Bay 12 Games Forum

Ships
ITC (Interplanetary Transport Craft): A less-than-stellar spacecraft, the ITC is a version of the ships landed on your planet when you first colonized it. It is prone to malfunction, slow, and generally unpleasant. The rocket shuttles used to get equipment from the ITC to the ground have a limited capacity, meaning that with the exception of troops and things that can be broken into much smaller parts, the ITC cannot carry any equipment of a size greater than 1TC. It has 4TC capacity in total and uses chemical engines for propulsion. It has no armor or armaments.
Cost: 2 SPP

Units
Basic Military Unit: (you may rename this if you so wish) A capable group of soldiers trained to operate any equipment you can give them. Field training allows them to keep up to date on the best way to operate the newest deathtraps and self-destructing gizmos you send them even after they’re deployed.
Cost: 2GPP

Ground Weapons
Printed Pistol: Issued to security guards on the colony ships, the only real weapon both colonies have. They are 3D-printed out of plastic, a process which is not entirely reliable, meaning the gun has a tendency to break after prolonged use... or any use, really.
Cost: Cheap

Equipment
Basic Space Suit: A civilian space suit, totally unarmored and cumbersome to walk in. At least it works well enough, and has a self-sealing lining meaning a single shot isn't an immediate death sentence... most of the time. Necessary for deployment to worlds without breathable atmospheres.
Cost: Cheap

Other
Command Radio: Essentially just a very big radio set, capable of reliable communication between planets, ships, and/or other planets. Currently only useful for taunting your enemy. The transmitter dish comes in a single piece and cannot fit in an ITC shuttle.
Cost: 2GPP
Weight: 1TC (requires 2 shuttle TC)

Colony Defense Grid The reason you can't instantly invade the enemy homeworld. A series of surface-to-orbit missile launchers, the only real concession to defense the planners of the colony made. How they work is a mystery now, and no one wants to risk taking them apart to find out.

Ship Production Points: 16
  16 points: Unassigned.

Ground Production Points: 20
  20 points: Unassigned
 
Units
Nope, nothing to see here.

Ships
Your shipbuilders have been really lazy lately, haven’t they?

Planetary Contents:
1 & 2: Earthlike planets just as you’d expect. Take your opponent’s homeworld to win, lose yours and you die.
A: Riddled with caves and with a mineral-rich crust, this airless world is ideal for the production of spacecraft components. 1 GPP, 3 SPP.
B: A volcanic world with a caustic atmosphere and lava flows on the surface, B is full of minerals that can be easily acquired…if you can deal with the, quite literal, heat. 3 GPP, 1 SPP.
C: Icy, barren, rather flat in most regions. It has rather a lot of those things humans need to live sitting on and under its airless surface. 3 GPP, 3 SPP.
D: A surface-wide ocean is the defining trait of this planet, providing an interesting combat environment and also plenty of interesting life forms that can be studied….if you can build a big enough boat to catch one, anyway. 4 GPP, 2 SPP.
E: Another Earthlike planet, ideal for habitation….or, y’know, fighting a good old fashioned war over! 4 GPP, 4 SPP.
F: A world of highlands and mountains, the lower parts of the planet are filled with most of the planet's already scarce water. However, the mountainous regions have high mineral contents and plenty of good spacecraft launch sites above the majority of the atmosphere. 2 GPP, 4 SPP.
G: Deserts cover the surface of this planet. Deserts made, in fact, of a curious sand with abnormally high metal and mineral contents. It has an atmosphere that serves to stir up the sands into occasional sandstorms. 3 GPP, 3 SPP.
H: An airless, small rock in space, H is heavily cratered and not a great place to live. Good place to build spacecraft, though. 1 GPP, 3 SPP.
I: A world covered in wide stretches of windswept terrain covered in something that we’re going to call grass, I is ideal for large-scale industrial activity. Nobody cares if you do irreparable damage to a huge tract of grasslands here, after all, there are a hundred more huge tracts of pristine grasslands you haven’t ruined yet. 3 GPP, 1 SPP.

Every turn will be composed of three parts, that is going to look suspiciously like Chiefwaffle’s Planetary Arms Race (which is dead), or NUKE’s Battle for Aljadid (which is totally not dead yet).

The first phase is the design phase. You will write proposals and vote for what you would like to design. Anything from tanks to planes to spacecraft to industrial equipment and gigantic building projects will probably be viable. I will warn you if something is actually outside the scope of the game before you design it. Don’t try to do the same thing multiple times though, if I’m feeling vindictive I might just let you find out how big of a negative modifier I’m willing to hand out.

Quick note on infrastructure: Generally, each piece of infrastructure requires a full design of its own and has steeply diminishing returns. You can replicate the same infrastructure across four different planets, but you’ll need a design for each one (representing the difficulty in setting up logistics and constructing it in the unique environment of each new planet). New techs can be revised into preexisting infrastructure designs if you can justify it being simple enough, while using more designs to build more of the same infrastructure on a planet is generally not even going to be worth your while. Just sayin’.

Next you will revise something. I’m going to succumb to what I always try to do in everybody else’s Arms Race, and say that you can totally do new things in a revision. It’s going to be a lot more difficult to do new things using the revision, however. Generally you will make incremental improvements or fix the results of your last design and such using the revision phase.

Finally, the strategy phase. This is where you give up and let that one weird guy who enjoys it do all your strategy things. Building and equipping units, ships, and shouting orders to everything and everyone within earshot.

Roll (probability): Result
2 (1/16): Utter failure. While you gain experience, you don’t get anything workable.
3 (1/8): Buggy mess. Whilst you managed to make something, it isn't really usable.
4 (3/16): Below average. It works. Not especially well, but it works.
5 (1/4): Average. You get what you asked for, more or less.
6 (3/16): Above average. It works, and somewhat better than might be expected. Not a lot better, mind.
7 (1/8): Superior craftsmanship. It does its job and it does it perfectly. Its performance is exceptional and it is as reliable as clockwork.
8 (1/16): Unexpected boon. Not only does it work, but it does things you never even expected it to. If no 'bonus features' make sense, then you just get experience with some related field.

Designs of other difficulties modify the roll value like so: Trivial (+2), Easy (+1), Normal (+0), Hard (-1), Very Hard (-2), Ludicrous (-3). Designs harder than Ludicrous are Impossible and will never yield a successful product. At best, they will grant you experience in the relevant area. I will try to warn you before you stumble into a design that is Impossible for a reason other than “the laws of physics as established don’t work that way”. Similarly, if the result of your roll would be less than 2 after modifiers, you get no experience and no workable product either.
Also note that the results above are guidelines. Results may not exactly match, but the 'value' will be the same, roughly. Remember: Nothing is as clear-cut as we’d like it to be, so you’ll have to bear with me. Remember, your suffering is my suffering, except for when it’s just your suffering.

Note on the effectiveness of designs
Some things will be nerfed, and other things will be buffed. See Battle for Aljadid or Planetary Arms Race---I’ll be aiming for a tech progression somewhere like Chief’s PAR. Note that while certain things may be incredibly powerful or useful in real life, that does not mean that I’ll make it easy on you. Yes, a kinetic rod delivery system is capable of obliterating chunks of the surface with near-perfect accuracy (on airless worlds). No, that does not mean that when you make it you will suddenly rule ground combat. You’ll find that you have issues that can’t be completely overcome. Similarly, other techs may get buffed to make them more effective than they can be IRL: Electromagnetic (plasma) drives saw a buff like this in BFA, amongst other things.

Cheap equipment can be produced as much as makes sense. All you have to do is make sure that equipment reaches the soldiers.

More expensive items will have a cost level expressed as a number of “production points”. You have a limited amount of Ship and Ground Production Points, which you dedicate towards the construction and upkeep of ships and units/equipment. Satellites and ground-based installations may also cost Production Points if they do not produce them. For instance, a defense laser satellite will have an SPP cost, as will a ground-side ground-to-space missile silo. However, a space-elevator tether making it easier to assemble spacecraft or a mining complex will likely provide SPP and GPP, rather than costing them.

Ships/equipment may be decommissioned by moving them to the homeworld. Scuttling warships is not possible, as they represent quite a lot of material that takes a huge portion of your economic power to keep around, and your government would be extremely unhappy if you just lost all those resources because you wanted to build something newer and shinier. Ground equipment likewise cannot be destroyed by you, and it won't be lost unless you evacuate from a planet without sufficient TC to remove the equipment along with the troops. If it is lost in this way, it will take a turn for the points to become available again. Same deal with lost warships.

Capturing a planet will grant extra Production Points, as will infrastructure projects. Each planet gives some number of Production Points, representing the amount of resources easily available for extraction. Further production on any given planet can be done with infrastructure that you design.

Your colony has limited ability to supply soldiers, so your soldiers are split into “Units” each of which has a cost. Each unit represents “a substantial number” of soldiers.

Units may be produced, requiring GPP. Each unit will, by default, cost 2 GPP. Other Unit types can be designed, representing the formation of the appropriate training, production, and bureaucratic apparatuses necessary to run differing military structures. You can revise already-created units, just not revision new units into existence. The primary reasons for making other units will be making specialists or changing the general competence of the unit (which will also be able to change the cost).

Units and equipment take up space. Your starting transports have a Transport Capacity (TC) of 4. A full Unit takes up 2 TC. Larger pieces of equipment (things that cannot reasonably be packed into a single person’s combat equipment, generally) may also take up TC. Equipment is not fixed to individual Units and can be moved freely between Units and transports in orbit.

A Unit can carry as much equipment as you like, but it will only use a sensible amount. You could equip a single unit with several different types of tank and nothing else, but then the entire unit would end up equipped and trained as tankers and thus be woefully unprepared for combat in dense forests or extremely mountainous terrain.

Planets consist of 10 zones each. An uncontested Unit on a planet will capture 4 zones per turn. Once all 10 zones are captured, the planet is yours- its resources may be extracted, and defensive facilities constructed in orbit.

If both teams have Units present on the same world, combat occurs. The winner will advance by 1-4 zones, depending on their margin of victory. This progress will be taken out of any remaining neutral zones before enemy zones.

Units will generally not be destroyed outright if space-capable transport is available, instead upon losing the last segment of territory they will evacuate. If the enemy is substantially more powerful than the survivors, all weapons, equipment, and vehicles larger than what an individual soldier can carry with them may be abandoned on the planet. The Unit will not leave any intact equipment for the enemy to study.

Ships may be moved across the map following the indicated lanes. Your basic engines allow you to move a distance of one planet per turn. Better engines will allow faster movement. Ships may make one action and [Move Speed] moves per turn. Loading and unloading takes an action at most planets, except at your Homeworld and any planets with some sort of surface-to-orbit infrastructure. For instance, you can Load Troops from your Homeworld, Move 1 space, unload half your cargo, and Move one more space. You can also trade a Move action for another one, if possible, i.e. loading troops on a planet (not your homeworld, that's free anyway), then Moving to another planet and unloading there. This obviously only works with improved engines, and grants additional utility to more powerful engines.

You will be able to designate tactics for your captains to follow---though note that they are possessed of a measure of intelligence, meaning they will attempt to flee if outmatched, or change tactics if the ones you’ve directed them to try don’t work. For instance, ordering them to keep a piece of tech secret is all well and good, but if their lives are on the line and they can’t escape, they’ll use the tech if it could logically help them. If one side tries to flee, the other side gets to attempt an intercept if their engines are of an equal speed. If the intercepting' sides engines are of greater speed, they will be able to catch and engage the fleeing side indefinitely. If both sides can't or won't flee, battle occurs.

Ships may suffer damage in battle, which will likely affect their performance. This damage may be repaired by ending a turn at the homeworld. Field repairs are not possible with starting tech.

Victory is achieved once all enemy ships have fled or been destroyed. In orbit, if there is no or very little enemy presence remaining, the orbit is considered Controlled, and your transports will be able to land/retrieve units and equipment without risk, whilst you are free to conduct orbital bombardment in support of ground troops (provided there are bombardment-capable ships present). The enemy will be utterly incapable of doing either and will have a very hard time moving past the orbit. If a substantial enemy force remains, the orbit is Contested- your transports may risk interdiction, and your ability to perform orbital bombardment will be restricted, as will the enemy's.

Units on a blockaded planet will suffer, causing their performance to deteriorate as supplies run out.

Ships
ITC (Interplanetary Transport Craft): A less-than-stellar spacecraft, the ITC is a version of the ships landed on your planet when you first colonized it. It is prone to malfunction, slow, and generally unpleasant. The rocket shuttles used to get equipment from the ITC to the ground have a limited capacity, meaning that with the exception of troops and things that can be broken into much smaller parts, the ITC cannot carry any equipment of a size greater than 1TC. It has 4TC capacity in total and uses chemical engines for propulsion. It has no armor or armaments.
Cost: 2 SPP

Units
Basic Military Unit: (you may rename this if you so wish) A capable group of soldiers trained to operate any equipment you can give them. Field training allows them to keep up to date on the best way to operate the newest deathtraps and self-destructing gizmos you send them even after they’re deployed.
Cost: 2GPP

Ground Weapons
Printed Pistol: Issued to security guards on the colony ships, the only real weapon both colonies have. They are 3D-printed out of plastic, a process which is not entirely reliable, meaning the gun has a tendency to break after prolonged use... or any use, really.
Cost: Cheap

Equipment
Basic Space Suit: A civilian space suit, totally unarmored and cumbersome to walk in. At least it works well enough, and has a self-sealing lining meaning a single shot isn't an immediate death sentence... most of the time. Necessary for deployment to worlds without breathable atmospheres.
Cost: Cheap

Other
Command Radio: Essentially just a very big radio set, capable of reliable communication between planets, ships, and/or other planets. Currently only useful for taunting your enemy. The transmitter dish comes in a single piece and cannot fit in an ITC shuttle.
Cost: 2GPP
Weight: 1TC (requires 2 shuttle TC)

Colony Defense Grid The reason you can't instantly invade the enemy homeworld. A series of surface-to-orbit missile launchers, the only real concession to defense the planners of the colony made. How they work is a mystery now, and no one wants to risk taking them apart to find out.

Planetary Contents:
1 & 2: Earthlike planets just as you’d expect. Take your opponent’s homeworld to win, lose yours and you die.
A: Riddled with caves and with a mineral-rich crust, this airless world is ideal for the production of spacecraft components. 1 GPP, 3 SPP.
B: A volcanic world with a caustic atmosphere and lava flows on the surface, B is full of minerals that can be easily acquired…if you can deal with the, quite literal, heat. 3 GPP, 1 SPP.
C: Icy, barren, rather flat in most regions. It has rather a lot of those things humans need to live sitting on and under its airless surface. 3 GPP, 3 SPP.
D: A surface-wide ocean is the defining trait of this planet, providing an interesting combat environment and also plenty of interesting life forms that can be studied….if you can build a big enough boat to catch one, anyway. 4 GPP, 2 SPP.
E: Another Earthlike planet, ideal for habitation….or, y’know, fighting a good old fashioned war over! 4 GPP, 4 SPP.
F: A world of highlands and mountains, the lower parts of the planet are filled with most of the planet's already scarce water. However, the mountainous regions have high mineral contents and plenty of good spacecraft launch sites above the majority of the atmosphere. 2 GPP, 4 SPP.
G: Deserts cover the surface of this planet. Deserts made, in fact, of a curious sand with abnormally high metal and mineral contents. It has an atmosphere that serves to stir up the sands into occasional sandstorms. 3 GPP, 3 SPP.
H: An airless, small rock in space, H is heavily cratered and not a great place to live. Good place to build spacecraft, though. 1 GPP, 3 SPP.
I: A world covered in wide stretches of windswept terrain covered in something that we’re going to call grass, I is ideal for large-scale industrial activity. Nobody cares if you do irreparable damage to a huge tract of grasslands here, after all, there are a hundred more huge tracts of pristine grasslands you haven’t ruined yet. 3 GPP, 1 SPP.