Space Opera Test Game

[GrumpyMel]

As promised, I am starting an AAR of our Test Game of the Space Opera Scenerio that I designed. The game should play quite differently then a standard AT WWII scenerio. The basic premise is that each of the 5 players represents a Major Noble House in a future Space Empire that has fallen into Chaos by the death of the ruling Emperor.

The game map features 21 different planets to fight over in 20 seperate star systems. Systems are connected to each other by Jump Gates which are only passable by Jump Capable starships. This forms a sort of web of star systems.The planets surface are seperated from space by a layer of atmospheric hexes which are impassable to everything but atmospheric capable craft. This helps to make space and planetary surfaces seperate and distinct theatres.

Another big change from regular game-play is that units require resources to build. There are 3 different types of resources, all of which can be found on the surface of planets (although not all planets have all resources). Isotopes are used to build spaceships and atmospheric capable craft such as Landers, Starfighters and Starbombers. Organics are used to build Foot Troops such as Infantry, Militia and Rangers. Minerals are used to build ground vehicles and equipment such as tanks, artillery and SAM batteries.I won't go into the details of explaining all the rules up front. As the AAR progresses, you should start to get a feel for how the scenerio works.

In our test game, I am playing House Cadwall. It starts out on the Planet of Grail in the upper Left Hand Quadrant of the Map. The position is somewhat isolated, giving me more protection against multi-front wars and decent room for growth without conflict...but it also makes my choices less flexible and makes me a bit slower to expand. Below you can see a picture of my starting position on the strategic map along with my starting stockpile of resources. All Houses start with a stockpile of 500 of each resource in order to allow them to build units for a few turns before they need to capture any resource areas.

[GrumpyMel]

You can see a detailed picture of part of the surface of my starting planet below. The planets are all quite different from one another in size, terrain and composition of resources and production cities. The starting planets for each Major House although quite different in feel and terrain are somewhat balanced against each other in terms of resources and production capacity. Grail has the second lowest Production capacity of the players starting planets with 18K in Production Capacity but has a decent number and nice balance of resources, featuring 2 resource hexes of each type.

You'll note from the picture below that I only start out controling a very small portion of the surface of my home planet. To be precise, I control my Houses Capital Seat (which is an important production city because it supplies 15K Production and is the only place I can produce Knights and Nobles, some of the most powerfull foot units in the game), 1 organic resource and a defensive fortress. I also control 1 starbase in the space around my home system, which is not pictured in this screenshot. Starbases are where you build spaceships.

The rest of my home planet is either unoccupied or controled by rebel forces. Rebels are an AI controled faction, hostile to all the Houses. Rebels control all the planets in the game to start, including the territory on the players starting planets not occupied by those players. Despite thier numbers, rebels have fairly weak forces, mostly consisting of militia. Although they do have a few more powerfull ground units scattered on some of the planets. Rebels also don't have any space or atmospheric units, meaning they can't move from planet to planet, nor can they oppose a landing (unless you land ontop of one of thier units or next to one of thier SAM batteries...which work just like Flak does in the regular game). Most importantly rebels can't build any new units. This generaly means that players shouldn't have too much trouble wresting control of a planet from rebel forces...as long as they don't spread themselves too thin.

[GrumpyMel]

Finally here is a shot of the composition of House Cadwalls starting forces. The starting space forces are identical for each House, but the Ground Forces are varied quite a bit to give each House a bit of a different flavor. Each House will start with some units in it's OOB that it no longer has the Tech to build. House Cadwall is no exception. If I want to build any more Star Cruisers, Rangers or Marines. I'm going to have to research the Techs to do so.

[GrumpyMel]

My goal as Cadwall is to take advantage of the postives my position offers me, while trying to mitigate it's negatives. Looking at the strategic map, I can see that access to the entire upper left quadrant of the map is controled by just 2 JumpGates, one in the Solstice system and one in the Heimdall system. If I can take these 2 systems, I'll have a nice secure and defensable base of 5 planets from which to expand in the middle portion of the game.

My idea is to try to establish a presence on both Heimdall and Solstice right away, both of which are 2 jumps away from my home system. This means I'll skip colonizing the Vigil system which lies in between and even hold off on fully securing my home planet somewhat. The reason I'm doing this is that I've found it's much easier to come in and take an unowned system or at least one that you already have a presence on then it is to come in with a full scale invasion against a hostile owned planet. If I methodicaly expanded out from my home world by the time I got to Heimdall and Solstice, I might already find some other Houses with a presence there. By establishing a presence in both perimeter systems at the outset, I reduce that risk.

Once I've secured these systems I can then safely backfill in the rest of the territory in my intended sphere of control. House Cadwall has the luxuary of persuing such a strategy due to thier relatively isolated position. For some other Houses, this would be a much riskier plan. You can see my initial strategic goals displayed on this screenshot of the strategic map below, which I've marked up to give you an idea of the initial board position of the various Houses.

[GrumpyMel]

The devil is in the details as they say. Now that I've got my basic strategic goals set, I've got to work out a plan to execute them. I've already decided I'm going for BOTH Solstice and Heimdall at the same time, rather then fully securing one and then taking on the other. This is a pretty agressive plan, since my forces will be spread more thinly and have a steeper fight against the local rebel defenders on each system. However executing it will allow me to establish a presence on BOTH systems before anyone else can. If I went with a sequential approach instead, i'd risk another House beating me to one of those systems. I'm going to need really good timing and a strict timetable to pull this off well.

On to the details. Taking an owned Planet requires 3 things.... ground troops to do the fighting, Jump Transports to carry the troops to that system and Landers to get them onto the planets surface. I've got some initial ground forces on Grail (my home planet) but not nearly enough to invade even one system, let alone two. I'm going to have to build ground forces for my campaigns against Solstice and Heimdall. This means depleting my resource stockpile since I don't control many resources yet...but that's ok...that's what the stockpile is there for. I've only got one Jump Transport in my starting Fleet, that might be ok for an operation against a single system...but it won't be enough to go against two at once. I'll have to build at least one more Jump Transport at the Starbase I own in the Grail system. Finally I have 2 Landers in my starting forces. At a minimum I need 1 Lander on Grail to transport troops up from the planets surface and 1 Lander in each system I want to invade. So I'll need to build at least one more of these as well.

[GrumpyMel]

Turn One - I need to determine my starting moves. My starting Space Forces are divided into 2 Fleets... the Home Fleet containing my warships and the Exploration Fleet containing a Jump Transport, 2 Landers and a Frigate as escort. A single Jump Transport can carry 200 points of ground troops as well as having berths for upto 2 Landers or 4 SpaceFighters/Bombers. So not a bad initial landing force for an uncontested planet.

The problem is I don't have sufficient ground forces built yet to fill out that invasion force. In fact, in the first turn there is only one unit I can load aboard my transports, that being my Ducal Marines who are station at the Starbase in my home system of Grail. So I could keep my Exploration Fleet sitting around for a few turns until it can be loaded up with units and then send it on it's merry way to either Solstice or Heimdall.

However, rather then do that, I'm going to take the initiative. The Ducal Marines, though a powerfull unit, would be wasted landing on thier own... but there is another key element to taking a system...namely grabbing it's starbases. Starbases and orbit points are both used to transition troops between space and a planets surface. There is no shortage of orbit points in any given system, however they are quite indefensible. Ground troops fight at a huge penalty in orbit points (basicaly it just represents a spot in space where troops are transfered between transports and landing craft) and all Capital ships have pretty decent bombardment capabilities, making using an orbit point to invade a planet a very risky endevour if there are any hostile ships in the area. Starbases are the real prize in any system, since they are both quite defensible and have shipyards that can be used to produce new starships. Each system only has one or two though. I want to make sure that I can seize at least one of the starbases in each of the systems I want.

Heimdall shouldn't be much of an issue... it is 2 jumps away from me and 3 from the next nearest House, meaning I can get to it before anyone else can. Solstice on the other hand is 2 jumps away from both myself and House Sian-Chi. Since I want that system, I want to make sure that I can seize at least one of the starbases in it. This is a perfect job for my Exploration Fleet and the Ducal Marines. They'll be filling the classic role of Marines by acting as a RDF to sieze and hold one of the Starbases in the Solstice system.

First I strip the Exploration Fleet of it's Landers... they won't be needed for this operation and I have better uses for them. One is transfered to my HQ at the Ducal Seat where it can be used to transport newly built units up from Grails surface. The other is left at the Starbase, to be loaded onto a new Jump Transport I plan to build this turn to be used to carry landing forces in later turns. I then load up the Marines aboard the Exploration Fleet and send it on it's way. This turn I can only make it as far as Vigil, starships only have enough movement to make one jump per turn, so they won't arrive at their destination till next turn. I send the Home Fleet along for the ride, just to make sure my transport doesn't run into any nasty surprises.

[GrumpyMel]

On Grail, I only have a handfull of units to command at the start of the game. I move my main HQ into the Capital City so it is easier to transport off newly constructed troops. I have 2 combat legions to give orders to at this point. The Household Guard which is my largest and most powerfull Legion, I decide to advanced toward Dyfed to the southwest. Dyfed is the only other decent sized settlement on my home planet and I should be able to capture it on Turn 2 if I use the Guard. I decide to keep the Guard on Grail for this purpose, as it can pretty much handle any rebel band on the planet by itself. 1st Legion, my other combat unit, I keep in the Capital and transfer a handfull of Knights to it from my HQ to strengthen it. I have earmarked it for future use in the Heimdall Campaign.

[GrumpyMel]

Only two things are left for Turn 1. First I set my Production, I build as many infantry as I can, some horses and Artillery and my starbase builds a Jump Transport. These ground forces, along with 1st Legion and some troops I have in my HQ will be deployed into units on Turn 2 and transported up to my starbase on Turn 3, where the Jump Transport will take then along with the Lander I moved out of Exploration Fleet as my first wave for the Heimdall Campaign. This can depart Grail on Turn 3. I am launching the first wave for Heimdall first since it will be easier to seize isotope resources there which i anticipate I will need soon...and because I expect resistance there will be weaker. My plan is to build a 3rd Jump Transport and more ground troops and launch 2 waves against Solstice (the Exploration Fleet should be back by then) in rapid succesion and then launch the follow up wave for Heimdall. Hopefully the intial force won't have run into too much trouble by the time it reaches them.

I have one last decision to make before then turn ends... Diplomacy. There are 3 non-player factions in the game besides the Rebels. Those are the Minor Noble Houses, The Church and the Guilds. None of them have any units or territory in the game, but they will each provide your House with a special benefit if you can woo them to your side. You do this by playing Influence Cards. You have a card in your hand for each faction. They cost only 2 PP's to play and you can only play a factions influence card once every turn. Playing the card will increase your influence by 10 pts, it will also decrease your influence with the other 2 factions by 5 pts each (the factions don't like each other much). The first player to reach 100 influence with a faction aligns it to his House and gains it's special benefit. Once a faction has been aligned to your House, you cannot loose it...and no other player can gain it's allegiance. There is also a card that sabotages another Houses diplomatic efforts, reducing it's influence with ALL factions by 5 pts. That card costs 5 PP's to play and you can play one of these against each rival House once per turn. The way it works out is that it is fairly cheap to align a faction if nobody sabotages you (takes 10 turns)....however it can be pretty expensive if you are getting into a bidding war with another House.

As i am the first player, no one has bid on any factions yet. Since it's pretty inexpensive, I will try to influence one of the Factions and see if I get any competition (It's a bit impractical to try for 2 since the factions don't like each other...you end up sabotaging your own efforts when you try to influence more then one). I look at the benefits of each Faction. I decide right off the bat that I'm not interested in the Guild. Aligning them will give me 50 free resources of each type every turn. This can be nice for a House that is short on one or more resources. However, Cadwall has good resource planets in it's starting area. Therefore, I don't anticipate the Guild will be as much of a benefit to me as it might be to some other Houses. This leaves the Church which gives me 5 free PP's every turn...or the Minor Nobles which doubles the number of Knights/Nobles I get in my resource pools. Both of these benefits are nice (though not overpowering I believe). Purely as a matter of personal preference I choose the Minor Nobles. I play the appropriate card which costs me 2 PP's and gains me 10 Influence with the Nobility (reducing my Influence with the Church and Guild to -5 each). My turn is then done.

[GrumpyMel]

The second turn is not overly exciting for me. The Exploration Fleet does arrive in Solstice system and the Ducal Marines unload and capture the starbase. Since there is no garrison, this operation consists of nothing more for them then walking in and turning on the fusion reactors to power the base. Still my first expansion into another system! More importantly, I assure myself of the use of a Starbase for the Solstice Campaign.

On Grail I have built my initial landing force for Heimdall, but I won't be able to fly them upto the starbase and load them onto transports so the Fleet can depart until next turn. I do have my first battle of the game, which consists of the Household
Guard pushing the rebel force out of Dyfed and capturing the city. You can see this pictured below. I did this without air support as I know the rebels have a SAM battery in that city. They manage to do this while suffering minor casualties.

[GrumpyMel]

Turn 3 finally sees the launch of my expedition to Heimdall. The initial wave consists of 1 Noble and a small staff element which I will turn into a HQ once I land on the planet (HQ's are not air transportable in Advanced Tactics, so if you want one on a planet you need to transport it there as a regular unit then turn it into a HQ), a new Legion I dub the Heimdall Guard and 1st and 2nd Legions, a garrison unit of militia to hold the starbase and 1 artillery unit for fire support. Hopefully this will be enough to hold a foothold on the Planet until follow up forces can arrive. The expedition departs and makes it as far as Vigil (1 jump) escorted by my combat fleet. Next turn it will arrive in system.

On Grail, I begin to move 3rd Legion (which I had no space to load on the transport) toward the rebel held Organics to the southeast of my capital. Seizing resources is important at this stage. They spot the rebel garrison and I use my starfighters in system to strafe that force a bit.

[GrumpyMel]

Of interesting note, no one seems to be competeing with me for influence over the Minor Nobility, so I continue playing cards to increase my influence of them. Throughout the game it's important to keep an eye on what the other Houses are doing, which you can get an idea of from looking at the strategic screen and scanning the map. I do this every turn, but I won't mention it here unless it is particulary relevant (they are free to make thier own AAR posts in this thread if they like).

Finally, I move to my production (pictured below) which is now focused on the 1st and 2nd waves for the Solstice Campaign. One thing I make sure to do beyond building ground forces is to build both an additional Lander and Jump Transport as I'll need them for the Campaign. At this stage, you likely won't have captured many resources yet. So you'll want to keep a carefull eye on your resource stockpiles when producing. You don't want to run short of something that you need to have in order to build something critical. It's expected that your stockpiles will dip dramaticaly in the first few turns, capturing resources early can be important in order to offset this.

[GrumpyMel]

Turn 4 sees my invasion fleet arrive in the Heimdall system (pictured below). The first thing they do is sieze one of the starbases, as I will use it to stage landings on the planet. I unload all ground forces from the Jump Transport onto the starbase in preperation for landing on the planet next turn. I also create a new unit on the starbase and transfer my lander which was stationed in the Fleet onto it. This is a little trick I picked up. It allows you to fly more transport missions each turn then you would be able to if you kept the landers loaded aboard your fleet. It also frees up your fleet to move right away, meaning it's free to do other things (like go back to pick up another wave) while you conduct landing operations. This turn my Exploration Fleet arrives back in Grail from dropping off the Ducal Marines at one of Solstice's starbases.

[GrumpyMel]

Back on Grail, I deploy the first wave for the Solstice Campaign into thier units. As before, I won't be able to transport them upto the starbase for loading onto transports until next turn. This will be followed in rapid succesion by a 2nd wave for Solstice as I expect rebel resistance on that planet to be significant. As soon as I can after that I will prepare the follow up forces for Heimdall.

As for operations on the planet itself, 3rd Legion captures an important Organics resource from rebels. This is important as I am building lots of foot troops and those require Organics to produce. Meanwhile, the Household Guard is hunting down the remnants of the rebels that retreated from Dyfed.

[GrumpyMel]

Despite the capture of a 2nd Organics resource, resource stockpiles are running criticaly low, as you can see from my Production Screen (pictured below). In fact, Isotopes now are so low that I have to halt starship production. I'll need to capture some Isotope resources before I can resume building those. Capturing resources and making sure that your production is balanced correctly are important considerations for expansion in the early game. That will factor in to my Landings on Heimdall next turn.

[GrumpyMel]

Turn 5 see's my first expansion onto another planet Heimdall. The previous turn I captured one of the starbases in the system and unloaded all my forces from thier Jump transport onto the base. Making a secure landing on another planet requires a bit of carefull preperation. Last turn I took the neccesary steps to make myself ready. In addition to unloading all my troops and transfering the lander to a new unit based out of the starbase, I also created a new unit for the 2 starfighters my fleet was carrying and base this out of the starbase as well. This will provide some much needed Air Support for my invasion.

The first and probably most important thing for me to do is select a landing site. Gerneraly you want to avoid dropping right on top of any enemy units, but you want to get close enough to a city so that you can establish a foothold on the planet and start building some local replacements. It's also ideal to select an area that is a little isolated from other cities on the planet... as you don't want the rebels to be able to respond too quickly. For my purposes, I selected a section of hills on the southeast portion of the planet, not far away from a city called Deep Core Two. The hills will give me good defensive terrain in case the rebels decide to try to overrun my LZ. The spot also has the benefit of being next to an Isotope Resource which is something I badly need to capture in order to rebuild my fast shrinking stockpile.

For the procedure itself, I first run a recon sweep of my selected drop zone with my starfighters. The rebels don't have any interceptors themselves.... if I were fighting another player that would be something I would need to worry alot about. However the rebels do have SAM batteries. If I were to drop ontop or even next to one...not only could they take out the unit I was landing but they also might even shoot down my Lander which would royaly muck up my invasion plans. So I send the starfighters in to make sure the zone is clear of air-defenses. The recon sweep shows clean and I instruct my Lander to paradrop the first unit, the Heimdall Guard, onto the spot. They make landfall safely and it looks like the entire zone is clear of defenders...including the Isotope hex which appears to unguarded. I take a bit of a risk and drop my next unit right onto it, capturing the undefended resource. I drop the rest of my forces down in and around the initial landing zone. I like to establish multi-hex zones so that if the enemy does attack my beachead on his turn, my forces will have somewhere to retreat to and thus not get wiped out.

In all, 3 Legions and an Artillery battery make Landfall on Heimdall. Not a large force, but I'll be sending in a follow up wave soon. Hopefully the present force will be sufficient to hold until they arrive. As a final move, I had one of my nobles and some staff loaded in with the Heimdall Guard. Since HQ's aren't air transportable in Advanced Tactics, I needed to move these SFT's as part of a regular unit. I now create a new HQ on the planet from these. I finnish by assigning the units on planet to it. This is a little risky since it reduces thier readiness this turn...but I want the HQ bonus available for them on the following turns. You can see the end result of my landing operation pictured below.

[GrumpyMel]

The other major bit of news for the turn is that the 1st wave of my Solstice invasion force launches from Grail. This consists of 4 Legions and some starfighters for air support, along with some SFT's to form an HQ once on planet. You can see this force arriving in the Vigil system pictured below. Next turn I'll launch a follow up wave comprising of 3 more Legions, 2 Artillery Brigades and an Engineer Brigade. The turn after that my follow up wave for Heimdall should be ready. Having built up my Space Forces to include 3 Jump Transports allows the ability to have a continious flow of troops moving toward my campaigns on multiple planets like this and is an important element of my strategy.

[GrumpyMel]

Finally, you can see my production for the turn. Note I am now getting Isotopes from the freshly captured resource on Heimdall since I directed it's production to the HQ I just created there. Resource Production has to make it's way to an HQ, just like any other type. However, once it arrives at that HQ it goes into a global pool and is available for builds anywhere!

[GrumpyMel]

Turn 6 sees the first wave of our Solstice invasion force reach it's destination and debark at a starbase in system, making preperations for landing next turn, just as our forces did in Heimdall previously.

The main ground action is on Heimdall itself, pictured below. While marching toward our first objective, the city of Deep Core Two, we stumble across a group of rebel engineers struggling to build a road on the frozen tundra of the planets surface. Our forces give battle.

Elsewhere, the follow up wave for the Solstice invasion departs Grail and the follow up wave for Heimdall is being readied for deployment.

[GrumpyMel]

Pictured below is our production for Turn 6. You will note that our priorties are shifting slightly. We've already built most of the ground forces we'll need for our initial invasions. We start to divert some Production toward PP's. We can use these in future to obtain new tech's through research. This can provide us with more advanced troop and ship types to bolster our forces.

[Bombur]

Turn 28. House Chian Shi played the turn but I´m having troubles with Internet access. Will fix this ASAP.