• Registered: 2005-04-03
  • Posts: 68

Topic: The Solar Federation Campaign Diary

I have posted up a copy of my campaign diary, for those that want to read up on what has been happening so far in this second VBAM/SX campaign. You can grab it from the following address:

http://planetside.firenebula.com/sx/Sol … n_2204.pdf

Right now it is just a mix of rambling rules (none of them finished, just works in progress), the diary, and some background notes that I have created thus far. The style of the diary is in the form of the VBAM/SX book, because I thought it would be neat to try and simulate the layout and thought it would be apropos to the audience smile

Most of the Solar Federation ships listed in there section aren't actually used and will probably be removed. They were just some notes on really old ships before I decided to not use them.

As for the actual SX ship designs, sometime later this weekend I will go in and zip them up and put them up in that folder for people that might be interested in them.

Unfortunately, the Solar Federation has no better luck than the Solar Federation, and are in a war already -- you can only guess with who after reading the diary!

-Tyrel

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

Re: The Solar Federation Campaign Diary

I read through your stuff and I like some of the changes that you are putting in to this game. You will definitely need to keep us posted on how the campaign goes!

-Bren

  • Registered: 2005-04-03
  • Posts: 68

Re: The Solar Federation Campaign Diary

I hope to possibly zip everything up and upload tomorrow sometime, after I get Starlight turns finished and a few other things done. At about 55 pages so far, and the Secrona War has both started and ended since the last update.

I am probably going to tweak the Macro tech research increase from 5x normal to 4x. 5x is a little much, but still much better than the 1x from the Starmada Edition book (as far as my play style and assumptions on the tech system go).

Researching weapons separately as directed research projects has worked well. It forces you to think ahead, which is always good. It also keeps a players from deploying wild new gadgets or weapon variations without putting some investment into it.

I will likely implement a prototyping system for them, too, just to make things interesting. Probably something roughly like Jay's main prototype rules from the book, but with any positive effect being an A-OK result, and the others just meaning that the research project failed to be achieved and needs several more turns to actually complete successfully.

After talking with Charlie, I also decided to change the main prototyping chart for this campaign around a bit. Basically everything gets shifted down one spot, with the 1st slot now being a perfect result, plus a maintenance bonus (woo hoo!) and the 9th slot (now 10th) requiring a re-roll (d10); on 1-5, you get the current 9, on 6-10 you get the current 10. I am just really sick of that 10% chance of my prototypes exploding effecting almost every unit I try to prototype. This has happened across three campaigns, usually on prototypes that cost 10+ EP to build and/or take years to complete. Bah, I say, bah!

Things are getting interesting. So far there have been two more alien contacts, one IND-2 (but nearly IND-3) and another IND-3. So it could get pretty interesting in the future.

Unless something else comes up by the end of this campaign year I will probably introduce a new INT-1 power into the campaign on 2206.1 just to liven things up a bit and add a third wheel to challenge Terran and Secrona domination of these lesser species.

-Tyrel

  • Registered: 2005-04-03
  • Posts: 68

Re: The Solar Federation Campaign Diary

A partial update...

I have uploaded a copy of all of my working files (minus the diary, which I PDF'd for everyone's benefit -- 3MB Word docs aren't fun to fling around) into a single zip for people to look at and use. The address is:

http://planetside.firenebula.com/sx/sol2.zip

It is about 3MB anyway, so be warned! It includes everything, so it should give you an idea of where things are at and how things are going.

One thing people will notice is that I have created a new, standardized sheet for the new ships that is based on the old XLS, but with a few tweaks beyond even my original tweaks. Construction costs were tweaked after I discovered that there was a bug that kept corvettes at Cost 2 when they really should be Cost 1 (to be conducive to VBAM stats), and I also rounded up the AS/AF since I thought those values were sometimes not converting quite right, either. So now any weapon will likely get you at least AF 1 AS 1 with Starmada-ville ships.

I have another race on the map that I am thinking of adding, but I might hold off until the end of the campaign year. I am also thinking about forgoing them and instead adding either a machine-intelligence or a hydrogen-environment gas giant alien. The machine-intelligence, if added, would come in on a mothership equipped with construction bays and remote mining equipment, which would allow it to act like mobile Productivity (but with the caveat that all remote mining would be strip mining my default!).

I haven't decided which route to take just yet, so we will wait and see. Luckily, the Kaluest and Orchar both love the Humans. The Secrona are warming up to us, too, so it is looking to be good times to be a human.

-Tyrel