BCS as Operational Combat

[robject]

This is good therapy for me.

References:
http://wargamingmiscellany.blogspot.com/2009/04/philosophy-practice-and-practicality-of.html

"I think that wargame design should be a process of reduction NOT expansion; the latter does not lead to better design or more realism … it just leads to confusion!"


Solar System and Scale

Divide a 4' x 3' hexmat into three sections: leftmost, center, and rightmost. Place the mainworld in the leftmost section.


Task Forces

A unit represents a capital ship, a frigate, a large monitor, a squadron of auxiliaries, etc. Units are grouped together into task forces to pool advantages or dilute risk. Each task force has statistics based on the primary vessel or vessels, equipment, and experience. Morale (performance during the encounter) modifies these values.

A task force is intended to be one step lower than the "squadron" as defined by Traveller -- a pile of capital ships and their auxiliaries. Thus a task force could be one capital ship and its escorts. I think the ideal number of units on the board is seven, plus or minus two, so a typical Trillion Credit Squadron could reasonably break down into seven task forces.

Combat is task force versus task force.

One turn probably represents hours.


Launch and Recovery

Fighter swarms and missile salvos are launchable. Fighters are recoverable.


Missile Salvos

Missile salvos are, perhaps, a special kind of task force.


Uncertainty

Dummy counters represent unknowns to the intruding forces, protecting forces, or both.

So, sensing tasks are identification tasks, with difficulty based on range, as in combat. Sensing uses the profile of the largest vessel in the task force, and is more difficult if the force is e.g. lurking in a gas giant or behind a moon.


Activation Cards

Activation cards are used at the task force level. Their purpose is to focus each turn on the most important move each player wants to make right now.


Combat Is Not Simple

Combat is hex-to-hex, and even though the scale is vast, ranged attacks will happen.

Combat is probably resolved with a number of 1D attack rolls, each of which may be modified, compared against the target's defense numbers.

Successful defense requires depth and reserves.

Superior "combat power" always wins. Flanking or rear attacks enhance combat power substantially. Surprise enhances combat power substantially. Initiative lets you apply superior combat power. Perhaps over and over. Finally, an attacker willing to pay the price can always penetrate the strongest defenses.

I suspect a task force cannot split its fire. If you want to split fire, then first split the task force. This is probably a good game-balance decision as well: if you want to hit more targets, you have to make yourself a bit more vulnerable. Might be unrealistic, unless I can handwave the nature of attacks and allow for minor skirmishing regardless.

Critical hits are the only things worth tracking. Minor hits can bamboozle, suppress, disrupt, or disperse targets.
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A potentially "nice" combat mechanic is:

nD < Weapon TL + Crew Quality + Target Profile, where "n" is the range in hexes to the target. Profile can be affected by e.g. lurking behind a moon or hiding in the atmosphere of a gas giant.

The resulting number is the target number for the target's active defenses. So you want to roll high, but under your target, and the better your weapons and crew, the more likely you'll mop the floor with your enemy.

Defenses fire separately.

If the defenses fail, the attack still has to overcome the target's armor. This is where special effects apply (e.g. meson guns, radiation hits, stasis weapons, jump projectors, and so on).


Task Force Counters Are Just Complicated Enough, but No Further

Less than 50 pieces of information. Twelve would be better. Probably will be somewhere in between.

If possible, four weapon elements, and a way to effectively note defenses (assuming that ships will want to be protected in a manner adequate to the mission of their vessels). The units that make up the task force will probably have the same level of detail, so that a single unit could act as a task force if necessary.... OR the units would have values on a different scale entirely for tactical purposes.

Take a single ship (the AHL) as an example of the scope for a task force here. All elements must have rules-relevance to the game being played, so we can use things such as Mission Code to employ special rules.

Mission, Profile/Size, Troops, Movement rating, Jump rating, Spine, Secondaries [Anti-escort, Anti-missile, Ortillery], Active defenses (Dampers, Screens, Anti-missile), Fighters, Refuelers, Armor.

15 pieces of data. I expect to find a few more, as well. So, 20 data.
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[robject]

Tricky parts to think about

Can a single unit in a task force attack a single unit in an opposing task force, or is it task force against task force?

Can ships move "over" a planet, or are they forced to "go around" it?

Is moving "onto" a planet equal to entering its atmosphere and/or landing? Is there a movement penalty for entering a gravity well?

Is movement equal to "maneuver", in hexes?

Is there a movement penalty for changing the facing of a task force?

Can a unit move through a hex adjacent to an enemy occupied hex? Or is a unit "stopped" at that point?

 

[mike wightman]

Tricky parts to think about

Can a single unit in a task force attack a single unit in an opposing task force, or is it task force against task force?

Why are you grouping them as a task force? So that they can support each other - therefore task force vs task force becomes your tactical battle resolution (if you want to change scales) or you resolve as task force vs task force for abstract.

Can ships move "over" a planet, or are they forced to "go around" it? Is moving "onto" a planet equal to entering its atmosphere and/or landing? Is there a movement penalty for entering a gravity well?

With the manoeuvre drives available to Traveller ships they are practically immune to orbital mechanics - again unless you are going to switch to a smaller scale for tactical combat the planet is a feature rather than an obstacle.

Is movement equal to "maneuver", in hexes? Why or why not?

Not - Traveller has always prided itself on Newtonian mechanics for movement, if you don't make any attempt at tracking vectors you are moving to the abstract and may as well just adapt a chess board.

Can a unit move through a hex adjacent to an enemy occupied hex? Or is a unit "stopped" at that point?

That will depend on scale and weapon ranges.

 

[mike wightman]

I still think the best space combat game GDW ever made was Star Cruiser.

I still think for system scale you have to be prepared to change scales as you go from interplanetary movement of forces to tactical battle. Imagine moving your task forces and your opponent moving theirs around your system and and then battle being joined when task forces meet opposition.

The tactical battle can be range band based or full on vector movement (I use range bands).

What I do for wargaming system level stuff.

A fleet is assembled from ship counters (slightly more info than the ones in FFW etc) and the fleet can be split into squadrons/task forces based in the fleet tactics of the admiral/senior captains - these can be independently moved around the system map using their manoeuvre rating/agility to build a "vector".

When opposing forces meet each other I either use the FFW etc. combat resolution to get it over with quickly or break out the tactical range band system I use to allow the individual ship counters to move around and engage in combat - still using the FFW etc. combat matrices.

I only use ship vs ship combat for role playing.

 

[Piper]

Divide a 4' x 3' hexmat into the inner system on the left half of the map, the middle system on the right half, and the outer system off the far right edge. Place the primary in the left center, place one or two inner planets, place one or two middle planets.

Sounds like the map from Triplanetary. There's a new and improved version over at SJG:

http://www.sjgames.com/triplan/

Can ships move "over" a planet, or are they forced to "go around" it?

If you rotate your frame of reference 90 degrees, going over IS going around. Planets should have some effect on movement.

Is moving "onto" a planet equal to entering its atmosphere and/or landing? Is there a movement penalty for entering a gravity well?

Planets are pretty much the only terrain we got. They should receive some special attention in the rules.

Is movement equal to "maneuver", in hexes?

For simplicity's sake, yes. The time scale needs to change (G-days instead of G-turns).

Is there a movement penalty for changing the facing of a task force?

Given the time scale on a map of this size ... On the other hand, some sort of facing penalty/arc of fire limitation tends to give actual reasons for maneuver.

Can a unit move through a hex adjacent to an enemy occupied hex? Or is a unit "stopped" at that point?

eeek! In space? With the scale of an individual hex? Ships should be able to occupy the same hex without restriction.

 

[robject]

Of Particular Interest To Traveller

Jump Scatter.The intruder designates targets for each of his task forces: either a planet, planetoid, or just somewhere within the system. If a planet, planetoid, belt, or oort cloud, then the actual distance is the 100D limit + Flux. For example, for worlds, the 100D limit is at S=7. Adding flux can result in a ship emerging as far away as S=12, or 3 AU from the target. With a gigantic scale map, resolution is similar to:

-5 to 0: same hex.
+1 to +2: adjacent hex.
+3 to +4: several hexes away (~1 AU).
+5: several hexes away (~3 AU).

When simply jumping into the system, the range to the primary is the yardstick, subject to Flux.


Jump Time. 168 + Flux hours for naval vessels. Thus the window is 10 hours for all ships. If the turn length is 1 day, then flux doesn't matter. If the turn length is 6 hours or less, then flux might matter.


The Meson Gun. Meson guns are a special type of attack; either a game breaks out hull armor as a separate statistic, or else meson guns have a "boost" to attack values. Similarly, when meson guns are attacking, defenders with meson screens get a "boost" to their defense. In effect this changes the ATT and DEF.

Other weapons don't seem to have this degree of effect on the game. But if some do, then I think they'd have similar rules apply to them.


No Ansible. Task forces separated by great distances work together less effectively. This is a penalty to actions -- i.e. perhaps a player may only move task forces that are within range of each other in a given turn.


The Spine Always Bears. This nugget, coupled with the overall high agility of Big Ships, seems to suggest that flanking and rear actions in fact do NOT have a better chance at succeeding than forward attacks.

 

[Ulsyus]

Sorry if this is lecturing to the knowing, but I just thought I'd get this out there...

The role of C processes (Command, Control, Communications, Computing: described variously as C2, C3, C4, C4ISR, etc) in the real world is to expand understanding (described in various doctrine as Situational Awareness or more recently as Situational Understanding since the insistence of essentialising the ISR component with the C elements) to allow a commander to make the most effective decisions as quickly as possible, with subordinates doing the same within the framework of the ops plan.

The role of wargame processes (well, according to me) should be to limit the options of the player to approximate those that would reasonably be available to a real life commander with all appropriate and effective C4ISR available to them. One example I have referred to before is the dummy counter system in GDWs Assault. Western forces had more dummy counters, leading to greater uncertainty for the Warsaw Pact player. This could be based on a number of factors, but it's a known that the WP would point troops and barrel on, relying on force mass and tempo, the momentum of troops if you will, to overpower NATO defences and punch through too quickly for them to reform and present another defensive layer. So, they had more uncertainty about exactly where NATO elements were given it wasn't as high on their priority list as it was for the blueforce, who had to use their less stuff to target more things.

Any operational level game should introduce uncertainty. Dummy drones sqwaking like real vessels, decoy ships, powered-down ballistic trajectories, jumping into masked areas, sensor buoy arrays in occluded zones. All the elements that add uncertainty, so that by the time someone realises exactly where the decisive engagement is going to occur then the force that has been more effectively manoeuvred have the advantage. Or the player who has been lazy and thoughtless is punished mercilessly!

 

[robject]

I still think the best space combat game GDW ever made was Star Cruiser.

I like what I see of Star Cruiser, and it looks like a superior version of GDW's tactical space combat games. I'd have to compare it more closely with Battle Rider to see how much they differ -- BR appears more abstract.

The downside of SC is the time it takes to run an encounter. I don't exactly know the times needed, but I can guess based on the example scenarios, and the mandatory shipsheets for tracking damage, that the game is relatively slow. The majority of the scenarios involve three to six ships, total. The two Kafer scenarios involve about 24 ships total.

I'd want an operational game to range from 24 to 50 units total, not including missile salvos.

 

[robject]

Star Cruiser

The Star Cruiser combat system could be used for ACS ships. Star Cruiser is at far too low a resolution for the game I'm wanting to play. And that resolution is embodied in the ship sheet required for each vessel, which contains two emissions signatures, weapons loadout, defenses, and locations for damage tracking. If that were abstracted away... well we'd have something that's not Star Cruiser, wouldn't we?

SC's attack mechanic is nice: 1D + Weapon Target Rating + Weapon Effects + Computer Rating - Range + Crew Quality + Target Profile. Again, most of these mods come from a detailed ship sheet. In a more abstract ship, the attacking ship's equipment rating is one number ("ATT"), and target profile (and crew quality) is typically 0.

But: I note that "firing" defenses as a separate task, in an attempt to block a successful attack, is probably a nice mechanic to have, even for an abstract game.

Finally, the attack must be stronger than the target's armor. I suppose this is where meson guns would come in handy, although 2300AD doesn't have them.

Each ship sheet has 14 pieces of non-surface fixture data. There are up to 18 weapons. Each weapon has up to 8 pieces of data. There are also boxes for "TTA" and sensors. And there's more. These are true ship sheets.



Battle Rider

Battle Rider makes the now-common-knowledge observation that critical hits are the main things worth tracking.

I see I must have stolen the task force idea from Battle Rider without remembering it. Aaand I like the way BR uses the task force counters to disguise the composition of task forces until opposing sensors can identity its elements. I note that Star Cruiser uses the same basic idea: while you can't hide emissions, that doesn't mean you have an identification OR a targeting solution.

BR also has elements I had not yet gotten to: launch and recovery, and reconfiguration of task forces, partial cover offered by lurking around planetoids and planets.

BR also has elements that might slow down a game: for example, all ships conduct all activities each turn, vector movement, operational markers (although this might not be too bad). BR requires a "turn record" phase which is entirely dedicated to administrivia.

BR is in tactical space, rather than operational space. In general terms this means that one turn is appx 30 minutes.

BR allows task forces to split their fire. I think I want fire to always concentrate: if you want split fire, then split your task force first.

Finally, BR counters have essentially a ship sheet's worth of information on them. 13 distinct elements, and the weapon elements each have 7 or 8 pieces of associated data. The Voroshilef has 48 pieces of data on its counter. A task force can have several of these.



Sensors

It seems that the easiest thing to do is to mainly ignore them, revealing units as soon as they're within a certain range of the enemy. In fact, that can be an aspect of your side's technology, planning, equipment, or all three.

Alternately, sensing is just a different form of attack, using the same mechanic.

 

[Ulsyus]

Star Cruiser: great game! It slowed down a fair bit once BCS-style ships were involved, and once numbers of vessels became a bit involved. A few of those Kafer-war battles took a looooot of time to resolve.

Battle Ride: brilliant system for BCS combat. What counts? Critical hits!! Big ship shoots at little ship? Little ship blows up. There were some issues I had with the big vessels given the way screens and vessel size could lead to negative hit values, but the overall concept was great.

Starmada: sort of while not quite managed to merged both ideas. Great ship data sheets, not too much focus on the detail, and with the Fleet Ops supplement made for great squadron+ actions. I added sensor rules similar to SC, and have a group of red and blue foam balls on stands as the sensor blips to use at the start of an action before they're replaced by ship models.

Bring back a BR-style game for BCS and we're well on the way. It doesn't have to be played on a map, but could be abstracted out like HG.