Q-Ships

[Gareth_Perkins]

Can someone explain the Q-Ship trait from the VBAM: CC for me?

It is very odd as written, seemingly lowering the CC of the vessels while it is a civilian fleets escort, but not reducing the chances of raiding. Am I missing something? CC doesn't seem very relevant (as convoy escorts more often act as squadron commanders in my experience).

Given that they are intended to deter pirates I would have expected something more like this:
If you are open about employing Q-Ships, and have (say) 50% of your civilian fleets escorted by Q-ships then you should be less susceptible to raiding (say a -10% to the raiding chances in any system).

If you are not being open about the Q-Ships then they should be treated as civilian fleets (I would assume that this use is not to deter pirates, but to infiltrate other empires),

[mwaschak]

Hi Gareth,

Tyrel may be able to address the specifics more accurately, but he is on vacation. The intention as I see it here is that a transport fleet can include, by itself, its own warship for protection without revealing its true nature to the enemy. This can be a blast in a scenario.

I am not sure if they could directly deter a pirate, since the attack against the Q-ship would mean the pirate has already committed to action. Instead, I see it as giving the transports a real means to fight back.

-Jay

[Gareth_Perkins]

I see your point,

And if there where a finite quantity of pirates I would agree,

But since destroying pirate vessels is essentially meaningless (there are always more of them) it doesn't really provide any benefit, (ultimately I would generally prefer not to have to fight pirates at all given the choice - and a destroyer achieves this more effectively than a Q-Ship as it directly reduces the likelihood or a raid (and can still fight in any ensuing battles). Perhaps if pirate destruction had some impact on the Raiding percentages, then there would be some point).

I am not sure if they could directly deter a pirate, since the attack against the Q-ship would mean the pirate has already committed to action. Instead, I see it as giving the transports a real means to fight back.

Conversely, if it became known that my empire employs Q-Ships for convoy escort, any pirates are more likely to move into safer grounds (at least convoys escorted by destroyers are obvious... And the pirates can then pick and choose their fights. If the convoy could consist of nothing but Q-Ships then it becomes a much riskier proposition),

Now, for player vs. player I can see some advantages (being able to incorporate a Q-Ship in a civilian fleet without the other players knowledge perhaps). But this is more a "spying" or "military use" type of affair,

As far as "spying" is concerned, I would normally assume that the "Espionage" missions would represent this sort of thing. Military use of Q-Ships to get fleets into position I can see however as a conceivable use.

On a side-note given the last. If I have a Trade treaty (or Peace Treaty) with another player can my fleets draw supply from the friendly empires supply points? (i.e.: If I establish a trade treaty and establish a route deep into the other empire, can my trade fleet utilise their supply points)? Logic would indicate the affirmative,

[Charles Lewis]

My recollection is that the Q-Ship trait was intended to represent armed merchant ships and do just as Jay mentioned: increased a civilian fleet's chances of surviving a raider attack.

One of the things that is slowly percolating in my tired noodle at the moment is a more robust system for player-directed raiding, allowing players to detach ships from line of battle duty for commerce raiding. This, by the way, is the original source of the term "cruiser" - a ship used to cruise the seas looking for enemy shipping to attack (at least according to Mahan, I'd consider him to be as good an authority as any).

Under those rules, a Q-Ship trait would have greater utility as it could influence an opposing player's decisions regarding what he used for raiders. If you know there's the possibilty that a civilian fleet or transport ships have a chance of being able to shoot back, you're probably going to go a little heavier on your raiders. Which would reduce your main fleet strength, which could entice your opponent to send more raiders, which could force you to pull your raiders back, etc., etc., etc.

One of the points that Mahan makes in The Influence of Sea Power Upon History is that a naval raiding strategy almost never works without a large battle fleet to force the enemy to keep his strength concentrated and limit his ability to respond to your cruisers - otherwise, the enemy just disperses his strength to improve overall protection of his merchant shipping and your cruisers keep running into warships instead of juicy merchants. I'm working on developing some mechanics to put these kinds of decisions into the hands of players in a VBAM game.

[Charles Lewis]

I'd like to add that the current raiding rules essentially push a player into deploying sufficient assets to deter independent pirates and raiders ala Babylon 5. But commerce raiding needs to be a valid tactic for players, too, IMO. Look at the early years of the naval war in the Atlantic during WWII or many of the engagements of WWI - these were directly related to German commerce raiding efforts.

[Gareth_Perkins]

I'd like to add that the current raiding rules essentially push a player into deploying sufficient assets to deter independent pirates and raiders ala Babylon 5. But commerce raiding needs to be a valid tactic for players, too, IMO. Look at the early years of the naval war in the Atlantic during WWII or many of the engagements of WWI - these were directly related to German commerce raiding efforts.

I think that would work regardless of the presence of Q-Ships,

The big problem there is with supply lines. The ships need to make forays into hostile territory and be able to fight!

That said, the big difference between the War in the Atlantic and VBAM as written is that the convoys travelling across the Atlantic where essentially travelling across no-mans land, while most civilian commercial traffic in VBAM is travelling through a network of transit links totally enclosed in their own empire.

That will preclude commerce raiding to a great extent in VBAM using the "Jumpgate" system as written - although it will not stop "home grown pirates" so to speak,

[jygro]

The big problem there is with supply lines. The ships need to make forays into hostile territory and be able to fight!

Perhaps there is a new use for intel points. Basically make a secret supply point for which your personal raiders can draw supply. Actually, I think the better way of doing it is to send EP as a supply cache into an enemy's supply area (using the intel rules for discovery) and then your raiders use that (and anything they can steal) to keep themselves in working order.

-Bren

[Charles Lewis]

Actually, this is where the new Logistics/Endurance rating would figure in - i.e. how long can a particular ship go outside the normal supply net.

That said, Bren's idea is a good one...I'll have to throw that in the mix.

[Tyrel Lohr]

I have been revisiting the Q-Ship concept recently (while on vacation), and from what I can remember the purpose of the ability is to provide extra defenders for a civilian fleet in order to protect it from enemy attack. Along those lines, my recent doodling has drafted a rule that a unit's Q-Ship Rating would essentially be the maximum number of Q-Ships that could immediately come to the defense an intercepted civilian fleet. So if you had a Q-Ship (3) unit, you could have a total of 3 Q-Ships immediately drawn into the combat scenario and ready to engage the enemy from the beginning.

The job of reducing raiding chances in a system should probably fall to the new ability that has bandied about here for awhile: Police. Under the new tech and ability rating system I have been working on, each point of Police Rating would essentially add its value to whatever method is used to determine military strength in a system (which then reduces the raiding chance).

[mwaschak]

The job of reducing raiding chances in a system should probably fall to the new ability that has bandied about here for awhile: Police. Under the new tech and ability rating system I have been working on, each point of Police Rating would essentially add its value to whatever method is used to determine military strength in a system (which then reduces the raiding chance).

And for that matter all it just has to do is fool the pirates, be it some combination of trickery, electronic warfare, or an honest-to-goodness CA on patrol. If Q-Ships work to fool the pirates to coming closer, why not a faux CA that is actually hauling cargo. That might scare of some pirates.

-Jay

[Gareth_Perkins]

The trick isn't to trick the pirates into getting closer surely, the trick is to scare them off. The Q-Ship has the potential to work in two ways.

Either it can be used as a lure ("look at the juicy merchant, not a warship in sight"), which is good for eliminating pirates,

Or it can be used as a deterrent ("the Feds use Q-ships as escorts, lets raid someone else instead - it's just not worth the risk"), which is good for keeping your merchant shipping safe,

Which do you wish to do (option two makes more sense with the rules as written)?


As a possible alternative, it might be possible to tweak the raiding rules to make pirate-hunting worthwhile. Instead of the standard rules give each system a "pirate EP" rating, known only to the GM. Whenever a pirate ship is destroyed, reduce the EP total by its cost.

Each turn the system has no military shipping in-system add one to the rating. Each turn add the number of civilian ships to the rating. Random events that add to the raiding chance instead add to the pirates EP rating. Decommissioning ships adds to the rating (perhaps +1 per 5 DV or part thereof).

If you wish to incorporate the "police" idea (and I think it's a good one) then perhaps subtract the systems police rating from the turns EP gain (may never reduce the gain <0). (Police ships assigned as convoy escorts should provide no benefit in this way, only ships assigned to the system for the full turn).

Set the basic raiding chance at 20%. Modify by +10% per EP the Pirate pool exceeds the total military DV in-system. -10% per EP the other way around. Any pirate raids are drawn from the systems EP pool (if it only has 1EP then they ain't raiding with much!) up to the normal die roll cap. I'm toying with the suggestion that raiders lose 2xEP cost of units lost in battle from their pool to represent the increased effectiveness of "scaring off" the raiders.

Now there's a point to pirate hunting (it reduces the EP pool, making future raids less likely), which in turn makes Q-ships worthwhile. On the other hand, if you don't keep on top of the raiders, word will quickly get around that you're easy-pickings and you'll have some serious problems!

This would also allow empires to smuggle in EP to hostile systems as an Intel mission to raise the chances of piracy... Which sounds like an interesting quirk. Of course another Intel mission could remove EP from the pool (representing police agencies cracking down on piracy),

[Charles Lewis]

Definitely some good ideas here. I think some mechanism to allow one player to muck around with the piracy chances in another player's territory either directly (military commerce raiders) or indirectly (supporting independent pirate groups) is a good idea.

[Gareth_Perkins]

Hmmm, maybe - possibly I posted it in the wrong thread though...

As much as I like the idea - I hate the complexity it introduces, adding another attribute to track, and requiring a fair amount of calculation each turn.

[Charles Lewis]

Remember, the VBAM system is modular, so any such rules would be removable (or addable, depending on original presentation). The intent has always been to have a rules set that is consistent and customizable so that players can have as streamlined or as complicated a game as they desire.

[Tyrel Lohr]

Or it can be used as a deterrent ("the Feds use Q-ships as escorts, lets raid someone else instead - it's just not worth the risk"), which is good for keeping your merchant shipping safe,

This option is the one that I would probably prefer, as it is easier to handle mechanically within the body of the existing rules. If you had a ship like the Q-Ship from "On Basilisk Station" protecting your freighters, it wouldn't take too many commerce raids against such ships for the enemy to decide that raiding your forces is probably not the way to go.

As a possible alternative, it might be possible to tweak the raiding rules to make pirate-hunting worthwhile. Instead of the standard rules give each system a "pirate EP" rating, known only to the GM. Whenever a pirate ship is destroyed, reduce the EP total by its cost.

This is a very good idea. You would essentially end up with a "Raider Threat Level" in each system, that would both serve as a modifier to the raiding chance as well as represent the maximum number of EP of pirates you could run into in a system. The players would probably be able to glean a very basic amount of information about the Raider Threat Level in their systems -- though that might be a separate Intel mission (espionage, sabotage -- and maybe even propaganda). For a basic mission result you could end up with a general threat level (Low, Guarded, Elevated, High, Severe), or else the exact number of points.

The strength of such a solution is that it makes player-sponsored raiding fairly simple. It could just be an Intel mission that, if successful, increases that system's Raider Threat Level by a stated amount of EP from the player's point pool.

Above I mentioned possibly having a Propaganda element involved. I am just wondering if, as an optional rule, you could have a defensive counterpart to the Raider Threat Level that would similarly be used to generate mercenary or civil patrol units in a system to help defend against raider attacks? With a Propaganda mission, you could then pay/bribe the raiders to perform security in a system, effectively converting them over. I don't know, that is a wild tangent there -- but I can see it applying to universes like the Wing Commander: Privateer setting where you had a lot of mercenaries flying around as guns for hire.

Set the basic raiding chance at 20%. Modify by +10% per EP the Pirate pool exceeds the total military DV in-system. -10% per EP the other way around. Any pirate raids are drawn from the systems EP pool (if it only has 1EP then they ain't raiding with much!) up to the normal die roll cap. I'm toying with the suggestion that raiders lose 2xEP cost of units lost in battle from their pool to represent the increased effectiveness of "scaring off" the raiders.

I wish we had a good statistic that we could use to represent a rough approximation of military force in a system. You use DV, we've used Construction Cost, and neither really does the job well. That being said, your approach to raid modifiers is interesting.

I still think the output of a system needs to be the major factor in determining the base likelihood of raids in a system. A backwater planet with no economy or trade value of any kind would not be of much value to pirates looking to make a big score, but a major system with lots of income would be -- especially if it were largely undefended. I could see maybe halving the Commerce Value of a system to get the base raiding chance in that case, and then applying other modifiers as desired (including the system's Raider Threat Level).

Now there's a point to pirate hunting (it reduces the EP pool, making future raids less likely), which in turn makes Q-ships worthwhile. On the other hand, if you don't keep on top of the raiders, word will quickly get around that you're easy-pickings and you'll have some serious problems!

The Threat Level aspect also helps to remove the need to handle such raiders as Underworld Empires in order to keep them in play; they are just a background element that can continue to grow, as desired, but in a predictable fashion. It also means that a system *could* go lawless if enough raids are generated there.

I have some trepidations about the amount of extra bookkeeping that would be required to update each system's Threat Level, though, as it is proposed. I am not sure of a better way around it right now, though. There has to be a better solution. The nice thing about the raiding chance right now is that it is a fairly simple die roll, and with a spreadsheet you can have it make the calculation for all systems in a single action and then record and resolve raider strikes from there.

What if you kept the normal raiding chance mechanic (one roll per system), but then only put the EP value of the survivors into the Threat Level statistic for the system? Then if a raider force is completley wiped out, you would remove their EP cost from the system's total? That doesn't allow you to have the maximum value aspect that you were trying for, but it would keep the Threat Level concept viable. It also means that a successful raider attack would increase the value, while an unsuccessful attack would reduce it.