Force on Force solo/coop?

[madman]

The search function here is not helping so I will ask direct. Has there been any published, or not, rules, suggestions, ideas, etc. for playing FoF solitaire or cooperatively?

Ambush Alley has a set of rules near the end but frankly, as written, they are very poor game wise. The insurgent forces basically fade away if not led and if a leader is present they spend their time trying to build into larger groups. Then they fade away as opposed to attacking, defending or otherwise interacting with the player’s forces.

But it is easy to play sensible actions for an insurgent force and doesn’t take much thought to make them reasonably effective. Looking through the Force on Force rule book I did not see anything, but it may have been buried/hidden. Also curious if one of the many supplements addresses it.

I am looking to play coop and have been doing so with my gaming buddy using Battlespace but I find the game scale limiting. I would like to play up to a platoon with support elements. I have played AA solitaire where the insurgents perform reasonable actions and the game is a good play. Thank you in advance.

 

[Mike]

Nowt here?

Search Results

[madman]

Me asking 4 times, 1 person referencing the rules I mention and the balance people calling themselves soloXXX or solo and FoF (I searched for Force on Force btw) in the same message but different (unrelated) paragraphs. When I used Force on Force solo I got 15 pages of hits, the first couple pages had nothing to do with my search but somewhere the words appeared. Pretty similar to Google’s search results.

[maggico]

For what I known, sure there are no rules about solo play in the FoF manual. There is a mention about some possibility, but nothing more. I didn’t find anything in the expansions about these.

The only possibility is the old Ambush Alley solo/coop rules, but I understand that are not so good for a fun game.

[madman]

Yes, that is what is in the copy of AA I have. Not satisfying as a game but perfectly reasonable as a simulation.

Still looking, or ideas from other rules, but may have to wing it myself.

[Papasan]

Never seen any, Madman, though I do play FoF solo & co-op on occasion, it’s roughly based on what’s in AA, though I always try to do what’s best for the enemy unit & roll dice when a ‘difficult’ decision needs to be made. In co-op games we tend to operate the enemy that faces our co-commander.. That’s when you find who your real friends are ! 😀

[madman]

Just how I play. I guess I need to expand my ideas into more rolls for evenness.

[Ruarigh]

They’re not specific to Force on Force, but have you considered Platoon Forward from Too Fat Lardies or Programmed Wargames Scenarios by Charles S. Grant? Platoon Forward is designed for WW2 but I think it works well enough for modern and scifi too. It uses a hidden enemy system that should offer a decent game, as it randomises the enemy, thus limiting your knowledge. Programmed Wargames Scenarios probably requires more adaptation because it feels like it was written with horse and musket in mind, but the systems of dicing for the enemy’s deployment and responses to your actions are eminently adaptable to most games. You might also look at the enemy AI in Five Parsecs from Home. Enemies are classified according to various types and then have a list of action priorities that you read down until your reach the first one applicable to the current situation.

Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

https://envirocitizen.eu
https://emidsvikings.ac.uk/

[Papasan]

Thanks for that, Ruarigh, though with the mechanics of AA & FoF and how they function I’m not sure they would work. The game already has a system of generating random forces that can be adapted for deployment and the AI forces react to moves that the solo/co-op player makes with a mechanism that can be used to determine how they do that.

[Ruarigh]

Given the issues that madman highlighted, I thought that other approaches might offer a useful solution. In particular, the scenarios in Programmed Wargames Scenarios could offer ways to avoid the insurgents grouping and never attacking, by using tables of possible actions that also offer some unpredictability. They would also allow you to play against enemy regular forces as a game-controlled opponent. I’ve played Tomorrow’s War but not FoF or AA, so I cannot comment on the latter two, but it would certainly work with TW.

Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

https://envirocitizen.eu
https://emidsvikings.ac.uk/

[madman]

Thank you for the suggestions. It is just at almost $70 for PWS I am going to have to pass, unless I see a copy cheap at the next few convention swap shops.

[Ruarigh]

madman wrote:

Thank you for the suggestions. It is just at almost $70 for PWS I am going to have to pass, unless I see a copy cheap at the next few convention swap shops.

$70? Yikes! Sorry, I did not realise it was that expensive. That’s heading towards academic book prices!

Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

https://envirocitizen.eu
https://emidsvikings.ac.uk/

[madman]

So one thing I was thinking on was having every unit pass a TQ test in order to active. If they fail I was going to have them pull a SitRep card from Battlespace in the same way as Battlespace does. Think very one sided FOW cards, but more towards additional forces arriving and not on hot spots, OR some or all insurgent units activate at that point. I am thinking this since in Battlespace the ratio of insurgents to troopers is much higher and they are much more effective than I have found so far in AA.

[Mike Proudlock]

The Ambush Valley supplement has some AI rules for the VC that might be adaptable to other insurgencies.

[madman]

Mike Proudlock wrote:

The Ambush Valley supplement has some AI rules for the VC that might be adaptable to other insurgencies.

Thank you, I will give it a look over.

[Author]

Posts