High Guard Next: When you can't take anything else away, you know you're done

[Matt123]

Eurisko was the AI program that took advantage of the HG1 deeply flawed weapon/USP rules?

On the AI point, after examining Lenat's writings on the subject I am of the view what he had was a combat simulator which could churn through battles and allow ship designers to gain experience rapidly. He states several times that he never played the game, yet his program output combat results that were used to refine the fleets.

My pick is that he roped in the university wargames club to design ships and react to the combat results. Difficult to prove of course, but equally there does not appear to be much AI in what he did and his approach hit a research dead end.

 

[kilemall]

On the AI point, after examining Lenat's writings on the subject I am of the view what he had was a combat simulator which could churn through battles and allow ship designers to gain experience rapidly. He states several times that he never played the game, yet his program output combat results that were used to refine the fleets.

My pick is that he roped in the university wargames club to design ships and react to the combat results. Difficult to prove of course, but equally there does not appear to be much AI in what he did and his approach hit a research dead end.

Well hell, the Pentagon has spent millions per year running that sort of thing since at least the 60s, especially with nuclear exchanges ala WOPR.

 

[rancke]

My apologies to Whartung, I had missed the whole critical hit rule, which does indeed make larger ships more survivable against spinal weapons.

Only against particle accelerators. Armor doesn't protect against meson crits.

If armor alone defended against crits, it would be possible for a cruiser-sized ship to resist damage just as well as a battleship-sized ship, something that there is setting evidence is not the case. Indeed, that's the definition of a cruiser: a ship big enough to carry a spinal but so vulnerable as to be unable to stand in the line of battle. You know, something that can be mission-killed by a single shot from a meson spinal. Which, under the HG rules includes battleships... :nonono:

What is needed is a rule that makes size itself a defense against crits. And that seems perfectly reasonable to me. The damage that will shatter all the fuel tanks of a smaller ship would only shatter some of the fuel tanks on a bigger ship; the chance of hitting a computer would be smaller the bigger the ship; and so on and so on.


Hans

 

[McPerth]

5. Morale is important, as are Admirals.

I posted this in another thread, but I guess it belongs more to this one, so I copy it (with some more comments) here:

I think a good fleet-level game also needs rules for crew morale and the presence of an Admiral. I don't know if FFW et al has this - do they?

IMHO, as stated in some other threads, more than crew morale what is needed is crew quality. In HG (I assume we're taling about CT), the only crewmembers whose skill afects the game are the Fleet CO (Fleet Tactics skill, that modifies initiative), ship's CO (Ship's Tactics skill, that modifies effective computer number) and Pilot (pilot skill, that modifies effective agility). As for the rest of the crew, they can all of them bu untrained conscripted people, for what is worth...

The effects of those few quality effects HG has eas dicussed in this thread over a year ago.

About aldmirals, I expect most fleets to be maneaged by competent staffs, so the individual aldmirals having less effect that in the Age of Sail. I expect the effect of individual aldmirals to be anecdotic to negligible...

OTOH, staff effect would be greater, and could be represented in strategic games as per side (be it empire, pocket empire, individual planet, etc...) or fleet (planetary/subsector/imperial, even being different in each planetary and subsector fleet); but I expect its effect being more in the strategical picture (intelligence, readiness, supply, etc...) than in the tactical one (where crew quality may affect more).

 

[elbmc1969]

My apologies to Whartung, I had missed the whole critical hit rule, which does indeed make larger ships more survivable against spinal weapons.

Only against particle accelerators. Armor doesn't protect against meson crits.

If armor alone defended against crits, it would be possible for a cruiser-sized ship to resist damage just as well as a battleship-sized ship, something that there is setting evidence is not the case. Indeed, that's the definition of a cruiser: a ship big enough to carry a spinal but so vulnerable as to be unable to stand in the line of battle. You know, something that can be mission-killed by a single shot from a meson spinal. Which, under the HG rules includes battleships... :nonono:

What is needed is a rule that makes size itself a defense against crits. And that seems perfectly reasonable to me. The damage that will shatter all the fuel tanks of a smaller ship would only shatter some of the fuel tanks on a bigger ship; the chance of hitting a computer would be smaller the bigger the ship; and so on and so on.

Unless I'm grossly misunderstanding, size is a defense against crits:

"Critical Hits: All batteries whose weapon code exceeds the size code of the target ship will inflict (if they hit and penetrate) automatic critical hits equal to the size difference. For example, if a missile battery of factor 9 hits a size 4 ship, it will (in addition to any other damage) inflict 5 critical hits. These critical hits are reduced in number by one for each two factors of armor the target ship has; round odd numbers down. Meson gun hits are not reduced by armor."

It's possible that everyone is talking past everyone else here. I do agree, obviously, that spinal mesons will still do an immense number of hits that are likely to result in a mission kill. A high-factor meson screen can mitigate this, but part of the problem is that the tonnage of meson screen generators doesn't scale with the mass of the ship. Yes, the power requirement does, but the system might work better with larger meson screen generators, which advantage larger ships, and/or a greater range of meson screen generators, so that smaller ships (cruisers) can still take meson screens that are useful against other cruisers, but aren't effective against battleships.

 

[McPerth]

Unless I'm grossly misunderstanding, size is a defense against crits:

"Critical Hits: All batteries whose weapon code exceeds the size code of the target ship will inflict (if they hit and penetrate) automatic critical hits equal to the size difference. For example, if a missile battery of factor 9 hits a size 4 ship, it will (in addition to any other damage) inflict 5 critical hits. These critical hits are reduced in number by one for each two factors of armor the target ship has; round odd numbers down. Meson gun hits are not reduced by armor."

It's possible that everyone is talking past everyone else here. I do agree, obviously, that spinal mesons will still do an immense number of hits that are likely to result in a mission kill. A high-factor meson screen can mitigate this, but part of the problem is that the tonnage of meson screen generators doesn't scale with the mass of the ship. Yes, the power requirement does, but the system might work better with larger meson screen generators, which advantage larger ships, and/or a greater range of meson screen generators, so that smaller ships (cruisers) can still take meson screens that are useful against other cruisers, but aren't effective against battleships.

What makes meson spinals so letal are not the criticals, but the extra rolls that a spinal does per factor over 9. For Particle Accelerators, those rolls are reducied by one per armor factor /and modified by armor), but for Mesons Guns, no rolls reductions nor modifications due to armor. And target size is irrelevant for this.

So, a J rated Meson spinal rolls 10 times in the radiation and 10 in the internal explosión, in both cases unmodified, and the possibility for a Fuel Tanks Shattered or being left without computer or crew (if exponential crew factor is used) are quite high. A particle Accelerator also rated as J, would have those rolls reduced (down to a mínimum of 1) and all rolls would be modified by armor.

And meson screens can avoid, but not mitigate this, as you either penetrate them or you don't.

 

[robject]

[...] These critical hits are reduced in number by one for each two factors of armor the target ship has; round odd numbers down. Meson gun hits are not reduced by armor."

[...] the system might work better with larger meson screen generators, which advantage larger ships, and/or a greater range of meson screen generators, so that smaller ships (cruisers) can still take meson screens that are useful against other cruisers, but aren't effective against battleships.

So, that makes me think of two questions.

(1) What if armor factors were halved, so that their rating directly adds to the ship's size code? In effect, the formulas would be double their current values.

(2) High Guard can't treat screens and dampers (etc) as armor: it requires task rolls to penetrate them, if they apply. Isn't that the only way to deal with them?

 

[whulorigan]

(2) High Guard can't treat screens and dampers (etc) as armor: it requires task rolls to penetrate them, if they apply. Isn't that the only way to deal with them?

I don't remember my High Guard combat that clearly, but:

What if you let the successful task roll to penetrate work as it currently does in HG, but if the task fails, then the Meson Beam factor is reduced by 1 factor per Meson Screen Factor? (In other words, let it act as both an active and passive defense).

 

[mike wightman]

Fixes to try for HG:

split the USP so you have a line for spinals, a line for bays, and a line for turrets

agility only counts as a defensive modifier vs spinals

on the damage tables bay weapons do not get the +6 DM (nuclear missiles therefore get a -6DM)

meson screens act as passive defence (the roll to penetrate) AND acts in the same way armour does against PA (and all other weapons), i.e. it reduces the number of extra hits by the screen rating and the number of crits by half the screen rating.

Note that spinal mesons are pretty inaccurate - they miss an awful lot of the time - and a decent screen can reduce the chance to penetrate to the point where even a successful hit has a low chance to penetrate the screen (unless you use the biggest guns which require big ships (battleships) to carry them).

 

[McPerth]

Fixes to try for HG:

split the USP so you have a line for spinals, a line for bays, and a line for turrets

This would allow ships to have spinals, bays and turrets of the same weapon in the same ship (as in MT). You have my vote on that.

agility only counts as a defensive modifier vs spinals

on the damage tables bay weapons do not get the +6 DM (nuclear missiles therefore get a -6DM)

See that this makes bays quite more important (and in some cases the decisive weapons). Meson bays now become quite powerful against heavy armored gunboats/fighters (if you can power them, off course).

Missiles become the decisive weapon (even more than they already are), nukes used agains heavy armored ships (where they are more effective than PA spinals), while against small boats the rating vs size criticals become the decisive factor.

To compensate you should add ammo to the rules (in HG you don't have limits to firing missiles)

Secondaries become quite useful against fighters if you remove agility from their equation (even a tiny factor 3-4 rated laser turret would result in 2 critical hits against a unarmored fighter, and now could hit it on a 8-9+, and you can have quite a lot of them on a capital ship)...

 

[mike wightman]

Yup, the fixes above add balance to the game and make bays and turret batteries usefull for more than just absorbing weapon hits.

Missile ammo rules are a must, I agree with that.

It's easy enough to add a tally chart to the USP for number of battery rounds the missile bays and turrets have ready to fire - a missile magazine could then store more battery rounds but you would have to spend a turn reloading or something like that.

You could even bring back the HG1 rule for high intensity missile fire - you launch the lot in one turn to try to overcome defences but then you must spend a turn reloading (if you have a magazine).

 

[samuelvss]

IMHO, as stated in some other threads, more than crew morale what is needed is crew quality.
About admirals, I expect most fleets to be managed by competent staffs, so the individual admirals having less effect that in the Age of Sail. I expect the effect of individual admirals to be anecdotal to negligible...

Well, analogizing from history to predict technology may be fraught with uncertainty, but analogizing from that technology to predict changes in human nature even more so. Future staffs will have more tools, and may for those tools be better, but they will not bind the commander, who will be free to do as he will. Bad commanders tend to have bad staffs, though. Good commanders tend to have good staffs, and are often good commanders because they know when to ignore and when to defer to staff recommendations. Management and leadership are two complementary disciplines upon which organizations rely. Military organizations rely more on the latter than civilian organizations do, but excellent civilian organizations are well-led; a good leader may not be able to manage, but can hire managers. A good manager bereft of leadership talent cannot, except by accident, hire a good leader, because he won't understand it.

Attacking the wrong objective efficiently doesn't usually help. (ex: Pearl Harbor: Japanese Tactical and Operational brilliance, and Strategic suicide). Hiring sycophants and firing those who give you bad news does not brew victory. Character flaws are not decreased by being given flag rank, alas. That said, a good leader will know what a good staff will look like, and mold his or hers, through training, mentoring, hiring and firing. A really good leader can even see things the staff can't. No person was ever inspired to lay down his life by really efficient staff work. Many lives have, of course, been sacrificed needlessly by shoddy staff work, coupled with poor leadership, where the leaders did not spot the mistakes.

OTOH, staff effect would be greater, and could be represented in strategic games as per side (be it empire, pocket empire, individual planet, etc...) or fleet (planetary/subsector/imperial, even being different in each planetary and subsector fleet); but I expect its effect being more in the strategical picture (intelligence, readiness, supply, etc...) than in the tactical one (where crew quality may affect more).

Strategy requires coherent vision. Understanding the strategic environment is indeed facilitated by good staff work, specifically intelligence, but this does not create good strategy. Great operations, logistics, and other support work will mitigate against poor intelligence, but only to an extent. Strategic logistics, a strategic tool, is more a matter of material capabilities, which requires both strategic vision and good acquisitions capability, which is in turn a outgrowth of previous staff work and financial

Strategical capability is thus a product of things that occurred outside the scope of the current staff, and current brilliance can only mitigate a small amount of prior lack of preparation. China has more airborne divisions than the US, but the US dwarfs it in the ability to project airborne forces, not because the current Chinese staff thinks it unimportant, but because historically China has not developed that capability. The US with some 220 C17's, could drop all of its one airborne Division in about a trip and a half (round numbers, open sources), over strategic distances. China cold not do that over operational distances in less than about 48 hours. Doing this would require very good staff work. And a lot of C17's...

That said, someone still has to give the order to get ready, and a staff can't do that. They can tell the commander when he needs to give the order, in order to properly more the resources. Of course orders like those have to be given by national leadership. Not giving the order in time will not be saved by really good staff work.

Strategic success requires military leadership that can link the nation's strategic goals with success in the right campaigns that best support those goals. Strategic success can compensate for tactical ineptitude, but tactical brilliance can never rescue strategic incompetence.

So leadership is even more important at the strategic level, both in real time and over the years leading up to the fight.

 

[robject]

Running with an idea...

The idea is that spines are never alone; they're always installed with secondaries. Bays and turrets.

So, bake that into the design rules. Allow some adjustment, but set the broad parameters when the spine decision is made.

This is not to avoid the "Eurisko" scenario (even though it does), but to make design a bit more helpful.



Ask yourself: when is it not true?

Assume "Eurisko" is not a valid answer to the question.

 

[mike wightman]

Communication and intel lag - the battle could be months away and all your strategic planning is worth exactly squat if the opposition does something unexpected.

It requires the local fleet commander to have the tactical and logistic capability to adapt to a situation that the strategic planning team won't even find out about until it is all over.

 

[Matt123]

... As for the rest of the crew, they can all of them be untrained conscripted people, for what is worth...

The average skill rating for non-PCs is assumed to be 2 across the fleet (HG2 p44).

It raises the possibility though of dedicating fleet funds into technical and management schools in an effort to up-skill and retain staff. Achieving an average skill rating of 3 should be possible, if expensive and achieving skill of 4 in select ships or Top Gun squadrons might be interesting.

Of course there is also the potential for reducing crew quality from 2 and saving credits. I suspect tho' that would impact on fleet readiness, maintenance, lifespan and a whole bunch of other stuff.

 

[whartung]

Communication and intel lag - the battle could be months away and all your strategic planning is worth exactly squat if the opposition does something unexpected.

It requires the local fleet commander to have the tactical and logistic capability to adapt to a situation that the strategic planning team won't even find out about until it is all over.

Well that's the thing, right?

A fundamental issue with High Guard, IMHO, is that the game is over, pretty much, before it's started. It's like the card game "War". The game is decided before the first card is played, but the players don't necessarily know who's won yet. But it was all in the shuffle.

In HG, the game is fleet design, not so much battle execution. Line your ships up, put some in reserve, and roll the dice. If you start with the advantage, you will likely maintain that advantage throughout the battle, and now the question isn't victory, but rather how much did it cost.

If the fleets are essentially equal, then the dice will eventually give one side an advantage that the other can't over come, and we're back to the first point.

So, in truth HG is more suitable as a component is a more strategic game. Then it's more a game of economics, efficiently bringing power to the field and strategically locating that power (fleet/system maneuver) rather than how that power is executed in the field. Then you question how sophisticated does HG need to be at all.

 

[McPerth]

... As for the rest of the crew, they can all of them be untrained conscripted people, for what is worth...

The average skill rating for non-PCs is assumed to be 2 across the fleet (HG2 p44).

It raises the possibility though of dedicating fleet funds into technical and management schools in an effort to up-skill and retain staff. Achieving an average skill rating of 3 should be possible, if expensive and achieving skill of 4 in select ships or Top Gun squadrons might be interesting.

Of course there is also the potential for reducing crew quality from 2 and saving credits. I suspect tho' that would impact on fleet readiness, maintenance, lifespan and a whole bunch of other stuff.

Ok. Assume your OC has ship tactics skill 3, as does your pilot. The rest of the crew have a defaul skill of 2. Now you are able to raise the skill of all your crew except the OC and Pilot to 5. According the rules, what changes? Nothing, as their skills are not used for anything, according HG2.

And neither will it hinder your ship performance if you take a crew full of untrained recruits, as their skills are irrelevant for game pourposes, only the OC and pilot skills have any relevance. That's what I mean.

 

[Matt123]

According the rules, what changes? Nothing, as their skills are not used for anything, according HG2.

HG provides context (average crew skill is 2) and ability to use PC skills in key positions. No it doesn't allow for greater average skills, but it also does not tackle how you would enable such greater skills. No doubt thinking that was out of scope for a fleet combat game.

TCS might have tackled this, being a strategic game, but didn't.

Adding such a feature would involve considering the cost of infrastructure to support such higher skill levels, while still keeping game balance.

As to impact in the game, the simplest solution is to treat differences in crew skill the same way as differences in computer size. But that's the easy part. The hard part is how does the player pay for it, with the goal of maintaining some semblance of play balance.

 

[Matt123]

A fundamental issue with High Guard, IMHO, is that the game is over, pretty much, before it's started. It's like the card game "War". The game is decided before the first card is played, but the players don't necessarily know who's won yet. But it was all in the shuffle.

You are comparing a game of chance with a game where chance plays a very limited role. Those that do not like chess, sometimes play ludo and that is great. But to compare chess to ludo on the basis that a chess game between an experienced player and a novice is pre-determined, is a fundamentally flawed comparison. All games of chance equalise skill levels. Most other games reward skill to some degree.

In HG, the game is fleet design, not so much battle execution. Line your ships up, put some in reserve, and roll the dice. If you start with the advantage, you will likely maintain that advantage throughout the battle, and now the question isn't victory, but rather how much did it cost.

If the fleets are essentially equal, then the dice will eventually give one side an advantage that the other can't over come, and we're back to the first point.

Sooo, if skill doesn't win the day all that is left is luck. Yep, that describes many games.

So, in truth HG is more suitable as a component is a more strategic game. Then it's more a game of economics, efficiently bringing power to the field and strategically locating that power (fleet/system maneuver) rather than how that power is executed in the field. Then you question how sophisticated does HG need to be at all.

Here I agree with you whole heartedly. This is the essence of HG/TCS, a strategic game involving economics, how to compose a fleet, deploy it, intelligence delays, decisions on when to commit your forces, when to preserve them, time taken to rebuild your strength and strategic alliances with neighbours.

 

[samuelvss]

Sooo, if skill doesn't win the day all that is left is luck. Yep, that describes many games.

Well, except that larger HG battles involve so many rolls that the results are going to be much more predictable statistically. Sample size and all that...

Here I agree with you whole heartedly. This is the essence of HG/TCS, a strategic game involving economics, how to compose a fleet, deploy it, intelligence delays, decisions on when to commit your forces, when to preserve them, time taken to rebuild your strength and strategic alliances with neighbours.

Also, the quality of those dispatched to command the fleets is critical. FFW's admirals did this nicely, except that the "orders written in advance" was a clumsy tool. What you would know when, and when the dispatched orders would get where, and who would be there when they got there is all perfectly possible by a computer. Another change I would make is not knowing how good or bad your admirals were ahead of time: you could get a weak group, solid group, and rock stars, but you wouldn't know how accurate these descriptions are until the shooting starts.

I find that HG is in essence a system to do acquisition and design; and also quantify tactical engagements. Small engagements can be fun. Huge are just unmanageable, but the system tells you roughly where they'd go.