“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 #19: The Newest Ship in the Fleet by K. Patrick “Shadowmeld” Barley

One of the challenges we had to overcome in Talon was balancing fleet strength across the factions. We have several areas of fleet imbalance between Fighters, missiles and the Talon Dreadnaught, but as a whole the fleets needed to be able to field large or small forces that at least feel balanced. Through the first year of playtesting we started with a central ship the Heavy Cruiser (CA). Our first battery of play tests had us pitting three CAs against each other to test Talon tools versus Terran tools. It was this testing that rooted out the need to add afterburners and eventually lead to some Talon structural increases. Wave after wave after wave of Talon CAs clashed into their Terran counter parts, disruptors alight. Phasers and torpedoes fired back and as the dust settled, our win rates came closer and closer to even.

We then slowly folded more and more ships into the scenarios, first Scouts and Frigates, then Terran Light Cruisers and both factions’ Destroyers. The Talon Destroyers had us adding missiles for the first time, and while we were trying to weigh this unconventional weapon system it seems another issue flew under the radar. The Light Cruiser.

For all intents and purposes, the Terran Light Cruiser (CL) was a more agile, slightly less armored Heavy Cruiser with a torpedo launcher that fired in 3 different arcs. In the scenarios we were running at the time we started testing weapons for balance and took it as a given that ship design was balanced mechanically. Instead we were looking for range, accuracy and damage of weapon systems and seeing if tweaking those numbers would let us generate the scenario outcomes we were hoping for with these changes. What we failed to question then was the true strength of multi-arc weaponry, especially multi-arc torpedoes. Their longer range and high damage output makes them a serious threat in this game of micro movements. By being able to alpha strike their payload (fire all of their weapons simultaneously) against ships in a 270 degrees of fire and versatile range envelopes, the CL’s window of counter play is really small. They are the epitome of the Terran ship design, scrappy underdog, with well-designed weapon and power systems.

Eventually, we began testing large scale battles, with the Dreadnaught, Battleships and Battlecruisers and were able to test the bigger weapons. As we implemented rules to balance our largest disparities, it put into perspective the glaring hole we had in the middle of our fleet structure. We had Fighters and Scouts, followed by Frigates, both factions’ Destroyers and then the Light Cruiser. With Terran (at the time) holding four of those lightest of classes of ship (to Talon’s 2), we knew we were developing an identity for them as more of a swarming faction with reliable durability, but slower maneuverability. With the Talon sporting numerous CA’s in most scenarios and fleet builds, we felt confident in the CA balance because of the numbers of play tests we ran with them against the Terran CAs.

However, it wasn’t until later in testing that we started running smaller fleets against each other that were built on point values alone, instead of scripted scenarios. It was at this point that we realized there wasn’t much choice for Talon in the smaller fleet battles, and the choices we did have were limited to ships that were less compelling in overall design due to their lower cost. Let’s face it, firing a pair of missiles once every other round and at range while you wait to recharge isn’t all that compelling of a game, especially when your opponent is firing his phasers, recharging them with his battery and overall doing more with his higher power curve and more interactive ship. The failure here wasn’t in poor design, but rather the failure of an individual aspect of the game when dragged to the extreme of low total ship point fleets.

With the intent to build these low point fleets as tests of the point balance system, we had to look at a way to improve the diversity of choice Talon had, while also possibly bringing in line the strength of the Terran CL as it was beginning to come to our attention that it sported a problematic load out. At about this time Jim had just wrapped up his first draft of the Space Empires tie in rules, and was passing his charts around to get our input. One of the things I noticed on the charts was a ship size conversion for Terran ships. Scouts and Frigates were ship size 1, Destroyers were ship size 2 and the Terran CL was ship size 3, with a small annotation that said that Talon must research ship size 3 but gained no new ships. On the other side of things, Bob and I had been discussing how to value multi-arc weapons in our weapons document and that we were sure that that is what was making the CL feel stronger than the Terran CA, despite it having fewer weapons, shields and hull.

“Why don’t we have a Talon CL?” I asked.

At first Bob said, “We could, but we’re so far into testing…”

Then Jim said, “Do we really need it? Would it make the game more compelling?”

Then, with an argument similar to the one above, work began on the newest ship in the fleet.

We set some design expectations for the new ship:

-No missiles. We were still finalizing their rules, and wanted the CL to feel different from the Terran CL with a phaser and Torpedo, but in a way that also didn’t mimic the CA too heavily.

-It needed to be different enough from the rest of the Talon fleet to justify its inclusion. Fleets don’t build ships just to have one of every size.

With these aspects in mind we tossed around some ideas for layout, and we started a discussion about weapon arcs that could be compelling. One idea was to go full on for a cheaper ship that fired only in the forward arc and was designed to fly dead at the opponent and turn around quick to make their pass, like a jouster. Another design was to give three disruptors across all three arcs, to counter the power of the Terran CL. Lastly we had an interesting concept for a lopsided weapons array, that fired two weapons out of two arcs and one weapon out of the opposite side arc. Either concept we looked at had us running three disruptors, so we knew that is what we wanted to stick with. The jouster concept was conceptually similar to the Talon fleet as a whole, and while we could go overboard on turn radius reductions, the ship was still likely to take too much time setting up for its ideal role to actually perform that maneuver more than once. We quickly realized the triple arc Disruptor design was a more powerful CA, with less cost, and even more arc abusive that the Terran CA, due to the weapon recharge synergy. Lastly, the offset weapons load out was an interesting concept, but would be the only asymmetric weapons design in the entire game, and that was something we didn’t really wish to bring into the game, especially this late into development.

In the end, we chose to use a design that mimicked that blended all three designs into one ship. We used the joust’s three forward, the asymmetric’s 2 and 1 division and the triple-arc’s arcs we gave to the single disruptor. This versatile structure allowed the ship to take on more roles, in combat and bend with your situation and fleet design to engage the enemy in unpredictable ways. This was just the ship design we wanted out of something like the CL, but was it solid enough to warrant adding the ship to the game this late? Was it truly that much different than the CA?

As designed, the simple answer was no. But there was hope. The Terran BC had been bugging me at this point. It was a ship with a standard Terran array of weapons, but it was designed to have a high amount of available power to act as a CIC ship for the fleet. In short, it was different than the other Terran ships through a method other than weapons. Talon had yet to gain a ship that was different in this way. With just the right power curve for the Talon CL, we could create an asymmetric balance between the fleets, establish the CL’s role amongst the fleet, tidy up the Space Empire’s conversion chart and stick to our design goals and requirements for the CL, all while deepening the flavor of each fleet’s concepts. Talon have a fast maneuverable CIC ship, taking as little hull as possible for tactics and information and utilizing their weight to bring bigger guns to bear. Terrans house their CIC ships in a larger standard ship, protecting vital information and power resources as best as they can. Talon focuses its technological development on larger guns and more missile tubes. Terran focuses on smaller more agile craft with strong versatile weaponry.

With this concept locked down, it was just a matter of finalizing the numbers using our point value sheet, setting a cost below the Talon CA as close as we could to the Terran CL, for simple user efficiency. The newest ship in the fleet was born, and Bob’s job of editing Player Aid Cards, rule books, scenarios, examples of play, and just about every document in the box began. Meanwhile, I got to pull the ship out and play with it a bit.

Previous Article in the Series: Talon Tuesday Issue #18: The Player Aid Cards

Next Article in the Series: Talon Tuesday Issue #20: Talon Puzzle 1

Author: Patrick Barley