Federation Commander

[Tiigo]

Hello all! I was lucky enough to spend most of this past weekend playing FC with friends, and one of the games we played was an experiment to see how an idea we hammered out would work. We set up a fixed map that contained 11 (I think) map boards. The shape was irregular, some of the rows were offset from the others. In six of the corners we placed markers denoting wormholes. When a ship entered a wormhole a 6 sided die was rolled to determine which wormhole the ship would pop out of (including the one it just entered!). Facing upon exiting a wormhole was to the center of that particular map board. To account for drones/shuttles/plasmas, they too could enter wormholes and roll to see where they re-entered. If it was not on the same board as their target they would lose tracking and be removed from the game. Three of the 4 of us played our favorite empires (Gorn, Kzinti, Lyran and Vudar) to see how they fared. Needless to say, it was utter chaos! But that was the fun of it, you never knew what sort of mayhem you'd find yourself in.

I am curious about what sort of experimentation anyone else has done with their maps/games.

[wedge_hammersteel]

We played a game similar to yours. We had a large fixed map with a traveling Vortex.

The battle was between two ships. Each ship started out 4 hexes away from the vortex. One ship was in home space and one ship had been spit out of the vortex. Neither opponent knew who was in home space. Each ship had to gather 200 lab points on the vortex in order to determine if he was in home space or the visitor.

The fun part was that the vortex alternated sucking in and spewing out each turn. On odd turns the vortex was spewing so no one could enter the vortex. On even turns the vortex sucked in and ships could enter the vortex.

The game lasted at least 3 full turns as no ship could gather enough lab points to determine if he was the one to leave through the vortex. Most times this occurred on turn 3 when the vortex was spewing so the visotr ship had to hold out until turn 4 in order to leave.

The goal of the ship in home space was to either destroy the visitor ship or the vortez or both.

The goal of the visitor ship was to escape through the vortex to get back home.

At the end of each turn, the vortex shifted position on the map. One six sided die to determine direction and two six sided die to determine distance.

It was fun. Maybe not for the visitor ship that almost made it through before the vortex shifted away by 12 hexes just as the home ship was bearing down.

[marcus_aurelius]

We tried a modified free-for-all with 5 players.
The map was a large hex 4x3 map with a class-M planet in the center.
The victory conditions were:

Win = land 8 marine units on the planet (transporter and/or shuttle) AND surivive until the time limit is reached (about 3 hours in our case)

Draw = land 8 marine units on the planet (transporter and/or shuttle) OR surivive until the time limit is reached

Loss = don't land 8 marine units and not survive to the end

We each took a war cruiser: Fed NCL, Kzinti CM, Lyran Jaguar, Klingon D5, Romulan Sparrowhawk

The marine landings (I got the idea from Showdown on Grimrock scenario) added interesting twists. For example, my Fed NCL had 4 OL Photons ready and I passed up an opportunity to fire at the Kzinti at range 4 because I needed to get to the planet to drop marines and I wanted the photons for an intimidation factor. If a flew to the planet without photons, I would have been pounced upon. Once I dropped the marines I unloaded the photons on the Romulan while uncloaked because I am nervous around cloaks.

Lots of deals happened during the game. For example, "don't shoot at my down shield for the next 2 impluses and I won't fire at you so we can both transport marines"

We had 3 "wins", 1 draw, 1 loss.

The Fed NCL won with 8 marines on the planet minor shield hits and no internals.
The Romulan "won" because they had 8 marines on the planet and was still alive with roughly 2 control boxes and 2 excess damage boxes, no weapons, no warp, etc.
The Kzinti won with 8 marines on the planet and half of the ship left.
The Lyran had a draw with 8 marines on the planet and a fireball that used to be a ship.
The Klingon lost with less than 8 marines on the planet and a fireball that used to be a ship.

This was the most interesting game our group has played so far this year. Most games by the end of turn 2-3 we can predict the probable winner. Here it wasn't predictable at all.

We may try again, but with another twist of landing the marines, rescuing an ambassador and then bringing the ambassador (and possbily marines) back on board.

[mjwest]

Back in the day, we would play SFB free-for-alls on a "wrap-around" map. Basically, if you moved off the map on the right, you would reenter the map on the left as if the two map edges were adjacent. You could shoot over the map edge, too. (So sometimes your best shot on someone was over the map edge, rather than across the map.) We got the inspiration from video games at the time that often had "maps" such as that (like the old, original Asteroids game).

It could be rather mind-bending when you get shot from someone clear across the map who is, in reality, only 8 hexes away. It was great fun.

Note that the map we played on was large at 38x43.
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Federation Commander Answer Guy

[Tiigo]

Interesting ideas, gentlemen! Definitely something for us to try in the future. Thanks for your responses!

[Kang]

May I suggest you write these up as scenarios and submit them?
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