Firestorm armada and Phoenix Rising equivalence - How?

So I wanted to give people something of an insight into the process I'm going through before I release the first version of Phoenix Rising. The whole basis of PR is to utilise the wealth of data from FSA v2, which was widely lauded as being one of the most balanced games out there. So how do you do that when you're creating a new game?

Well the basis of this is statistical analysis - lots of it. Modelling a game like Firestorm is a fearsome process, because there are so many variables. In chess, there is a constrained 8x8 board, a set number and type of pieces and modelling that is difficult enough. There are a couple of hundred different Firestorm Ships, and a multitude of different interactions between them and their weapons, MARs etc....it's close to infinite in variation.

However, there are some restrictions that can be imposed - Scenarios impose limits on where ships can be at the start, movement limits where they can get to, turn limit and weapon arcs constrain weapon lethal zones....it's also not necessary to model EVERYTHING, just a representative selection of conditions that each ship can be examined under.

Now this still means there's a HUGE number of things going on, but it allows ships to be compared using actual criteria that are present in the game, rather than an arbitrary "feel". Once this has been done, all that's needed in the new game is to produce similar statistical results, and you have your ground level ruleset balanced for the prior edition - plus or minus any "tweaks" desired - the important thing here is that you can make these modifications with an actual idea of their impact, rather than just "winging it" - which is, to be fair, how most games development is done!

So - as I've mentioned in the past - the way I've approached this is by evaluating ships on two main criteria - how survivable they are against other ships, and how able they are to destroy enemy ships. When you boil everything else away, this is the crus of the value of most units in TTGs - how mean and tough are they, and how able are they to project that power (it's no good being super destructive if you never get in range to use that power). Now this all needs doing TWICE, of course - once for the old Firestorm Ruleset, and once for Phoenix Rising's rules. The great thing about doing this is that it's dynamic - when you change something, you can clearly see the impact that has on that ship and others.

So just how involved is this? Well, here is ONE cell from the Firestorm Armada calculator, used to calculate how many ships are able to damage it in one range band;

This is repeated for every ship in every range band for both DR & CR, main and supplementary weapons (torpedoes, mines etc). It takes into account firing arcs and speeds of the ships weapons used to target the ships over the course of a 6-turn game, as well as MARs, ship type etc etc. Has this driven me completely insane? Well, maybe!

The point here is that Firestorm Armada v2, whilst extremely flexible, has rules which affect how the ships interact and behave, and these constrain possibilities within the game. For example, a ship with a Primary weapon that only fires into RB1 and has a speed of 5" and Turn Limit of 3" is really not very dangerous, even if that weapon is enormously powerful, because in a 6-turn game it will probably only get a single shot in. That's probably less dangerous to a ship that has half the AD but a move of 12" and TL1, because that ship can project the threat of those AD more freely. All of this can be modelled, and whilst an approximation, if you cover 85-90% of the statistical incidences in the game, and because you're using this to compare ships against each other in the same framework, you get an unbiased and mathematically measurable value out  the other end.

Now once you have that "benchmark" of FSA v2, the "easy" part is (once you've done the same for PR, or any alternative ruleset, actually), you can start adjusting things to get THE SAME END RESULT. This is the important bit. What matters is that end set of numbers, and once you're there, because the whole thing is "live", you can then make further adjustments to amend specifics of how factions play and "feel" in the new ruleset, ratehr than making adjustments from "gut feel" and seeing how things play out. Of course, playtesting and player experience are still critically important, since this is what the final objective is - create a game that plays and feels like FSA v2, but (hopefully) ironing our some of the wrinkles in that ruleset.

The other by-product of all this is that it allows ship value to be based on actual gameplay impact, rather than (once again) what "feels" right. That in turn allows you to have a custom ship generator that doesn't have the problems associated with the fun - but flawed - v1 generator.

DIY Weathering Pigments - dirt cheap!

Weathering pigments are a great way to add, well....weathering, to your models - large or small. There's a plethora available from many manufacturers...and I've never bought a single one. "Why not?", I hear you cry...well, because I'm old enough to come from an ancient time before such things were really a thing, and I had to resort to other methods, and was taught this particular one by an expert modeller friend of mine who used to paint professionally for model companies, do a lot of military dioramas for model magazines, and who currently works for Forgeworld. His tip was simple and highly effective, as well as very cheap. I can pass it on in two words - chalk pastels.

Chalk pastels are available all over the place - from discount book stores to art supply shops and lots in between. You can buy a set of 25 to 48 of them for around £10 or less - and often much less. Don't get confused with oil pastels, however, or you'll get yourself in a real mess! here's a set I picked up from a local supermarket for about £4 or so.

So these square-profile blocks are very much like chalk - as the name suggests - but if you scrape the edge of one with a hobby knife, you get a fine pile of dust that you can apply exactly the same as a weathering powder. 

Use a damp brush and the pigment will dissolve in the same way two, meaning you can use them dry or wet to create stains or streaks - exactly like weathering pigments. I've used them to create everything from exhaust streaks to rust and oil stains. You can use white to create fading or colours to create tonal variations too - the advantage of a set of these pastels is you get a huge range of colours, so don't feel limited by the usual greys browns and black.

So these are great, but one of the pains of using them is scraping them each time you want to use them. Now, many of us can agree that Citadel paint pots suck at storing paints in - the design of them makes the paints dry out, the lids can be awkward and it's too easy to knock them over. I've transferred mine over to cheap dropper bottles, which makes them much easier to use. That leaves me with a lot of citadel paint pots. But wait - before carting these to the recycling, there's another use...holding my DIY weathering pigments. It turns out that a standard Citadel paint pot holds one full stick of chalk pastel...nice coincidence! Drying out isn't an issue for dry pigments, and the lids can be made less fiddly with a few hobby blade "adjustments" to them.

  

Now I'm not going to spend hours scraping chalk pastel sticks into powder, so I need another method...fortunately I have to look no further than my kitchen to my handy pestle and mortar.

 

Breaking the pastel into smaller pieces to work on helps here, thirds or quarters seem to be fine, and grind to a nice, fine powder. I do this on a sheet of paper so I can simply pour the resulting powder into the citadel pot after grinding. Tapping the pot on the table half way through helps the powder to settle if you're getting close to the top.

Using a stiff make-up brush also helps to dislodge the ground powder and get the last bits out

And that's it! A set of as many weathering pigments as you desire, for a fraction of the cost of "purpose made" commercial ones. Enjoy!