Hmm ... sorry about that first post ... this forum software doesn't seem to like Opera.

Anyway...

When I initially glanced at the Endeavour rules, I was immediately unimpressed. The entire Achievement Points system seemed far too meta-gamey for my liking. If the players are trying to open a trade route, their success or failure should be based on whether or not they open a trade route, not gathering X amount of points. Similarly any other endeavour.

On closer inspection, it became apparent that APs aren't measuring what I thought they were. They don't determine success or failure of the Endeavour per se, but instead they tell you if the income, prestige, influence and contacts generated in the process are sufficient to improve the Profit Factor. This makes much more sense, and suddenly we have nifty system I quite like.

Components automatically generating APs returns me to me original issue, however I see strong possiblities for meta-gamey nonsense. If a military endeavour involves outfitting a system defence fleet, how exactly is a barracks or pod bay assisting you? Conversely, why isn't your cargo bay, which allows you to bring in more spare parts and ammo, helping at all?

As such, I'm wondering if people have had any success at applying component bonuses less strictly. My inclination is to allow a component to add achievement points to add to any endeavour, but only if the players can show how it is assisting them. If the component is being used in it's default role (eg, a cargo bay for trade, and observation dome for exploration), I would be fairly generous in ruling on whether or not it is effective, while a use outside the default (pods for a criminal objective) would require a much better explanation.

Any thoughts, especially actual experiences with a system similar to this, would be appreciated.

SableWyvern said:

Well, one thing to consider is how you apply themes to the objectives within an Endeavour. The theme keywords for an endeavour don't necessarily have to reflect the desired end result, so much as what tasks are involved in reaching that point. So yes, you might be outfitting a system defence fleet, which is notionally an act with military elements, but are any of the tasks required to establish that fleet going to involve military force?

Themes aren't applied to Endeavours as a whole, but rather to individual objectives (of which every Endeavour should have at least three, but you should not feel restricted to three objectives per endeavour). Even preparing a planetary invasion may contain objectives that have no Military theme, such as gathering an army and outfitting it (which may include Creed and Trade objectives; if you happen to be using soldiers round up conscripts, then the Military theme becomes appropriate), determining a route to the planet sufficient to keep your supply lines open (Exploration at the very least), with the only Military element being the start of the invasion itself (which may still have other themes, such as Exploration if you need to find a suitable drop-zone for your forces, or Creed if you've decided that this is a religious war and your army needs to be driven by faith).

Beyond that, I think your house rule is fine, though with careful application of themes to any given objective, I don't necessarily see it being used too often.

Thanks for the feedback. I only just got my hard copy of the rules, and haven't studied the Endeavour rules closely, but it sounds like the areas I saw as being potentially problematic aren't a serious issue.

It does, however, sound as if you are applying bonus achievement points for each objective, rather than just once per objective. This leads me to the concern that the bonus points will potentially make up a substantial portion of the total accrued. Of course, that's predicated on the players fitting sufficient achievement bonus components into their ship, which may come at the cost of other benefits. I'll reserve judgment until I've had a chance to get a firmer grasp on how everything actually works. Either way, I think that any aspect I'm not entirely happy with will be easy enough to adjust into a more than functional system.

Certainly, the lack of visible criticism seems to indicate no major problems with the rules as written.

If the players play the right cards while desining their ship and then play the game accordingly the AP-generating components can be very powerful, like getting more than twice the thresold to achieve a endevour (and thus earning, loads of extra PF points) while performing normally or sub-normally.

My advice as GM to the players is if your GM determines your starting SP and PF through the dynasty path of Into the Storm, get as much SPs as you can (and as consequence as little PF as you can) and design a "full-option" ship : you won't stay poor for long.

Count Xanthis, I have to say, I don't like the sound of that at all. A well designed ship should IMO assist with the successful completion of Endeavours, not dominate the results.

I can put it the other way: GM take care of what your players can do. OTOH it is quite easy to temper, as it is two ways to optimize toward a AP-generating ship:

- have a reasonnable bonus in every theme

- have a big bonus in one or two themes

Should your players choose option one, the impact of the bonuses would stay reasonnable as an objective has rarely all the theme . Should they choose option two, avoid these themes.

Other way are possible too. Scale up the achievement thresold of endevour. Scale up opposition (Such have their ship damaged, and make them burn PF point to get it fixed). Furthermor misfortune is going to cost them an average of 0.99 point / session.

There is never problem, only solution to be unveiled

Well, there are always solutions, but I'd prefer one that stops a problem from occurring, rather than just mitigating its consequences. I think your option two is particularly troublesome, as it amounts, IMO, to a rather unfair bait-and-switch. "Hey guys, I see you built a ship that really supports undertaking trade missions. I guess that means you will want to do a lot of trading, and have presumed that you will be able to. Well, screw you, I'm going to make trade missions really rare." Scaling up AP targets is much the same thing. "That ship you maximised for harvesting APs? Its forced me to scale up the AP requirements, which means your barely any better off than if you'd left those components out. In fact, you're probably worse off, because you're missing out on the extra weapons and shields and moral-improving components you could have installed instead."

When players are designing or selecting a ship, their decisions should be meaningful, and not hamstrung by a GM who lets them build something that will damage the game if he allows it to function as advertised.

I'm currently leaning towards something along the lines of (with the values below being just some basically random numbers I plucked out of the air to illustrate the concept):

- Ship components can't contribute more AP than 30% of the Endeavour target

- No one class of component can contribute more AP than 20% of the Endeavour target

This means that components will still have a significant effect, but won't overshadow the characters' actions, and also means that having lots of bonus components will be useful, but only for the more significant Endeavours.

I still haven't had a close look at the actual rules, so my position may alter, but it seems like a viable house rule to me -- and, importantly, a rule whose effect is transparent and immediately obvious to the players.

I am still tweaking to find the good balance myself. So far I make my players to play an introductory game where they had contribute to valorize Tygress III and now they have started Lure for the Expanse (we are at the half of the 1s scenrio). I guess my solution will finally be to create opposition which make them to spend money. Thus their PF will make an (ascending) yo-yo.

SableWyvern said:

I really don't think I agree with this. It feels like saying "no magical swords bonus can do more than 30% of the opponents health damage." If you are fighting Kobolds it is fine if your +5 swords +5 bonus is enough to kill them even before you roll for damage.

If you are a rank 8 Rogue Trader with a feet of 10 warships, 5 barracks, pods, a munitorium, and 3 tank brigades, I have no problems saying:

"Pacifying this mining colony requires 150AP, and your bonuses total up tooo....700AP. So, yeah, you basically don't have to deal with the military portion of this endevor."

Throw in some good descriptions of their troops curb stomping the colonists, and skip right to the meaningful decisions.

It is OK when your players start getting more powerful and can breeze through small encounters. When they have 50AP in bonuses you provide them with 150AP endevors (pacify mining camp). When they have 700AP in bonuses you should be giving them 1500AP endevors (conquering systems, stopping orkish hordes) and letting them lay the smack down on smaller endevors without getting involved personally.

You don't need to hamstring your players equipment to it from "overshadowing the players". You just need to raise the stakes.