Fleet Captain: I like the way this sucks

Gameblog reader amp108 asked:

[D]o the dice all have to be of different sizes? Can you have something like d6/d4/d4 or d12/d6/d6? How about something like d6/d4+1/d4?


Otherwise, you only have 3 different types of ship. What say you?

Good questions!  Energy allocation by die type is not meant to be the only method whereby ship classes can be distinguished from one another.  It's an important mechanic, but not a primarily distinguishing one past the small/medium/large size difference.  The Slowness Factor mentioned earlier is another dimension that has small differences that are meant to distinguish more between Escort A and Cruiser D, rather than Escort A and Escort B.  Most small ships involved in space warfare will be Energy Rating d4/d6/d8 and Slowness 1.  A Slowness 2 rustbucket would not be out of the question, just to give an example.

Let me explain a wider point this hypothetical rustbucket makes.  One important touchstone for me in designing Fleet Captain is this vessel:

That big slab is the Klingon L-13 K’el Ri’anda ("Dangerous Fat Man") battleship.  To the best of my knowledge it first appeared in FASA's Klingon Ship Recognition Manual.  Brad Torgersen makes the argument for me in his entry for the L-13 at the improbably long-named Star Trek Starship Tactical Combat Simulator On-Line Database & Archive: The L-13 sucks as bad as it looks.  It was a complete boondoggle for the Klingon Empire, slower than nearly any other vessel in space and armed no better than most cruisers.  In short, it is just the sort of thing that a real military procurement system would foist upon the troops on the front line.

In Fleet Captain, not only do most captain suck at their jobs, most of their vessels are average at best.  I have no problem with the Fleet Captain's vessel being a sweet Constitution class heavy cruiser with kickass weapons.  But I want to explore conflicts involving mostly suboptimal vessels.  Therefore, the primary distinguishing characteristic for each vessel isn't high or low numbers in stats that all vessels possess, rather we'll be looking at simple (cross fingers) exception-based rules that define how badly each class of vessel sucks.  So the Archimedes-class frigate often suffers from Torpedo Jams, while the Jehoshaphat-class destroyer tends to be a Fast Decompressor.  Other differences are bound to come up when I get serious about hull points and weapons and firing arcs, though we're still trying to Keep It Simple, Rients.

Oh, yeah, here's another picture that's important inspiration for this project:

This is you after seeing the order of battle for your own side.

How many levels does Napoleon have?

Kate Beaton, one of my favorite cartoonists, posted this picture of an old political cartoon featuring Mssr. Bonaparte.  It looks like one helluva D&D adventure to me.

Dear Mr. Raggi,

THIS IS CARCOSAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

(Photoshop by my buddy Pat.)

Fleet Captain: a key mechanic

You know how Kirk and others after him are always blurting out orders about diverting power to the forward shields?  This serves as the inspiration for the central mechanical conceit of Star Fleet Battles.  In SFB each engine generates X points of energy, which you then distribute among phasers, shields, torpedoes, movement, life support, recharging batteries, tractor beams and I don't know what else.  It's a great concept with an over-complicated execution.  Each turns becomes hella bogged down by everyone plotting out their energy allocations on these worksheets you have to have in front of you in addition to your ship sheet.

Fleet Captain tries to keep the basic concept but trims it down.  And in the case of fleet elements not commanded personally, the allocation is automated.  Here's how it works: every ship is rated in three dice.  A small escort ship might be rated d4/d6/d8.  A cruiser gets d6/d8/d10.  Your flagship and other big kickass vessels get d8/d10/d12.  Each turn you get to decide which die powers your shields, which die goes to weapons systems and which one goes to movement.  The other captains stinking up your fleet decide via a d6 roll:

Do you loathe these other captains yet?  If not, don't worry; you will.

We don't want our capital ships to be ridiculously fast compared their destroyer escorts, so each size vessel has a Slowness Factor.  For small, fast ships that's a 1.  Medium ships have a Slowness of 2.  Big fat ships have a Slowness of 3 or 4.  The Slowness Factor is how many pips it costs to move a hex.

Example: A smuggler flying a corvette is trying to escape some imperialistic douchebags in a big ol' wedge-shaped cruiser.  Both max out their Move die this turn.  The corvette uses a d8 and roll an 8.  The douchebags get a d10 and also rolls an 8.  It looks like a push but it's not.  The corvette has a Slowness Factor of 1, so it moves 8 hexes the hell away from the cruiser.  The cruiser has a Slowness of 2, so it pursues only 4 hexes in the direction of the corvette.  The space between the two vessels has just grown by 4 hexes, much to the relief of the smuggler.

Tales from the Outhouse

Cole, Chris, Oliver and Raymond finished up the first expedition to the Caves of Myrddin at about 6:30 this morning Illinois time.  I had a great time and the assembled players seemed to enjoy it as well.

Setting out just after sunrise, their party got back just in time for lunch at the Outhouse.  Or most of it got back anyway, I'm not sure if Taurus, the mysterious sword-wielding Juggalo they picked up en route to the dungeon, returned with the group or not.  Either way, the other Outhouse guests have never met the man. The Outhouse, by the way, is the delightful nickname for the building at the edge of the grounds of the Abbey of St. Emmet.  (With no inn anywhere in the area, the guest house of the Abbey is the best accomodations available nearby.)  Surprisingly, all concerned returned alive and in possession of all their various limbs and organs.



Like this, only with leather
 armor and a spear.



Father Geoffroy, Diarmud Duff and Rumpert can make their own reports of the events in the Caves if they so choose.  But after being plied with a few drinks Rumpert's henchman Helmût will open up a bit.  Not that Helmût is a great source of information.  For one thing he's not terribly smart. And he speaks both Anglish and Norman poorly and with a terrible Scandinavian accent.  On top of that he only starts talking after imbibing enough ale to slur his words.  But here's what you think Helmût tells the adventurers gathered at the Outhouse:



The party explored the Big Cave.

Monsters defeated included an improbably large number of spiders, a trio of giant maggots with octopi for heads, lurking aspics in both tiny and giant size, a pile of vengeful kelp and a skeleton-demon with four arms.  The latter was decapitated by one of the other party members.

The group also encountered a nun and a hunchback leading around a group of children.  What exactly these people were doing in the cave is not clear to poor dumb Helmût.  The nun was killed by the giant aspic, which had the ability to burst into flames.  The hunchback and the children later disappeared, possibly victims of the Mysterious Clicking.

Any other info will have to come from the PCs or firsthand knowledge.

Fleet Captain, part 2

Equipment Needed

• The rulebook, which will hopefully be short when it is complete.
• Fleet Sheets, one for each player.  These are kinda like the ship sheets from Star Fleet Battles or the mech sheets from BattleTech, but they printed on legal-sized paper in landscape orientation.  About one third of the sheet is used to detail your flagship, while the rest will be used for tracking your fleet.
• Miniatures or counters for all the ships involved.  At some point I'll do a tutorial on how to make pretty decent counters using MS Paint, colored paper, cardstock and poker chips.
• A hex map.  If you want to use rulers and protractors that's your business, but I'll stick to the simplicity of hexes and the kick-assitude of this sort of thing.
• Dice.  This game uses D&D type dice, especially d4, d6, d8, d10 and d12.  Maybe other dice too.  I dunno yet.
• Turn counters.  Chits or tokens marked on one side with arrows (turning right, turning left, straight) or a stop sign.  Ideally the other side would be relatively unobtrusive but still detectable on the map.  You'll need a quantity of these, as each ship will use one every turn.
• Pencils or somesuch.
• A pack of ordinary playing cards.

I don't need another project...

...but Super Galactic Dreadnought has inspired me.

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.