SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread III

[Darkevilme]

So it seems Tia is going to be waiting days for Stalin to arrive. How tedious, good thing she told the fleet to slow up.

Say it with me people: UN-REAL-TIME.

Right right. Good thing as well, she's got to devote as much time as possible to making the Council and Queen agree that ignoble as it is agreeing is in there best interest. That and the Sovereignty is no longer the nation depicted in 'Annals of the Bragulan war, Starring the daring admiral Zap Starstreak and his stalwart CI companion Zeus'.

[Shroom Man 777]

Balthier and John Tamrin have so gotta meet up!

[Master_Baerne]

Do I have relations with the Centrality? I've lost track in several series of confusion.

[Simon_Jester]

Balthier and John Tamrin have so gotta meet up!

Why not?

One of these days, mang. One of these days.

Do I have relations with the Centrality? I've lost track in several series of confusion.

Speaking for myself, I interpret "has relations" to mean "interacts with on a semi-regular basis." Umeria and the Centrality are close enough that I find it easy to believe there is at least limited interaction (if nothing else, so Enduvos had relations he could threaten to break off with us). The Ascendancy is somewhat farther away, and there are considerably more countries between you and them.

So, dunno.

[Shroom Man 777]

Goddamn I spent the whole day working on BEARS vs. NAZIS. But apparently space battles are just not my thing. Do note that I'll finish that thing tomorrowish, so please don't interrupt while the Bragulans and Space Nazis carry out their business.

[Simon_Jester]

Eh, that space battle was actually kinda nifty, if you ask me. I eagerly await the outcome of the Bragulan ramming attempt...

[Shroom Man 777]

It's kind of rough. Lots of grammer problems. Bah. Edits!

[PeZook]

Passive-agressive arrays

EDIT: And vacuum tube autoloaders! Oh man!

[Shroom Man 777]

Black Panthers? Man.

But damn. That stuff with the albino girl is just depressing. I am going to sleep now.

[Ryan Thunder]

A fair point. I for one have been trying to avoid doing it too much, or at least illustrate that a certain amount of effort goes into securing the victories, and that the nation securing them isn't by any stretch of the imagination perfect.

Well my rule is to never declare victory, only what actions were taken and possibly my intent, until one player concedes defeat amicably. Now, I broke that rule a couple times that I can think of in SDNW2; the first time was because another player was being incredibly irritating. The second time was because it was just a bit of fluff that didn't really affect anybody. So there are some situational aspects to it. SDNW3 had game mechanics, so that was an entirely different matter.

If you're interacting with me and your actions are reasonable (consistent with what rational policy-makers might do, or with events that might unfold regardless of what policy-makers want) I will not be one of the ones yelling.

In fact, I hope I will be happy.

Cool.

[Force Lord]

Operations in-game start in June. I already know that Simon, Sorchus, Zor and LoC9 will send forces. Anyone else care to join?

I wouldn't mind, but my nation probably has no relations with the Centrality.

Well, as far as I know your nation in its current form came about pretty recently, and mine is willing to coexist with ideologically-opposed states as long as they don't meddle in my internal affairs or act overly aggresive towards me.

[Simon_Jester]

Well my rule is to never declare victory, only what actions were taken and possibly my intent, until one player concedes defeat amicably. Now, I broke that rule a couple times that I can think of in SDNW2; the first time was because another player was being incredibly irritating. The second time was because it was just a bit of fluff that didn't really affect anybody. So there are some situational aspects to it. SDNW3 had game mechanics, so that was an entirely different matter.

I can sympathize with the desire to "declare victory and go home" when another player is being incredibly irritating, Ryan.

That aside, I really do not see the problem.

[Shroom Man 777]

Space Nazis are so hot right now!

[RogueIce]

A fair point. I for one have been trying to avoid doing it too much, or at least illustrate that a certain amount of effort goes into securing the victories, and that the nation securing them isn't by any stretch of the imagination perfect.

Well my rule is to never declare victory, only what actions were taken and possibly my intent, until one player concedes defeat amicably.

That works when you're dealing with another player (or you get somebody to arbitrate, of course). Zor's issue is that he's doing it against NPCs. And against NPCs, you pretty much have to "declare" something one way or another, unless of course you ask somebody else to play the NPC role for you.

That, I think, is where it can sometimes get tricky. You certainly don't want to make a habit out of easy victories. And having too much coincidence is a bad thing. Yeah sure, your $400 Battleship of Awesome will easily kick some pirate ass. But what're the odds it happened to be there at just the right time, especially when the pirates were probably in some out of the way patch of space?

[Simon_Jester]

Well, Shroom is writing a hard-fought victory against pirates. So that is fair.

By the way, this is where I picture the Grand Trunk running, in green:



Note the black triangle cutout from the shoals, and from the corner of Prussian space. I can shuffle the geometry if LoC9 loves his right-angle border corner too much to part with it, but that's the general direction I'm aiming at: something that runs more or less 'north south' in the neutral space along the Prussian border. Its exact width and position aren't what I'm trying to nail down, though.

From this perspective, you can see why the Umerians are Not Happy about the Prussians grabbing a planet in T-10, in the sector immediately to coreward of their colony sector (the one I snipped the corner off so there'd be room for the Trunk). That stretch of the Trunk is already close to the Prussian border, and grabbing the inhabited planets in T-10 for use as fleet bases would be a predictable move to make before declaring control of the Trunk itself and setting up "toll booths" and customs patrols to assert rights over Umerian/Tianguo/whatever traffic moving along the Trunk.

Note that the Trunk may also continue further to coreward into Tianguo, and is definitely supposed to continue further to rimward toward the UN, probably with a wrinkle into Altacaran space.

[Dave]

*sigh* School is pouring on work and I'm juggling plates as it is. Senior year in college is decidedly busy and my time management skills seem to have atrophied.

While I don't want to bow out completely (there's a chance things will lighten up over Thanksgiving and I'll have time to catch up and post some), it looks like this is going the way SDNW1 went for me -- too busy with RL to keep up with the pace of the game.

Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you have fun (I know I did when I had the time). Feel free to use my nation as a setting for whatever it is you want to do -- I've tried to keep things as open as possible for other people to play with; it's all in the spreadsheet linked in my sig. Just don't expect me to have the time to read the latest or to post my own responses.

[Shroom Man 777]

Where is that guy, anyway? It's not like Maxim Chernov is growing any younger!

I am planning a series of posts dealing with an anti-piracy mission in the New Rhineland Colony Sector (since I imagine colony sectors are kind of your nation's 'wild frontier' and are not completely tamed).

What about your negotiations with the Umerians?

[PeZook]

Oooh...there's people with a grudge agains the Sovereignty AND the Bragulans?

That is a most auspicious development.

[Shroom Man 777]

As foretold by prophecies made in ages past!

[Darkevilme]

Oooh...there's people with a grudge agains the Sovereignty AND the Bragulans?

That is a most auspicious development.

This seems unsurprising to me. You'd expect these sorts of people to be littering the Bragulan/Solarian border like flies on a dead dog. Though really they should be holding a grudge against whatever clueless colony planner decided to settle the Koprula Zone Shoals. Unless their worlds are solid unobtanium you'd think they'd go settle somewhere where the daily weather report doesn't include the possibility of orbital bombardment.

[Simon_Jester]

At this rate I'm surprised there are any quasi-habitable worlds left along the Sovvie-Bragulan border... the place really ought to be a dead zone if they've been burning a planet every few years for the past several hundred. It's not like sane people would invest anything in terraforming a place like that.

That said, you know what the most disturbing thing about the whole Majella incident was?

Augustus Bullfinch apparently looked like Michael Jackson without receiving any plastic surgery beforehand

[Shroom Man 777]

Presumably getting literally pancaked by a pancake bomb, and then getting reconstructed by necronites, might've done a bit of cosmetic whateverizations on Bullfinch.

Its rare for the USS and the Brags to waste entire planets like that (unlike the loopy Imperium guys - though even then, they do deal with virulent Karlacks), since deadite infestations haven't happened before, as far as anyone knows. Unless zombie outbreaks happened every few years for the past several hundred too... though now it just might!

[PeZook]

It's not the first planet that was wiped out this year.

The Collectors are getting slightly irritated by that fact...

[Simon_Jester]

Presumably getting literally pancaked by a pancake bomb, and then getting reconstructed by necronites, might've done a bit of cosmetic whateverizations on Bullfinch.

But they built a statue before pancaking him, and it looked like Michael Jackson too!

Its rare for the USS and the Brags to waste entire planets like that (unlike the loopy Imperium guys - though even then, they do deal with virulent Karlacks), since deadite infestations haven't happened before, as far as anyone knows. Unless zombie outbreaks happened every few years for the past several hundred too... though now it just might!

Hmm. That's a distinct point: that here, the only reason the Bragulans outright flattened the place (as opposed to just nuking the fuck out of it to the point where the ecosystem would take centuries or decades of hardcore terraforming to recover) was because of the zombie outbreak.

Yeah, I guess you have a point.

It's not the first planet that was wiped out this year.

The Collectors are getting slightly irritated by that fact...

In fairness, this is shaping up to be a fucking weird year in galactic history. It's like suddenly every possible stripe of madness and stupidity was unleashed upon an unsuspecting galaxy, all at once!

[Shroom Man 777]

For you, the day the Bragulans graced your planet was the most important day of your life. But for Byzon... it was Bragsday.