Dramatic SFB: WoA

[Charles Carroll]

Yeah that I think is part of the problem Matt. In the Beginning....God
created...no wait...wrong speech. When we start out...we are weak. Maybe
can field a ship or two. For at least some of our borders. Some we just
cant touch. But see...one thing I learned very early. Always defend your
scenarios where you are the defender. Why? Because losing the scenario not
only means you do not get points but you could potentially lose so many
points that you have a negative balance for the entire turn. Potentially
anyway. But what is the penalty for not bothering to attack the enemy? Not
a thing. So...perhaps one change to consider is that in every scenario. If
you do not attack...then he gains ground and it costs you something. As in
real life...going purely on defensive has shown us that you will die over
time. That was why we developed counter attacks, and preemptive strikes and
various ways for a defensive nation to go on offense.

Obviously it can be argued that by attacking occasionally and defending
always, that this would be good enough. And maybe it would. But from an
actual war with someone. Allowing him time to just rest, recover and build
uncontested leads to potentially more of a threat than losing some far
flung border world. So perhaps we need to add when you are the attacker
that failing to win or even attack costs you something. In an alliance, you
have to balance the costs so as not to come out negative.

Anyway just another thought from depravity.

On Wed, Nov 21, 2018 at 6:12 PM Matthew via SFBdrama <
sfbdrama at lists.mattnet.org> wrote:

>
> > 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
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