Building a List of Reasonably Balanced Two-Player Scenarios

JimDauphinais · Post by **JimDauphinais** » Sat Jan 19, 2013 4:01 pm

I would like to start compiling a list of existing FC scenarios that folks feel are reasonably balanced.

By reasonably balanced, I mean the scenario is no worse than 60/40 in play balance and could likely be brought into better balance through victory point bidding for sides or some other reasonable bidding mechanism.

The scenarios can be from KB, RB, any Attack Module, any Briefing, Captain's Log, Communique or e23.

Also, if you know of a fun unbalanced scenario that you believe could be balanced with a simple fix, feel free to suggest that scenario and your suggested fix.

My ultimate aim in this is to start identifying existing scenarios that could be used in a tournament setting.

I would appreciate any help I can get.

Thanks,

Jim

Sllarr · Post by **Sllarr** » Wed Jan 23, 2013 7:01 pm

Good initiative.

One question though. Are you looking for 2 players, 2 ships scenarios only or mixed ship numbers (2 or 3 versus 1) would also be acceptable ? What about scenarios with radically victory objectives (escape versus destroy, ie.) ?

storeylf · Post by **storeylf** » Wed Jan 23, 2013 7:59 pm

I imagine this is a hard call to make, the few scenarios we played (before deciding most weren't balanced) we only played once or twice, which wouldn't be enough to make a good judgement, even less so as they would have been just the same 3 players involved.

It might be easier for those interested to come up with some scenarios themselves and put them out to test.

The other way of course is to have 2 players take it in turns playig each side and add up the points, and see who wins when accounting for that. That potentially removes a lot of balance problems.

JimDauphinais · Post by **JimDauphinais** » Thu Jan 24, 2013 6:52 pm

Any 2-player scenario would be valid for the list.

I agree with Lee's point with regard to the frustration his group has had with the the play balance of the published scenarios. Locally, we have had a similar experience. However, I feel a number in the lot are not that bad and could be brought into reasonable balance with some tweaks (in some cases, just dealing with holes in the victory conditions that allow an assured victory to one side). Designing a balanced scenario based on the same theme as an existing published scenario might also be possible.

Unfortunately, I think time limitaitons practically preclude the idea of playing the same scenario twice.