The campaign is not scenario based like our last ones, but is based losely on an SFB campaign, which some may recognise. We have tried to give it some 'historical' flavor of course.
The basic premise is that each player is at war with each other. The 'map' is a triangle with a track between each corner. Each of the corners is one players home base. The track between each player is split into 8 zones, 4 for each player along that track. The idea is to fight your way down the track and take out the home base at the far end. The first player to take any other home base wins. - we don't want to knock some one out then have him sit out for weeks on end, it also discourages alliances which are often the downfall of 3 way campaigns.
Starting from the initial 'front line' on any track and advancing towards the enemy we will meet the following zones:
A Base Station
A clear zone
A Battle station
A terrain
Then finally the corner zone - A starbase and planet.
The terrains will be secretly choosen by each player owning the zones at the start. To encourage planets they will come with a free set of DefSats.
The 3 sides are:
In the Red corner, the Coalition. Klingon, Lyran, Romulan
In the Blue Corner, the Alliance. Fed, Kzinti, Gorn
In the Yellow corner, the Invader. ISC or Andro (revealed after the others have choosen ships)
Each player starts by choosing 2000 pts of ships. The coalition and alliance can only spend a max of 750 on any given empire (so they must purchase from all 3 empires). All normal Fed Com ship/weapon restrictions apply during battles (which mainly affect ISC/Andro), but not at the overall fleet level. We are allowing ships from SFB that have rules in FedCom. We are also allowing carrier using playtest DF drone rules.
In addition to normal FedCom restrictions we are also applying 2 additional restrictions.
The number of ships in a battle is limited to the dam con of the largest ship, plus that ship. So a cruiser would allow 5 ships (4 + itself), a battleship 9 ships (8 + itself).
There may be only 1 special ship per 5 ships in a battle, or part thereof (so you need 6+ ship for 2 specials). Specials are: Scouts, Carriers, Aegis, Drone. Note that is 2 specials total not 2 of each type.
Damage will be tracked simplistically as per our last campaigns. So ships that end damaged but not crippled will start with a little damage in subsequent battles. Cripples will start badly damaged. Additionally, frame damage is not repaired between battles.
Ships may transfer from one front to another if they move to the home base for a turn.
At the end of a campaign turn each player gets 100 pts to spend. Damaged ships cost 25% BPV to repair, cripples cost 50% BPV (and must be at home base), new ships cost 100%.
Bases cost 25 to repair from damage, 50 from cripple. A dead base may be replaced by a Mobile base for 50, and in each turn afterwards may be upgraded for 100 until it reaches the level the zone originally had. You can't build new ones, only replace lost ones.
The points for spending have been set very low to make existing ships valuable, and make it hard to replace those larger ships. It will take a couple of turns to buy a new cruiser, or you can buy a small ship now type of thing.
The main part of a round is choosing a fleet from the available ships on each track. Then the larger pointed fleet has first choice on whether to attack, if not the other player can do so. The attacker will attack the next zone along he hasn't yet captured. Any bases come 'free' for the defender, the attacker gets a suicide freighter against bases. Victory is last man remaining on the map, destroying bases doesn't capture the zone, it just means that the base is no longer there to help. It is quite possible that it may take a couple of battles to take out a zone as you wear down the other guy.
hehe excellent!