The Romulan Republic wrote:What's the state of Coruscant? Is it still around, or was it given a Base Delta Zero or something?
A little elaboration on backstory might also help differentiate ours from the other one on Spacebattles.
Well, Coruscant survived, albeit battle-scarred. It has long since been repaired and has been serving as the capitol of a large Republic faction. The Battle fo Coruscant was really a plot device (based on the Dark Empire plot of the Emperor clone returning from Byss) to get all the major, big-name "legacy" characters out of the way. That way, no one could claim that their faction has more "win" than any other because Luke Skywalker joined them, etc.
We got rid of most big-name characters, but some smaller characters were still around. Chief Percival Bast, General Carlist Rieekan, Tavion Axmis, General Sev'rance Tann... you get the idea. A few B- and C-listers were left. We also used some existing baddies for enemies, such as Hethrir, and we agreed that Daala never left the Maw. We kept her around for later use.
You start with a maximum of 4 worlds in an area that have decided to band together to protect themselves from the mean ol' Galaxy. You're encouraged to look up the worlds in Wookiepedia and find out about them so you can make informative, in-depth and in-character posts (ie, it would not go over well to claim a planet that is mostly desert and try to say that it's got lots of oceans and lush jungles, for example).
I'm mostly fine with this, though I would point out that people complained when I set the limit to one major world and
ten colonies. Some people may find four worlds, with a maximum of 2,400 points, to be too little. Unless we lower the point value of units, but if we do that then some units will likely be worth only a decimal point apiece (maybe that's fine though).
I found it helps not to start off with the potential to Zerg-rush single worlds. With 3-4 various worlds, one well-equipped Homeworld makes you plan carefully and step lightly. But like i mentioned in a previous post, we had problems with powergamers and people showing up later wanting to start out with, for example, the entire Corporate Sector all at once.
Once you pick your planets, we determine a point value for them.
Who is the arbiter if their is a disagreement over the point value of a world? Their are a lot of worlds in canon, and there is a lot of inconsistent canon. Granted, this will likely be an issue with any system of rules we use.
We do have a GM, but a lot of it now is group consensus among the long-term players. I started playing shortly after I got to Iraq, and that was mid-2004, so it's been going for some time and those of us who've been involved that long have a vested interest in putting a lid on upstarts; we've also gotten used to one anothers' styles and know how to reach agreement together on issues. So that's something that rules can't really account for.
CLASSES:
Homeworld- 600 pts.
Major----- 400 pts.
Average--- 200 pts.
Minor----- 100 pts.
Colony---- 50 pts.
A major homeworld, like Corellia or Coruscant (or of another major, space-faring species) is worth 600 points. (A "major, space-faring species" means a sentient species that has achieved faster-than-light travel on its own --so, like, Ewoks or Jawas don't count since, though they may be intelligent species, they never developed space travel-- or much technology on their own at all).
"Major" worlds are worlds that may not be homeworlds to major species, but are large, high-population industrial giants. Your typical "city-world" will be like this, such as Eriadu or Druckenwell.
"Average" worlds are worlds that have sizeable and respectable populations, but have not covered the surface of their worlds in population. They may be popular or important, but they're not giants on the Galactic scene. Naboo, for example, is an "Average" world.
"Minor" worlds are worlds with self-sustaining population but very little real power or influence. Bespin would be like that.
"Colony" is a small world or space station that relies on contact with another world to keep going. Any large, industrial space station would be a Colony (but not an ordinary Golan defense platform-- you can't spam space stations to boost your points). Mining colonies like the one on Mustafar would fit in this category.
Sounds good.
A note on "stations" as a resource-- these are, of course, the big stations like Silver Station, Centerpoint, etc. A Golan defense station doesn't produce resources; so people can't spam out Golans and get hundreds of extra points. Rather, they cost points, since they add to defense, and have to be built and paid for like ships.
Try to find a small cluster of worlds that are near each other, don't go picking all Homeworlds that are clear across the Galaxy from one another. Have a good, clear reason why these worlds banded together, especially if they're a mix of, say, former Imperial and Republic worlds.
Given hyperspace speeds, why must worlds in a faction be near one another?
This was a metagame rule; it was mostly for convenience and keeping track of "map blobs". It's not necessary and many factions now have far-flung outposts.
Decide if you want your government to be Imperial, Republic, Seperatist, or Independent in nature. That will also determine what types of ships you can start out with.
What about ships that are sold on the civilian or black market (transports, probably obsolete fighters, Corrillean Corvette all come to mind)?
We have a list of "Independent" ships available, stuff that are ubiquitous to all factions because they are so universally used. Things like Nebulon-Bs, CR-90s, and the like are on it, and lots of fighters and YT- freighters. We also recently decided that LH-3210 Trade Fed megafreighters (the ring ships) and ISD-Is would be on that list (although I haven't updated that yet).
Put your worlds together and add them up. The resulting number of points is what you use to buy ships with.
What about purchasing extra ground units/planetary defences beyond what's available on your ships/stations?
For the most part, we've played pretty loose with that. We figured that deployable assets were important to account for, but there'd be too many defense assets to count so we just try to keep it "reasonable". As long as no one abuses the idea ("You can't invade, I have ten million squadrons of X-Wings!") we don't really worry about it. If I was doing this over I'd say a "standard planetary defense package" would consist of, say, 50 divisions of troops and 20 wings of fighters, some turbolasers and ion cannons and a planetary shield, and slap a 5-point cost on it and call it good, but until it becomes a problem we haven't bothered.
I myself have about two or three hundred various Divisions on each planet, and a few dozen Navy fighters and another few dozen Police fighters, less for colonies.
Ship Construction List
The list here spells out which ships are accepted as canon for this game. Custom designs and cross-overs from other universes are NOT permitted.
Oh well, I can see the logic to it. But plenty of other STGODs have had custom designs, and I don't know that such is a bad thing as long as the designs are restricted to Star Wars tech.
I agree with ships from other universes though, unless people want to invite madness and turn this into Trek vs Wars.
Yeah, we had folks trying to conjure up "Star Wars" versions of Bab-5 cruisers, 40K assault landing barges, and so on. We try to keep it "pure Star Wars". Feel free to ditch this by all means, since after all no one's trying to mimic the SB game exactly.
The guys I play with over there are mostly pretty good, but remember that overall there's a, um... well,. let's say a difference in overall maturity level in SB com. We get some wankers wandering through from time to time. Most of the long-term, dedicated people that are in the Story-boards section are pretty decent, though (it's the only part of the board I post at, actually).
SHIP RULES:
1. Minor Ship mods are allowed: Straight out swaps should be alright, for example: Trading a turbolaser for a shield generator or an ion cannon, one-for-one. Modification such as this can only be performed on military craft. Warships can also be converted into the civilian ships by stripping them of weapons.
How does that effect the ship's point value, if at all? Does it cost us if we mod a ship mid-game?
Generally it doesn't affect point value. Trading a turbolaser for an ion cannon or a tractor beam is small potatoes. But for example if you wanted to, say, turn a whole Star Destroyer into a specialized electronics warfare platform with a cloak, that's a significant change that would draw a lot of power (esp. the cloak) and require maybe backup reactors, thus lessened crew and hangar bay space, etc, so it gets more expensive and we agree on a cost adjustment.
I, as ruler of Naboo, created the
Royal-class Star Destroyer: I took out the troop and assault lander space and massively expanded the hangar bay to concentrate on fighters. I mixed Imperial "capship" doctrine with Republic "fighter" doctrine so most of my capships have expanded fighter capacity, and I made dedicated landing fleets with
Acclamators for planetary assault. The RSD costs the same since I traded troops capacity for fighter capacity. Now, if I'd expanded the frame to include both, I'd have to jack the cost.
2. Putting weapons on Civilian Ships: Some civilian ships carry weapons to protect themselves from pirates. But if you mount too many weapons on a civilian ship, it is no longer considered a civilian ship, but a combat ship, and open to attack from hostile navies.
Does this mean there's a rule against attacking civilian vessels?
No, it's just we wanted to discourage covering freighters with gobs of weapons and then claiming 'foul' if someone attacked it because it was "just a freighter". Although we've used Q-ships, and the Trade Fed can "arm-up" freighters for temporary duty as battleships, and then "de-mil" them later.
Determine how big your civilian ship is, and find a military ship close to the same size. Count the number of weapons on the military ship and divide by 10. The resulting number is how many weapons you can place on your civilian ship. If you go over that number, then it is no longer considered a civilian ship but a military vessel.
I'd think weapons
power is more important than weapons
numbers. A ship with one heavy turbolaser is much more menacing a combatant than a ship with fifty kiloton-level point-defence guns. Also, this could be tricky, since "find a military ship close to the same size" means very little. An Interdictory Frigate, if I recall, is rather lightly armed for its size, etc. But maybe leaving it open is a good thing.
You are correct, but it was just easier this way. We hadn't really had a problem with it, so it's a bit extraneous.
3. Police/Customs/Border Patrol/Enforcement Ships: Police ships are calculated using the same points system used for Navy ships, and with a difference-- Police ships are meant to CAPTURE, not DESTROY, their targets. At least 50% of the weapons on a Police vessel must be Ion Cannons and/or Tractor Beams. Police Ship fleets must be made up of at least 50% Corvettes or Frigates, and nothing larger than a Cruiser class is allowed (so, no "Police Star Destroyers").
This seems rather arbitrary and needless. What does it matter if a ship is
called a police ship or not? Its how its used that matters. So why not let someone call their vessels police ships if they wish? Players will still react to them based on their capabillities, and they'll still have the same capabilities. I guess what I'm saying is, why do we need a sepperate, artificial class for police ships?
When we first established the Point system, Police ships were exempt, then, they were re-calculated anew for Police fleets. This can be exploited, of course, by having massive "Police/Customs" Navies secure your borders while the real Navy went out to conquer. It hasn't been a problem, and it would probably be easier to just make all ships cost a little less, or jack the initial values for worlds.
And a cruiser level ship with fifty percent turbolasers and 50% Ion canons is damn formidable. Since Star Destroyers are cruisers at best, destroyers at worst, a "police Star Destroyer" sounds perfectly possible under this system. Then again, Wars ship classifications are screwy as hell, and I probably wouldn't include a particular classification system in the rules at all if it can be avoided.
Yeah, it was a breakdown in our otherwise fairly well-thought system, I felt.
4. No plantary scale weaponry/'superweapons' on any sort of ship or station.
While given the limitations on planet numbers I doubt anyone could afford them, why make it a solid ban? Its not like such weapons are all that rare in Star Wars.
Just to prevent spammers from making several "Eye of Palaptine" or "Eclipse" class ships, or World Devastators for "t3h win". We ruled that the facilities to make these collapsed with the Empire; or were either blown up by their Imperial guards so they wouldn't get captured by the Republic, or the Republic (during it's brief reign) destroyed the facilities.
6. 6 game months development time for the above-mentioned modifications.
How do we determine when six months have passed in-game? Is this real time? Because that poses its own problems if, say, someone can't post for a few days.
We were on a "1 RL week = 1 game month" rotation.
8. Cloaking Devices for fighters are VERY expensive. You cannot equip entire fleets or wings of fighters with cloaks. At most a faction can equip 1 cloaked fighter squadron for every 1 major planet or above they have represented in their OOB. Police fighters do not have cloaks.
So if a player designates a vessel a "police ship," it can't be cloaked regardless of the laws of their faction or the points they invest in it? Why?
Again, I would strongly consider scrapping the "police ship" designation as anything more than what the player prefers to name their ships as.
We felt that cloaks on a Police ship was kinda against the grain of the Police mission, although we hadn't considered vessels doing undercover investigations or stake-outs. Basically to prevent fleets of cloaked ships. Adjust as needed depending on what the consensus is about the Police ships. Most of the novels had people interacting with "Imperial Customs" before encountering the Navy, so I went with "Police ships". Plus, my government on Naboo wanted a lessened military presence for political reasons, so we had a stronger civilian Police presence and less of a military one.
9. If you build ships from another political faction (ie, Republic trying to build or buy Imperial ships), then take the base cost of the ship (in either time or points), divide by half, and add that half to the base cost again. So a 10 point ship will cost you 15 points if it is from another faction. The only exception is Independent ships, which can be built by anyone at their base cost. Independent faction owners, however, must pay the "cost + half" for importing a Seperatist, Imperial or Republic ship.
Not too bad, but really, why not allow people to have whatever ships they want? Aren't most ships produced by private companies for sale? What about captured ships? In a time of galactic chaos such as the backstory suggests, wouldn't a lot of fleets be scraped together out of whatever was available? Really, this is one place I think we could simplify things by just scrapping a rule.
Just to encourage continuity (a lot of metagame rules, really). We were trying to encourage consistency with stated government goals; for example a Republic could very well use TIEs and ISDs, but would that be politically and socially easy for the democracy-minded citizens to swallow? Given how the "symbols of Imperial abuse" might appear to a Republic-minded citizen, we hoped to encourage some diversity.
Naboo actually had a internal political crisis over the use of left-over Imperial hardware, especially when the Falleen joined, and a campaign of "de-Imperialization" was roleplayed by me as a condition for Falleen membership in my government. I re-designed Clonetrooper-II series armor with modern Stormtrooper electronics inside, rebrande dit "Alliance Armor" to break with both Clone and Storm- trooper images; re-named the Star Destroyers as "Star Defenders" and scrapped a lot of Imperial scoutships and replaced them with MandalMotors designs, and so on. So a lot of it is to encourage roleplay options rather than just "fleets for the win!" empire-building spam.
Codes for ships:
+ means you may not start out with one of these, but can acquire it later.
* means that the design is owned by a particular faction, and you must ask for the plans before you can build it.
$ means that the design can only be operated by members of a particular species; you can modify them for x2 the cost.
That last sounds a tad overpriced for realism, but if a case can be made that it helps playability, fine. Otherwise, no comment.
Our Mon Cal player insisted that Mon Cal ships could not be used by non-Calamari; I guess the Geonosian Nantex starfighter flies based a lot on scent, so again, that wouldn't be compatible with non-Geonosians. Again, just some built-in challenges.
The "+" all the way up to "++++" ratings were for increasingly difficult ships to build, that way a one-world faction would not be able to crank out an SSD if they wanted. You had to have a certain amount of territory/resources to build certain levels of ships. It was a leftover designation from before the points system; it can probably be dropped.
7 real days = One game month
Every 4 real-time months = 1 game year
Ok, except that because a battle might take days to play out in, and players might go a few days without posting, and then a month has gone by while a fleet was crossing between two systems and fighting a single battle.
When needed, time becomes 'elastic'. It really is up to group consensus and we don't worry overmuch about the passage of time except every once in a while. I recently finishe dup an arc that in writing covered about a month and a half, and I wrote out many individual days, but if we adhered to the time rule religiously it would have aged my characters 4 years. So judgment is used when/as appropriate.
Buying ships cost money and you have to have it accounted for somehow. You get the ship 'right now' but you also have to find a crew 'right now' or it sits in the yards for at least 3-4 months while waiting for crews. You can also buy Droid crewers or Clone crewers from various factions around the Galaxy, but it costs more money.
How much more? And how do you determine weather you have enough crew for a ship? You didn't list any rules about population or military size. Also, ships are built instantaneously, or do they take time to build?
We never got that in-depth about the populations; this was to prevent, say, a guy with Tatooine and Ryloth as his start-up worlds from announcing he had a SSD. It would utterly denude his worlds of population just to do a pre-flight check.
Whether building or Buying, use common sense. A faction of 2-6 worlds is not going to have the tax or industry base to suddenly purchase or build 300 Star Destroyers. A typical start-up faction will have 1-6 worlds, a small fleet of up to two-dozen (24) ships, and up to 10 shipyards of various sizes, either Imperial or Independent.
What's the diference if cost, if any, between building and buying?
Also, I thought we were limited to four starting worlds? And does this mean we have to start with Imperial or independant shipyards, even when playing another faction? Lastly, this makes it sound like the point value of ships is left up to the player to make a reasonable guess, while elsewhere it sounded like their was a list of point values for different types of ships.
At first we lumped the factions into "Imperial" and "Everyone else" and it wasn't until later we further defined it into CIS, pirates, etc. We were planning on doing more "economy" stuff in the game but never got around to it, we were thinking about ways to account for GDP and all that, but it was already too damn many rules.
We at some point allowed some players to start with a few extra worlds because they wanted some backwater, asscrack type worlds with little resources, so we fudged it and let people start with 6.
Remember, this is 5 years of patchwork you're looking at here!
There are advantages to staying small: Factions with less than 10 worlds can shave 1 month off of build times. Larger factions have more bureacracy, worker shortages, and other headaches to deal with.
And more resources. Also, what is the purpose of this rule? I don't know if it does any harm besides adding another rule, but does it do any good?
It slowed down the desire to land-grab when people started out.
Do you have a list of what each unit is worth?
Yeah, I'll post the shiplist.
What happens when a player chooses an obscure but canon unit that's not on the list?
It is presented in one of the ships & stats thread for discussion on th evarious merits and shortcomings, and a point value is agreed to by consensus.
Also, what about units like a fighter squadron or an infantry regiment that might be worth decimal point values on this system?
As long as people didn't abuse it ("...10
Billion divisions!") we just waved it off.
In addition to my previous points regarding limiting what ships are available, I observe that the abillity to do so would presume that the game ran quite a long time. How long do most STGODs run?
If they make it past the first two months, I think you're lucky to squeeze 8-12 months out of the typical STGOD. Depending on the players, you'll fall to the usual squabbles ("I shot you!" "No you didn't!"), or arguments over resources, what can and can't be done by ships/people/weapons/etc, or just a slow decline in interest.
With a good crew you can get a STGOD to go for... well. for 5 years!
Some of the STGODS (they call 'em "SD"s, for story-debates) at SB.com have gone on longer than ours, even. But most form up and dissipate within a few weeks to a few months, rare is the one that makes it past the 1-year mark. I use my participation as a writer's workshop to experiment with ideas and characters. When I lived in California and did my small-press comics, I had a ready supply of people to commune with for creative ideas. Not so in Boise, Idaho! Now I commune online to bounce ideas. I use on-line STGODs to bounce ideas about writing, say, government leaders, battles, intrigue, diplomacy, etc. Writing negotiations or brinksmanship or battles with a live person countering you is good for the creative process.
Not to press the point too strongly, but why not dump the police ships catagory?
Like I mentioned, it was an attempt to reflect the ubiquitous nature of the "Imperial Customs corvette/frigate/cruiser" that always seemed to vex characters in the novels. In a post-collapse Star Wars, it is not necessary unless a faction wants to present a "less militaristic" face to the Galaxy and their citizens.
What about ground troops?
As long as there were no abuses, we never worried about it. Most of the people I write with are willing to take hits and lose battles for the sake of good, interesting plots so we always just went with "we have enough ground forces/fighters to get the job (ie, the plot) done".
Finally, my apologise for the long post, and the pain that your eyes may have suffered reading it. However, it was that or a whole bunch of smaller posts, and I didn't feel like quadruple-posting.
Eh, no biggie. Although next time I may break it up. Whew!
IMO It's better that people do a +1 so we know they're interested, instead of us thinking we have a bunch of fucking spammers with nothing better to do, except sabotage our poll.
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