All the Knight Hawks rules focus solely on the Sathar and UPF Fleets plus the Rim later in the war.  There is never any mention of civilian involvement or Mega-corps or pirates, all of whom are directly affected by the war and would have been involved in some way.  Which begs the question, how many ships might be found in any given system at any given time?  What percentage of them are armed?

As this game has quickly evolved the introduction has been changed...

This game of the Second Sathar War is based on the Campaign from the the Knight Hawks rules.  We are looking for 4 admirals per side plus potential backups or assistants.  Some Admirals may even wish to have individual ship commanders.

I will see if I can adapt what happens in this game to work for the other game I had in mind, for now I just want to enjoy running this game the way I think it was always intended :)

If we get more than 8 players registering here it will good to have back ups as I assume there will be drop outs along the way.

So how are we handling a hex battle map?

I have found one blank map so far but it is only 55 hexes x 40 which I doubt will be big enough.  Still hunting...

Yeah, Imma need more room than that. What about doing it without hexes, and using the equivalent of a “protractor and tape measure?”

I'm not going to make any changes to the rules, what you suggest starts to make things complicated when it comes to maneuvering.  I can find a way to patch multiple hex maps together if necessary.

So while I wait for you guys to sort out who is taking command of what and getting your ship rosters sorted, I will continue musing about the composition of the ships in the Frontier.

After reading the Frontier explorer article about how many ships the Construction Yards could support in the Frontier, I agree around 1500 seems a good number.  I think that included the ship numbers from the UPF and Militia but I will consider those ships as extra, it is less than a hundred and does not skew the numbers too badly.  General consensus seems to be around half those ships are system ships, not capable of interstellar flight, mostly shuttles, local freight and passenger ships etc  In practical terms, most of these ships would have little combat value so I focused on the rest.

I figured the number of ships in any system at any given time was most likely related to the population of that world so I assigned a value to each population level.  Outpost = 1, Light = 2, Medium = 4, Heavy = 8.  Divided across all the planets of the Frontier I came up with 7 ships in an Outpost system, 14 Light, 28 Medium, 56 Heavy.

So the next step is to figure out what the break down is of those ships.  I figure they will fall into a few major categories:

Private Yachts/Cruisers etc  10%

Passenger Cruisers  20%

Mining 30%

Freight 40%

What do you guys think so far?

That seems like a reasonable way to estimate it. Remember that space fleet is paid for out of taxes so would be just a fraction of the size of the private sector shipping tonnage. Look at the United States military... Schneider and JB Hunt by themselves individually probably have more shipping ability than the entire US military. FedEx probably has more cargo planes. However the Federation is not on a total war footing like we were in World War II. The entire economic output of the Federation is not going to support the war effort, and I doubt they would be able to retool fast enough to matter given that this war is going to be over in a matter of just several tendays. So yes, there does need to be a lot of “civilian“ traffic that is several times higher than space fleet.

I don't know what the stats are like in the US but here in Oz small business is the biggest employer so I'd have to think based on that, then probably more than half of the civilian fleet would be owned by the Mega Corps

In reply to GM (msg # 7):

I like the breakdowns, but I disagree with the starship totals. Since HS 5 and below can be launched from a planet, they don't need to be created in a station. That means as many fighters, shuttles, assault scouts, scouts, explorers, research ships, yachts etc as the Frontier needed. You could can even say HS 5 Frigates and Freighters as well, but I am willing to say the warships need to be created at a Station with HS-5 Freighters and Transports being created on planet.

Just my pet peeve :)

In reply to GM (msg # 7):

Drop Mining to 25% and add Scouts/Explorers at 5%

Also, totally off topic, can the UPF get a Topic that lists all of the Defensive Space Stations (FORT,FSS,ASS) and their current status, weapons, etc? It will make it easier to keep track of these things. Thanks!

In reply to GM (msg # 1):

I want to discuss this rule:

Effects of a Misjump. Any ships that misjump during the course of this
strategic game are lost for the duration of the war. They may reappear later in
a campaign, if the referee wishes, but should not be brought back into the
war.

I can understand this if the war lasts only a month or two, but in case of Zeb's Guide, the war lasted 10 years! I can't believe a ship or fleet would be lost for that long. Any thoughts?

In reply to Frank Patnaude Jr (msg # 12):

There needs to be a serious penalty given the risk/reward for risk jumping. Moving that quickly is a big tactical advantage.

I suspect if any UPF fleet is out of play for two months, the war will be over for the UPF.

In reply to Robin Hood (msg # 13):

I agree with that. But since there are rules for jumping into an unknown system and then finding your way back out, I would rather use those instead of the gone for the entire game rule.

Are you not including the star liners, ag ships, and explore action/research ships?

If all you guys agree on this, then I am happy to use the risk jumping rules to find your back.

I will create the thread, you guys can populate it, there is a 'templates' thread you can copy Station info across :)

I don't want to mess with gunnery/pilot skills etc.

Just sayin'. If somebody misjumps from Risk Jumping I can see using the astrogation rules to get un-lost and back into the fight, but I don't want to have to keep track of individual skill levels aboard ships.

They have faction skills for UPF, Militia and Sathar.  Granted the Sathar have crap skills.

Based on the information provided, it seems we're NOT using this rule:



Or am I mistaken and missed something? It makes it kind of hard to make decisions if we don't know what ships are where.