Hello Commanders!

Assault Fleet Centauri has been out for just over a year now in early access in some form, and I wanted to give you an update on the game.

I'm still working diligently on refining the game, making new ships, new officer abilities, and refining the rules. In fact barely a day goes by where I'm not thinking about AFC, Section 5, or the Solar Cold War setting. I've been picking away at them all pretty diligently, but I'm only one person and this project is huge. I thought, since it's been a year without a game update I should tell you what I've been working on. Basically, the games been going through a full rework. I'm fundamentally changing the basic mechanics of the game, but I'm doing it in service of the spirit of the game.

Why the change?

There are two reasons why I needed to change the game. 

First of all  the mechanics are much more of a convoluted mess than I originally thought. Back in October I showed the game to a friend of mine at PAX Aus. They're a very insightful game dev and have a knack for getting to the heart of what a game is, and what does and doesn't work in a design. Up until this point I'd only showed the game to RPG players, not anyone in the industry. 

Something that became immediately apparent was that every action you could do in the game worked completely differently in a way that was just confusing to a new player.  More specifically, there were too many different ways to roll dice. Another factor in the confusion was that some mechanics were ultra granular and felt like moves in board game, while other mechanics were very loose, narrativist, and open to interpretation...and not in a fun way. So the incongruity of the mechanics alone demanded a revision, but so did the game feel they created. 

When I originally started making this game I wanted to create a tactical rpg where success was based on the choices you made. What Version 1 of AFC turned out to be however was a board game where choosing the right move was all that mattered. I don't want a tactical game of sci-fi chess. As a player I want to be engaging with the game world as closely as possible to the way my character would be. I don't wanna be thinking about action economies and granular rules, I want it to be a narrative simulation. I want the tactical puzzle to be about considering the in universe circumstances, not board game manuvering...I'll save that for board game night

So something also needed to change in the design philosophy of mechanics. The game as it stood wasn't about making choices, it was about system mastery...and that's not what I wanted it to be.

What's Changed?

I don't want to list every little bit of rules difference, both because that'd be tedious but also because it wouldn't be useful. I'm pretty set on the major change, but still working out the details. The basics of the game, what I consider the core experience, remains unchanged. Each player still commands their own warship. Those ships are still made up of Hull Points, Weapon Systems, and Ship Abilities.  Your player character is still your ships commander and has Skills and Officer abilities. Your ship is still represented in the play space by a playing card. And as ever, a key part of your success is managing your resources. 

 What's changed is that the game, where ever possible, focuses more on narrative positioning than numbers and stats. It now uses a decision matrix to determine the effectiveness of your action, but you still roll dice. Graduating up or down dice sizes as the odds stack up for or against you. Instead of Crew abilities each ship has a number of Sub-Commanders, NPC Officers that help you lead your crew in actions. I've also done away with combat phases. Instead each officer on your ship gets to take an action. I've redesigned the Ship sheets to be more legible, coherent, and to better describe the in world capabilities of your vessel. The Officer sheets are more streamlined, and setup so you can print them on the back of your ship sheet.

There's a lot more changes that I've been making to the game but the big one is that I've moved it even further away from what other tactical rpgs are doing. This now feels even less like D&D and Starfinder, and much more like someone fused Blades in the Dark with war collage strategic simulations.

What does that mean going forward?

This Dev Log is just a declaration of intention. Its update on what I've been working on. The new version of the game is nowhere near ready for public viewing but I did want to leave you all in the dark about what I've been doing for the last 12 months. 

Right now, nothing changes for you or the game. I feel that the new mechanics are pretty big departure from what I originally released, and I don't want to steal that version of the game away from you. When version 2 of AFC  is eventually ready for the public, I'll archive version 1 but leave it available as a zip file for you all to access through the downloads. 

I hope you're as excited for version 2 as I am, thanks for reading, and Fair Winds.

I thought I'd expand on the 12 month update by giving you all a preview of how the sheets have changed. Looking at the sheets is a good way to see how the design philosophy of the gam has evolved. Let's start with a look at the officer sheet, oh but first you should know that this is still subject to change.

Okay so the first thing you'll notice here is that you have half the sheet devoted to your Commander character,  and then the other half has space for your officer staff.  This replaces the old Crew Abilities feature that ships had. Each player will control their main character, their Commander, and then have a retinue of attended sub-commanders. The size of your retinue is determined by your ship type. For example, corvettes require 3 officers to function, which would include your Commander, and then two other officers. 
In combat each officer gets to make one action per turn, so corvettes get to make 3 actions. This also means you could loose officers and end up down an action (or you could give a field promotion to someone?)

Each officer has their own skills and abilities, although your NPC officers get a reduced number. You might have also noticed that the skill is different, and the skills themselves no longer have pips/ranks. In the new paradigm, you either have a skill or your don't. Skills now represent common core competencies at which you excel. You might understand the basics of Gunnery, but it you don't have that skill it means you didn't specialise it at the war college.  When taking actions in the game your skills can be leveraged to improve you dice level/size (more on that in a minute.) Functioning similar to Fate Aspects.

Alright, there's a lot of changes to the ship sheet, lets get the easy stuff out of the way first. The ship abilities have been edited to be more succinct. Defensive abilities now either function off charges or they are single use. I also got rid of Expansion Modules because I'm cutting ship modification from the game.  (Although I might do a supplement in the future about building custom ships.) Missile and health trackers also got an overhaul to make them easier to read at a glance. Range is now measured in Bands, not Cards.

Let's talk big changes. Your ships now have armour facings, this is for two main reasons: Burn and Weakpoints. You know that thing in star trek where they redirect power to the forward shields cause there's only one enemy,  but then SUPRISE, they get flanked by a cloaked ship? This helps facilitate moments like that. Now ships can have weakspots they need the defend (on most, it's the rear where the main drive cone is.) It also allows us to start tracking  Burn, which lowers your armour value, across multiple turns. On the tail end of that discussion Point Of No Return was a feature in the early access release, but now it's more codified and has better wording. If your Hull Points drop below that line, there is no coming back from it. Ever. The ship is just too damaged.

Another big change is up the top, under the ships description. Navigation and Crew. Now most of the changes to crew we've already discussed when talking about Officers and the like. Navigation, that is how ship moves, is now a lot more descriptive. Instead of having a movement speed, your have engine type (Fast, and then something about it's method of propulsion.) No more FTL charging, now you have an FTL Type. Basic vessels can't jump more than once in a battle, normally using it up on arrival. (P-to-P just means your Jump Drive is only interplanetary, not interstellar.) These are again about narrative position, and get leverage like fate aspects. Although there are some mechanical 
limitations too, like with the FTL Jump limit. There will be more detail on what the keywords mean in the book.

Lastly, there's a reminder for the effectiveness matrix at the bottom of the page. For most rolls in the new version of the game you're trying to hit a 6 or better, and all those advantages you've been leveraging help increase the size of the die that you roll. This also lets you leverage tactical and creative thinking. Like if you're enemy is unaware of your presence and you've been watching them for a while, you could leverage that into saying your guns are dialled in. If the GM or Facilitator agrees, that might raise your dice level to D10...and if you're firing more than one gun, well now you're multiplying that die by the number of weapons. Better positioning means larger die, more opportunity means 
extra dice.

Which dovetails perfectly into talking about how the movement cards have been redesigned. It always bothered me that there was a lot of unused space on the sheet when printing off cards for AFC. I fixed that by adding a range ruler, with the range bands on it. Close range works out to about half a Warship Card in length, and fictionally is about 5 Kilometres. This is the range band you're using Autocannons 
and lasers at. Interestingly, completely by coincidence, real world CIWS Autocannons have a range of 5km. You can see the other range bands in the image, Mid, Far, and Extreme.  Extreme range is really for narrative weapons, not the kind of things you'll actually be using in game. Interplanetary missiles, Railgun Satellites, Colony Solar Lasers, things like that.

The other thing I did to fill in space is make a reminder for the rolling mechanic, and the Ship System Ratings. You can see that across the top, and it just reminds you what beats which. First Rate sensors are better than Second Rate sensors, for example. Again, it'll be explained in more detail in the book.

The ship cards themselves are a lot more spartan, but that is because I wanted to make room for writing the names of your ships on there. It also allowed me to add ship direction reminders, cause I always forget which side is Port and which is Starboard.

There is also more variation in the size of cards. All your main warships are still full sized playing cards of course. However half cards are used for squadrons,  swarms, and small craft (shuttles and tugs.) I also used the half cards for the various objects and markers that various abilities can create, and added some new types of tokens to the list.

***

But yeah, still a LOT of work to do on this game, and much of this hasn't been tested yet. Which means it could change dramatically, but I'm liking the game a lot more and feeling a lot more confident in it. It's feeling solid.

I hope you found this insightful, and until next time; Good Hunting Commander.