• Registered: 2011-06-11
  • Posts: 110

Topic: Victory Points

Does anyone use any house rules for Victory points?  The reason I ask is that I think the current system is too simple and is open to a few (minor) issues such as:

A standard 1000 point scenario:  Side A takes a mix of ships of various values, Side B takes 2 x 499 point ships (an extreme example).  Side A has to destory both ships to win as they need 500 points to win.  Side B has a greater chance of success.

Am I missing something?

I'd recommend gaining 1/2 VP for a ship that's taken to 1/2 hull.  That at least balances this a little.  Any thoughts or more ideas?

  • Registered: 2009-08-03
  • Posts: 245

Re: Victory Points

I'm not really sure how half-points for crippled ships (half hull) solves that.  We actually played with half-points for cripples for a while, and it made striker carriers significantly better than they should've been.  Created more problems than it solved for us.  One other solution would be to effectively penalize unspent points by applying a multiplier to each side's VP earned equal to total allowed points / total spent points.  If this is done, then in the given case, side A needs only to eliminate one of side B's ships to win (499 * (500 / 499) yielding 500 VP).

  • Registered: 2011-09-22
  • Posts: 26

Re: Victory Points

I do agree the system needs some revising, I'm not sure that this is the way to go about it.

  • Registered: 2011-06-11
  • Posts: 110

Re: Victory Points

Half points makes the system better because in my first example you only have to kill 1 ship and cripple the other.  That's a 25% reduction in the amount of damage side A needs to win.

Could you explain the "striker carriers" issue you had?  I'd like to find out any issues with this system.

Cheers.

  • Registered: 2008-12-22
  • Posts: 654

Re: Victory Points

The vast majority of games that I have played have been scenario based, and used VPs to determine the victory conditions, and I haven't really had a problem with something like you describe. I guess I don't personally understand why it is a problem to have to try and destroy both ships, as in your example. That would pretty much be my goal anyway  smile  In a lot of the games I have played  we play to the "bitter end" even after victory conditions are met, just to see how much damage the "loser" can inflict on his way out. In an evenly matched game the winner is often destroyed or at least badly mauled as well (which points to how well balanced the system can be even if it is "simple"). It makes the final outcome more interesting to me than halting the game at a victory "threshold."  I wouldn't like to see any system that actually shortens the game as you propose because to me the whole point and the enjoyment comes from the game-play, not just the outcome. If my opponent brings two 500 point ships to a game and I need to kill them both I'll consider it a challenge rather than a flaw in the game design. At the very least it is a lot less of an issue to me than the min/maxing issues that can make actual game play annoying at times.
That's my 2 cents,
Erik

  • Registered: 2009-08-03
  • Posts: 245

Re: Victory Points

Urg, yeah, we used to play to the bitter end / with no regard for VP, but we kind of got sick of Pyrrhic victories eventually.  Using VP changes things dramatically - it becomes all about going "OK, how can I get the N points I need with the highest probability / minimum risk," rather than "Well, I need to kill all these ships, and it's just a question of the best ordering of targets."

What we ran into with striker carriers and crippling was that striker carriers could stand off and easily achieve cripples on ships that actually used guns long before said gunships could get in range, every damn game.  Also not fun.  But yeah, going with a multiplier on 'effective points scored' means that you just have to kill an equivalent fraction of their actual force (so in your example, you'd only need to kill one of the 499ers, rather than a kill and a cripple, which is still an advantage to the even-split fleet).