Convoy Attack and Defense

Discuss general information about the Federation Commander gaming system here.

Moderators: mjwest, Albiegamer

Post Reply
User avatar
Klingon of Gor
Lieutenant SG
Posts: 150
Joined: Wed Jun 01, 2011 7:11 pm

Convoy Attack and Defense

Post by Klingon of Gor »

I have a few questions about scenario design, and I'd like to hear the opinions of others. Assume a scenario or campaign built around commerce raiding. One or more raiders will be attacking a convoy. The pbject will be to destroy and or capture the escorted ships, though obviously escorts may be engaged as necessary to carry out the mission.

About what percentage of the point value of the convoy should be escorting warships? Should the convoy point total be equal to the raiding force, or should the escorts by themselves equal the total point value of the raiding force? I was assuming a lone raider, or a wolf pack/raiding group of not more than 380 points, which would allow 3-4 warships of a small size. (It could allow a larger ship, maybe a light raiding dread, but I was more interested in attackers and defenders of CL size at most. ) Obviously an individual raider would entail fewer ships and be easier to set up and run, but a wolf pack might be tactically more interesting. I have little experience of scenario design, and any thoughts would be appreciated.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away" - Philip K Dick
User avatar
Kang
Fleet Captain
Posts: 1976
Joined: Sun Sep 23, 2007 12:13 pm
Location: Devon, UK
Contact:

Post by Kang »

Interestingly, I am working on a similar scenario. For my scenario, the victory conditions are centred mainly on the number of cargo boxes taken home by each player at the end of the game.

Why does this matter in the light of your original post? Well, I am trying to work out probable capture amounts and so on, so the raiding (and escorting) ships need to be balanced with regard not only to the scenario as a whole but as a function of the number of ships that each raider will likely be able to capture. This is mainly a function of the Marines aboard each raider, and is the reason why I asked the rules question here:

http://tinyurl.com/cpw3wqe

So the take-home message is that you may well need firstly to decide on your victory conditions - what you want each side to achieve - and then design the order of battle around that, and not necessarily on points values. This is how I'm doing it, anyway.

Hope this is helpful :)
Image
Post Reply