Subtopic	Posts		Updated
	Archive through June 02, 2003	25		06/02 12:21pm
	Archive through July 05, 2003	25		07/05 09:54am

Garth:

I talked to the guy who did fleets and sussed out his production costs. His box price is 50 bucks for that box, and he's got about a 7:1 markup, doing a 2,500 copy print run, not counting his mold making costs.

He's got three or four sprues of molds, each of which set him back 6.5K.

I can put SVC in touch with the lady who handles my injection molding -- for one, my plastic parts are a heck of a lot cheaper than Dave's from Fleet Games.

However, injection molded pieces have high up front costs (note that the gentleman in question has spent about 20K on 2.5K copies, or $8 per box for the molds, on top of about 6 per box for the other components. (1.5 for the box, about 2 for the heavy cardboard map, about a buck for all the plastic bits, about a buck for the rulebook and cards.)

He sells those games at about 20 bucks to a distributor, plus pays his own shipping -- right now, for every game he sells to a distributor, he loses around 2 bucks. Every game he sells at full retail, he makes 30 bucks on...and he's desperatly hoping for a hit, so he can go into reprints and amortize those mold making bits.

Now, an F&E-as-Axis-and-Allies kind of game would be cool. Current F&E takes so long it's nearly unplayable.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Saturday, July 05, 2003 - 01:11 pm: Edit

David,

"the problem is that it will almost be an entirely new game."

Yes, it is. I can open a new topic for it. Is there enough interest to continue this idea for me to do so??? Let me play it over in my mind some more.


"Perhaps you could try your hand at some OOBs?"

I'm not sure what you're asking me to do ... create OOB for this topic (F&E:Lite) or for my idea (which will have far fewer ships).

Ken,

What's his MSRP?? $50 (fifty)??? I paid him $20 (twenty) for a copy.


Garth L. Getgen

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Saturday, July 05, 2003 - 03:00 pm: Edit

Okay, crunching some numbers .... I am finding that this game is unreal in its size!!

Here's the numbers of ships per race at the start of the game (including MB and MON, but not pods or Admirals):


Federation: 122 + 51 mothball + 28 PWC = 201
Klingon: 206 + 48 mothball + 33 Imperial Reserve = 287
Lyran: 128
Kzinti: 130
Hydran: 94

Total: 840

Without the Federation, there's still 639. Take out the Klingon mothball / Imp-Res, and its down to 558.

My idea was to cut all fleets to about one-third their size .... but that still leave us with a gmae starting with 186 ships on the map. Put the Feds back on the map, with all the mothballed ships, and it's right at 280.

Wow.

That's a lot of beer & pretzels, no??


Garth L. Getgen

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Sunday, July 06, 2003 - 06:41 pm: Edit

David, exactly how are you working economics?? I saw you mention that the income is at 50% ... does that mean you add it all up and divide by two?? If so, perhaps a better way would be to add it all up in the Spring, and that's all you get for the entire year, save for any "suplimental income" you might get in the way of salvage or whatnot.


Garth L. Getgen

By David Slatter (Davidas) on Monday, July 07, 2003 - 04:49 am: Edit

I add it up and divide by 2 - i.e. you start at "economic exhasution" levels, and it gets worse on turn 16/26. I have written new build schedules that reflect the halving of the economy.
Interesting idea on adding it all up in spring and that's what you get for the year. However, I personally would prefer to keep the economics once/turn, as alot of rules depend on it being that way or are tuned in that manner (e.g. raids).

When I said OOBs, I meant for your idea, not for mine - i.e. about 1/3 the orginal fleets or less. I'm interested to see what varients you will omit (as you will have to omit some). I'd start by axing a selection from SFGs, penals, Swacs, ground troops, and might force the system back to specific carrier groups rather than flexible escorts.

By David Slatter (Davidas) on Monday, July 28, 2003 - 06:08 am: Edit

Ok I am going to reopen this area for more discussions. The suggestions I am making here are based on the disillusionment we felt after 6 days of a FTF game which got as far as coalition turn 8. There were a number of reasons for the disillusionment at the time.

1) Fatigue. I'll admit this, we probably should not have got fed up and just packed it in. But perhaps we had played too long. However, if this is a point to be made, I would therefore formally tender the notion -

"F&E cannot be played FTF in one block of time".

i.e. it simply takes too long. This is bad thing, IMHO. We should be targeting this game to take, at worst, no longer than 8 days or so. The way we were going, it was going to take at least 3 weeks.

2) Builds and losses.

This was the chief source of my frustration. On turn 6, the coalition took 2 hydran SBs and the Hydran homeworld. The Zin were engaging as much as they could in the north.

However, on summing up the total amount required to repair the coalition fleet that turn, if the coalition had the repair capacity, they could repair ALL those cripples and have money left over for new builds and conversions on turn 7.

In other words, the coalition fleet INCREASED in overall size on a turn when we had massive casualites and cripples on both sides. To actually cause a decrease in the size of its fleet would require over 40 rounds of combat at 30 damage per round EVERY TURN. And this would only result in a net decrease in fleet size because the coalition does not have the repair facilities to repair all those cripples on a sustainable basis - they have the money!

How many turns do you see with 40 rounds of combat between full fleets (BATS bashing does not count)? In my experience, barring a capital assaulty, turns 1-5 usually results in about 10-15 per turn - 8 or so on the coalition turn (1 SB assault), 5 or so for the alliance.

3) Fighters.

The more expansions that come out, the less I like fighters. It is hard enough to generate the damage required to keep the game under control without throwing it away on fighters. I like there being a certain number, but things have just got out of control.

4) Pin counting.

Persistant counting of ships, often in large numbers, is a requirement of the game. While pinning is a fundamental aspect of the game, it would be nice if there were fewer ships to count.

5) Inconsequential battles.

On frequent occasions on the Zin front, there would be two fleets facing each other with 60 ships+, and one round of combat would ensue before one side retreated.

These battles occured because one side was pinning the other away from a target, that side usually then retreating.

I have an issue with this because those defending ships doing the "pinning away" have stopped an attacking fleet getting to a base. They arn't going to do that "in real life" just by one poxy round of combat. There should be a number of engagements required to prevent all elements of the attacking fleet from reaching their target. After all, all the attacking fleet has been "pinned". If only one battleforce of that fleet engages the enemy, what has its other elements been pinned by? Empty space? Certainly not the opposing fleet - you cannot be pinned if you are not in any kind of fight.

It's like a world war II squad cowering behind a wall when there no is gunfire to be heard or has been heard up till now. Their objective is a mere 100 meters ahead. At the very least, one person might pop up for a few shots to see if the enemy is there! Then, when the enemy respond because they are there, you will get an engagement where both sides take casualties.


Those were the chief reasons we packed up. In the "A very english war", some have suggested that the alliance gave up. Nothing is futher from the truth. While it was felt that the coalition had the edge, the coalition player also gave up for the reasons outlined above. The decision to abandon the game was mutual.

I will post some ideas to address these problems in the next post.

By David Slatter (Davidas) on Monday, July 28, 2003 - 06:28 am: Edit

Ok, how do I think these problems can be addressed without having to completely rewrite the game? Well, I'm going to try to do it while touching as few rules as possible.

1) FCRs. It was felt by both sides in the game that these were way too powerful. It was suggested that their fighters should cost as much as carrier fighters. There were several reasons why this was suggested.

a) The only way you can get 6 fighter factors on a frigate hull is to use an FCR. As a result, you get more fighters per hull.
b) FCRs only cost 1 to convert from a base hull as opposed to 2 for a carrier. hence, they are still cheaper than carriers.
c) FCRs can be inserted into carrier groups to "save the carrier". This is a powerful ability not available to other ships that have fighters.

Another thought I have had - not discussed with the other players in the game (james & paul)

d) I would build an E4R over a F5V every time, even if E4R fighters cost 2 each. You use a worse hull, and get more fighters down on the board.

2) It was felt that free fighters should be entirely removed from the game except for some Hydran ones. This however is probably too major a change to implement. It is basically a method to reduce the economies of the various nations, and benfits from the fact that it is simple to implement.

3) A selection of the F&E lite rules outlined in this thread could be used. Principally, I would like to see economies and builds halved - the reduction in OOBs are not so important. Again, this is a heavy change, and I hear you all screaming "you can't possibly balance that". To that, I would reply that we had got to the point where we simply did not care about balance - we wanted a game that was fun to play.

4) Reducing the number of fighter squadrons allowed in a battleforce to 2 (3 for 3rd way Feds). This was not seriously mooted, but seemed one way to go, as then simply saying "take the damage" does result in an extra cripple per round on the enemy.

6) I have come up with a very simple idea with respect to the pinning problem that will increase the intensity of the fight. It is possible that this and the change to FCRs might be enough. I will outline this in the next post.

By David Slatter (Davidas) on Monday, July 28, 2003 - 07:04 am: Edit

A suggestion to make pinning battles more lethal.
This is merely a rule outline - it will need some more writing up to close all the potential loopholes.

1) Any ship that reacts into a battle hex or has its hex entered by an enemy opmove must declare whether or not it is attempting to pin the enemy. If it is not, then it is ignored for the purposes of pinning counts (maybe allowing the enemy to move on), and a marker is put on these ships to denote them as such. Once this marker is deployed, these ships cannot later be used to pin out any further enemy movement at all, even if they subsequently react to another hex.

2) Any ship or ship equivalent that is declared as pinning the attacker cannot be withdrawn before combat, and cannot be a "rejected flagship" exempt from battleforce requirements. This includes fast ships. Half of the ships not pinning the enemy can be withdrawn as usual under the rules, and rejected flagships can be chosen from those remaining.

3) In the ensuing combat, the defending fleet cannot retreat unless one of the following conditions are met.

a) The attacker does not oppose the retreat and says so verbally. In this case only, the attacker may not then persue.

b) The defender is defending a base or a planet with PDUs remaining. In which case, he can retreat at any point after the first round leaving the base behind him to cover his retreat as usual. Slow persuit is enagaged as normal.

c) All of this ship/ship equivalents of the defender denoted as pinning the attacker have individually fought at least one round of combat, either in the main battleforce, in the scout slot, or as a drone bombardment ship. While carriers can send their fighters forward as usual, pinning carriers and escorts MUST also themselves fight at some point - just having them in the support echelon does not count.
Once all these ships have fought, the pinning fleet may retreat and persuit/slow persuit conducted as normal.

Note 1) that as auxilaries do not count as pin factors, they will not be required to fight in the battleline before the slow unit retreat. However, LAVs and SAVs must at some point at least send their fighters forward directly from the LAV/SAV in the support echelon.
Note 2) FCRs can be put into carrier groups at the rate of 1/round. So, provided you do not have an unrealistic number of them, they will reamain fairly safe. However, they will have to be in the battleforce at some point, because they are pining the enemy. Alternatively, just choose not to use your FCRs as pinning ships. Your choice!


Now this idea and increasing the cost of FCRs may in themselves be just enough to make F&E playable again (for me). Certainly, this idea can make pinning out the enemy with lots of E4s much more hazardous for the E4s than previously! It also does not make carrier groups more vulnerable per se, often a problem with ideas that have tried to increase the intensity of fighting.

However, I still a fan of my F&E lite ideas! Especially given that I think even F&E lite will take at least a week of play!

By David Lang (Dlang) on Monday, July 28, 2003 - 01:08 pm: Edit

change 3c to say that you have to fight enough rounds to have had as many SE in a battleforce as the smaller of the two fleets and I could see some sense to it.

the two cases I am seeing that trigger that statement

1. pinning force of 60 ships pin 10 ships you should only have to put 10 SE in combat to pin them

2. you don't need every ship in combat, just enough ships (allow ships to fight multiple times and count each time) so if you pin with 60 ships you will have to fight at 4 rounds (12 ship fleet + 3 SE of fighters per round) but you could use the same ship more then once.

thinking a bit more about it I don't think you need to have every SE fight, set the figure at 3/4 to 1/2 of the smaller fleet and it's still reasonable (useing your analogy, not every platoon needs to come under direct fire, if the next platoon over is getting hit and you know there are others out there you don't have to engage to know that they're there.)

By David Lang (Dlang) on Monday, July 28, 2003 - 01:15 pm: Edit

also the requirement for every ship to participate in the battle will be harder on the alliance with their very limited production of specialty ships then for the coalition

there is serious talk about eliminating free fighters, look at the return of the cruiser game. they eliminated free fighters (except some hybrid fighters for the hydrans) and eliminated the maulers ability to shoot at ships.

By Edward Reece (Edfactor) on Monday, July 28, 2003 - 01:25 pm: Edit

Inconsequential battles

If you take a huge stack and approach a target in a straight line you only get 1 battle. If I am doing that I will break my fleet up and move in from 3 or 4 different hex-sides, thus generating more pin battles.

By David Slatter (Davidas) on Monday, July 28, 2003 - 03:19 pm: Edit

Edward

Hmm - that would be better. But often you may only be able to approach from one hex. Still, that's probably worth tacnoting.

By James Southcott (Yakface) on Tuesday, July 29, 2003 - 04:23 pm: Edit

The two elements that I would most like to see for face-to-face games are - a reduction in hull numbers and multiple combat rounds if two large fleets end up in one hex.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Wednesday, July 30, 2003 - 12:34 am: Edit

James,

There have been many suggestions to get multiple battle lines going at once, or even larger single battle lines. Every single suggestion has been shot down time and again in that it would wipe the Kzinto and Hydran off the map by Turn Seven or so.

I made one of those suggestions, and after crunching some numbers and playing with some sample fleets, I must grudgenly agree with that assessment.

As to the reduction on hull count ... how much reduced and at what phase of the war do you want them reduced?? I cunched a ton of numbers for the Ultra-Lite topic and came to the conclusion that F&E "breaks" if the starting OoB were cut by 50% or more. It breaks if the production rate is cut by more than 50%.

This thing has been balanced on a knife-edge thru years of development and playtest. It's amazing how easily it falls over it you tip it one way or the other.


Garth L. Getgen

By David Slatter (Davidas) on Wednesday, July 30, 2003 - 03:53 am: Edit

Garth

Interesting. I played F&E lite for three turns as shown here, with 50% builds (except mothballs) and ~70% OOBs, and it was doing just fine.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Wednesday, July 30, 2003 - 06:11 pm: Edit

David, I think you'r close to the limit. I was working with 33% OoB and 33% income. It seemed rather broken to me. Combat losses were too high to sustain the attack, production rates to low to keep up with those losses. After two or three turns, both the Lyran and Kziniti were at a stand still. Even the Klingon forces were ground to a halt pretty quickly.

Then again, it was only one, single test. Or perhaps that's the way it should work. {shrug}


Garth L. Getgen

By William Jockusch (Verybadcat) on Thursday, July 31, 2003 - 04:32 am: Edit

The basic problem here is that proportionately, the Coalition has more of its strength in its fleet, while the Alliance has more of its strength in its bases.

When you halve the fleets, you are therefore hurting the Coalition more than you hurt the Alliance.

Therefore, to maintain the balance of the game, you need to do one of two things: either

1) cut back on bases as well, or

2) cut back on the Alliance fleet by a greater proportion than you cut back on the Coalition fleet.

William

By David Slatter (Davidas) on Thursday, July 31, 2003 - 06:01 am: Edit

William

I considered that for F&E lite. There are several points.

1) I kept the mothballs the same, including the IWR. This was a deliberate ploy to keep the klingon offensive more sustainable without the ship count at start having to be totally one-sided.

2) The base thing is deceptive. It would appear that you should cut back on the bases, but actually it is not necessary. The thing is that the alliance end up with so few ships that they can't defend nearly as well. For instance, the Zin have barely enough to cover their four capital systems and one other SB. As a result, many more alliance bases fall for next to nothing as the coalition can choose where to attack.

When playing F&E lite for the first 3 turns, the Zin fleet declined in size slightly (~5-7 hulls t1 + t2) while the coalition fleet increased in size fairly rapidly still (+15 hulls at least t1 + t2).

Dave.

By Andrew Wynberg (Awynberg) on Sunday, August 10, 2003 - 07:11 am: Edit

For beer & pretzels F&E there are a number of options which you could import from regular wargaming:

1) a odds-based combat results table to resolve six months of combat in a single die roll, with modifiers for the presence of special units, bases, PDUs etc.

2) using an aggregate unit that is larger than an individual ship, say based on fleets of about 50-100 ships, controlled by an admiral

3) another abstract way to have fleets distinguished by the ships they contain, try Pacific Victory (Columbia Games) which distinguishes between cruisers, battleships and aircraft carriers. In F&E terms: pin/attrition units, ships of the line, and heavy strike units.

In my humble opinion, at the centre of the viability of beer & pretzels F&E is whether F&E players are too hard-welded to the idea that tracking the fates of perhaps thousands of individual ships is fun, and the (wargaming) public's perception of strategic games based on Star Trek.

By David Slatter (Davidas) on Monday, August 11, 2003 - 04:42 am: Edit

Andrew

There are two other threads which deal with a "beer and pretzels" type F&E. One is in these preoposals - titled liek "super simple strategic level F&E gaem. The other is under the SFB proposals on the main menu.

This thread is basically trying to reduce F&E a bit without really changing any of the current rules.

By Andrew Wynberg (Awynberg) on Thursday, August 21, 2003 - 06:07 am: Edit

Oops, sorry...I'll go post there.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Sunday, February 21, 2021 - 05:32 pm: Edit

Just to ask a question, has there been a proposal for a “Civilization style” version of F&E?

The only new component would be a map in F&E scale. (Use the same number of hexes 19 hexes top to bottom, 60+ left to right.) note: all provinces should be 6 hexes exactly, if possible. No neutral zone hexes. The northern map edge represents contact with off map territories. The single row of hexes is really half a row of a province, at which point off map hexes need to be surveyed.

no terrain at all, no WYN hex.

All empires start with one star base and a capital world (including Gorns and Romulans. This is a civilization type game, not regular F&E.).

Starting hexes randomly distributed on the map, all equally distanced from the next closest empire. Placement of players random every new game.

Use all normal F&E rules, each empire income based on one capital world (generates 5 EP per turn, and one tug(example Fed TT), and one six hex province (generates 2 EP per turn.)

Players may build colonies (per normal F&E rule set) and no “discoverable” Minor or Major worlds.

All empires start with a shipyard and one size class 4 slip way. A new slip way is added when EP per turn income reaches 25 EP (or a multiple of 25, such as 50 or 75.). when player has 3 functional size class 4 slipways, he can choose to build a size class 3 slipway. When he has 3 functional size class 3 slipways and 6 functional size class 4 slip ways, he may build a size class 2 slip way.

Not sure how to limit fighters or PFs, but players could build any ships they want assuming they have enough slipways. Overbuilds still legal, but with limited income, players should think long before they do it.

Just an idea.

By Jason E. Schaff (Jschaff297061) on Sunday, February 21, 2021 - 06:12 pm: Edit

One observation. With the slipway system as presented, a player would not be able to build SC 2 ships until their income reached 225 EP per turn. (The SC 2 slipway would be the 9th slipway added.) The Federation base income in F&E is 221 EP for comparison. It might be better to use some sort of sliding scale, where the EP gap between slipways becomes slightly smaller as income increases. You could also have a situation where at each step a player can either add one SC 4 slip or upgrade an existing slip by one SC, with some requirement that at least fraction of the slips (50%?) must remain SC 4.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Sunday, February 21, 2021 - 08:46 pm: Edit

Good point.

I was just trying to illustrate a possible method.

Y.M.M.V.

Your idea would speed up production of warships. I did not specify, but as each player would need to build up infrastructure (base stations, BTS, Star Bases etc.) a considerable amount of income needs to be spent building bases, starting colonies to generate the EP required to build the fleet.

Players need to balance economic development with fleet size.

Too big a fleet means less income.

A big income just means Kettrick (or some other Klingon player) will be by soon to share in your wealth.

By John M. Williams (Jay) on Sunday, February 21, 2021 - 09:12 pm: Edit

Hi Jeff,

There's a scenario akin to Civilization in Captain's Log #33: The Long Distance War.

One player starts in the Hydran capital; the other in the Kzinti. The two empires use their traditional on-map territory, but the off-map areas are adjusted to make the economies equal. Both sides then begin with 300 points (or whatever is agreed to) for initial fleets, and can select the races of their choice (though if one side is Hydrans, the other gets extra points). Both sides also get identical per turn production schedules (one DN, one CA, etc.).

Lyran and Klingon territory is empty space to be explored and conquered. Planets in those areas are all neutral and waiting to be conquered/captured, including the Klingon and Lyran capital hexes, which become key prizes because of their density. Entering the Wyn and LDR hexes is prohibited.

The scenario in CL obviously has more details than that, but those are the key points. The scenario also includes some potential variations.

Jay

By Lawrence Bergen (Lar) on Sunday, February 21, 2021 - 10:23 pm: Edit

Jeff: Early Beginnings by Tim Losberg/John Wong is Civ Based F&E...It requires a full understanding of F&E but begins with a province and semi developed capital and some ships for survey.

There are rules for Tech development, Random events each turn and potential discovery events when a province is discovered. Non Player Races can be discovered that can go to war with you/ or become your Ally.

There is an alternate Scenario that involves the players working together to stave off an Andromedan invasion

It is a fully fleshed out scenario and has been play-tested for years privately in Sacramento and at Origins/Strat Con.

BTW if you plan to play this scenario live against opponent you are going to need to develop a cardboard addiction (ordering far more counters from ADB)

Email me or Tim Losberg for the scenario rules

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Monday, February 22, 2021 - 06:07 am: Edit

Super, I did not realize it had already been done.

Gee. Captains log #33. The latest CL was/54? 21 at 2/year. That was more than 10 years ago, how time flies.

I guess I need to reread the captains logs again.

By Lawrence Bergen (Lar) on Monday, February 22, 2021 - 09:52 pm: Edit

Jeff I emailed you and included an econ form I used in my last game.

I used your profile addy...if you want it sent somewhere else you can email me at my profile address.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Tuesday, February 23, 2021 - 10:31 am: Edit

Got it.

Many thanks.

Looking forward to this weekend when I will have time to study it.