It's much easier to throw 1-10 or 1-20 around in your head than 50-7440 etc.
All the choosing to be done is further constricted to given Phases, it will eliminate a lot of loophole gaming by more definitively spelling out what can be done when and where.
For Fighters/Aux/Support, rather than treat them as a finite individual unit attached to a larger unit, we could just treat them as abilities of a sort of that greater unit. So it's not so much fighters get tracked and deployed and attack individually or are destroyed, but they have functions that factor in to a Capital Ships greater abilities. Then the amount of squadrons a ship would have could translate in to how many times in a battle a certain ability could be used, or to what effect? This also eliminates mass delpoyment of every support unit a ship has for every battle creating swollen globs, and forces "Support" to take on the respective roles they are meant to instead of generally augmenting any kind of attack.
I don't think anyone has a problem with managing 2 ISDs, 3 VSDs, and 4 CRAKs... it's the 22 SF Squadrons and 10 AUX groups attached to it that give players headaches before writing a post.
1. GRIDLESS (no grid, simple as, best possible thing for us doing this online with no graphics).
It's up to the player to determine which units get lost
I wouldn't mind taking a more space-oriented approach. Personally I am more drawn to the mid-to-large scale naval battles (1 ISD and company vs. NEBs & CORVs), and wouldn't mind taking helm of the Rebel Fleet for the campaign and GM'ing.
I like the idea of a lot of action concentrating on one planet, but for purposes of raids, battles, smuggling to-and-fro, opening the game up to a Sector, even if we just utilize a few worlds in practice, just feels better for me. If we stick with the Seswenna Sector, simply using Eriadu and Sullust as our "main stage" systems with the others in the background might work.
As we're discussing all of this, I just want to bring up the bad memories of SWSF Legends RPG, and the Aburik Cluster. One fizzled out, the other got burned out in development hell. Whatever we decide, the game should be fast-paced, scalable, and focused on a few victory conditions so we don't get bored nor dragged into a massive group SL that requires everyone to post according to some short order timetable. I'm of the opinion that collaboration should be rewarded, not required.
Eriadu seems like a real high profile planet...
Fair enough I'm sold on Eriadu. Time to do a little research.
Stray thought as I'm heading out the door - somewhat standard (traditional) rules with very minimal dice rolling (if any) as one stage of battle, but also having a 'micro battle' within the larger battle that holds some sway using more dice sort of like the example Eidolon gave for miniatures - somehow weighting the two results and then going from there?
Because the problem we are trying to solve is the linear nature here - bring as many guns and ships as you can and let them go at it. There's no surprises and retreats are rare or impossible, it's not a big surprise and it gets old fast. So what if we found a way to sort of 'distill' combat into something representative of the whole? Like in a large engagement, focusing on one smaller engagement.. i don't know, this are stray thoughts! Just throwing them out there, maybe they will fire something in someone's mind that's more useful.
I'm skeptical of a "custom starship" combat model because if we get to the point of your ship versus mine, the ship with the most guns wins.
The only way to accomplish this is be both turn-based and scenario-driven. One example scenario I think can highlight something we need is the Millennium Falcon escaping Mos Eisley. This entailed a (short) ground combat sequence (Han vs Troopers), followed by a space combat sequence (ISD vs Falcon). All of this happened in the span of a few minutes on screen!
We need grids, grids, and more grids, in order to accomplish this sort of gameplay.
The problem with using the dice rolling function, is that I can preview the dice roll results, and if I don't like them, I can delete the script, re-preview my post to clear the cache, and then re-roll the dice until I get the results I want.
As I've mentioned before in other threads, the market is saturated with Star Wars gaming
Another thought is a decoder system that is revealed only after each roll. In this way, even if a player chooses to look at die face values with preview before posting, he won't know for sure what the values will translate in to until the GM decodes it with a decoding roll. Basically it'd go something like as follows. . .
1) establish 2-3 set legends/keys for decoding rolls. . .
1 = hit 2 = hit 3 = miss 4 = miss 5 = action 6 = action
1 = miss 2 = miss 3 = action 4 = action 5 = hit 6 = hit
1 = action 2 = action 3 = hit 4 = hit 5 = miss 6 = miss
2) a player is attacking something with something else. . .
player elects to attack with something that uses 3 attack dice, so his roll would look like this. .
(http://162.243.8.124/swsfonline.com/public_html/Themes/swsf/images/dice_warn.gif) This dice roll has been tampered with!
Rolled 3d6 : 3, 2, 6, total 11
but even if he sneaks a peek, who knows which of the 3 decoding legends will be applied.
3) after a player rolls, a GM makes a decoding roll immediately after that simply arbitrarily chooses which key to choose 1-3 . . .
(http://162.243.8.124/swsfonline.com/public_html/Themes/swsf/images/dice_warn.gif) This dice roll has been tampered with!
Rolled 1d3 : 3, total 3
, the Millennium Falcon, was a heavily modified TY-2400 freighter.
Personally, I'd like a combination of Armada and X-Wing for space combat, with RPG elements for ground SLs & combat.
1. Let's say the Galactic Empire is building a Planet Defender Turbolaser at some system.
2. Rebel Command catches wind of this, decides to organize a strike task force to sabotage/destroy the PDTL. Space: supplies and shipment convoy for the PDTL can be hit, Ground: the actual construction site can be hit too.
3. We, as the player community (PC), will "play the part" of either Rebel Forces or Galactic Empire, or find some way for our characters to be involved in either side (i.e. an independent bounty hunter could work as a "private contractor" for GE security, etc.).
In regards to sensibilities and people getting offended, that's a bridge we can cross when we get there. I'd rather have airtight rules that require no arbitration or GM judgment. When an X-Wing blows up a TIE Fighter, we don't bitch at each other, but when a prized NPC gets killed, how will we reconcile that?
My preference is that a Master Character is immortal (unless the player agrees/decides for it to be killed). Everything else... is expendable. Everything and everyone. If we make the game campaign-based, then we could truly "play for keeps" by deliberately trying to destroy specific characters or ships. I mean, had the Falcon not slipped into a convenient asteroid belt, who's to say Death Squadron would've captured it for sure, and Leia would've been turned to the Dark Side? That being said, prior to the asteroid belt, the Falcon sure gave some Star Destroyers a run for their money (and had the hyperdrive been operational, would've escaped anyhow). Even if the Falcon had some escort vessels, Vader would've wanted to concentrate efforts to capture it regardless. The same thing would happen in our game. In chess you play for checkmate.
See, im not so sure I get down on that. I mean, its one thing to have your character pull off a miraculous escape, its completely another to have a system set up where your character, sitting on board the bridge of an exploding ship, with a single line post makes it to an escape pod, the pod flies through an entire opposing fleet, untouched, lightly sets down on the planet and you remain completely undetected, knowing exactly where you are, until a friendly ship, that somehow enters the area completely undetected picks you up and we are back to do it tomorrow. I mean, stop me if that doesnt sound like complete nonsense to you...
Oh my. Thats some hiroglyphics there man. With all due respect as it is a good idea, I just think that may be a bit more complicated then what we are shooting for. Youre talking 3 or more posts for a single round of action, and I see people, very much myself, having problems keeping track of what is all going on and who is on what phase of actions. Is there any way to simplify that at all?
This took about 30 minutes to build in PowerPoint, after scouring the internet for top-view pictures of SW vessels. It was easy.
My overall vision for this game...
(http://i790.photobucket.com/albums/yy185/americanhero1984/Mockup_zpsv6tqsins.png)
Well that's the thing, with a dedicated Maneuver/Movement Phase, players take turns positioning their units based on initiative and speed.
This is a place where specs are going to require more work, as in, some units might have the ability to move last even if they won the initiative check.
Suppose for that posted picture, Movement initiative went like this:
1. Missiles-in-flight
2. Torpedoes-in-flight
3. TIE Fighters
4. X-Wings
5. YT-1300
6. TIE Bombers
7. CORVs
8. Y-Wings
9. ISD
Weapons initiative could be the reverse:
1. ISD
2. Y-Wings
3. CORVs
4. TIE Bombers
5. YT-1300
6. X-Wings
7. TIE Fighters
8. Launched Torpedoes
9. Launched Missiles
By flip-flopping the order of initiative for fire and movement, it gives the faster units preference for maneuvering and the slower units preference for shooting. In reality, a CORV could not move-fire-move without also getting into the weapons range of the ISD and taking some hits. The best way for the CORVs to win would be to constantly run circles around the ISD so only 1 CORV would be in a firing arc at any given time.
Hey, whats our name?
Galactic Civil War - The Lost Campaigns?
Galactic Civil War - Confrontation?
Galactic Civil War - Influence & Injury?
Galactic Civil War - The Sesweena Campaign (simply using GCW and new name for each successive campaign?)
Galactic Civil War - Tactics? ;p
Yeah, I think short battle posts are going to be the norm. This is actually a good thing: by doing less per post, players can actually commit more time overall to the battle. We can jump online in the morning while partaking in our coffee, during the lunch break, and then once at night. Whereas before, we'd be lucky if we get organized and have enough time to do a proper battle post with SL and tactics, etc.
What we have going on right now on the drawing boards is the most complex battle sim we've attempted, so it's going to have to go through this development period before we figure out the kinks.
I suppose, we could entertain the possibility of a single move phase, where you move everything under your control.
Option B: Fire & Movement for individual units based on initiative. You do all the actions for a unit in a single post, and we take turns, like:
1. TIE Fighter moves to H-3, fires on X-Wings in H-2.
2. X-Wings fire on TIE Fighters, move to I-4.
I can't decide if our scale is too big.
See now we're getting into some next level web design/programming that is probably beyond Hop's level of expertise and time willingness.
I'm doing some private testing of some ideas. I can't decide if our scale is too big.
This feels the same way. The imps have to gain influence, kill the rebels, and what not else to achieve victory. All I have to do is kill an ISD, which as any simming vet knows, really isnt that difficult. It just seems like the game would last 1 economy period and be done. Posting board masturbation in essence, a lot of work for 2 weeks of gaming and very little pay off.
with such an easily achievable win condition.
but my bottom line is this: I'm just really tired of commanding capital ship task forces.
Ramano: I still havnt been told what you guys are doing with combat yet.
Hale:The demo will likely consist of a CRAK + 6 TIE Fighters vs CORV + 4 X-Wings + 2 Y-Wings, as this will be representative of the scale and size of combat for management purposes.