[Ensign Q]

holy crap. i cant really follow your idea, but turning ship battles into a minigame would be awesome. it would be cool if a weak ship can escape a borgcube if youre lucky. like playing a (sub)game of stonerockscissors (with cards) to see if you take a hit or similiar. alternatively it could follow the rules of blackjack. like who comes closer to its ship stats hits.
would completely revamp tactitcs cards though, so probably too much for the cc to consider.

[boromirofborg]

In your battle idea (which I like), would the ships weapons and shields add on to the tactics?

Another possible idea would be keep the 2/3, but slot 1 would be just the raw ships, and slots 2 and 3 would would be just tactic/tactic.

This would still give the bigger ship the advantage (guaranteed win of 1 slot), but will still result in them losing some of the time.

[BCSWowbagger]

A tactics metagame would be cool. Heck, just a +1/+1 that inflicts a random casualty and -1/-1/-1/-30, but nullifies Breen Disruptor Burst, would shake thing up right quick. Interesting point re: reliability. It seems fair to say that, if a strong attacker has only a 50% chance of winning a battle, nobody will ever bother with being a strong attacker. On the other hand, when a strong attacker has a 100% chance of winning a battle and inflicting lopsided casualties (e.g. "hand weapons boost all my personnel to 18 STRENGTH"), the battle is a mere formal, mechanical exercise in misery. Neither of these is good for the game.

It seems we should aim for some kind of middle ground -- where, say, a moderately stronger attacker will win 75%-ish of the time, or will face some substantial risk of losses. My own sense is that we're a bit too close to the "mechnical exercise in misery" end of the spectrum too much right now, so I think a tactics metagame could be nice.

@Hoss-Drone, I have read your post twice and have no idea what you're saying, but would like to hear it if you can explain slowly in simple words my feeble brain can handle.

For myself, I have always thought it would be interesting, and potentially less of a mechanical exercise in misery (even against overwhelming forces) if ship-vs-ship forces paired off something like the way personnel do in personnel battle. Of course, it could not be exactly the same, because you can't shuffle ships. My instinct is that defender chooses pairings. Picture this:

Two TwT Dominion Battleships attack the Enterprise. The Hood and a Type 9 Shuttlecraft are also present, and join the battle.

In the current game, the Battleships attack and destroy the Enterprise with a direct hit, while the Feds return fire against one of the battleships, damaging it.

In my slightly different version of the game, the Type 9 could pair off against one of the Battleships, leaving the Hood and Enterprise to deal with the remaining Battleship. The Type 9 would take a direct hit and die, but the Enterprise would only take a single hit, and live to limp home to Spacedock. Basically, you'd have sacrificed the smaller ship to save the larger one -- and taken more overall HULL damage than you would have the other way.

I can imagine that making ship battle a lot more exciting for both players, while still allowing the stronger attacker to reap his just rewards. Might also make battles feel more like "Sacrifice of Angels" than they currently do. And making ship battles work more like personnel battles would make the rules more digestible (although of course that would have to be balanced against the transition costs for existing players learning new rules). However, I have zero test data to support any of this.

[boromirofborg]

Also, a thought from my many rewatches of ST on going now:

- Battles happen fairly frequently. Rough guess is at least once every 6 episodes or so.
- Ships being destroyed happens rarely (Dominion war excluded.)

Translate to the game:

- Players like interaction, at least in theory
- Players don't like losing everything

Opinion piece:

Battle should be something that happens far more often than it does now, in the sense of if you make it though an 'ideal' game, you should have to battle at least 1-2 times.

However, this should result in typically speed bumps, not annihilation. *If* we were reimagining battle from the ground up, I would want tactics to have less hull damage then they do now.


Then the game becomes a little more like this:

Opponent is moving their mission solver ship. You need to buy time. You attack their USS Enterprise with your D'Kora.

You "win" the battle, taking out two of their crew, and reducing their range by 2. In the battle, you also lost one personnel.

Both sides return to their facilities for restocking, but now you are prepared to finish your mission first.




Some of this comes back to the question of preferred game length. (Personal preference is more turns, less actions per turn.)

[Mr.Sloan]

- Battles happen fairly frequently. Rough guess is at least once every 6 episodes or so.
- Ships being destroyed happens rarely (Dominion war excluded.)

Translate to the game:

- Players like interaction, at least in theory
- Players don't like losing everything

You nailed it. Maybe something like: Even if shields are not outmatched, maybe a redshirt dude on a console dies anyway.... while even if you have more then douple the amount of weapons, the ship is not destroyed and might need one more attack next turn.

Also i don´t like cards that make battle compmletly impossible (Strategema) also landing is a bit OP to me. While at the same time completly outwiping all facilitys of the opponent should be more difficult. e.g. more defensive tacitcs like shields + 50% (helps facilitys a lot) but weapons - 6.

[boromirofborg]

I'd probably even be ok with the idea of facilities not being able to be destroyed by normal battle, but needing a special card to do so.

Outside of total war settings (Dominion war, and DSC's KLN/Fed war) how often do we see facilities being actually destroyed? The Fed Outpost in Balance of Terror and the Gorn attack on Cestus III come to mind, but they are the exception instead of the rule.

Alternatively, maybe stating that you need 200% hull damage to destroy a facility? (Or that hull damage on facilities is halved if you want to avoid that logical conundrum.)

[Hoss-Drone]

@Hoss-Drone, I have read your post twice and have no idea what you're saying, but would like to hear it if you can explain slowly in simple words my feeble brain can handle.

Lemme slow it down then with an example.

Player A Has his Set XV Uss enterprise with his TwT Kirk and Matching commander Picard with captains log (7+3=10) attack his opponent's Jem hadar warship with Deyos and a vr headset (9+1=10). Each have a Bbd. Each draw 2 tactics, pick one and place it face down as shot 1. They then repeat it for a shot 2 and a shot 3. In shot 1 player A reveals a phaser banks and player b reveals a green disruptor burst. Shot two player A reveals a photon torpedo and player b reveals an evasive maneuver. Shot 3 Player A reveals Phaser banks again and player b reveals Frontal Assault. Matchingattackers weapons against defender's shields Player A wins two out of 3 and chooses one of his winning phaser banks to get .

Under my idea there would still be the option to "fleet attack" and gang up your 4 ships against a borg cube. A lack of a tactic just adds a +0 to the shot. Idk about returning fire same turn or not and i agree with you guys in principle that the current hull reductions are too good getting ships blown up too easily and would argue for needing -200% (100 for the shields then 100 for the hull itself). Realistically, the reductions from tactics would make surviving a formality bc you can't run but it would make it all more interesting and strategic if you need to spend 1 or even 2 more turns shooting.

[JeBuS]

@Hoss-Drone Where does Shot 3 come from in your scenario?

Edit: Or wait... are you saying each ship is drawing 6 total tactics each battle, and you're choosing 3 of them?

[Professor Scott]

@Hoss-Drone Where does Shot 3 come from in your scenario?

Edit: Or wait... are you saying each ship is drawing 6 total tactics each battle, and you're choosing 3 of them?

I think he was saying winner is best 2 out of 3, so 3 shots each drawing 2 tactics and picking 1, so 6 drawn total and 3 used. I presume he is limiting the winner to choosing only a tactic from the 2 winning shots (Phaser Banks) and since they were the same tactic, not really a choice.

[Hoss-Drone]

@Hoss-Drone Where does Shot 3 come from in your scenario?

Edit: Or wait... are you saying each ship is drawing 6 total tactics each battle, and you're choosing 3 of them?

I think he was saying winner is best 2 out of 3, so 3 shots each drawing 2 tactics and picking 1, so 6 drawn total and 3 used. I presume he is limiting the winner to choosing only a tactic from the 2 winning shots (Phaser Banks) and since they were the same tactic, not really a choice.

Exactly.

One of the ancillary benefits of my proposal is that it will force bigger tactic decks and since you need to win 2 of 3 having a one dimensional Bbd means your opponent is reliably going to win. So you gain incentive to play defensive tactics on the deck as well and if there is one thing design hasn't done is make more defensive tactics (or make them relevant). In my proposal, solid defense would itself a win so your incentive is to have good offense and defense. (Making breen disruptor burst less good)

If my 200% idea is also adopted it would also make the damage effects more relevant since you could get more of them and blowing the ship is harder meaning you WANT those effects for help. Target these coordinates could come out of the binders....

One way to resolve all of this in one swoop:

1. Create a new damage type by rule: let's call it Deflector damage.
2. Simple change to the destroyed rule that hull damage effects only apply if Deflector damage at 100% or more.
3. Create a new tactics focused set where most of the tactics have higher defense but they all have Deflector damage as a marker effect (similar to hull damage) and mostly don't do any kills as part of their applied effect. *Edit*. - nor have reductions to stats.
4. Change default damage rule to be 50% deflectors for two hits then hull damage for two hits. New default marker released as a promo.

The natural result is that at a minimum players are gonna have to play with 2 different tactics and would likely play more so as to be more unpredictable. This would also make downloading tactics better and would open design space for making more tactic downloads and/or .

[BCSWowbagger]

Intriguing! Thank you for explaining.

[JeBuS]

I thought about @Hoss-Drone's idea a bit more. It seems to me that we already have a "Deflector Damage" mechanism in the game: SHIELDS.

What effect would it have on your proposal if instead of a new tactic type of damage, there was a blanket rule that Hull Damage doesn't apply until SHIELDS have reached zero? Hull damage only gets applied by tactics placed after SHIELDS have been taken out.

[SirDan]

What effect would it have on your proposal if instead of a new tactic type of damage, there was a blanket rule that Hull Damage doesn't apply until SHIELDS have reached zero? Hull damage only gets applied by tactics placed after SHIELDS have been taken out.

That is a fascinating and simple idea.

[Hoss-Drone]

I thought about @Hoss-Drone's idea a bit more. It seems to me that we already have a "Deflector Damage" mechanism in the game: SHIELDS.

What effect would it have on your proposal if instead of a new tactic type of damage, there was a blanket rule that Hull Damage doesn't apply until SHIELDS have reached zero? Hull damage only gets applied by tactics placed after SHIELDS have been taken out.

I considered it already and my conclusion was that while it my might make target shields a useful tactic, it would just skew the tactic metagame even harder to breen disruptor burst and crimson forcefield while creating a snowball effect. Hit em with breen disruptor burst then flip 2 another plus a crimson and they are -5 shields. Do it again and it's the same result as if there was no new rule. So it wouldn't be elegant, it would be pointless.


Making it separate is literally the point so it forces two different concerns and prevents snowball effect. The new defensive tactics would also likely have little to no static marker effects so they don't add to the snowball problem. You hit em with hull damage tactics and they get weaker but you can't blow them up, hit em with deflector damage tactics and it's the same.

[JeBuS]

But I'm not sure your proposal changes the variety of tactics either, aside from forcing me to stock BDB + whatever the best Deflector Damage tactic would be.