“Talon Tuesdays” is an article series appearing on InsideGMT periodically on Tuesdays.  It features articles from the Talon development team regarding the game’s design, development and upcoming release.

Issue #15: Lifetime Score

The goal of most battles in Talon is control over that region of space.  This is expressed with our default victory condition: Last Ship Standing.  That means for most games, the winner is the side with ships remaining on the map, regardless of how many ships that side lost during the battle. This is important because we felt that if your fleet beats up another fleet and then retreats, you didn’t really achieve much for your faction. The goal is the conquest/securing of territories as represented in most scripted scenarios.  It’s a different ball game in Empire War, where one goal may be to deal significant financial damage to your opponent. However, even then you need to avoid losing territory.

So this default victory condition helps to prevent “hit and run” tactics. There are other game types, like planetary invasion or escort missions, where there are other ways to lose/win the battle.  We’ll talk more about those specific game times in another Talon Tuesday. We did, however, want to reward players that were able to fight more efficiently.  That is, destroy enemy ships while preserving your own.  That goal may seem obvious, but once you play Talon, you will realize that situations may arise such as putting a key ship in a dangerous position to win a battle. For instance, in order to “alpha strike” the enemy’s Dreadnaught and force a critical damage roll, you may need to turn your Battleship, exposing it’s down shield to other nearby enemy vessels. Is it worth the risk? If there was no ship preservation incentive, it would be a near no-brainer decision.

Instead we have a “Lifetime Score” system that uses degrees of victory for points.  You’ll find this very useful, especially if you play the same few opponents on a regular basis. At the end of every battle, you add up the Ship Point value of ships destroyed on each side.  Divide the loser’s total by the winners total then an amount of victory points based on this Degree of Victory as follows:

With those break points for Victory Points, it’s pretty easy to do the math in your head. So if I destroy 3 times more Ship Points worth of ships than you destroyed AND I win the battle (I have the Last Ship Standing) I won a devastating victory and will add 3 points to my Lifetime Score.

These points can come from pretty much any game mode in the Talon box: Playing scripted scenarios, design-your-own scenarios, Empire War and Campaign Games.

A “Campaign” is just an agreed upon series of scenarios (they can be scripted from the Play Book or ones you’ve designed). The last scenario in a Campaign has its victory points doubled. The player with the most victory points scored during this Campaign is the winner of the Campaign and will get 5 bonus victory points added to his Lifetime Score.

How do you preserve your ships (or attempt to spoil a devastating victory for your opponent)?

Retreat.

All ships (except Fighters and Bases) are equipped with FTL drives. The FTL drive and the NFTL drive are essentially the same engine. When you’re in combat, you’re flying using your NFTL drive which distorts space around your ship, allowing you to move “faster” since you’re moving through less space.  The FTL drive actually pushes you into subspace, allowing your ship to move many times faster the speed of light.

The FTL drive needs to do a few things in combat before you can retreat a ship: It has to be “spooled”, you have to be traveling at a Speed of 1 and not be in terrain, during the “retreat phase” of a given Round. The FTL drive is “spooled” once the Round number is equal to the total hull boxes printed on a given ship. So a Cruiser that has 6 hull boxes is spooled and could FTL out by Round 6.   Ships have to undergo this process because dropping out of FTL to NFTL speed (entering combat) leads to an energy build up within a ship’s drive system that is proportional to a ship’s mass. This energy must be gradually released, and the drive charged, before it is ready to jump again. It’s a side effect of traveling faster than the speed of light.

In Empire War and some scripted scenarios you cannot score as many victory points. This is due to the uneven nature of some of those battles. For instance, in Empire War if I have 1 more Logistics Point worth of ships than you, I cannot score a Devastating Victory in this battle. It’s not a balanced battle.

We have a rule in the Play Book on Sportsmanship.  I borrowed some of this from an old Starfleet Battles manual because I think it’s important to emphasize things like that in this kind of war game. For example: It’s possible that you could be stuck in a battle where there is no reasonable chance of victory. You could be moving fast enough to outrun the enemy ship, but have no weapons. Slowing down to retreat would mean your annihilation but the enemy can’t catch up to you. We strongly advise conceding such a game and starting another. I’d much rather play another game than needlessly drag one out.

I’m currently working on an “app” that will help track Lifetime Score, Empire War games (and ship assignments) and Design-Your-Own scenario setups… however, I’m the only guy working on it and I have a day job too :).  My goal was to have it ready by the time the game ships. It won’t be. But hopefully in the near future you’ll be able to use your smart phone as a player aid for Talon.

Previous Article in the Series: Talon Tuesday Issue #14: Space Empires Crossover

Next Article in the Series: Talon Tuesday Issue #16: The Play Book

Author: Bob Seifert