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Forum game II: Forum game harder (Vague rule idea outline discussion thread)

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Spoon:
I wanted to share some of the ideas I've been thinking up. I'm still working out a lot of details but I figured now is just as well a good time to hear your thoughts on this. It's a really big wall of text though.

First off all to get this out of the way: the game will not be a direct sequel to the first game.
Also I took a bunch of pages out of the book of the gundam game, Gihren's greed(/ambition). I doubt anyone here played it.
I have no idea for a date for this, this is just throwing out ideas.

The game will have two types of turns, the Strategy turn and the Tactical turn and will be split up in three phases. The first phase has the four Terran factions competing against each other in limited warfare and diplomatic games to reinforce their position. The second phase has the Hierachy invade and the LSF established. Then the third and last phase is all about securing the win for your faction.

Like the first game, the UGC, CRF, SF and DD will be the major players. The fleet/admiral distribution will likely be the same (4/4/3/2) but each faction now also comes with two political positions. A minister of foreign affairs and one for internal affairs. Both of these positions will have a stronger roleplay element to them and will be vital for success for your faction. The ministers do not take command of a fleet but instead are responsible for the strategic position of the faction. The Strategy turn is their battlefield.

Foreign affairs handles the direct dealings with other factions. They negotiate deals such as trade treaties with other factions. Also, they have a strong voice when it comes to influencing the decisions of their faction leader.
Internal affairs is the person responsible for making the financial decisions. What is the faction's money spend on? What plans do we initiate? and so forth. His opinions will also have some small amount of influence on the leader, just not as much as the minister of foreign affairs.

General faction mechanics
Money: Generated each turn from owned planets and other locations, as well as any trade treaties and the like. Money makes the universe spin around. Your faction needs money for research, making deals, its military and initiating plans.
Resources: While money is important, you still need actual materials to build ships. Resources is mostly spend on the military, rebuilding fleets and resupplying.

Technology: Each turn a certain (limited) amount of money can be spend to further your factions tech levels. Research is pretty straightforward. You pump money into it until the goal is met and you raise your tech level by one. This will either unlock some passive bonus, a new plan to initiate or other neat stuff. (Each faction follows the same tech path).
Research will be divided in 'General' and 'Military' technology.

Political Influence: This is gonna be an important thing to keep track of. PI comes in 5 levels: Trivial, Poor, Average, Strong, Mighty
PI can be increased by things like winning military battles, skillful negotiations with other factions and such. But will decrease if your military is getting its ass handed to them, or if an admiral decides to violate a treaty, disobeys direct orders from the faction leader and so forth.

An example on how PI comes into play.
Let's say the UGC has an excess of money but is running dangerously low on resources. The CRF on the other hand has the reverse situation. The ministers of foreign affairs contact each other and agree on a 'sell resources' deal. The UGC sells 1000 resources for 1000 money. However the UGC had some rough times and their PI is currently 'Average' wheras the CRF has a 'Strong' PI. This adds a modifier of 1 to the deal. So the UGC eventually sells 1000 resources for only 900 money. Had the CRF's PI been Mighty they would have only paid 800. In reverse, if the UGC had a stronger PI than the CRF, the CRF would have had to pay more money for the deal.
Political influence affects a number of deals like these as a modifier.

Plans: Over the course of the game there will be a number of plans that can be initiated for certain effects. Plans take effect immediately and cost money, some of these plans are faction specific. Like for example, the UGC can initiate a plan to hire a mercenary fleet. This plan can be initiated again once it expires. A lot of other plans are one time things with one time effects.

Faction leaders: I mentioned these a few times now. But who are these faction leaders?
It's a me~ Spoonio~
So yeah, all factions have me as their leader. A horrible prospect I'm sure. I'll roleplay your President/CEO/Empress&Queen. You'll have to deal with their personality and quirks. They may want to declare war on an other faction for some utterly trivial reason or want to backstab an allied faction for whatever reason. This is what the minister will have to try and lead into proper ways and the Admirals may have to obey some questionable orders at times.
Also, if a minister for whatever reason missed the strategy turn deadline, is out of town for a while, the position is not filled because of lack of players or whatever other reason. The leader will handle these affairs instead. (For better or worse :p )

That's the very general gist of the Strategy turn. After which comes the Tactical turn, where the admirals get to do their things.

Spoon:

Some things you guys will be already familiar with. A fleet will have a Major and a Minor action to take each turn. However since here all players take their turn at the same time it won't matter in what order you type down your minor or major action, as the way in which things are resolved are fixed.

A list of orders I've currently got:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Major:
 -Attack: Engage a fleet within range. Uses one supply
 -Travel Starlance: Move through a starlance
 -Insystem jump: Move to any sector in the same system. Uses one supply
 -Secure sector: Claims important sector for your faction.
 
Minor:
 -Move: Moves the fleet to an adjacent sector
 -Secure sector: Claims important sector for your faction.
 -Fire Subspace missiles: Attack an enemy fleet with Subspace missiles, can fire through Starlances. Uses one supply.
 -Resupply adjacent fleet: Uses one supply to give adjacent fleet two and recover 5% strength. Supply fleets cannot resupply each other.

Takes both Minor and Major action to perform:
Resupply: Must be in a Strategic sector.
Recovers 50% strength, recovers all supply. Costs xxx resources per supply recovered. Defense -10 during resupply.
When done in a sector containing a shipyard, this also upgrades the fleet to current tech levels and/or refits fleet to different type. And repairs the fleet completely.
 
Resolve Order: Resupply -> Attack -> Move
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now the map this time around will be grid based and things are a bit more in depth.


Here's a rough example on what I have in mind.

Fleet Mechanics:
- Strength: Or otherwise translated, the Hitpoints of a fleet. Unlike the first game, taking damage does not influence the damage your fleet is able to dish out.
- Defense: This stat tends to be Zero most of the time. But there will be occasions where your fleet takes up position in an asteroidbelt and the like which will give your fleet defense against enemy attacks.
- Supply: Every fleet needs supply to operate. And once they run out, the actions they can take will be highly restricted.

There will be different types of fleets an admiral can choose from:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fleet types:
Patrol fleet:
 - Fighters: Atk 5 Rng 0-0
 - Point Defense: Atk 3 Rng 0-0
 - Main Batteries: Atk 7 Rng 0-1
 - Subspace missiles: Atk 3 Rng 1-2 <Tech level unlock>
Supply: 5
Strength: 110

Rng 0: 15
Rng 1: 7+3
Rng 2: 3

Carrier fleet:
 - Fighters: Atk 5 Rng 0-1
 - Bombers: Atk 5 Rng 1-2
 - Point Defense: Atk 3 Rng 0-0
 - Subspace missiles: Atk 3 Rng 1-2 <Tech level unlock>
Supply: 5
Strength: 100

Rng 0: 8
Rng 1: 10+3
Rng 2: 5+3
 
Artillery fleet:
 - Point Defense: Atk 3 Rng 0-0
 - Main Batteries: Atk 10 Rng 1-2
 - Subspace missiles: Atk 5 Rng 1-3 <Tech level unlock>
Supply: 4
Strength: 90

Rng 0: 3
Rng 1: 10+5
Rng 2: 10+5
Rng 3: 5
 
Supply fleet:
 - Main Batteries: Atk 5 Rng 0-2
 - Subspace missiles: Atk 4 Rng 1-2 <Tech level unlock>
Special: Uses one supply to give adjacent fleet two and recover 5% strength.
Supply: 6
Strength: 90

Rng 0: 5
Rng 1: 5+4
Rng 2: 5+4
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
(There is no difference between faction fleets. And all of this is subject to change )

As you can see, each fleet has multiple ways of attacking an enemy fleet, leading to different opitimal ranges to attack from. Patrol fleets want to be in the same sector as their opponent so they can inflict maximum damage. Whereas a Artillery fleet wants to keep its distance.
Positioning and teamwork between allied fleets will be the key to success.

The formula is straightforward. Let's take a look at the picture of the map above again:

Let's say that the 4th CRF is a Patrol fleet and the 1st DD is a Carrier fleet. Both fleets attack each other, at their current range of 1, the 4th CRF suffers 10 damage, bringing its strength down from 110 to 100 wheras the the 1st DD takes 7 damage, putting it at 93. Both fleets have spend 1 supply this turn. The 1st DD has nothing near it to resupply (since this is the CRF hometurf) and will likely do an insystem jump to G-9 next turn to take the starlance to more friendly places.

Using the same example but giving the 4th CRF 1 defense for its positioning at the asteroid. It would take 8 damage instead, 1 damage less for each weapon type its being hit with.


Both turns will use the same map, but each turn will get its own version, displaying different information. My goal is to have all important information be available from just looking at the map with pretty little icons and shizzle. So it won't become a quagmire of spreadsheets.

And that's the general gist of it.
Thoughts? Ideas? Objections? Insults?

Phantom Hoover:
OK this is probably a bit trivial, but: if you're adding all these extra mechanics to the map and game, will you be reducing the scope accordingly?

0rph3u5:
Will Strategic and Tactical Turn by after one another or happen at the same time?

Depending on whetever all decission have to happen at the same time or after one another has a huge impact on how in-faction communication can be organized and enforces certain hierarchies in faction - e.g. the decisions of the Strategic Players (Ministers) are going to be far more important if the Turn happen sequentially since the Tactical Players have to work with the decission already being fixed, it will give the Strategic Players more room to enforce policy since the Tactical Players have to react to their decissions ... with synchronous turns the decission making structure will be more fluid as all Players actions have equal weight, due to the fact that no ones actions pre-from the actions of the others, and it will certainly deminish the dominance of single players but it might also lead to less "focused" play...


EDIT: also shotgun on the New Britannia Ministy of State!  ;)

General Battuta:
Simultaneous action reveal owns in games with intrigue.

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