships forced to withdraw into the Cluster switch their "political" loyalties to the Usurper and side with him during the inevitable War of Return.

On a separate note, will there be a separate order of battle for the Orion Cluster Cartel ships held in reserve to defend their shipyard in the WYN Cluster, or would any such ships be subsumed into the WYN OOB as "mercenary" forces?

By Douglas Lampert (Dlampert) on Friday, February 05, 2021 - 12:11 pm: Edit

For Chuck's question of why have a scout on the battle line at all without, EW. TacIntel probably matters in a large fleet engagement where you're playing with full TacIntel rules (I've never tried this in SFB, but I think you'd want one special sensor in a large fleet providing TacIntel even without any other EW benefit).

By Chuck Strong (Raider) on Friday, February 05, 2021 - 12:15 pm: Edit

TacIntel is subsumed into o F&E.