New FGC anyone?

[Jaim Magnus]

Likewise; provided it's no later than, say, 3055, and earlier is better than later. A pre-3025 campaign could definitely be interesting.

A 3010 FGC was attempted and tanked.

[Crunch]

A 3010 FGC was attempted and tanked.

Indeed. The problem is balancing player interest (For instance having both Clan and IS factions to maximize appeal) with number of factions. I still think that post Jihad Marik splinter states might be the best way to go.

[WONC]

I still think that post Jihad Marik splinter states might be the best way to go.

That could be very interesting to play, especially with so many minor worlds that aren't officially part of any of the major regions.

I'd considered, a long while back, running an Inner Sphere in Flames game with some friends of mine that had a similar scope. To keep it simple, I'd thought about setting it at pre-Operation Revival (3049-ish), and only allowing the Fire Mandrill Kindraas as the playable factions. Unfortunately, it never panned out.

[Klingon]

I won't presume to speak for others; just myself. If it's at *latest* 3055, I'm in, at least as player. I can co-GM if wanted. Personally, I think 3025 itself is the richest opportunity, followed by 3050, but that's just me. I'd make a poll, with multiple answers possible, for what all eras people would play in and see where the most responses are.

[Paul]

No poll until a staff exists.

[chaosxtreme]

I can make time to be one of three.

[monbvol]

Well Paul my offer still stands.  I'm always glad to offer what assistance I can to the Fan Councils because it is something I rather like the concept of even if we haven't gotten the execution right yet.

[Paul]

Well, like I said. A team of at least 3 is what's needed. Individuals expressing interest means nothing if they won't work together.

Paul

[chaosxtreme]

Alright so we have two and we just need one more.

[Bergie]

Interested.  Personally I'd like to see a 3025-era game without Clans.

[monbvol]

My main concern is that the players will want too many different things and with how draconian I'm going to be about certain items if I wind up GMing another Fan Council it could easily fizzle out very quickly and I don't want that.

Ideally I'd love to take the opportunity to beta/play test any new ISiF rules in the works but honestly at this point it would not surprise me if that has been dropped from the plans for IO.

As for Era I do think 3025 may be the best bet with the restriction of only allowing the 5 Great Houses.

[Fatebringer]

<<Hides his white feathered hat>> I've seen too many people to disappear on me to try and run one of these gain, but I could be interested in playing again, Clan or not.

[worktroll]

Also, the people wanting to run an FGC are going to have to convince us Admins that they've thought about this and know how they're going to handle it.

For example, the last FGC foundered because of a combination of:
- highly detailed ruleset requiring complex order submission
- a very large number of factions ranging in size from Niops to Lyran Commonwealth
- insufficient faction heads capable of managing order submissions
- combat resolution & logistics systems that could be exploited

Any attempt to revive the same system would not be well regarded, unless the people involved could discuss how they intend to manage those problems, as well as the usual issues of metagaming, MegaMek vs. hasty resolution, etc.

FGCs: they're for life, not just for Christmas. ;)

W.

[monbvol]

That is close enough to describe what's caused the fall of every Fan Council I've been a part of.

My thoughts to solve some of that:

-Forget Megamek resolution period.  Every time I've seen it supported game turns get stretched out because games were not getting played and frankly if all a person is interested in is larger scale Megamek games there are the various Mekwars servers and MekHQ.  The only way I'll allow it is if the Clans are involved and it is used to resolve personal trials only.

-Tracking.  Units, systems, production, research, transportation, and various other items can make things a pain.  Unfortunately as much as people complain about the armies being too small versus population all the big 5 have hundreds of named regiments and systems to track.  As such this is the 900 pound gorilla in the corner I've never been entirely able to figure out how to make go completely away.  Even cutting back to the shattered FWL or the Clans and their comparatively smaller Toumans could be a bit much without some very hefty computerized automation.

-Metagaming we may actually have some great opportunity to get away from with the forthcoming time jump as if no one knows the future they can't start getting ready for it.

-One player, one faction.

-I want to support Civil Wars/Wars for Independence but figuring out how to support that without adding more tracking is going to be a pain.

-Colonization?  Fah.  This is Battletech not Peacetech.  This is why I'm very much in favor of not allowing small fry powers to be PC controlled.

[worktroll]

I thoroughly concur, Monbvol.

Colonisation/improvements always struck me as totally irrellevant in a game with one-week turns. Colonisation needs years, and probably tens of years, before the colony moves from a resource drain to a supply source.  I understand the appeal of 4X gaming (still addicted to MOO2), but not on that scale.

If you're working at a high enough level, the old GDW Imperium game had a nice mechanism - war turns & peace phases. Peacetime was measured in years, there were no movement restrictions, and production was at lower levels, but you could actually establish new factories & colonies. When war broke out - which was not at the players control - production rates went up, but movement mattered, and you had that whole spaceships clashing, planets being invaded, and half-built factories being razed thing going on ;)

And metagaming will always be with us; "uncertain future" is certainly a good way to address it.

[monbvol]

*nod*

I do like the idea of the Fan Councils quite a bit.  I know I can't come up with a comprehensive rule set for something of this scale on my own.  My strengths lie more in breaking apart rules to figure out what works, what doesn't, and how they interact even on fairly subtle levels.

And yes, I know we'll never be completely free of meta-gaming but not having a pre-existing script for a change would help a lot.

Plus I remember how frustrating it was when I was in charge of the FRR and TC in those two Fan Councils.

FRR: Can't attack the Lyrans.  Can't attack Kurita.  I know I'll attack the bandit kingdoms.  Better than sitting on my ass doing nothing.  What do you mean metagaming?  I'm BORED.  I don't care that it's right before the Clan invasion.  I want to pick a fight because I'm not here to play Peacetech.

TC: Can't attack the CapCon.  Can't attack the FedSuns.  Magistrocy if they weren't an ally.  Tortuga's too far away.  Pirates Haven Cluster requires too much force to conquer.  Bored now.

[worktroll]

TC: Can't attack the CapCon.  Can't attack the FedSuns.  Magistrocy if they weren't an ally.  Tortuga's too far away.  Pirates Haven Cluster requires too much force to conquer.  Bored now.

That probably explains what the Taurians get up to in canon  ;D O0

[Bergie]

I also agree that there is no point in having more than one, maybe two, people per faction.  As much as many will say it 'limits' players, having played second had to someone before I found it COMPLETELY boring.  No offense to them, but unless you have a say in how orders go about, you quickly get detached from the world around you and give up.

As for minor factions, I think there should be a 15 system limit as to who you can play.  I have written up a set of rules I thought would be good for a 3025 game (got some feedback on it, and would welcome more, by the way!) where I was able to bring about enough RP for small factions to care, but even then it is a 1/week log in at best for them.  If we do a 3039-era (or earlier), I think the powers should be:

FedSuns
LyrCom
DracCom
CapCon
FWL
St. Ives
Rasalhague
Magistracy
Concordat
Outworlds

Everything else should be GM controlled, or 'mass controlled' by a player or two, with no two factions controlled being less than 100 ly from each other.  For example, one player plays "Pirate" and randomly launches raids on people, controlling groups like Tortuga and the Oberon Confederation.  People who simply don't care about each other, but fill a similar niche.  Overall, a 15-20 player game is about all you'll be able to sustain in this environment, which does kind of go against the spirit of the FGC, but I think it tightens up the system.

If you want to have multiple players, the only way to really 'engage' them is to give them a named PC and a fraction of the national RP budget to play with.  Someone having Regulus would get maybe 2% of the FWL budget, but it is enough that they can build up to something crazy (building secret factories, etc).  Lots more work for GM's, but more interesting for players. 

[monbvol]

That probably explains what the Taurians get up to in canon  ;D O0

Well I did lose a bet to Ben Rome in that Fan Council so who knows what hijinks that inspired him to since he was one of the GMs at the time.

I also agree that there is no point in having more than one, maybe two, people per faction.  As much as many will say it 'limits' players, having played second had to someone before I found it COMPLETELY boring.  No offense to them, but unless you have a say in how orders go about, you quickly get detached from the world around you and give up.

As for minor factions, I think there should be a 15 system limit as to who you can play.  I have written up a set of rules I thought would be good for a 3025 game (got some feedback on it, and would welcome more, by the way!) where I was able to bring about enough RP for small factions to care, but even then it is a 1/week log in at best for them.  If we do a 3039-era (or earlier), I think the powers should be:

FedSuns
LyrCom
DracCom
CapCon
FWL
St. Ives
Rasalhague
Magistracy
Concordat
Outworlds

Everything else should be GM controlled, or 'mass controlled' by a player or two, with no two factions controlled being less than 100 ly from each other.  For example, one player plays "Pirate" and randomly launches raids on people, controlling groups like Tortuga and the Oberon Confederation.  People who simply don't care about each other, but fill a similar niche.  Overall, a 15-20 player game is about all you'll be able to sustain in this environment, which does kind of go against the spirit of the FGC, but I think it tightens up the system.

If you want to have multiple players, the only way to really 'engage' them is to give them a named PC and a fraction of the national RP budget to play with.  Someone having Regulus would get maybe 2% of the FWL budget, but it is enough that they can build up to something crazy (building secret factories, etc).  Lots more work for GM's, but more interesting for players. 

I did mean more of no more of this one person being in more than one faction.  I think no matter what that has to stop.  Ultimately I did have similar thoughts about trying to break the workload/responsibilities amongst the second tier leadership.  Like the Federated Suns faction head could let who ever is their Draconis March leader handle things in that region while the Capellan March leader handles things on that front.

That said I'm still inclined to limit to the big 5 for playable factions.

My ultimate goal would be to get things manageable enough that one person if they had to could handle an entire faction by themselves with no more than 7 hours total investment over the week long turn.  As indicated I'd love to give the entire week real world to resolve things.

[foxbat]

Worktroll has it right. As a former GM, I witnessed all the sore stuff he pointed at. I was about to express some ideas about a new FGC, but since I no longer have the time to run it as a GM, I won't. Your game, your rules. All I'll say is, think of yourselves first and foremost, not the players. GM burnout is the most dreadful trouble for a FGC. You need to have FUN, if running the FGC becomes another chore, the goal has been missed.
So, as a rule thumb, you should never allot more than one hour a day to the administrative work. Notice that this is an absolute maximum. On average, it should be closer to a half hour. That means you can skip a day, and still catch up fast later.  ;)

[Bergie]

If at all possible, all orders SHOULD be able to be cut down to a single page on an excel sheet.  Players should be allowed to keep their own, more complex sheets, but that is up to them.  As someone who has also seen the flip-side of the GMing game, I simply got lost in the pile of Orders that I had to sift through.

[monbvol]

Well just to organize things properly I'd say 3 tabs in a spreadsheet should be fine and most of that would be just to track the hundreds of regiments and hundreds of systems a faction has.

[Edit]  Though to be totally honest I'm not sure spreadsheets are the right tool, especially when trying to divide up workload, for a Fan Council.  A better approach would probably be a reasonably secure Internet accessible database.  Something where you could set permissions so that only certain logins can see certain information.  [/Edit]

[Bergie]

How about a Dropbox account?  You can have a separate folder for each faction, and set permissions for each one to a separate person.

[monbvol]

As someone who dealt with trying to automate the factional spreadsheets a great deal for Fan Council 3010 and all the headaches it caused because I had to keep the files in specific places or the pushing out of new data wouldn't work, yeah I think an Internet database would work worlds better.

But that does illustrate what I think the ultimate problem with this scale of rules is going to be.  To make it robust enough and not time consuming at the same time is probably going to require a lot of computerized automation, to the point it can probably only be done as a computer game.

[worktroll]

And there's enough problems with restarting an FGC without putting hiring a dedicated DBA into the mix ;)

[monbvol]

*nod*

The way I see it is there are only two ways a Fan Council can work.

1:  It has to be a very stripped down setting where there is very little to track.  Problem is I don't think there is enough real player interest to make it work and I'm not convinced a canon setting of any sort would suffice anyway.

2:  Pray we can get someone who can either make spreadsheets perform more tricks than I'm capable of, a DBA who'll volunteer, or some other type of computer coder who can otherwise automate things well enough to make a larger setting work.  Oh can't forget webspace somewhere that can handle multiple simultaneous connections.

[Bergie]

Is it possible to make a Java-based game, similar to MM?  Each player imputs their orders on their turn, then presses "okay", with the program dealing with all the appropriate dice rolls.

(I have no expertise on these matters, so I'm kind of grasping here).

[Paul]

The only significant question is: does anyone with the skills to code something feel like helping out that way.
Based on the available skills, a solution could be articulated.

[monbvol]

Well based on this thread, I would say it is at least theoretically possible but based on AL9000 not having updated his program in some time I'd say it is unlikely we'll get anything more substantial.

With the added consideration of skilled coders with spare time seems rather rare I'd also consider the probability of getting someone else to chip in being exceptionally rare.

[WONC]

1:  It has to be a very stripped down setting where there is very little to track.  Problem is I don't think there is enough real player interest to make it work and I'm not convinced a canon setting of any sort would suffice anyway.

I agree with your assessment completely. Perhaps something akin to what the Chainelane Isles are/were would be the best setting? If each faction were restricted in what sort of power or scope they could wield, that would cut a lot of paperwork out of the equation right off the bat.

It wouldn't need to be the Isles, either, but some setting where each House or Clan could have a presence (if the player base wanted/needed it) alongside a few "native" powers (again, if wanted/needed; it's a very adaptable idea). Divide the territory on each world in this star cluster into eighths (with each player and/or faction starting with just one eighth of a planet; could be very scalable based on demand or interest), drop combat back from Galaxies and Divisions to Clusters and Battalions, tie territory held to the amount of Battalions/Clusters any faction could field, and it could well be a decent start to a more streamlined system of play.

Anyway, that's simply my observations on the subject.  :)