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Wednesday, September 05, 2012

Battle Group Terrain

This is Steven Petrick posting.

The battle group topics have been revealed, and each pairing of battle groups for Captain's Log #46 faces its own terrain challenge. More so than any other battle group articles, these will each be unique as the commanders have to deal not just with an enemy to their front, but terrain other than open space or a planet.

There are numerous terrain situations in Star Fleet Battles, some of which have also been incorporated into Federation Commander (which faces similar challenges).

Each commander will have to assess the restrictions the terrain he has encountered have placed on him, and on his opponent, and maximize any advantages he can gain, while minimizing any liabilities it will impose, reversing those circumstances on his opponent.

Because we wanted the commanders to deal with the terrain, it was necessary to use a closed map (otherwise the commander would simply "float" the maps to open space and ignore the terrain). They must deal with it, and thus we hope for articles that will be useful for other players when confronted with such terrain, and perhaps interest them in challenging themselves to face such terrain.

We are also again dealing with a reality in that commanders will rarely get to specifically design their force for the terrain in which they encounter their enemy. Thus, as in real life, they have to fight the enemy with the forces they have, not the forces they wish they had.

This has always been something of an option in Star Fleet Battles, which provides for random terrain generation in design your own scenarios. When I played extensively I can assure it was a shock when one fleet battle we had set up to play suddenly devolved into the middle of an ion storm (and while it was not the same empires as were later showcased in the scenario "One Corner of Hell," my memory of that fight was the basis for creating that scenario years later.