Trillion Credit Squadron Campaign Scenario Ideas

[Whipsnade]

Is the Island Clusters campaign even close to being balanced?

Spinward Pirate,

As with many things, the answer to your question is It Depends. My group played it so often(1) that certain opening gambits for certain starting positions became almost so routine that it began to bear an uncanny resemblance to Avalon Hill's Afrika Korps(2).

Events in a full TCS campaign are primarily driven by the actions of the two "witches" and the two "Mexican Stand-off" pairings.

The "witches" are New Home and Esperanza. New Home has a TL bonus and Esperanza has a population bonus. IMHO Esperanza is the better of the two.

She has much more money and her TL disadvantage means she'll be building cheaper designs; i.e. infinite missile monkey boats. Because Esperanza is also behind a "moat", she's hard to get at. If she waits and conducts offensives against one opponent at a time she can quickly swamp them.

Esperanza has an excellent strategic position too. She's on the edge of the cluster and thus has one "flank" already "defended" while each of her possible initial opponents all have to worry about other systems.

New Home's TL bonus isn't as powerful as one first would think. She has a much smaller budget with which to build her navy and the improvement in ship systems she enjoys isn't that significant. She has somewhat better dampers, somewhat better spinal mounts, somewhat better drives, somewhat better computers, and so on but all of that is incremental.

New Home's strategic position near the center of the Cluster isn't a good as you'd first assume either. While only one player, Neubayern, can attack her directly, she can be reached from five other systems. Being essentially surrounded with a smaller navy means that New Home can only fort up and counter punch for most of the game.

The two "Mexican Stand-off" pairings are Sansterre-Amondiage and New Colchis-Joyuese. The worlds in those pairs are only two parsecs from each other and, with jump3 being the standard for six of the Cluster's eight battlefleets, worlds in each of those pairs can directly attack the other directly while still maintaining "bugout" fuel for jump1. Many of the campaigns I ran saw alliances of varying degrees between the "Mexican Stand-off" pairs early in the game.

The Sansterre-Amondiage pairing on the Cluster's edge has the better strategic position of the two. The New Colchis-Joyuese pairing is not only towards the Cluster's center but also borders Esperanza. These different strategic positions meant that Sansterre-Amondiage alliances were usually offensive in nature while New Colchis-Joyuese alliances were usually defensive.

Sansterre-Amondiage would usually picket Colchis and then strike at Neubayern and New Home in that order to (hopefully) control the Old Islands quickly. New Colchis-Joyuese would snap up the rest of the New Colchis trace while closely watching Esperanza and Serendip Belt. When Esperanza's offensive kicked off, they'd either defend New Colchis or try to hit Esperanza proper while her forces were engaged against Serendip Belt.

Because of the distribution of systems within the Cluster, Serendip Belt and Neubayern are rarely masters of their own fate. They like New Home, essentially react to the events around them. Serendip and Neubayern are too far apart for any type of alliance to have any real benefits. This is because both are relatively isolated and both face a 363.63kg gorilla, Serendip with Esperanza and Neubayern with the almost automatic Sansterre-Amondiage alliance.

My recollection of it is that most of the systems would be dominated by a couple of the more advanced systems.

That's the idea. All the nonaligned systems are easily gobbled up by the Cluster's great powers once the balloon goes up and the Concordat of Topas is shredded. Seizing non-aligned systems and holding them long enough to collect taxes from are two different things however.


Regards,
Bill

1 - TCS was a perfect multi-player game for shipboard. Everything could be done by pencil and no one ever needed to meet face to face.

2 - Like The Russian Campaign, that game has been played so long and so often by the hobby that its system has been essentially hacked. Much like chess, there are a handful of opening gambits and counter gambits that trump all other options. Again like chess, I've seen players at cons resign from a game in as little as three turns because they know they cannot win twenty turns later.

 

[Whipsnade]

If I was going to run a TCS game, I think I'd scatter the players across an entire sector... (big snip of interesting material)

Hans,

A sector is just too much space for the budgets involved. You'd have several tiny fleets groping around in the dark while rarely bumping into each other.

Remember the FFW double blind game from a few years ago? The Zhodani easily moved a huge fleet across the Jewel subsector to hit Efate without the Imperium being any the wiser. You'd have the same thing happening over and over again in a sector-sized game with TCS budgets. Players would also be loathe to dispatch ships from their homeworlds lest an enemy show up in force while the fleet was a week, a month, or a quarter away.

If you increase the budgets to fill the sector, you run into another problem. How are you going to model comm lag? TCS has one player per power and they're rarely more than two weeks comm time from either their home system or battlefleet(s). In a sector sized game, a player could be months in comm time from either home or the fleets. Writing orders to his far-flung forces for the referee to implement would then become a players primary activity in the game. That doesn't sound like too much fun.

Of course, instead of saddling the players with dozens of orders to write each turn and saddling the referee with multiple dozens of orders to implement each turn, you could recruit teams to play each power. That raises all new problems however. Getting eight people together for a TCS campaign is hard enough, finding the 24 or 32 or 40 people required for a sector-sized campaign would be next to impossible.


Regards,
Bill

 

[skyth]

Well, I ordered the CDROM, so I'll have the TCS rules soon enough

 

[Jeffr0]

So... Hans wants a sector-sized Traveller themed 4X "eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate" type game that requires a lifetime commitment and extensive development. Bill says that the Islands Campaign has been hacked by the gaming community and has issues with "Witches" and "Mexican Standoff" dynamics-- while requiring a large number of players and a long term commitment. That leaves us designing a 5-6 player Axis and Allies type scenario using High Guard and the Trillion Credit Squadron campaign rules.

So I'm trying to think of ways that we could introduce terrain to our High Guard games... and get 5-6 players interacting quickly and without much preamble... and have something with a reasonably "short" playing time... and something that has a relatively decent return on the group's investment of time and effort... while at the same to illuminating some aspect of Traveller that is not widely known outside of grognard circles... and this is what I think of:

1) Players design single 20 BCr TL 12 High Guard ships according to predetermined specs-- no fighters, riders, or small craft, though.

2) Play on a hex map with the "Mayday" rules-- ie, 5 hexes is short range and 15 hexes is the maximum range.

3) The last person in the game with a ship that can both move and fire is the winner.

4) Increase the Tactical Intelligence element by only reporting hits and/or penetration of defenses. Players know the abilities of a ship only by observing it in action.

5) Variants: Play again, but allow fighters and/or require missiles to move at 6G's and track fuel as with Mayday. Missiles can be fired upon while in flight and only roll to-hit (short range always, I guess?) when their counter contacts their target.

The thing I like best about High Guard so far is that the games are mercifully short and everything about a game's current state can be stored in a few lines of ASCII text. That is the defining quality that makes it suitable for PBEM play and also the large round robin tournaments that we've been able to run.

Our current games do not have any terrain whatsoever, of course-- and we are only marginally benifiting from the double-blind nature of refereed PBEM set up. On the one hand, this means High Guard will work relatively painlessly as part of a TCS campaign-- and we can sacrifice the "light" tactical intelligence rules we've been using without much impact on the overall fun of the battles.

On the other hand... I question how much return we'll get on our efforts at the TCS campaign level. Mostly I dread the process of coming up with a 5-6 player scenario only to find its flaws after 100 hours of play and thousands of emails. I could be a total wimp here and there may be nothing to worry about... but I just see us (not surprising with Traveller, I know) moving from acting as game players to taking on the role of game designers-- which means that the nature of what we're doing becomes frighteningly similar to what I do in my day job! [Day job = debugging poorly engineered systems.]

And then I think about this:

In most games, a player simultaneously plays the role of every member of a military unit; no orders need to be given, and every man performs as the player likes. In Striker, realistic limitations have been put on the abilities of officers to command their units. Giving orders to subordinates is a time consuming process; commanders will find it advisable to devise a simple plan and to give most orders in pre-battle briefings. Changes to this plan in the heat of action will be difficult except through on the spot leadership.

And I wonder if small Striker games and tournaments might better address our desires for leveraging the fun that's to be had in coordinating disparate forces in a double blind and/or multi player environment.

 

[Whipsnade]

Bill says that the Islands Campaign has been hacked by the gaming community and has issues with "Witches" and "Mexican Standoff" dynamics...

Jeffr0,

Not exactly hacked, especially when compared to truly hacked designs like AK or TRC. I guess the word I should have used was "stale", although that has rather negative connotations too.

The majority of my experience with TCS was during a period of time over twenty years ago which lasted perhaps 16 months before we grew tired of the game. A core group of perhaps 6 people played in most of the campaigns. I refereed dozens of campaigns during this period. Some campaigns ran concurrently and others were abandoned rather than finished.

If you play the same game on the same map with the same rules against the same people using the same ideas for nearly a year and half, the game would naturally begin to seem stale. We had hacked the game, when and only when, we played it against each other. New people would have brought new ideas and those new ideas would have made the game fun again.

... while requiring a large number of players and a long term commitment.

That was my objection to Hans' sector-sized TCS proposal only. You'd need bigger fleets to fill the bigger map which would require more people working as teams.

My blather about TCS' "witches" and "Mexican" pairings have everything to do with the "geography" of the Islands Cluster and nothing to with the rules. If you change the map, both would disappear.

With a little effort, I think you can devise a "circular" cluster of systems which would allow the placement of 5 or 6 "homesystems" that have no "geographic" disadvantages. None would be surrounded like New Home or New Colchis, none would be behind a moat like Esperanza, and none would be on a "protected" edge like Sansterre.

Equal care can also be taken when placing the game's "target" systems within the cluster, whatever those targets end up being. They can then be placed with "distance equality" relative to all the "homesystems". [Imagine 2 targets (T) and three homesystems (H). H1 would be 3 and 5 hexes from T1 and T2 respectively. H2 would be 5 and 3 hexes from T1 and T2. H3 would be 4 hexes from both.]

Yes, a game map created in this method would be somewhat artificial like that found in Settlers of Cataan, but such a map would mean the game's results would depend more on the actions of the players and less on the luck of a geographical draw.


Regards,
Bill

 

[Hal]

Some thoughts to consider regarding all of this...

What if fleet movement rules were based in part, on some of the Fifth Frontier War rules? Certain Admirals of a rank would have a seniority rating, and must plan their moves in advance based on their admiralty value. Planetary defense navies of course, need only react to when a fleet blips into existence from jump space.

An operational style game could be cobbled together as well based on a sort of layered ring system. Each "ring" is of a given "diameter" or "range band" if you will. Think of it as a bullseye type target where the GM can do a simple "Ok, each ring is 1/4 light second wide. Since the distance between any given two points will be known, you can utilize the CT book 2 formulas on how long it takes to reach any given segment within a ring.

So why have this kind of operational game? Now you can determine where a ship is at any given time using simplified mechanics. Now, a fleet can jump in to a given "ring plot" and if navigation is successful, the ships plop into existence where they originally targeted for with navigation rolls. Ships that plop into being without any nearby sensor platform, will be able to play possum and drift closer to the main world. Since fighters only have a duration of 12 hours (36 turns according to High Guard), one could readily see the advantage for having a fair number of ships acting as picket ships. Now we can start the cat and mouse type manueverings.

My proposal is this...

We use only TWO game worlds - and with perhaps a little bit of fun, recreate the war between the Sylean Confederation and that other empire that went the way of Carthage and other defeated empires...

But instead? We play it on an operational level with just the minimal worlds, and we utiilze High Guard to handle any fleet actions of any kind. So you want a recon of the outer space to insure that the enemy fleet doesn't have a couple of spies skulking about? Send a recon in force.

If I might suggest? GURPS TRAVELLER has some pretty good ideas about sensor ranges of ships in silent mode, in broadcasting mode, and in active sensor mode. Civilian ships are supposed to be in active broadcast mode with their transponders. Why not devise something like that for High Guard or CT?

Last but not least? How many people remember the rules system called Starfire? There was one rule for the empires version of the game, where you needed to have a civilian naval network in order to collect your taxes and such. What if...

What if in this version of the game, each X number of credits required a given tonnage of cargo space shipped in from various locations. Commerce raiders now have a target to go after, empires now have a series of missions besides that of killing enemy warships, and an operational cat and mouse game of fleets trying to preserve their merchant marines from the pathalogical killers who captain the fleet intruders and commerce raiders. Every X dtons of cargo that never make it to the home world or to the ship building world lowers its taxable income that supports the fleet and the army.

Pocket Empires has a lot of good stuff in it that would perhaps make it useful for running a campaign with a few people. RIU's can be directly converted to Imperial Credits, and RIU's can be used to define the non-naval elements (ie the Army) so that while ships may do the battleling in space, they STILL have to be able to pay for the troops ships, and they still have to protect those troop ships from being destroyed. Fighters can also be used as ground support elements that enhance not only the naval battles they are used in, but can also be utilized to act as Troop strength points.

Ah well, I'd best shut up now before someone throws a boot at me or something

 

[Jeffr0]

I was thinking of something less "realistic".

Remember the old game Trade Wars?

Players build fleets of ships... and use their cargo holds to do Book 7 style trade.

If the players are tied to specific worlds... well... I was thinking it would be easier to do in a TNE type setting-- that way systems can improve significantly in a short period of due to trade between nearby pocket empires.

The problem with TCS tournaments (edit: campaigns, actually) is that it is a zero sum game. It's Diplomacy. If I kill your fleet, we both lose ships and our enemies all become stronger relative to us. There needs to be a way for people to cooperate. So I was thinking some sort of Settlers of Catan type resource cards that can be traded... to model some of the Pocket Empires type improvements.

The Book 7 trade could be done... and the amount of goods a world has can fluctuate... encouraging players to go places where other folks aren't so much. This is to get players out and about with lots of smaller fleets... instead of having just the mega-fleets on patrol.

(Oh yeah... and the operational game stuff would be very important-- that can tie into the trade and build-up stuff in a classy way....)

Just some ideas.

 

[skyth]

I used to love trade wars

 

[DonM]

While I know I don't have time to play (having run a TCS game on the web in the 90s), I'd like permission to kibitz and peek at developments.

Thanks!

 

[tbeard1999]

Given that HG handles fighters in a relatively flaky way, I'd impose significant pilot limits so that fighters are impractical. I wouldn't overdo it, though. I like the idea of players having the option of larger numbers of light ships.

If using TL14+, I'd prohibit buffered plantetoid hulls -- they make it way too easy to build super heavily armored ships.

In a high tech campaign, I'd impose fairly high jump minimums. That will significantly reduce the tonnage available for weapons, power and armor and force some interesting tradeoffs.

 

[Matt123]

Bills notes on the Island Clusters campaign were interesting & in hindsight I can relate them to the games I've played- also a long time ago.

IMHO I'd take the easy path for the first campaign and use or adapt the Island Clusters. Most interested here have never played or ref'ed it & the experience would lead to a far more interesting 'custom' campaign for all later.

 

[dccarles]

I like the Island Clusters a lot. The only real disadvantage I can see is that the colonies of the major worlds are pretty much valueless economically, so in my campaign (unplayed, sadly) they're worth victory points equal to their population factor + TL. (Or maybe it was multiplied, I forget.)

My Island Clusters campaign assumes Serendip Belt and New Colchis are loosely aligned against Esperanza and Joyeuse, Sansterre and Amondiage are rivals, while Neubayern and New Home are mostly neutral. (These are player-adjustable, though. Expedience is a powerful force.)

However, the campaign kicks off with a struggle between New Home and Amondiage. When the bureaucracy strikes down a reform law extending the vote to all (regardless of their civil or property status), a significant minority of the population stages a general strike. Overvigorous government suppression of the strikes produce local revolts.

Amondiage sends a squadron to safeguard the interests of their nationals and guest workers, while New Home, seeing the opportunity to gain an ally, sends military aid to the government. War starts when Colchis' ground batteries, equipped with New Home's missiles, fire on an Amondiage detachment trying to prevent New Home from landing a large shipment of g-carriers. Amondiage concludes that New Home is responsible and...

Well, that's up to the players.

--Devin