F&E Vassal Module 1.3

by on April 26, 2012 at 8:20 pm
Posted In: F&E

Again, long after I thought I’d be done and get it out the door, I’ve released the next version of the Federation & Empire Vassal module.

Download it here:
http://www.starfleetgames.com/documents/F&E 1.3.zip

The changelog for this version is longest one yet; it’s a pretty massive update. Here’s a quick list of the highlights:

* The ISC extension is updated for the actual published version of ISC War.
* The scenarios are now bundled into the module, so the zip is just the module plus extensions as separate files now.
* The capital charts are completely reworked so that you should be able to run a capital assault just from them.
* The racial charts and battle mats have been updated and look better.
* A lot of markers have been added as memory aids for combat. This includes handling hidden information functions such as which of multiple maulers is actually mauling.
* Added a bunch of carriers with heavy fighters, and separate counters for all the HDW (and similar) modes.
* New squadron counters for the Theater Transports, for when they’re working as a permanent team.
* A new extension (“Extras”) includes just about every unpublished ship that I have official stats for.

So, go download and enjoy! …And tell me what bugs and mistakes remain.

Oh, and I should warn you that the combined module & ISC extension are a pretty huge package. The main ISC scenario (“Driving Winds”) is also pretty massive, so you will need to give Vassal more memory space than the half-gig default. Go into the Vassal module manager, and the the module itself and select “Preferences” from the File menu, and change “JVM max heap” to 1024 (from 512). Otherwise, you’ll probably be able to load, fiddle around, but not save anything big with the ISC….

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Cretin Victory

by on April 24, 2012 at 7:10 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Well, okay, yes, it is a Cretan victory. I’m just bitter. 😉

The gang got together for a 5-player session of Advanced Civilization on Sunday. We’re getting more practiced at this, and got things going very smoothly. We drew for order to chose civs in, sat ourselves down, and had a very fast moving morning.

I got first choice, and decided upon Thrace, while Patch took Egypt, Dave took Babylon, Jason took Assyria, and Mark took Crete for lack of any position more enticing.

I did my normal job of abusing Thrace’s generous AST schedule and heading for Greece’s high concentration of city sites. Jason headed directly south with Assyria, while Dave maneuvered around him, leading to Assyria stretching from Lake Van to Palestine, with Babylon stretched 0ut around it from the east, to the north, and around into Anatolia. Mark’s Crete ended up primarily colonizing western Anatolia, jostling with Babylon, and my colony across the Bosphorus, with a small presence in Attica and Morea (we also ended up splitting Euboea).

I ended up with a very solid start as I got lucky in early trade card draws, and with a little dealing, got some solid 4 and 5-card sets, which allowed me to purchase three Civ cards at once, and then two more two turns later.

At this point I had a very solid lead, but as I pointed out at the time, having an obvious lead as we broke for lunch meant I was in for a miserable afternoon with the ‘biggest bulls eye’ award.

Well, it wasn’t miserable, as I never experienced quite as much destruction from disasters as I expected, but I had a hard time getting my feet under me again, and spent several turns stuck at four cities, which largely halted progress. Mark had largely caught up, and kept causing problems, with both of us stuck at the entry to the Early Iron Age (working on all those cards), while the rest of the table spent time stuck at the entry to the Late Bronze Age. We actually had to go back and sort out the AST at one point as we realized we’d been forgetting it after no one had moved for 2-3 turns, and every one was in Late Bronze now.

Mark had had a weak looking start as Crete, but benefited from Civil Wars in Egypt and Babylon, which gave him some foreign city sites that stayed up for a long time. (He got one city in the deep desert of Egypt, and then one near the Nile through Treachery, and Patch didn’t manage to get rid of the Cretan population and then the cities until after Mark got a couple from Babylon.) This did a lot to power him into a very solid second and start passing me by the end of the day.

By the time we had to pack up, I was still only at eight cards, and had muffed my trading on the last round and shut myself out getting any truly good deals. Though I might have been in a good position for the turn after, if there had been one. Mark, however, managed to pick up card 9, and finally passed into the Iron Age before we had to pick up for the day. In addition, I ended up with a Treachery from Patch that I couldn’t get rid of as I had traded myself into a corner.

Final Scores:

Side Player AST Cities Civ Cards Trade Cards Treasury Total Place
Thrace Rindis 1000 300 600 44 4 1948 2
Crete Mark 1100 350 560 5 0 2015 1
Assyria Jason 900 300 480 6 0 1686 4
Babylon Dave 900 150 520 9 10 1589 5
Egypt Patch 900 400 450 12 1 1763 3

So, yet again, I placed second (7 out of 8 times now), though this time I had a fairly clear lead for a while. I do believe this is Mark’s first win in our group.

We’re thinking about trying to arrange a Saturday where we can go much later than the normal 5 PM and try to get to the final end of the game.

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Second Wind Coalition Turn 2

by on April 21, 2012 at 1:49 pm
Posted In: Second Wind

And now things begin in earnest. With both the Lyrans and the Klingons having massed everything on the borders, the Kzinti can’t defend everything, and must pick their fights.

My usual plan is to go for the planet in 1001, so as to cut off the starbase in 0902. After a turn as a partial grid, the Kzinti have motivation to let it go. This game is the first time that I’ve had to deal with monitors, and I couldn’t juggle everything to feel like I could take on the planetary defenses, monitor, and likely reaction (or at least, Reserve) forces this time.

Builds:
Lyran: DN, TGC, 3xCW, JGP-V, 2xDW, DWS, 3xFF, FRD, 2xKBP, 4xFF->DW
Klingon: C8, D7, TGA, 7xD5, LTT, D5S, 2xF5L, 4xF5, 2xE4, E4R, FRD, Activate 2xD6, 2xF5, 3xE4, D7->D7A, D6->D6M, D6->D6V

Once again, no ‘true’ heavy cruisers have been built (after conversions). There’s several new hulls, but they’re all on other duty. Worse, the life expectancy of a D7A is not great, but it’s the best stasis ship the Klingons have right now.

Which I suppose brings us to ‘new toy time’. Thanks to an episode of the Animated Series, the Klingons have ships with Stasis Field Generators, a device that can be focused on up to three targets at a time, and stops time for that target. Usually, this is done to an enemy ship, whereupon the rest of the fleet gathers near, drones are launched, and the field is dropped. The ship then explodes in a hail of gunfire and drones that hit seconds later. Or, it can be used to protect friendly ships, since it will be immune to fire while the field is up.

The problem is that the field only works at short range, and the SFG-equipped ship must be at a full stop to use the field. This is not wise when there’s other annoyed enemy ships about.

The rules for all of this in Combined Operations are very long and detailed, since there’s a lot of potential rules interactions. And it’s an interesting study in rules that gives the Klingon player full control over his intent, without letting him get everything he wants. Each (non-friendly) target is rolled for to see if the ship is frozen, nothing happens, a random target is frozen (that procedure causes a lot of the rules), or there is a disaster which leaves the stasis ship vulnerable while nothing gets frozen. The more targets the Klingons try for, the worse the chances.

With the addition of the Klingons, and still only a one-front war, the Kzinti had to suffer five raids this turn, which he called up POLs for on each one. My goal was to cause as many disrupted provinces as possible, mostly aimed at ones I couldn’t get at, and the rest at ones that would be difficult to garrison. The Klingons sent in 3xD5, and couldn’t avoid taking a casualty in each fight, so retreated without disrupting anything, with one of the D5s crippled to boot. The Lyrans sent in a CW and CF, both of which managed to disrupt provinces.

Combats:
1601: Klingon: dest D5
1602: SSC: Kzinti retreat
1605: Kzinti: dest BATS; Klingon: crip 2xF5
1303: SSC: Kzinti: dest POL; Lyran retreat
1506: Neutral: 2xPDU; Klingon: crip E4, capture planet
1405: Kzinti: dest BATS; Klingon: crip SAV
1205: Kzinti: dest BATS; Klingon: crip D6, F5
1105: Kzinti: 2xPDU; Klingon: crip D6, capture planet
1504: Kzinti: dest CVE, EFF, SF; Klingon: crip D7C, D5, F5, dest D5
1004: Kzinti: dest BATS; Lyran: crip DW, DD
1304: Kzinti: 3xSIDS, crip 3xBC, dest CVE, 2xEFF; Klingon: crip D7, D6J, 3xF5, dest D6S, capture DD; Lyran: crip 2xCA, CW, DD, dest DW
0903: Lyran: crip CW
0703: Kzinti: dest BATS; Lyran: crip DW, 2xDD
0701: Kzinti: dest BATS; Lyran: crip CL, 2xFF
0902: Kzinti: 4xSIDS, crip BC, CL; Lyran: crip 5xCW, 2xCL, 2xDW, DD, dest SC, DW, 2xFF

I had thought I had a pretty good chance of taking down the Klingon border SB when I diverted a Lyran force to join in on the assault, however, I just didn’t have what it took there, and he had a pretty good defensive force.

Meanwhile, I actually did have enough ships at 0902 to have a good crack at it, but I had no specialty ships. Most notably, there was only one scout present, which Belirahc wisely took out in the first round, leaving me to fire into a -2 shift most rounds. Even so, there was a chance at it, but the dice were not with me; a final 1-5 split convinced to leave instead of digging even deeper into the fleet.

As usual, all the secondary objectives were met. But I didn’t manage any of my primary objectives (taking out a SB or 1504). I’d say this turn shows that while I’m more experienced with F&E, I’m not that experienced. The easiest thing to fix would have been to remember to put a second scout into 0902. Actually sending the Lyran Red Claw fleet there instead of 1304 would seem to have been best as well.

This is of course no more than a delay, as the Kzinti cannot hold up against this for long (and he can’t really afford to lose ships at this rate for long). But the clock is ticking. There is a lot for the Coalition to do in the early game, and not enough time. Delays like this are something that I can ill afford if there’s going to be a creditable invasion of the Federation on Turn 7.

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A History of Venice

by on April 16, 2012 at 10:56 am
Posted In: Books, History

Norwich’s A History of Venice is a good and thorough work covering from the initial colonization of the islands of the Rialto to the city’s fall to Napoleon (roughly 420 to 1797), but I found it a bit disappointing. However, I spent most of the book wondering why. Partly, I think, it is because there are very few personalities in the book. Norwich himself actually complains of this on two occasions—there’s just very few places in Venetian history where you can say anything about the personality of someone.

However, I think the main problem is I was hoping for a history of the Venetian state, and the book is really a history of the city, though restricted to that period where it was a state. Which is to say that except for those occasions where outside action impinges directly on one of Venice’s holdings, those holdings don’t show in the book. It feels like a stage play with one set—Venice—and news from abroad is sung by the Greek Chorus. There’s no sense of how the overseas empire really worked.

But, Norwich loves the city of Venice, and that love shows through on every page. One thing that is tracked lovingly through the pages are the buildings and monuments of Venice. When a new building goes up, there is a footnote telling what part of it is still visible today. When a Doge dies and is put in a tomb, there is a footnote giving where it was, and where it was moved to if anything happened to it. Visiting Venice with this book in hand would be a real treat.

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Weekend in Motion

by on April 10, 2012 at 3:21 pm
Posted In: Computer games

I have a few things I want/need to write and post. But they’ve all been big, and I haven’t been able to convince myself to sit down for a long stretch and pound some of it out. But I took part in the big survey over at Paradox last month, so I received the free copy of Cities in Motion going into the weekend and want to share some thoughts.

I’m not a big fan of city builders and the like, sandbox games tend to be something that I just don’t stick with for very long. But there’s some interesting things with this one.

First, it isn’t really a city builder. SimCity et al. put you in the city board office; you’re zoning areas, working out the main street grid, and working out the infrastructure. Instead, you’re only dealing with mass transit, more like in OpenTTD.

But it isn’t that either. OpenTTD and A-Train and the like have cities as little things, and you’re establishing transit links across the countryside. CiM is concentrated on single urban areas, leaving you to manage bus lines, tram systems, and the expensive subways. No trains (at least, not under your control) or airlines here.

It is also mostly oriented around a campaign, so you are given scenarios and a constant stream of goals to accomplish. In keeping with it being published by Paradox, this is more of a sim than its cousins, with each map being a particular city (mostly Western/Central European, with NY, SF and Tokyo appearing in expansions). However, this also leads to trouble as the behavior of the lines in the game don’t really match with expectations, with the need to have a bunch of small interlocking lines to make make money with bus routes instead of long sprawling ones. (Or is this just the inhabitant of the land of failed mass transit speaking?)

At any rate, an interesting technical wrinkle is that the passengers get on the transit system with particular destinations in mind, so success also rides on satisfying those. I know that OpenTTD was pondering how to put something like that into its model the last time I looked.

And then late Sunday night, I finally got around to trying out Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun. As is usual with Paradox, the first reaction is that of being overwhelmed. The more so in this case because it is more detailed than the usual, being kind of all the concerns of Europa Universalis with all the concerns of Imperialism added on top.

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