Dominion War Wargame

[Sho-sa Kurita]

Just to stir the pot a little more, try this site --

http://www.freewargamesrules.co.uk

There are many games, both sci-fi (incl. ST) and non- which would probably be good to build on.

-- Daniel

[Antonsb214]

Federation vs. Empire was a huge game, but I think the map should have been bigger, and the fleets were tiny by DS9 standard. You had fleet control sheets so that all the ships in the fleets were on the sheet and not the map, you just moved a fleet counter, this was a good idea, noone wanted to move a stack of 30 counters around. But for a DW game the fleet control sheet could be further divided into wings or squadrons. And battles could be carried out on a battle chart, not a map, but a chart with your general divisions in a front, your fleets center, left flank, right flank, and reserve. the battlephase would be carried out here. Of course, you may want to put a limit as to how large your fleets will get. And how many players/races will there be, just Fed and Dom with Cardassians being controlled by a particular side depending on the year/stardate? And territory should be important, in F vs. E the more territory you got, the more resources came with them, including bases and such, for our DW game, we could have the sector have victory point values, just one of several factors that can help determine who won a fight. Capturing a sector with a shipyard or a sensor network could give you bonuses in upcoming turns like more ships or a look at another players ship chart to see how many ships he has and what movement orders he gave for the next movement phase. I hope these ideas don't sound too complicated.

[Lowly Uhlan]

Battleforce 2, they took the main stats from the standard BT game and condensed each vital attribute down to simple numbers. In BF2 each counter represented about 4 units
So maybe you could have attributes (1-10?) for weapons, shields, hull structure, warp speed and maneuvrability.



You can make it even more simple by removing the hull component and just have the offensive Vs defensive aspects, or you can add a few bits to give more flavour to the whole thing. Warp speed ratings could affect how fast a task group travels from system to system. -Snake Plissken
BF2 was a great example of how to run small units of different mechs,grouped by size.Having each ship have its own hull rating would require more record keeping(a seperate card or sheet for each squadron).I could live with this .having a master list of ships with the ratings of 1-10 would work fine.No hull values would speed up play at the cost of realism,but would be acceptable.I would say no to manuver and action cards, making it more of a true wargame .Taking out the random nature of card draws makes a game apure test of tactics.Seperate conters for different size squadrons (3-ship,4-ship,ect)and possibly type (cruiser,destroyer)sounds good.Once again the master list of ships comes into play.What do you think

[Snake_Plissken]

so Eric any developments?

[Lt.Khrys Antos]

I just thought of something else while looking at my Bells of War stuff. Fleets no matter the size should be invisible. Only a marker like someone said above should be visible.

Now you could have say sensors on planets (planets could be of strategic value for resources and sensor posts). Each sensor could "scan" a certain distance out into the void of space to check what's in a fleet. A bonus if its the capital world. A penalty if its a fringe world. Cloaked ships could have a rating by which they could ignore a scan all depending on the bonus' and penalities.

You could also include supply lines. Robbert Raets has a good idea of including admirals into each army. So the Federation could have lets say Sisko which gives bonus' to fleets movement or firepower.

IMO any board game system should include a means to avoid rolling something like 10+dice per turn. It would reduce te factor of a bad roll/good roll and would increase overall strategy.

[Eric R.]

Originally posted by Snake_Plissken
so Eric any developments?

Just been letting the pot simmer in my mind a little.

I like the Idea of Leaders, though you would only expect to see Admiral Ross and perhaps Sisko on the map, to go anyfurther down the ladder would be unrealistic for the scale of the game.

[Lowly Uhlan]

Originally posted by Lt.Khrys Antos
[B]I just thought of something else while looking at my Bells of War stuff. Fleets no matter the size should be invisible. Only a marker like someone said above should be visible.

A Galaxy class ship has high sensor resolution to a range of 5 LY and medium to low to17 LY.If a turn lasted 2 weeks and average cruising speed is WF 6 and a hex is say 5 LY across that would give med. to low resolution to 3 hexes beyond that they should be invisible(said Galaxy moving 3 hexes a turn at WF 6).How about generic commanders beyond Sisko, Martok,ect.Elite ships or sqaudrons at an increased price(are we using point based combat values?). Supply lines are a great idea.

[Eric R.]

My thinking on sensors was that units could have reaction range during the enemy's movement phase, Much like cavalry units in the Stonewall Jackson Way series. Simply put when an enemy unit came close the ship could make an interception attempt if that attempt was sucessful combat would be initiated with the defender being the attacker. If the attempt fails then the ships continue on. Certain units based on there aggressiveness would have a higher reaction score, such as Defiant and Bird of Pry starship wings.

[Kodiak]

Hi,
You might want to check out the thread at
Strategic Ops it might get you thinking about some other considerations. I wish you the best of luck with this project.
-Kodiak
P.S. I've worked out an Excel spreadsheet to calculate move scores if you want it.

[Eric R.]

Well, kodiak I looked at your thread and thought that your last post needed to be brought over here becaue they are questions very relevent to this effort.

1) Does anyone have a map of UFP/Cardassian/Klingon space with the core worlds marked and a scale? Knowing how far a Dominion strike force would have to go to attack a core world would make thinking about the times involved much more fruitful.
2) How long can starships conduct operations without having to resupply? According to Dominion Wars, the game, only the explorers had the range to probe deeply into Cardassian space, this doesn’t quite ring true, so I’m wondering if anyone has any thoughts on this and the usefulness of forward starbases, in the DS9 Core Rulebook it is stated that most strikes targeted supply starbases, knowing how far a ship can range is of critical importance (this will mirror the assumption in Federation & Empire, but it is a question of scale).
3) How much stuff needs to be shipped between planets to allow them to contribute to the war effort? One of the traditional objectives of navies has been to deny the ability of foreign commerce to transit, knowing how much commerce is going on will give some estimates to how much of an effect anti-commerce raiding will have on the belligerents.
4) Why are deep space battles fought? It as far as I can tell there is no reason why a deep space battle should be fought, the only time that a defender would want to fight a deep space battle is when they don’t want the enemy to get to a static target, but why wouldn’t the attacking fleet maintain warp speed and enter the system?
5) How long does ship construction take and what type of resources does it take to build a ship? One thought that I had after reading an essay on why the Klingons use swarm tactics (http://www.houseveska.org/KWA400.pdf) is that one of the reasons for using smaller ships would be so that fewer resources need to be concentrated into a small region to build the ships and that at least some consideration needs to be taken to what it takes to build and repair ships.
6) What paradigm does the Startrek environment subscribe to in terms of strategic and tactical operations? To me it looks a lot like the early Honor Harrington background, with ships able to engage each other and do some damage, but unless both sides really want to mix it up few ships will be destroyed (this also explains why torpedoes are not the primary weapon, they can do a lot of damage, but unless you use overwhelming numbers, you usually won’t be able to destroy a ship before it can retreat), but I’d really like other input, especially sense I have not seen the last few episodes of Deep Space Nine.
Thank you for any thoughts that you have on these or other questions.
-Kodiak

[Lt.Khrys Antos]

Qc #4 is a tough one, but I see a few reasons why fighting out in deep space would be of some advantage.

1) No collateral damage to any nearby starbases or commerce and it would avoid (at least for the feds) to have to defend the ships.

2) A deep space battle takes away alot of "terrain benefits" and the battle is fought clearly and in the open. Maximum maneuvrability and almost non-existent hiding spots. Good for a fleet which knows that its superior in firepower.

3) A battle out in space has some advantage for Romulans who can cloak and take their time in eliminating a threat. Otherwise, their opponent could do some of the same with planet atmospheres.

4) Defenders may want to stall an advancing fleet, while the advancing fleet may want to annihilate all defenders. Passing over your opponent at warp speed is all well and good, up until you drop out of warp and your opponents are in front of you AND in back of you.

[Kodiak]

Eric, I am glad that some of the thinking that happened before is of use to you, a Strategic Dominion War era game has always held interest for me, despite all the other things that I’ve worked on.

In response to the Lieutenant’s remarks:
1) This is a fine objective for the defender, especially when it comes to commerce, but this would not be the ideal situation for an attacker, unless the objective was just to destroy or cripple enemy ships, now this can be a viable objective, but destroying a fixed objective, production center or starbase, would have a much higher return. For example, in Federation and Empire ships needed to be within supply range (one turn worth of movement) of a supply point, or suffer a reduction of 50% in combat power. Destroying supply points and capturing planets allowed you more freedom of movement (by reducing the number of points that an enemy could attack from) and more resources. Even the mightiest fleet will lose if it can’t go on the offensive.
2) When you remove terrain benefits, you also remove the reason for fighting. As the region has nothing worth fighting for, this changes it if is a trade route, in that case it reverts to point 1.
3) The Romulans, Klingons and Breen can use deep space to their benefit for using cloaking tactics. However to me the real strength of the cloak is its ability to conduct strategic raids. Earth can be hit without allowing the defensive forces time to defend. Just knowing that the other guy has cloaking ships will force you to take a more defensive mindset, if I know that my enemy has two Warbirds that can strike at any Victory Point hex that I need to defend my first though (though dependent on the rule set) is that I need to have enough defensive power on each of those hexes to make an attack by the Warbirds risky at best and perhaps fatal.
4) The effectiveness of this tactic really depends on how warp speed combat is conducted. If it can be effective, then this would be the preferred engagement system, assuming that the defensive fleet was strong enough to take on the attacking fleet. If it is not, then the ships are out of position, however assuming a turn/hex based system, moving a fleet a few light years out could allow it to either return to its base or strike an enemy target on the next turn, this could provoke a deep space battle, even if it is just to keep the fleet from moving.


I think that one point that needs to be nailed down is how warp speed combat is conducted. Of the basic paradigms that needs to be established this one should help define the others.

If construction is going to be handled, or abstracted and people are going to be given options (options are a good thing, the make the game interesting), you might want to check out the last reply on this page Defiant V Ent. A regarding manpower issues for ships.

-Kodiak

[calguard66]

Federation and Empire by Task Force Games.

Not the Paramount SF universe, but somebody did make a stratiegic-level Star Trek based game.

Originally posted by erhershman
It would be interesting... I'm surprised some company hasn't thought of making this kind of game yet.

[Kodiak]

Eric,
These are a few notes that I had from when I gave this a go, maybe you’ll find them useful:
1) Be mindful of the relation between sensor range, distances and ship speed, thanks to the really long sensor range, 15 ly, and the great variance in speed, an Intrepid could move either three hexes (cruise) or 13 hexes (sustained) (assuming 5 ly and 14 day turns).
2) Keep the doctrine in mind, once you have the types of operations you want, determine why they happen and then build the rule set, check out The Complete Wargames Handbook
3) Finding a good map of the entire region will cause problems, be wary. On the other hand, if you have a good map that makes sense, please post the URL.

-Kodiak

[Lowly Uhlan]

Good points from Kodiak.Most of the major DS9 battles happened at sublight speeds but most of those did have a static objective. Star Trek Star Charts has proven invaluable in my RP series ,theyre worth a look-awesome maps.Has anyone mentioned tachyon detection grids? Sensor nets?What say you Eric?