STGOD: A Dead Art?

[SirNitram]

Yanno, I don't see what's hard about the idea of a ship being 'specialized'. If it's specialized, it's good at one thing. That would mean, to a logical person, that you can't be simultaneously specialized against two different threats; capital threats and point defense. I don't know, maybe I'm requiring too much.

[InnocentBystander]

I've got a quick question on specializations and points past 50. If you have a with 50 regular points and 50 specialized points, are you suffering from dimished returns after the first 50? Are there any cases where you made an investment that adds up to 50, but with specialization could put you over (say 40+10vs capital; which might equal 55 or 60 pts against another capital) the 50 point limit? Or do specialized points suffer from dimished returns separately?

[rhoenix]

I've got a quick question on specializations and points past 50. If you have a with 50 regular points and 50 specialized points, are you suffering from dimished returns after the first 50?

According to what I understand, yes. Basically, a huge 100 point ship going up against two 50 point ships probably won't be coming home, and at least one of the 50 point ships will be, and that's even with bonuses taken into account. Points total are the thing, not just the base points + bonuses.

Are there any cases where you made an investment that adds up to 50, but with specialization could put you over (say 40+10vs capital; which might equal 55 or 60 pts against another capital) the 50 point limit? Or do specialized points suffer from dimished returns separately?

If it takes you over the 50 point limit, then it's no longer a 50 point or less ship. The specialized points, as I understand them, are added to the base point cost of the ship before diminishing returns are considered.

The analogy I can think of is packing a radio, telephone, answering machine, and television into an alarm clock. Excessive complexity creates multiple points of failure.

EDIT: fixed quote tags

[Crossroads Inc.]

The more I watch everyone else Specialize thier ships to death, the more Im glad I just have "X" point ships, sure, I may be at a disadvantage if someone has something specialized specficlly for me, but when in doubt Generalize!

[Darkevilme]

I specialized then realized it was silly and undid it so i have only two specialist ships, which i assume are the ones i have to specialize cause it says in the fluff that they're scoutships and thwocking huge long range flying guns respectively. Then again, compensator class weaponry...from a matriarchy >.>

[Covenant]

The more I watch everyone else Specialize thier ships to death, the more Im glad I just have "X" point ships, sure, I may be at a disadvantage if someone has something specialized specficlly for me, but when in doubt Generalize!

I love specializations. I wish there was more wierd shit to throw points at! Generalizing is not a bad idea, but it's soooo booooring. I want to have some tradeoffs. We can't buy STL speeds, or super good sensors, or advanced fire control devices and stuff... so the few things that we can specialize in, I do. If everyone's ships were just generalized how boring would that be?

[Hawkwings]

about as boring as two gigantic spacefleet slugging it out in deep space, with laser beams and explosions and railguns and brave captains commanding "Ramming speed!"

AKA: about as boring as you want to write it.

[Hotfoot]

The more I watch everyone else Specialize thier ships to death, the more Im glad I just have "X" point ships, sure, I may be at a disadvantage if someone has something specialized specficlly for me, but when in doubt Generalize!

I love specializations. I wish there was more wierd shit to throw points at! Generalizing is not a bad idea, but it's soooo booooring. I want to have some tradeoffs. We can't buy STL speeds, or super good sensors, or advanced fire control devices and stuff... so the few things that we can specialize in, I do. If everyone's ships were just generalized how boring would that be?

How many times do I have to say that sensors are a part of Electronic Warfare before people start to remember?

The reason there aren't a million things to spend points on is because the specific bonuses have been consolidated so that the bonuses don't overlap. Think about it, what does advanced fire control do? It helps cut through jamming (Sensors, ECCM) and increase the accuracy of your weapons, and thus the damage (anti-capital/anti-fighter).

The POINT of this system is that it is based on what effects are generated, not what methods you use to achieve those effects. As we said before, you could have hot pizza oil doing more damage, or it could be awesome fire control. Regardless, it doesn't matter, because the end result is the same. The only way it matters is in how you choose to write your battles and tech-wanking with your other players.

Besides, the game isn't JUST about space combat or ground combat, it's about running your empire, manipulating information, diplomatic negotiations, etc.

[Bugsby]

The more I watch everyone else Specialize thier ships to death, the more Im glad I just have "X" point ships, sure, I may be at a disadvantage if someone has something specialized specficlly for me, but when in doubt Generalize!

Amen! I went the super-specialized route in STGOD4 - my cruisers were pretty much divided into "gigantic shielding ships with massive point defense that throw small rocks out the window" and good old "glass cannons". It worked pretty well, but it made combat tactics a pain in the ass. And I lost a LOT of glass cannons. This time I'm just doing straight X-point ships. Sure, I'm missing out on some things, but I can never be caught with my pants down.

Point for mod clarification:
As a result of this "every ship does everything pretty good" approach, I have not allocated any points towards EW. In his summary of my race, Starglider indicates that cloaked ships will rip me apart. I was under the impression that not specifying meant that I had no exceptional EW ships, and cloaked ships will certainly be MORE effective against me. But I CAN defend against cloaks, right? Star Trek VI em and look for the exhaust or some crap?

[SirNitram]

Cloaks are not a 'Win Game' button against ships that aren't EW specialized. Plus, they're double-blind. How does he plan to fire accurately?

[Bugsby]

Cloaks are not a 'Win Game' button against ships that aren't EW specialized. Plus, they're double-blind. How does he plan to fire accurately?

All I needed to know.

[Starglider]

In his summary of my race, Starglider indicates that cloaked ships will rip me apart.

It appears I missed a golden opportunity with those recommendations. I had no idea so many people would actually take them seriously. I should've been more misleading in the hope of tricking people into bad fleet choices.

I was under the impression that not specifying meant that I had no exceptional EW ships, and cloaked ships will certainly be MORE effective against me. But I CAN defend against cloaks, right? Star Trek VI em and look for the exhaust or some crap?

Seriously, cloak is pretty much useless for actual combat. As I illustrated in the pre-game RP, it doesn't even let you run away from a fight with a ship of the same size reliably, because cloaks replace shields and prevent you from firing back - without sensors you can't even use point-defence weapons. Combat ships will be running with shields up and constant sensor sweeps.

The only thing cloaked ships are really good for is sneaking past defensive fleets, shooting stuff up and/or inserting special forces, and then running away again. Patrolling EW-heavy pickets and enhanced strategic sensors (presumably) block this, but that's nearly as good because you've inflicted virtual attrition; depending on how paranoid the enemy is, you may be able to force them to significantly weaken their main fleets (by holding ships and points back for EW patrols) with a mere handful of cloaking raiders. You might be able to use them for surprise flanking maneuvers but the fact that a cloaked ship has to sacrifice a decent portion of its weapons potential limits the effectiveness of this. In principle a huge fleet of cloaking cruisers could exploit their ability to bypass long-range sensors to avoid meeting a concentration of defenders, but the point sacrifice to cloaks would leave you with little combat capability when your fleet finally does get cornered (e.g. when you get invaded), so unsurprisingly no one has done this.

The point I was making with you is that with no specific measures to defend against them, cloaked ships should be pretty effective at raiding isolated convoys and outposts unless you keep your entire fleet at home protecting everything. They'd better be, otherwise cloaking would be almost entirely useless.

[Imperial Overlord]

MOD VOICE ON:

We're still hashing out how exactly production is going to be handled, but we have settled on how merchant fleet and Dark Hellion's "Industrial Hellworld" points are going to work.

Merchant Fleet Bonuses:


1) Piracy damage resistance. Having a large merchant fleet acts as a kind of countermeasures against raiders. More shipping means can afford to lose more hulls, more Q-ships, privateers, etcetera. Kind of a "Battle of the Atlantic" kind of thing. You can still be hurt or crippled by raiding, you just have an extra bit of protection, depending on the points sunk into it.

2) Allows the player to draft some of his merchant fleet for use as transports if his (free) transport allowance gets whipped out in that area.

Dark Hellion's "Industrial Hellpit" advantage could work just like the merchant fleet advantage for similar reasons allowing him to get value for sticking 50pts in it. It essentially works the same way with non-essential industry taking up the slack to handle losses or quickly churning out cheap ships for landing troops.

[Tasoth]

The idea behind the mothership point was actually to have something for a player to attack with the Vak actually lacking a planet. It's assailable, but would just require someone to scout it out or follow a family pod home when they left a system. With no retaliation, I'll just have to put more family pods into play as I get the points for them.

The translation is this: you need an assailable production center. There needs to be a way that you could be taken out of the game, and the way you have your OOB as of right now, that is not possible.

[[/quote]

Yeah, I kinda realize that. The Vak family fleets, though, are the result of years of growth. They just don't spit out fleet upon fleet as they get the resources. Each Mother actually started out as an infant in one of the other fleets, and over many decades of growth, sometimes centuries, proved capable of not only commanding a starship, which the Pipsqueaks are used for, but at management of shipboard activities as well as diplomatic activity. So if you were to knock out all five family fleets that I have in my OOB, the Vak are gone. They'll wait a century or so before even thinking about coming back, hoping that all the meatbags responsible for the violence against them are dead and gone. An attack on Mothership Prime or actually hurting all five fleets to the point where maybe it's just a mothership or a courier or two left of it is going to take the Vak out of the game. Scouts promise.

[Covenant]

Seriously, cloak is pretty much useless for actual combat. As I illustrated in the pre-game RP, it doesn't even let you run away from a fight with a ship of the same size reliably, because cloaks replace shields and prevent you from firing back - without sensors you can't even use point-defence weapons. Combat ships will be running with shields up and constant sensor sweeps.

As the most heavily cloak-loving guy around, I believe, cloaked ships are just normal ships with zero defense. The advantage is you can deploy them stealthily and keep them behind your lines in non-obvious locations, but a Stealth Ship is not an awe-inspiring death machine. It's even worse than a Bird of Prey from Star Trek, as those at least had use of their sensors, where our cloaker vessels barely have any sort of visibility whatsoever.

So really, don't worry about the cloaks. People who have them are going to have a few advantages if they want to risk it, but almost nobody will go into battle with cloaked vessels, as anything will tear them apart and you'll find them really fast. Cloaking is an RP-heavy thing. If you're cloaked with full engines on, for example, I'm sure they'll see some thermal bloom from that.

[Hawkwings]

If we add 5 points of ftl speed to a destroyer and 5 points of ftl speed to a battleship, so they both get the same speed increase?

[Tanasinn]

Yanno, I don't see what's hard about the idea of a ship being 'specialized'. If it's specialized, it's good at one thing. That would mean, to a logical person, that you can't be simultaneously specialized against two different threats; capital threats and point defense. I don't know, maybe I'm requiring too much.

That...makes a lot of sense. I've reworked redistributed parts of my OOB with contrasting tech (anti-cap AND anti-fighter focus, for example) to inject some sense into things. If this isn't allowed at this late stage, I can always revert. =/

To make up for the time wasted in compiling my race's quick reference, though, I've updated it, minus the recommendations; those aren't for me to say.

Code: Select all

>>> Tanasinn : The Glorious Khurlassian Republic <<< 

boisterous space squids 

Upgrades : +130 ground combat (numerous, diverse and ruthless) 
           +110 internal security (massive secret police force) 
           +40  propaganda (anti-occupation bonus) 
           +10  medicine (anti-bio-warfare) 

Planets  : 1 x 50 pt : Nalthar (CAPITAL) 
           2 x 30 pt : Norn, Sur 
           1 x 20 pt : Ellorn 
           1 x 15 pt : Tranquility 
           5 x  5 pt : Anvil, A Place, Colmer, Outreach, Shuss 
           'assorted minor outposts' 
 
Ships    : 5  x PC  1  combat + 1 speed                             'Vigilance'  
           6  x DDZ 3  combat + 2 anti-cap                             'Fury' 
          13 x DL 2 combat  + 1 point-defense + 1 EW + 1 speed    'Reliance' 
           8  x CLE 9 combat + 1 speed                                  'Wraith' 
           5  x CLZ 8  combat + 1 anti-cap + 1 point-defense    'Ungol' 
           8  x CAE 10 combat + 2 EW + 2 point-defense       'Inquisitor' 
           18 x CAZ 10 combat + 3 anti-cap + 1 speed          'Bellicose' 
           6  x CC  10 combat + 3 cap-defense + 1 interdiction 'Invincible' 
           3  x BC  18 combat + 2 anti-cap + 1 EW                 'Blade' 
           2  x BC  18 combat + 2 cap-defense                      'Dalmor' 
           1  x DNE 29 combat + 3 EW                                  'Spectre' 
           2  x DNZ 30 combat + 2 anti-capital                     'Tyrant' 
           2  x DN  30 combat  + 2 cap-defense                    'Nova' 
           1  x BBZ 40 combat + 5 anti-cap + 2 EW              'Herilorn' 
           1  x BB  40 combat + 5 cap-defense + 2 interdiction  'Overlord' 

(5 x 2) + (6 x 5) + (13 x 5) + (8 x 10) + (5 x 10) + (8 x 14) + (18 x 14) + (6 x 14) + (3 x 21) + (2 x 20) + (1 x 32) + (2 x 32) + (2 x 32) + (1 x 47) + (1 x 47) = 
  1040 pts fleet + 170 pts worlds + 290 pts upgrades = 1500 pts

I'm not sure if cap-defense is being considered a seperate point expenditure following my explanation of why I considered it one, so I counted it as one when I edited the quick-reference above. Sorry for any inconvenience, guys.

[Starglider]

If we add 5 points of ftl speed to a destroyer and 5 points of ftl speed to a battleship, so they both get the same speed increase?

I'm pretty sure this came up a few days ago and the answer was 'cloak quality and speed boost are determined by % of ship points spent on it, everything else (EW, interdict, specialised weapons) is linear capability to points spent'.

I'm not sure if cap-defense is being considered a seperate point expenditure.

Thanks for the summary. I like the concept of predictive shielding. But based on the other mod decisions I suspect it's above the complexity threshold for this game - as far as I can see 'anti-capship shields' and 'anti-capship weapons' have almost the same game effect (maybe a negligible difference in how easy it is to retreat). Will have to wait for a ruling though.

[Tanasinn]

I did accidentally skip two ship classes in the math that I initially posted, but I fixed them to be correct.

[Hotfoot]

Last I checked, improved shields were an option, and work just as well against fighters as capital ships.

[Covenant]

Last I checked, improved shields were an option, and work just as well against fighters as capital ships.

I thought we had already decided against upgraded shields and passive defense options as they made for computational headaches? Not trying to be contrary, but it just seems like the Mods need to get together and decide what is in and what is out, and then post it so we can tell.

[Nephtys]

How is improved shields a specializaiton? It works vs anything harmful, so it's a flat point increase.

My 35 point Battlecruiser vs a 30 + 5 shields battlecruiser really seems sorta redundant. It's not a real spec, it's an 'upgrade'. An EW or Cloaking or Interdictor or Point-Defense ship is 'specialized'.

[Hawkwings]

No, in pure offense, the 35pt battlecruiser could blow up more things faster than the 30pt +5 shields battlecruiser. However, the 30+5 would be able to take more damage than the 35pt.

At least, that's how I understand it. Base points is overall combat capability spread out over *all* areas, and specialized points are for boosting specific areas.

[SirNitram]

What's different about surviving longer(And thus firing more shots), and firing more powerful shots?

In the end, nada. So I really find this superfluous.

[Hawkwings]

Because you could make a ship with destroyer-class weapons but double-battleship class shields? It could plink at another battleship all day and do nothing, and the other battleship wouldn't be able to get through its shields without a ton of effort.

It's like strapping a pistol to a mountain and calling that the same total points value as a tank. Except the tank has 100 pts balanced while the pistol/mountain has 1 pt in offense and 99 pts in defense.