2009 PBEM Trillion Credit Squadron Tournament

[Jeffr0]

Would there be any interest for this?

I think the specs for 2009 are TL 15, Jump 2, and 4G with a restriction on the number of pilots.

I was thinking that we could run this Round Robin. When you turn in your fleet, you would be required to turn in your "default orders" as well. (Something like, fire one meson shot at each of the largest cruisers in order... blah blah blah.)

I am considering sending a master fleet analysis to all players: this would show your to-hit chances for each of your ships vs. all of the enemy ships. Would that level of information ruin the fun, or should this be a contest of odds-computation? I was thinking that eliminating the tedium of calculating all of that would make it more fun for average people-- plus, if one person had a program to do that, that would be a stupid unfair advantage for them versus everyone else.

I was thinking of having weekly turns. Each Tuesday, results for the turn would be published. People would have until Friday to respond with clarifying orders, or else the default orders would be used instead.

I was going to attempt to write programs to handle as much of this as possible... and collate all the resulting data into a massive after action report to help people learn and understand High Guard more easily.

So what do y'all say?

 

[far-trader]

One perspective only...

...wasn't the whole TCS battle thing pretty much killed by what's his name who computer calculated the unstoppable fleet decades ago?

That said, I think it could still be made a decent game with some working rules to guard against such a tactic and restore the original rock-paper-scissors meme.

As for what such rules might encompass I'm less sure of. I have thought about it now and then but never really worked it out.

A couple points off the top of my head for debate if desired :

Budget:

I always thought this should include operating costs (fuel, life support, maintenance - I mean the rules say include the architect fee but not the above?)

I think it should also include expendables (chiefly, if not solely, missiles) and salary/training costs (as a way of setting crew effectiveness) - Skill 1 costs base salary, Skill-2 is double* that, Skill-3 is triple*, and so with a max of Skill-5(?) ). For what period would be the issue. One load-out and a month's pay/training seems too short. Maybe 10 load-outs (including the magazine/cargo space for it?) and a year?

* mostly for training

Fuel shuttle requirements always seemed a bit low to me (10% of capacity). It meant to me that if you didn't take any damage it'd take you a long time to refuel by shuttle. There should be a penalty for that in a campaign situation, and even a contest situation imo. Not sure what though. Easiest might be to raise it to something more reasonable, even 20%. But then again the AHL only has about 5% of fuel capacity by shuttle, though it can in skim by itself at some hazard.

A price adjustment for TL might allow more interesting fleet composition, and better mirror the canonical OTU fleet composition, by allowing more ship for the MCr at TLs below 15. This is the reverse of the TL adjustment in Book 4. I can't recall where or what the numbers were but somewhere (MT?) it was suggested that the Imperial Credit Standard was a TL15 Standard, and lower TLs could be purchased at a discount being they were less valued. Again I'm not sure what factor would work to make the lower TLs a valid option, if not an attractive one.

Rules:

Emergency agility has always seemed a cheap, broken concept imo. Too easily abused. If you want agility you should have the excess power available. Not saying I don't like the idea of power management, I do. But it should be an EP decision, not a freebie. And it's not something that easily lends itself to simple HG combat. Better imo to limit agility to a max of (agility dedicated powerplant rating - power plant damage points) or (current maneuver drive rating) whichever is lower.

The frozen watch Pilot requirement always seemed an unnecessary complication to me. The simple 50% overage for frozen watch works fine.

In concert with this the crew factor always seemed to me like it should be treated more as an effectiveness rating. So a crew factor 1 means no Skill greater than 1, crew factor 2 means no Skill greater than 2, and so on. Your capital ships with the huge crews (factor 5) have the best Skills in the fleet (effective Skill-5) and the best ability to stay in the fight even taking crew hits (without resorting to frozen watch revival). Naturally carried craft crew are included, so you get the big carriers with the best fighter pilots (Skill-5) in the fleet. Compared to smaller ships with fewer crew only rating maybe a good pilot (Skill-3).

Also related to this, a flag ship should allow some effective crew bonus for the fleet, as long as it is in the fight (making it a primary target of course). The requirement of including a flag bridge with it's own computer in the design should be obvious of course. And the computer rating should be the limiter on how much fleet it can affect. Perhaps model number = 100s of ships? That might also be a good measure for carrier fighter command (treating it like it's own small dedicated fleet but not requiring a separate bridge and computer?).

Another thing that mildly bothers me is the absolute breakpoints of some designs. The "fighters can't hit fighters" and "fighters can't damage big ships" problem sums it up. The simple solution would be to allow hits, penetrations, and damage even when mathematically impossible. Perhaps the old 12 is always a hit and damage is always done would work. Or something a little more thought out. Not necessarily anything as complicated as fighter grouping for USP bonus, though that too is a good idea if easily managed.

Anyway, that's my quick thoughts. I am interested in the idea and playing, but would like to see it fixed first to make it more interesting, without impacting play of course. More design trade-offs and decisions, more chance of no single master fleet design.

On the computer design/evaluation idea that should work as long as everyone playing has equal access to the same programs. I say this because every program I've used has some creator bias in it so if different programs are used the ships may be different even if building them to the same specs.

 

[Jeffr0]

<crickets chirping>

Hmm.... doesn't look like a lot of interest here.


far-trader, is it possible to make a new table for scoring hits/damage maybe using 3d6 or percentile dice... maybe combining multiple ships with "zero" chance to hit in order to improve the odds.... Assume that everything is correct for the big weapons... just that there's some granualrity that has been omitted. Maybe ten fighters can combine to get a 1/36 chance of hitting where they would all otherwise miss? (Just guessing....)

 

[far-trader]

<crickets chirping>

Hmm.... doesn't look like a lot of interest here.

Sadly so. Maybe it's just a bad time. Christmas rush and all.

Or maybe TCS has had it's day with the old guard. You might try it over on Mongoose. Just reinvent the TCS rules (simply a set budget for a fleet for the most part, easy for everyone to grok) and go for it. I have a feeling you might get a good game going there. The possibility is almost enough to tempt me back there.

 

[pendragonman]

My take is that most of us are waiting to see exactly what the rules are for the tournament, and what restrictions will be in place to stop the radical min-maxing that what's his name and his computer did in the earlier tournaments.

 

[far-trader]

My take is that most of us are waiting to see exactly what the rules are for the tournament, and what restrictions will be in place to stop the radical min-maxing that what's his name and his computer did in the earlier tournaments.

Well don't just wait Jump in with any ideas and we'll hash things out...

One idea just hit me, what if we did blind teaming? Break up the budget and work in fleet construction, maybe even provide varying restrictions for each fleet component, then randomly group the players to form the fleets? Might that reduce the min-max issue and make a more interesting less homogeneous fleet? Something more like the canon fleets? Would that be a bigger draw?

That said, the holiday time crunch is coming. If we could get the specifics hashed out in the next week and allow a month for work on submissions and kick off the game in the new year that might be workable. Yes?

 

[Ron Gianti]

I think this is a great idea and would almost certainly join up, especially if I could continue to get help here in the rules and how to play.

My take on it though is that I'm very new to HG and TCS and when I see people listing rules changes I wonder if I could keep up. I'm not totally clear on the existing rules...

On fighters - I've read enough of the rules to figure they are not useful at TL15. Instead of modifying the rules to compensate, just live with it imho. At TL15 Fighters are obsolete. Maybe have a tourneyment at lower TL first or later?

As far as squeezing out every bit of rules lawyering to get a "winning" fleet and thus having to tweak the rules to avoid that, maybe we could all just agree to be adults? Design a fleet and play it out, maybe you'll win, maybe you'll just have fun? This is an "advanced" (read "old" ) audience we're talking about right?

my .02

 

[far-trader]

I think this is a great idea and would almost certainly join up, especially if I could continue to get help here in the rules and how to play.

Not a problem at all

My take on it though is that I'm very new to HG and TCS and when I see people listing rules changes I wonder if I could keep up. I'm not totally clear on the existing rules...

As far as squeezing out every bit of rules lawyering to get a "winning" fleet and thus having to tweak the rules to avoid that, maybe we could all just agree to be adults? Design a fleet and play it out, maybe you'll win, maybe you'll just have fun? This is an "advanced" (read "old" ) audience we're talking about right?

my .02

I was tempted to suggest we could all be adults but...

As for suggested rules changes to avoid the trap, we could just run it by the book to avoid the confusion and see how it goes.

And yes, by the book fighters are obsolete by TL15 (earlier in fact I think, around TL13 maybe, still viable at TL12 iirc). Not that there's anything really wrong with that, tactics and tools do change. It's the way they seem to be made irrelevant that kind of grates. I guess. Or the way that while canon fleets are a mix of TLs and compositions, including TL15 fighters, they don't actually work well in the combat rules. If you follow.

 

[far-trader]

I think the specs for 2009 are TL 15, Jump 2, and 4G with a restriction on the number of pilots.

Maybe the simplest way to go is for me to just shut up about changes and allow you to run it the way you want

Sooo, are those minimum specs or hard specs? Can we go more than 4G? And what is the pilot pool?

Just wondering a little too if you got that somewhere semi-official, like as in TCS Tournament play is still alive and well at cons or somewhere?

 

[Jeffr0]

In general, I prefer to play by official rules... but tweak balance with "scenario guidelines" instead of adding in custom house rules. Playing by the original rules levels the playing field and keeps things simple.

What about a by-the-book tournament... but it's a mixed TL fleet?

Maybe a short-range 'local' fleet (Jump-2, 5G) at TL 12... combined with a long-rage 'imperial' fleet (Jump-4, 3G) at TL 15. You have to split the budget between the two fleets....

Or is there some other scenario that would be more interesting...?

Perhaps... to make small fleets matter... there could be some other abstract objectives in the system-- and the fighters and battle riders could be sent off to contest them while the cruisers slug it out. I'm not sure what would make sense given the setting....

Or maybe some other campaign-level objective-- fleets could be rated on additional conflicts in addition to the all-out slug-fest

I dunno.

Hmm. Game development is a non-trivial exercise that can be exceedingly time consuming. Given that High-Guard has never been improved upon, I think it's overly ambitious to attempt to "fix it" at this point. (More starships have died under High Guard rules than all the other Traveller rulesets/battles put together.) Maybe if we had the complete data on one or two traditional TCS tournaments, we could point to the data and say, "designers: go fix a, b, and c."

Or rather... without having played the original game, I don't have a clue as to how to fix it. But maybe if we had a tournament, we could have enough experienced players after that to work out a really fine house rule modification.

 

[Jeffr0]

Maybe the simplest way to go is for me to just shut up about changes and allow you to run it the way you want

Sooo, are those minimum specs or hard specs? Can we go more than 4G? And what is the pilot pool?

Just wondering a little too if you got that somewhere semi-official, like as in TCS Tournament play is still alive and well at cons or somewhere?

Those specs are wrong; let me look them up in the front of the yellow big-floppy-book again tonight. (Marc Miller laid out the specs for the tournaments up through the year 2010 when he put that book together.)

I presume we'll mostly be using daryen's ship design program:

http://www.downport.com/amv/software/hgs.html

If anyone knows of any issues with it, please speak up. I was assuming I'd use it to validate the designs for the tournament.

What's the minimum number of contestants to make this worthwhile? Actually if we just had two players to push it all the way through once and help work out the kinks... that might be better. If we can finish that game quick... we can use the results and the after-action reports to promote the big 5-or-more person round robin tournament for later on next year.

[I'm still very much thinking out loud here. People that know what they want to do can have a lot of influence just yet-- as long as there's someone to go along with them. My main goal is to set up the plumbing for running games like this... so we can all do whatever comes next.... I'm still of a mind to use strictly original High Guard 2e rules unless there's a clear alternative. Either way, the starships must explode!]

 

[pendragonman]

"Splashing noises"

Ok So what if we set no more than 10% of the budget be spent at tech 15, 20% at tech 14, 30% at tech 13 and the rest from tech 12?


We further decline asteroid ships and put an upper size limit on battle riders of perhaps 10k or 20k dtons?

Thoughts?

 

[Jeffr0]

"Splashing noises"

Ok So what if we set no more than 10% of the budget be spent at tech 15, 20% at tech 14, 30% at tech 13 and the rest from tech 12?


We further decline asteroid ships and put an upper size limit on battle riders of perhaps 10k or 20k dtons?

Thoughts?

Far Trader... Ron Gianti...

Do either (or both!) of you accept this challenge?

If so, feel free to counter with whatever factor you want: for instance, "I play that as long as the pilot limit is set to 200 and each player gets a single black globe."

Anybody else out there up for a game, feel free to jump in here....

 

[The Dragon Master]

I'd like to get in on this, but this would be my first time building a fleet, and my first time engaging in combat (haven't yet been able to play, and only received CT within the last week or two). But if that isn't a problem you can count me in.

 

[Jeffr0]

Those that are new to the game may want to play a game of Billion Credit Squadron instead. That can begin as soon as two players have their fleets ready.

We could probably finish that game before pendragonman and his opponent(s) can finish designing all their ships.

Alternately, we can all jump into the "monster" game and figure it out as we go. :evil laughter:

Just tossing out ideas here...

 

[Ron Gianti]

Far Trader... Ron Gianti...

Do either (or both!) of you accept this challenge?

If so, feel free to counter with whatever factor you want: for instance, "I play that as long as the pilot limit is set to 200 and each player gets a single black globe."

Anybody else out there up for a game, feel free to jump in here....

I totally accept. I have no factors to request, I don't know enough about the game. I only ask my virtual fleet for mercy, since I may make some serious mistakes, leading to the death of many of my virtual subjects in greivous combat... Expect me to make mistakes, blow me up, but let me know if I did something "wrong"...

 

[far-trader]

I totally accept. I have no factors to request, I don't know enough about the game. I only ask my virtual fleet for mercy, since I may make some serious mistakes, leading to the death of many of my virtual subjects in greivous combat... Expect me to make mistakes, blow me up, but let me know if I did something "wrong"...

I will also accept and make your destruction as mercifully quick as possible.

(nothing says overconfidence like braggadocio, I'm sure I've just sealed my fate as the loser )

I typically try to put flavour in my fleets rather than simply the biggest hammer. And I'm sure you'll have quick answers to any questions that come up.

I need to refresh my memory of AMV's HGS to recall where I (iirc) spotted some bias. Vaguely recall some hardpoint and power allocation bugs/bias (again iirc). It's a great program though, so I can probably work with it anyway. I like the old fashioned manual method but for TCS HGS would speed things up. I'll go check my version is the most recent and run a hand crafted design through it and see if I spot any issues. Tonight with any luck.

So, we have two players. Will you do the honour of refereeing Jeffr0? If we get more I'll volunteer to take a ref chair for the next pair. We'll work out specific contact procedures later.

I think we might as well go by the books, TCS and HG, of course. Leave "embellishment" for later games. You have access to both Ron?

And can we get the definitive Annual Tournament Specifications, at your leisure, Jeffr0. Might as well keep it "official"

 

[Jeffr0]

So, we have two players. Will you do the honour of refereeing Jeffr0? If we get more I'll volunteer to take a ref chair for the next pair. We'll work out specific contact procedures later.

I will certainly ref this one.

And can we get the definitive Annual Tournament Specifications, at your leisure, Jeffr0. Might as well keep it "official"

Wait... we've got Ron Gianti pairing off with pendragonman's funky mixed-tech proposal.

We've got The Dragon Master wanting in on a game, too. Are you wanting to go against him in a "official" 2009 Tournament Spec game?

I'll be happy to attempt to manage two seperate TCS battles simultaneously. Whatever y'all want. A four-way round robin where every fleet battles every other fleet would be insane, but possibly more interesting-- if everyone can agree on the specifications, of course.

(I am crunching through the rules in preperation...)

 

[Ron Gianti]

I typically try to put flavour in my fleets rather than simply the biggest hammer. And I'm sure you'll have quick answers to any questions that come up.

So, we have two players. Will you do the honour of refereeing Jeffr0? If we get more I'll volunteer to take a ref chair for the next pair. We'll work out specific contact procedures later.

I think we might as well go by the books, TCS and HG, of course. Leave "embellishment" for later games. You have access to both Ron?

Indeed. I have the Book 0 - 8 reprint and the DVD including TCS, which I just printed out on the work printer and put in plastic binding. Thumbed through it, I better read through in total! I'm a lot more excited about designing ships knowing they'll get "used"... I downloaded and will check out that program too.

 

[far-trader]

Wait... we've got Ron Gianti pairing off with pendragonman's funky mixed-tech proposal.

We've got The Dragon Master wanting in on a game, too. Are you wanting to go against him in a "official" 2009 Tournament Spec game?

I dunno, I'm confused now Let me get back to you when I find my brain (gotta run, will figure it out later... )