community rules changes - ideas/direction

[erloas]

So barring someone buying up the IP the rules pretty much have to go to community based if they are to evolve.  And even if someone does buy up the IP, a community set of rules would give them a very good starting point for any revamp of the "new official" rules.

I would like to start with what direction we want the gameplay to go.  What do we want the game to play like?  Not things like specific rule changes like "I want to see the % large in list building change by 5%" or "ships X, Y, and Z in 'this' ORBAT need more defense/firepower/etc."  What are the goals of the rule changes, rather than what specifically are the rules.  Something like "a stronger focus on ship size diversity" or "more reasons or ability to take mixed theater forces" would be good though.

Personally I would like to see games last more rounds, not necessarily longer games but games that go 4+ rounds instead of ones that end in 2.

More advantage to out maneuvering or out flanks someone, which would in turn make smaller ships more valuable.

Simpler mechanics for fixed channel weapons.

Make rocket and torpedo attacks more thematic and function differently than "guns that can be countered with AA/CC."

More variety in scenario and win conditions, especially so no "one list" can be the best option for every scenario that might come up.

More focus on "balanced lists" so focusing on any one single type of thing is rarely going to be better than a more balanced, inclusive list.

More, too, but that seems like a good place to start for the OP.

[Fracas]

With 2.5 just out
Shouldn't we give it some time and see?

[slimeball]

with some if the fleets not having orbats, most of the main fleets not being finished regards Commodore doctrines etc. and the ridiculousness of the new carrier and strato carrier rules I am strongly in favour of reverting to 2.0 and staying there. just using the new orbats for ships that were released after 2.0 (for those luck enough to get their kickstarter ships)

community adjustments are alright in some cases but having to check which mixture of house rules you and your opponent want to use today is just messy when 2.0 was a great ruleset anyway

[Ruckdog]

I actually come down on the side of Fracas for the most part. 2.0 was a pretty good ruleset, yes, but I also feel that the core rules for 2.5 made enough improvements over the 2.0 version (especially the boarding, commodore, and SAS sections) that we shouldn't just junk them because of some needed ORBAT adjustments.

Fair point about not all fleets having ORBATS under 2.5, but I'm not sure how big of an issue that is; the vast majority do, and the ones that don't were very minor factions in terms of model count and, I'm guessing, player base. Off the top of my head, I can only think of the Scandinavian Teutonic Order and the Canadians that didn't get their 2.5 orbats released; are there others I'm not thinking of?

[Draco84oz]

The problem is that most of the fleets only got a "get you by" list, with the main ones due out a month ago. The temp ones didn't have the full abilities - I mean, just compare the Egyptian and Covenant Drone SAS stats.

Plus, we never got anything for the League of Crimson...

[Fracas]

We can tweak the model profiles I guess

[Ruckdog]

The problem is that most of the fleets only got a "get you by" list, with the main ones due out a month ago. The temp ones didn't have the full abilities - I mean, just compare the Egyptian and Covenant Drone SAS stats.

Plus, we never got anything for the League of Crimson...

Those are good points, and I definitely think these are issues the community should address. I'm hopeful we will be able to get access to the draft stats that were being worked on, and push those out for folks to use. I still think the core 2.5 rules are the way to go for now, though.

[Fracas]

I think we should keep the game alive with a campaign

[slimeball]

I understand that 2.5 brought some improvements but for every improvement I feel it brought a WTF moment. 2.5 was.just too incomplete for my tastes, but feel free to run with it, it's your hobby too after all.

the problem with community tweaks is that you end up with multiple rulesets and end up having to fight over which one to use. one person might like mannbattle 1.0 because it makes their sas super strong, but fanstormarmada 1.0 makes battleships better, his opponent brought 6 of them and isn't budging on which rules he wants to use.

[Ruckdog]

I understand that 2.5 brought some improvements but for every improvement I feel it brought a WTF moment. 2.5 was.just too incomplete for my tastes, but feel free to run with it, it's your hobby too after all.

the problem with community tweaks is that you end up with multiple rulesets and end up having to fight over which one to use. one person might like mannbattle 1.0 because it makes their sas super strong, but fanstormarmada 1.0 makes battleships better, his opponent brought 6 of them and isn't budging on which rules he wants to use.

I agree completely; it's a topic I've spoken about in the past on the MBS podcast (see my Ruckdog's Report from Ep 18). Ultimately, there is no "perfect" solution to this problem, short of another company taking over the DW IP. In the case you mention, the best way I can think of to avoid that version conflict would be to coordinate the rules ahead of time, if possible.

I think it will take some time for the wider community to come to a consensus on which versions of each game will be the go-to for pickup play and events. My first instinct is to use the most recent version of the game that was officially released as the starting point, hence 2.5 for DW. For DW specifically, one thing to consider is that some folks managed to get their hands on physical rule books for 2.5 (lucky devils!). It only seems natural to me that they would want to use them. Also, there are all the new models that were in production for the KS, again some of which have made their way to backers, and which only had "official" stats in the 2.5 orbats. Granted, the stats for the new DW models could pretty easily be converted to 2.0, and as was discussed above there were some factions/models that never had their 2.5 stats released. So, no matter what version of the core rules we go with, some custom ORBAT adjustments will be necessary. 

This is why I am hopeful that the efforts of the DW play test group will not have been in vain, and the revised and/or expanded 2.5 Stats they were working on will find its way to the light of day.

[herezjohny]

There are sub factions that never got a 2.5 update, again yes it's not complete.  Unless we ourselves make some changes, some are easier than others due to models that are shared between factions and their close allied sub factions.

[Amiral X]

The V2.5 clearly bring some improvements to DW, but the main issues is that orbats are not finalized (without speaking about a few rules problems). The released versions are early draft that have been released to make the community wait for final ones, but they are stuffed with mistakes (lots have been reported on SG forums but not taken into account) and the impact of rule modification on overall balance of the game have not been tested.
As a result, I'm really splitted between keeping for a while the V2.0 (with was stable and rather well balanced), or jumping to V2.5 and making the required modifications to rrules and orbats, to make them usable... 

[erloas]

With 2.5 just out
Shouldn't we give it some time and see?

I think most people had a pretty good idea of 2.5 by now.  Obviously there will be a lot that didn't too. 
I would personally base any adjustments off of the 2.5 rules, but without anything even approaching a community consensus on what we want to do, it is hard to do anything.  And many people coming in and saying "I would like to see it almost the same" is also a very valid response and if that was the case then we have that to go with.

Some changes too would come from ORBAT balancing, and we know that needs to be done because it was an unfinished job.  For instance games lasting into later turns could come from lower AD pools or higher defenses or more HPs and all of that could be done in the ORBATs.  Of course knowing whether or not people want games to go more turns is key to deciding to make those changes or not.  At the same time if people want everything to die faster then making any of those changes would be counterproductive. 

There are also a few RAI vs RAW questions that people have, and knowing which one to make "official" would be easier if we knew what most people want the game to play like.

Or a ship like the much maligned Stolz, does it suck because it has a fixed channel weapon or some other reason? Do fixed channel weapons simply need a change across the board or is it only an issue with a couple models, or is it not really an issue at all?

[Merlin]

I'm with the " v2.5 is only just out" crowd. I like what the rulebook did for the game. I can play 2000pt games in 2 hours or less and that's a good thing.

Personally, I would focus on leaving the game as it currently is, and hope the Beta testers just give us the stats they were working off of and not worry about the NDA. By this point who would care if they released them to the public?
Any company that takes over the games aren't likely to run with much, and they certainly wouldn't use a fan made version of stats. They'd want to do things their way.


As I see it now, there isn't too much wrong with the current Orbats. A few mistakes here and there in the Core faction orbats, but the Alliance Nation ones are more or less perfect. I had an early version of the STO and Operational Orbats given to me by Neil himself. Nothing particularly bad in either, except some spelling mistakes or missing figures for Sustained Assault on the Eider Mk3. But everything else was good. I will tidy up the Orbat I was given and update it to have the list of the Lend-Lease options that they were to come with as well and then I will post it up for Ruckdog to add to his repository here.

To this end, I've made it my mission to make some STO models and 3d print them. Some of you may have seen my endeavours on Facebook already.


So Yeah, overall I say leave community rules for a while. We don't need to mess with the framework that Spartan made for us just yet and there is plenty of scope within the current framework to make stats for new factions fan made Orbats.

For example, I've got a Portugese Empire set of stats made that Neil was impressed with. Probably still needs some fine tuning, but it would work.

[Asuo]

For now I think the only thing we should work on is correcting the mistakes in the orbats 

Update editions is easy to get around, use a single resource download site and keep it correct and tidy.