MT Only: Board gaming/wargaming the Rebellion

[McPerth]

I have a question as I've never played Imperium. In that game, with 1 week turns and individual units and their jump movements modeled, how long does it take typically to conquer a subsector? That will give you an idea of how long realisticaly it might take for a unit at the strategic level to move through a hostile subsector.

I believe Simon's thinking of FFW.

FFW rate of conquest is mostly going to depend on besieging higher-tech worlds with lots and lots of defenses. That can take a while ...

I agree simon refers to FFW, not Imperium.

This said, it's quite a time since i played FFW, but IIRC, the time that it took to take a subsector depended mainly on the opposition.

As you say, if you have to bessiege a high tech (and I guess hi pop) world, it can take long, or not, depending on how it is defended.

To begin, if there's no fleet there (just the SDBs and defending battalions), you can just bypass it, as it represents little to no risk leaving it behind your lines (at most, they can be a base for enemy fleets to refuel, if they reach it). If it has only its planetary squadrons (if any), they can be easily destroyed by your fleet, and after that just bypass it again.

OTOH, if you have to occupy it, the SDBs are destroyed quite quickly if they don't disperse, if you have a large enough fleet, and same for planetary forces, that will only last 2-3 turns against a large fleet bombing (no matter how many of them you need to fight). And if you have also enough ground troops, such a planet is likely to fall in the same week as your fleet arrives to it.

Let's imagine Jewell (TL 12, 120 SDBs and 12C battalions planetary defenses. If the Zhodani make a strong effort against it, with about 50 bombardment factors, and have not to fight any squadrons there, as they arrive, they would fight the SDBs, that, unless dispersing, would loss about 40-50% in a turn (and if they disperse, the Zhodani can directly attack the planet). Once SDBs are neutralized (either by destroying them or by dispersal), naval bombing has about 50% chances to produce 50% losses among the Planetary defense forces (and with no risk to the fleet).

In fact, I think FFW does not represent well in this sense the canon history, where taking such a HiPop planet would take months at best (the invasion of earth took about 8 monts, again IIRC).

See that in this game, a subsector is easily taken in one month if only defended by reserve fleet and the attacking fleet is large enough (as would happen in FFW), but it can take quite longer to take it if well defendend. In fact, if the front stabilizes and fleets can support each other, it can well become and immobile attrition war...

I think I've got a way to minimally model communications and intel lag at a strategic level though. For the time being let's assume a 3 month turn. Normally if a unit is moving tactically and maintaining unit cohesion and command, and moving through potentially hostile territory it gets to move 1 subsector per turn. That includes sending scouts into neighbouring subsectors and maintaining tight communications with HQ and neighbouring friendly units.

However in theory it might be possible to move faster than that by sacrificing scouting and not maintaining tight communications lines. So to model this you do allow units to move 2 subsectors in one turn, BUT the unit's movement order is written down secretly 1 turn in advance, perhaps immediately at the end of the player's previous turn. It cannot be changed to take into account anything that happens during the enemy player's intervening turn. This simulates the unit's lack of awareness of changes in the strategic situation while it's performing it's fast dash.

There would need to be rules about whether you can only do a dash if the first subsector you move through is friendly, or only lightly defended. Maybe you can only do it if the forces in the intervening subsector are below a certain threshold and you defeat them by a sound margin in an 'extra' combat phase, otherwise the dash ends prematurely.

You wouldn't have to write down orders like this if you don't intend to make any dashes, but many players might choose to pretend to do so even if they have no plans for any of their units to do this, in order to keep the other players guessing.

Simon Hibbs

In fact, the true length of a turn is quite irrelevant for the game itself. I set it at a month to ease (or so I thought) time accounting and allowing for a long game.

See that the Rebellion lasted in canon history about 7 years (1117-1124) before degenerating in Hard Times, the last 3-4 of them being mostly attrition war and black war, so the high intesity war would be about 3-4 years, 35-50 turns if they are one month and 12-16 if they are 3 months long. The main changes I'd do if the turn was set at 3 months would be to make the economic turn every 4 turns (once a year) instead of every 3 turns (once a quarter) and to allow administrative movement (something you also talk about, BTW) to be faster (after all, it mainly represents the transfer of forces from one front to another).

What I'm really surprised about all the comments to now is that no one has talked about the game system itself, just about the length of the turn (and its implicatoins it communications delays)...

 

[simonh]

Quite right, I did mean FFW.

The game system looks fine, I'd have to actualy play it to be able to comment much further. I developed a tabletop wargame to run at my local club a few years ago and found that there is no substitute for actual playtesting. The final game was hugely different from my initial design.

Simon Hibbs

 

[Orr]

Quite right, I did mean FFW.

FFW is strategic, but it's still too "small" to model the Rebellion. You're not going to want juggle squadrons and brigades fighting in single star systems while engaged in a war whose map ranges from the Rim to the Marches and Antares to Dark Nebula.

You might as well try to play the entirety of Operation Barbarossa with ASL.

FFW also lacks economics/logistics rules, both of which were extremely important to the various factions in the Rebellion. (Economics/logistics are always extremely important, it's just that many of our wargames ignore them for simplicity's sake.)

Finally, FFW lacks POLITICAL rules and any game modeling the Rebellion simply must have those. The Rebellion is a political struggle and the victor(s) will win more by political means than military ones.

In previous threads similar to this one, the consensus suggested Avalon Hill's Kingmaker as a model. That game blends together economics, dynastic concerns, local and national politics, diplomacy, and straightforward military action with area movement to model the multi-factional War of the Roses.

Using Kingmaker as a very rough analogy...

• The subsector is going to be the smallest area in play.
• Each subsector will be rated for factors like economic power, infrastructure, intrinsic defense, loyalty, and the like.
• Subsectors can change loyalty through outright conquest, politics, bribery, and so forth.
• How much a subsector "assists" with a faction will depend on it's loyalty to that faction. A player could occupy a subsector and still not fully control it.
• The players will compete against each other by military, diplomacy, and political actions.
• There would "event" cards, both randomly drawn and deliberately played, which effect a player or players by various means.

A multi-player, grand strategy, political/diplomacy game modeling the Rebellion would a hugely fun. Designing such a game would be a great deal of work however.

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

Burgundian Crossbowmen For The Win!

FFW is strategic, but it's still too "small" to model the Rebellion. You're not going to want juggle squadrons and brigades fighting in single star systems while engaged in a war whose map ranges from the Rim to the Marches and Antares to Dark Nebula.

You might as well try to play the entirety of Operation Barbarossa with ASL.

FFW also lacks economics/logistics rules, both of which were extremely important to the various factions in the Rebellion. (Economics/logistics are always extremely important, it's just that many of our wargames ignore them for simplicity's sake.)

Finally, FFW lacks POLITICAL rules and any game modeling the Rebellion simply must have those. The Rebellion is a political struggle and the victor(s) will win more by political means than military ones.

In previous threads similar to this one, the consensus suggested Avalon Hill's Kingmaker as a model. That game blends together economics, dynastic concerns, local and national politics, diplomacy, and straightforward military action with area movement to model the multi-factional War of the Roses.

Using Kingmaker as a very rough analogy...

• The subsector is going to be the smallest area in play.
• Each subsector will be rated for factors like economic power, infrastructure, intrinsic defense, loyalty, and the like.
• Subsectors can change loyalty through outright conquest, politics, bribery, and so forth.
• How much a subsector "assists" with a faction will depend on it's loyalty to that faction. A player could occupy a subsector and still not fully control it.
• The players will compete against each other by military, diplomacy, and political actions.
• There would "event" cards, both randomly drawn and deliberately played, which effect a player or players by various means.

A multi-player, grand strategy, political/diplomacy game modeling the Rebellion would a hugely fun. Designing such a game would be a great deal of work however.

Kingmaker probably would be a good fit since they both have the same setting: a kingdom torn by civil war and multiple claims to the Throne. Hell, they both have mercenaries and several heirs to mess with. (Important safety tip: Never, ever take custody of an Heir! They only bring trouble and death with them. Go for the Archboshoprics.)

Can't lie, I am interested in this topic since one of my players when asked what he wanted to do responded "Put Count Interhaus on the Throne.", which since HIM Vlad II hasn't died or abdicated means he wants to play Kingmaker...IN SPACE. Just be sure, I put it to him just like that "KM..in space" and he agreed and now I am on the hunt for ways to make that a possibility. Players, always with the monkey wrenches...