FC Designers Notes

7/30/2019 FC Designers Notes

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Flying ColorsDesigners Notes 2/3/08

This leaves the last inspiration to the development ofFlying Colors: Close Action. Close Action can best bedescribed as an anti-inspiration. It is exactly what Idid not want in Flying Colors. This is not to say byany means that Close Action is a bad game. I do infact view it as the single most complete simulation ofAge of Sail combat currently available in the same

sense that Advanced Squad Leader is the mostcomplete simulation of squad-level combat. But Idont play that either. Generally, I dont like complexgames, so I have no intention on designing one.Rather than deal with the minutiae (hull shapes,cannon loads, crew qualities, etc), I opted to abstractthese concepts as much as possible and still allowreasonable results. One would say that I took a top-down approach rather than bottom-up. Its simply not

possible for two players to complete Trafalgar in anevening (my ultimate goal) using Close Action. Wheninitially designingFlying Colors as well as during its

redesign for GMT, there were several cries to add incomplexity. These were all weighed against theultimate goal of the design, and if they pushed it toofar of its intended mark, they were abandoned. Ifirmly believe that wargame designers ultimatelydesign games that they want to play. Since we dontlive in a vacuum, its likely that there are other playersout there with our same tastes, so its for that audiencethat a game is intended.

Thats enough about the philosophy of design. Letsget into the details!

It seems the easiest way to describe the mechanics ofFlying Colors by following the sequence of play andpointing out specific concepts. Before getting into thathowever, the first item requiring mention are thegames components themselves and how they workinto the scale of the game.

One of the first decisions I had to make when puttingFlying Colors together was how the game should bevisually presented. As indicated earlier, it would be ahex-based game to avoid perceived kludges inmovement mechanics. For counter sizes, I opted for

one by one-half inch sizes for ships of the line andhalf-inch counters for frigates and smaller vessels.The decision to uses these sized simply stemmed fromwhat I was used to. My key inspirations used thosesized units, so I saw no need to stray from theordinary (using the smaller size pieces for smallerships provided the added benefit of greatermaneuverability for smaller vessels within the scopeof movement mechanics). The same goes for the scaleof the game. This was actually a secondary

consideration (oddly enough) as I chose to emulateother Age of Sail games. Flying Colors is essentiallythe same scale as Fighting Sailand Wooden Ships &

Iron Men; and a third greater scale than Close ActionAdhering to parameters set by these other designsfreed me to work on mechanics to speed play. Onedesign disadvantage to this emulation is one that hard-

core enthusiasts may quibble over. In the scenariodesign, the ships are much closer together than theywould have been historically. Generally there should

be an additional one to two hexes distance betweenthe ships per the doctrine of the period. Im sure thatGMT wouldnt have been happy at having to includetwelve maps in the game, rather than three! Call thisthe first major abstraction in the game. I could havereduced this abstraction by going to half-inch units forall ships, but there would be too much other detail lostin the process (such as maneuverability andindividualized ship names which of these is more

vital, Ill leave up to you).

A question that often comes up is the use (or lack ofuse of smaller (5th Rate and below) ships in the gameWhen designing the Relative Range version, my goawas to only include ships of the line no smallervessels at all, since they did not play a major role inthe larger battles I wanted to play. When introducingthe game to GMT, the first question I got was whatabout frigates? If GMT were to accept the designthere would have to be some indication that theywould be covered within the system. The first attempto do this was to include them as repeaters to extend

the command radii of the leaders. This option didnwork out very well in playtesting and ultimatelyseemed cheesy. I decided instead to include acouple of smaller scenarios that would include a fewfrigates instead, as something of a teaser for futureexpansions to the system and to show how the smallervessels would operate using a core set of movemenrules. I still have not included many of the smallerships in the selection of scenarios for the same reasonthat they were not included in the original design. Idid not see where they had too much of an impact on

play, and in this first outing thought it best to

minimize the headaches of dealing with smallervessels mixed into the Line.For those of you who dig frigates, youll enjoy thenext game in the series that will cover frigate actions.

With the pieces on the map, we come to what Iconsider the highlight of the game, its commandsystem. As noted, the command system in FlyingColors was borrowed directly from Richard BergWar Galley. The command system is the means by

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which I was able to discard pre-plotted movement.Commanders can command ships in one of two ways.Either those ships can be in a formation (thus,following rules of engagement by the book) or theycan be within command influence of a commander.Its this latter ability that separates the stodgy, old-fashioned commanders from brilliant ones. Generally,

the more ships that are in a command as well as thenumber of commands available to a fleet indicate itsflexibility. Being forced to maintain formations forcesa fleet to stand off from the enemy, lest the line is

broken and part of it cut off and destroyed. Acommander with a high command radius on the otherhand can allow ships to break out of formation and actindependently. This latter feature, in essence, showsthe impact that Nelsons pre-battle orders had on fleetsunder his command. It also shows Byngs hesitance atMinorca to engage the enemy (thus resulting in hiscourt martial and death by firing-squad). In order for

this system to function properly, I had to limit thenumber of commanders available to each side. Bydesign, the more commanders available, the greaterflexibility of the fleet. This raised some hackles duringthe development process from those who felt I was notgiving a fleets commanders sufficient credit. Yougive some you take some. Consider the existenceof the non-represented commanders as rolled up in thescores of the commanders provided.

The right to act first in a turn or to demand that youropponent act first is dependent upon who wins theinitiative for each turn. Initiative is not determined

until after commands have been defined, so playersmust define their commands in order to maximizetheir fleets effectiveness based upon either the gain orloss of initiative. Acquiring the initiative is based ontwo things: the quality of the fleet admiral (the bigcheese) as well as the fleets Audacity. Ahhhh theAudacity rating!

As noted previously, there are several key abstractionsbuilt into Flying Colors in order to exchangecomplexity for speed of play. The Audacity rating isthe big one and the one thats raised the most

comment and criticism from those seeking greaterdetail in the game. On its face, a fleets Audacity is asimple measure of one fleets quality as a whole ascompared to its opponent. Its an indication that thisside was better historically than that side and isexpected to win a specific scenario. All the detail thatgoes in to making one fleet better than another isrolled up into its Audacity. But it is a double-edgedsword. The onus of attack is on the side with thehigher Audacity. Failure to attack with an advantage

in Audacity results in an automatic loss. Refer back tomy comment regarding Admiral Byng at Minorca. Ahigh Audacity rating can also get a fleet into trouble ifa players not careful. Over-confidence while playingthe winning side can get real ugly, real fast!

Getting back to fleet activations, once the initiative

has been determined, the side with the initiativechooses whether he or his opponent will activate thefirst command. Then, players alternate activatingcommands during the duration of the turn. One sideactivates and command and then the other sideactivates a command, and so on and so forth until allcommands have been activated. After all thecommands have been activated, out-of-commandships (those that could not be included within acommand for whatever reason) are activatedindividually in the same manner as full commandsone at a time, alternating back and forth between

players. The penalty of being out of command is theinability to initiate an attack. The penalty of being outof command forces a player to do his best to retain afleets cohesion during play. That being said, there isstill a chance for out-of-command ships to acindependently of a fleet, but this comes down to thequality (again) of the fleet admiral. Nelson aTrafalgar is the best commander in the game, and eveunder him, and out-of-command ship is only able to

behave independently 50% of the time. Note as anaside that the ability of ships to act independently inthis fashion is yet another indication of thosemissing commanders.

Okay, so what happens when a command is activated?This is where the serious game mechanics kick inspecifically ship movement and combat. The lattertakes place during the former, so a discussion omovement first is in order.

Unlike land-based wargames where units can moveone-, two- or twenty-steps at a time, sailing ships aresubject to the whims of the wind. Flying Colors is asmuch about fighting the wind, as it is your opponentSince the scale of the game was borrowed from

similar titles, movement rates were borrowed as wellThe angle of a ship relative to the direction of thewind dictates the number of movement points a shiphas on that turn. And unlike their land-basedcounterparts, ships must expend allof their movemen

points.

Ship movement in Flying Colors is likely themechanic that changed the most between the DPTversion of the game and the GMT version. In the new

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version, weather effects were introduced (increasingor decreasing movement rates) as well as turning rateswhen turning a ship into a less advantageous positionwith regards to wind direction. These changes werehammered out between the development team andvocal members of ConsimWorld, to great advantage tothe game. Keeping in mind my desire to limit the

complexity of the game based upon thataforementioned design goal, this was one of thosechanges that significantly enhanced play withoutlosing sight of that goal.

The greatest change with regards to movementbetween the new and old versions ofFlying Colors isthe collision rules. In the older version, it is far tooeasy to collide with an opposing ship than it washistorically. Perhaps this was a hold over from theadoption from War Galley or an artifact of playingWooden Ships & Iron Men where fouling was a

standard tactic.Flying Colorsdeveloper, John Alsen,suggested an alternate movement mechanic to limitthe likelihood of collisions. I took that suggestion astep further to allow movement through opposingvessels, as given the time structure of the game and itsattempt to simulate simultaneous movement in a non-simultaneous fashion, this struck me as realisticwithin the constraints of the design. In the newversion, collisions are extremely difficult to achieveand grappling can only affect ships that are dead-in-the-water. This change further reduced complexity andadded accuracy. A two-fer!

Adopting the ability to move through other vesselsalso allowed me to further clarify and enhance the useof point-blank fire. Previously only ships that werefouled or grappled could use it. Now, there really isfire from a range of zero, making crossing the T thatmuch more effective a maneuver.

One movement feature that was retained between theversions was the clear distinction between wearingand tacking, the two turning maneuvers available toships. Wearing is a long, roundabout manner ofturning while keeping wind in a ships sails at all

times. It is a stern-based turn; so all rotation of thecounter involves moving a ships stern. Tacking is abow-based maneuver that involves the rotation of aships bow into and through the wind (running achance that of the ship becoming stuck into the windor in irons). During the redevelopment of the game,there were a lot of questions as to why there was amechanical distinction between the types ofmovement. What difference does it make anyway?Isnt that a needless addition of complexity? When

designing the game I determined that it was necessaryto show that distinction, not so much for educationa

purposes (bow maneuver vs. stern maneuver) than formechanical ones. In order for a ship to get to thesame

place on the map using either wearing or tackingrequires the distinction, all else being equal.

Now that ships are moving, we come to the reason forplayingFlying Colors in the first place: trying to sinkem! In retrospect, the mechanics I used in the combatsystem are likely derived from a couple of my favoritegames. I did not do so intentionally, but I guess oneuses what one likes.

The first item of note is the structure of the shipcounters. Each has a front (undamaged) side and a

back (damaged) side. On each is a Damage valueindicating the number of hull hits a ship must sustain

before being flipped to its damaged side and then

sustained before it has a chance of sinking or strikingKind of like Dan VerssensDown In Flames series?Yeah, kinda like that

The second item of note is the determination of aships firepower at a specific range. Depending uponthe ships relative rate (now theres a giveaway!) aship will have a certain amount of firepower at aspecific range. This value is modified to result in a firstrength used on the combat results table. Kind of likeCourtney Allens Up Front? Yeah, kinda like that

The concept of relative rate is directly attributable

toFlying Colorshistorical research expert, Niek vanDiepen from whom Ive learned a heck of a lot about

both the subject matter as well as the game designprocess. I can definitely say thatFlying Colors is a farfar better game for his suggestions than the originaRelative Range version. Relative Rate is a measureof the size of a broadside a ship can fire, not just thenumber of the guns it carries. A third-rate 74-gun shipmay actually be carrying enough firepower to qualifyas either a second- or fourth-rate ship, relative to otherships in its or its opponents fleet. Ships with a relativrate value bound in a white circle are carrying a

relatively heavy broadside and those in a black circle lighter broadside. Making this simple distinctionallowed us to add a lot more variety to the game atvery little cost in added complexity (again, keepingthat goal on target).

Another new addition to the GMT version of the gamis the inclusion of carronade modifiers. Many othergames include these short-range smashers aindividual gun types. Rather than make tha

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distinction, it seemed a more appropriate treatmentwould be to add them as a firepower modifier when atclose enough range. Depending upon the year inwhich a scenario takes place and the nationality usingthem, this modifier will increase or decreaseaccording to their use. The one standout worthmentioning is the British vessel Glatton that was

predominantly armed with carronades. She is one shipthat you neverwant to get behind you at close range!

The damage table probably went through the mostchanges throughout the design and redesign process,tweaking it to get the right feel. It was designed in afashion similar to other Age of Sail games (again forthe sake of familiarity), using a progressive damagestyle. The closer a ship is to its target, the greater itsresulting firepower, resulting in a range of higherdamage possibilities. The rolls on the damage tableare further modified by environmental conditions and

to some extent doctrinal tendencies (note, thatstendencies for you hard-core types it was notFrench doctrine to fire at rigging it just worked outthat way). The higher the modified roll, the greaterdamage dished out. Of course, raking fire increasesdamage.

Since were on the topic of damage, heres a goodpoint to discuss another key abstraction: Hull vs.Manpower hits. Another large difference between

Flying Colors and the more pencil-intensive Age ofSail games is the lack of crew hits. The use of the termManpower (probably a bad choice, in retrospect)

has led to confusion on this issue. Manpower does notequate to crew hits in other games. Hull hits are acombination of the loss of gun crews as well as guns.As a ship sustains Hull hits, its relative rate decreases(or increases, depending on your point of view); thatis, the strength of its broadsides are reduced owing togun and gun crew losses. Manpower, on the otherhand, is simply a reflection of a ships ability tolaunch a boarding action when grappled to an enemyship. No more than that. When a ship sustains aManpower hit, its upper deck has been put intodisarray and may have suffered enough Marine or

deck-gun losses to reduce its boarding ability.

The final key abstraction should be noted here as well.That is, what exactly comprises a broadside, relativeto the time scale of the game? Each turn representsroughly 7.5 minutes, give or take a few. In that time, agun crew can fire multiple times. So to be moreaccurate, each ship should be able to fire in just aboutevery hex it enters, more than once per hex dependingupon the number of movement points the ship earns

relative to the wind. You can imagine for yourself thehuge spike in complexity that would cause. Thereforeeach broadside is an abstraction of all the lead a shipcan fire during a turn. This is also why a ship can fireout of both broadsides per turn without penalty.

Since pre-plotted movement has been eliminated from

the game, whats to keep an active ship from movingunmolested into an opposing fleet and firing? To keepthat from happening (or at least to discourage it to acertain degree) is the introduction of a defensive firemechanic. As soon as an attack has been declared, anyone enemy ship (not necessarily the target) may fire atthe moving ship prior to the attack being resolvedThis mechanic encourages fleets to be self-supportingTo add an additional wrinkle, however, the movingship need not fire on the intended target in order todraw fire from opposing vessels. This forces thedefending player to decide whether or not to hold

defensive fire for later during the turn. Decisionsdecisions! An optional rule also exists to allowdefensive fire to occur at any time during movementof an enemy ship. This allows for greater flexibility indefensive fire, but also slows the game downsignificantly and is therefore not recommended forlarger scenarios.

Youll recall the mention that having a high Audacitycan get you into trouble if youre not careful. Thiscomes in to play when firing on a ship holding acommander (particularly the fleet admiral). Everytime a ship with a commander takes damage, theres a

10% chance that the commander will be woundedEach time a commander is wounded, theres anadditional 10% chance that the commander is killedmodified upward by +10% for each point of Audacitythat commander is operating under. In additionAudacity is used as a negative modifier whenchecking for command transfers to another ship

Nelson at Trafalgar will head into the allied fleestanding on the top deck of the Victory and wont beheading anywhere when the Victory starts to take hitsIf he goes down, thats a big chunk of the British fleethat will go out of command!

Once all movement and combat have been completedfor a turn, ships that have grappled have theopportunity to initiate Melee. As indicated earlier, theability to initiate a Melee has been significantlydecreased between the current version of FlyingColors and the Relative Range version to keep morein line with history. Boarding actions were rare, buthey did occur; most notably Nelsons capture of twoships during the battle of Cape St. Vincent. To allow

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this to occur, the Nelsons Patent Bridge rule wasincluded. The odds of this actually occurring are

pretty small, but if the opportunity does arise, theresno reason to deny a player Nelsons glory!

After Melees have been resolved, ship status checksare made. This involves checking the status of ships

on fire (and whether or not they might explode) andthe chance for those ships that have sustained enoughdamage to sink or strike. Explosion checks wereincluded to make sure there is a chance of emulatingthe loss of the French flagship Orient at the battle ofthe Nile. Ships that have struck have given up thefight in order to attempt staying afloat. Ships that havesunk have well sunk. There has been somediscussion on ConsimWorld that ships sink too easily.Playtesting has not borne that out, but to make it alittle tougher for Struck ships to sink, Ive allowedremaining Manpower on a Struck ship to be used as a

die roll modifier when checking for sinking.

Once ships have begun to sink or are struck orcaptured, fleet morale has to be checked. If a fleetsustains enough damage, the survivors make a breakfor the nearest port, granting victory to their opponent.The Break Check die rolls are modified by the relative

pummeling that each fleet has taken, along with thefleets Audacity. This mechanic was included toremove the fight-to-the-death syndrome present inother Age of Sail games. The mechanic also helpskeep playing time limited.Those are the key concepts and the rationale behind

their use. Its not an exhaustive overview of the gamesystem, as the unmentioned mechanics arestraightforward.

As Ive noted on several occasions,Flying Colors wasdesigned with a specific goal in mind, which was tocreate a fast-playing Age of Sail wargame where to

players can complete the battle of Trafalgar in anevening. Have I succeeded? In my own estimation, Idhave to say: almost. Trafalgar cannot be completed inan evening, but it can be completed in one longsitting. Ive done it several times with victories on

both sides. I really feel that Ive created the Age ofSail wargame that I want to play, and judging frommany of the responses Ive read on-line, that manyother players want to play as well.

I dont think Im over-simplifying, but for all intents, Itook an over-all look at what mechanics wereavailable and removed what I did not like, simplifiedwhere necessary, and retained what I thought mostvital. The result is the game at hand.

But is the game for everybody? Absolutely not, sinceeverybody has their own tastes. But to those whothink it could be their game but for a few wrongfeeling mechanics, I can promise thatFlying Colors isstill a work-in-progress. During its development, frominitial design to publication I only had a dozen

playtesters. Even if only a tenth of those whopreordered the game are playing it, thats still tentimes the number of folks who have been at it since itinception. And thats a lot of great feedback!

If theres something about the game that just doesnseem right, Im asking for your suggestions. All I askof you is to keep the original design goal in mind.

Potential changes to the rules aside, plans to extendand enhance the system through expansions andadditional series games are extensive. There are lots o

battles to cover, from frigate actions to oar-drivengalleys and from the early 1700s to the end of the Ageof Sail.

Heres hoping you all will stay aboard and thank GMTand all you Flying Colors players for your continuedsupport!

Mike [email protected]

Design Notes Addendum

Its been about six months sinceFlying Colors sailedinto the hands of P500 customers, and in that timethere has been a lot of good discussion about the proscons, merits and faults of the game system. As Iindicated, I considerFlying Colors to be a work in

progress, a point reinforced by the recent release ofthe games first set of Living Rules.

I think Ive made it abundantly clear that I dont wantto take changing the game mechanics lightly. Thegame conforms well to my concept of what it issupposed to accomplish, so any changes must addresssome serious issues or at least those issues thatreceive a large amount of discussion traffic.

As there were simple but substantive changes betweenthe DTP version of Flying Colors and its GMTreincarnation, so too a few issues have cropped up thagenerated enough concern to deserve a second lookand a tweak or two since the games professionarelease. Specifically these cover the sequence of playand raking.

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In the first version of the rules, it is possible, owing tomaneuver, to put one or more ships in the center of aformation out of command. During the next turn,

players would have to wait until the end of the turn toget these ships back into formation. This would havean odd effect on a Line in that the rear of the linewould leapfrog past the center and then the center

would have to catch up. Sometimes this would creategaps, depending upon the position of other ships.Obviously, I did not have a problem with this, as it

provides one more penalty to the loss of formation,but there was enough consternation about it for me tolook for a fix.

In order to allow a fleet to maintain its line in a moreorderly fashion, Ive changed the sequence of play tointegrate the activation of in-command formations andout-of-command ships. Rather than play leap-frog,

players can activate the out-of-command center of a

line on a ship-by-ship basis before bringing up the rearof the line. Large line formations are bettermaintained, and fleets are better able to completeturning maneuvers. This change also eliminates a stepfrom the sequence of play, simplification always beinga good thing.

I did not see this turning issue as much of a problem,but the rake mechanics worried me a bit.

A few critics of the combat system likened raking inFlying Colors to aerial combat in the classic AvalonHill game:Richthofens War. In this game, aircraft are

often reduced to flying in circles, where one planefires on anothers tail and the latter circles around toreturn the favor. SeveralFlying Colors players saw thesame mechanic duplicated with regards to raking. Irake you you rake me. This had to be fixed.

Rather than making rakes automatic, Ive made them afunction of the distance between the firing ship and itstarget. And even then, its not a sure thing as a die rolldetermines if the attack will be a rake or just a

broadside. When opting to break an enemys line,youre taking a risk in that your moving ships may

well be setting themselves up for raking fire from theenemy. Under the new mechanics, a captain has tothink twice about taking this audacious step and not

being certain that a rake will be achieved.

The new rake mechanics add a little more wristagein that there will be a die roll prior to every rakeattempt. To simplify things, Ive moved current rakeresult modifiers from the backend of the process into

the rake roll. This keeps complexity at about the samelevel and the pace of play on the right tack.

Apart from these two major mechanical changes to thgame system, a couple of minor changes have beenmade that significantly impact play. The first is theelimination of a fleets flagship as a gratuitous target

Sinking a flagship no longer results in the immediateloss of the battle. The second is the elimination of theaudacity penalty applied to firepower on a side with a

poorer quality fleet.

The rest of the changes to the game involve theincorporation of clarifications and errata with an eyeto making the game as accessible to new (andespecially non-naval game) players as possibleAdmittedly, there are a few other mechanics aboutwhich players have indicated some concern; mosnotably the break check rules. As yet, no one has been

able to convince me that these issues requiremodification.

So whats down the road forFlying Colors? The nexitem you should be seeing is the first expansion to thegame, to be titled: Ship of the Line (again, borrowingfrom C. S. Forrester). This expansion should includeroughly a dozen more scenarios, most of which havealready been determined. Most of the action thereinwill be from the American Revolutionary War periodwith an emphasis on the exploits of French admiralsDe Grasse and Suffren. After Ship of the Line isavailable, work on the second volume in the series

focusing on frigate actions will begin in earnest. Ivealready begun testing the new card-based initiativesystem that will appear with this volume and you canexpect to see the American fleet sail into action withthat release.

Until then, keep your shot hot and your powder dryAnd thanks again for all the interest and outstandingfeedback!

-- MPN

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