Dramatic SFB: New "Main" Campaign

Wed Jan 27 12:48:26 PST 2021

Matt when do you think the Campaign will be ready to start?

On Tue, 26 Jan 2021 at 04:09, Wayne Power via SFBdrama <
sfbdrama at lists.mattnet.org> wrote:

>
>  the Campaign is 8 years, then have just two turns a year in stead of 4
> (makes the scenario/battles more important for the EP gains/loss).
> On Tuesday, 26 January 2021, 11:40:08 am AEST, Brent Stanton via SFBdrama <
> sfbdrama at lists.mattnet.org> wrote:
>
>
> So the big questions as I understand it is how to get more battles out of
> the campaign. Lots of good ideas have been suggested by a number of folks,
> but we could talk hypotheticals until the heat-death of the universe. At
> the risk of showing my youthful impetuousness, I think we need to come to
> an agreement and decide, so we can all play and have fun.
>
> The proposed changes fall into two broad categories: Those that require
> changes to the actual scenarios and their rewards (which means more work
> for Matt), and those that aim to modify player behaviour (via
> construction/deployment limits or limited deployment information sharing).
>
> In my opinion, the latter are the only options feasibly available to us.
> Matt already does a lot of work behind the scenes for us and I'm not about
> to ask him to do even more. Just encouraging the players who want more
> battles to message their neighbors and give them an approximate force for a
> sector is the easiest solution that I can think of. It can be applied as
> much or as little as each player desires, and has the potential to yield
> the best results for the least sacrifice of player agency.
>
> Respectfully,
> Brent
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 16:32 Wayne Power <wdpower at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>
> 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:
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>    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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