Mayday Guard- Bringing Movement To HG2

[kilemall]

This is the thread to discuss my in development version of HG2 which for reference purposes I will be calling Mayday Guard.

I have been 'fandancing' as some put it about certain features I have in more or less firm conceptual states, as a means to further thinking about maybe doing something similar for their solution sets to whatever design problem they have.

Apparently uncertainty and conceptual assertions are troublesome to some.

Rather then upend other people's threads with upset over my posting, I'll post most of it here and the ugly workings of developing a complex system can occur in a clearly labelled area to be read or ignored as desired.

I may still 'fandance' though, it's a risk.

 

[Whipsnade]

Good idea. Let me repost my last response in the thread you referenced. It should keep things honest.

Whip says gotta have a whole system.

I said no such thing. I said you currently have nothing, not even a partial system and you need to concentrate on getting at least one partial system part play-test ready. I wrote:

Concentrate on one system, something like one type of movement or combat involving one type of weapon, get that to a "beta" level, and post it here for comments.

From a pedantic standpoint I should have written sub-system, but the comment still stands.

Whip I have maneuver completely sussed out on it's own...

Completely sussed out except for...

... but the part that's not done yet is the interactions with damage and armor and maybe I want to go back and mess with it to get the full ranged effect to ensure real choice between full accel, agility and weapons, with again no one perfect solution set.

... which means you don't have a maneuver system. You have a grab bag of ideas you want a maneuver system to produce, but you don't have an actual maneuver system which will produce those results.

Which means you have nothing.

I'm not worried about the scale switch...

You should be. It may seem completely intuitive to you. What it seems like to someone else is what actually matters. Other people have to read you rules and get them to work. Other people aren't going to be able to read your mind to get the rules to work.

Let me share two maxims Rickover taught those is my profession:

Face facts brutally

If you cannot write something down, you do not understand it.

You can't or won't face the facts that you have more ideas than actual rules, that you have a wish list instead of actual sequence of play. The fact that you cannot yet write down your maneuver "system" means that you don't yet understand that system and the fact that you don't understand that system means the system doesn't actually exist.

While you know what you want the system to do, you don't know how a system could do it.

Again, you have nothing.

This is more like a Harpoon time/space zoom...

You're going to seamlessly accomplish the time/space "zoom" a computer program does with "pencil & paper" or "map & chit" methods? Okay.

I think I have already proven with things like the QND Medical system...

I'm the guy who asked you to put together a complete document and post it in the File Library, remember? That QND medical system is not a war game, however.

I'll continue to post for them and just have to live with your disappointment and critique.

Quit playing the martyr.

I haven't told you to stop posting. I told you to stop teasing us with unsupported claims. I told you that, if you have something, show it to us. The fact that you can't or won't show us anything speaks more loudly than your various claims.

Remember. all this began when you claimed weapon ranges vary in your rules. Sadly, not enough of your rules actually exist as rules instead of as wishes to support that claim. You want weapon ranges to vary, but you haven't shown us how weapon ranges vary.

Good luck. There's a lot of work ahead, but your QND medical system shows you should be able to handle it.

 

[Whipsnade]

Apparently uncertainty and conceptual assertions are troublesome to some.

They're troubling because they're usually nothing more than vaporware.

Remember, you flatly stated: "In my implementation though, they DO have big range differences."

Apparently that statement was merely a conceptual assertion?

How might "... optimal engagement bands for maneuver decisions..." be achieved in your alleged rules? Or is that too just more conceptual smoke being blown up our collective bottoms?

Tell us how you think you might be able to accomplish all these design goals. Or is all this just another wish list?

Inquiring minds want to know. More importantly, inquiring minds can help.

 

[kilemall]

I'm not going to bother responding to every statement you made. Playing win the internet with you is a waste of time, I've done years of it with other people on other fora and quite frankly I'm done playing nice with people who are more interested in telling other people how they are wrong then listening or god forbid actually ask a question to determine facts or accept that development is development.

I understand where you come from, being from a family of engineers and manufacturers/aviation/electronic techs, and in computers where having fuzzy understandings is dangerous. However, this is a game forum, Hyman Rickover is who we need if I was designing a reactor, but I'm not, this is a game of cards and play, leave him at the dockyard, he's not invited.

Yes I recognize the system is not complete, but the precise detailing of where the sticking points are, the thoroughness with which I tackled the sensor and engagement range FIRST with the future intents and general outlines firmly in mind so that the sensor rules true up with the speed and engagement ranges settled, should tell you I am well on my way to a working system.

When I say the system will do it, it will. Just like I may not know the exact twists and turns of coding a program before I write it, I can still know what it is going to do, what my basic approach is, but I also know that quirks or an unappreciated aspect of the spec or data may alter what I do or how, in fundamental ways not ready to be 'published' yet.

I may not have all the code down and compiled at a given moment. But I know where it's going.

To me game rules are far more like a program that can be deleted, edited, quickly thrown out en masse and redone, then a nuclear reactor part that must be beyond six sigma QA.

I'll throw a professional philosophy back at you since you are so fond of lecturing.

In our IT shop we basically run a 10:1 hours ratio of thinking and communicating and clarifying what the spec is, and what the larger business process is, architectural and support and scaling considerations, before we actually sit down and code.

I am in the 10 part of that ratio, and so no it's not written down, but it's not fuzzy either.

It's all in my head as one big interactive matrice, with one part cascading through affecting the others, and so I need to mess with ALL of it at the same time while having working values plugged in for SOME of it so I have a baseline of systems to evaluate the other not done systems.

We also can critique each other's stuff, from the lowliest printer jockey to the Supreme Mainframe Architect, and will point out issues or dangers without rancor or ego, and ideas and improvements flow regardless of 'rank'.

That's what I expect when I post here, so it's not like I show up and will cry if someone disagrees with my geenyes, I WANT critiques.

But I DARN well am not here for a dressing down like I'm an idiot unprepared CPO at your yard when I architect better then that.

And I'm taking on the Big Kahuna, a crazy Traveller game design goal likely better people then I have tried and lost at. I'm doing damn well at it so far, and nothing you've had to say is terribly helpful OR is causing me to alter my approach to this.

Want to be helpful? Work on discussion on parts I have talked about, or bitesize chunks of parts in flux, or the primary problem at the moment of armor/sliding or pen to damage to range to tohit to armor schemes to economic effect, or my sequence of approach to the problem set, or even ask reasonable questions without an Apollo project design spec and a 'you're wrong' attitude.

Want to help? You're welcome to. Challenge? I'll challenge back. Tell me not to post my way or have a pouncing approach rather then questioning? Hit the road.

Your choice.

 

[kilemall]

They're troubling because they're usually nothing more than vaporware.

Remember, you flatly stated: "In my implementation though, they DO have big range differences."

Apparently that statement was merely a conceptual assertion?

How might "... optimal engagement bands for maneuver decisions..." be achieved in your alleged rules? Or is that too just more conceptual smoke being blown up our collective bottoms?

Tell us how you think you might be able to accomplish all these design goals. Or is all this just another wish list?

Inquiring minds want to know. More importantly, inquiring minds can help.

I'm down to details of damage, the business end of the HG design, not vaporware. But I understand that this has to be right before I compile working values to be tested.

See, this question

How might "... optimal engagement bands for maneuver decisions..." be achieved in your alleged rules?

is functional, this

Or is that too just more conceptual smoke being blown up our collective bottoms?

is just curmudgeonly grousing for your emotional reaction to my fandancing.

I will answer the first kind of statement, even with the alleged nastiness in it. You can leave the other back where it belongs.

Optimal engagement bands refers to an HG version of the sort of design and fighting problem WWI/WWII gun battleships and cruisers had.

A combination of penetrating power, arc, range, and armor relative to all these factors meant that in a battle between two ship types, one might do well at extreme range, the other will do better at medium range, and one or both might be easily destroyed closer in, or one have advantage.

Approaching this as spinal weapons being big battleship guns, bays as cruiser guns, and turrets as small guns, with a variance of speed to choose optimal range (or with newtonian motion more like optimal pass), I need to have armor work as either a penetrating model like most naval wargames guns, or have a sliding version like the current set but pegged more to battery value rather then just the simplistic spinal-nuke/non-spinal divide.

I also want the 'were in space' bits such as increased damage from missile vee, a great falling off of to hit forcing fire to split in order to achieve hits (and thus have less penetrating power), and of course the battery increase as range closes to point blank already discussed.

Armor schemes matter greatly in this question, and I don't know if I like the implied scheme the damage results suggest, or if it's really worth the candle to get into other alternatives, such as carapace (hard on the outside chewy explosions on the inside) or nautilus (highly bulkheaded limited internal damage) or segmented (magazine and powerplant max armor, everything else not).

So ya, a few considerations in play here, and not easy to figure out a damage model for all of that that keeps things simple.

I have the ship floor map damage system I had spent a few months on in consideration, but a lot of the problems with that is that it won't do the fast results I need for backdrop fights, and I can't decide on a joule/EP/battery rating detonation to ton destroyed value unless I can true that up to the fast system.

 

[McPerth]

[m;]Please, avoid personal attacks. To now, most of the thread is becoming so. Do not force us to close what could be an intresting discussion before it begins[/m;]

 

[robject]

Armor schemes matter greatly in this question, and I don't know if I like the implied scheme the damage results suggest, or if it's really worth the candle to get into other alternatives, such as carapace (hard on the outside chewy explosions on the inside) or nautilus (highly bulkheaded limited internal damage) or segmented (magazine and powerplant max armor, everything else not).

Segmented damage is one possibility for BCS, and therefore segmented armor is also viable. A pro would be that damage tracking is more granular than hit points or one-mod-to-rule-them-all, but not so granular that you're tracking damage to (e.g.) every battery. And there's (potentially) still room for some customization. AND you also get an interesting abstract map for boarding actions.

Yeah, the more I think about that, the more I like it...

 

[McPerth]

This is the thread to discuss my in development version of HG2 which for reference purposes I will be calling Mayday Guard.

I have been 'fandancing' as some put it about certain features I have in more or less firm conceptual states, as a means to further thinking about maybe doing something similar for their solution sets to whatever design problem they have.

Apparently uncertainty and conceptual assertions are troublesome to some.

Rather then upend other people's threads with upset over my posting, I'll post most of it here and the ugly workings of developing a complex system can occur in a clearly labelled area to be read or ignored as desired.

I may still 'fandance' though, it's a risk.

I understand (mostly from the thread name) that your intent is to put a movement system (hence the Mayday reference) to HG2.

I'm afraid that will not be easy if you intend to end up with a playable system, as HG2 is thought to confront large fleets, and the sheer amount of pieces on the map would make it unpayable if used for that.

It can be a fine idea if the intent is just to confront a handful ships (counting a fighter squadron/wing as a single ship) per side. Oherways, you'll need many markers (as ASL does) to remember which ship has already moved or fired, just to tell one of the problems I expect.

 

[Piper]

... the sheer amount of pieces on the map would make it unplayable ...

True, but you can ameliorate this to some effect by grouping into squadrons. Another potential issue is having large amounts of off-board paperwork to deal with.

One problem I often have with threads of this type is visualizing the final product and seeing where it's an improvement over existing attempts. I'm not trying to be snarky here but we already have seen: Mayday using High Guard designs (Suggested in the Mayday rules), Battlerider (TNE), and Power Projection: Fleet (a Full Thrust variant). You're going to have to bring something new to the table to improve on these or to avoid their shortcomings.

There's certainly room for another fleet battle game and tossing idea around is never a bad thing.

 

[kilemall]

Segmented damage is one possibility for BCS, and therefore segmented armor is also viable. A pro would be that damage tracking is more granular than hit points or one-mod-to-rule-them-all, but not so granular that you're tracking damage to (e.g.) every battery. And there's (potentially) still room for some customization. AND you also get an interesting abstract map for boarding actions.

Yeah, the more I think about that, the more I like it...

Hmm, I'm thinking you're thinking that I am talking about modular/segmentation as ship design elements. I'm thinking more like individual ship systems that get the armor treatment and most don't as a way to have cheap armor, something like getting vest armor for ground combat but leaving the arms legs and head exposed.

This sort of ship floor plan damage treatment would only be for player ships for the most part, so it would have a FULL floor map and be more about engineering drama.

Example- the PA bay shot from the enemy cruiser Platypus Rampant pierced #7 fuel tank, drove through #2-4 crew staterooms destroying their personal effects, cut the sensor feed lines running under the main hall blinding the passive sensors, hit the #2 turret control space and caused a capacitor detonation from the charged laser, the burst hit the heavily armored magazine next to the turret and deflected, then exited the hull.

And the entire pathway of the shot is bathed in radiation.

We have to get gunner Charley out of there, he's been hit with shrapnel AND rads, we have to get the electrical sparking cut at the turret before it sets off the missile propellant in the turret, and we've already lost active sensors so we are blind and need either set fixed ASAP, whichever is easiest.

Hopefully everyone threw on their hazrad ponchos overlaying their vacc suits to deal with the PA rads, don't have time to go back to the ship's locker now....

Time to mourn the loss of personal knickknacks later.

That was all actually my initial pass at resolution, but realized I didn't have a consistent model that would reasonably match a less granular approach to damage, which is pretty much every other ship but the player's.

So damage resolution that hopefully allows this but have to get the big armor/range/effect stuff settled first.

 

[kilemall]

I understand (mostly from the thread name) that your intent is to put a movement system (hence the Mayday reference) to HG2.

I'm afraid that will not be easy if you intend to end up with a playable system, as HG2 is thought to confront large fleets, and the sheer amount of pieces on the map would make it unpayable if used for that.

It can be a fine idea if the intent is just to confront a handful ships (counting a fighter squadron/wing as a single ship) per side. Oherways, you'll need many markers (as ASL does) to remember which ship has already moved or fired, just to tell one of the problems I expect.

Not worried about it, in most cases in fleet actions it will be blobs o'ships on same speed course heading and together even if they are separated by 1-10,000 km.

Especially since I am making small ship escorts a thing, so they are not likely to be detached and if they are its recon in force so they are together and again one counter.

So Mayday course plot ahead of time, they fire end of turn, player and direct opponents are the ones that get the 100s phasing treatment.

To separate that out, I just came up with DP and NDP ships as a designation- Dramatis Personae and Non-Dramatis Personae.

DP ships get the whole treatment, NDP ships get simple Mayday move and firing phase.

As for firing, I don't know that I would want to mark fired states on counters on map for a large force, more like go down the list for the squadron, or 3x5 index cards per ship/squadron, they are laid down they are done firing.

Fleet NDP movement initiative winner gets to see what the enemy moves are, then makes his moves. NDP Ship Tactics winner fires first for effect.

 

[kilemall]

True, but you can ameliorate this to some effect by grouping into squadrons. Another potential issue is having large amounts of off-board paperwork to deal with.

One problem I often have with threads of this type is visualizing the final product and seeing where it's an improvement over existing attempts. I'm not trying to be snarky here but we already have seen: Mayday using High Guard designs (Suggested in the Mayday rules), Battlerider (TNE), and Power Projection: Fleet (a Full Thrust variant). You're going to have to bring something new to the table to improve on these or to avoid their shortcomings.

There's certainly room for another fleet battle game and tossing idea around is never a bad thing.

<Shrug> point me to threads with previous efforts and I can take a stab at seeing if I am reinventing the wheel.

I don't care for the published Mayday/HG rules for a variety of reasons. Have not read BR. Did look over PP:F, fun little system and gives you that zoomy 3-D feel, but a little too abstract and SFB/B-17 arced feel for me.

 

[mike wightman]

Get Battle Rider and Brilliant Lances, both for TNE.
Read them thoroughly.

Between then they already do just about everything you are after.

Couple of questions.

What exactly are you adapting from HG in order to stick with the title?

Are you aiming to produce a tabletop wargame, an rpg ship combat add on, or some combination of both?

 

[McPerth]

Hmm, I'm thinking you're thinking that I am talking about modular/segmentation as ship design elements. I'm thinking more like individual ship systems that get the armor treatment and most don't as a way to have cheap armor, something like getting vest armor for ground combat but leaving the arms legs and head exposed.

This sort of ship floor plan damage treatment would only be for player ships for the most part, so it would have a FULL floor map and be more about engineering drama.

Example- the PA bay shot from the enemy cruiser Platypus Rampant pierced #7 fuel tank, drove through #2-4 crew staterooms destroying their personal effects, cut the sensor feed lines running under the main hall blinding the passive sensors, hit the #2 turret control space and caused a capacitor detonation from the charged laser, the burst hit the heavily armored magazine next to the turret and deflected, then exited the hull.

And the entire pathway of the shot is bathed in radiation.

We have to get gunner Charley out of there, he's been hit with shrapnel AND rads, we have to get the electrical sparking cut at the turret before it sets off the missile propellant in the turret, and we've already lost active sensors so we are blind and need either set fixed ASAP, whichever is easiest.

Hopefully everyone threw on their hazrad ponchos overlaying their vacc suits to deal with the PA rads, don't have time to go back to the ship's locker now....

Time to mourn the loss of personal knickknacks later.

That was all actually my initial pass at resolution, but realized I didn't have a consistent model that would reasonably match a less granular approach to damage, which is pretty much every other ship but the player's.

So damage resolution that hopefully allows this but have to get the big armor/range/effect stuff settled first.

This sounds to me as playing AH Bismark game (1978 edition) in its advanced rules version. Ever tried it?

We tried it twice with some friends, back in the late 80's, once engaging BCs (KM Gneisenau and Scharnhorst against HMS Repulse and Renown) and once engaging 4 destroyers per side. In both cases, we ended with awful headaches.

 

[Piper]

<Shrug> point me to threads with previous efforts and I can take a stab at seeing if I am reinventing the wheel.

"Threads" was a poor word choice on my part. Perhaps "concepts" might have been better. That said, Flykiller's system seems to cover hit location and distributed sectional armor fairly well as you yourself noted.

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=35184

I wasn't concerned so much about forum posts (although damage allocation, sensor rules and squadron groupings have been talked over a number of times here) as I was about existing published games. Some of what you're suggesting seems to have been covered in Battle Rider and Brilliant Lances (sensors, damage allocation, squadron maneuvers).

Unlike Mike, I don't recommend buying either BL or BR unless you're really keen on owning and playing them. There are a lot of good ideas in those games but nothing that you can't devise on your own tailored for your own system.

If you're not already aware of them, Winchell Chung has some interesting ideas on penetrating damage and damage location that might be interesting reading:

http://www.projectrho.com/game/gamenotes.html

 

[Piper]

... To separate that out, I just came up with DP and NDP ships as a designation- Dramatis Personae and Non-Dramatis Personae.

DP ships get the whole treatment, NDP ships get simple Mayday move and firing phase.

It sounds as though you're wanting to have player characters as serving crew aboard naval vessels. If this is one of your goals, have you considered toning way back on the granularity for "NDP" ships?

I'm thinking something along the line of an Imperium-style beams-missiles-defense rating with Mayday-style movement. You would probably need an incremental damage system for the NDP ships and a way of converting incremental damage to detailed damage for the DP ships (a chart or series of charts should suffice).

This might help focus the action on the DP ship without spending an inordinate amount of time resolving details on NDP ships.

Just a thought.

 

[jec10]

Get Battle Rider and Brilliant Lances, both for TNE.
Read them thoroughly.

Between then they already do just about everything you are after.

Couple of questions.

What exactly are you adapting from HG in order to stick with the title?

Are you aiming to produce a tabletop wargame, an rpg ship combat add on, or some combination of both?

Suggestion seconded.

If you're designing a new Trav space combat game I don't think you can say you've done your homework until you've been through what is arguably the single best one out there at present (Battle Rider - not saying it is perfect, but for me it has the best set of features).

And fundamentally, you need to decide whether this is a squadron/fleet-scale game you want or a player/single ship scale game.

 

[kilemall]

"Threads" was a poor word choice on my part. Perhaps "concepts" might have been better. That said, Flykiller's system seems to cover hit location and distributed sectional armor fairly well as you yourself noted.

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=35184

I wasn't concerned so much about forum posts (although damage allocation, sensor rules and squadron groupings have been talked over a number of times here) as I was about existing published games. Some of what you're suggesting seems to have been covered in Battle Rider and Brilliant Lances (sensors, damage allocation, squadron maneuvers).

Unlike Mike, I don't recommend buying either BL or BR unless you're really keen on owning and playing them. There are a lot of good ideas in those games but nothing that you can't devise on your own tailored for your own system.

If you're not already aware of them, Winchell Chung has some interesting ideas on penetrating damage and damage location that might be interesting reading:

http://www.projectrho.com/game/gamenotes.html

Chung's whole site is a first stop for any space warfare gamer.

It would be easier to just scrap the whole HG table resolution, the trick here is to maintain the TL progression and economic build to combat effect ratios, so that's why I want to try keeping it in some form prior to wholesale scrapping.

 

[kilemall]

Suggestion seconded.

If you're designing a new Trav space combat game I don't think you can say you've done your homework until you've been through what is arguably the single best one out there at present (Battle Rider - not saying it is perfect, but for me it has the best set of features).

And fundamentally, you need to decide whether this is a squadron/fleet-scale game you want or a player/single ship scale game.

Looking over the Battle Rider counters, looks like boiled down stats for extant ships, 12 direction maneuver, some level of involved missile game, crew/skill resolution cards likely randomized by ship or squadron, and sensor/thrust state.

Do they have a set of rules for converting HG stats into BR? Some of those are intuitive, others especially the battery definitions and things like fire control are not. I won't be using ANY OTU craft other then ACS types, so I would be using ATU designs wholesale so it has to be convertible.

What is BR's hex range and time? NOT interested if we are back to 5 hours and 1 LS hexes.

Looking over BL, seems like it is the same 12-direction maneuver system, scale is individual ship, sensor and firing arcs, task-based starship action rolls, basically TNE Mayday.

Ranges appear to be more like Mongoose Traveller ranges, not unreasonable to prune the time space energy and missile resolution scales down to rational by our standards. But I am definitely going for Big Guns at Big Ranges.

Does BL allow me to build a ship without TNE?

Well hell, this thing is exactly why I didn't want to get into the latter-day HG descendants- I don't WANT to have 'it's TL14 so the meson dohickey is 5m3'.

I also strongly disagree with arcs being 'a thing' for anything short of being under full thrust. Plenty of time to roll pitch and yaw around to bring every single weapon to bear every 100s turn even at half thrust.

Or hull arc being a detection modifer, Star Cruiser's take notwithstanding. Powerplant exposure, EMF (which is a big thing given what I am doing with power), maneuver use (whether impinging by gravitic field distortion or reaction thrust of some sort), weapons use- that's all much bigger.

I do have stealth in but it's abstracted and hideously expensive. It's all in the Sensors and Engagement Ranges thread.


All that being said, I am sold on needing to check on the maneuver and missile systems, that is a major sticking point and I could do with some elegance. If missiles are predicated on Mongoose ranges though I expect to be less then enthralled.

Fundamentally, I don't have to do any such thing re: single ship or fleet. I want both, with detailed resolution when I am doing dramatis personae and not when I just want Big Background. You are welcome to consider it folly, we shall see.

But even if I do settle on one sort of 'subject matter', I still want to play out other types, either hyperdetailed or fuzzy fast background resolution, as a validity check if nothing else.

 

[kilemall]

It sounds as though you're wanting to have player characters as serving crew aboard naval vessels. If this is one of your goals, have you considered toning way back on the granularity for "NDP" ships?

I thought I made it burningly clear that is my intent. If not, consider it so.

I'm thinking something along the line of an Imperium-style beams-missiles-defense rating with Mayday-style movement. You would probably need an incremental damage system for the NDP ships and a way of converting incremental damage to detailed damage for the DP ships (a chart or series of charts should suffice).

I kind of think in terms more like the various War At Sea/Victory At Sea counters, since those have maneuver speed in addition to armor and weapons. Probably 8 values

Spinal Factor
Main Meson or PA Bays (Im throwing in MDs while I'm at it)
Missile Factor
Laser (usable PD or beam)
Sand
Countermeasures
Armor
Screens
G

It's not a useless direction, I just need to have it working forwards and backwards before I boil it down to those numbers.

This might help focus the action on the DP ship without spending an inordinate amount of time resolving details on NDP ships.

Just a thought.

I had already considered it, I want the background ships to have their 'character' and to largely have the same results hyperdetailed or abstracted, have to get it right both scaled and then I can aggressively go after burning away useless player-hour tasking for intended effect. SO validation of general approach is a thing too.