Anyone still playing Brilliant Lances?

[wnourse1]

I've just picked it up again after a long hiatus in gaming in general and went to play out a sample scenario. Wanting to pick a simple one, I picked the Vampire scenario and began filling out the ship record sheets.

What a pain - particularly since the sheets don't have enough slots for weapons and defenses aboard the destroyer (or any of the other larger ships). So taking a trick from Squadron Strike, I figured why not use a spreadsheet as a template that could be printed out before each battle? In addition, I could put in the base data for the ships that are included with the game, vastly reducing setup time.

Has anyone else done anything like this, or would anyone have interest?

I've got the template done and the data for the Midu Agashaam destroyer entered. The downside is that it's two pages, rather than one and does not yet have the accumulated G track or the heading info, although I'm thinking that I could scan those off an original sheet and embed the image into the sheet. I'll test it out and see how it comes out. If it seems to work and I'm feeling ambitious, I'll probably add it to one of the versions of the ship design spreadsheets, which will aid me in the campaign I'm running.

 

[Jeffr0]

I have BL...

I intend to run some games with it this year, but I'm currently tied up with High Guard tournaments.

I've scanned the record sheets and thought about filling them out for the sample ships at some point... that way it could be "print and play" and all that. I would also like to show step by step how each ship is built with the design rules.

Maybe I should play some games before I do all that work...

But that is what I'd like to work toward....

 

[the angle]

I have a copy, but I've never used anything from it except the maps and beautiful counters to play Mayday, which I consider to be both a simpler and better game. That's the whole reason why I bought BL, in fact -- to get the maps and counters.

Steve

 

[mike wightman]

I always found Battle Rider to be a much better game to actually play. Ended up using BR with the occasional rule from BL.

Rarely play either now unfortunatly

 

[The Oz]

I always found Battle Rider to be a much better game to actually play. Ended up using BR with the occasional rule from BL.

Rarely play either now unfortunatly

Me, too. I like BR, even if I don't like the way it treats lasers as armor-penetrating.

 

[jfetters]

We really need to run some of these online...

 

[aramis]

I've played, since I got it, exactly 3 games of BL. In every case, the SFB player opponent said, "This is too much work!"

 

[wnourse1]

I would be up for either BL or BR online.

 

[robject]

So tell me about Battle Rider

What's Battle Rider like? I've heard good things about it, but never seen it.

 

[Whipsnade]

What's Battle Rider like? I've heard good things about it, but never seen it.

Robject,

Battlerider is Mayday movement combined with a stripped down, critical hit focused combat system partially derived from HG2 and MT. Sensors are added to the mix also, rather well IMHO. There are other rules dealing with topics like commanders, formations, and the like.

Because the combat system is focused on critical hits, the game does not play well with the small ships characters will be normally be flying.

Regards,
Bill

 

[warwizard]

I've read through the brillant lances game, designed up ships and produced hit location charts and did some solo play, but never did it face to face till this past summer, used the complete sensor rules. native player was tasked with defending 3 refueling locations using whatever forces he could build with 5 Bcr... paying for all the ordance as well as the ships and small craft, had 4 or 5 different designs of missiles, two main ships with about 50 fighters and a couple of small craft, everything at TL-10. The intruder deployed a single ship, no craft, and two missile designs, one of which had airframe, anti grav and fuel scoops, and a fusion rocket, and power for 4 weeks of antigrav and electronics endurance, intended to provide sensor platforms in the gas giant to try to sniff out a defender before comitting the main ship to the gas giant.

Play proceeded as follows, defender sets 1 ship landed on an airless moon in orbit at furthurest gas giant, about 15 fighters deployed in a globe around the gas giant about 3 million Km out, (sensors on the fighters are not good enough to provide coverage unless somthing is thrusting really hard.), repeat the same deployment on innermost GG, and one ship's boat and 5 recon drones at the middle GG. Intruder jumps in well short of the system, nearly oot cloud distance, throws on a few g turns and drifts for a week, launching a bunch of 1000 Au communicator equipped simi autonomous missiles and the gas giant investigation missiles, nearly half of his total ordance, and all the gg missiles, which are on a 0-0 orbital insertion course for the gas giant. and the other flights of missiles diverge somewhat, sending 10 or so past every moon close enough to get a ping even if the ship was landed and powered down.

Native player spots the gas giant missiles when they start their deacceleration burn some two hours out (+2.5 sensitivity thrusting in excess of 4 g's with the exaust pointing at the sensing units) and orders all his pickets to go to active sensors, and readies his reserve fighters, and sends a few drones to an interception course to get a good look at what's comming,
and they pass near enough to get a lock on one missile each, but there are several hundred in the flight, an hour later a second batch of missiles pass the drones at very high speed, the drones get detection but no locks as the combined vector was nearly 1.2 million Km/turn. reviewing the written orders on the attack missiles, they are not going to attack the drones, so they pass on by the drones. The launching ship is some 30 light minutes back, so there are written orders, which take 2 turns to change in response to any reports. no furthur orders are given and the gas giant missiles make it to the gas giant, and the attack missiles make their high speed flybys on the moons. The native ship is detected but not locked and the missiles are out of range for their nuclear detonation lasers, and are unable to maneuver to attack positions, and use their fuel to maneuver to get a flyby on the middle gas giant. Game is called at this point, intruder has spotted and target locked a handfull of fighters and got a detection on the main ship, but not enough info to localize beyond which moon it happened at. Native player has a point location of the ladars that are doing the target locks way outside their engagement envelope, knows there is hundreds of hostile missiles lurking in the gas giant, and that their ship was seen. Their 2nd ship is going to need a week to get to either of the gas giants under attack, and the intruder shuts down their target locks and maneuvers for the middle GG, winning the engagement by refuelling and jumping. Both players said that their missiles and fighters needed much better sensors, and that the scenario was just too much work.

 

[Whipsnade]

I've read through the brillant lances game, designed up ships and produced hit location charts and did some solo play, but never did it face to face till this past summer, used the complete sensor rules. (very big snip of scenario description)

Warwizard,

An interesting story riddled with so many massive holes as to make it's worth as an example nil.

Your intruder exited jump in the Oort cloud and targeted the middle gas giant? Did you bother to look up what might be the plausible distances involved or did you just make things up?

The inner edge of Sol's Oort cloud is thought to be 2,000 AUs out. Sedna, thought to be one of the nearest objects aside from comets that might have once belonged to the Oort cloud, has an orbit whose closest approach is ~74 AUs out. Neptune, the system's outermost gas giant, orbits at ~30 AUs out. A ship would have to cover 1970 AUs to reach Sol's outer gas giant from the inner edge of the Oort cloud.

In your scenario, the intruder exits jump at "nearly oot cloud distance" and then "throws on a few g turns and drifts for a week". The intruder also launches "several hundred" drones towards the system's middle gas giant with amounts to only "half of his total ordance". Despite having exited jump around 2000 AU out, the intruder is only "30 light minutes back" of her several hundred drones when they pass by the middle gas giant a week later.

Giving you a mulligan on the "middle" gas giant orbit and calling it comparable to Neptune's, your intruder managed to cover about 1966 AUs(1) in week after throwing on "a few g turns".

Those must have been some really wicked gee turns.

The numbers here are just too screwy for your scenario to be taken seriously. The travel times are nonsense and I don't even want to imagine launching several hundred missiles in a Brilliant Lances game. The latter sounds like something you'd see being played in the anteroom of Grognards' Hell.


Regards,
Bill

1 - That's starting from a point 2000 AU out and reaching a point 30 light-minutes, or roughly 4 AU, behind the drones as they performed their flyby of the gas giant at 30 AU for a total of 1966 AUs traveled.

 

[warwizard]

Actually I did not provide full details on the scenario, you're assuming the intruder started with 0 vector relative to the system, I was placing the scenario where there was a high relative vector between the origin and destination system. For example Sol and Bernard's star have a very high relative motion vector, add in the orbital vector of whatever planet the mission launched from, and place the jump entry "ahead" of the system with the vector heading in system, and the few g-turns becomes a course correction to move the vector close to the gas giant. I did not think full details were needed to further the discussion in the thread concerning the amount of work involved in using the rules and what my players thought of it.
Yes the scenario in question was a test of the Imperium game mechanic of having a single scout squadron prevent enemy movement through the system, so the Sol-Bernards's star jump was reasonable assumption, and using the god given vector to conserve fuel and reduce detection chances during the approach (as well as how far out he arrived)was the player's decision not mine, I was just the referee.
We used a vector movement system where the ship or missile moved the distance of last turn's vector + 1/2 of this turn's acceleration, and place future position pin at distance = last turn's vector + this turn's acceleration. In other words we used real physics for the movement, and the players said this was too fiddley, and took too much time to move the units.

 

[Whipsnade]

Actually I did not provide full details on the scenario, you're assuming the intruder started with 0 vector relative to the system, I was placing the scenario where there was a high relative vector between the origin and destination system.

Warwizard,

So you're saying that the intruder exited jump with a vector allowed it to cover nearly 2,000 AUs in about a week? That means they already had a vector of roughly 492,000,000 meters per second. And you then added a few g-turns?

You do realize that the number I quoted before you added the g-turns is greater than c, don't you? It takes light roughly 11.5 days to cross 2,000 AUs, but your intruder somehow does it in seven.

I'm sorry, I simply don't buy it. You can add the intruder's thrust to Earth's orbital vector plus the relative vector between Sol and Bernard anyway you want. The numbers still make no sense whatsoever.


Regards,
Bill

 

[Ron Gianti]

Play proceeded as follows.

I just got this game on Ebay for under $20 unopened.

Reading your detailed battle description has made me want to leave it unopened...

I'm barely juggling the games I have now, no brain power left for something that complex... at least not in May...

 

[Zparkz]

Ron,
you can safely open the box. BL isn't meant to cover those scales warwizard is quoting. BL is more detailed than MT space combat (which I by the way never understood to this day). If you want something simpler, Battle Rider may be the ticket, however it does not scale well with smaller crafts as it is meant for multikiloton crafts.

 

[aramis]

Ron,
you can safely open the box. BL isn't meant to cover those scales warwizard is quoting. BL is more detailed than MT space combat (which I by the way never understood to this day). If you want something simpler, Battle Rider may be the ticket, however it does not scale well with smaller crafts as it is meant for multikiloton crafts.

MT space combat is just Bk5 with tasks.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Heh, I found the basic starship combat rules difficult to deal with, but not from a rules mechanic standpoint. Rather it was me trying to invent where and what the next "hull" hit did to the player's scout ship.

"And a pulse laser takes out ... uh ... the galley! No beer tonight!" By that time the ship usually looked like Swiss cheese. That's when I usually sped up the combat process with a few "lucky" critical hits.

Our group, me specifically, was tempted to purchase May Day all those years ago, but held off. SFB was the hot item at the time. Combined with all the other wargames that were on the market in the 80s, I just didn't want to invest in yet another system.

I have BL, have gone through the rules, but the copy I was given is missing some stuff.