Simming Discussion

[SWSF Hale]

Thanks for your thoughts. I put gaming development on the back burner these last couple months on account of wrapping up my Master's program (hooray). Now that I'm done, I'll be putting some more work in to the forum here.

A lot of the creative-design decisions that have been made thus far are based on the recent history of gaming on this forum in the last few years, with respect to a handful of games that simply failed to launch. As passionate as we are and can be with respect to the Star Wars universe and this forum, the realities and pragmatics of life have a tendency to suppress our commitment here (beyond SL posts).

The reality is that most of us probably only have a good hour or two per week to actually "game." This is the #1 driver of all recent creative-design decisions. For instance, we have found that the bulk of the time spent simply writing a combat post is used managing specs and unit assets. This is no fun. So here, a "return to traditional specs and traditional simming" is the antithesis of what we can realistically accomplish as a gaming forum. Not being harsh, just pragmatic.

The next game is going to reflect a few creative-design principles:

1. Hierarchical unit grouping. You can combine or divide as much as you want up to a point. For example: Starfighter Squadrons can "attach" to Capital Ships to augment that Capital Ship, or they can "detach" and fight as an individual unit.

2. Ratings, ratings, ratings. Weapon emplacements, shields, and hull values will be replaced by various combat ratings that reflect what a unit can do. This is to simplify combat and make it more intuitive.

3. Big galaxy, but regional focus for a season (1-2 months) to encourage player interaction. The reason for this is because in previous games whereupon we had a huge roomy galaxy with every system you could think of, players had a tendency to go off and do their own thing... and not actually fight anyone.


There is probably going to be no such thing as an ideal one-size fits all game that pleases everyone here, but the above principles reflect what the forum is honest capable of sustaining.

[EmperorSeverus]

Thanks for your reply, Hale. And congratulations on finishing your Master's!

About the sim: The last time I was active was back in the AOL days, so I can definitely appreciate what everyone who kept it going has learned in the last few years, but honestly if we're not calculating damage to shields, then we might as well be sitting around a table playing Armada. It's a great game, but it's not as great as what SWSF is (or was, at least). The combination of calculated combat and stories made SWSF what it is. My vote is to bring back the glory days.

Is it that time-consuming to say OK my VSD II, which was already down from 1800 shields to 1250, just took another 68 damage from the volley of turbolasers and laser cannons that came from Eidolon's Corvette, and another 215 from insight's Assault Frigate, so my shields are now 1250 - 68 - 215 = 967? Now I'm going to respond and hit insight's Frigate with my 20 turbolaser batteries and 40 turbolaser cannons for a total of 400 HP, and I expect to bring his shields down from 1,400 to 1,000. Obviously the calculation can get slightly more complex when you're intercepting incoming concussion missiles or whatever before attacking, etc., but the math is easy once you get into it, and even easier if you just create your personal spreadsheet before the launch date. It seems to me the time-consuming part is just writing the actual post, which you have to do either way.

Surely there is a way to retain calculated combat without taking up everyone's entire evening every night.

[SWSF Hoppus]

Servius you sparked some ideas about how to solve scale issues.

But to answer the time issue its been when you have to manage an empire, fleets with dozens of units, and battlr posts with a handful of ships and dozens of squadrons.. and when people cant respond daily things grind to a hault.

[EmperorSeverus]

Hoppus... In that case, I would suggest retaining calculated combat and just pushing out the "once every 12 hours" rule even further. If 24 hours is too frequent, then maybe once every 48 hours is more reasonable. If not 48, then 72. Worst case, we could do once a week. Not on a specific day, but 7 x 24 hours from the last time you posted. So if your last combat post was 11:57 PM EDT Saturday night, then your next combat post can occur again any time after 11:57 PM EDT the following Saturday.

[SWSF Hoppus]

Sure only a battle takes a month and it makes conventional universes hard to pace with income collected once a month, an ISD built in 2 or so months, travel times being < 24 hs between most worlds, etc.. It's just hard to logistically balance and to keep interest when a battle can literally take 1+ months to resolve.

[EmperorSeverus]

Once every 48 hour combat posts, double the hyperspace travel times, revenue still collected on the first of every month.

We could create a standard spreadsheet that is distributed to everyone that requires very minimal edits whenever you add another ship to your fleet.

When you're not in combat, the only thing you have to remember is when you're supposed to arrive at the next system. With double the travel times, what was previously a 96-hour journey (for example) would now be a 192-hour journey (8 days). Something that could easily be kept track of at the top of a spreadsheet.

Combat still resolves pretty quickly, and the extended travel times mean you don't have to post as often when you're not in combat.

[SWSF Hoppus]

sigh, yes all things that have been hashed out here before.

Your initial post set my off on a brainstorm however for scale. Essentially we start with just 10-12 planets, and they will be either New Republic, Imperial, or Neutral worlds.

Players don't control the worlds, they instead control assets on the worlds.

There are two types of assets: military facilities and financial/influence facilities.

Financial/influence facilities are fixed and when destroyed auto regenerate after a certain time. These facilities generate credits every day that are accumulated on site, and auto-deposited at the end of the financial term (30 to 90 days say).

Military facilities are essentially production facilities that give the player resources/bonuses and can be destroyed.

There are space battles, on a specific grid.

There are ground battles, around a specific facility. There is a limited 'cross-pollenating' between facility units -- you can't send troops from Facility A to Facility B when it is under attack, but you could from support ships in orbit, say.

Military Facility examples:
- Munitions Dump (free restocking of warheads, free repairs of damaged SF onboard their motherships in system)
- Imperial Garrison (free restocking of troops, starfighters, GAVs -- from the standard load outs that come to these units, units taken to resupply a ship auto-regenerate 30-days later).
- Financial Hub (takes deposits of credits...)

Financial Facilities
- Governors Palace
- Space Port
- Mining Outpost
- Agricultural Complex
- etc...

As credits accumulate *on site* at the units that produce them, they can be raided at any time. A player can 'sack' the facility by taking it over, loading those credits on to his ships, and taking them to a Financial Hub facility to deposit them.

A player could collect their own credits and manually transfer them at any time, too, if they don't want ot wait til the auto-deposit at the end of 30 days, and to keep their money less exposed.

The fleet sizes would be small -- I was thinking like SW Armada starter sets... Imperial gets a VSD, 1 TIE/F, 1 TIE/B, some troops and GAVs onboard, 1 financial Hub, 1 other financial facility, etc. Rebel player has a Neb, Corv, 1 X/W, a GR75 with troops, or something.

You would win influence points for sacking enemy facilities and stuff. You invest those points to either acquire new Financial Facilities on worlds (yoru influence in the empire has grown, you have more resources, for example) or invest htem into characters, which allow you to command a larger number of units in the field. Credits are used to buy new ships (supplied by 'the empire' when you buy them) or to upgrade units (like TIE/F to TIE/I) and stuff like that...


Anyway, that was the idea. But getting something working that is fun in combat with just that small number of units, is tough. Without dice.

[SWSF Eidolon]

  Game must accept reality of small pool of potential participants.

  Also a balance of the 3 aspects of gameplay..

  Writing, Combat, Management

  The 4th Dimension is Time.



  Problem is of the limited pool of participants, and the 3 aspects and 1 constraint above, can you get enough middle ground in there to make it work for them all?


  I'm waiting for everyone else to jump on my 1 planet game band wagon. =P  You can write from any planet in the galaxy but the only combat arena is one world and the uni is centered around an ongoing grinding stalemate conflict battle there between Rebellion and Empire.  We get ourselves a ground/planet grid of hexes with some terrain tiles and we have "castles" sort of (i.e. bases, facils, settlements etc) that players are trying to destroy/conquer.  Empire maintains a blockade, Rebels run it daily. Etc

  A smooth seemless method of verified die rolling in posts would be incredible.

[EmperorSeverus]

Negative on the single planet Eidolon

Hoppus a lot of what you said sounds good, I'll follow up later this weekend with some feedback and questions about influence.

Regarding space combat... I take your point (Hoppus) about small fleets and no dice. Pure calculation works well with a large pool of players and you never know who could exit hyperspace and disrupt what you thought was going to be a definite defeat for the ship you were hammering. With smaller fleets, though, it's true that outcome is basically decided. A couple of smaller ships going up against an ISD will get destroyed every time unless they enter hyperspace. I'm actually OK with that, but for the sake of coming up with something everyone can agree on...

Here's an idea I think you'll both like (it involves dice), and I think Hale will like it too: calculate damage you expect to inflict on the enemy ship's shields or whatever, then say 80% hits for sure (assuming all lasers for the sake of the explanation), but for the remaining 20% roll one D10 to determine what percentage of that "remaining 20%" hit. This was an idea I came up with recently when I started trying to adapt IGE for the Armada miniatures (basically throw out the Armada ruleset and the ship tokens, shield dials, etc. and just use the miniatures with an adapted IGE\SWSF warbook).

Space combat would look something like this: My VSD II fires a flurry of lasers at insight's Frigate that totals 400 HP between my 20 turbolaser batteries and 40 turbolaser cannons. 80% of this (320 HP) will hit for sure, but as for the remaining 20% (80 HP) I roll a D10 that lands on 2, so total damage to insight's ship should be 320 + (80 x .2 since I rolled a 2) = 336 instead of the 400 that would have hit under the classic sim rules. Insight's shields come down from 1,400 to 1,064 instead of 1,000.

Under these rules, a couple of smaller ships might actually have a chance at defeating a larger ship if they successively roll high and the larger ship rolls a couple of unlucky rolls. Most of the time the larger ship would still win (as it should), but at least there's a chance to defeat it now and the outcome among just a few ships is not always a definite known from the beginning. I think it's a good system, and if you think about it it actually makes sense. In space you would expect most weapons fired to hit. At the same time, you might not expect all weapons fired to hit due to a variety of reasons (some weapons malfunction, some hit debris, and the enemy ship's maneuvering evades some).

I like the idea of adapting the classic SWSF rules to the Armada miniatures so much I would actually like to start a whole development board on that topic alone. Anyway, for the next sim here on the forum, we could use the same idea of 80% plus roll one D10 to determine what percentage of the remaining 20% hits (assuming nothing is intercepted).

Of course, if any of the final HP you expect to hit comes from missiles, the ship you're firing on would still have a chance to intercept to reduce damage even further.

Let me know what you think.

[SWSF Hale]

This dice roll has been tampered with!
Rolled 1d10 : 10, total 10

[SWSF Hoppus]

 Busted, Hale!

[SWSF Hoppus]

The other issue with classic sims is imbalance. The specs for ships are hard to reconcile atbtimes... they just vary so much, and you get crazy imbalances in combat. The smaller ships end up canon fodder and you have super powerful outliera like vsd and isd that for their size do way more damage than compatable vessels
Like dreds and rafa and what not. Armada side steps this eniterely. Compare the vad and neb cards then look st athier specs on wookiepedia, the cards arent too dramatically different as the specs would suggest.

[EmperorSeverus]

Not sure if that's a problem. ISD's and VSD's wreck other ships, that's just a given. In the time between Death Star I and II, the Rebels didn't win because they had comparable ship specs, they won because of strategy and luck. In any case, it's not really about winning for me. Winning is obviously fun, but it's more about the immersion in the EU for me. Personally I don't mind going New Republic and watching my ships get destroyed if it comes to that. At worst, it forces me to think more about strategy. And ultimately, whether my faction wins or loses, I had fun being immersed in the EU.

We should go classic rules with minor tweaks and improvements, no dice, and just enjoy the the sim.

[SWSF Hoppus]

Well that's my point exactly. In the movies it is clear that the Rebellion is massively weaker, its ships are weaker, they stand no chance, but the Force and it being a movie, they do the impossible.

In a game, having one side always so clearly dominant is really tough to keep going because, well, it sucks! Back in SWSF days on AOL, the game was more about everyone coordinating and battling together and all that. Take away that dynamic and the game's weaknesses are really glaring and hard to get by. At least that's been my experience. IT has been like 10 years since we had a real traditional sim rolling here (LotF) and it sort of petered out because the NR was doomed, as its fighters were much more expensive, all it really had were fighters, and replacing those lost in battle was inevitable bankrupting again and again.

I certainly long for a game that is near to the spirit of the old days. I love AE still, I love the specs, the rules, the way SF combat worked. It's just hard to find scale and to actually have people active enough to play. We get put to 8-9 people who say they are in but then nothing happens (I'm guilty of this as well, this last time).

sigh.

[EmperorSeverus]

I say let's do it. It's the only way.