[geeks] SFB (was Re: [rescue] Biggest drives (and SVM) in a U60?)

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Fri, 02 Jun 2006 @ 22:30 -0400, Phil Stracchino said:

> (redirected from Rescue)
> 
> Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> > What is amazing is how some things can circulate through a group of
> > people. 
> > 
> > For example, when I was in high school, I played Starfleet Battles,
> > Starfire, and other games like that.  One of my friends had a set of
> > manuals, SSD sheets, and other game materials from Starfleet Battles.
> 
> I fondly remember Starfleet Battles.  But some of the ship designs,
> particularly Federation, were *terrible*.  No Klingon ship in the game
> could bring more than 50% of its armament to bear on a target directly
> ahead, and the situation off the bow to one side or the other - or off
> the beam - was even worse.  There wasn't a Federation ship in the game
> that could fight its way out of a wet paper bag.  MANY ships didn't have
> enough power available to make better than half speed with all shields
> and weapons fully powered up, and quite a few were worse than that.

To me, that was an accurate reflection of the Star Trek universe, both
the original series and the books of the time.

Sure, I could optimize a ship design, but that would not be very realistic.
Every race had different abilities, philosophies, construction methods and
materials, etc. Optimizing a ship based only on efficient use of BPV is
highly unrealistic, and would eliminate a lot of the strategic elements
of the game.

Basically, it assumes equality among all ship builders, and that wasn't
true in the Star Trek universe.

So yes, ship designs often sucked, but most of that was on purpose.

One thing that helped was to create scenarios, rather than try to create
equalized fleet engagements.  For example, a pair of Federation heavy
cruisers protecting a few cargo vessels from Orion Pirates.

Another aspect of this was what ruleset you used.  The simple rules
eliminated a lot of the nuances, particularly some of the advantages and
disadvantages of various races.

For example, the Federation had the best build quality, and their designs
minimized internal damage on hull hits by only allowing damage in the hit
section. They had redirectable shield reserve generators, and torpedo overload
ability. They also could use probes as huge torpedoes. You lost most of that
if you didn't use the complex advanced rules.

I admit, it was really hard to play for long with the advanced rules,
but it sure was a better game if you did.

Some random notes/thoughts:

Klingon firing arcs: that was deliberate. Klingons focused on forward
firepower and boarding capabilities. Most of their ships have a large
rear blind spot. It would have been wrong for SFB to do otherwise.
Their construction methods were inferior to the Federation, and their
philosophy was expansionist and warlike.  They were belligerants.

By contrast, the Federation vessels were optimized for long range
combat, defensive shielding, minimization of internal damage, and large
firing arcs instead of forward firepower.  Again, it would have been
wrong for SFB to correct that.  The Federation's primary strengths and
philosophies were exploration, research, diplomacy, and expansion of the
UFP territory.  They were defensive by nature.

Overall I didn't think it was too bad, and later versions of the rules
were much better overall.

The Cadet rules were easy to use, but really far too simple to get
realistic battles.  You also found a lot of the ship limitations harder
to deal with.

The highest level of rules was the Commander Rule set.  Great battles
and almost any ship could win if it had a good captain who know how to
use it, but very complex to play.

> So a friend of mine and I analyzed a whole bunch of SSDs from
> different ship classes and different races, and reverse-engineered the
> starship construction rules until we had a set of rules that we could
> use to build a copy of any ship in the game and come out within a few
> percent of the listed BPV (build point value).  While we were at it,
> we wrote a damage allocation table program that ran on a HP-80 (iirc).

That's a neat idea.  

However, it doesn't take into account limitations not covered by a
purely materialistic view of BPV.  Or at least, your description doesn't
appear to.  It looks like you did a pure optimization without regard to
wether or not such a ship could have been built.

SFB didn't provide a way of tying BPV to the technology and build
capabilities of the various races. At least, that's how I remember it. I
didn't have my own copy of the Designer's Rulebook. It might have
covered that, I can't remember.

Optimizing ship designs purely based on BPV is really only realistic if
you assume equal capabilities among the factions, something which is not
true in the Star Trek universe.

If you want pure ship design rules, Starfire is much simpler and you
design your own ships any way you see fit.

I would really like to see a computer game based on Starfire rules.

Also, Starfire is ripe for someone to come along and modify the rules to
handle more nuances, like perhaps take into account tech levels and
build capabilities.

The game as it stands is mainly a contest among equals.

Aside:

In the ST:NG TV series, the writers completely forgot the variations in
ship capability, and also stopped having any moving battles.  Instead,
in ST:NG the ships simply faced each other a few hundred meters apart
and slugged it out.  If you think about it, ships capable of fighting at
high sublight speeds would never have done that.  SFB ranges were quite
long, with each hex being fairly large.

Ironically it was the orignal series where you got to see more realistic
high speed combat that took ship design into account.  I'm thinking of
the meeting with the Romulans and their slow ship but powerful mauler
gun, or the high speed fight with the Gorn warship.  

Large fleet engagements: I could see them being slower affairs, simply
because of the logistical problem of organizing a large fight.

More irony: the whole point of the Galaxy class phaser array was to give
a large firing arc without sacrificing power, and yet the ST:NG writers
never used that in any show that I'm aware of.  The ship had rear
defense and a big firing arc with a lot of power, and the writers only
used that in one, maybe two episodes.  Otherwise, all battles in ST:NG
were ship-of-the-line broadside combat.

Ridiculous.


-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- [Well, I have entered the "metallic years." 
Silver in my hair, gold in my teeth, lead in my ass... -- Sheldon Hall in
the rescue list]