Dramatic SFB: WoA

[Matthew]

> Matt's idea is that you can win by eliminating the other guys borders.

The theory behind the loss of borders is to represent an empire that is 
losing territory. Once you are out of borders, you are theoretically out 
of other territory. Hence why you would be out of the campaign.

Yes, it would be something of a hindrance for the guy on the other side 
of the border (the one presumably closing the border.) But is offset by 
his ability to open borders with his other neighbors: If I make ground 
shrinking the territory of one guy, I'd be naturally opening mutual 
territory on one of his neighbors. Granted, there is no easy way to 
model this with the campaign framework (conceptually, not 
programatically), so it's up to the player being aggressive to manage 
his net border size so he doesn't lose out on potential benefits.

As for the ideas of limiting fleet count, fleet BPV, total fleet 
move-cost, etc: that is largely unreasonable. As Greg pointed out, 
different races have a different BPVs per ship - Hydran (since their 
fighters are baked into their costs) vs Tholian (who don't even have a 
Drone Speed surcharge) would be an excellent comparison. Fleet Count 
Limits will cause everyone to slide into heavy hulls and leave behind 
the small ships entirely. Fleet Move Cost will cause people to dive into 
attrition units and heavy hulls (packing more guns per hull).

The scenario fleet limits given for the campaign (by using S8.0 or some 
other system) and individual scenario limits put something of an 
upper-limit on what each player will expect to see (particularly when 
they analyze the high-value scenarios the opponent will likely assign 
ships to.) I could go heavier into scenario limits on ships, or even 
ditch S8.0 for something tighter (The FCR regime from the CDH, or the 
BPV Capacity system (with tweaked numbers) that I used in another campaign.)

But really, the best limit on fleets around, is if you start blowing 
[other people's] stuff up. The campaign rewards are geared for people to 
*replace* ships. I envision where people are willing to fight hard for a 
scenario where they can outright replace a Heavy Cruiser - at least to 
the point where they lose a destroyer and cripple a cruiser.

I'm really thinking that I should probably set more scenarios for a 
NOBORDER penalty and to reduce the EP rewards. That aught to encourage 
more people to fight (or lose a border), and further stem the tide of 
rising fleet BPVs. Granted, I don't want to totally retard the growth of 
fleet BPVs. So it won't be a radical reduction of EPs.

Furthermore, Some people seem to be doing better because they have large 
border-counts where they are friendly. So they get some tit-for-tat 
rewards and have some safe growth. That's a viable strategy, until their 
neighbor decides their "friend" has grown to big. I really expected to 
see more of the "It's time to knock you down a peg."

--Matt