Federation Commander

JohnDDW · Lieutenant JG Joined: 11 Feb 2017 Posts: 41

Rather than giving a bonus to initiative, has an alternative been considered that ties squadrons of ships to how much command capability the fleet has?

I had a few ideas for alternatives.

#1(1) A ship with "command" trait allows a number of ships equal to its "labs" trait value to be in squadrons. (or labs/2 as #1b)

#2 A ship with "command"+# trait allows you to create # number squadrons from ships in your fleet.

#3 You are able to have any of your ships operate in squadrons if you have any non-crippled ships with the "command" trait

Sgt_G · Posted: Wed Aug 16, 2017 5:55 am Post subject:

FedCmdr doesn't use it, but SFB and F&E both assign a "command rating" to each ship, designating the number of ships that may be in the battle fleet. The maximum rating is a 10, but there are a few "free" ships to go above that limit.

There have been several suggestions to build fleets around groups, and even groups around squadrons, in order to get a massive number of ships (50+ per side) on the board. These idea do not fit into Star Fleet Universe and have been disapproved every time they come up.
_________________
Garth L. Getgen

Master Sgt, US Air Force, Retired -- 1981-2007 -- 1W091A

JohnDDW · Lieutenant JG Joined: 11 Feb 2017 Posts: 41

Well the proper context of this is that I'm only talking about "ACTA:SF" which does use squadrons, and the only limit on how many ships you use is the points you choose. (and which is why I posted in the ACTA section)

The base rules for squads in ACTA is that you may only place ships into squads in games of 2,000 points or more. And you may only have three ships per squad.

The penalty of squads being that sure you have to move all of them at the same time, but the benefit is you fire weapons with all of them at the same time too, where normally you would only get to move/fire with one ship at a time before it goes back to your opponent.

I could go more over how ACTA uses the 'command' trait in the game, but would prefer dicussion about the alternative rule for the command trait as used in ACTA:SF

Sgt_G · Posted: Wed Aug 16, 2017 1:58 pm Post subject:

It's been a while since I've read ACTA:SF rules, and I forgot about that. I was thinking of the guy who wanted this very complex fleet-building system for Federation Admiral that would have allowed for an average of 35-50 ships per side in the battle zone.

Okay, so a squadron can only have three ships, which move/fire together. And you want to allow for more ships per squadron. Do I have that right? Given the smallish number of ships in the fleet, perhaps a dozen or so, I tend to think the number per squadron was limited to three for game balance reason. If you have five or six ships in a squadron, well, that's half your fleet moving together. Kind of defeats the alternating move/fire system in the game, doesn't it??
_________________
Garth L. Getgen

Master Sgt, US Air Force, Retired -- 1981-2007 -- 1W091A

Scoutdad · Posted: Wed Aug 16, 2017 3:05 pm Post subject: Re: Alternative "Command" Rule?

Steve Cole · Site Admin Joined: 11 Oct 2006 Posts: 3828

ADB has no problem with players making up their own rules about how many ships can be on the board. If you pick a big fleet, pack lunch, and dinner, and keep the pizza delivery number on standby.

We just won't publish official rules on building massive fleets because the universe must be consistent. Two consenting opponents can do what they like regarding fleet size.

Does remind me of the guy who showed up for a tank battle "limited to the number of tank minis you own" and found out I outgunned and outnumbered him five to one because if he was using his entire collection so was I. He had a couple of composite battalions; I had an entire cohesive division.
_________________
The Guy Who Designed Fed Commander

JohnDDW · Lieutenant JG Joined: 11 Feb 2017 Posts: 41

Myrm · Ensign Joined: 25 Jun 2012 Posts: 11

I would raise one note here. The use of squadrons for moving and firing crops up in other Call to Arms engine based games and it really doesn't cause heavy issues on initiative and those effects get bigger the larger the disparity in manoeuvre units on the table. The main one being the initiative sink which is very artificial and can skew games.

Now this was particularly relevant in the B5 version, where the extreme cases was people using Drazi fleets that were outnumbered and how essentially the chances of getting any of their main guns firing was limited. These ships used 'Boresight' tagged weapons where you had to line up on the target and so initiative sinks let you skip your vessels out of harms way. OK extreme case and unlikely to be an issue in SFU even with the most restricted fire arc weapon I know - the mauler.

However in regular fleet battles the initiative sink lets you hold back movement of important ships until the other side has run out of move choices and then freely zip around even if you lost initiative. Squadrons make that more obvious and more extreme the more often they are used and the bigger they get. Initiative should be a handy bonus not a manipulatable nothing nor a game winner.

Sorry, that's along way to say that I wouldn't go too far down a rabbit hole of designing big squadron rules if the nature of the game makes them undesirable.

If you plan a big game and want such rules to speed things up that is a good idea but you need to then organise the fleets such that they don't create this effect - so at that point I would say simply squadron up what seems good and what works for the game on an ad hoc basis.

JohnDDW · Lieutenant JG Joined: 11 Feb 2017 Posts: 41

I know that movement is important and initiative sinking is one way to try and out-maneuver your opponent by keeping more important ships out of harms way.

But having a squad unload three ships of firepower at the same time rather than firing one at a time sure can make the difference, and reduce the number of initiative sinks your opponent has to play with. Especially if its three decloaking ships with a lot of plasma to unload.