I had to rewrite it. Oh well, I made it more brief.
Research & Development Discussion - Delta+1
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No arbitrary limits, if you can save money then you can save as much as you like towards tech.
Hey Mantlefan, if you find some free time you would mind going over our other Delta proposals? Getting a new set of eyes would be great. I would suggest reading the original proposal, making comments on that and then see if that area was covered. UK Exile I think is the next one to be completed, and then neutral blocks and aa guns.
Also using A2 as the base we are trying to achieve balance between the two sides while giving the axis (who hold initiative) multiple avenues of attack. Its tricky!
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Yes, I understood what you were saying, Mantlefan. It makes sense in certain aspects, but I feel given just how expensive it is to buy tech dice (32 IPC for the first 4, 48 for the first 6 with a maximum of 6 dice per turn) that countriest who cannot save their cash may not be able to participate in getting technologies. Pretty much the only way smaller countries have to get technologies (mostly India and Australia, but I’ve seen Japan get crushed under the jack-boot of American imperialism as well) is the free dice system. If they cannot save enough to get that one free die, they might not be able to get any technologies.
Perhaps, and I cannot read your mind, but perhaps you forgot that the price of extra dice was pretty hefty under the new system? To put it mildly, it would take 50-67% of Germany’s income just to buy a set of dice to augment their free ones.
Here’s a counter proposal we never considered. Stick with 2 charts but have one be the “free dice chart” and the other a “dice only chart” where the free dice chart only has half the abilities of the other. So if you rolled your free dice and got #3 then you would only get Paratrooper’s technology, not the Heavy Bombers. If you purchased dice and got #3 then you would get both Paratroopers and Heavy Bombers.
For table top play you throw red dice for purchased tech and white dice for free tech and there you go. For online you just have two command lines. On the battleboards (I call all the boards battleboards, not just the actual battleboard) just go with Chart #1 is free and Chart #2 is paid. You can never get the “free” technology with “paid” dice. Not that you would want too. Same for the reverse.
(quoted the rule below, so you don’t have to go back and find it.)
- Improved Bomber Technology (Combine the following):
- Paratroopers (2 infantry)
- Heavy Bombers (2d6)
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BTW, I think that’s a fair balance. If nations are going to “save up” for free rolls they’re going to need an extra 40 IPC to get up a bracket. I don’t picture nations doing this, not when they can buy 4 rolls for 32 IPC or 5 rolls for 40 IPC or 6 rolls for 48 IPC. If they are earning 8 IPC they might buy 2 infantry and save 2 IPC and thus get a free tech roll, but it won’t do them much good even if they get it, they’re already in dire straights.
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Well I don’t see any nations saving money so they can purchase other dice. I think they would save money so they can get more ‘free’ dice and then spend the remaining ipcs on troops.
Strategically, I have to admit if I was Allies and Germ saved ipcs, Russia would then save ipcs. If Japan saved, then the rest of the allies will save ipcs too. Since the axis have the initiative the allies have to react to the axis, whats a better way than to try and reach parity in the tech race before fighting? Plus there are a finite number of techs, once you have them all you can release the dogs of war. It’d be boring as heck to playtest but I am willing to try it.
Further, a nation’s income is a better arbiter of their material power than CoH, which can be saved by the player.
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@mantlefan:
If I could get a little more direction as to which thread(s), I’d love to help.
I believe they are all on the first and second pages in this forum.(house rules) Each thread will have ‘delta’ or ‘delta1’ in the title and a few pages of dialogue.
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I understand the complaint, I’m just saying if you need 40 IPC to get to the next teir, that’s A LOT of saved money! You’d be far better off spending 32 IPC and getting 4 dice than sitting around with an extra 40 IPC in your pocket each round.
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If we were to go for mantlefan’s idea of getting free dice based on income rather than cash on hand, I would suggest that deciding the number of free dice a player will get on the next round should be determined at the Collect Income phase of the current turn.
To make it really simple in face to face games, you could actually get your “research dice” then and hang on to them until next round (unless your buddy steals them out of your box). Most of us have about 100 extra dice laying around so maybe use some old ugly ones for research dice and save your nice black ones with the rounded edges for rolling battles. In online games, you would just state the number of free dice you will get next turn and it will be posted for posterity.
At the start of the next turn, you can purchase more dice at Purchase & Repair if you want to.
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Ok. Not sure how that is preferable over getting the ‘free tech rolls’ at the beginning of your round when you R&D. Seems like one just involves keeping track of a number until your next turn.
Mantlefan’s idea is to have it determined at the beginning of your turn, the R&D turn, in order to make players a bit more tempted to over defend territories in the hope of holding onto those ipcs for more free tech rolls. Not sure how its going to playout on the board. I think we’ll still see a lot of attrition lines of 2 inf 1 ftr attacks and such.
It might give more impetus for Germany to defend France however, the beaches and not Paris.
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But what if you lost territories since your last turn?
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Mantlefan:
There are two sets of dice. You get the free dice based on the cash on hand. The first bracket starts at 10 IPC (if you earn less than 10 IPC, you cant feed your people let alone hire scientists!) and goes up by 40 IPC. I feel that is a sufficient enough jump between increments of free dice that no one is going to be “saving up” for more dice - and if they do, it’ll be so harmful that they might lose the game because of it.
Before you roll your free dice, you determine if you want to buy more dice. You must purchase at least 4 dice and cannot purchase more than 6 dice. Dice are 8 IPC each, so that’s 32-48 IPC just to buy dice to roll at the same time as your free dice. (You roll all dice together. So if you buy 4 and get 2 free, then you have 6 dice to roll.) The cost is so high primarily because you do get free dice. However, the cost is low enough, I feel, that it is better to buy 4 dice now than save 40 IPC for 1 die next round.
Lastly, if you are not at war you cannot get technology - and China can never get technology.
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I’m very much against the idea of free tech rolls for the rich. (or for anyone for that matter. You want some, you pay for it)
Even a big nation has to pay to do research. Research costs a lot of money.And the result will still be translated depending on a nation’s income.
If you’re a poor country and you have jet fighters, you can’t produce many of them.(i must admit that i’m not a tech fan to begin with)
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@mantlefan:
@Vance:
But what if you lost territories since your last turn?
Exactly. That’s one of the major benfits of having it be the income in the turn you roll. It doesn’t reward someone seeking tech for just tossing 2 inf and a ftr into a territory to kill the 1-2 inf in there.
Oh OK I get it. I thought you were saying you wanted to speed up the game by motivating people to spend their IPCs and not save them. But awarding dice at the end of a turn would push it too far and promote sleazy land grabs; doing it at the beginning of the turn would promote more defense and if you take a territory you mean to keep it. Good idea.
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@mantlefan:
@special:
I’m very much against the idea of free tech rolls for the rich. (or for anyone for that matter. You want some, you pay for it)
Even a big nation has to pay to do research. Research costs a lot of money.And the result will still be translated depending on a nation’s income.
If you’re a poor country and you have jet fighters, you can’t produce many of them.(i must admit that i’m not a tech fan to begin with)
It’s not just being “rich.” It’s having the industrial capacity to support a research enterprise. The more industrial capacity you have overall, the more ability in general you have to research.
That’s why I like basing the cost of dice on IC’s rather than IPCs, but I would be OK with it being based on IPC’s if that is based on income score and not just cash on hand.
I understand your point about having the capacity. How about a minimal income (some kind of treshold) to get to be allowed to buy tech?
edit: if this has been said before i apologize, i confess i didn’t read every post in the topic…)
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How about we compromise and say NO income does not count?
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Guys, remember, under the current system you need 50 IPC to get 2 tech dice! Australia, India and Italy are NOT going to be saving up that much, but they will qualify for one tech die even without having to save up for it.
Now, I’m willing to conceed the NO cash as it is not actual land holdings, in exchange for being able to save my 1-3 IPC and use it in my tally (which is less than 10% of what you need for a second die roll, mind you.)
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@Young:
I’m saying this right now for the record…… if Delta+1 becomes a boxing ring for Cmdr Jennifer and Mantlefan… I will personally delete and dump every Delta thread I have created in this forum.
Bah, no punches have been thrown. We need more eyes on this, everyone is invited!
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@Cmdr:
Guys, remember, under the current system you need 50 IPC to get 2 tech dice! Australia, India and Italy are NOT going to be saving up that much, but they will qualify for one tech die even without having to save up for it.
Well, India doesn’t really matter in this case since they benefit from UK’s tech.
Edit: by the way, one time we tried (in Anniversary) to allow a nation to buy tech for an Allied force (so in Global this would mean that USA (once in the war and therefor allied) can buy tech tokens for (for ex) Anzac. Or Germany buying tech for Japan. No idea if it would be interesting for Global, though.
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I think you missed the option to have your free rolls determinted by Income that you hold at the beginning of your turn.
Also what about making this tech activate at the end of your round, thereby getting rid of the ‘heavy bmbs + LRA’ I WIN aspect.
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I think that is option number 1 or number 2, Jimmy.
I am not completely certain, but I don’t think you can get any technology and turn it into an instant win on this massive a board. If you can think of an example, I’m willing to hear it and rethink my position accordingly. (LRA was “I win” for Revised if it happened immediately, I don’t think it matters as much in 1940. But I’m not looking too hard at the Russian border, which is where it will probably occur.)
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Here’s my 2 cents……
Research & Development (Version #5)
I originally suggested that nations receive free tech rolls at the beginning of their turn in order to get technology into our games, because optional or not, players just weren’t buying rolls.
My original thought in the house rules forum way back before Delta, was every power receives 1 free roll during the R&D phase (no purchasing), but there are more powers for the allies than the axis, and of course China can’t do squat with most technologies.
In light of this concern I suggest the following:
1. Nations that are without a capital may not make research rolls (free or purchased).
This eliminates China and France from rolling which cuts down the extra amount of dice that the allies receive over the axis, and I would even go so far as taking away all technologies gained if you lose your capital.
The next concern is that some people love their research rolls so much, that getting 1 free roll just ain’t enough. they need multiple free dice and the opportunity to purchase them if they wish. In light of this we created a chart for an amount of free dice per nation based on income, however, that raised the concern that the rich were getting richer and the poor got nothing. Here is my new free roll chart suggestion.
$0-9= 0 roll
$10-39 = 1 roll
$40-80 = 2 rolls
$80+ = 3 rollsMantefan is right, we can’t have people saving money and leaving units off the board for a far fetched hope of secret weapons. It will prevent aggressiveness and put to much attention on R&D, which IMO should be an opening act for the big show, and not some nude streaker trying to steal the show. So, I suggest that……
2. The Research & Development phase is now the last phase in the turn sequence.
1. Facility and Capital Ship Repairs
2. Purchase new units
3. Combat movements
4. Resolve combat
5. Non-combat movements
6. Place new units
7. Collect income
8. Purchase and/or roll free Research & Development dice.You may say “what if we want to base our purchases on, what tech we might get” well I think thats silly and you should wait until the next round, besides after the Americans split the atom, they still needed time to build the bomb and test it.
**3. The income eligible for free R&D dice will be calculated by the amount earned on the income tracking chart, plus the amount earned for NOs (not cash held back from the purchase new units phase).
4. Players may use cash held back from their purchase new units phase, plus money from their collect income phase in order to purchase additional Research dice at $10 each. However, only one technology can be won during each R&D phase regardless of how many 6s are rolled during research.**
Sorry Jen, but I think we should keep the hairy naked streaker off the field.
I have always thought it silly to have scientists working on a whatever, like when you roll and get a technology your nation may be stuck with something they can’t use…… well why were the scientists working on a useless tech to begin with.
5. My suggestion is, we create 10 technologies and number them 1-10 on a chart. If a nation wins a technology, they may choose 6 of the 10 tech choices that they wish to develop. Based on their selection a new 1-6 chart is created (lowest to greatest from the original chart) in which that player will roll a 6 sided die to determine the technology that is won.
I give more power to Jen’s suggestions when making this chart, because it was her chart that originally got voted in Delta. I also liked that she kept true to many of the original tech options and this way we have a few slots to be creative.
OK, I think I’m up to 7 cents now.
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