• Registered: 2007-07-29
  • Posts: 55

Topic: What's a good way to make Tech unbalanced for a campaign?

Adding traits to a weapon makes it cost more in a perfectly balanced fashion.  Improving macro tech levels lets you put more stuff on one ship, but keeps the points at their perfectly balanced level.  [size=50](In fact, I think TL effectively hurts you by lowering your hull hitpoints per CR, but that's not the point.)[/size]  In the VBAM conversion, the VBAM cost is based directly on the Starmada cost.  So adding TL and weapon traits increases your cost there in a perfectly balanced fashion.

But I don't want tech to be perfectly balanced.  I want better tech to be better.  So a campaign's ships have motivation to improve instead of just change.  The first thing that came to mind was making all weapon traits 1.0, but then their original rating is how hard it is to research them.  Like a 1.2 mod takes 2 kleptorks, a .7 mod takes 3, and a 3.0 takes 20.  Should that be a straight progression, or have a curve?  (Starmada loves curves.)

Ship equipment is more complicated since it has many cost vectors.  Maybe leave the space alone, but have the sum of the Orat and Drat effects be what determine the cost, and then change them both to no effect.  A macro tech level solution just eludes me though.  Engines don't have a cost to shift their size modification to, but they do factor in to weapon costs.  Oy.


So I hope the general idea of what I'm going for is clear; tech make gooder.  Thoughts?

  • Registered: 2010-06-29
  • Posts: 82

Re: What's a good way to make Tech unbalanced for a campaign?

In general I agree with both your general and side points. However starmada must remain a balancing system to cater for the competitive builders. :roll: 

One issue you need to consider is how long your campaign is and therefore how much Tech advance you actually need in the game.  In reality you will rarely need to cater for open ended tech development and having a limited range of possible tech levels allows the discerning campaign creator be creative  without having to invent stuff which will never come up.

For what they are worth here are some thoughts/options I have had about tech in a Campaign setting.
1. Make things cheaper at higher tech levels by applying a multiplier to the CR for each tech level 1.0 for level 1, 0.9 for level two and so on.(This was to mainly compensate for your side point.) In reality Military technology tends to produce better more expensive stuff not cheaper as you generally want the latest available. So this is not an accurate model of tech development. sad
2. Limit the ROF, ACC, IMP ,or DAM levels at each tech level or possibly the total number available to be allocated to each factor.
3. Force negative Traits such a Non-Piercing-3 at level one and Non-Piercing-2 at level 2 and so on but do not apply the SU reductions. When the require technology has been researched you can then develop the 'Laser MkII' with either the SU reduction or without the negative trait.
4. Limit the maximum SU at each tech level.
5.Bearing in mind your side point. What about turn the tech rules on their head somehow, making the SU cost increase as the tech goes up and linking that to idea 4? (just had this idea and not yet thought it through)

All these ideas 'unbalance' the game for unrestricted competitive gaming and design but as an Umpire/God of your very own universe you can use the rules such as Starmada and VBAM as a set of suggestions not cast iron requirements  yikes  . It is after all your campaign!

  • Registered: 2005-03-29
  • Posts: 330

Re: What's a good way to make Tech unbalanced for a campaign?

An idea to make tech 'worth' more is to factor the hull size of the ship for maintenance each round.

For Example:  At weapon, engine and shield tech 0.
A hull 2 with an engine of 5 and a shield of 2 with the weapons below costs 32
Battery V:   Laser,  1-3/4-6/7-9,  2/3+/2/2
[ab]

but at weapon, engine and shield tech 2.
You can create a hull 2 with an engine of 4 and a shield of 3 with the weapons below for 61
Battery V:   Laser  TL2,  1-3/4-6/7-9,  2/3+/2/2
[ab]  [ab]  [ab]

Now this is nothing that you didn't know already.  But lets say you have to pay a maintenance fee of hull size x 5 each turn. Nation A who has the first low-tech ship wants to build a fleet of ~300 credit fleet and purchases 10 of those ships. Nation B who has the second high-tech ship also builds a fleet of ~300 credits but only gets 5. In terms of CR, we are considered 'balance'.

However, the next turn Nation A has to spend 10 credits per ship in maintenance or 100 credits, but Nation B only spends 50 credits!  It now pays to increase your tech levels.

When I was using Starmada / VBAM system for solo games. I had 11 tech levels giving a lot of room to grow (the base tech level in starmada - tech level 0 was actually TL6 for me).  I also made it a curve (new tech level squared x 100) so to go to TL1 to TL2 cost 400 credits but to go from TL8 to TL9 was 8100 credits.

Food for thought?
-B

  • Registered: 2010-06-29
  • Posts: 82

Re: What's a good way to make Tech unbalanced for a campaign?

Yep thinking food.

The issue with tech levels is to decide what 'reality' you want. We do not need to model real world economics and development, after all we are taking about space ships here! However lets take for an example the real world aircraft carrier. A modern carrier is of course far superior to its WWII ancestor. A modern carrier is much bigger but its systems are not fundamentally different just orders of magnitude better. But the modern carrier costs far more than its WWII equivalent, not just in $ or £ but as a proportion of GNP. Even without its current budget problems, the USA could not afford to deploy the same number of carriers and escorts today as it did in 1945. But no-one would suggest building WWII quality ships, nations which cannot compete in the Carrier tech race abandon the race rather than settle for copies of WWII designs. Look at the UK despite the problems of cost we are trying to build a modern carrier not a WWII clone.
SAE and VBAM and most of our game solutions to tech however tend to make Tech 'cheaper'.  Which is why, in general, I think forcing weapons to use 'negative' traits are a better option, but requires some thought to set up the tech tree correctly.

My point about how many tech levels do you need is really to do with the time frame of your or my campaign and how much development will occur during the game. Did you need 10 levels in your solo campaign or did you just want them? Of course if the campaign has races at different levels say Earth Alliance vs the Shadows then a large number of tech levels is a must big_smile .