World management for wargame campaign?

[Ruarigh]

I'm putting together a stupidly large campaign game using Traveller as the background. My gaming buddy and I do not have the time to play an RPG properly, but we have a couple of hours per week that are perfect for small wargames. The plan is to play small skirmishes and RPG Light style games using an adapted Classic Traveller system, platoon-level military skirmishes using Tomorrow's War and larger games using Striker 2. The games will be linked as part of the campaign narrative, giving us the opportunity to pick up and put down the campaign as time permits. In theory, we can dip in to the game at various points along its timeline, and thus create the history of the planet we start on.

That is all well and good, and I could run the campaign based purely on that, but I like resource management games too and that is where my problem begins. I shall be setting the initial campaign on Beltene in Reaver's Deep c.2300 or so and taking some liberties with canon to make our two nations fit. Each nation will start as an established nation with a population in the millions, rather than tens of millions and I want to be able to have us manage the nations with the opportunity for investing funding in development so that we can increase each nation's tech level over time. Ideally we should be able to focus the funding on particular areas, so that the military forces we field can develop slightly differently, as might other areas of technology, which would create differences in the armies and air forces that we use.

So that's the background. I have Dynasty, The World Tamer's Handbook and Pocket Empires. My initial reading of The World Tamer's Handbook and comments on it, suggests that it might break down at the nation size I would like to start with, while Pocket Empires seems to require much larger dominions to rule. Dynasty does not look like it has what I want either, appearing to be too static in tech level.

The questions:

1. Is my reading of these books right?
2. If it is not right, can they be played straight or what adaptations need to be made to suit the game I am proposing?
3. Is there something out there that bridges the gap between a colony and a pocket empire?
4. Does anyone have any suggestions for simplifying the book-keeping for such a campaign?

Thanks in advance for any and all suggestions. I know that I could just state that advances are made every so often, but I would prefer a more organic approach.

Cheers,
R

 

[warwizard]

I've been thinking that a two tiered approach to this is needed:

A WTH spreadsheet for each planet or outpost in a system with the meta tasks being handled at the pocket empire level.

WTH breaks down at about the 2-3 year point where you have to define all the items you need to build to establish the functions of a class E,D,C,D, or A star port.
( I make one house rule in WTH to help with the macro economic issue of the RM being more valuable than the industrial output that uses the RM:" The RM ship at a rate of 200 RM per displacement ton, not 20." As the RM are purchased at a lot size of displacement tons... this has the effect of making the RM used to produce industrial goods 1/10 the cost than as previously seen.)

So for use in detailing a world with a population in the millions WTH seems suitable once you define the constructions needed for the abilities the world will have.

Class E Downport: Nothing more than a beacon and a place to land, hmm ok build a high quality road 3000 meters long with about 16 lanes, and about
.15 Mcr of light industrial goods and 200 m2 area of housing for the beacon and 4 labor units to man it, provision it with 200 KW power from your power industry and you have your 1000 AU radio (cost and power per T4 FF&S)

Advance to class D, Need warehousing space sufficient to hold all of the goods exported in a month. This varies by population and how much export trade is conducted. Unrefined fuel is available: water cracking plant (minimum sized fuel purifier from FF&S) with cost and power requirements from thoes rules, building to house it, fuel tankage to hold a reserve of fuel (again scaled to demand) Power to keep the fuel liquidified. Customs office to collect taxes on trade. Passenger terminal scaled to demand. Search and rescue teams, security teams. Space to ground shuttle service. Space search and rescue service.

Advance to class C: need to add repair capability, and improve the fuel supply to "refined" Repair , ok more warehouse space: "hangars" Light and heavy industrial output devoted to making spare parts for space ships, laborors in a new class "repair technicians" Capitol goods are "repair tools" output is in CR repaired.
( I propose this is extended to the building of ships when we go to B and A class ports you produce the industrial output in parts and assembly pays for it again just like the construction industry builds a building for your other capital goods) Fuel purifier is now scaled with the size of the tankage to be able to purify the entire installed tankage in 6 hours.

I'll leave the A and B ports for you to post.

 

[Ruarigh]

Cool, that's a couple of decent ideas, thanks. Looking forward to other ideas too. I like ideas, because I can play with them and see what works best for me.

 

[Timerover51]

Ideally we should be able to focus the funding on particular areas, so that the military forces we field can develop slightly differently, as might other areas of technology, which would create differences in the armies and air forces that we use.

So that's the background. I have Dynasty, The World Tamer's Handbook and Pocket Empires. My initial reading of The World Tamer's Handbook and comments on it, suggests that it might break down at the nation size I would like to start with, while Pocket Empires seems to require much larger dominions to rule. Dynasty does not look like it has what I want either, appearing to be too static in tech level.

The questions:

1. Is my reading of these books right?
2. If it is not right, can they be played straight or what adaptations need to be made to suit the game I am proposing?
3. Is there something out there that bridges the gap between a colony and a pocket empire?
4. Does anyone have any suggestions for simplifying the book-keeping for such a campaign?

Thanks in advance for any and all suggestions. I know that I could just state that advances are made every so often, but I would prefer a more organic approach.

Cheers,
R

Are you looking strictly for ideas based on the various Traveller books, or are you open to using other sources as well?

 

[Ruarigh]

Are you looking strictly for ideas based on the various Traveller books, or are you open to using other sources as well?

My first preference is for Traveller books, because of the Traveller-centric focus of the campaign. However, as long as it can all be dovetailed together with the Traveller material, then I will consider anything from anywhere.

 

[Timerover51]

My first preference is for Traveller books, because of the Traveller-centric focus of the campaign. However, as long as it can all be dovetailed together with the Traveller material, then I will consider anything from anywhere.

Sorry for the delay in replying, I had some other things to deal with the past couple of days.

As you are thinking of putting a couple of countries on a Balkanized planet, I would recommend taking a lot at the CIA World Data Book, and picking out a couple of countries that match the characteristics for which you are looking. That would give you a lot of additional data like population characteristics, natural resources, needed imports, education level, etc. Then, depending on your Tech Level, if not too much advanced over the present, either get the current military forces off of a site like Global Security, or post the countries here, and I pull the data off of one of my back copies of the Military Balance. That gives you your basic military forces to start working with.

I would think that would save you a lot of time and effort.

 

[Ruarigh]

Yup, those are all good ideas for starting points. I already have some ideas for my own force, but the additional information will help flesh it all out and provide a baseline for the whole game.

I did wonder about specifying areas of technological improvement such as personal weapons, personal armour, transport, vehicle armour, heavy weapons, etc and then calculating how long each should take to improve to the next level. Add to that the cost of researching these improvements, however I work it out, the GDP of each nation on our world and then my friend and I can start allocating our spare cash to different areas of research as we choose. Ideally the cost of researching them all at the same time would be much more than we can afford, so we have to prioritise different areas for expenditure of our money and resources. He might develop vehicles first, while I might develop infantry heavy weapons. Suddenly our nations develop in different ways and our armies become slightly different too. I hope that makes sense. I'm a bit sleep-starved at the moment.

 

[Timerover51]

Yup, those are all good ideas for starting points. I already have some ideas for my own force, but the additional information will help flesh it all out and provide a baseline for the whole game.

I did wonder about specifying areas of technological improvement such as personal weapons, personal armour, transport, vehicle armour, heavy weapons, etc and then calculating how long each should take to improve to the next level. Add to that the cost of researching these improvements, however I work it out, the GDP of each nation on our world and then my friend and I can start allocating our spare cash to different areas of research as we choose. Ideally the cost of researching them all at the same time would be much more than we can afford, so we have to prioritise different areas for expenditure of our money and resources. He might develop vehicles first, while I might develop infantry heavy weapons. Suddenly our nations develop in different ways and our armies become slightly different too. I hope that makes sense. I'm a bit sleep-starved at the moment.

Well, the World Fact Book gives you GDP as a starter, although you might want to tweak that a bit depending on your nation.

Are you having these countries be adjacent, or separated in some manner? If one is say an island while one is on the mainland with possibly unfriendly neighbors, you would immediately have different priorities in research and development. I will take a look and see what is the newest copy of the Military Balance that I have, and I also have a couple of copies of the Almanac of World Military Power from the early 1970s as well. What Tech Level are you thinking of?

 

[Ruarigh]

You can read some of the background I have written on my blog. The UPP for Beltene in my game is B866675-9. I am tempted to increase the population to 7, but I don't want it too high, because I would like to keep a chunk of the planet for exploring and the planet has not been colonised for long. Both nations are TL9 because I wanted spacefaring capability (I have space fighters to use), so I assumed that this was an organised colonisation with big money backing it. That also gives us laser rifles and proper sci-fi tech rather than playing WW2 in space. It also means that original colony was well-planned and laid out with decent infrastructure for exploiting local resources. Unfortunately, due to ideological differences over what it means to be English, the colony split into two factions who formed the current nations and are now in a semi-permanent state of low level skirmishing on the border.

The two nations are on the same landmass and have a border in common. The rest of the planet is unexploited yet, although there is a small corporate outpost on the planet's moon. I don't know if this belongs to one of the nations or if it has been put there by an external agency. I'm still fiddling with the maps in FT3 and CC3 so I am not certain about the precise geography.

I can certainly work with real world GDPs and similar things, and hopefully combine them with the Traveller material to generate a means of progressing, so I am pleased you mentioned them and I am off to look at them now. Thanks.

 

[Timerover51]

Greetings, I was just wondering how things were going? I did look at your blog page, and I like all of your scenery.

 

[Ruarigh]

I'm glad you like the terrain. I have family problems to deal with that cropped up a couple of days ago so it may take a little while to put it all the details together. I shall post them once I have sorted things out though and hopefully get a narrative going about the campaign. Thanks for your help and ideas. They are all feeding into the various ideas I am testing.

 

[Timerover51]

I'm glad you like the terrain. I have family problems to deal with that cropped up a couple of days ago so it may take a little while to put it all the details together. I shall post them once I have sorted things out though and hopefully get a narrative going about the campaign. Thanks for your help and ideas. They are all feeding into the various ideas I am testing.

Let me know if you need any more data or help.

 

[Ruarigh]

I have now had time to skim WTH and PE again and think I have the basics of a system for running the colonies. Essentially, PE includes a RU to Cr conversion and a system for researching higher tech levels. WTH has a system for running colonies/small worlds. I reckon that means that I can combine the two systems to run our wargaming world. I like the random events in WTH, because they can trigger RPG-Light skirmish adventures using an adaptation of the Classic Traveller rules for miniatures games.

For setting up our nations, we both have a clear idea of culture and I want the nations to both start from the same basis, so we shall apply suitable numbers to make it even and develop from there. With the population numbers sorted, I plan to borrow heavily from real-world data, as suggested by timerover51, including adapting modern nation maps of countries with appropriate population levels to suit the world our game will be based on.

It is all coming together slowly now. Thanks for the pointers and help.