BATTLESTAR GALACTICA PLAY-BY-FORUM--SESSION 1

Shellhead wrote:

Anyway, I'm not letting anybody die under my watch... I'll take the hit and dump the cards. Save your cards for a more serious crisis.

Comander Tigh: So say we all. I agree with Apolo. The good thing is we're one step closer to jumping out of this Fraking sector. President Roslyn, I'm hoping you take my advise and order Starbuck to jump in a viper to defend the civilian ships.

"What the frak is that pilot doing - attacking a cylon basestar while our civilian fleet is unguarded ?!!!"
"From what I understand about Vipers and his skills, he could have got himself around to either the same sector as the raiders or the civvies !"
"And now he wants to automatically succumb to this crisis with a resultant loss of morale in the fleet without even discussing it .... although I still don't have much to contribute still."
"The sooner I get my cylon detector sorted the better !".


SOUTHERNMAN says "I'm keeping the two google documents updated, the spreadsheet has lots of game information while the presentation has the graphic (which has turned out quite simple to update in the end)."

Hey - the Morale has been taken down already on the google presentation. The crisis isn't a current player's choice, the Morale only goes down if/when we fail the Skill Check. Obviously Apollo doesn't want to contribute (even though he has three cards for the skills) and Tigh and me (Baltar) can't help too much, but we still need to hear from Starbuck and Roslin.

Southernman wrote:

"What the frak is that pilot doing - attacking a cylon basestar while our civilian fleet is unguarded ?!!!"
"From what I understand about Vipers and his skills, he could have got himself around to either the same sector as the raiders or the civvies !"
"And now he wants to automatically succumb to this crisis with a resultant loss of morale in the fleet without even discussing it .... although I still don't have much to contribute still."
"The sooner I get my cylon detector sorted the better !".

Hey - the Morale has been taken down already on the google presentation. The crisis isn't a current player's choice, the Morale only goes down if/when we fail the Skill Check. Obviously Apollo doesn't want to contribute (even though he has three cards for the skills) and Tigh and me (Baltar) can't help too much, but we still need to hear from Starbuck and Roslin.

I launched closer to the Base Star and Raiders then the civilian ships, because our best defense is a strong offense. The Raiders moved before I could get there, but I thought it would still be good to cripple the Base Star quickly. Odds were even up that I should have gotten in at least one hit. Besides, Starbuck can intercept those Raiders more quickly than anybody, especially if Madame President issues an executive order to her. Helo couldn't Exec Order me because he's still on Caprica.

If the rest of you decide that we're going to try to stop that Crisis, I will help when it comes around to me. But the idea of throwing several cards just to prevent me from losing two cards sounds like a bad idea. Or maybe Cylon treachery.

Remember that if we do fail the Crisis, Apollo has to discard his two cards randomly - will the moderator handle that ?

And there is at least one piece of information that we aren't handling - skill card numbers for each player.
This is open information and needs to be known by humans and unrevealed cylons alike to plan strategies for skill checks and the game in general.
Also, Tigh's weakness means he hits the bottle when down to one skill at the start of any turn and must then discard it - so we need to know for that, as well as keeping tabs on the 10 card hand limit.

The spreadsheet has a random number column. I use it to shuffle any deck, or hand that I'd like.

The number of skill cards in a player's hand is secret after drawing. I am posting for each draw what is chosen, so deductively you can figure out what people are roughly holding in terms of skill mixes. Far so more than an in-person game where details like that are easily overlooked.

Are you looking for counts of skill decks? I can include that information if you'd like.



CURRENTLY:

Politics: 14
Leadership: 12
Tactics: 13
Piloting: 14
Engineering: 19

Here's a handsize check:

Helo-0 cards
Apollo-7 cards
Roslin-3 cards
Tigh-3 cards
Starbuck-3 cards
Baltar-3 cards


I am keeping everyone's cards in hand on a spreadsheet. I will not lose count of them.

One last note on handsizes--most other forum games are letting the players track their own cards in hand after PM'ing them out. I'm sure they're keeping a central spreadsheet like I am for sanity checks but otherwise you as a player have to know how many cards you have in hand (and respond when asked by your other players.)

Apollo reckons:

I launched closer to the Base Star and Raiders then the civilian ships, because our best defense is a strong offense. The Raiders moved before I could get there, but I thought it would still be good to cripple the Base Star quickly. Odds were even up that I should have gotten in at least one hit. Besides, Starbuck can intercept those Raiders more quickly than anybody, especially if Madame President issues an executive order to her. Helo couldn't Exec Order me because he's still on Caprica.

"Not that good an arguement - a complete loss of control by our CAG. You could have been in the same sector as the raiders which means next turn they won't be able to move, and if Roslin was able to ExecO you then with your MaxFP skill you probably would have wiped out all those raiders.
Rush of blood to the head or a cylon brain being active."

If the rest of you decide that we're going to try to stop that Crisis, I will help when it comes around to me. But the idea of throwing several cards just to prevent me from losing two cards sounds like a bad idea. Or maybe Cylon treachery.

"This probably is a fair call, but you have left some information out - the fleet also loses morale. You were very quick off the mark to take that early morale loss, as well as leaving those raiders untouched when you could have annihilated them next turn with your MaxFP.
But unless anyone else speaks up, the Skill Check is probably out of reach."

Ken B. wrote:

One last note on handsizes--most other forum games are letting the players track their own cards in hand after PM'ing them out. I'm sure they're keeping a central spreadsheet like I am for sanity checks but otherwise you as a player have to know how many cards you have in hand (and respond when asked by your other players.)

I'll add the above numbers to the main page of the google spreadsheet.

I'll try to post that information with Crisis updates. Will that help?

Southernman wrote:

"Not that good an arguement - a complete loss of control by our CAG. You could have been in the same sector as the raiders which means next turn they won't be able to move, and if Roslin was able to ExecO you then with your MaxFP skill you probably would have wiped out all those raiders.
Rush of blood to the head or a cylon brain being active."

"This probably is a fair call, but you have left some information out - the fleet also loses morale. You were very quick off the mark to take that early morale loss, as well as leaving those raiders untouched when you could have annihilated them next turn with your MaxFP.
But unless anyone else speaks up, the Skill Check is probably out of reach."

I didn't realize that I could move two space sectors instead of just one. I started in Foxtrot and moved to Alpha, after the Raiders had already moved to Bravo.

As for morale, it is the easiest resource to replace, if the President does a decent job. If morale continues to drop unchecked, we can always have an election.

Apollo, as for the rules question, you may:

Movement Step: "If the player's character is piloting a viper; he may move to an adjacent space area during this step, or may discard a Skill card to move to a location on Galactica or Colonial One and return his Viper to the "reserves."

THEN:

Action Step:

Activate his Viper: If the player is piloting a viper, he may activate it to move or attack a Cylon Ship.


However in your case you too the Special action of the card Maximum Firepower.

Apollo admits:

I didn't realize that I could move two space sectors instead of just one. I started in Foxtrot and moved to Alpha, after the Raiders had already moved to Bravo.

As for morale, it is the easiest resource to replace, if the President does a decent job. If morale continues to drop unchecked, we can always have an election.

OK - when piloting you Move, but then your action can be another Move. And because you then would have been in the same sector as the raiders it would have stopped them moving the next time they were activated. And also next turn is Roslin's, and if she has an XO card then she can give you two attacks and one of those would have been a MaxFP.
Or you could have double moved the other way to stay with the civvies - but Tigh in Command can order the other Vipers that way.

Seems Lee Adama only went to flight school for the flash uniform and the girls

I get it now. I could have moved all the way to Bravo sector but wouldn't have been able to attack the Raiders yet. Then I could have kept them from moving closer to the civilian ships, possibly using some Evasive Maneuvers to hold them off until I could fire back.

Shellhead wrote:

I get it now. I could have moved all the way to Bravo sector but wouldn't have been able to attack the Raiders yet. Then I could have kept them from moving closer to the civilian ships, possibly using some Evasive Maneuvers to hold them off until I could fire back.

Also, remember they could only attack you if they get activated ... and we know now that only the Heavy Raiders were activated after your move, so you wouldn't even have needed one of us to play evasive manoeuvres either. Then you just wait until an XO gets played for you to obliterate them.