Rumors of discontent and division forming within the Empire are unsubstantiated and completely false. These rumors, if they were to even exist, likely come from the neighboring (to an Imperial colony) state hellbent on conquering and oppressing our people. Reports from the front lines that the Empire are the aggressors in this "colonialist" "war" of "aggression" are also false.
That being said, the Emperor himself has deemed it necessary to end this war promptly and quickly and has called upon his trusted Imperial Bureau of Design and Engineering, you, to begin reforming the technology employed by the army overseas and give our men the edge needed to end the fighting and bring them home. For purely benevolent reasons and not at all due to needing the forces to ensure domestic stability. Certainly. The Emperor wouldn't have denied that was the case if it was the case. The Emperor does not lie, after all.
And with this, your job begins. You are all part of a single team -- the Empire's Imperial Bureau of Design and Engineering. There are
no factions. There
will be no factions.
There will not be a collapse of the Empire in 3 turns, forcing everyone within this one team to choose a side. Since again, if that
were the case why would you be thinking that it
doesn't happen?
Steam Empire is, and you may have guessed this via excellent inference from the title, an Arms Race. Anyone familiar to the genre should know roughly what to expect, and anyone new to it should know that they can hop in whenever. You don't need to study all the following rules to know how to play; they're more for reference purpose.
In short, you design equipment for your side and get to see how that equipment helps your soldiers fight the enemy. The game is divided into turns of set time intervals, each turn divided into phases. An explanation of phases for those unfamiliar with the Arms Race genre follows:
Design Phase: design new equipment for your military to use; anyone in the team can submit a design proposal and the team votes on one (or more, in special circumstances) proposal for their team to work on that round. In the following Design Results, based on a dice roll & difficulty of the design based on your technology level/experience, you get to see what your engineers came up with based on the proposal.
Revision Phase: works similar to the design phase, but on a much smaller scale -- use revisions to change things about existing designs or make new designs/variants with a few changes/whatnot.
Battle Phase: Decide how to deploy your designs; with your current resources as the budget, outfit your platoons with your designs and send them out to fight. Then after this, you'll receive the Battle Report detailing fighting with the other side and how your designs/deployments fared. The
Internal Affairs Phase can exist though won't always appear, and simply exposits ongoing affairs and events within your side or anything else that may be relevant. Plot/lore/fluff stuff. If there's any player interaction in one of these phases, then it'll be detailed at the time.
The Battle Report is always posted in the core thread (this thread), and is universal to both sides. The rest of the phases/reports start/end at the same time but each side gets their own post about it in their own thread. That is, if there were separate teams with their own threads. There is only the Empire. There will not be a split and there will not be two threads created for the two fighting sides. Because that would never happen.
The setting is (slight fantasy) steampunk. With some softer sci-fi behind it (in other words, I won't tell you that your cool steam annihilator mech immediately trips and falls because mechs are a silly idea in reality). If you have any questions on a more specific part of what kind of technology is possible, please go ahead and ask me.
Designs and revisions are, barring scale, identical. A proposal is voted on as a team, then you get a report on the resulting tech/equipment/what-have-you from the GM. Me.
Every design/revision has a difficulty:
- Easy: The proposal represents absolutely nothing new. You're working entirely within existing concepts and technology you have plenty of experience with, on a relatively (depending if it's a design or revision) small scale. Chances are you'll get what you want, but with low risk comes low reward. Don't expect something game-changing.
- Normal: You're working with new technology/concepts/whatever, but still have one foot firmly within known territory and aren't playing it too risky. You can get a lot done with designs/revisions of this caliber, but it's still not particularly ambitious.
- Hard: You're working with new technology and concepts. Whatever it is you're doing, it's based on prior experience/technology/knowledge/designs/whatever, but it's new and exciting. Very respectable ambition that can get very nice results, but doing poorly on something this difficult will likely leave you with nothing but (respectable) experience and a pile of scrap that was supposed to be a prototype.
- Very Hard: Bold new ventures into bold new territory! The concepts here aren't completely alien to you, but are very novel nonetheless. A lot of exciting breakthroughs can happen, but it's extremely unlikely to come out with a perfect design/revision. Consider yourself lucky to have something useful; it's arguable that at this point the most valuable reward is the knowledge and experience gained in the process.
- Insane: You have no idea what you're doing and you're stumbling around in the dark hoping to hit your head on something promising, and write down where it was before you bleed out. While all other difficulties will always reward experience even in a complete failure, it's very possible to come out of an Insane design/revision with nothing to show for it. Generally speaking, this is a bad idea. But who knows? It'll be obvious and rare when a proposal is Insane difficulty. It's the equivalent of trying to build an ICBM in your backyard.
Unlike in other Arms Races, the difficulty of a design/revision does NOT affect the dice roll. It's more a representation of what to expect. Getting an 8 on a Very Hard design means the same as getting an 8 on an Easy design: you're going to get the best you could have hoped for. Just, what this means exactly changes depending on if it's an Easy or Very Hard design.
You have a few different types of resources, and a given amount of each. The resources in question are as follows:
- Steam Cores: An extremely precious resource, Steam Cores represent extreme investment in time, talent, resources, infrastructure, and knowledge. It's said that in the definitely-impossible case that the Empire were to collapse, it's unlikely any new Steam Cores would be produced again for a long time. Unlike the other resources' quantities representing some vague arbitrary quantity of that resource, 1 "unit" of steam cores is literally one single Steam Core. But do not misinterpret their value. They are a resource to be used.
More specifically, a Steam Core is a piece of technology whose potential has barely even begun to be realized. It allows for tremendous feats in steam-based machinery and technology. It's truly a black box of mystery, wonder, and maybe magic honestly who knows. Expect to base your strategy around designs employing Steam Cores. - Metals: Brass, steel, iron, and the like. A plethora of different metals important for machinery, armor, and much more.
- Coal: Fuel. The majority of designs and equipment will need at least some of this. Whether it's fuel for soldiers' heating and food, or fuel for tremendous machines of war, it's vital. Coal can also effectively represent general infrastructure cost behind something. Leather armor, for instance, would have a cost in coal representing how much fuel was required in the processes involved in making the armor from obtaining the hide all the way to putting the final touches on the armor.
Resources' quantities are based around units, one unit representing (barring the Steam Core where 1 unit = 1 core) some arbitrary and purposefully vague relatively large amount of that resource. Every design that can be employed in the field (and perhaps more) will have a cost in units of different resources. A design's cost is represented by a series of bracketed numbers sharing the color with the resource they represent the cost of. A design with a cost of
[3] [2] [3] means that design costs 3 steam cores, 2 metal, and 3 coal.
Currently, the Empire's Logistic Corps handles the specifics of resource usage and allocation. But say in the impossible event that the Empire were to collapse -- and it would never -- for your sake you could estimate that a design's costs, when fulfilled, can produce/maintain enough of the design in question to outfit a platoon of about 50 men. How many specific instances of the design represent a platoon's worth depend on the design. A rifle would probably be given to every soldier unless specified otherwise. A tank would probably just mean one for a platoon. Unless otherwise stated, a design can be given to a platoon multiple times. Whether the platoon can make use of multiple cost's worth of a design is a different question.
Resources change based on several factors, including territory, and represent your total capability. If you have, for example, 50 coal, that means you can use up to 50 coal outfitting your platoons. Next turn, unless something changes, you will still have 50 coal regardless of how it was used last turn. This remains true for steam cores, though you are reusing the same ones. If you spent a steam core on Design A one turn then spend it on Design B next turn, then that means you physically took it out of Design A and slotted it into Design B. Steam Cores are quite modular.
In such an impossible scenario where you were to handle deployment of designs yourself, it would happen every Battle Phase. You would have your (theoretical) platoons and choose what designs to outfit each platoon with and where to send those platoons. Travel time is not a factor. Or it wouldn't be a factor. Because such a scenario would never, ever,
ever happen.
Once the battle phases start, your side is given a certain number of platoons to equip (see Resources spoiler) and deploy as you see fit.
This is where Theatres (or Theaters. I generally call them Theatres because I am pretentious, but sometimes use it interchangeable with theater instead) come into play. They represent distinct regions relevant to your goals and grander strategies. A theatre is generally quite big, though the exact size varies based on what the theatre is. They're all connected to each other along lines; to attack one theatre, you may need to hold the theatre closer to your center of operations first. This will be clearer when a map is provided, and this will be done at the beginning of turn/year 0. Effectively, the map is divided into 2 "lanes" along which the theatres exist.
Every theatre has a distinct and unique terrain and operating conditions that affect the effectiveness of designs there. A tank will be more useful in the plains than in mountainous areas.
Each theatre is divided into chunks of territory which represent relative control of it by the opposing sides. A theatre with 4 chunks of territory could have 1 section belonging to Team A, and 3 belonging to Team B. In a single battle report where they fight over that theatre, victory gives the winning side one of the losing side's pieces of territory.
If the theatre being fought over is completely owned by one side at the beginning of the battle report, then combat will actually be taking place where the theatre in question crosses over to the connected theatre closer to the HQ of the side who doesn't own the fought-over theatre. Victory by the side with complete ownership will instead gain them territory in the subsequent theatre.
Most theatres have resources in them. Meaning that when one side has held complete ownership over the theatre for more than a turn (so it won't come into play the very same turn that theatre is conquered), the resources in that theatre will become available for use in outfitting platoons for the owning side until/unless they lose complete ownership of the theatre.
Platoons are assigned a theatre to be sent to every Battle Phase. Travel time doesn't matter -- a platoon will always be wherever you need it. At least, if your logistics network allows it.
Platoons favor variety, synergy, and specialization over quantity. Assigning 3 identical platoons to one theatre is unlikely to give a particularly large advantage (though it will be of notable use; just not tremendous). Instead of attempting to overflow the enemy with countless legions, focus on specializing your platoons, giving them specific roles and the equipment needed to excel in those roles, and let them work together. A tank platoon and a scout platoon will do much better than 2 tank platoons, for instance.
Some theatres are more "abstract" -- namely the Sea. These theatres don't have territory, and instead of levels of dominance. Platoons can generally still fight in these theatres (with the right design -- a bunch of men with rifles by themselves won't do much at sea) but instead of winning territory, you achieve a certain level of dominance in the theatre for that and only that battle report. For example, holding partial dominance over the opponent at sea means that your troops will likely do better in theatres affected by the sea. Sea power helps fighting in islands, and so on.
A fancy new gun is only useful if you can get it to the front line in the first place, get the soldiers there so they can use it, then get ammo there so it can be shot.
This is where the Logistics Reports come into play. For every theatre that your military is seeing activity in, you'll receive a logistics report. It's similar to the Sea & Sky theatres in its abstractness. It'll heavily impact performance (invading a cold region, for instance, will go a lot better when you can keep your troops fed and warm and supplied). Performance in the Logistics Report is affected by the deployment of designs in the associated theatre, especially logistics-focused designs. A really effective cargo transport may not be good at shooting your enemies, but if you deploy a platoon focused around it in a theatre or attach it to an existing platoon, logistics will be a lot smoother there. Logistics is also impacted by Logistics Load; the sum of all Metals & Coals resources spent on deploying designs in that theatre. The higher the load you have, the more strain will be put on your logistics in the theatre in question.
The Logistics Report represents the effectiveness of your side's, well, logistics in a specific theatre. How well it transports materiel and troops and supplies to the front lines. How well it brings resources from exploited theatres to your factories. How well your factories produce your designs outside of just having enough resources. How well your troops are trained. Basically every "behind the scenes" aspect relevant to military performance is covered in the Logistics Theatre.
Every theatre, the logistics theatre reports how your designs are used to this end. A higher Logistics Load puts more strain on the theatre and may hurt combat performance if your logistics aren't ready for it. Many things can put strain on it though, not just Logistics load. The enemy side can negatively affect your logistics. Whether through sabotage/bombing or literally anything else, it is possible to have your logistics hurt by enemy actions. Bad "performance" in the logistics report will hurt your effectiveness, and good performance naturally helps.
Every update has that phrase in invisible text to make them easy to search. And for the love of god,
do not use this phrase in your own posts. This is not my invention; I stole the idea from someone else.
There is of course only one side. The Empire. There will not be two differing sides. There will not be a map representing the Empire's broken territories, because the Empire is not and will never be broken. There will be no theatres, because as the Empire remains intact (and always will) that will never be your job. You will never have to pick a side within a collapsing empire.
Never.
The Empire remains eternal.
Author
Topic: Steam Empire, an Arms Race: Year -1, Internal Affairs Phase (Read 19603 times)