Archive through February 06, 2022
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Archive through February 06, 2022
Richard - Perhaps I and William am more willing to bounce the BIR around abit - even if we have a stronger line, we don't always pick 4 (partially due to the belief that if I need 20% to kill a shop and William needs 30% - why should I go high?) - but tactics would probably change.
Douglas - I envisaged the choice would be attack base or PDU's or Ships (if BIR permitted it).
As others have said though - the Coalition could just still just targets ships.... which might be an issue.
William - Extra Alliance ships would be easy (but that partially is self defeating in 'removing ships from the game 
) or something else?
Peter (and SVC) - so what level of 'extra ship' kills can keep the game balanced AND not add 500 word of rules which comes up once every 10 turns.
I would have though is there was 50 rounds of combat in a player turn, 5-10 would be sufficient to avoid it being a worthless rule...
...but that might be too much to avoid killing the Alliance.
(Noting that even at BIR 7, a low roll might NOT be enough to kill 2 ships - roll a 1 or 2 for example, would be 27.5%/30% and so 75 compot is only a max of 23 damage)*
So the rule MIGHT be useable (and worthwhile), but may not always kill 2 ships.
* - Noting this is the issue Peter raised early - 24 damage might be a 66% chance on 'average' at BIR 7 to kill 2 enemy ships, but to get 32 damage if the smallest ships your facing are 5 point Defensive Compot ships your facing might be only a 33% chance.
Like, for the sake of clarity, I'm in no way fundamentally opposed to rules that result in more ships dying. But if there is a new rule that results in more ships dying, it needs to not:
-Be more usable by the Coalition than the Alliance.
-Be something that specifically penalizes carriers (which advantages the Coalition and penalizes the Alliance significantly).
-Give the Coalition even *more* advantage for having maulers.
And there are a *lot* of factors involved here that need to be balanced out to make such a rule (such as "the Hydrans and Kzinti have a preponderance of 4 point ships that need to be on main battle lines most of the time where the Coalition simply don't". And again, maulers) work. Like, in an absolute sense, if there was some sort of rule that resulted in twice as many ships exploding on an even and consistent basis, that might work just fine. But it'll be hard to come up with such a rule that works.
Like, the existing auto-kill rule is perfectly fine as a base line rule. I mean, it comes up, like, once every 3 or 4 *turns* total, and even then, half the time, it gets ignored when it comes up ('cause when it comes up, it most often comes up in a situation where someone wants to direct fixed defenses, due to the rules involved). But as a rule, it is fine.
Maybe the actual thing to do here is to just fix the auto-kill rule so that it comes up more often while still doing so evenly.
The auto-kill rule is a joke because you need 5 conditions to have it happen, which means it never applies. An excellent start to a fix would be to make it apply on the first round of combat.
Quote:Like, in an absolute sense, if there was some sort of rule that resulted in twice as many ships exploding on an even and consistent basis, that might work just fine. But it'll be hard to come up with such a rule that works.
I disagree. Each Alliance ship killed results in a disproportionate impact on their navy.
Example (and I'm pulling numbers out of a hat here). The Klingon navy has 300 ships. If it loses 3 ships, that's 1% of its navy. The Kzinti navy has 150 ships. If it loses 3 ships, that's 2% of its navy.
The relative ratio of losses also changes. If the Klingon and Kzinti navies each lose 3 ships, then the relative change between navies is (150/300)-(147/297) = 0.5% difference. If you double the number of kills to 6 on each side, then the relative difference is (150/300)-(144/294)= 1%.
In other words, even if the raw number of ships on each side lost is increasing equally, can result in doubling the relative change in fleet pin count capacity between navies.
That is NOT equal. It penalizes the Alliance.
It also devalues Alliance fighters. Rather than stick around and burn fighters for cripples, the Alliance might prefer to just fight a round and run rather than lose more ships. Now, that often happens anyway, so the impact is modest, but it is real.
In addition to this effect, there are overall going to be fewer fighters lost on both sides. Players will more likely direct on multiple ships, leaving fewer damage points to fall on fighters. This *again* devalues fighters, which hurts the Alliance.
The impact is modest, but it is real. If you wanted a slight pro-coalition nudge, I'd judge this to be a good rule idea for playtesting. However, I'd urge caution (for whatever my opinion is worth).
Maybe it's worth a playtest?
I figured it was some kind of play balance concern that made the autokill rule so weak.
In the basic game, the Alliance is much more likely to get 100 compot in the early going than is the Coalition. The full game may well be a different story.
For play balance, a complicating factor is that I'm pretty sure the basic game, without expansions, has a pro-Coalition balance. So a playtest would likely not help assess how it changes.
I'm curious which of the many constraints were in that rule as SVC originally designed it.
Ted wrote:
>>I disagree. Each Alliance ship killed results in a disproportionate impact on their navy.>>
Maybe? Here is the thing; in games I have played where the Coalition directed a lot, and the Alliance dropped damage a lot to "overwhelm the Coalition repair capacity", the Alliance got slaughtered.
In games I have played where the Alliance directed ships about as much as the Coalition directed ships, and kept rough parity of ship kills, the Alliance did just fine.
As such, it seems like if the we just doubled those kills, it would be about a wash. But maybe not?
William wrote:
>>I figured it was some kind of play balance concern that made the autokill rule so weak.>>
Maybe? I think it was probably a overly cautious response to automatically killing ships.
Like, if, say, the parameters were changed to "works on first round" and/or "works with 90 compot" and/or "works on BIR4 minimum", it would happen more often, and probably be a wash. But also prone to brutal, unfair luck (i.e. I randomly roll twice as many 6's as you, I'm coming out way ahead). Which is probably something worth avoiding.
William, you are wrong. The Autokill rule does come into play at times. Bill Steele and I have it come into play several times in our Empires of the Dead game.
Speaking of the Empires of the Dead game, there have been 492 ships killed in 10+ Turns. The majority of which have been by directed damage rather than by the auto kill rule or general self kill. That is almost 25 dead ships per player turn. I think the average is actually 20 given where we are in the current turn. That doesn't even include the various bases, auxiliaries, and PDUs killed.
I was exaggerating. Yes, it's once every few turns. Has probably killed 5-10 ships total in my game with Paul, which is currently on turn 25.
Yeah, the auto-kill rule, as noted, comes up. But not that often. Again, you need, what:
-BIR5+.
-100+ compot.
-Not the first round of combat.
-Then roll a 6.
And then on top of that, you need to not want to direct something, when the situations that are most likely to generate an auto-kill result are ones where one side or the other is likely to want to direct something (i.e. where do these requirements line up most? Over capitals, where someone probably wants to direct PDUs).
As such? Doesn't actually come up much. I mean, yeah, once and a while it does, and it is extra demoralizing to have to self kill a ship *and* then still resolve 45 damage on top of that. But if I were to hazard a guess, over the course of a 34 turn game, I suspect that the auto-kill rule resulted in maybe a dozen dead ships per side. When, as previously noted, over 2000 ships were killed (I just checked; 2060 ships were destroyed over the course of a 34 turn game).
It seems likely that loosening up of the auto-kill rule would probably not be out of the realm of reason.
Possibilities:
1) Make it work on the 1st round of combat.
-That it doesn't work during the 1st round of combat means that, like, probably over half the time the conditions are met, it doesn't happen.
2) Lower the compot requirement.
-Yeah, 100 compot is a nice, easy to remember number, and a not unreasonable bar to cross. But also limits the number of times this happens. Significantly. Make the threshold 90 (which is a super common compot threshold to cross)?
3) Make it not random.
This is probably the idea I'd like best out of this. That auto-kill only happens on a 6 is just insult upon injury; larkily rolling a 6 when your opponent doesn't often has a huge impact on a battle already, and then making them lose a ship while also sucking up a huge amount of damage is often just cruel brutality. If the auto-kill rule was "if the conditions are met (other than the 6), a ship must be self killed, regardless of the die roll", auto-kill would be more consistent and less capricious and random. And one could plan accordingly to help mitigate the damage (while also increasing ship death). Like, VBIR would still randomize it a little, but at least it would be even across the board (i.e. both sides could conceivably suffer or not). I mean, if it were not random, you'd probably also need to lower to compot threshold so it was less likely that one side had the possibility of autokill and the other did not. But maybe it's a thing that could happen.
Or maybe just make the auto-kill based on total compot--i.e. if compot after VBIR is 6 or more, both sides need to self kill a ship (so if one side picks a 1 and the other picks 4, you still need VBIR to roll up to get an auto-kill, but then it would still be both sides).
It could be done just based on damage. Then you could leave out compot and bir both.
Like, I'm not super fond of increasing the likelihood based on more randomness; and I don't know that I like the idea of "If you do a lot of damage, you also get to blow something up for free!" (which is currently the plan).
I do like the idea of compelling more ships to die. But I am unconvinced that having it be more common, but still just random by side (so Paul can see his ships get vaporized constantly while never getting to return the favor :-) is a good idea.
If it were just based on BIR (maybe, make it it a high threshold, like 7 or 8--if it were 7, it could still happen if one side picked a 1 if VBIR hit 6; if it were 8, it would only ever happen if both sides basically agreed to it), and had nothing to do with damage or compot or whatever (i.e. "If a round has a adjusted BIR of 7+, you must destroy a ship to resolve damage before resolving the rest of your damage"), it would be reasonably evenly distributed and not just a lark. If both sides picked high, they'd know a ship was going to explode.
Auto kill rule is certainly an easy way to get more dead, but we get back to the problem
1) Fighters become less valuable
2) Hydrans might lose more than most
3) With Maulers, it's basically saying 'Alliance always lose a ship, Coalition lose a ship if X happens'.
Therefore the easiest is perhaps just to say
"If a side does more than 20 damage", it can direct on the smallest ship (by Defensive Compot) which does not have a Form or Scout Bonus or is escorted on a 3 : 2 basis*."
or direct on a Base or PDU - or use a Mauler's normal ability - or direct normally.
* - So to kill a FF would take 9 damage, a F5 12 damage and a CA 18 damage.
Most rounds would see a ship die - unless the Attacker wanted to kill a base/PDU's.
But I am guessing that would kill the Alliance pretty quickly.....
….so a higher damage threshold level (30?) could be agreed - which might still hose the Alliance (Maulers) or not happen enough, so the occurrence isn't often enough?
Paul wrote:
>>3) With Maulers, it's basically saying 'Alliance always lose a ship, Coalition lose a ship if X happens'.>>
I'm not seeing how this is the case with what I suggested. If the auto-kill rule was something like "if BIR is 7+, you must self kill a ship", and assuming the rules are similar to the existing auto-kill rules (i.e. if you direct a ship, you lose out on the auto-kill), maulers will mostly be irrelevant to the situation (I mean, maulers will still be good to direct under the threshold and whatever).
>>But I am guessing that would kill the Alliance pretty quickly.....>>
I'm somewhat unclear on the apparent fear folks have of the Alliance getting demolished if ship death is increased. Like, in playing two recent games long term, both sides directed a ship most of the combats. The Alliance did (and is doing) fine with roughly even ship loss (in the 34 turn game, the Coalition actually lost about 20% more ships than the Alliance did, and the Coalition won a marginal victory)
Peter
The issue is if a Auto Kill (or similar type of rule) doesn't apply - the Coalition due to Maulers may still kill an Alliance hull.
Will not always happen, but the Coalition gets two bites at easily killing an enemy ship.
I start with 200 ships - you start with 100 ships.
I lose 20% more than you (as I am attacking).
If the rules currently say - you lose 50 ships, I'll lose 60 ships - so it's then 140 v 50 ships.
If a new rule comes along - and you now lose 80 ships and I lose 96 ships - it's 104 v 20 ships.
Even increasing my losses to 30% from 20% still makes it 96 v 20 left.
I think that's the issue people are worried about with a general increase in deaths.
>>The issue is if a Auto Kill (or similar type of rule) doesn't apply - the Coalition due to Maulers may still kill an Alliance hull.>>
It's fairly rare that the Alliance can't kill a hull if they want, even without maulers. It only takes 18 damage to kill a F5L/DW in a battle group, and even then (due to the lack of "kill two ships" as a thing), there are regularly F5s/FFs on the line (as ad-hoc escorts or in battle groups or whatever). Even if the smallest thing on the line is a D5, it is unlikely that the Alliance can't kill a D5 with a full line (well, unless the Coalition has -8 negative points...). Yes. The coalition has maulers, but as I mentioned in the other thread, maulers are general fine (they become a problem when you add in excessive negative point abuse, 'cause then you *do* end up in a spot where the Coalition can kill a ship and the Alliance can't sometimes); a mauler means the Coalition can kill a small escort and then a bunch of fighters, while the Alliance kill a small escort and then fewer fighters.
Adding an increase "auto kill" rule (that hit evenly) would mean that more ships would die, but they'd die across the board, and that isn't much different than just folks directing all the time (which is what I see most of the time anyway [*]). But then in instances where, for whatever reason, both players don't direct, they still have ships die more often.
[*] Yes, sometimes one side doesn't direct, to force an enemy to leave earlier, or, like, over a capital, to just self kill anyway in the face of huge damage. But generally speaking. in all the games I have played in the last decade+, both sides directed ships all the time.
When the auto kill rule kicks in, and it does so some what regularly with average (not Paul Howard) die rolls it is sometimes better to let the damage fall and watch your opponent kill fighters and a ship. Coalition players should love seeing the auto kill rule come up against Kzintis. The auto kill rule saves you from having to direct on something. Sure you can maul an EFF for 8 points, but why when you can let you opponent kill it for 6 and have to take another 2 on fighters, of if they take fighters first then watch them not have as many minus points as they wanted.
Personally, I like the auto kill rule as published. It gives you options when it has the ability to affect the damage distribution in a given combat round.
SSC is much more interesting now than it was with the old Single Ship Combat rules. Proper planning allows the phasing player to sneak in a couple of unexpected kills. Remember the order of movement matters. Not only moving large fleets, but smaller fleets from larger fleets can create deception and force the defender into inaction or worse, the wrong reaction.
Speaking of SSC, how are you going to resolve the ability to take a casualty as a retreat against your chit idea?
Not sure we can find a simple way to balance 'not killing the Alliance/2 v 1 happening too often/rule not occurring enough to make it worthwhile'? 
Thomas - will respond in the other topic on SSC.
Auto Kill is not bad for the Alliance, at least in the basic game. In my game with Paul (which sadly seems to be dying), for a long time, the Hydrans have reached 100 compot with considerably greater regularity than any other race. The race that is second most likely to get there is the Gorns. And with the 3rd Way coming, the Feds will get there a lot too.
So if the 100 compot threshold is kept, but something else is changed to cause the rule to apply more often, I think the Alliance will come out fine.
>>Not sure we can find a simple way to balance 'not killing the Alliance/2 v 1 happening too often/rule not occurring enough to make it worthwhile'?>>
Like, I think my main point about auto killing and the Alliance in general is that in a game (well, 2 games at this point, if not 5 or 6, thinking back to the ones I have played int he last decade) where the Coalition *killed an Alliance ship at pretty much every possible opportunity*, the Alliance still did ok [*], and nothing terrible happened.
So if an auto-kill rule didn't actually change the dynamic to kill *more* Alliance ships than if the Coalition directed in *pretty much every possible opportunity to do so*, then it is probably fine. And if the auto-kill rule supersedes directing (which the current auto-kill rule does), it's probably fine.
Like, in my experience, I don't think not enough ships die. I think plenty of ships die. All the time. 'Cause in the games I play, both sides direct all the time. And so plenty of ships die (2060 hulls died in the full 34 turn game. That seems sufficient, from the perspective of ship death). I also realize that not everyone plays the game in this way, and they spend a lot more time dropping damage, and so they don't see ships die as much. If an adjusted auto-kill rule pushed ship death up in games like that, while not really increasing ship death in a game where both sides direct all the time, nothing terrible would happen.
If nothing else, if the current auto-kill rule were adjusted so that it happened even *twice* as often (say, it hit on a 5-6 instead of just a 6, or hit on 1st round instead of 2nd+), it would still likely just be a drop in the bucket.
[*] In a base rules game (no expansions at all) that made it to about T22 before I threw in the towel, the Alliance did *terribly*, but that wasn't 'cause we were both directing ships all the time, which we were. It was 'cause of a handful of identifiable, terrible strategic errors I made as the Alliance.
I proposed a similar rule back when the rulebook was lost updated. It was rejected as players feared it would not be balanced.
I don't see a problem with this rule as the disadvantaged player can always select a low BIR to avoid the multiple DirDam rounds. A fleet either wants to fight and selects a high BIR, or it doesn't and selects a low BIR and then retreats after a round or two.
I've been reading through these posts and came across an idea which may help with the auto kill rule. The main issue seems to be that the rule would affect the Alliance more heavily due to the smaller number of ships available, so with each auto kill the Alliance loses a larger percentage of its fleet.
What if a base, or planet with PDUs/PGBs, were allowed to have a lower ComPot threshold to qualify for an autokill, say 90? This way the rule would benefit the Alliance initially and the Coalition later in the game.
It's just a thought.
The autokill rule was so watered down by the staff that it's not relevant in any context.
And I do not agree it benefits either side more than the other. Auto-kill (as originally intended) impacts those who use the "fleet preservation strategy" as it retards the gain in fleet size.
This is not a balance issue. This is an "I like that style of play and will fight like heck to keep it" issue.
A more deadly autokill rule might be something like 'for every three (or perhaps four) ships crippled voluntarily by damage in one battle round, one must also be destroyed (owner's choice which). This can generate minus points.
I would have to fire and replace the entire staff as they all want to use the lots of ships strategy.