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RE: Space Opera - Test Games - 1/6/2010 6:09:32 AM

GrumpyMel

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Turn 31 sent on to Lunaticus.

This month see's the first clash between Romanov and Cadwall ground forces on Circe. House Cadwall reports an important victory in the initial engagement as no less then 3 Romanov Legions are captured or destroyed in an ill-fated landing attempt on the main continent. One of those legions droped directly onto Cadwall's 31st Legion and was cut down almost immediately upon exiting thier Landers. It is still early in the conflict but the morale of Cadwall forces everywhere seems bouyed by this report of initial success.

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Post #: 121

RE: Space Opera - Test Games - 1/7/2010 2:17:21 AM

Tufkal2

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Turn on to Casus_Belli.
I like it that the Rebels are suddenly pretty strong and have some technology upgrades....
And as to Circe we will see how things come along long term...

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Post #: 122

RE: Space Opera - Test Games - 1/7/2010 4:16:16 PM

GrumpyMel

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Yeah, Rebel strength varies a bit planet to planet but generaly the more valuable the planet the stronger the rebel forces there.... rebels are mostly militia but here and there they have some advanced units (rogue army units/security forces, psionic covens, local warlords, robber knights, etc).

I did make the rebel forces on each players starting world weak in comparison. Wanted to give players the opportunity to build up a little momentum before having to deal with more powerfull stuff. Figured it would make sense from a scenerio standpoint... the home-worlds of each major house would likely be a little but more orderly and under control.... hence weaker rebel forces.

The one portion of the scenerio I'd like to beef up (aside from tweaking) would be to add some covert operations/spy stuff and also add more diplomatic options between the Houses (like trading resources, etc). Figure I can do most of that stuff with action cards...but it's a decent amount of work...so I may hold off on that until a future version....and just do some tweaking/bug fixing with the scenerio before calling this version done and pushing it out of the sandbox.

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Post #: 123

RE: Space Opera - Test Games - 1/8/2010 2:56:52 AM

Tufkal2

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Well the rebels I saw had gunships and hovercrafts. Maybe all rebels on all planets pooled together to buy some research upgrades.
But is a lot of fun to play against.

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Post #: 124

RE: Space Opera - Test Games - 1/9/2010 10:59:27 PM

GrumpyMel

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Turn 32 sent on to House Romanov

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Post #: 125

RE: Space Opera - Test Games - 1/10/2010 12:24:05 AM

Tufkal2

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Turn on to DeCastillo.
I am only slowly beginning to understand how the jumpgate influence playing. They make for an interesting feature.

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Post #: 126

RE: Space Opera - Test Games - 1/21/2010 3:45:50 AM

GrumpyMel

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Turn 34 on to the Romanovs

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Post #: 127

RE: Space Opera - Test Games - 1/29/2010 2:06:15 AM

Tufkal2

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Hi all
I sent turn 34 to Casus Bello on the 21st Jan....
Who has the turn?
Best Regards

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Post #: 128

RE: Space Opera - Test Games - 1/29/2010 3:15:02 AM

Casus_Belli

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Please accept my humblest apologies, gentlemen

. I thought I had sent the turn on, but apparently I have had it all the time. I've sent it now. I can only plead holidays and a full life as mitigation for the oversight.

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Furthermore, Carthage must be destroyed.

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Post #: 129

RE: Space Opera - Test Games - 2/3/2010 3:07:11 AM

Casus_Belli

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So...

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Furthermore, Carthage must be destroyed.

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Post #: 130

RE: Space Opera - Test Games - 2/4/2010 3:17:02 PM

GrumpyMel

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The files with me. I got it on the 31st. Sorry, things have been a bit hectic lately....will try to get it out tonight or tomorrow at the latest.

GrumpyMel

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Post #: 131

RE: Space Opera - Test Games - 2/5/2010 3:06:47 AM

GrumpyMel

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Turn 35 Sent on....sorry for the delay.

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Post #: 132

RE: Space Opera - Test Games - 2/6/2010 1:33:33 PM

sapper32

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Turn35 sent on

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Post #: 133

RE: Space Opera - Test Games - 2/8/2010 9:57:09 AM

Casus_Belli

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The campaign in north-western Kesh is proving to be a gruelling slog, with both sides suffering losses without gaining or losing much ground.

Pressure on House DeCastilio is mounting, however, as Drako's supremacy in space allows those evil scum to reinforce, while forcing the gallant DeCastilian forces to fight with their backs to the wall

.

The crucial battle is in space, although the seat of purpose, to paraphrase what's'isname, is on the planetary surface.

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Furthermore, Carthage must be destroyed.

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Post #: 134

RE: Space Opera - Test Games - 2/8/2010 5:13:18 PM

GrumpyMel

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A similar dynamic is occuring on Circe between Romanov & Cadwall. I begin to understand the frustrations of the isolated Japanese garrison commanders in the Pacific

.

A well played game so far, by all involved. If you guys are enjoying the scenerio, you should definately check out the latest version I uploaded...lots of improvements (I think) there.

One thing I tried to address a little bit was to make the game a little more fluid while still retaining the ability to effectively isolate planets (as the Drako & Romanov players seem to be doing very well in our current game). I put in 2 small things that should add a bit of a twist in that regards....

- The player who has aligned the Guild can build a special ship type called "Guild Smugglers". These ships have limited combat and carry capacity but can move (slowly) through Deep Space. Meaning that the can bypass the use of Jumpgates with these ships. Make's it a little bit harder to completely lock down a system against this player. Although their limited capacity makes it expensive to conduct operations with them and you'll only be able to get a trickle of reinforcments into a system via this method.

- All players, if they research Covert Ops tech get access to a Covert Ops Action Card which they can play against an opponent once per turn (The card costs a decent amount of PP to play as well). The card will generate small groups of partisans (under your control) in the opponents territory. The appearance of these partisans is random...so it's not like you can direct them towards a specific system. But it'll mean that an opponents planet is never entirely secure once they've killed off the rebels. Even if they've got access locked off from space...small groups of hostile forces can appear on the planet. Essentialy it means that a player needs to worry about maintaining some security forces in his backfield...even if it is otherwise safe from attack. I really wanted this option because it means that the action won't be entirely constrained to the one or two systems that compromise the "front line". The partisan forces generated are small enough and weak enough (and rare enough) that they shouldn't be much of a problem for local security forces to deal with.... However, if a player leaves them entirely alone to build up over a number of turns... then they could start to be something which could threaten isolated production or resource centers.... meaning that you can't completely ignore them.

If you guys have any other suggestions, let me know. I'm happy to get feedback about what things work or don't work well about the scenerio....and about dynamics that I might need to tweak a bit. I've gotten some good feedback already which has made it's way into some of the updates.

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Post #: 135

RE: Space Opera - Test Games - 2/8/2010 10:29:26 PM

Casus_Belli

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I'd love to start again as DeCastillo with the new version, now that I'm familiar with the scenario.

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Furthermore, Carthage must be destroyed.

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Post #: 136

RE: Space Opera - Test Games - 2/9/2010 4:11:33 AM

Tufkal2

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Here are my thoughts:
Am enjoying the game. The naval war feels about right. Am slowly moving ahead on the ground. I also see the problem that the ground war just takes too long to bring to results. I am confident to win the war on Circe eventually since I can bring in new troops each turn but it just feels like it takes forever. As to reasons I see the following:
- there is no naval (space-based) artillery I could use
- ground troops and ground artillery move very slowly when not on plains
- artillery is not too effective and has only a range of 1 hex
- my airforce is effectively blocked by anti-air guns
- ships (ocean ships) are too expensive for the fact that I cannot transport them to another world
- no supply usage required by units
So would not mind restarting if some of the above concerns could be alleviated. I think the suggestions above make things more interesting but I do not think they would make the ground war more dynamic.
Here are some ideas which might or might not work:
- give the player who owns the orbit around a planet have some more influence on the ground war. Maybe a morale boost. Or some chance to drop bombs. Or some nice units which can only be produced in orbit
- have units move a little bit faster
- have artillery which can shoot maybe 3 or 5 hexes
- give air units a bit more survivability against air defenses
- on water planets make the war on the oceans more interesting. Easy to produce ships which can travel fast and bombard ground units
Best Regards

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Post #: 137

RE: Space Opera - Test Games - 2/9/2010 11:19:34 AM

Casus_Belli

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So who wants to restart?

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Post #: 138

RE: Space Opera - Test Games - 2/9/2010 2:50:46 PM

sapper32

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Turn 36 sent on

I agree the ground war takes forever with huge losses on both sides on Kesh anyway i will take the system in the end but it will take some turns yet to acheive,ive blockaded the Jump gate to Kesh so my greater resource's will eventually tell, then i will have to break De Castillos blockade of his side of the jump gate this game could go on for a long time.

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Post #: 139

RE: Space Opera - Test Games - 2/9/2010 4:17:41 PM

GrumpyMel

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Some thoughts on the current ground situation...

I think the thing with the ground war is that both Casus & I concentrated more on ground units where you guys put more into space forces. So even though you are controling the systems and should eventualy win... you're having a pretty tough slog on the ground where we concentrated our builds.

On Circe, I was able to put a really good size force with a good mix of troops onto the planet before you were able to seal it off Lunaticus... so it's no surprise you are having a hard slog there. I also have some decent local production to replace losses. I have no doubt that you'll eventualy win the contest there unless something truely dramatic happens in space. However up until the last turn or so you hadn't even brought in enough forces to achieve numerical parity with me, let alone superiority.

You also had a very poor unit mix for the job. Armor is great for punching a hole through enemy units in open terrain and then exploiting the break through.... but if it lacks proper infantry support, it's going to have real problems...especialy if it has to attack into urban terrain or mountains (or heavy woods/jungle for that matter) and across a constrained front. You had very little infantry support for your armor...which is why I think you started running into some problems initialy. I think that you expected to rely on your air-power as a force multiplier to devastate my ground forces (shock & awe) and then mop them up with your own ground troops. Problem with this was that I actually had some reasonable air defense... in the way of my own fighter squadron and then augmented with a decent number of SAM batteries. Note that I made no changes to plane survivability vs flak numbers from vanilla AT... planes and SAM batteries use the same numbers in that regards as they do in regular AT.

In the regular game, air-power is king...but FLAK can be an effective foil if you deploy it in sufficient numbers and well dug in... you can neutralize an opponents ability to launch strikes at specific points locations. The thing is that FLAK is pretty localized in defense. In can only cover a limited area well...whereas Air has the range to strike anywhere. I think this is an important dynamic...otherwise victory is simply a matter of getting air superiority.

In the case of the Circe map... the islands are narrow with alot of choke points and with a backbone of hills and mountains...making a pretty good setup for the kind of localized defense flak is designed for.

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Post #: 140

RE: Space Opera - Test Games - 2/9/2010 6:02:28 PM

GrumpyMel

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Some thoughts on the suggestions....

- I would have loved to have put in a supply system. I just don't think the regular AT engine could handle it very well given what I've had to do with the scenerio to make the space/ground thing work. That's why I didn't even bother trying with it.

- Logicaly, controling space would make the ground war pretty much superflous...as you would be able to simply bombard any hostile ground units into dust with your fleet from orbit before landing. That seemed rather boring/one dimensional to me...so I specificaly designed with the intention of avoiding that. I wanted the ground war to mean something...with space still being very important. That's why I came up with the "No Atomics" rule....essentialy the Houses are fighting a somewhat limited war...where they can't afford the political ramifications of mass bombardments of the planets they hope to rule.

So basicaly, I decided not to allow Space Fleets to DIRECTLY influence the fight on a planets surface. They could INDIRECTLY effect it by preventing reinforcements from entering the fray. However, I did want SOME limited ground support role for having a Navy in system. That's where Space Fighters/Bombers were supposed to come in. The design flaw that I have (IMO) in the version that we are playing is that there is a disincentive to build/risk many of them in a ground since they use the same critical resource - Isotopes - that players need for Spaceships. Thus loosing a bunch of fighters/bombers to SAM batteries is a really big deal for a player... bigger probably then it aught to be.

What I did in the updated version was changed the resource that these units require to Minerals (the same one that mechanized ground units use) which I hope will fix the dynamic... As loosing fighters/bombers in that case, while still not fun... shouldn't be as painful a blow as loosing something that takes Isotopes to replace.

I'm hoping this helps address the air/fleet support issues. If not, I may look at putting in some sort of air unit specificaly designed for doing bombardments. Maybe a cruise missle type thing or a specialized bomber. I want to be carefull not to tip things too far the other direction though...otherwise the ground war will become irrelevant.

The other problem with allowing long bombardment ranges is that there is no "terrain type" cost for bombardments....so allowing ships to bombard from orbit also means allowing ships to bombard other space units across Deep Space hexes or JumpGates....which should not be happening.

Naval Units - I agree with this. Although I did give Warships some bombardment capabilty (I think about the same as AT cruisers)... wet water navies could definately use some work in the scenerio. I didn't spend alot of design time on them. They probably are way too expensive given their limitations. I'll go back and take a look at the numbers on them again... they can probably use a bit of a speed boast...maybe a couple additional SFT's...and some cost tweaking. Will try to get that in an updated version over the next few days.

- Artillery has pretty much the same stats as vanilla AT except for the range. I felt given the scale, a 1 hex range made more sense. (IMO) Multi-hex ranges can really make artillery over-powered in many scenerio's as well (not that it isn't in reality though). So I'm kinda leaning at keeping it at one. I could consider putting in some weaker version of artillery with longer range though....maybe some sort of rocket/missle artillery. Mobility for guns shouldn't be bad if you provide horses as transport... that's what I see most people do with it in vanilla AT.

- Given the scale of the scenerio...I did realize that it COULD take forever to play to conclusion. That's why one of the very first updates I did was to add Victory Conditions and a Time Limit (Optional of course...you CAN keep playing past the time limit if you choose). Under that revision the game lasts 5 years (or 60 turns) and your score at the end is determined by the number and size of the cities you control (basicaly Production Points). So in order to win....you don't need to destroy the other players... you just need to make sure that you capture and hold onto more cities then everyone else before the timer runs out. In that way...it almost disincentivizes players from hunkering down and doing the turtle/attrition thing...since you won't get taken out...but you can't win by doing that. Again the rationale behind the scenerio is that the Houses are fighting more of a limited war with each other...not neccesarly to the death...but until one achieves enough dominance to be recognized as Emperor. It's my hope that this makes a little bit of the....I know I've got zero chance to win but it'll take forever to finally destroy me...dynamic that makes the end part of some other "total war" type scenerio's a little tiresome to play out. With this sort of victory conditions....even if you know you won't win....how well you hold out can help determine who actualy does. I'm not sure whether 60 turns is too long, too short or whatever...but it seemed like a nice arbitrary number to pick. I display the score in a report each turn anyway...so players could always agree to play to a different number of turns.

In short...I think some of the updates I've already made in new versions will help address many of the issues that have been brought up.

The two things I'll try adding to the next update will be:

- A revisit of Wet Water navies to make them more cost effective given their limitations.

- As an expirement, I'll try adding a space-to-ground missle type SFT...buildable only at starbases...and too heavy to transport out of system. It can be very resistant to AA fire but I'll make it destructable upon use and fairly cost ineffective for the playload....as I don't want players building hundreds of these things and simply dominating ground war with them. I'll make it use Minerals though...so as to not gum-up Starship production overmuch. That should add a little punch to controling space in a system...without overpowering the ground war element.

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Post #: 141

RE: Space Opera - Test Games - 2/9/2010 6:07:57 PM

GrumpyMel

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Oh and I'm perfectly happy to restart with an updated version....keep playing this one.... do both or neither... whatever you guys decide. I'm just happy to have gotten play testers for the scenerio...and that people are getting some fun out of it

Just let me know what you guys decide you want to do...and I'll go along with it.

If you want to go with a new version...It shouldn't take more then a couple days to put in the changes that Lunaticus's suggestions brought up (the Wet Water Navy tweaks...and the space to ground missle experiment)

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Post #: 142

RE: Space Opera - Test Games - 2/10/2010 6:06:55 AM

GrumpyMel

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Just uploaded a new version with some of the tweaks I talked about. See the Mod's section for details.

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Post #: 143

RE: Space Opera - Test Games - 2/10/2010 9:17:48 AM

Casus_Belli

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It's a real shame about supply, it would add a whole new dynamic to the game. I have certainly been enjoying this game, although it does move slowly. I think the ground/space balance is well done - it seems like the ground war does make a difference, especially when you think about resources, while what happens in space also has a big effect. I liked the space missiles, but they did not have any effect whatever when I used them. Maybe they could be more expensive but also deadlier. This would mean space defences for planets would be effective if well-deployed. You wouldn't necessarily need a deep-space navy for defence.
Good ground artillery - level 2 or 3 - should have a two-hex range, at least.
I think you are right about the situations being a function of the way we played, rather than the scenario, and the situation can change dramatically, if some threshhold is reached, or a blockade is broken, say.
I would give units faster movement, or make them easier to upgrade, and then give them faster movement. I like the tech-tree in general. Capital ships take an awful long time to build, which is ok, but maybe three turns, rather than four at full production, for a cruiser, would be better.
I did have some other ideas, but they've flown out of my head now that I've tried to write about them.
So far GrumpyMel (who seems like a mild-mannered sort of chap), Lunaticus (who comes across eminently sane) and Casus Belli (a peace-lover if ever there was one) agree we could restart. How about it Sapper32?

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Post #: 144

RE: Space Opera - Test Games - 2/10/2010 5:03:52 PM

sapper32

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Im up for restarting im enjoying this game but started realy slowly not quite knowing how to do some things i think i will have to be quicker off the mark this time and build the correct units to start with.
Will keep my eyes on this thread and see what is decided by everyone.

Regards Ian

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Post #: 145

RE: Space Opera - Test Games - 2/10/2010 6:03:17 PM

GrumpyMel

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Well...that would leave Bombur....any thoughts Bombur, would you be up for a restart with the new version?

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Post #: 146

RE: Space Opera - Test Games - 2/11/2010 12:39:56 AM

Tufkal2

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Thanks GrumpyMel for having a look at the suggestions I had. As I said am enjoying the game as it is but if ground combat becomes a bit more dynamic I think I would enjoy it even more.
One other suggestion I do have when we restart is to switch around the noble houses. I would very much like to see another part of the galaxy next time. So how about a random reshuffling of houses?

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Post #: 147

RE: Space Opera - Test Games - 2/13/2010 11:06:39 PM

Casus_Belli

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So we're going again?

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Post #: 148

RE: Space Opera - Test Games - 2/14/2010 12:54:16 AM

GrumpyMel

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Well I sent turn 37 along on the 9th. Waiting to hear from Bombur if he's interested in a restart. If he's not we we would need to find an additional player for a new game....though if neccesary we could try with 4 and just leave one of the Houses inactive.

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Post #: 149

RE: Space Opera - Test Games - 2/14/2010 10:37:43 AM

sapper32

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Hi all ive got turn 37 sat in my inbox are we continuing this game?? dont want to play it if i dont need to.

Regards Ian

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Post #: 150