Konya wa Hurricane Coalition Turn 13

by on January 5, 2018 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Konya wa Hurricane

Crossposted from the SFU blog on BGG.

With the collapse of Klingon supply into NW Federation space, I had some serious problems to face. Overall, Income was just slightly down over the previous turn, but that was partially from a shift from Lyran and Klingon income to Romulan. The major planet in 2306 generated two EP in a partial grid, and I used one of them to supply six ships in 2708, as I knew I needed them to go a full six hexes.

Survey rolls were very poor this turn, with only the Romulans getting near average (3 on 1d), while the Klingons rolled 3 on 2d and Lyrans got 4 on 3d, for a total of a 3, two 2s, and three 1s across everyone.

Builds:
Klingon: B10, D7C, D7V, D6M, 5xD5, 2xAD5, MD5, D5S, F5L, 6xF5, 2xF5E, E4R, PDU, D6V->D6U, D6->D6S, B10->B10A
Romulan: CON, FHF, SP, SPB, SPC, SPF, SK, 2xSKE, SEH, WE, SNB, 2xWB->KE, BH->BHF
Lyran: BC, STT, CW, CWE, CWS, STJ, 2xDW, DWE, 2xFF, FCR, FRD, FTM, CP, MB->BS(F), CW->CVM, 2xFF->DW, FFE, CWE

However, the B10 rolls continue to do well, and B10-1 Invulnerable completed this turn, and was immediately fitted with an SFG kit to become a B10A. Paying for the Invulnerable’s fighters caused me to cancel a second Klingon PDU. Well after the fact, it came to my attention that the Romulans can only convert one WE into a KE per turn, so there was some post-turn adjustments to the Romulan fleet.

For raids, the Lyrans sent the DNL after the Kzinti CONV in 1801, but was forced to retreat before it could make a real try at it, while a BC disrupted a Fed province. A Klingon C5 tried to restore supply to the South Fleet, but naturally was only able to eliminate one of the blocking POLs. But both raiding D5s were eliminated by Federation reactions (an F-14 squadron, and a CA that reacted out from 7th Fleet to rescue a blocking FF). A DNL responded to a Romulan raid, and luckly the SP got out intact, while the other two disrupted Federation provinces.

With a fair number of ships out of supply, my offensive options were limited. Hydran space saw the usual after-party cleanup as the Klingons reclaimed all the Hydran planets they’d been booted off of last turn. The Romulans split their attacks, and didn’t hit anything with major force, but concentrated on trying to get deeper into Federation space, more to try and force reserves to move towards them instead of shutting down Klingon operations.

On the Klingon side of Federation space, two main targets emerged. C8V Vindicator struck at BATS 2609, hoping to retreat onto Federation planet 2610 afterward, while other Klingon forces struck at the adjacent defended Federation planet, so that the defense couldn’t concentrate on one. The other was a major attack on the 4th Fleet SB. This happened after the Kzinti Marquis Fleet reacted off of it to an attack on planet 2106.

The Lyrans were overstretched in Kzinti space, but struck at all the major targets outside the capital, including the convoy in 1801.


Confusion all along the Kzinti-Federation front.


Driving past the former 6th Fleet SB.


Counterattack on the Gorn border.

Battles:
1701: SSC: Kzinti: dest POL
1704: Kzinti: dest FF
1706: SSC: Federation: dest FF
2705: SSC: Federation: crip FF; planet captured
2804: SSC: Klingon: crip F5
3807: SSC: Federation: dest cripFF
0801: SSC: Kzinti: dest POL
2407: SSC: Federation: dest POL
2109: SSC: Federation: dest POL; both sides retreat
3113: SSC: Federation: dest POL
1801: Kzinti: dest FKE, CONV, crip FF, EFF; Lyran: crip STT, DW, DDG
1802: Kzinti: dest EFF; Lyran: crip DW, planet captured
1001: Retreat after refused approach
2204: Federation: 1xSIDS, dest CA, SC, 3xFF, FFE, SWAC, crip CA, 3xNCL, 2xDD, 4xFF; Klingon: dest D7C, 3xD7, D7A, D6D, D5A, 2xAD5, MD5, F5, crip C8, D7V, 5xD5, D5S, F5
2106: Federation: dest 2xDE, SC, crip 2xNCL, FF; Kzinti: dest MSC, crip MEC, EFF; Klingon: dest D6D, F5L, crip C8, D6, 2xF5L, 5xF5
2006: Klingon: FF captured
2509: Federation: dest PDU; Klingon crip D5
2609: Federation: 2xSIDS, crip 2xNCL, 3xFF; Klingon: dest F5, crip D7C, 2xD5
3509: Federation: crip 3xFF; Romulan: dest SPF, crip KE
3210: Federation: crip 2xFFE; Romulan: crip FH, SP, WE
3206: Federation: dest BATS; Romulan: dest SP, SK, K5
5008: Gorn: dest BATS; Romulan: crip WE
4808: Gorn: dest BATS; Romulan: crip KR, SK, 2xK5
4008: Gorn: crip 4xBD, DD; Romulan: dest SUP, crip 3xSN

As usual, there were a number of small battles scattered about that were weighted in the moving player’s favor, but a couple of out of supply Klingon ships ended up tackling a Federation fighter squadron in 2804, which rolled an 11 in SSC to force a cripple on a ship a long way from home….

The Lyrans had a much tougher force for the convoy fight in 1801, though they made up a lot of damage in fighters and during pursuit. The real annoying thing is the convoy (like several I have scattered around) are part of the opening setup, and really exist to support colony creation, which we’re not using. So I doubt he’ll try this again with a convoy he has to pay for, and this battle only happened because of a SO rule.

I had a pretty good force for the SB battle in 2204, though I forgot to use a CP, while Byron used one, so I was a ship down for the battle. I was originally thinking of just burning one SIDS per round (and did that the first round), but the EW differential was killer, and things were already getting out of hand two rounds later after I’d killed a SC and SWAC, forcing him to abandon EW superiority. I then sent in the stasis ships to try and bag things for cheap (or force him to dial EW up on the SB, which would have been fine), and they worked better than I feared, with the D7A freezing a CA and missing completely, and the D5A getting a FFE on the CVA group for cheap on a Defender Selects. The good news out of all this is the D6M present is fine, and I arranged to leave another one in the area.

The fight for 2106 was another large one, this time with Kzinti supplying about half the forces. If I’d really wanted to take it, I think I could, but it’d have meant crippling the entire fleet, and I want effective forces in the area more than to make supply easier… until he takes everything out as there’s nothing left. In both this and the SB fight, I took out some heavy scouts, which I hope sticks long enough to make everything easier later.

2006 had two purposes: 1) Make sure supply moved through the hex, which was occupied by the FF+CA survivors of a raid. 2) Provide a fight for all the out-of-supply cripples from 2306 to retrograde from, getting them much further than they could move. As luck would have it, I also captured the FF put up to let the CA get away. I may just cash that one in, even if I am losing 5-point F5s too fast.

The twin battles of 2509 and 2609 did not work out as I hoped. I had hoped to either kill the BATS or devastate the planet, but didn’t really have what it took in either place. But I had held part of a reserve in place, which was part of the point. I also had hoped to retreat onto empty planet 2610 and take it. I should have just been less fancy and taken it during movement. Byron retreated onto it, so if I went there, it’d have been a fighting retreat. But, it did keep him from doing a pursuit round he wanted.

Going after BATS 3206 meant going out on a limb, but it drew an extra reserve away from other targets. I had not expected to get get cut off completely, which was accomplished by a Federation retreat from 3210 into 3310. If I’d realized that beforehand, I’d probably have accepted wrecking a force to take one of the two planets in-between.

My worries about having hit my high-water mark are being justified, as I didn’t make any real goals this turn, other than perhaps pulling a lot of crippled ships out of Federation space. That said, 2509/2609 is much weaker, having lost one of two PDUs and the BATS being on the verge of crippling. There’s a number of ships in range of Earth, though they’d have to go out of supply to get there (but putting them into supply for the beginning of the next turn shouldn’t be too hard). Raiding the Federation capital is definitely on the ‘to do’ list (as part of reducing the Federation economy), so I imagine that area will be getting attention.

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2017 in Review

by on January 1, 2018 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Life

This is the second year where I’ve been trying to have a new post up on this blog every three to four days, and this time I made it with no extra gaps. Mostly, posts were four days apart with only a couple occasions where I squeezed it down to three (this is one of them, as I squeezed the schedule for this to be due on the 1st). At least a third of the time I had one or more posts waiting in queue to go up, which is where I want to be. Maybe another third I knew what the next post was, but needed to write it, and the rest of the time I was struggling to come up with something. Hopefully, this year I can cut down on that last a lot more, and get a few things ready for putting into ‘dead’ spots. If I can build up some spare posts, I’ll be moving to a three-day schedule a lot more.

I did 93 posts this year, up 2 from last year, which shows I mostly just avoided having any gaps in the schedule. Looking at the categories, I had: 43 posts in Books, 11 in ASL, 9 in Boardgaming, 6 in CC:Ancients, and Konya wa Hurricane, 5 in GURPS, 3 in Anime, and SFB, 2 in F&E, and Gaming, and 1 each in Life, and Computer Games. Folding those up the subcategories gives 8 in F&E, 37 in Boardgaming, 5 in RPGs, and 44 in general Gaming. This, again, points up the fact that I need split up the ‘Books’ category. Considering I did review a couple of graphic novels this year, I should at least split that off.

It’s been a mixed bag for gaming this year for me. Face-to-face gaming has really come apart, with Patch too stressed and busy to make it over much, and Mark disappearing off the face of the Earth for months at a time. Hopefully, it’ll pick back up this year, but I have my doubts. ASL for the year was pretty good, with 12 games, with 5 wins and one abandoned. I will need to find some time to get a couple more PBeM games going this year. My idea to get into some of the other moderate-sized games by PBeM didn’t happen; instead I ended up with two PBeM games of F&E, one of which has a very eager and active opponent, and so it takes up a lot of my free time. An off-on idea has been to solo a few situations in SFB, and I just started gearing up for one of those; we’ll see if I actually do it.

I have one RPG review sitting in the can, which will probably go out soonish, and I’ve been meaning to write up a review of FR8 and continue my Forgotten Realms reviews, but haven’t gotten up the gumption. Recently, I was contemplating trying to go back and finish off my EU III: Divine Wind review, and get the Paradox series going again, though past that (which is about 1/4 written) I probably won’t. At the same time, I’ve started wondering about doing a similar series just on Europa Universalis IV, it has changed a lot over the course of the expansions, and explaining it all would actually take some work. I’d also like to get back to some more design and genre-related posts, I recently did one, which is far from my best, but it was nice to think about again.

Smudge has been getting her animation going again (leading to some late nights where she just doesn’t stop), which has been part of her not being involved in any MMOs, which means I haven’t either. I did finish a couple games of EU IV during the year (one as the Ottomans, and one as England), and have started a couple others, but haven’t gotten far. I’ve spent the last month and a half bouncing around various other games, including Civ IV, FreeOrion, OpenTTD and Settlers II, enjoying them all. Despite a comparative lack of gaming, I spent around $650 on gaming during 2017, which might help explain why my finances aren’t in as good a shape as I’d like. A decent chunk of that was during a few months where I got a bit ASL-obsessed, and finally decided to upgrade part of my collection to the MMP versions (something I’ve been meaning to get to for years), so hopefully I’ll have a more modest budget for 2018. Though I might do another upgrade round.

However, the big expenditure for 2018 will probably be a new computer. Azuna is doing fine, though I had to replace the type cover, as the original one wore out; I’d abused the hinge a bit. But Horo’s primary components are over a decade old now, and I’m starting to notice. For most things, the processor is just fine, though there’s a few heavy websites out there that can kill the system (one of them being for CNET, where I work…). But the F&E Vassal module really needs the JVM heap to be set somewhere north of 2GB, and my motherboard can only take 4GB of RAM, so I’m constantly running into memory issues. So I will be building a new desktop soon.

I hit this year’s Goodreads goal of 52 books exactly, and as usual have a large backlog of books to read. During July, Amazon averaged two Kindle books per week on sale that I already had on my ‘to get and read’ pile, and I’m still working through that. Best book of the year is definitely Ancillary Justice, though as I said in my review, it’s a slow burn, it was halfway through that the book came into focus, and I realized just what I was seeing. Uprooted was also very good, and the second-best of the year. Best non-fiction (and third overall) was Stilicho: The Vandal Who Saved Rome, which was a very informative look at an important juncture in the Western Roman Empire coming apart. Actually, it’s been a very good year for reading overall, and I could easily go on for quite a while with other recommended books. Reading Through History did not get very far this year, from about 1730 to about 1750, but I read five books in that period, in addition to all the go-back-because-its-earlier reading.

Personally, 2017 has been a good, but not great year. Finances are worse (not entirely my fault, but that’s a rant I’m not going into), but not disastrously so. Gaming  is overall down, despite a good start. System is showing its age. I’m about to fix that last, and that will take some stress off the gaming I am doing, as it should improve F&E Vassal performance quite a bit. There’s been a number of problems around the apartment, but we’re actually getting decent replacements now instead of crap that just breaks again.

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SH53 Border Incident

by on December 29, 2017 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: SFB

Crossposted from the SFU blog on BGG

After our last big game, Patch suggested we do an SFB game next. After rooting around in the scenarios for our current year (Y160) a little, we decided upon “Border Incident”, a scenario originally meant to showcase a miniatures boxed set, and featuring the new Romulan KR ships.

The Romulans created an incident designed to test their new ships in battle—a battle balanced well in their favor. An old “Warbird” ship attacked a Federation outpost and then fled into the Neutral Zone, drawing a Federation CA after it. The new Romulan ships Proconsul and Tribune were waiting in ambush, and the first test of these ships seemed well under control. Unfortunately for the Romulans, it did not go according to plan.

The scenario starts with the CA closing in on the WB+, with a KR and K5R showing up on turn 3. A Gorn CL shows up to help the CA on turn 4. Patch volunteered to take the ‘allies’ in the scenario, so he wouldn’t have to worry about reading the cloaking rules in detail (only the WB+ cloaks, the KRs don’t have them for this scenario), but ran into trouble. A 50-point plasma torpedo requires a lot of respect, but I don’t think he really comprehended just how limited a sublight ship is even with cloaking reducing damage. The WB has three choices, move one hex on impulse 32, do one impulse tactical move (turn) anytime from Impulse 2 on, or spend no energy, and get one free turn in place on impulse 32. This means where it is is a given, and only facing could be variable. With the WB+ facing away from the CA at start, staying out of arc of the Pl-R on approach is easy.

Studying the situation again now, I’d go speed 21 (the WB+ is 20 hexes away) to get into its hex on impulse 31. Assuming the WB+ goes, and stays, cloaked for this, 6xPh-1 at effective range 5 should do 12 points of damage (after reduction from cloaking effects). The Photons should be half full overload, and half standard (all allowed as prior arming for WS-III; no further overloading is done for flexibility and lack of energy), and then reserve power dumped into the photons to overload them for the point-blank shot. And that’s where this plan is iffy, since there’s a decent chance that all four will miss (1:16), but with full reserve power put in, there should be 2×16 and 2×12 point shots, and lucky rolls will easily kill the WB+ (average looks to be ~16, for a total of 28, or not enough to get through the armor, more’s the pity). No matter what happens (well, other than the WB+ blowing up), on impulse 32 watch the WB+ move first (if it didn’t Tac), and move into a hex it’s not in. On turn 2, go speed 4 and launch a Wild Weasel while reinforcing the shield facing the WB+. The WB+ probably started decloaking on Impulse 32, and fires (after Tacing to face the CA) on Impulse 5, and the WW moves on 6 before it impacts, so the only damage done will be from the phasers. If the WB+ doesn’t launch the R, there’s a problem, as you’ll still be ~5 hexes away at the end of the turn, and limited to speed 14, with the KRs coming on.

And it’s the KRs on turn 3 that keep this from being a walkover. With one more turn, the CA can counter anything the WB+ did to counter all of that, and two-three would allow another pass that can probably punch through whatever’s left on the rear shield and do damage that it can’t recover from. As it is, it should be noted that with 9 total power, shield damage is probably permanent, as there’s not enough to regenerate them with (I’ll note here we used the original Basic Set WB+, not the Y1 version with two more impulse power as the scenario was published ages before that came out).

As it was, I went speed 1 to get a little closer to where the KRs would show up, and Patch went speed 20, cautiously approaching from one side and behind. Not liking how things looked, Patch aborted the attack run on Turn 2, boosting speed to 22 and ejecting all four torpedoes to re-arm them as standard/proxes. He held to speed 22 on Turn 3, and I entered at the bottom right with the KR doing 21 and the K5R at 23. Patch basically went straight for the Gorn entry point, while I tried to close the distance. Towards the end of the turn, the CA started turning around, and hit the K5R with one out of two prox photons.
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Brothers in Valor

by on December 26, 2017 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

The final volume of the Man of War series starts, as usual, in medias res with the USS Cumberland stuck in an impossible situation. Unlike the previous volume, this one flows naturally from the situation at the end, but there’s also a decided tendency to make the opening action bigger and badder than the previous.

Once out of this bit of formula, we’re back to our usual mix of well-done military SF, with plenty of action. The character side is less evident here; I assume it got crowded out by other concerns (or deadlines). The bulk of the book is involved in a daring and dangerous mission (or two missions, really) behind enemy lines. Some early parts of this got done a bit episodically, and I wondered if I’d accidentally missed something, but no, there’s just less bridging between sections than I expected.

Man of War is billed as a trilogy, but Brothers in Valor does not bring the action to a close. How this is considered ‘the end’ is way off in spoiler territory, but needless to say, I’m eager to see what happens next, and am disappointed that the next two (shorter) books are prequels, as opposed to the promised next series.

Despite some minor problems, overall the writing is holding up, and I do recommend the entire series as good military SF.

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Gaming Technology

by on December 22, 2017 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Gaming

Technology is such a ubiquitous fact of our lives today that how to represent it comes up in a lot of games, from tactical differences to the strategic march of progress. The best-known example of the latter would be the ‘tech-tree’ in Sid Meyer’s Civilization, which has been copied many times since then. The general idea is that there’s a large list of possible advancements out there, but only a few are available at a time, and each one not only provides a benefit, but leads to other advancements, like an episode of Connections. But while that’s possibly the most common way of representing technological advancement (and a staple of most computer strategic SF games), it’s not the only way.

The biggest problem with the usual methods of depicting technology, is that the player is generally given a laundry list of choices, and whatever he chooses is inevitably the next one gotten. To a certain extent this isn’t bad for handling engineering, as improvements in equipment are often goal-driven, but much scientific progress is accidental, and even happens while looking for something completely different. This would imply a more random ‘research’ mechanic, which could easily go wrong, and take interesting choices out of the game. But there’s room for games where technology is less important, and you just manage how much ‘funding from above’ you’re doing.

Civilization (the Francis Tresham board game) may be the earliest attempt to show technological progress in a game. While it has a large list possible advances to obtain (like in the ‘tech-tree’ model), they are not dependent on each other. Instead, each belongs to one or two of five different general fields, and each advance acquired in a field provides a discount to all the others. This is often equated to a tech-tree, but nothing requires having gotten another advance first.

Hearts of Iron III had a very interesting take on the question however. It divides fields into practical and theoretical knowledge, and keeps a score in both that slowly degrades over time. Whenever you get any kind of advancement in a field, your theoretical score goes up, while building units or engaging in combat generates points for the relevant practical score. High scores in either, or both, makes research in that field go faster, representing familiarity with the field, or a knowledge of just what types of things need improving. The game still has you picking what you’re going to get next, but activities outside of the tech window also influence things. It’s an ingenious idea, and I’d like to see some form of it show up elsewhere.

While I can’t really complain about the usual tech-tree approach, especially in a fairly abstract game such as SidCiv, I do think hiding away the theoretical end of science could be a useful approach. A space 4X game could do this, and maybe have a number of alternate sets of discoveries that are set when the game begins. In each game, the player doesn’t know what version of ‘physics’ is true in advance, and only finds out as particular discoveries come in, which he then starts basing practical advances off of. It’d be a lot of extra work on the development end, but it could make for a very rich game.

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