Originally posted by Dom:
Just to let you know that Power Projection: Fleet is now shipping...
.. and if you like PP:Escort then PP:Fleet is a 'must have.' PP:F is twice as long as PP:E. "Fleet" recapitulates most (if not all) of the rules from "Escort" as it is a rules set of its own rather than an 'expansion' of the earlier book. For those already familiar with PP:E, this material still bears careful re-reading as there additions, addendums and corrections interspaced throughout the rules.
One thing that PP:F does not have is most of the small ship SSD's from PP:E. This is in keeping with the new book's emphasis on fleets and capital ships. So no
Broadsword, but you do get the
Tigress so I'd say it's a trade up.
Some thoughts on what's new:
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- There is some nice intro material, including designers notes, which gives some insight into some of the choices that were made in designing the rules for PP:F - specifically as relates to the lack of specific sensor and ECM rules - these are abstracted into a 'relative computing power' factor based on tech level.
In all, it seems that the rules are strongly slanted towards speed and playability with the vector based movement system providing a good dose of reality.</font>
- Next up are the new Command and Control rules - which relate to how many ships can be in a task force and the effects of the Task Force and Fleet flagships on C&C.</font>
- Crew Quality is new - crews can be Green, Regular, Veteran and Elite - with the expected die modifiers. Crew quality is mostly there for the campaign level game and can safely be ignored for skirmishes, as it was in PP:E</font>
- This is followed by the above mentioned restatement of the combat and movement rules. new and interesting here are gravitational effects, rules for fighters and rules for spinal mounts.
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- The gravitational rules seem to be pretty much derived from traveller Book 2, which I'd say is a good thing. There are several methods of applying the gravitational effects presented, ranging from relatively simple to 'needs a calculator.' I guess it depends on how much of a Newtonian stickler you want to be. Note that gravity effects both movement and weapons fire (as was briefly noted in PP:E).</font>
- The Fighter rules are, like the missile rules, a departure from the vector movement system - fighters have a base movement factor equal to their M-drive rating and their agility and they can move mostly unrestricted within that movement rating. This seems to be another case of playability trumping 'realism' and I want to get out there and push some counters around before I pass any kind of judgement.</font>
- Then there are the spinal mount rules. I'm sure many PP:E fans will be buying PP:F just to get at these goodies
Spinal mounts do 1D6 damage for each weapon factor. For reference, the AHL class ship carries a factor 6 PAWS and the Tigress carries a factor 7 meson gun. With the threshold check and catastrophic damage rules, spinal mount weapons are going to be 1 hit = 1 kill against most non-capital ships. Probably against some of the capital ships as well. Luckily they can only fire every other turn.</font>
PP's combat rules are.... well, they're vicious and unforgiving. Ships die. A lot. Which is rather the point, I'd say and definitely realistic in my book. You really get that 'hammers vs. eggshells' feeling. Of course that's just the reason that PP is not particularly suitable for playing out PC level ship to ship engagements in an RPG setting.
Ask me about the time a long range 'hail mary' laser shot took out the bridge on my Sloan class escort on Turn 1, sometime. Blasted lucky Zho-bastage
With the addition of the spinal mounts they're vicious and unforgiving in a big way now.
- We also have Black Globe rules - pretty much straight from High Guard. Not essential - but nice to have.</font>
- There are some fairly abstract rules covering boarding actions which will be appreciated by some of those flying the 'flaming eye' out there.</font>
- These are complimented by rules covering the effects of psionics on ship to ship action and boarding actions, so the slimy Zho's will now get their due.</font>
- We get extensive rules covering jump operations , again pretty much straight out of Classic Traveller.</font>
- There is a whole section on ship vs. planet combat which is going to come in handy for the campaign game. These rules include planetary bombardment and assaults. Yes Virginia, there are deep meson sites and it does indeed look as though they will be quite formidable.</font>
- This brings us to the scenario generator. There are two sets of missions - one for the 'intruder' and one for the 'native' (gee sounds like CT book 2 again!). Each side chooses a random mission with corresponding buy points and victory conditions. This means that, going into a scenario, you won't know what size force you are facing and you won't know what their victory conditions are. Victory conditions also vary depending on whether you have more or less buy points than the opposition - so it's possible to get mauled in a lopsided fight and still 'win.'</font>
- Sounds like a lot - right? Well that's just the warm up. Now that you can fight with fleets, attack and defend planets and systems etc. you're ready for the strategic game. There are three versions of the Strategic game - each more complex than the last. All appear to be based on a combination of Trillion Credit Squadron and Fifth Frontier War.
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- The Tournament game is meant as a one off - you each get a trillion credits to form up a fleet
- additional parameters come off of an annual table that runs from 1981 to 2010. Sound familiar? It's straight out of TCS. You then get to fight it out via the scenario generator.</font>
- The mid tier strategic game is called 'Clash of Empires' and looks to be your basic TCS campaign set up along the lines of the 'Island Cluster' campaign in TCS.
Note that no specific setting is given anywhere in PP:F - you will need Traveller or at least some supplements to provide a battleground.</font>
- Finally there is the full on 'Pocket Empires' strategic game - which looks to be a combination of 5FW and TCS rules.</font>
The strategic game is played in one week turns and uses written orders. How far in advance the orders must be written is affected by C&C lag determined by fleet tactics skill. There are rules for ship construction, maintenance and repairs, determining crew quality and logistics such as fuel and ammunition.
What there is not, is a lot of guidance on how to do the record keeping etc. for all of this work. But we're all big boys and girls around here, so I think we can figure it out. It's just good to know up front that a lot of the 'nitty-gritty' of the strategic game will be left as an exercise for the student.</font>
- Power Projection does not include ship design rules - it even says so on the back of the book. It does include rules for converting ships designed in High Guard, MegaTraveller or T20 to PP ships, so you can use your favorite rules set (unless your favorite is TNE or GURPS - then you're going to be doing some guess work).
High Guard is the standard - and there are plenty of SSD's included for those who'd really rather not roll their own. As there are a great number of canon ships in existence (cf Traveller's Aide #7 for starters), I don't think that PP:F is especially handicapped by not having a 'built in' design sequence. Besides, you've got High Guard - what else could you possibly need? </font>
- The back page of PP:F includes a handy 'cheat sheet' for converting Traveller star systems for use in PP - basically it gives kilometer to movement unit conversions and defines the various gravity bands... so you don't have to.</font>
- There are plenty of new counters and SSD's. There are two pages of color counters featuring Jesse Degraff's artwork printed on card stock and some 14 pages of counters and SSD's printed black on yellow as with PP:E. Lots of new SSD's for ships ranging from 5,000dt to 500,000dt - for the Imperials and Zhodani.
The new color counters are very nice, but I would recommend downloading the PDF of the color counter sheets from PP:E from the Power Projection website and printing those on nice cardstock for such things as sand and nuke detonations. You *will* need a lot of sand counters.</font>
eek
That was *a lot* of thoughts on what's new. Well I guess I'll wrap things up with the following opinions.
If you like spaceship miniatures battles like Full Thrust etc. and/or you enjoyed PP:E - PP:F is definitely worth the price of admission.
I'm not a 'fleet engagement' type of guy - 400 missile salvos on the board at a time does not sound like fun to me, more like work. Give me a tense little battle between a few small task forces any time... but there is a lot in PP:F to recommend it even if you never plan on broaching the
Tigress,
Lurenti or
Idlev class SSD's.
The strategic game has some definite potential - perhaps even as a PBE-mail and just meet to fight out engagements as needed. I can see some brave souls out there breaking out their copies of
Imperium and figuring out conversions for the Vilani and Terran counters already. I'm sure five or six close friends could stay plenty busy for the next ten years or so fighting out the Rebellion.
So many thanks and congrats to Dom, Andy and BITS for getting this one out the door. Quite an accomplishment and clearly a labour of love.
Dom - when are we going to get the symbol sets to make our own SSD's? I've got some ships I'm looking to convert.
--michael
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