Fleet Captain - a game where spaceships go BOOM!
Wargames for spaceship miniatures come in two broad types. The Captain’s Chair type, wherein the basic deal is that you make a bunch of fiddly decisions for your one ship. You get the joy of being the Kirk, but if you want a Big Damn Battle with a crapload of ships on each side it quickly becomes cumbersome. The other variety is the Admiral’s Game. You get to run a squadron or fleet of vessels, but your large number of equally important play pieces causes you to lose that Kirkishness in the abstraction. Star Fleet Battles is the premier example of the Captain’s Chair game, while examples of Admiralty games abound. I'm particularly fond of Starmada and Full Thrust.
Fleet Captain is an attempt to hybridize the two types of spaceship games. The conceit is that each player sits in the captain’s chair of one key vessel in their fleet. They have wide latitude over this flagship. The ships comprising the remainder of their fleet are theirs to control, but the commanders of those vessels can react to the directions of their Fleet Captain only on a limited basis. In fact, it will generally be assumed that the other command officers in the player's fleet are significantly less competent than the Fleet Captain, who must shepherd the stupid gits across the battlefield.
Wargames for spaceship miniatures come in two broad types. The Captain’s Chair type, wherein the basic deal is that you make a bunch of fiddly decisions for your one ship. You get the joy of being the Kirk, but if you want a Big Damn Battle with a crapload of ships on each side it quickly becomes cumbersome. The other variety is the Admiral’s Game. You get to run a squadron or fleet of vessels, but your large number of equally important play pieces causes you to lose that Kirkishness in the abstraction. Star Fleet Battles is the premier example of the Captain’s Chair game, while examples of Admiralty games abound. I'm particularly fond of Starmada and Full Thrust.
Fleet Captain is an attempt to hybridize the two types of spaceship games. The conceit is that each player sits in the captain’s chair of one key vessel in their fleet. They have wide latitude over this flagship. The ships comprising the remainder of their fleet are theirs to control, but the commanders of those vessels can react to the directions of their Fleet Captain only on a limited basis. In fact, it will generally be assumed that the other command officers in the player's fleet are significantly less competent than the Fleet Captain, who must shepherd the stupid gits across the battlefield.
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I'm visualising a starship battles equivalent of one of those FPS games with cretinous AI squad members.
ReplyDelete"Sir, the Litany of Litany's Litany has got stuck between two asteroids again. The captain seems to have entirely forgotten that his ship has retros, and issuing the Recall command only causes it to ping-pong between the two. What are your orders?"
Less facetiously: I recall Warmaster (GW's 10mm battle game) used a similar mechanic. The general's unit did as told, but he had to make leadership checks to issue orders to other units. This represented flag waving, trumpets, messengers scuttling around the field of battle, etc.
Pass = unit does as ordered, and you can try to give them more orders (at an ever-increasing penalty).
Fail = unit either doesn't get the order, or something Charge of the Light Brigade lolrandom instead.
Chris's point about Warmaster is a good one for handling orders to other units if you do not already have a system for that. The warmaster rulebook is available free on the Games Workshop website Here (that is Specialist Games >Warmaster> Warmaster Resources just in case the link doesn't work)
ReplyDeleteThis sounds great, sort of reminds me of how in many rpg based mini wargame supplments, the PC characters can be "Heroes" who are significantly more effective on the battlefield than regular units.
ReplyDeleteSo this is why I've been getting an influx of visitors to SGDN!
ReplyDeleteGlad I could inspire you, Jeff. One of the reasons I started my blog is that I didn't see very much blogging about spaceship gaming. It's great to see others start exploring this subject as well.
One nitpick: I'd consider any game where you keep track of individual ship systems, like Full Thrust, a captain's chair-type game.
That terminology quibble aside, I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with for your Fleet Captain game.
Also, I don't usually mention the word verification when I post comments, but this one is "mings" :)