Fleet Captain: what the hell is wrong with this crate?

By: Unknown on 05:48

I'm going to try to get back on track with this spaceship game. If you recall from earlier posts, one of the key ways ship classes in Fleet Captain differ from one another is how they suck.

Ship Design Flaws (roll d20 for each class of vessel)

1. Tends to Explode - Every turn of live comba the ship has a 1 in 20 chance of exploding for no apparent reason.
2. Fast Decompressor - The first hit to do Hull Damage also causes one point of Crew Casualties as redshirts are sucked out into space.
3. Torpedo Jams - Any roll of a ‘1’ on a torpedo attack disables torpedoes for the rest of the game.
4. Rustbucket - 1 in 6 chance of a critical with every hull hit.
5. Simply Mediocre - All die rolls at -1.  A ‘0’ move is a normal Drift.
6. No Safety Rails - All Crew Casualties are doubled.
7. Poor Fire Control - 1 in 6 chance of targeting ship adjacent to foe, whether adjacent vessel is friend or enemy.
8. Unstable AI - On any turn this vessels does a Full Drift (neither moves nor fires) there is a 1 in 6 chance the main computer gets bored and murders sufficient crew to cause one Crew Casualty.
9. Psychosis-inducingly Bad Decor - If the Captain is eliminated from play the crew mutinies; ship takes no action but Full Drift for rest of game unless Boarded and Captured by a friendly vessel.
10. Weapons Blind Spot - No fire possible along one hexline (see chart).
11. Shield Flaw - Shields one die smaller along one hexline (see chart).
12. Engine Imbalance - All vessels in this class tend to pull either to the left or right (determine randomly).  All non-turning Forward movements must drift in that direction.
13. Dubious Aerodynamics - Automatically take d4 hull damage whenever passing through an atmosphere.
14. Convenient Airlock Access - Boarding attempts are +1 against you.
15. Excellent Broadcast Antennae - All mines, seeker missiles, drones, etc., are +1 to attack you.
16. Faulty Astrogation Sensors - Rolls are -1 to avoid asteroids, black holes, etc.
17. Puny Retrorockets - 4+ on d6 that any Drift move marker must be treated as a Forward Move at smallest die engines.
18. Insufficient Lateral Bracing - Any maneuver involving more than one hexside’s worth of turns does d4 hull damage.
19. Flame Protardent Materials - Fires roll 2 dice each turn.
20. Roll again twice.

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Fleet Captain: fighters & missiles

By: Unknown on 12:49

Gameblog reader pavo6503 asks:

...It is generally accepted as the rule that air power made battleships obsolete in WW2. The US and British Navy kept their battleships in safe harbors until air superiority was established. Now, some say aircraft carriers are obsolete because of submarines and anit-ship weapons like the Chinese DF-21, a ballistic missile with 900 miles of range and attacks from above with incoming meteorite speed. It doesn't even have an explosive warhead, just a concrete slug! Small missile launchers are the new awesome as far as naval power goes.

How well do the rules for your game hold up to this modern situation? Do squadrons of fighters and torpedo attacks have the same devastating effects? ...

I know you're concentrating on speed and fun with workable rules being the desired outcome but have you found that fighters and missile attacks are the way to go?

Any resemblance between Fleet Captain and modern naval warfare is purely coincidental. There's got to be fighter rules in Fleet Captain simply because Star Wars is fighter heavy.  However, they can't be quite as awesome or important as in Star Wars, because original Star Trek is another heavy influence.  So try imagining the Battle of Jutland involving a few biplane-launching carriers and you get the vibe I'm going for.  I want to have bigass anti-ship missiles as well, simply because I want the possibility of launching a missile and striking a friendly vessel by accident.  But big, dumb, slow capital ships exchanging wildly inaccruate laser cannon barrages will still be the focus of the game.

Right now I'm trying to figure out whether I want my fighter rules just plain simple or so mind-numbingly simple the Rogue Squadron fans spit and call me names.  For example, here are two possible movement rules I am considering:

Alternate 1: All fighters not already engaged in a dogfight roll a large die (d12 or d20 maybe) and move up to that many hexes with no regard to facing changes or anything like that.  Just roll and move that many hexes, no big whoop.

Alternate 2: All fighters not already engaged in a dogfight just plain go wherever they want.  Pick up the piece and set it down somewhere else on the board.  Fighters are just so many orders of magntiude faster and more maneuverable that they all but teleport for our purposes.

Missiles will definitely move on some sort of die roll.  If they end their move adjacent to an enemy vessel they automatically attack it.  If they end their move adjacent to a friendly vessel there's a flat 1 in 6 chance they misidentify the ship and attack.

Either way, fleets will be limited on the number of carriers or missile boats they can deploy.  I'm imagining maybe 2 to 4 stands worth of fighters or missiles per specialty vessel and probably only 0 to 2 such vessels in any fleet.

(Also, I have a different game idea that's all about the fighters as opposed to the capital ships.  In that game all vessels above fighter/shuttle size occupy multiple hexes, functioning as terrain.  The fighters buzz all around them, with the capital ships involved basically stationary or nearly so.)

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Fleet Captain: Countdown to Doom

By: Unknown on 14:20

Any ships that have been reduced to 0 hull points must roll on the chart below before taking any action, including the mandatory Drift at the end of a turn where the ship wasn't activated.

Countdown to Doom (normally 1d6, Fleet Captains roll 2d6)

1 - STRIKE COLORS - Remove ship from board.  If the enemy wins, they capture it as prize.  If the rest of your fleet wins, enjoy the court-martial.
2 - BOOM! - Your ship explodes.  You are dead.  See the rules below for more details.
3 - ABANDON SHIP - Place one Escape Pod marker on your hex for every point of crew efficiency you have left.  1 in 6 chance the ship explodes anyway, killing everyone.
4 - SITTING DUCK - You may only Drift this turn.  Any further hull damage to vessel has an X in 6 chance of Exploding the ship, where X is the hull damage inflicted by the incoming shot.
5 - VENTING ATMOSPHERE - Take 1 point of crew damage.  3 in 6 chance of one fire self-extinguishing.  You may act normally this turn.
6 - EMERGENCY REPAIRS - Crew restores 1 hull point.  2 in 6 chance of extinguishing one fire.  You may act normally this turn.

7 - EMERGENCY REPAIRS - Crew restores d6 hull points, extinguishes all fires and repairs a weapon system of your choice. You may act normally this turn.
8 - EMERGENCY REPAIRS - Crew restores 1 hull point.  2 in 6 chance of extinguishing one fire.  You may act normally this turn.
9 - ENGINE STALL - You may only Drift for movement this turn.  Weapons and Shields still function.
10 - SPITE STRIKE - You may fire as many weapons as you want this turn, but vessel has an X in 6 chance of Exploding, where X is the number of weapons fired.
11 - ENGINE CORE BREACH IMMANENT - Sometime this turn, your ship Explodes.  You get to pick when.  Try to take one of the bastards with you.
12 - SHATNERIAN MIRACLE - Erase all damage to vessel.  Extinguish all fires. Go forth and kick ass.

HOW TO EXPLODE
Anybody or anything that happens to be in your hex takes damage equal to a centerline torpedo strike.
Anybody or anything that happens to be in an adjacent hex takes damage equal to an offcenter torpedo strike.
Replace your ship with an Explosion marker.  This remains on the board as a stationary Density 1 asteroid field.  At the beginning of each turn roll 1d6 for each Explosion marker on the board.  On a 6 remove that marker.
Make a loud explodey sound effect.  Entertain your friends.

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Fleet Captain: Improbably Dense Asteroid Fields

By: Unknown on 07:51

The asteroid rules for Fleet Captain can be used as a springboard for designing other space hazards.

First, let's begin by acknowledging that in the real world asteroids are rarely dense enough to pose a threat as a group.  Still, we all love the asteroid field sequence in Empire Strikes Back, so we darn well need asteroid rules in our game.  From a design point of view, asteroids (and any other terrain) needs to providing insteresting variation to the game without so overwhelming the other rules as to warp overall design.  In other words, we want asteroids, they need to be exciting but also nod vaguely towards realism and we have to make sure the game doesn't become about them.

Let's start with a simple assumption: if we are using asteroids then the whole map is a segment of the asteroid field.  Every ding dang hex has one or more smallish and uninteresting asteroids in them that for all purposes we ignore mechanically.  The asteroid markers we are going to place on the board represent areas of particularly high danger.  You can think of those markers as the "big rocks" if you like, but a more sophisticated reading of the simulation at work here would be that those markers indicate crests in the density waves that propogate through the asteroid field.

Anyway, each asteroid marker needs to contain two pieces of information, a direction arrow and a density rating from 1 to 6.  Something like this:

The arrow is in the corner for no particular reason.  You're going to place these on the map facing a hexside just like the nose of a ship.  Note that if you are using miniatures you can omit the number, simply place a small number of asteroids on a single base; the number of rocks on the base is the density rating.  Make sure the base has an arrow marked on it.

You don't need many of these asteroids to jazz up a space battle, one of each size 1 to 6 is probably enough for most space maps.

Okay, let's look at the mechanics for these babies.  Each turn asteroids are moved after you place movement markers but before you start flipping cards.  Roll d6 for each asteroid marker and move it that many hexes in a straight line.  If you move off the map place it opposite where it exited, next turn it will re-enter the map there.

Did you just pass an asteroid through a ship or land on the same hex as one?  Good, 'cause now its time to learn what happens when you try to occupy the same space as a few million tons of space rock.  Roll a d6 to avoid contact.  If you get above the asteroid density rating, you are safe.  If you don't, you're in trouble.  Roll d20 damage.  Shields do not protect you, you are just straight up taking a big pile of Hull Damage here.  The one thing that might save you is your Laser(s).  Each Laser shaves off d6 worth of incoming asteroid damage.  If the asteroid marker tried to end it's movement in your hex, move it one more hex.  Nature may abhor a vacuum but Fleet Captain abhors having two objects in the same hex.  That's a big pain in the ass when using minis.

The same basic procedure applies when you try to fly through an asteroid hex.  The two main differences are that A) you can attempt the Special Maneuver called Avoid Hazard to increase your chances of successfully negotiating the field and B) if you try to end your turn on an asteroid hex it is your vessel that moves one extra hex, not you.

The other important thing to know about asteroids is that they attenuate weapons fire that passes through them.  Subtract the density rating from the attack roll of any fire passing through the hex.

Where to initially place the asteroids is something of an art form.  One way to do it is to try to guess which rows on the map will be most conducive to screwing up the battle for everyone, then rolling dice to determine the hexes along those rows that the asteroids begin in.  The longest rows on the map are usually a good bet, something like this:

But obviously how you set up the fleets will have an impact on choosing where to put the asteroids.  In most scenarios you don't want the initial placement to destroy any vessels before the first turn of the cards.

I prefer my asteroids to all float in the same direction, but what do I know?

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Fleet Captain: the attack chart

By: Unknown on 10:45

This is the first Fleet Captain piece where I'm not so sure of my footing.  Please feel free to tell me that ships are too fragile under these rules.  I can't make up my mind.

If I did my math right, this chart expresses a very simple idea:

• Roll attack the attack die, roll the defense die.
• If the attack die is higher, you have penetrated the shields and do damage.
• Damage inflicted is attack roll divided by defense roll, dropping fractions.

Ship hull points tend to range from 4 to 8 for Escorts, 6 to 12 for Cruisers and 10 or higher for Battleships and such.  Ships can blow up fast and unexpectedly.

One of my design goals is being able to play out a 3-battle mini-campaign in a single 4 hour convention slot, so ships shouldn't last too long once the shooting starts.

However, running out of hull points doesn't automatically damn your ship.  Each round you are out of hit point you roll on the Countdown to Doom chart to follow.  You might survive a few more turns at diminished capacity or you might be able to trick someone into boarding your ship just before your self-destruct system activates.  Or maybe you just plain explode, inflicting damage on neighboring vessels.  As with everything else, your Fleet Captain is better able to deal with such emergencies.

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Fleet Captain: initial thoughts on weapons systems

By: Unknown on 03:00

Worf: They are now locking lasers on us.
Riker: Lasers?
Worf: Yes, sir.
Picard: Lasers can't even penetrate our navigation shields. Don't they know that?
Riker: Regulations do call for a yellow alert.
Picard: Mmm, a very old regulation. Well, make it so, Number One. And reduce speed, drop main shields as well.
Riker: May I ask why, sir?
Picard: In case we decide to surrender to them, Number One!

I love that sequence.

Most vessels in Fleet Captain have three kinds of weaponry.  You can call these Primary, Secondary and Tertiary weapons if you'd like, but I tend to think of them as Torpedoes, Phasers and Lasers.  Rename them as better suits your own sci-fi universe.  If I was running a Traveller-themed game I'd call them Spinal Mount, Batteries and Turrets, for a Star Wars game I'd trade out Phasers for Blasters, etc.

These weapons are differentiated very simply. 

Torpedoes are Forward Firing Only.  Check out this figure.

The colored hexes represent where the red ship can target a foe with Torpedoes.  Targets in the blue centerline are attacked at ONE DIE BETTER than you normally get when rolling an attack.  So if you have a big battleship with d12 powered to weapons, break out that that d20!  For targets in the purple regions, slightly off the centerline, you get to add a flat +1 to your attack roll.  Plus you get the added benefit of being able to make an extra attack.

The other two weapons systems have 360 degree fields of fire.

Phasers use whatever die you've allocated to weapons.  You get one, two or three vollies of Phaser fire per turn, depending on the size of your ship.  If you have multiple targets in range each volley must each target a different ship, starting with the nearest enemy vessel, unless your captain executes an Alpha Strike special maneuver.

The range of Torpedoes and Lasers is equal to their die type.  E.g. a Phaser powered to a d10 has a range of 10 hexes. 

(If you like lots of fire across large boards, here's an optional rule: Each weapon's range band is based upon its die size.  Die size drops after each band.  That d10 Phaser attacks as a d10 at range 0 to 10, as a d8 at 11 to 20, as a d6 at 21-30 and as a d4 at 31 to 40.)

Lasers are primarily designed to shoot down enemy fighters and missiles, blast away debris, etc.  Most ships get one laser attack per turn.  Swarming fighters and similar targets are attacked at a d6, even if the ship has powered weapons only to a d4.  Using a Laser for anti-ship purposes is allowed, but at d4-1 to a max range of 3.

So if you have a typical big ship with a single foe directly ahead at range 3 or less, you can make up to five attack rolls against the foe.  This is why big ships try to keep escorts handy, to draw at least some of that fire.

Carriers, minelayers, missile ships and other specialty attack craft usually do not mount any Torpedoes.

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Fleet Captain: before you flip those cards

By: Unknown on 09:30

Before you start flipping cards to see who flies where and who shoots what, you actually have to do a little planning ahead. This simulates your best efforts to direct the rest of the fleet to where you want them to go on the board. Every Fleet Captain should be supplied with a set of counters. On side could be marked by Fleet/Faction/Polity/Race/Whatever or it could have a nice starfield decoration or it could just be blank. The other side of the counters should be marked in one of four ways:

Before the cards are deployed, every ship in play must have one of these markers face down next to it. If one guy at the table is holding up the game you are allowed to raz him for it. I suggest humming the Final Jeopardy countdown music in unison.

When you get a move result (a Black card) you activate the unit you are moving by flipping over their marker.  If you are shooting (a Red card) just pick up the marker and put it back in the pile.  A ship with no marker cannot be activated.  When one of your dumbass captains makes a normal move (using a 2 through 10 playing card) this is how it works:

FORWARD ARROW: Roll your movement die, move the full amount (divided by your Slowness, dropping fractions).  Optionally, you may sideslip one hex right or left on the last hex of your move.  A sideslip is an easy concept to show but can be hard to convey verbally, basically you nudge over one column while retaining your facing.  Like this little red ship making a 4 hex move that ends with a sideslip to the right:

Don't rotate your vessel at any point,
just slip to the side.  You dig?



If you can wrap your head around that sideslip thing the rest of this will be dead easy.  A key point to remember is that you can only sideslip at the end of your move.

RIGHT or LEFT TURN:  Move forward the full amount dictated by dice and Slowness, then turn your vessel one hexside (60 degrees) in the direction of the arrow on the marker.  That's it.  That's the whole deal.

STOP SIGN: The stop sign is a total lie.  In space they have this thing call Momentum.  (We have it here on Earth, too.  But it's easier to miss when it gets mixed in with Drag and Gravity and Ham Sandwiches and what not.  In space Momentum is just about the only thing they got going.)  A stop sign means your vessel executes a Drift maneuver.  You move forward exactly one hex.  After you move that one hex you may turn one hexside to your right or left, at your option.  You may not sideslip.

Notice how all these schmuck captains and their sucky vessels are about as graceful as oxen in tutus?  An especially important consideration here is that each turn NPC vessels have this nasty tendency to enter the hex immediately in front of their nose whether it is a good idea or not.  It doesn't matter if the enemy has dropped gravitic mines there or if that hex is surrounded by the sphincter of a giant space amoeba's bunghole. 

This is why the rules dictate that if you shoot you always Drift as well.  So your moron junior captain can smash into things right at the moment of his ultimate triumph.  Before you fire, you drift one hex forward.  You may not turn.  Also, if you run out of cards for the round and still have movement markers down, all remaining vessels Drift forward one hex, no turn allowed.  This can happen because the cards aren't just flipped off the top of a deck.  At the start of each turn the scenario organizer or some designated person deals off a small pile of facedown cards.  The number of cards so dealt is equal to the number of ships in the largest player fleet in the game.  This little pile is then turned over one card at a time.  The round is over when the last card in this small stack is turned over, whether everybody acted or not.  The cards used are discarded until an entire deck is exhausted.

Of course, the Special Maneuvers available to all captains can modify these rules.  But those are tricky and uncertain.

IMPORTANT: FLEET CAPTAINS DON'T SUCK

• Your flag vessel may move less than a full move if you so desire.
• Your flag vessel may turn or sideslip at any point in your move, if you placed the appropriate marker (you can only sideslip in a Forward Move, etc.).
• If you put down a Stop Sign then your flag vessel may either sideslip when you drift one forward OR turn to face any direction if you go straight ahead. 
• In general, the Special Maneuvers rules work even better for your Fleet Captain.

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Great Moments in Fleet Captain History #1

By: Unknown on 02:30

Optional Rule for 'Small Hex' Games: Any time two NPC vessels enter the same hex roll d100 for each ship.  If both rolls come up the same number, the ships make contact and both take the number rolled in hull points of damage.

Fleet Captain does not come with a set scale for either time or distance.  Individual GMs, scenario designers and player-empowering anarchist collectives can work such things out for themselves.  Or simply do what the designer does and remember the MST3K Mantra: Repeat to yourself it's just a show, I should really just relax.

But there are times when the size of one of those hexes of empty space really matters.  One is when you want to know if ships can accidentally bump into each other or not, hence the optional rule above.  Another is when you want to put a planet on the map. 

If we're fighting a last ditch effort to defend Earth from the forces of Omicron Persei 8 it's important to figure out at some point whether or not Earth fits on the map.  Perhaps you print out a custom counter that's exactly one hex wide.  "This counter blocks line of site and anyone entering this hex must make an Avoid Hazard maneuver or crash into a randomly determined city in New Jersey."  Or maybe you cut an old globe in half and slap that puppy down on the map.  You'll need different rules for that to cover the partial hexes peaking out beneath the hemisphere.  Another possibility is that the battle is taking place so close to Earth that any vessel exiting the right side of the board at more than Drift speed crashes into the planet. 

Or perhaps these hexes are friggin' huge and the Earth is just another dot in hex 1213.  If I recall correctly, Steve JacksonMarc Miller's vector-based tactical sci-fi ship game Triplanetary has much of the Solar System on the mapboard.  You literally bank around Venus to line up a shot against your foe, who is over by Jupiter when you make your turn.  I kinda think turns were days or weeks long in that one.

Anyway, my point is that "Oops!  I got my destroyer in your frigate!" is funny.  But it shouldn't happen too often.  Space, after all, is really, really big.  Besides, if you want vessels crashing into stuff, that's what Improbably Dense Asteroid Fields are for.

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Fleet Captain: the card deck

By: Unknown on 04:24

In Fleet Captain the deck of playing cards is used as a sort of initiative mechanic, based upon Crew Inefficiency and the captain's Incompetence.  At the beginning of each turn d6's are thrown to see who gets to go first each card flip.  If Bob rolls a 4 and Susan rolls a 5 that means that Susan must act first after every flip until the turn is over.  You can think of the cards as sort of an impulse/phase time management mechanic, with better crews and smarter captains making better use of their time.  Let's look at Bob's fleets.

Bob is playing a contingent of Middle-Aged Uplifted Spacefaring Tortoises, a.k.a. the Maust.  He has 5 ships in his fleet:

• The MDF (Maust Defense Force) Warhol, a cutting art, state-of-the-edge Heavy Cruiser and his Fleet Captain's ship.  As Bob's personal vessel, it is not rated for inefficiency or incompetence.  It can act on any phase of Bob's choosing.
• The MDF Kinkade, a leaky old battleship that should have been sold for scrap seven centuries ago.  The Captain's Incompetence is rated Jack-Queen or JQ, which is not too bad.  That means he can attempt a Captain's Maneuver any time either of those cards come up.  The crew has an appalling Inefficiency of 234, which means the ship can only move or fire when those cards come up.  Picking which vessels to activate when a low card comes up is one of the tough command decisions the Maust hope Bob is capable of making.
• The MDF Pollock, a decent light cruiser design with only a slight tendency to explode.  The captain of the Pollock graduated from command school with top honors, but hasn't gotten along with the Fleet Captain since that embarrassing incident at the Admiralty Christmas Party, so his Incompetence is only JQ while the fleet is under Bob's command.  The crew is astonishingly well-trained, with an Inefficiency of 23456789.
• The MDF Bob Ross and Alex Ross, a pair of destroyers of the same mediocre class.  The commander of the Bob Ross is a young go-getter with everything to prove.  Her Incompetence is JQK, meaning she can attempt a Captain's Maneuver on any face card.  This kid just might have it in her to be Fleet Captain some day.  She's managed to whip her sad-sack crew into an Inefficiency of 234567, which is pretty decent for this fleet.  The Alex Ross, on the other hand, is commanded by a wily old fool near retirement.  No way in hell is he sticking his neck out any more than he has to.  His Incompetence is J and his lack luster crew is 2345.  Note that these two vessels have the exact same engines and guns and hullpoints and nearly the same name, but one of them is going to get a lot more done on any given turn. 

So let's look at some of Bob's options when various cards are drawn.

• A black (black means move) 5 would indicate that Bob could opt to move the Warhol, the Pollock or either Ross.
• A red 3 means that any vessel in the Fleet could opt to shoot.  Red=shoot.  This would be a good time to actually use those giant zap guns on the Kinkade.
• A black Queen would mean that the Warhol, Kinkade, Pollock or Bob Ross could attempt some sort of special movement-based Captain's Maneuver, like flying through an asteroid hex unharmed or doing a 180-degree turn.  Note that NPC Captains only succeed in some maneuvers on a d6 roll where they beat their vessel's Slowness, so the sluggish Kinkade probably shouldn't try anything too dangerous.
• An ace always indicates that the only vessel you can activate is your flagship.
• In this fleet, any ten card would mean only the flagship can move/shoot.

Note that the Crew Inefficiency is written out long form 2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10, rather than just Inefficiency 5 because it also serves as the damage track for crew casualties.  Crew losses are marked off starting with the 2 and working up.  Similarly, the critical result Captain Bumps Head On Console can eliminate the Jack from his or her Incompetence rating.

Note that all vessels only get to Move or Shoot each turn and at the beginning of the turn there's no good way to tell if you should move now or hold out for an opportunity to fire.  You MUST move/fire if you can.

You can tell whether or not you've moved or shot by the markers mentioned in the Equipment Needed list.  Before all this card malarkey you place a marker face down next to each vessel.  Pick it up when ever you move or shoot.  Also, shooting actually involves a one hex forward Drift before you resolve fire, so every vessel moves every turn.

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Fleet Captain: I like the way this sucks

By: Unknown on 12:16

Gameblog reader amp108 asked:

[D]o the dice all have to be of different sizes? Can you have something like d6/d4/d4 or d12/d6/d6? How about something like d6/d4+1/d4?


Otherwise, you only have 3 different types of ship. What say you?

Good questions!  Energy allocation by die type is not meant to be the only method whereby ship classes can be distinguished from one another.  It's an important mechanic, but not a primarily distinguishing one past the small/medium/large size difference.  The Slowness Factor mentioned earlier is another dimension that has small differences that are meant to distinguish more between Escort A and Cruiser D, rather than Escort A and Escort B.  Most small ships involved in space warfare will be Energy Rating d4/d6/d8 and Slowness 1.  A Slowness 2 rustbucket would not be out of the question, just to give an example.

Let me explain a wider point this hypothetical rustbucket makes.  One important touchstone for me in designing Fleet Captain is this vessel:

That big slab is the Klingon L-13 K’el Ri’anda ("Dangerous Fat Man") battleship.  To the best of my knowledge it first appeared in FASA's Klingon Ship Recognition Manual.  Brad Torgersen makes the argument for me in his entry for the L-13 at the improbably long-named Star Trek Starship Tactical Combat Simulator On-Line Database & Archive: The L-13 sucks as bad as it looks.  It was a complete boondoggle for the Klingon Empire, slower than nearly any other vessel in space and armed no better than most cruisers.  In short, it is just the sort of thing that a real military procurement system would foist upon the troops on the front line.

In Fleet Captain, not only do most captain suck at their jobs, most of their vessels are average at best.  I have no problem with the Fleet Captain's vessel being a sweet Constitution class heavy cruiser with kickass weapons.  But I want to explore conflicts involving mostly suboptimal vessels.  Therefore, the primary distinguishing characteristic for each vessel isn't high or low numbers in stats that all vessels possess, rather we'll be looking at simple (cross fingers) exception-based rules that define how badly each class of vessel sucks.  So the Archimedes-class frigate often suffers from Torpedo Jams, while the Jehoshaphat-class destroyer tends to be a Fast Decompressor.  Other differences are bound to come up when I get serious about hull points and weapons and firing arcs, though we're still trying to Keep It Simple, Rients.

Oh, yeah, here's another picture that's important inspiration for this project:

This is you after seeing the order of battle for your own side.

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Fleet Captain: a key mechanic

By: Unknown on 07:55

You know how Kirk and others after him are always blurting out orders about diverting power to the forward shields?  This serves as the inspiration for the central mechanical conceit of Star Fleet Battles.  In SFB each engine generates X points of energy, which you then distribute among phasers, shields, torpedoes, movement, life support, recharging batteries, tractor beams and I don't know what else.  It's a great concept with an over-complicated execution.  Each turns becomes hella bogged down by everyone plotting out their energy allocations on these worksheets you have to have in front of you in addition to your ship sheet.

Fleet Captain tries to keep the basic concept but trims it down.  And in the case of fleet elements not commanded personally, the allocation is automated.  Here's how it works: every ship is rated in three dice.  A small escort ship might be rated d4/d6/d8.  A cruiser gets d6/d8/d10.  Your flagship and other big kickass vessels get d8/d10/d12.  Each turn you get to decide which die powers your shields, which die goes to weapons systems and which one goes to movement.  The other captains stinking up your fleet decide via a d6 roll:

Do you loathe these other captains yet?  If not, don't worry; you will.

We don't want our capital ships to be ridiculously fast compared their destroyer escorts, so each size vessel has a Slowness Factor.  For small, fast ships that's a 1.  Medium ships have a Slowness of 2.  Big fat ships have a Slowness of 3 or 4.  The Slowness Factor is how many pips it costs to move a hex.

Example: A smuggler flying a corvette is trying to escape some imperialistic douchebags in a big ol' wedge-shaped cruiser.  Both max out their Move die this turn.  The corvette uses a d8 and roll an 8.  The douchebags get a d10 and also rolls an 8.  It looks like a push but it's not.  The corvette has a Slowness Factor of 1, so it moves 8 hexes the hell away from the cruiser.  The cruiser has a Slowness of 2, so it pursues only 4 hexes in the direction of the corvette.  The space between the two vessels has just grown by 4 hexes, much to the relief of the smuggler.

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Fleet Captain, part 2

By: Unknown on 05:34

Equipment Needed

• The rulebook, which will hopefully be short when it is complete.
• Fleet Sheets, one for each player.  These are kinda like the ship sheets from Star Fleet Battles or the mech sheets from BattleTech, but they printed on legal-sized paper in landscape orientation.  About one third of the sheet is used to detail your flagship, while the rest will be used for tracking your fleet.
• Miniatures or counters for all the ships involved.  At some point I'll do a tutorial on how to make pretty decent counters using MS Paint, colored paper, cardstock and poker chips.
• A hex map.  If you want to use rulers and protractors that's your business, but I'll stick to the simplicity of hexes and the kick-assitude of this sort of thing.
• Dice.  This game uses D&D type dice, especially d4, d6, d8, d10 and d12.  Maybe other dice too.  I dunno yet.
• Turn counters.  Chits or tokens marked on one side with arrows (turning right, turning left, straight) or a stop sign.  Ideally the other side would be relatively unobtrusive but still detectable on the map.  You'll need a quantity of these, as each ship will use one every turn.
• Pencils or somesuch.
• A pack of ordinary playing cards.

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I don't need another project...

By: Unknown on 04:05

...but Super Galactic Dreadnought has inspired me.

Fleet Captain - a game where spaceships go BOOM!

Wargames for spaceship miniatures come in two broad types.  The Captain’s Chair type, wherein the basic deal is that you make a bunch of fiddly decisions for your one ship.  You get the joy of being the Kirk, but if you want a Big Damn Battle with a crapload of ships on each side it quickly becomes cumbersome.  The other variety is the Admiral’s Game.  You get to run a squadron or fleet of vessels, but your large number of equally important play pieces causes you to lose that Kirkishness in the abstraction.  Star Fleet Battles is the premier example of the Captain’s Chair game, while examples of Admiralty games abound. I'm particularly fond of Starmada and Full Thrust.

Fleet Captain is an attempt to hybridize the two types of spaceship games.  The conceit is that each player sits in the captain’s chair of one key vessel in their fleet.  They have wide latitude over this flagship.  The ships comprising the remainder of their fleet are theirs to control, but the commanders of those vessels can react to the directions of their Fleet Captain only on a limited basis.  In fact, it will generally be assumed that the other command officers in the player's fleet are significantly less competent than the Fleet Captain, who must shepherd the stupid gits across the battlefield.

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