Subtopic	Posts		Updated
	Archive through December 10, 2004	25		12/10 12:33pm

"To be "in action", an admiral must be included in a battle force that uses the full command rating of the largest available flagship, and fight at least 3 combat rounds (including fighting retreats)."

Even at BIR 0, it will be difficult for a full fleet to avoid busting a BATS in 2 rounds.

I was trying to come up with a rules mechanism that would only allow admirals to gain experience from large scale battles. i had envisaged players using the border BATS as "grad school" in order to give their admirals cheap experience. The Coalition should have a small edge in admiral experience when they hit the Federation (well, the Klinks anyway. The Roms have the same problem as the Feds in that they have to unlearn all their peacetime lessons first, and the Lyrans are more fixated on the Hydrans and [primarily] the Kzintis).

I never thought of lowering the BIR in order to stretch out the action and therefore gain experience. Obviously its a loophole that needs to be closed.

By David Lang (Dlang) on Friday, December 10, 2004 - 05:29 pm: Edit

it would probably be a good idea instead of saying that the admiral must be on the ship with the highest command rating, say that the admiral only gains experiance if he's on a CR 10 ship with a full fleet.

otherwise you can put a -1 admiral on a small hull and team it up with a FV and some E4's to go bash BATS at BIR 2 to gain experiance.

By Sean Dzafovic (Sdzafovic) on Friday, December 10, 2004 - 05:35 pm: Edit

Would there be a maximum to the experience gained per turn? Or just 1 "battle" per turn per hex regardless of how many rounds the battle goes?

By David Lang (Dlang) on Friday, December 10, 2004 - 05:41 pm: Edit

as I read it every three rounds would count as 1 'battle', but it could be limited to a max of one per round if it's too easy to gain experiance

By Greg Ernest (Grege) on Friday, December 10, 2004 - 10:06 pm: Edit

It's not about how big of a fleet he leads. It's about what he lives through.

Make the experience based on how much damage has been taken by a fleet under his leadership.

BATS busting will contribute a little bit, but if he goes in against a Capital and survives, he'll learn a lot more.

By John Doucette (Jkd) on Friday, December 10, 2004 - 10:31 pm: Edit

Actually, the size of the force he leads does make a difference. A good brigade commander won't command a division as well until he gets used to the comlexeties of the size of his new command. It's probably safe to assume that the admiral counters as represented in the game are at least Vice-Admirals, if not higher.

Unless there was an intricate rank structure tied to how effetcive an Admiral counter was, best to keep the increase in effetciveness tied to size and number of actions fought.

By Greg Ernest (Grege) on Sunday, December 12, 2004 - 03:05 pm: Edit

In order to survive a large amount of damage, the Admiral would have to be in a large fleet. I thought that just went without saying...

By Sean Dzafovic (Sdzafovic) on Monday, December 13, 2004 - 08:35 pm: Edit

Well, I wanted to avoid dice rolls to gain experience. The Klinks can fluke out and get a +1 admiral after a couple of battles and then hit the Feds with him. The Flatheads would be in a world of hurt.

Mostly, I wanted everyone to be on a steady progression. I'm just not sure what the minuimum criteria for a battle should be.

Another option would be the races that enter the war later gain an average admiral or two, since they get to benefit somewhat from exchanges with their allies already engaged.

By John Doucette (Jkd) on Monday, December 13, 2004 - 09:02 pm: Edit

I don't think you should eliminate luck, though, Sean. Luck is as big a part of war as planning. Maybe a couple really nice dice rolls mean that that admiral is the SFU Rommel or Patton.

By David Lang (Dlang) on Monday, December 13, 2004 - 11:43 pm: Edit

the problem is that the game is already slow enough, any extra rolls are very questionable now

By John Doucette (Jkd) on Monday, December 13, 2004 - 11:44 pm: Edit

This whole proposal is questionable, so what's a few extra die rolls? ;)

By Joe Stevenson (Ikv_Sabre) on Friday, November 28, 2008 - 11:52 am: Edit

"However, I have always been of the opinion that a +1 BIR admiral is way too good, at least until it becomes easier to kill them (currently, it's almost impossible). "

This discussion is pretty dead but I wanted to comment on this, having been involved in the decision.

During playtesting, we found that when Admirals were easier to kill, the game devolved into "Kill the Admiral"; it really hurt game mechanics.