3-6 Jumpships per counter, roughly 500 total, about 100 per house (but 50 of those were merchants and abstracted). This means the invasion of Tikonov in the 4th SW by the 8 Crucis Lancers RCTs would have used 25 of the 50 Davion jumpship counters. The civilian ships can be requisitioned, but reduce income and technology from the regions it was taken from. 1 counter per warship, but there were none in the 4th SW when I initially was going to model the game.
10-15 Dropships per counter, roughly 2000 total, about 400 per house, again half were abstracted but these typically never get requisitioned. The Tikonov assault used only about 20 of the 200 available dropship counters.
Each mech battalion was represented, as were a few companies (like the Black Widows). Total of around 1500 counters, 300 per house. I tinkered with making some of these have integral dropships to reduce the dropship count. There was about 200-300 aerospace wings per house as well, though many of these were integrated with dropship flotillas. Mech units weren't generic at all, and some units are far more capable than others of the same size. LAMs had unique abilities.
Armor was by regiment and sometimes brigades, there would be about 2000 of these, around 400 per house. Infantry would have had about 1 per brigade or 3 regiments, or about another 400 counters per house. These would be generic, like "Light Hover", "Assault Tracked", "VTOL", "Artillery", "Jump Infantry", "Grunt", etc.
There would be 1 of 3 ways to represent damage, never decided which to use:
#1 - Counters with #1 to #4 on them, each representing a step of damage, if damage was taken at step #4 the counter was flipped, and another 5 steps could be taken. This means 1 "damage" would be a mech company, armor battalion, or infantry regiment destroyed. This would increase the counter count dramatically, but there would be very little record keeping. A mech company counter would be destroyed with 1 hit.
#2. Track all unit damage/quality/etc on paper, lots more paper, lots less counters
#3. Counters could be damaged and flipped, or perhaps just ok or destroyed, or maybe crippled and destroyed with a counter, I didn't like these much
Those were the big chunks, other counters included:
- 1 per factory, just a name really, the factory stats were tracked on a piece of paper
- Around 20 or so counters for leaders per faction, maybe named, probably generic with stats tracked on paper
- Counters for castle brians, SDS, Caspar, Battle Stations
- Counters for various things like depots, fortifications, caches, command centers, political capitals, etc
- 1 counter per university/academy/school. These were used to track techs, pilots, etc (you need a # of trained pilots to actually use a # of mechs for example).
- Lots of counters for "technical support groups", which would have 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, etc on them. 1 "TSG" could support 1 counter, 2 may be able to build an infantry unit, 4 for an armor unit, 8 for a mech/aerospace unit, 16 for a dropship, 32 for a jumpship, 64 for a warship, etc. This was the best way I could model the whole "loss of technology" over the succession wars. Loose a couple facilities, need more maintenance, eventually you don't have enough techs to build warships... then start loosing jumpships, etc, etc... eventually you barely have enough techs for maintenance. I *really* liked this approach!
- Some miscellaneous counters like ones for Pony Express, Black Box, Irradiated planets, discovered SLDF cache/core, Numerous generic planets for newly discovered systems (yes, you can explore!), planets that lost their militia, etc
- A hundred or so counters per faction to place on "conquered regions", a region being a 4-8 hex area
I went with 7.5 LY hexes as doing so meant only a few hexes had >1 system in them. 30 LY hexes means LOTS of hexes have multiple systems, and the game becomes more abstract and I didn't want that. 7.5 LY also means you can move 4 hexes, so allows some strategic maneuver. Turns were 1 week, allowing 1-2 jumps per week, with 1 additional turn of transit.
Some other notes:
- Systems had more than just a dot and name. In their hex you could see if they had freshwater or not and how much of the planet was water, if the planet had atmosphere, primary terrain, HPG class, Zenith/Nadir recharge and/or battle stations. This means unless your armor/infantry battalion was vacuum capable, only a mech unit would be good on some planets. Mechs can also do assaults on planets without friendly forces already there without negative modifiers. Planets also had a defense rating, for a # of militia units on planet.
- Espionage was going to be an "addon", and be very similar to the ISIF espionage rules which I kinda liked. Counters would be placed in your "espionage" phase to get detail on a planet, sabotage/assassinate/insurrection stuff, etc. There would be dummy counters too, each player would just go around and place these counters, and turn them over to determine what happened.
- Supply was going to be an "addon" as well. Basically units used 1 supply to fight for 1 turn, unless energy+fusion based they would suffer negatives if they had no more supply. JS/DS flotillas could carry supplies to the battles along with the units. Supply depots could be placed. This would mostly be tracked on paper.
- Communication delays. Optionally you could write down all orders for turns in advance, if a unit had no order they had a default one. This meant there would be communication delays between leaders. A faction leader typically has a high bonus to orders it gives, so it benefits you to use him/her to give orders. Those orders went to regional commanders which could forward them. Instead you could just give orders with regional commanders that wouldn't give as much of a benefit. Mercenary units could be individually ordered with benefits based on their commander. I think this would have worked really well, the Big Mac Attack would have made sense, as would the benefits of the black boxes, the comstar interdiction, and the Davion success in the 4th SW as they gave lots of orders before hand.
- Hidden bidding when merc contracts expired, and mercs may or may not decide to leave their employer even with no offers
- Fatigue/Morale. Optional rules to track fatigue, basically if you fight too many turns you suffer, and Morale to surrender or flee in the face of battle.
- Random events. Discovering the SLDF memory core, finding an SLDF depot, pirates, insurrections, stellar events, defections, etc
Probably more, but that was just what I remember. The map was the killer for me. 8-9' with .625" hexes was just too big, I thought about breaking it into "fronts", like the "Federated Suns-Capellan Confederation Front" and then allowing the ability to combine all games, but I always thought it was weird to just control "part" of a faction.
A full map with clans would be 9.5' x 17.5'. If I drop the clans, and a few of the far off worlds (I could place them on the map border with a "turns to get there" track, I can get the map down to about 8' wide and 7.5' high. That is almost acceptable.
However, with the large numbers of counters, and the additional detail I wanted to have on star systems, I decided to just make it into a computer game. But I may be suffering from project creep.
If I had some interest in the above plan, and had a few people to do some datamining for me, I could bring myself to complete it.
This same engine, with most of the same parts, could represent any succession war, the jihad, dark age, age of war, etc, etc. The reunification war would be easy to model as well, as you really could break up the maps into just the 4 periphery factions and give the SLDF forces that went in, though the whole loss of technology and such wouldn't be as applicable and data would be pretty much completely home grown.
