Star Trek Sim, Rules and Guidelines
Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2010 6:37 pm
I will do this in a Q&A Format as it seems simplest. I will add to it as we move along.
1. What is the in game date?
Post Star Trek Nemesis, same as the data on this website. The reasoning for this is it gives us a list that is at least a starting point for putting together orders of battle. I am certainly open to debate on making some minor changes to things from here, but for the most part we would use the DITL numbers since it is a readily accessible and most importantly a comparable source among the various powers.
2. What is the game objective?
Short answer, whatever you decide it should be. The longer answer is your objective should be whatever your power would be looking to do in the Star Trek universe. For the Federation this is peace and security. You will answer to the Federation Council. If you start blowing apart sun's because the Ferengi got the best of you in a trade deal the Council will probably stop you from doing so. Now if you are the Klingon's, you probably can get away with it though other powers might decide you are a loose cannon and wipe you out before you ruin the whole galaxy.
3. Why would I want to play a power limited by Democratic Government?
Powers like the Federation and the reconstituted Cardassian Union do have to answer to legislative bodies. That does limit freedom of action to a degree. There are economic and production incentives to manages such a power though as they have far lower internal security cost and are more productive than other cultures. The Federation itself is economically large enough to simply bury the other powers in starships IF those powers continually provoke them.
4. Who decides what the council thinks?
For the most part the game manager. An example of something that could happen to you if you play the Federation is that say you submit to build nothing but huge battleships in a given year. The council will reject that plan and alter it to include things like science ships and explorers, probably in greater proportion than you might have had you submitted a balanced plan yourself.
Does this mean you can't build your battle fleet? No. You have to make a convincing argument to do so and present a plan that balances defense and the other missions of Starfleet. My desire is to never have to change something you do. The council in that respect is always "in session". All you have to do is ask and tell me why you think your proposal makes sense and it will probably be approved.
The only reason this exist is to keep the Federation from acting like the Galactic Empire.
Also, you will never have to defend military orders short of going to war (obviously). You can send your ships wherever you want to do whatever you want, short of starting a war.
5. Is there a map?
Yes, this was the hardest part of putting this together. For the moment the map will be the following.
The reason for using this map, despite some flaws with cannon, is that it has lots of points that can be used to describe where things are. If someone has a better suggestion I am all for it and please make one here.
6. Is there exploration and colonization?
No, it is simply to time consuming to track for the benefit it provides. Your worlds will be set at the start of the game and your population will grow accordingly from there. There is simply no way a colony established in the game time frame would likely come to matter during the time we are playing. Exploration does occur but is abstracted in that it is simply an area to which you assign ships and from time to time it produces certain benefits for you.
7. Can I design my own ships?
Yes, performance is determined by the DITL ship builder. A calculator to figure the development cost and time frame is provided. It will also calculate cost and time to improve certain components like Phasers and Torpedo tubes.
8. How are ships managed?
All ships are assigned to a fleet. This is all automated through a spreadsheet function. For each fleet a list of all classes that the player could use is given. The player simply assigns a number from the total ships they have. Provisions for up to 10 Fleets per player have been made. The spreadsheet will calculate the power and max warp speed of the combined fleet for you. For perspective I set up the whole Federation Fleet (by far the largest due to having 47,000 classes it seemed) in 10 minutes.
The player then can move fleets and re-assign ships as they desire. The map provides distances between stars that can be estimated close enough for our purposes. DITL provides a calculator to tell us how long a movement will take.
9. Can I have carriers?
Since I know this will be asked let's address it now. No. Why? Because the accounting is too complicated. You have to account for fighters/shuttles for each carriers. Those have losses. They have to be replaced. It creates a nightmare of tracking and won't add much to the game so the answer is just no.
Fighters and Runabouts are simply tracked as being part of the fortifications of a given system. This might make some people mad but playability is more important than this.
10. Can I issue tactical orders to my fleets in battle, how are fleet battles resolved?
Yes, to an extent. You can't direct individual units to do certain things. You can direct your fleet commanders to say fight to the death and they will press on regardless of casualties. Or you can say order them to use say Miranda class ships to screen a withdrawl in the even they are losing, which would make the losses of those old ships high but preserve say your Akira and Nebula Class ships.
Battles will be resolved by rolling a 100-sided dice. The comparative combat power of each side is added, modification for orders are considered and each side gets their proportion. Say we have a fleet of 100,000 power vs one of 50,000 power with no particularly brilliant orders to modify it and it is a meeting engagement in empty space.
The 100,000 power fleet is the winner if the dice rolls 1-66. The 50,000 fleet is the winner if the dice shows 67-100. To add another layer to it if the 100,000 fleet rolls 13 or less (20% of their possible numbers) they have a major victory. If they roll 14-53 it would be a victory (60% of possible). 54-66 is a minor victory.
The 100 sided dice is then rolled again to determine damage. If you scored a major victory you destroy 50% and damage 80% of whatever the dice roll comes in at. So if it rolls a 60 then you would have destroyed 30% of the other fleets combat power and damaged 48% of it. Using the same dice roll your casualties are computed using a percentage based on the outcome to figure lost and damaged ships.
Final totals will be modified a bit up or down based again on your orders and other objective conditions. If you have a fleet of ships that max at Warp 8 and lost badly to a fleet with ships capable of warp 9.5 and the other side ordered their ships to pursue you to the end, they will do just that and your losses will be higher. If you are faster then your losses would be a bit lower than the die rolls would have allowed since you can get away.
11. How is diplomacy conducted?
Between players, simply copy the game admin on all exchanges that are not public so I know what is going on. If I don't see it, it is not official for obvious reasons. If you want to have a treaty with another power all you have to do is writeup the terms. Know this though, the game admin will not enforce treaty terms. Just like in real life there is no one that can make the other power follow through on their end of the deal but you.
12. Is there money?
Yes. I know the status of money in the Federation is...nebulous at best. But simply put we need a way in game to track economic activity and it is simpler to just assign everyone a generic currency unit with which to pay for everything. Feel free to call them credits or anything you want.
13. How does the Economy work?
There are four things the player does that makes a difference in income.
Your population grows, which increases your income naturally as each citizen produces a taxable income of some amount depending on the society they are in.
You can raise taxes. This is a simple %. If you need more money you can raise it but as in real life there are consequences for raising it too high so beware.
You can borrow money. Like any government today you can simply sell bonds to your own people. You pay interest each turn on the amount outstanding. The more you borrow, the more it cost. Easy way to get money quick, also easy way to bankrupt your empire. You can also borrow from other empires one whatever terms you can negotiate. Why would you do that? Well if you borrow at 7% and the Ferengi just have extra money laying around then they might loan you money at 5% (or if we have a good Ferengi player they would loan you money at 2% with an adjustable rate in 2 years to 17% and take a planet as collateral) but it is up to the two players involved.
Finally, you can sell things that you don't want to other players. This could be ships, planets, conquered people (or your own people as slaves I suppose). Whatever, again it is up to the two players.
14. How does ground combat work?
Ground combat is a very simple system as is raising an army. Each power can create a standing army if they choose or simply raise troops as needed from their population. Those troops are deployed to a fleet by order of the player. There are four grades of troops. Elite, Crack, Regulars and Militia. Elite troops are 4 times as powerful as regular troops. Crack troops are worth 2 times regular troops. Militia are worth one fourth of regular troops.
Combat is resolved by the same die roll system as fleets based on the relative power of each ground force except there is no damage round for the loser. You either win or loose and the loser is wiped out. The winner takes casualties as proscribed before in the damage round for fleets, with no modifier.
15. Can I play the Borg or Dominion
Initially, no. The Borg are not likely to ever be a player race. They occur like a natural disaster for the most part. Each turn there is a chance that they show up in one form or another. How the player/players deal with it is up to them.
The Dominion, maybe. If the game develops well and there is a good reason then they will be made active and we will seek a player.
16. What Empires are open to play?
Initially the following.
The Federation
The Romulan Star Empire
Klingon Empire
Cardassian Union
Ferengi Alliance
Breen
As I said before I am open to other races (Tholians, Gorn, Shelliak) but we need to fill the other spots first and would have to as a group agree to just what exactly these races have. There is also the major issue that they fall off the map that I have found, though that is something we could work around if necessary.
My hope is people can just resolve who is playing which power by discussion.
17. How much time will this take?
My guess, if there is not a ton of diplomacy and war is less than 30 minutes once a week. If you want to be more active then more power to you. Obviously if you are conducting major military operations you might get busier, especially if you are particular about things. However don't worry about having to do that just to play. Your fleets will react well enough based on even the simplest of orders such as defend the Romulan border from system X to system Y so if you want to take that approach you can.
If you want to write orders splitting your fleet into three parts, with elaborate covering movements, feints and other such things then feel free as well. The more you put in, the more you will get out of it but if your opponents orders say 1st fleet stays at Earth period they will just ignore you and sit there.
1. What is the in game date?
Post Star Trek Nemesis, same as the data on this website. The reasoning for this is it gives us a list that is at least a starting point for putting together orders of battle. I am certainly open to debate on making some minor changes to things from here, but for the most part we would use the DITL numbers since it is a readily accessible and most importantly a comparable source among the various powers.
2. What is the game objective?
Short answer, whatever you decide it should be. The longer answer is your objective should be whatever your power would be looking to do in the Star Trek universe. For the Federation this is peace and security. You will answer to the Federation Council. If you start blowing apart sun's because the Ferengi got the best of you in a trade deal the Council will probably stop you from doing so. Now if you are the Klingon's, you probably can get away with it though other powers might decide you are a loose cannon and wipe you out before you ruin the whole galaxy.
3. Why would I want to play a power limited by Democratic Government?
Powers like the Federation and the reconstituted Cardassian Union do have to answer to legislative bodies. That does limit freedom of action to a degree. There are economic and production incentives to manages such a power though as they have far lower internal security cost and are more productive than other cultures. The Federation itself is economically large enough to simply bury the other powers in starships IF those powers continually provoke them.
4. Who decides what the council thinks?
For the most part the game manager. An example of something that could happen to you if you play the Federation is that say you submit to build nothing but huge battleships in a given year. The council will reject that plan and alter it to include things like science ships and explorers, probably in greater proportion than you might have had you submitted a balanced plan yourself.
Does this mean you can't build your battle fleet? No. You have to make a convincing argument to do so and present a plan that balances defense and the other missions of Starfleet. My desire is to never have to change something you do. The council in that respect is always "in session". All you have to do is ask and tell me why you think your proposal makes sense and it will probably be approved.
The only reason this exist is to keep the Federation from acting like the Galactic Empire.
Also, you will never have to defend military orders short of going to war (obviously). You can send your ships wherever you want to do whatever you want, short of starting a war.
5. Is there a map?
Yes, this was the hardest part of putting this together. For the moment the map will be the following.
The reason for using this map, despite some flaws with cannon, is that it has lots of points that can be used to describe where things are. If someone has a better suggestion I am all for it and please make one here.
6. Is there exploration and colonization?
No, it is simply to time consuming to track for the benefit it provides. Your worlds will be set at the start of the game and your population will grow accordingly from there. There is simply no way a colony established in the game time frame would likely come to matter during the time we are playing. Exploration does occur but is abstracted in that it is simply an area to which you assign ships and from time to time it produces certain benefits for you.
7. Can I design my own ships?
Yes, performance is determined by the DITL ship builder. A calculator to figure the development cost and time frame is provided. It will also calculate cost and time to improve certain components like Phasers and Torpedo tubes.
8. How are ships managed?
All ships are assigned to a fleet. This is all automated through a spreadsheet function. For each fleet a list of all classes that the player could use is given. The player simply assigns a number from the total ships they have. Provisions for up to 10 Fleets per player have been made. The spreadsheet will calculate the power and max warp speed of the combined fleet for you. For perspective I set up the whole Federation Fleet (by far the largest due to having 47,000 classes it seemed) in 10 minutes.
The player then can move fleets and re-assign ships as they desire. The map provides distances between stars that can be estimated close enough for our purposes. DITL provides a calculator to tell us how long a movement will take.
9. Can I have carriers?
Since I know this will be asked let's address it now. No. Why? Because the accounting is too complicated. You have to account for fighters/shuttles for each carriers. Those have losses. They have to be replaced. It creates a nightmare of tracking and won't add much to the game so the answer is just no.
Fighters and Runabouts are simply tracked as being part of the fortifications of a given system. This might make some people mad but playability is more important than this.
10. Can I issue tactical orders to my fleets in battle, how are fleet battles resolved?
Yes, to an extent. You can't direct individual units to do certain things. You can direct your fleet commanders to say fight to the death and they will press on regardless of casualties. Or you can say order them to use say Miranda class ships to screen a withdrawl in the even they are losing, which would make the losses of those old ships high but preserve say your Akira and Nebula Class ships.
Battles will be resolved by rolling a 100-sided dice. The comparative combat power of each side is added, modification for orders are considered and each side gets their proportion. Say we have a fleet of 100,000 power vs one of 50,000 power with no particularly brilliant orders to modify it and it is a meeting engagement in empty space.
The 100,000 power fleet is the winner if the dice rolls 1-66. The 50,000 fleet is the winner if the dice shows 67-100. To add another layer to it if the 100,000 fleet rolls 13 or less (20% of their possible numbers) they have a major victory. If they roll 14-53 it would be a victory (60% of possible). 54-66 is a minor victory.
The 100 sided dice is then rolled again to determine damage. If you scored a major victory you destroy 50% and damage 80% of whatever the dice roll comes in at. So if it rolls a 60 then you would have destroyed 30% of the other fleets combat power and damaged 48% of it. Using the same dice roll your casualties are computed using a percentage based on the outcome to figure lost and damaged ships.
Final totals will be modified a bit up or down based again on your orders and other objective conditions. If you have a fleet of ships that max at Warp 8 and lost badly to a fleet with ships capable of warp 9.5 and the other side ordered their ships to pursue you to the end, they will do just that and your losses will be higher. If you are faster then your losses would be a bit lower than the die rolls would have allowed since you can get away.
11. How is diplomacy conducted?
Between players, simply copy the game admin on all exchanges that are not public so I know what is going on. If I don't see it, it is not official for obvious reasons. If you want to have a treaty with another power all you have to do is writeup the terms. Know this though, the game admin will not enforce treaty terms. Just like in real life there is no one that can make the other power follow through on their end of the deal but you.
12. Is there money?
Yes. I know the status of money in the Federation is...nebulous at best. But simply put we need a way in game to track economic activity and it is simpler to just assign everyone a generic currency unit with which to pay for everything. Feel free to call them credits or anything you want.
13. How does the Economy work?
There are four things the player does that makes a difference in income.
Your population grows, which increases your income naturally as each citizen produces a taxable income of some amount depending on the society they are in.
You can raise taxes. This is a simple %. If you need more money you can raise it but as in real life there are consequences for raising it too high so beware.
You can borrow money. Like any government today you can simply sell bonds to your own people. You pay interest each turn on the amount outstanding. The more you borrow, the more it cost. Easy way to get money quick, also easy way to bankrupt your empire. You can also borrow from other empires one whatever terms you can negotiate. Why would you do that? Well if you borrow at 7% and the Ferengi just have extra money laying around then they might loan you money at 5% (or if we have a good Ferengi player they would loan you money at 2% with an adjustable rate in 2 years to 17% and take a planet as collateral) but it is up to the two players involved.
Finally, you can sell things that you don't want to other players. This could be ships, planets, conquered people (or your own people as slaves I suppose). Whatever, again it is up to the two players.
14. How does ground combat work?
Ground combat is a very simple system as is raising an army. Each power can create a standing army if they choose or simply raise troops as needed from their population. Those troops are deployed to a fleet by order of the player. There are four grades of troops. Elite, Crack, Regulars and Militia. Elite troops are 4 times as powerful as regular troops. Crack troops are worth 2 times regular troops. Militia are worth one fourth of regular troops.
Combat is resolved by the same die roll system as fleets based on the relative power of each ground force except there is no damage round for the loser. You either win or loose and the loser is wiped out. The winner takes casualties as proscribed before in the damage round for fleets, with no modifier.
15. Can I play the Borg or Dominion
Initially, no. The Borg are not likely to ever be a player race. They occur like a natural disaster for the most part. Each turn there is a chance that they show up in one form or another. How the player/players deal with it is up to them.
The Dominion, maybe. If the game develops well and there is a good reason then they will be made active and we will seek a player.
16. What Empires are open to play?
Initially the following.
The Federation
The Romulan Star Empire
Klingon Empire
Cardassian Union
Ferengi Alliance
Breen
As I said before I am open to other races (Tholians, Gorn, Shelliak) but we need to fill the other spots first and would have to as a group agree to just what exactly these races have. There is also the major issue that they fall off the map that I have found, though that is something we could work around if necessary.
My hope is people can just resolve who is playing which power by discussion.
17. How much time will this take?
My guess, if there is not a ton of diplomacy and war is less than 30 minutes once a week. If you want to be more active then more power to you. Obviously if you are conducting major military operations you might get busier, especially if you are particular about things. However don't worry about having to do that just to play. Your fleets will react well enough based on even the simplest of orders such as defend the Romulan border from system X to system Y so if you want to take that approach you can.
If you want to write orders splitting your fleet into three parts, with elaborate covering movements, feints and other such things then feel free as well. The more you put in, the more you will get out of it but if your opponents orders say 1st fleet stays at Earth period they will just ignore you and sit there.