Dramatic SFB: Alliances and mechanics

Mon Aug 23 08:27:32 PDT 2021

“If players want to have a strategic/diplomatic campaign, go that way or play F&E.”  Don’t go to F&E if you want a diplomatic campaign.  The only “diplomacy” is with your own side!

I have found that there are varying degrees of agreements.  That have different outcomes and problems.

Non-aggression/alliance.  Neither side sends ships where they are the attacker.  Total peace on the border.  This is the most problematic.

Limited hostiles:  Agreement not sent ships on the attack where there are negative points (or lose of border).  This eliminates about 50% of the scenarios from conflict, still allows fights for the other scenarios.  These can be good early game strategy on a front as you just do not have ships to go around.      

Turn by turn management: Check to see if you can agree on one or two scenarios, maybe arrange an even fight in a couple of scenarios.  Other scenarios being up for grabs.   You might talk some turns and not other (everything up for grabs).  This comes up usually with one empire a turn.  It is often a good to generate some fights (example: I am going to send around 150 BVP to this system…  doesn’t obligate them to only send that amount, but, if they want a fight, they know how much to send to get it.) 

I have been playing FMJ with zero diplomacy with opponents (per the moderator’s request) and got hammered this turn for it.  Everyone seemed to want a piece of the ICS and was outgunned in nearly every scenario and taking some negative econ hits.  That is painful.  Maybe it was random, maybe people have agreements that are shifting ships to those who have none.  Still early so no pattern.  This is the issue when some do and some do not have diplomatic agreements. I think FMJ does a decent job of mitigating the alliance issue.  

Mattnet campaign agreements.

FMJ: no agreements or arrangements.  3 battles fought with a couple pending this turn.  There have been a couple of others that would have been even fights but negotiated due to time constraints.  

GWO: limited hostilities and have made turn-by-turn discussions on two turns with another empire.  The majority of my fights played out in SFB (5 games) have been against these empires.  These agreements have generally generated more rather than less battles.    

I do like having a couple of arranged battles that will ensure some battles to play out.

Sent from Mail for Windows

From: Marcel Trahan via SFBdrama
Sent: Monday, August 23, 2021 7:41 AM
To: Brent Stanton
Cc: SFBdrama
Subject: Re: Dramatic SFB: Alliances and mechanics

Hi Majead, Brent

There is a big difference between resolving battles by diplomacy and making alliances.

To diplomatically resolve battles is normal and expected. You are outgunned or you outgun your opponent and offer him to leave is ok, because it can speed up the campaign. (i still love to blow up a few ships when i am outgunning my opponent or trying to escape with my ships when i am outgunned, those can be very fun scenarios to play)

What  i am talking about is more of 2 or more players making alliances, deciding beforehand how to share the scenarios, and only sending very low BPV units to reap the EP, and increasing those borders as much as possible.
When a player has 20+ friendly borders and lots of police ships that are there to cover those friendly borders, this is where the campaign gets boring.

An example would be you and me having a 12 scenarios border, you build 6-8 FXE at 26 BPV each and i do buy 6-8 SNP at 55 each (smallest ship i can build) and we do each send ships to the borders that we are defending and whenever we have a chance to get a BORDER scenario, we take it. This would end up each making on average 240+ EP per turn without risking any ships and using useless inexpensive units. After 5-6 turns of doing that, we soon get to 20 common borders, building another 4 cheap units and reaping on average 600+ EP each

Once a few players start doing that, the other players will only have the option to start doing the same thing or they will quickly get relegated and fall so much behind that they cannot compete in the other scenarios. It takes 4-5 turns of doing that before the campaign turns into a stalemate and grind to a stop.

If players want to have a strategic/diplomatic campaign, go that way or play F&E. If players want a SFB scenario generating campaign, just don't make alliances, manage your borders (not too many or too little) and send ships to try to get as many EP as you can and try to remove as many EP's from your opponent as you can. I love to be the attacker in those Colony Raid or Convoy Raid (yum yum, minus EP) or i will try to take as many enemy ships as i can when defending those ones.

I currently have 1 SUB carrier group (I ended up with the SUB because the SUP-K that i had was deemed to require escorts, so i refitted it into a SUB) that could probably take any of my opponent fleet and i send it to a critical scenario and as for the rest, i will send 1 or 2 heavy ships (MC 2/3+) or a few smaller ships to most borders, hoping to outwit my opponents or have just enough ships to have a minimum chance of winning the scenario, hoping that my opponent did not send a big fleet.

This turn, i am sending ships to 16 of my 22 borders, 3 of them with 4 ships, 1 with 3 ships, 5 of them with 2 ships and the rest with only 1 ship. I do hope this will end up having a few scenarios to play out. My 3 or 4 ships fleet are spread among 4 opponents and my 2 ships fleet are spread among the other 3 opponents. Single ships are spread among all of them.

This is way more fun than making alliances, reaping EP and sending huge fleets on the few non-allied scenarios that would be left. At least that way, i get to play scenarios, which is why i join those campaigns.

Matt's last campaign turned out to be an alliance based campaign (and i was part of that alliance based campaign with my Hydrans and i plead guilty) and at the end, nobody was playing any scenarios because we where dealing with 1500+ bpv fleets and who wants to play those huge fleet games that takes weeks to play.

I do sincerely hope that this campaign will not turn that way and end up with whomever as more allies.

Marcel

On Mon, Aug 23, 2021 at 8:07 AM Brent Stanton via SFBdrama <sfbdrama at lists.mattnet.org> wrote:
I can assure you all I have no nefarious "game-killing mega-alliance" intent in reaching out to one of my neighbors to seek a brief truce. I have infact turned down two perfectly good offers of alliance with great terms for what are essentially role play reasons. I have also made a habit this campaign of "leaking" approximate BPV values or ship names for one scenario each to my neighbors (much after the fashion of Wayne's Warp signature leaks) so it's not as if I'm depriving my neighbors of battles. 

I think there's some really interesting counterplay to be explored if you discover a pair of players setting up a huge border and farming out EPV with each other. Forming temporary counter-alliances, trading or selling ships to players who are engaged against the offending mega-alliance, the risk of being betrayed, and so much more! 

I respect that some of my fellow players are in the campaign to play the maximum number of battles possible - that's what would give them the most enjoyment. The campaign exists for more than just battles though, it's the context For those battles - My PFH is locked in a bitter civil war with Joseph's Tall Enough Hydrans, and I'm less likely to retreat even when the odds are long because we'd "rather take those Monarchist Hydrans straight to hell with us!" Or my defeated RN+ "HPS Tenacity" searching for an opportunity for redemption after being routed by Matt's Just Colonial Commission. 

I don't think it's any more appropriate to ban diplomacy because it has the potential to complicate things with an additional dimension of gameplay than to ban CV's or PFT's for the same reason.

Respectfully,
Brent
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