(01-28-2019, 04:27 PM)Orange Lantern Wrote: I'm curious. :
How do you play Silent Death – Do you come together for some quick scenarios every now and then or do you play elaborate campaigns with some sort of storyline tying the encounters together or something in-between?
And if you play scenarios, do you create your own or do you repeat those from the books for convenience's sake (and because there are really lots and lots of them)?
Or anything else that's unique to your games. Please tell me.
At the minimum when introducing noobs to the game including non-gamers (I've done this more than a few times at sci-fi/fantasy fan conventions in years past) I issue everyone a pair of identical fighters, nothing too complicated (my fave go-to op-for mix for noobs is Night Hawks pitted against a smaller number of Sharks. I give the Night Hawks some better pilots with a decent Gunnery skill (usually 6). The speed advantage and range advantage enjoyed by the Shark over the older Night Hawk is therefore roughly balanced out (and gods help any pilot of a Shark if they wind up in range of the Night Hawk's principal weapon system. What has always ensued is a bloodbath that gets everyone amped up and ready for another go (and wanting to learn how to use Missile Launchers and torps, a desire that I fulfill promptly).
As the players get more comfy, I just up the ante, and get tighter about keeping the TPV even between the two sides. I'll also throw in House specific craft such as the Hayabusa or the Spectre to liven things up. So once torps and using missiles is no long unfamiliar, in come the TPACs and MPACs accordingly. Then its off to gunboats, and eventually Warhounds.
With Warhounds I follow the KISS principle. I limit the number to one or two per side, and enforce the 30 second/60 second rule for players moving their fighters and gunboats (30 second rule) and escort class vessels (60 second rule).
The only optional rule I personally make use of is the Easing Target Speed Restriction rule. This means that fewer if any get left out when it comes to cannon fire (and keeps things more interesting IMHO).
For "terrain" asteroids are wonderful, and drift is no less entertaining. I personally love using asteroids to break up enemy formations, serve as mobile cover against cannon fire, and even for springing a tactical "ambush" if I can snooker a player into moving a particular fighter into a position where the impending movement of the asteroids is going to unmask their ship right into the LOS of one of my ships at a position of advantage for my bloodthirsty pilot(s) to exploit.
When Sheldon and I were regularly "butting heads," we typically deployed 300 to 1000 TPV depending upon how messy we wanted things to get. As we are both homicidal maniacs when it comes to fighter combat as well as good students of the Ilmarii Juutilainen school of fighter tactics (ie., "Attack! Attack! Attack!"), we fight our ships in mutually supporting wing pairs and will gang up on one another's individual ships whenever such an opportunity presents itself (or one of us manages to create the opportunity, and pounces on it accordingly).
"Pathetic earthlings. Hurling your bodies out into the void, without the slightest inkling of who or what is out here..."
- Ming the Merciless