Power Projection: Fleets Island Clusters campaign

[pmbnss]

Has anyone run the Islands Cluster campaign with Power Projection: Fleets?

Any wierd issues that come up?

How does it compare with High Guard campaigns in the same idiom?

I am considering starting a Trillion Credit Squadron / Power Projection game in the Island Cluster, so I'm curious as to what other folks' experiences were.

Thanks!

-Peter

 

[The Oz]

First thought: Battles will take longer to resolve in PP:F than in HG, so unless you like really, really long space battles I'd cut all the planetary populations by quite a lot. You might also want to look at cutting Esperanza even more, since it will not be at as great a disadvantage in PP:F as it would be in HG (because the computers are handled so differently in PP:F, for one thing).

Try playing around with Pop modifiers and costs of ships, to figure out just how big an advantage Esperanza needs to make up for it's positional disadvantage. Off the top of my head (and thinking about the games of TCS I played in the long ago time) I'd give Esperanza a 3-1 advantage in population over the TL-12 worlds, maybe a little more if you're going to use the currency conversion rules.

I'd also consider pumping up New Home some, maybe to as much as half the population of the TL-12 systems. Again, its TL-13 won't be as big a help in PP:F combat as it is in HG.

But above all, start small and try to keep it small. It'll go faster and be a lot more fun. And a heck of a lot easier to run.

 

[pmbnss]

Thanks Oz!

I am planning to use the non-population multiplier stats from the TCS book, so initial budgets for the TL 12 folks are in 4-5 Trillion range. Still a lot. Perhaps I'll reduce them back to the 1 Trillion range...

While we may do so some table top battles, I have a High Guard - PPF mashup that speeds play quite a bit - it loses some detail of course, particularly in facing and the interesting effects of sand, nuke blasts, and vectored movement, but we were able to do 30 on 30 75kton wagons plus escorts battles to conclusion within a couple of hours.

For secondary battery values, I've tied the USP to the damage rows, so that a USP-1 Laser is not the same as a USP-6. RCP has been closer to the existing computer models in the Cluster, so together this should compensate a bit for PPF's watering down of HG USP and Computer Model effects.

I'll try a few mock battles this weekend with equal budget TL-11, TL 12, and TL 13 forces to see a) what TCS gets, and then b)what this modified PPF produces.