Review of Fire on the Suns: TACTICAL COMMAND 2
Fire on the Suns: TACTICAL COMMAND 2 (TCOM2) Review
TCOM2 is a tactical starship simulation based upon its parent campaign system, Fire on the Suns (FOTS). It comes as a PDF file on a CD-ROM in a DVD case. Both the CD-ROM and DVD slip-cover have decent quality CG art that might seem a bit crude to some by today’s standards.
The CD-ROM has an auto-browser that pops up as soon as you slip it into your drive, bringing up a menu of its various offerings, which includes TCOM2; Cluster War (CW), a campaign system for TCOM2; the DAT, a ship-building program for TCOM2; VMAP, a PbeM utility; and an assortment of pre-generated ships and files.
TCOM2 Rules PDF
The rules are primarily B/W with a few bits of color used in examples and the aforementioned CG art, though oddly, the “cover” illustration is a B/W wireframe from a 3-D rendered starship. The font is easy to read, but the margins are very small, making the pages with no illustrations fairly dense. The book is well organized on the whole, with both a good Table of Contents at the fore and an Index at the rear.
The first forty pages contain the game system. TCOM uses a hex-based map and d10s as its standard die, though most rolls are percentile (d100). This struck me as slightly odd, since only very rarely are the rolls not in even increments of 10%.
For movement, ships accelerate or decelerate from the previous turn’s speed and conduct their move roughly in order of size, largest to smallest, using a non-vector, airplane- or powerboat-like system. In the basic game, all starships, though not gunboats or fighters, have the same acceleration, but an optional rule allows for some variation. There are also rules for other sci-fi movement types, such as micro-jumps or approximated vectors.
Combat is very simple and takes place simultaneously for all ships after movement. If you are in range, you start with a 50% chance to hit, modify the number, though there are very few modifiers, and roll to hit. For some weapon types, such as missiles and fighters, the target ship may attempt to intercept if it has point defense batteries. Some weapons can have special effects, allowing you to represent various sci-fi backgrounds.
Damage resolution is very interesting. Each ship is represented by a number of systems arranged together on a 19-hex wide “big hex.” Your 50 hull-space heavy cruiser has – you guessed it – 50 hexes of systems arranged in the shape of the starship of your choice. Damage comes from one of three directions, forward, rear-left, or rear-right, and you roll 2d10 to determine down which hex-row the weapon hits. It would be simple and more realistic to make this a six-direction system, and I’m not entirely sure why they didn’t. Weapons either sweep, explode, or penetrate as they “hit,” meaning that your beam battery might “hit” row 13 and sweep its damage to the right or left, your missile makes a crater starting at its impact point, or your penetrator drills straight down the row. The more astute of you might be asking: what happens if there are no systems on the row you roll? You miss; unless your sweeping weapon happens to sweep back onto target or your exploding weapon has a proximity fuse. The system is very similar to FASA’s Renegade Legion in concept. It’s used for starships, ground bases, spacestations – everything.
The rest of the first forty pages has space terrain, ground combat, scenarios, and a few other bits intended for interaction with the campaign game, Cluster Wars, but nothing that really stands out or requires specific comment here.
The second half of the rulebook contains the ship-design section. This is both where the system really starts to shine AND unfortunately where it starts to fall down. It is slightly less organized than the first portion of the book. One section explains what systems do in game terms, but the two-letter code for how it’s represented plus additional rule comments don’t appear till the very end. You’ll end up doing a lot of flipping back and forth before things will start making sense, but unfortunately, there are some things that don’t ever receive adequate explanation. Data Links [DL] say that they allow small ships to combine their firepower, but in no section is there a specific means for how they go about it. Resistant Armor [AX] is an ablative armor that can take “several” hits, but nowhere does it specify how many (or if the X is actually space for a number, what the cost is per hit). There are other, less glaring, ambiguities, such as combining several “hexes” into a single system, as might be done for a strength-4 beam weapon.
At its heart, however, it’s really a very strong and versatile system, allowing for the creation of anything from frigates to superdreadnoughts to asteroid forts to ground bases. The specifics just need a bit of polish.
The DAT ship creation program is very simple to use: click on a system, click on the hex-sheet where you want it, and it calculates the rest – to a point. It won’t let you know if you’re short on essential systems such as engines, crew quarters, or the ship’s bridge. You have to get that from the rules. Likewise, you’ll have to manually add any of the advanced technology systems, including their cost from the rulebook, before you can use them. You should really have the rules and the DAT open in two adjacent windows until you get a feel for it.
So armed, I created several ships from the basic systems and had at it. The action was fast and furious, and I soon had a satisfying hex-sheet full of wreckage.
In summary, I’d call this a diamond in its rough state. The tactical rules are simple and fun, but the construction rules could benefit from more work and organization.
Fire on the Suns: TACTICAL COMMAND 2
From: Ellis and Company Publishing
Type of Game: Tactical starship combat, hex based
Written by: Todd A. Zircher
Number of Pages: 66 on CD-ROM
Retail Price: $ 15.00 (US) + S&H
Email: Todd Zircher: tzircher@yahoo.com
Website: http://www.fire-on-the-suns.com/tcom2.htm
TCOM2 is a tactical starship simulation based upon its parent campaign system, Fire on the Suns (FOTS). It comes as a PDF file on a CD-ROM in a DVD case. Both the CD-ROM and DVD slip-cover have decent quality CG art that might seem a bit crude to some by today’s standards.
The CD-ROM has an auto-browser that pops up as soon as you slip it into your drive, bringing up a menu of its various offerings, which includes TCOM2; Cluster War (CW), a campaign system for TCOM2; the DAT, a ship-building program for TCOM2; VMAP, a PbeM utility; and an assortment of pre-generated ships and files.
TCOM2 Rules PDF
The rules are primarily B/W with a few bits of color used in examples and the aforementioned CG art, though oddly, the “cover” illustration is a B/W wireframe from a 3-D rendered starship. The font is easy to read, but the margins are very small, making the pages with no illustrations fairly dense. The book is well organized on the whole, with both a good Table of Contents at the fore and an Index at the rear.
The first forty pages contain the game system. TCOM uses a hex-based map and d10s as its standard die, though most rolls are percentile (d100). This struck me as slightly odd, since only very rarely are the rolls not in even increments of 10%.
For movement, ships accelerate or decelerate from the previous turn’s speed and conduct their move roughly in order of size, largest to smallest, using a non-vector, airplane- or powerboat-like system. In the basic game, all starships, though not gunboats or fighters, have the same acceleration, but an optional rule allows for some variation. There are also rules for other sci-fi movement types, such as micro-jumps or approximated vectors.
Combat is very simple and takes place simultaneously for all ships after movement. If you are in range, you start with a 50% chance to hit, modify the number, though there are very few modifiers, and roll to hit. For some weapon types, such as missiles and fighters, the target ship may attempt to intercept if it has point defense batteries. Some weapons can have special effects, allowing you to represent various sci-fi backgrounds.
Damage resolution is very interesting. Each ship is represented by a number of systems arranged together on a 19-hex wide “big hex.” Your 50 hull-space heavy cruiser has – you guessed it – 50 hexes of systems arranged in the shape of the starship of your choice. Damage comes from one of three directions, forward, rear-left, or rear-right, and you roll 2d10 to determine down which hex-row the weapon hits. It would be simple and more realistic to make this a six-direction system, and I’m not entirely sure why they didn’t. Weapons either sweep, explode, or penetrate as they “hit,” meaning that your beam battery might “hit” row 13 and sweep its damage to the right or left, your missile makes a crater starting at its impact point, or your penetrator drills straight down the row. The more astute of you might be asking: what happens if there are no systems on the row you roll? You miss; unless your sweeping weapon happens to sweep back onto target or your exploding weapon has a proximity fuse. The system is very similar to FASA’s Renegade Legion in concept. It’s used for starships, ground bases, spacestations – everything.
The rest of the first forty pages has space terrain, ground combat, scenarios, and a few other bits intended for interaction with the campaign game, Cluster Wars, but nothing that really stands out or requires specific comment here.
The second half of the rulebook contains the ship-design section. This is both where the system really starts to shine AND unfortunately where it starts to fall down. It is slightly less organized than the first portion of the book. One section explains what systems do in game terms, but the two-letter code for how it’s represented plus additional rule comments don’t appear till the very end. You’ll end up doing a lot of flipping back and forth before things will start making sense, but unfortunately, there are some things that don’t ever receive adequate explanation. Data Links [DL] say that they allow small ships to combine their firepower, but in no section is there a specific means for how they go about it. Resistant Armor [AX] is an ablative armor that can take “several” hits, but nowhere does it specify how many (or if the X is actually space for a number, what the cost is per hit). There are other, less glaring, ambiguities, such as combining several “hexes” into a single system, as might be done for a strength-4 beam weapon.
At its heart, however, it’s really a very strong and versatile system, allowing for the creation of anything from frigates to superdreadnoughts to asteroid forts to ground bases. The specifics just need a bit of polish.
The DAT ship creation program is very simple to use: click on a system, click on the hex-sheet where you want it, and it calculates the rest – to a point. It won’t let you know if you’re short on essential systems such as engines, crew quarters, or the ship’s bridge. You have to get that from the rules. Likewise, you’ll have to manually add any of the advanced technology systems, including their cost from the rulebook, before you can use them. You should really have the rules and the DAT open in two adjacent windows until you get a feel for it.
So armed, I created several ships from the basic systems and had at it. The action was fast and furious, and I soon had a satisfying hex-sheet full of wreckage.
In summary, I’d call this a diamond in its rough state. The tactical rules are simple and fun, but the construction rules could benefit from more work and organization.
Fire on the Suns: TACTICAL COMMAND 2
From: Ellis and Company Publishing
Type of Game: Tactical starship combat, hex based
Written by: Todd A. Zircher
Number of Pages: 66 on CD-ROM
Retail Price: $ 15.00 (US) + S&H
Email: Todd Zircher: tzircher@yahoo.com
Website: http://www.fire-on-the-suns.com/tcom2.htm
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