Dominion War Wargame

[Eric R.]

I have always wanted to see a full scale traditional Strategic/Operational level wargame based on either a Classic Klingon /Federation war or later a Dominion War wargame. So I thought I would just start a thread and see what idea I can get.

The scale would be of course be massive but the map would be dining room table size perhaps 4x5 ft and cover the entire region which the Dominion War covered including Earth. Open for other points of map dimensions (for instance should the Klingon & Romulan Empires have space on the map or just entry/exit areas?)

Counters would represent Starship Wings, Individual notable ships, Starbases/Stardocks, Ground Force Units (perhaps Regiments?) and Planetary Orbital Defense Systems.

Active powers would be Federation, Klingon, Cardassians, Dominion, Romulans and Breen with rules for Feringi, Gorn, Bajoran, and Tholian intervention.

Sequence of play would be a simple Movement/Combat/Build(repair)/Startegic movement with an initiative based activation method for each fleet (similar to the Great Campaigns of the Civil War Series). Supply would of curcial importance forcing the players to fight to control or keep important strategic spots such Starbases and certain star systems. Thus while most of the map would be "free and open" for movment most units would be concentrated in small areas and ready for quick movement to other areas.

Combat would be resolved by a method which would be simple and/or allow RPG style battles allowing the game to be a generator for combat for a typical Dominion War RPG Series.

Anybody with thoughts, idea or comments?

[erhershman]

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

[Robbert Raets]

I think it would be relatively easy to adapt the presented material in Spacedock and the Dominion War Sourcebook by mr. Steve Long. There's fleet resolution and equipment in there, so...

[Eric R.]

2.0 Map Features
Starsystems - Only the most important and rated for Constrution point values

Peacetime Starbases - those starbases in existence prior to the wars start will be printed on the map and are imovable during play.

Nebula - are areas where movement is reduced and combat is penalized.

Reinfocement Hexes - these are areas that reinforcements from off map areas can enter play from

Bajoran Worm Hole - A hex of unlimited CPs for the Dominion forces.

3.0 Units
Each power has a color specific for its units these are:

Blue - Federation
Green - Romulan
Brown - Klingon
Gray - Cardassian
Gray (w/blue band) - Allied Cardassian
Purple - Dominion
White - Breen
Yellow - Feringi

Starship Wings - Represent Starship wings of 2 to 7 ships

Starbases - Represent facilties constructed and moved into position during the war

Obrital Defense Facilities - System defense bases

Ground Force Regiments - the ground forces used in planetary assaults.

Planetary Defense Regiments - Large groudn based defense systems.

4.0 Sequence of Play
1.Fleet Activation
*Operational Movement
*Combat
2.Repeat Fleet Activation until player has no Fleets/units left or are able to be activated
3.Construction/Repair
4.Strategic Movement
*Strategic movement
*Interception Combat if necessary

5.0 Fleet Activation
Each fleet can activate as many starship wings as it can that are within its corrdination limit (usually 1-5 hexes away) Once activated all ships in the smae sleet can have the same movment allowence.

6.0 Movement
Movement is determined by rolling one die and adding the fleet coordination number for that unit, the resulting number is the units movement allowences, Only starships can move, all other units are either fixed (unmovable) or require transport aboad a starship such as Marines.

Startegic movement is conducted differently in that a fleet/unit can move from one frienly controlled planetary system/starbase to another, however such movement is open to interception by the enemy.

7.0 Combat
Combat is handled by odds/ratio combat in the basic form with fleet coordination/tech development providing a column shift in favor of the attacker/defender. Combat is conducted in rounds each round begins with a die being rolled as long as that number is higher then the curent round the batle continues once that number is lower then the current rounds number the battle ends.

Advance combat options will be provided

Rules for riads will be included.

8.0 Construction/Rebuilding
Each planetary system/starship is rated for a number of construction points these can be used to build new starships or new ground units or repair them. Only starbasess can be "out of Supply" and temproarily lose these points until no longer blockaded. CPs are not accumlative they must be spent in that turn and only in that turn i.e. Earths 24 CPs must be spent in that turn, when the next turn begins she will again have only 24 CPs.

New starships can only be constructed in systems with Stardocks.

[Snake_Plissken]

no offense to Steve Long, as he did a great job on Spacedock which is a GREAT RPG supplement but otherwise it doesn't make much sense. The CODA stuff, compared to that, would be a much better basis. But better yet would be to create a basic stating system from scratch. Think 'wargaming' here.

On a side note FASA attempted to do such a game in the late 80's and it was called Operation Armaggeddon. You had 4 scenarii: UFP vs Klingon Empire; UFP vs Romulan Empire; Klingon Empire vs Romulan Empire and lastly the 3 sides at war with one another simultaneously.

Also, FASA had a similar game for their Battletech universe called The Sucession Wars.

[Eric R.]

Tell me more about Sucession Wars, chances are that was the same system being developed for Operation Armageddon.

While I agree original thinking of a rating system for the various ships would be the simplist trick to determine the various wings strengths and capabilities, for example an Escort wing would have certain abilities that a say a freighter wing would not. However the Dominion War sourcebook is the base line for as the conduct of the war I am going to follow, in another word the history of the war. His narrative feels right and is something to work with.

[SIR SIG]

Sounds good Eric.

I may have to dig up the link (if i can) but a few years ago there was a basic Trek DW Wargame on the net. It had a strategic map around Cardassia and Bajor.

[Snake_Plissken]

Well it has been years since I have played Succession Wars but I recall the following: The map was the entire Inner Sphere, divided into the 5 major powers (Davion, Steiner, Kurita, Marik, Liao) and each realm was divided in several territories, each yelding various tax amounts. You could purchase extra tech (you had a tech tree) and extra units. So you would stack up your forces on a given territory to resist an attack or to board them into jumpships to attack another territory. Given the nature of the Battletech universe at the time, jumpships could not fight one another so 100% of the battles occured dirtside. The interesting thing was that the most effective defense was to buy huge amounts of conventional units (as opposed to battlemech units) so you could cause massive casualties among anyone who dared to attack you.

Fasa also had a similar game, but on a smaller scale and without the money element for their Renegade Legion line called Prefect.

As for Operation Armaggeddon, obviously the emphasis was on naval operations. I think they took the stats for the ships from the tactical simulator and compressed the stats to the bear esentials, like the offensive/defensive rating, speed and such.

It seems to me that you are aiming for something more realistic or at least with a more focused scope than what Succession Wars was. Have you figured how long, in the game's universe, does a turn last- days, 1 month? If so, I'd advise against building ships- that should be a lengthy process and it should force players to manage their forces with more focus. In a modern war you have to make due with the naval forces you have NOW, not the fleet of cruisers sittting in drydock that will be ready in 2 years, OTOH the concept of repairing ships is a great idea and sticks to what we have seen on DS9. A whole fleet of Romulan Warbirds isn't very impressive if it's venting plasma left and right! But you have to keep in mind that ships will number in the hundreds per side, even sometimes in the thousands.

[Snake_Plissken]

However the Dominion War sourcebook is the base line for as the conduct of the war I am going to follow, in another word the history of the war. His narrative feels right and is something to work with.

oh for sure! I'm dead certain that if those manuscripts had ever gotten published they would have sold like crazy. The quality of the writing was amazing.

[Lowly Uhlan]

Great idea Eric.Wasn't Task Force games Federation& Empire a strategic-level game ?I have yet to play a game on that level that wasn't bogged down on the early turns with resource accqusition and allocation .But I was probably playing the wrong games-never tried the FASA ganes you guys mentioned(though the Taactical Combat Simulator kicked a**).A starting fleet big enough to give players the option to either expand semi-peacefully or go into immediate offensive mode wold be good(not too big though). Also the source of all ship types (FASA,official,ect.) is a factor-I would lean towards official.These are just suggestions and if you design it,I have a group that will playtest it.Let me know!

[Lt.Khrys Antos]

Just an idea for a combat system which would be quick and easy.

Use some of the combat from the Bell's of War game. Each unit has a power rated from 1-12 with bonus for a specific amount. And an averages rule where players may choose to take an average instead of rolling a set of dice.

So say you have 12 power with an assortment of federation units you'd get 1 automatic hit instead of rolling the dice or you could choose to roll for all the units seperately. Its one of the best ideas used to stop the torrent of dices rolled every single turn.

[Snake_Plissken]

How do you want to condense your forces? In the aformentionned Succession Wars a single counter represented a whole regiment. Each regiment (IIRC) had a leadership rating and an offensive rating. The OR was rated 2-10 (again, IIRC) and to kill an enemy counter you needed to simply roll below your OR with a D10. If you take a later BT game, Battleforce 2, they took the main stats from the standard BT game and condensed each vital attribute down to simple numbers. So each battlemech had (again, you've guessed it, IIRC) a 1-10 number for its offensive power, armor and mobility. In BF2 each counter represented about 4 units- but you could fire each units individually and have them take damage the same way.

Now for a ST setting a good way to look at it is to look at how Decipher rates the ships in the ST card game. So maybe you could have attributes (1-10?) for weapons, shields, hull structure, warp speed and maneuvrability. So let's draw an example:

Akira heavy cruiser: Weapons (8) - Shields (6)- Hull (4)
Dominion fighter: Weapons (3) - Shields (2)- Hull (2)

let's say the Akira attacks the fighter; it needs to roll 1-8 on a D10 to score a hit. The fighter must roll 1-2 to stop the hit with it's shields. If the hit gets through, then it rerolls for hull integrity and it needs again 1-2 to survive, if not a warp core breech occurs and the ship goes boom! 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. For instance, each ship could have a maneuver modifier that can affect the opponent's weapons' to-hit. For instance, a Defiant-class ship could have a "+2" modifier to hit due to its agility. You could also allow for multiple hits instead of the single "live or die" system: on the first hit a ship suffers a generalized -2 penalty, on the second -4 and then on the 3rd one it explodes. Smaller ships could only withstand 1-2 hits while the capital ships 4-5 (?) Of course that would complicate the record-keeping considerably but it would allow for more detail. Warp speed ratings could affect how fast a task group travels from system to system.

Anyways just some random thoughts.

[Eric R.]

From Lowly Uhlan
Great idea Eric. Wasn't Task Force games Federation& Empire a strategic-level game ? I have yet to play a game on that level that wasn't bogged down on the early turns with resource accusation and allocation.

Yes F&E was more a game concerned with Economic then war and it is that which want to avoid in this game. Another reason that F&E got bogged down was high counter density and a small map (relatively), just look at the map in Prime Directive. I have seen some pictures of game layouts that resemble World War II on the Eastern Front more then space naval warfare! Each side will have substantial economic resources at the start of the game (save the Dominion). Therefore for the Dominion to survive they will have to get there own resources (unlike there Cardassian allies) and the allies will already have plenty of resources to fight off the initial attacks.

Cardassia will have to be a special case in the CP area. In a lot of ways her economy resembles that of World War II Japan with here natural resource away from her industrial base and dependent on merchant shipping to bring them to the “home systems”.

From Lowly Uhlan
Also the source of all ship types (FASA,official,ect.) is a factor-I would lean towards official.

In the case of the Federation that is no problem there are plenty of official ships already converted to CODA when the Starship book comes out, however the problem will come with the other fleets for example there is not too much on the Feringi, Gorn and Tholians in the 24th Century so some inventing will be needed.

From Snake Plissken
Have you figured how long, in the game's universe, does a turn last- days, 1 month? If so, I'd advise against building ships- that should be a lengthy process and it should force players to manage their forces with more focus.

I am leaning toward two week turns. Your points on construction are well taken, and in most cases the construction portion wont matter as much, however in large campaign games they would be an absolute necessity, perhaps a strategic planning phase for Economic development where every six turns you decide how many ships are under construction. I don’t know, will have to debate this later.

From Snake Plissken
Now for a ST setting a good way to look at it is to look at how Decipher rates the ships in the ST card game. So maybe you could have attributes (1-10?) for weapons, shields, hull structure, warp speed and maneuverability. So let's draw an example:

Akira heavy cruiser: Weapons (8) - Shields (6)- Hull (4)
Dominion fighter: Weapons (3) - Shields (2)- Hull (2)

In away such a system would resemble the old classic Gulf/Agen Strike (which by the way is one of my source for inspiration on this.

Khryrs, your system would make a nice alternative system. Great ideas folks keep them coming.

[Antonsb214]

I think that manuever cards for battles would be nice, and chance cards would be dramatic, lots of battles turn because of luck for one side or the other.

[Robbert Raets]

Originally posted by Antonsb214
I think that manuever cards for battles would be nice, and chance cards would be dramatic, lots of battles turn because of luck for one side or the other.

So we'll need a 'special' deck next to the board. Other ideas to put in there are espionage or 'religious' events (i.e. the Section 31 Changeling Disease and the Prophets closing the wormhole to the Dominion), Alien Artifacts and prototype ships (Prometheus, anyone? ).

What about major characters? Are people like Captain Sisko, General Martok and Weyoun represented on the board/map or not? Will famous ships be seperate from the Fleets or Wings?

What about (dare I say it?) Marines? Tac Fighters?