Dramatic SFB: New "Main" Campaign
Wayne Power
wdpower at yahoo.com.au
Mon Jan 25 14:32:55 PST 2021
Majead,
yes I found that a few empires are more powerful than others, I also notice that as the YIS gets later, the battles become more about the expendables (hoards of fast drones and hoards of fighters and PFs)
On Monday, 25 January 2021, 07:40:18 pm AEST, Majead Farsi via SFBdrama <sfbdrama at lists.mattnet.org> wrote:
I think it's up to each individual player how they wish to play their campaign. If you want more battles then announce your fleet sizes and if anyone is interested they will take it up. But sometimes the battles that that person is willing to play has no benefit for the other players or they need their fleets elsewhere. This will result in no takers unfortunately! and no battles for the player that wants them.On another point with regards to the start year. I found in the later years, Hydrans were very difficult to match for BPV and fire power advantage. Their fleet density is huge! Marcel may offer more on this, but I think not many battles for the Hydrans once it was noticed how one sided they all were! The only time I won anything vs them was when I had a much superior fleet and or Marcel was not interested in that encounter. Did anyone else feel this way?
On Mon, 25 Jan 2021 at 07:29, Brent Stanton via SFBdrama <sfbdrama at lists.mattnet.org> wrote:
I understand your frustration Don, 5 battles over 3 campaigns is depressingly low. I like your idea of scaling the BPV reward based on the fleet size(s), that seems like a really workable solution that doesn't take any choices away from the players by limiting our deployments or removing core mechanics. But I don't want to make even more work for Matt than he already does for us.
If not having enough battles is a big concern for everyone, and with Matt's permission, would we all be willing to try the "Wayne method"? If even just half the players share the move-cost of their bid for only one sector a turn, then we're all going to get to fight a lot more battles.
Respectfully,Brent
On Sun, Jan 24, 2021, 23:15 Don Lavanty <emeketos at gmail.com> wrote:
Don't get me wrong I like/love the economic construction part of the game but "winners are decided for the campaign solely on economic reasons who has the biggest fleet. So the player who avoids the most fights while increasing their borders the most wins. Generally, players will ally with 2 of their borders (in my experience and maximize income by either agreeing on who gets what or how can we increase borders. This does nothing to indicate who won the game on tactics or strategy just economic's hell the player with the most allies PF game won clearly on this alone. Victory shouldn't be scored just on economics but a level of victory * your BPV/opponent something that encourages activity, risk, and reward. .
ideally, if you win overwhelming or no show opponents you get a minimum economic or point value otherwise it's victory*(your bpv/opponent bpv) * economic value of the scenario. winning a fight with a bpv disadvantage should be worth more while loosing should be worth less. Of course, this could be abused like the border system is by players agreeing in advance that the lower bpv player wins to max econ too.
I am just pointing out this will continue unless something changes. I don't know what the right solution is but I am hoping we can figure something out going forward otherwise the economic side is literally getting in the way of actual gameplay and that is unfortunate.
last 3 campaigns start to finish I had less than 5 maybe 3 total over all of them entirely if your experience is different than mine I am all ears.
On Sun, Jan 24, 2021 at 11:40 PM Brent Stanton <brentzkrieg39 at gmail.com> wrote:
I think the light economic and construction aspects of the campaign are important because they add extra weight to the decisions of what ships to commit to battle, and how fiercely one is willing to contest each battle. Do I fight this one to the bitter end regardless of the damage I may sustain, or do I make a fighting withdrawal; the economics add an extra layer of consideration instead of every battle being a knock-down, drag-out fight to the death.
That said, I agree with you that the current situation does not create a large number of battles each turn for any given player. I think scenario alterations are out at this point as a solution, just because of the complexity of doing that. That leaves us with rules modifications to drive player behavior in a certain direction - in this case towards more frequent and evenly matched battles. I have lots of ideas, but I just don't know how to make that change real without compromising the core integrity of what the Dramatic SFB campaign is built around. Requiring each player to send a ship to every border before they can send more to any one border was a good idea, but didn't result in more battles afaik, even if we all had the time to play a dozen cruiser or frigate duels every week. A BPV cap for every scenario wouldn't resolve it. Say we set it high enough we can field small carrier or DN groups - that doesn't fix the war cruiser vs frigate mis-match because the BPV is set too high to impact duels.
The only solution to play more battles that I can think of is to steal Wayne's idea from the last game, and message your neighbor with a little force estimation, and trust that they will be sportsmanlike. For example he would tell me he's bid a single or multiple vessels to a sector with a move cost totalling X, and trust me to bid a roughly appropriate force. That still preserves the secret bidding, and the integrity of the campaign with all its mechanics as they are currently implemented. It doesn't guarantee battles, but it does give us at least the opportunity to play more battles. This wouldn't be strictly required, but perhaps strongly encouraged.
Respectfully,Brent
On Sun, Jan 24, 2021 at 8:44 PM Don Lavanty <emeketos at gmail.com> wrote:
I guess I am just coming to the conclusion the current format and style of play strongly discourages any actual games except for the few die-hard players.honestly, I could do away with the entire economic and purchase system and base scenarios purely on BPV, and the year campaign game winner is determined by who has the most victory points per scenario won(levels of victory etc). The fleet purchase and economic system are great for a campaign with real borders and ship movement to deal with they can sometimes detract from the whole reason I joined the game to begin with to play scenarios. I know that wouldn't be the way Matt's system is set up to do.
unless there is something to change that is going to alter player behavior or scenario constrictions I don't see this trend going to ever change. Last 3 campaigns I can list on 1 hand the total number of battles I actually fought.
On Sun, Jan 24, 2021 at 9:29 PM Wayne Power via SFBdrama <sfbdrama at lists.mattnet.org> wrote:
perhaps limit the total number of borders that an empire can have (perhaps 28,or less depending on player numbers, and have two-three size class 4 ships for each size class 3 ship, so the fleets of CAs are not on the field.
On Monday, 25 January 2021, 12:04:24 pm AEST, Brent Stanton via SFBdrama <sfbdrama at lists.mattnet.org> wrote:
I'm not 100% in agreement on the need for new rules to push everyone towards a specific style of 'strategic level' play. I understand we need some rules to make sure everyone has as much fun as possible, but not so many that it begins to stifle the fun - and to make things more complicated for the GM, that threshold is different for everyone.
Let's take the ship assignments as an example. If I decide sector # is the most valuable thing on my border and assign the biggest fleet I can command to it, that's its own handicap everywhere else along my border without even needing extra rules.
Similarly if I notice my neighbor always assigns big fleets to sectors with +10 income, I can choose to bid a big fleet against them in that sector and play the battle or to take advantage of their weakness every where else.
Respectfully,Brent
On Sun, Jan 24, 2021, 15:11 <sfbdrama-request at lists.mattnet.org> wrote:
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: New "Main" Campaign (Wayne Power)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Wayne Power <wdpower at yahoo.com.au>
To: Peter DiMitri <pdimitri67 at outlook.com>, Majead Farsi <majeadfarsi at googlemail.com>
Cc: "sfbdrama at lists.mattnet.org" <sfbdrama at lists.mattnet.org>, Brent Stanton <brentzkrieg39 at gmail.com>
Bcc:
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2021 19:59:33 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Re: Dramatic SFB: New "Main" Campaign
Matt did say campaign set between Y166 and Y180.
"So it's time to start up a new "Main" campaign:
- This is open to anyone and everyone, with no limit on the number of
players
- It will be set sometime between Y166 and Y180. Three turns to a year.
- No conjectural ships (unbuilt variants, impossible builds, or other
non-historical designs.)
- The game will go for 24 turns (8 game years). The winner will be the
player with the largest fleet BPV at the start of the 25th turn".
On Monday, 25 January 2021, 03:24:19 am AEST, Majead Farsi via SFBdrama <sfbdrama at lists.mattnet.org> wrote:
I'm easy with the year! But think we should go with the following choices Y170, Y175 or Y180! From what I have read so far I would think Y175 to be a good choice, but 178 is OK too !
Majead
On Sun, 24 Jan 2021 at 16:19, Peter DiMitri via SFBdrama <sfbdrama at lists.mattnet.org> wrote:
I like 178 too. In those 8 years you get the PF deployment and the last "refits" and some x-tech. It's a good transitional period.
My only issue with starting 171 in and 8 year campaign is that it ends in 179, where some races will have PFs and some races won't. I'd rather a timeline that allows the new technologies to be fully deployed across the empires. That could be solved by making it longer than 8 years, but I guess 8 years and 24 turns is a long campaign!
Peace,
Peter S. DiMitri
From: SFBdrama <sfbdrama-bounces at lists.mattnet.org> on behalf of Brent Stanton via SFBdrama <sfbdrama at lists.mattnet.org>
Sent: Sunday, January 24, 2021 9:07 AM
To: sfbdrama at lists.mattnet.org <sfbdrama at lists.mattnet.org>
Subject: Dramatic SFB: New "Main" Campaign Great news Matt! Thank you for the work that you do for us.
Concerning the starting year, I'm easy. Perhaps Y178? That would give everybody interceptors and a short lead up to full PFs and X-tech, and then several turns to play with all the advanced designs as they become available.
No preference on Omega stuff, just about everything is new to me anyway lol.
Don, on getting into more battles: Last campaign Wayne had a neat idea. He would send me the approximate strength of some of his fleets when he was spoiling for a scrap, something like "You detect multiple vessels with a warp signature of 1.5 in Sector ###". With that I was able to assign a force of approximately the same strength and we could do some shooting. If you've got a gentlemanly neighbor who won't take advantage of that information to steamroll you, that could be a potential solution without needed hard changes to the rules.
Brent
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