I'm thinking of recreating the battle of the first Death Star in armada. Figured I'd NPC the empire giving them a set of rules to follow and man the rebels myself attempting to destroy the station in a "surprise" attack. I AM AWARE that some upgrade cards for the Empire ships are not typically allowed on that specific ship! What is y'alls opinion and/or suggestions for this as I'd like to make it fair, but challenging. I built it based on the ships I own. What I was thinking is as follows:

-Death star; Standard station rules and cutout (as per CC) with 30HP, ability to destroy the closest enemy capital ship once every 3 rounds, counter 2 against all enemy squadron attacks, holds fleet admiral and deploys 4 new tie squadrons (2 fighters, 2 bombers chosen based on availability) every two rounds.

-2 ISD II's and 2 VSD II's; Orbits Death Star at speed 1 equidistant and alternating (ISD,VSD,ISD,VSD) order, receive upgrades "advanced gunnery crew, redundant shields and jamming field", attack closest enemy capital ship then closest enemy squadrons if 2 or more are in the same firing zone, otherwise next closest capital ship.

-Imperial Fighters; 2 standard TIE Fighters at distance 4 perpendicular to each Star Destroyer to start the game, Fighters attack closest enemy squadrons, bombers attack closest enemy capital ship when able, no uniques as to eliminate player influence on NPC. (Optional: Darth Vader is the exception if Luke is in play for nostalgia's sake)

Rebels! Can use whatever they have (including uniques) attempting to win using as small a fleet cost as possible. (Limit 2 upgrades and 1 title card per capital ship). The longer the match lasts the stronger the empire gets. The challenge is to win using the smallest fleet point cost as possible so the individual sets their own difficulty. Empire attempts to follow individual vessel rules as best as possible.

Thanks for reading and I'd appreciate your opinions and suggestions. Or links if someone has done this before me. TAKE CARE!

The FIRST DS? The battle of Yavin? The battle that included no capital ships at all (other than the DS itself) and was all about fighters? Why not the Battle of Endor, the battle around the DS2, which was an actual Armada scale battle?

Brain fart. Your right. Though both are possible, the second one is what I was thinking of.

I did this once before. It was 800 points per side, the Imperials had 1 SSD, 3 ISDs, a bunch of TIES and the Deathstar (not included in the point total). The Rebels had 2 MC80s, 1 Liberty, a special Lando squadron and a bunch of smaller ships and fighters.

We used a deck of custom event cards to determine when the shield generator would go down, when the superlaser would fire, and when someone would be killed in the Emperor's Throne room. It was a pretty fun game and took about 6 hours in total.

The Rebels won. The way the fleets were set up the Rebels started between the Death Star and the Imperial Fleet. They sent their fighters straight to the edge of the shield and waited for it to go down. Most of the Imperial fighters started with the Imperial capital ships, so they had to go through the rebel fleet to intercept the rebel fighters. Because we were sticking with canon these were 3 HP TIEs and Interceptors and they got shredded by all the flack from the rebel cruisers. There were only a few a TIEs defending the Death Star within the shield, and only a few cards in the deck that let the Imps spawn more TIEs from the Death Star. Plus, the draws were bad for the Imps in general so the superlaser never killed anything.

Here are some of the models and cards we used (the Death Star is just a painted cardboard box, lol). That photo wasn't from the actual game but it was pretty close to the final setup we used.

Welp. My wife saw the jealousy in my eyes when I showed her the photos. Y'all put way more effort into this then I did. Lol. Good job. I'm playing through it right now and yeaaaaa it's taking a while. But it's going pretty smooth. 3 rounds in and I'm almost in range of the Death Star.

--update. It took 8 rounds, 8 capital ships and 20 fighters. No unique pilots or ship title cards for the rebels and 2 upgrade cards each.

Empire used 2 isds and 2 vsds with 4 of 6 different types of fighters chosen by dice every 2 rounds.

Twas as a lot of fun. Totally worth it.

I was thinking of doing something similar to the suggested ideas, only as the start of a post-ROTJ campaign that would largely use the Corellian Conflict campaign rules for subsequent games.

Opening scenario is the Second Death Star Battle. Pit even number of imperial and rebel players against each other with some pretty big point values. However Death Star is off table, gets one in six chance of destroying a rebel capital ship every turn after the 2nd turn, and D3 additional tie (random variant) squadrons come from the Death Star's edge every turn. Death Star shield has 50-50 chance of going down after turn three, and Death Star has a one in six chance of blowing up starting the turn after the shield goes down with a +1 for every rebel fighter squad that exits the game on the Death Star edge, +2 for unique rebel fighter squad that does the same, -1 for every imperial squad that also leaves the game on the Death Star edge.

Death Star automatically loses its shield on turn six and blows up on turn 7 if it has not done so before then, and imperial players must take their remaining ships and flee to the nearest table edge. Imperial ships that fail to do so within three turns of the Death Star's destruction are considered to have surrendered and are destroyed for purposes of the campaign.

The campaign then goes on to play with the Corellian Conflict rules, but your fleet rosters start with whatever survived the Battle of Endor.

Edit: Thoughts? I was wondering particularly if three turns would be too much or too little time for imperial players to evac the board? Assume standard size play area for every two players.

20 hours ago, PubliusClaudius said:

I was thinking of doing something similar to the suggested ideas, only as the start of a post-ROTJ campaign that would largely use the Corellian Conflict campaign rules for subsequent games.

Opening scenario is the Second Death Star Battle. Pit even number of imperial and rebel players against each other with some pretty big point values. However Death Star is off table, gets one in six chance of destroying a rebel capital ship every turn after the 2nd turn, and D3 additional tie (random variant) squadrons come from the Death Star's edge every turn. Death Star shield has 50-50 chance of going down after turn three, and Death Star has a one in six chance of blowing up starting the turn after the shield goes down with a +1 for every rebel fighter squad that exits the game on the Death Star edge, +2 for unique rebel fighter squad that does the same, -1 for every imperial squad that also leaves the game on the Death Star edge.

Death Star automatically loses its shield on turn six and blows up on turn 7 if it has not done so before then, and imperial players must take their remaining ships and flee to the nearest table edge. Imperial ships that fail to do so within three turns of the Death Star's destruction are considered to have surrendered and are destroyed for purposes of the campaign.

The campaign then goes on to play with the Corellian Conflict rules, but your fleet rosters start with whatever survived the Battle of Endor.

Edit: Thoughts? I was wondering particularly if three turns would be too much or too little time for imperial players to evac the board? Assume standard size play area for every two players.

These seem better than the rules I used. I do have one suggestion you can use to make the superlaser less unpredictable. Create some superlaser dice, d8s with 3 labeled sides: 'L', 'M+', and 'S+'. Every round the imperial player can place one superlaser die into the superlaser pool (charging the laser) or declare a single rebel ship as a target and roll all dice in the pool (fire the laser at a ship). Each 'L' does 15 damage if the target is a large ship, each 'M+' does 15 damage if the target is a large or medium ship, and each 'S+' does 15 damage regardless of size. The rebels can use any upgrades or defense tokens they would like, treating the superlaser as an ordinary attack. A rebel ship is considered obstructed against this attack if it is within close range of an imperial ship.

On 4/16/2017 at 3:08 AM, PubliusClaudius said:

I was thinking of doing something similar to the suggested ideas, only as the start of a post-ROTJ campaign that would largely use the Corellian Conflict campaign rules for subsequent games.

Opening scenario is the Second Death Star Battle. Pit even number of imperial and rebel players against each other with some pretty big point values. However Death Star is off table, gets one in six chance of destroying a rebel capital ship every turn after the 2nd turn, and D3 additional tie (random variant) squadrons come from the Death Star's edge every turn. Death Star shield has 50-50 chance of going down after turn three, and Death Star has a one in six chance of blowing up starting the turn after the shield goes down with a +1 for every rebel fighter squad that exits the game on the Death Star edge, +2 for unique rebel fighter squad that does the same, -1 for every imperial squad that also leaves the game on the Death Star edge.

Death Star automatically loses its shield on turn six and blows up on turn 7 if it has not done so before then, and imperial players must take their remaining ships and flee to the nearest table edge. Imperial ships that fail to do so within three turns of the Death Star's destruction are considered to have surrendered and are destroyed for purposes of the campaign.

The campaign then goes on to play with the Corellian Conflict rules, but your fleet rosters start with whatever survived the Battle of Endor.

Edit: Thoughts? I was wondering particularly if three turns would be too much or too little time for imperial players to evac the board? Assume standard size play area for every two players.

Since it's a campaign, and in the EU the Rebellion scavenged all available ships, you could perhaps work in a way to make certain Imperial ships that are left behind after the Death Star explodes be made available to the rebels? Maybe certain ships (determined by a die roll? Points expenditure?) of a certain (size class? hull damage? point cost? proximity to an enemy ship of specific size?) could be 'captured' and used by the rebels? Perhaps the rebels would have to pay a certain amount of points to field them, and all unique upgrades are lost?

Maybe later on in the campaign, if the Imps are behind by a certain amount of points, they too could capture enemy vessels, so as to simulate Thrawn doing so in the EU.

I was inventing my own campaign for home use, and had a similar concept as described above, only with the add on that all unique officers/Admirals were considered 'captured' and could escape, be let free in a prisoner exchange, or kept in prison (also determined by a die roll).

5 hours ago, NobodyInParticular said:

Since it's a campaign, and in the EU the Rebellion scavenged all available ships, you could perhaps work in a way to make certain Imperial ships that are left behind after the Death Star explodes be made available to the rebels? Maybe certain ships (determined by a die roll? Points expenditure?) of a certain (size class? hull damage? point cost? proximity to an enemy ship of specific size?) could be 'captured' and used by the rebels? Perhaps the rebels would have to pay a certain amount of points to field them, and all unique upgrades are lost?

Maybe later on in the campaign, if the Imps are behind by a certain amount of points, they too could capture enemy vessels, so as to simulate Thrawn doing so in the EU.

I was inventing my own campaign for home use, and had a similar concept as described above, only with the add on that all unique officers/Admirals were considered 'captured' and could escape, be let free in a prisoner exchange, or kept in prison (also determined by a die roll).

I really like the idea of capturing ships to get a mix of rebel and imperial ships on both sides. Perhaps playing with the boarding party rules coming out in the next wave might do the trick. But the other suggestions might be easier to implement.

Ultimately, I am envisioning this as a role-playing campaign in which I might shamelessly steal the idea of capturing admirals too. Each team would be led by a Grand Admiral who would be responsible for distributing resources and coordinating the efforts of the other admirals on the team, but prisoner exchanges would add an interesting dynamic between the two teams. Maybe the same can go for captured ships? The incentive to get one's own ships back might be enemy ships cost 50% more to repair and deploy or some such so players would be able to field captured vessels in a pinch but might prefer their own.

20 hours ago, PubliusClaudius said:

I really like the idea of capturing ships to get a mix of rebel and imperial ships on both sides. Perhaps playing with the boarding party rules coming out in the next wave might do the trick. But the other suggestions might be easier to implement.

Ultimately, I am envisioning this as a role-playing campaign in which I might shamelessly steal the idea of capturing admirals too. Each team would be led by a Grand Admiral who would be responsible for distributing resources and coordinating the efforts of the other admirals on the team, but prisoner exchanges would add an interesting dynamic between the two teams. Maybe the same can go for captured ships? The incentive to get one's own ships back might be enemy ships cost 50% more to repair and deploy or some such so players would be able to field captured vessels in a pinch but might prefer their own.

It's not stealing if it's publicly posted

I find the idea of exchanging captured ships interesting, but a bit unthematic. I mean, if you were a rebel officer with an ISD-II in your fleet, would you really change it for an HMC80 or LMC80? It'd be a tough choice I think. Also, how would carry out a ship exchange? How would you transfer over 30000 crew from one ship to another without any incidents? I dunno, as a game mechanic it most certainly could be used, but I think it would clash a little with any attempt to keep the rules related to 'reality'. If one ignores the slight inconsistency there, then I really think it can be performed. Especially if you implement a rule that ships can only be built at shipyards, and certain shipyards can only build (and repair) certain types of ships, meaning that to use any captured vessels one would have to own specific shipyards. Since so much of the Thrawn trilogy revolved around capturing shipyards, as did some of the X-Wing series, I find this thematic, not to mention something that actually gives a strategic focus to planet-capture (establishing forward bases and so on, not as in CC jumping to any planet, but as in EAW and the books, with direct hyperlanes between certain planets, requiring some to be captured before others can be attacked).

Should such a rule be implemented, then not only are shipyards much more valuable, but the desire to rid yourself of vessels you cannot fly, in exchange for vessels that you can, may be more worthwhile. Of course, to prevent a team from stockpiling captured ISDs and then capturing a shipyard to repair them and replacing some rebel ships with ISDs and thereby creating a Imp-on-Imp style battle scenario certain restrictions would have to be implemented. In order to really do this I think a lot more depth would have to be added, such as ship upkeep expenses and crew wages, recruitment limit tied to current population, the possession of systems fit for storing unused ships etc etc etc. . .

I guess the simplest and most obvious fix (though perhaps the more boring?) would be a fleet point limit per player, and having unused captured vessels add to that limit. This would mean that either a team captures a shipyard and coordinates to enable all the captured vessels to be repaired and used*, or a ship exchange is arranged and vessels swapped. If the latter then a system of valuation would have to be considered. I.e., are ships traded based on point-cost? Base size? There are advantages, but more obviously disadvantages, to either system, such as the fact that ISD-IIs have no base point cost equivalent, so the rebel player is losing out, unless you combine ships, so one ISD-II is traded for, say, one MC-30c Torpedo Frigate and one Neb-B escort. Maybe I'm thinking too much into this, and if so I apologize, but please take this as thinking out loud for my own campaign. . . if you want me to stop I will

*Perhaps the Grand Admiral contains a central 'pool' of ships and squadrons, and assigns these assets to players upon request? This would imitate the way military resources were allocated in Star Wars, with a general coming up with a plan, it being approved, and the appropriate assets peeled off from the main fleet and allocated. After all, if a team with 3 players each with 500 points want to perform some missions, and they realize that they can perform 4 missions of 600, 200, 250, and 450 points, then why would they settle for 3 missions of 500, which is either a waste of 50-300 points or a mission that is under-manned by 100 points? Also, this would create scenarios of various battle-groups coordinating or being split into subsections, which I find fun. Granted, this could at times lead to unbalanced battles, but then, that's war. I forget who said it, but: 'If it's a fair fight, you're doing something wrong'.

49 minutes ago, NobodyInParticular said:

It's not stealing if it's publicly posted

I find the idea of exchanging captured ships interesting, but a bit unthematic. I mean, if you were a rebel officer with an ISD-II in your fleet, would you really change it for an HMC80 or LMC80? It'd be a tough choice I think. Also, how would carry out a ship exchange? How would you transfer over 30000 crew from one ship to another without any incidents? I dunno, as a game mechanic it most certainly could be used, but I think it would clash a little with any attempt to keep the rules related to 'reality'. If one ignores the slight inconsistency there, then I really think it can be performed. Especially if you implement a rule that ships can only be built at shipyards, and certain shipyards can only build (and repair) certain types of ships, meaning that to use any captured vessels one would have to own specific shipyards. Since so much of the Thrawn trilogy revolved around capturing shipyards, as did some of the X-Wing series, I find this thematic, not to mention something that actually gives a strategic focus to planet-capture (establishing forward bases and so on, not as in CC jumping to any planet, but as in EAW and the books, with direct hyperlanes between certain planets, requiring some to be captured before others can be attacked).

Should such a rule be implemented, then not only are shipyards much more valuable, but the desire to rid yourself of vessels you cannot fly, in exchange for vessels that you can, may be more worthwhile. Of course, to prevent a team from stockpiling captured ISDs and then capturing a shipyard to repair them and replacing some rebel ships with ISDs and thereby creating a Imp-on-Imp style battle scenario certain restrictions would have to be implemented. In order to really do this I think a lot more depth would have to be added, such as ship upkeep expenses and crew wages, recruitment limit tied to current population, the possession of systems fit for storing unused ships etc etc etc. . .

I guess the simplest and most obvious fix (though perhaps the more boring?) would be a fleet point limit per player, and having unused captured vessels add to that limit. This would mean that either a team captures a shipyard and coordinates to enable all the captured vessels to be repaired and used*, or a ship exchange is arranged and vessels swapped. If the latter then a system of valuation would have to be considered. I.e., are ships traded based on point-cost? Base size? There are advantages, but more obviously disadvantages, to either system, such as the fact that ISD-IIs have no base point cost equivalent, so the rebel player is losing out, unless you combine ships, so one ISD-II is traded for, say, one MC-30c Torpedo Frigate and one Neb-B escort. Maybe I'm thinking too much into this, and if so I apologize, but please take this as thinking out loud for my own campaign. . . if you want me to stop I will

*Perhaps the Grand Admiral contains a central 'pool' of ships and squadrons, and assigns these assets to players upon request? This would imitate the way military resources were allocated in Star Wars, with a general coming up with a plan, it being approved, and the appropriate assets peeled off from the main fleet and allocated. After all, if a team with 3 players each with 500 points want to perform some missions, and they realize that they can perform 4 missions of 600, 200, 250, and 450 points, then why would they settle for 3 missions of 500, which is either a waste of 50-300 points or a mission that is under-manned by 100 points? Also, this would create scenarios of various battle-groups coordinating or being split into subsections, which I find fun. Granted, this could at times lead to unbalanced battles, but then, that's war. I forget who said it, but: 'If it's a fair fight, you're doing something wrong'.

I think these are all good points. And it's totally cool. I've game mastered for a number of RPGs in college, so long-winded discussions on campaign rules are kind of my thing.

As we were talking about the possibility of exchanging ships, I took a step back and asked myself how realistic it would be for opposing militaries to exchange equipment generally speaking. Prisoners, sure, all the time, plenty of examples of that, but as I thought about the big equipment like capital ships the less realistic that particular possibility seemed. I guess my thoughts at the moment are that most naval equipment, including fighter squads, would realistically represent too great of an investment in resources to willingly cede to an enemy in war time. Maybe it could be otherwise in terms of a more finalized peace agreement, but any sensible commander would probably try to sabotage any equipment he/she knew was about to fall into enemy hands simply because that commander would know that such equipment would almost immediately be used against his/her forces at the soonest opportunity. The smart thing would simply be to make sure that that equipment didn't work when it needed to, and commanders who received any equipment once in the hands of the enemy would be wary of booby traps.

As far as using captured equipment goes, I'm thinking a 10% points increase to represent the crew's unfamiliarity with the given vessel and a 50% increase in repair costs to represent the lack of resources/facilities to properly service equipment from the opposing factions. Though I like the idea of certain shipyards producing certain equipment and thus increasing their strategic value, it might end up causing too much of a headache for players.

Imagine all the ISD factories falling out of imperial hands and they can't win them back despite doing well on other parts of the map. I think something like that might be more realistic in a sense but probably less fun for the imperial team.

A grand strategy video game series like total war would be able to keep track of all the complicated math necessary to keep things balanced, fun, and realistic, but I think table top is complicated enough without all that.

As for your point on Grand Admirals distributing resources, I was talking with some friends about a very similar idea for a battle tech campaign. The idea was each team would start out with equal battle value but it would be up to players to strategically allocate their forces on the campaign map. Ultimately, the campaign never took off because though some players really liked the idea of that amount of strategic latitude, other players were too worried about individual scenarios becoming too unbalanced. With the right group it could work out fine, just not the majority of that one.

10 hours ago, PubliusClaudius said:

I think these are all good points. And it's totally cool. I've game mastered for a number of RPGs in college, so long-winded discussions on campaign rules are kind of my thing.

As we were talking about the possibility of exchanging ships, I took a step back and asked myself how realistic it would be for opposing militaries to exchange equipment generally speaking. Prisoners, sure, all the time, plenty of examples of that, but as I thought about the big equipment like capital ships the less realistic that particular possibility seemed. I guess my thoughts at the moment are that most naval equipment, including fighter squads, would realistically represent too great of an investment in resources to willingly cede to an enemy in war time. Maybe it could be otherwise in terms of a more finalized peace agreement, but any sensible commander would probably try to sabotage any equipment he/she knew was about to fall into enemy hands simply because that commander would know that such equipment would almost immediately be used against his/her forces at the soonest opportunity. The smart thing would simply be to make sure that that equipment didn't work when it needed to, and commanders who received any equipment once in the hands of the enemy would be wary of booby traps.

As far as using captured equipment goes, I'm thinking a 10% points increase to represent the crew's unfamiliarity with the given vessel and a 50% increase in repair costs to represent the lack of resources/facilities to properly service equipment from the opposing factions. Though I like the idea of certain shipyards producing certain equipment and thus increasing their strategic value, it might end up causing too much of a headache for players.

Imagine all the ISD factories falling out of imperial hands and they can't win them back despite doing well on other parts of the map. I think something like that might be more realistic in a sense but probably less fun for the imperial team.

A grand strategy video game series like total war would be able to keep track of all the complicated math necessary to keep things balanced, fun, and realistic, but I think table top is complicated enough without all that.

As for your point on Grand Admirals distributing resources, I was talking with some friends about a very similar idea for a battle tech campaign. The idea was each team would start out with equal battle value but it would be up to players to strategically allocate their forces on the campaign map. Ultimately, the campaign never took off because though some players really liked the idea of that amount of strategic latitude, other players were too worried about individual scenarios becoming too unbalanced. With the right group it could work out fine, just not the majority of that one.

Those were my thoughts (formulated after I posted) as well concerning ship exchange, but I didn't edit them in. I was thinking of how easy it would be to put a thermal detonator in the reactor, walk off the ship, then remotely detonate it.

You do indeed have a good point about the issue of balancing fun and 'realism'. Maybe just have any shipyard be able to repair all ships? It detracts a bit from the strategy of capturing them, I think, but keeps enough so that there is a point to capturing them, and while not yet having played the game, I find it somewhat unlikely that all the shipyards will be lost without being able to recapture them during a campaign. Regardless of shipyards, a point increase for enemy vessels seems like a good idea, but I wouldn't suggest describing it as 'unfamiliarity' since that implies that eventually the crews will become familiar, and then what? Also 50% increase seems a lot, an ISD-II would cost 180 points. . . assuming you are not using CC rules for repair. Otherwise maybe just up the repair cost of captured vessels to 75% or 100%? Or do you mean a 50% increase above the normal repair cost, so 75%? Unless you don't intend to keep the rules for repair? In my aforementioned home campaign we repaired ships based on damage cards sustained, so if a ship was destroyed it stayed destroyed. Then repair cost the % of their base cost as there were damage cards. So an HMC80 with 4 cards would cost 57 points to repair, but if it had 7 upgrades it was left behind as 'too damaged to retreat through hyperspace'. In hindsight, this is perhaps too much, and the main reason the campaign didn't get off the ground was that it was turn based and had all this calculations for ship construction (depending on the planet you owned, you could construct X amount of points a turn), hyperspace travel (X turns based on die roll) etc. But I think that CC's rules for ship repair are a decent balance between 'well it's not worth it' and 'it's too cheap!'. I also think instantaneous construction and repair is good, if not so realistic, as otherwise it RALLY bogs down play. . .

Ultimately what I understand about CC is that it needs extensive house-rules to be made into a decent strategic campaign, and that as such it may just be better, for the purposes of a homegrown campaign, to ditch most of the rules and start with the map, then work your way up with new stuff, kinda like we're doing now. Again, I haven't played it yet, but even still I want to replace it with my own, just because I desire that amount of depth. Fortunately I'm only playing it with 1 other person, so I can implement the Grand Admiral asset allocation rule. . .

I do not know if you have ever heard of or played any games from the Avalon Hill company, which closed down in the '90s, but they had this sort of strategic depth, especially games like Advanced Third Reich, which is a strategy game encompassing all of WWII, from supply lines and the importance of the Ploesti oil fields to diplomacy. If you have, then these are the sort of games I like playing, and thus you'll understand were I am trying to take these (the campaign we are discussing, my own future one, CC) campaigns. Naturally if you think it's too much nobody is forcing you to follow my suggestions, but I've always preferred to aim high with my plans so that I can remove things if need be, but if it turns out I can achieve it, then I am prepared, rather than aim low and realize I can go further, only to not have thought quite that far ahead. . . .it doesn't always work, but still, worth a shot.

If you haven't heard of Avalon Hill, then 1) I definitely suggest you look them up and see if there is still anybody playing them, and 2) Advanced Third Reich has a rule book 62 pages long, with a font of perhaps 8, and had no rules for army groupings, unit allocation, there was no max allowed points, you bought a unit, placed it on the map, and that was it, it was free to move however it wanted (up to its max movement value). Similarly there was no rules for repair, or anything unique to Star Wars, such as hyperspace routes, or Armada, such as fleet point limits, etc. It did however have income based on controlled countries, three different options for each front (Offensive, Attrition, Pass) which dictated what you could do on that front, submarine warfare, etc. . . fairly detailed, and yet it could have been more (though I think they struck a balance between realistic and playable).

On a different note, the concept of promotion had also occurred to me. I.e., instead of recycling fleets in CC, you have the other admirals being part of your fleet (this works best, if not only, with the rule were you can split fleets) commanding squadrons of ships and fighters (say Dodonna is the admiral of a 400 point fleet, and Sato is the sub-admiral, commanding 200 points, and his ability only works with those 200 points. Then if you retire the fleet and want to keep some elements, Sato becomes the new admiral and the 200 points under his command become the center of the new fleet, with perhaps a new sub-admiral (if there are any left), with his ability restored to fleet-wide.

As for 'grand strategy video game', I have it in mind to make one of those for myself with what we are discussing now .

10 hours ago, NobodyInParticular said:

Those were my thoughts (formulated after I posted) as well concerning ship exchange, but I didn't edit them in. I was thinking of how easy it would be to put a thermal detonator in the reactor, walk off the ship, then remotely detonate it.

You do indeed have a good point about the issue of balancing fun and 'realism'. Maybe just have any shipyard be able to repair all ships? It detracts a bit from the strategy of capturing them, I think, but keeps enough so that there is a point to capturing them, and while not yet having played the game, I find it somewhat unlikely that all the shipyards will be lost without being able to recapture them during a campaign. Regardless of shipyards, a point increase for enemy vessels seems like a good idea, but I wouldn't suggest describing it as 'unfamiliarity' since that implies that eventually the crews will become familiar, and then what? Also 50% increase seems a lot, an ISD-II would cost 180 points. . . assuming you are not using CC rules for repair. Otherwise maybe just up the repair cost of captured vessels to 75% or 100%? Or do you mean a 50% increase above the normal repair cost, so 75%? Unless you don't intend to keep the rules for repair? In my aforementioned home campaign we repaired ships based on damage cards sustained, so if a ship was destroyed it stayed destroyed. Then repair cost the % of their base cost as there were damage cards. So an HMC80 with 4 cards would cost 57 points to repair, but if it had 7 upgrades it was left behind as 'too damaged to retreat through hyperspace'. In hindsight, this is perhaps too much, and the main reason the campaign didn't get off the ground was that it was turn based and had all this calculations for ship construction (depending on the planet you owned, you could construct X amount of points a turn), hyperspace travel (X turns based on die roll) etc. But I think that CC's rules for ship repair are a decent balance between 'well it's not worth it' and 'it's too cheap!'. I also think instantaneous construction and repair is good, if not so realistic, as otherwise it RALLY bogs down play. . .

Ultimately what I understand about CC is that it needs extensive house-rules to be made into a decent strategic campaign, and that as such it may just be better, for the purposes of a homegrown campaign, to ditch most of the rules and start with the map, then work your way up with new stuff, kinda like we're doing now. Again, I haven't played it yet, but even still I want to replace it with my own, just because I desire that amount of depth. Fortunately I'm only playing it with 1 other person, so I can implement the Grand Admiral asset allocation rule. . .

I do not know if you have ever heard of or played any games from the Avalon Hill company, which closed down in the '90s, but they had this sort of strategic depth, especially games like Advanced Third Reich, which is a strategy game encompassing all of WWII, from supply lines and the importance of the Ploesti oil fields to diplomacy. If you have, then these are the sort of games I like playing, and thus you'll understand were I am trying to take these (the campaign we are discussing, my own future one, CC) campaigns. Naturally if you think it's too much nobody is forcing you to follow my suggestions, but I've always preferred to aim high with my plans so that I can remove things if need be, but if it turns out I can achieve it, then I am prepared, rather than aim low and realize I can go further, only to not have thought quite that far ahead. . . .it doesn't always work, but still, worth a shot.

If you haven't heard of Avalon Hill, then 1) I definitely suggest you look them up and see if there is still anybody playing them, and 2) Advanced Third Reich has a rule book 62 pages long, with a font of perhaps 8, and had no rules for army groupings, unit allocation, there was no max allowed points, you bought a unit, placed it on the map, and that was it, it was free to move however it wanted (up to its max movement value). Similarly there was no rules for repair, or anything unique to Star Wars, such as hyperspace routes, or Armada, such as fleet point limits, etc. It did however have income based on controlled countries, three different options for each front (Offensive, Attrition, Pass) which dictated what you could do on that front, submarine warfare, etc. . . fairly detailed, and yet it could have been more (though I think they struck a balance between realistic and playable).

On a different note, the concept of promotion had also occurred to me. I.e., instead of recycling fleets in CC, you have the other admirals being part of your fleet (this works best, if not only, with the rule were you can split fleets) commanding squadrons of ships and fighters (say Dodonna is the admiral of a 400 point fleet, and Sato is the sub-admiral, commanding 200 points, and his ability only works with those 200 points. Then if you retire the fleet and want to keep some elements, Sato becomes the new admiral and the 200 points under his command become the center of the new fleet, with perhaps a new sub-admiral (if there are any left), with his ability restored to fleet-wide.

As for 'grand strategy video game', I have it in mind to make one of those for myself with what we are discussing now .

To clarify the point increases for captured ships, I was thinking an additional 10% to deploy in a game. It's been a while since I've had to really use good math lingo so I apologize that I have been imprecise. But for example, a 100 point ship would cost 110 to field for the team "liberating" said ship. But giving it further thought, do you think a player really should be penalized like that or should we just give it to them if they already took the trouble to capture it in the first place?

Thinking out loud, I'm amending my thoughts on the 50% increase on repairing ships which would have initially meant a 100 point vessel would have cost 150 to repair. I agree that it's steep, and wasn't super fleshed out in my head at the time. At the moment it's slipping my mind how CC does repairing ships, but I really like the repair system for the old Games Workshop's Battlefleet Gothic campaign. In that system, each world generated x number of resources (it varied by type of world) for the controlling player. Those resource points directly translated into hull points for repairing damaged vessels and purchasing new vessels with x number of hull points if I remember correctly, although I might be a little fuzzy on the purchasing ships part. The way it worked out playing the campaign there was you could actually keep most of your fleet in the game every campaign turn, but if you really took a beating after a particular battle or started to lose a lot of planets on the map vessels ended up having to sit in dry dock for a turn or two as reserves got moved to the front line. My current thought is a 2:1 ratio for repairing captured ships in a system like that. It's still steep, but I prefer to keep whole numbers here so that no one is left wondering what to do with a quarter of a point or something like that.

As for Avalon Hill, I have heard of them but haven't played any of their games as I recall it, but I think I understand what you're going for based on the description. It sounds something close to a number of Paradox games on PC. They're some solid grand strategy games that aren't too graphics intensive. Steep learning curve though. I had a play through of Hearts of Iron 4 where I did not realize that I had the entire Luftwaffe just sitting on the runway and I had to issue specific orders to get them to actually intercept enemy fighters and bombers. Still not sure if I really have the navy figured out in that one either. Because of the learning curve I've tended to stick with the total war series on PC. Just a tad more intuitive for maneuvering armies, but they haven't done any titles pushing beyond the nineteenth century yet.

Balance is the key for a good table top experience in my book too. Try to make things real and give players plenty of options, but also try to think which elements might be most fun to play out and which are best left as abstract. That will undoubtedly vary from group to group or game to game, but if everyone is in it for fun and can forgive the faults of both house rules and devs a lot of different things can work out.

16 hours ago, PubliusClaudius said:

To clarify the point increases for captured ships, I was thinking an additional 10% to deploy in a game. It's been a while since I've had to really use good math lingo so I apologize that I have been imprecise. But for example, a 100 point ship would cost 110 to field for the team "liberating" said ship. But giving it further thought, do you think a player really should be penalized like that or should we just give it to them if they already took the trouble to capture it in the first place?

Thinking out loud, I'm amending my thoughts on the 50% increase on repairing ships which would have initially meant a 100 point vessel would have cost 150 to repair. I agree that it's steep, and wasn't super fleshed out in my head at the time. At the moment it's slipping my mind how CC does repairing ships, but I really like the repair system for the old Games Workshop's Battlefleet Gothic campaign. In that system, each world generated x number of resources (it varied by type of world) for the controlling player. Those resource points directly translated into hull points for repairing damaged vessels and purchasing new vessels with x number of hull points if I remember correctly, although I might be a little fuzzy on the purchasing ships part. The way it worked out playing the campaign there was you could actually keep most of your fleet in the game every campaign turn, but if you really took a beating after a particular battle or started to lose a lot of planets on the map vessels ended up having to sit in dry dock for a turn or two as reserves got moved to the front line. My current thought is a 2:1 ratio for repairing captured ships in a system like that. It's still steep, but I prefer to keep whole numbers here so that no one is left wondering what to do with a quarter of a point or something like that.

As for Avalon Hill, I have heard of them but haven't played any of their games as I recall it, but I think I understand what you're going for based on the description. It sounds something close to a number of Paradox games on PC. They're some solid grand strategy games that aren't too graphics intensive. Steep learning curve though. I had a play through of Hearts of Iron 4 where I did not realize that I had the entire Luftwaffe just sitting on the runway and I had to issue specific orders to get them to actually intercept enemy fighters and bombers. Still not sure if I really have the navy figured out in that one either. Because of the learning curve I've tended to stick with the total war series on PC. Just a tad more intuitive for maneuvering armies, but they haven't done any titles pushing beyond the nineteenth century yet.

Balance is the key for a good table top experience in my book too. Try to make things real and give players plenty of options, but also try to think which elements might be most fun to play out and which are best left as abstract. That will undoubtedly vary from group to group or game to game, but if everyone is in it for fun and can forgive the faults of both house rules and devs a lot of different things can work out.

Coming around from my earlier position, I think you are correct in thinking that it wouldn't be quite worthwhile to further penalize the players for flying captured ships, so long as they are already spending points to capture them. The initial idea was that ships left behind, and perhaps with a certain amount of damage, become captured. If this is the case, then the player isn't actually doing anything to capture the ships. So either a one-time cost is applied (say 10% of the ship's cost) to use it, or the repair cost is increased slightly. Though it occurs to me that if a captured ship counts toward the fleet point total of player (as I believe it should), then we'd have to decide what happens if a player with a 500 point fleet captures a vessel. Can he? If so must he destroy another ship to make room for it? If he can destroy ships in such a circumstance, can he destroy ships if he doesn't want them regardless of capturing a ship, or is he stuck all the campaign with the ships he chose at the beginning (I think changing fleets, in response to the fluid nature of a campaign, would be advisable)? If he can't, then can he not capture ships, or must they be put 'in reserve'? Can you put other ships in reserve? I think the best solution would be to choose whether or not to capture a ship, and if you do, to destroy ships to make room, since while it's a bit unrealistic to destroy assets, 1) it's unrealistic to have fleet size limits, and 2) putting things in reserve can lead to players creating 4 or 5 fleets which they can swap out at will, which defeats the purpose of strategic planning. Maybe add a point cost to destroy a ship, so as to prevent players from destroying ships willy-nilly?

I like the idea of planets producing resources that can be used for hull points. But there are two main issues: How do you purchase upgrades, and given the focus of the current resources of the planets, are you going to replace them, or use them? The latter seems like it could lead to a glut of resources, since they are geared for fleet-point cost, as opposed to hull value. Does your 2:1 ratio mean 2 resources for every hull point? If so, I'd imagine that planets would not produce many resources, as an ISD would only require 22 resources. This assumes that you gather all planet resources in a group then reallocate them, as opposed to having each planet's resources only apply to that specific planet. Either way has merits, but since I still think that only shipyard-possessing planets should repair and build ships, the former may be advisable. If any planet can build ships, then the later may be better to restrict the players, in the sense that capturing 11 planets that each produce 2 points would have the same worth as capturing 1 that produces 22 using the former method, as both allow for the construction of an ISD and the 11 are harder to lose, and the loss of each one is less meaningful (2 points vs. 22). Another approach may be to use the amount of resources produced by a planet to determine the size of the ships it can produce, and then actually purchase the available ships using its resources. If planets individually produce ships, however, then you'd end up with a scenario where a 500 point fleet can be scattered over an entire system, so perhaps the best solution would be to have each planet's output be added to a total, and then the resources that determine each size class be summed by size to determine how many of each type are available, and then the total points be used to purchase any combo thereof.

I completely agree that fun and realism must be balanced, and while I personally find fun in realism, I am aware that most people do not, at least not to the same extent, and that it ultimately leads to an unenjoyable experience for the others involved. Concerning what we have discussed so far, I think we may have gotten as close to that balance as we may ever be, though of course if you don't think so I'm happy to continue striving for it.

Are there any other aspects of the campaign you are thinking of? So far we have added capturing enemy vessels. From what I understand you've decided to leave fleet construction and maintenance as they are in CC, and the same applies for movement. I hope you don't think me intrusive or desirous to have a predominant hand in shaping your campaign, I ask both because I too am designing a campaign and am looking for ideas, and because I feel it may be better to have another mind working on it for alternative viewpoints. This way, we are acting as sounding boards for each others ideas, which I think can only be to the benefit of us both.

Another thing that occurs to me to reconsider is planet capture. In CC you only capture planets if you place a base there, but as you have a limit to the number of bases you possess, eventually you will be fighting over planets you cannot conquer. As such such battles seem fruitless for all but campaign points. I was thinking that perhaps any planet you win a fight over should be yours, and you receive CP based on the # of planets you own. Thus, it's the same overall result (excepting the additional resources), but a different concept. What are your thoughts on the matter?