STGOD 2k8 Planning thread

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2007-12-20 04:32pm

Intel operations are basically just roleplay, so why not?

And the PearHarbor'd! sounds like a good general idea. We just want to encourage people to move their ass and start combats, not to wait around and keep an ear out for the Bangbus Man's jangling tune to ring through the air before they run out with their coins and deathships.

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2007-12-20 05:05pm

Just to get things moving, I've posted my first just to get the ball rolling for my team...

Post by **Beowulf** » 2007-12-20 05:05pm

On the other hand, we don't really want to punish people for being asleep when the first turn actually starts. Or for that matter, having left for Christmas Vacation.

Academia Nut · Post by **Academia Nut** » 2007-12-20 05:14pm

We'll just keep it pregame for now, we can only get things ready and plot, no attacking or anything else like that. All we can do is watch and whisper, and if we park a battle fleet right off someone's border then when they get back they will presumably have been able to prepare for an attack for a long time.

And if guy has parked their attack fleet off the border of an aggressor, then when the main game starts I would say that if the threatened group went out to meet the attackers then it would "count" as acting aggressively as its no fair if they were away and someone positioned things so that they would be forced to defend themselves and thus get Pearl Harbored.

Oh, and my OOB is updated to show the spread of my worlds.

Crossroads Inc. · Post by **Crossroads Inc.** » 2007-12-20 07:37pm

Darkevilme wrote:Numbers boosted, thanks for the check hawkwings.

Fear my stealthed raider squadron crossroads.

rest assured, when I get home to make a full post, my 35point "tradeships" are giving your little human slaves a close inspection... And just TRY getting past my sensor nets!

Hawkwings · Post by **Hawkwings** » 2007-12-20 07:40pm

Academia Nut: your Asgard system has 39 points of planets. The limit is 25 points per system.

Thirdfain: your light ships category only has 285 points, not 300 as listed. Plus you're 500 points under.

I think the pregame RPing is fine, but we shouldn't get bogged down in it. I'd say that there's no two-way interaction between players allowed. No no sitting down for diplomatic talks, but you can RP spies being put into place.

Academia Nut · Post by **Academia Nut** » 2007-12-20 07:57pm

Corrected, and yeah, the only two way interaction should be between spies and long range scanning. No one wants to do anything quite yet, there are still too many unknowns, too many ways for things to go wrong, we want to feel each other out, try and figure out who is weak and who is strong without showing our own hands.

We can start the game by having someone go "Fuck this!" and punching someone else in the face.

Hawkwings · Post by **Hawkwings** » 2007-12-20 08:13pm

Rule proposals:

Fleet Combat: Fleets do 1/10 of their Fleet Weight in damage per turn. Damage is equal to a ship's base value. Players can declare that ships are not firing, and those ships would not contribute to Fleet Weight. Fleet weight is simply the base points of all ships in the fleet. A ship that is not firing and not running away may still be damaged by the opposing fleet.

In addition, fleets do an additional 1/10 of their O value in targetable damage. To hit specific targets, the attacking fleet must have a net C3 value of +5, compared to the defender's D value.

Damage is randomly distributed to ships in the fleet, except for targeted O damage. Ships brought to 0 points are disabled and cannot fight, move, or interact with other ships under their own power. Disabled ships can be salvaged by the victor of the battle. If one chooses, the attackers can continue to fire on a ship that is disabled. If a disabled ship is brought to negative half of its original hitpoints, it is completely destroyed and cannot be salvaged. So, a 10 point ship would take 10 points of damage to disable, 15 points to completely destroy.

A ship may choose to flee instead of attacking. If so, the fleeing ships are treated as a separate fleet for targeting purposes.

Repair
Damaged ships can return to drydock for repair. There are two forms of repair: automatic and prepared.

In prepared repair, a nation can set aside a certain number of industrial points for repair purposes. One of their damaged ships may go to drydock, use the repair points, and be immediately available that same turn for more combat. In this method, a ship takes 1/4 of an industrial point to repair 1 point of base point value, rounded up. a 10 hp ship brought down to 2 hp would take (10-8 )/4=1 industrial points to repair. A 50 hp ship brought down to 13 hp would take (50-13)/4=9.25 ~= 10 points to repair.

In automatic repair, a ship is brought to the shipyards, and is fully repaired for free at the beginning of the next turn.

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2007-12-20 11:59pm

I think we're pretty close to ready to go--having a lot of new combat rules, after stuff got basically decided already--is unnecessary. Space combat is pretty much firmed up, and repair doesn't need so many rules. I'd write that stuff up, but for the next game.

If anything we need to figure out ground attack.

Hawkwings · Post by **Hawkwings** » 2007-12-21 12:12am

Where are these aforementioned combat rules? I saw that these two sections in the wiki were unfilled so I proposed the rules.

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2007-12-21 01:45am

We bandied them about quite a bit--they're pretty buried by now, I suppose. However, I have a burning hatred for fractional bonuses. I think doing 10 percent of your base weight in damage a turn is also too low. Bump it up to 20 percent, and don't give any snipe bonus to normal damage, it'd confuse the system as it stands.

Hawkwings · Post by **Hawkwings** » 2007-12-21 01:47am

So how would O damage be calculated? Special systems aren't part of base weight, after all.

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2007-12-21 03:26am

Hawkwings wrote:So how would O damage be calculated? Special systems aren't part of base weight, after all.

+O is tallied seperately, as it's in an entirely different pool.

Oh, I see what you mean--in the case of finding how much gets dealt, .1 or .2 a point, I'm not sure how much.

Dahak · Post by **Dahak** » 2007-12-21 04:57am

1: Is the list of "racial boni" in the Wiki current? If I wanted something like "Improved Computers", where would it go?

2: If there is an "agressor", why don't we have some actual bonus to those people NOT being agressor? I mean, the agressors get the good things, more ships, while those not being aggressive get exactly nothing, except the outlook of being kicked in the face. If you wanted to be aggressive, you could do that with the points you have and force them to act on first turn. I just think those not running around shooting things in the first round should get a different bonus themselves.

Hawkwings · Post by **Hawkwings** » 2007-12-21 11:35am

I'd say if we want to make normal damage 0.2 of fleet weight, we should make O damage 0.2 of O value as well, just to make it simpler.

Racial bonuses are accurate as far as I can see. Improved logistics, salvage, and assimilation need rules though.

For improved computers, what kind of mechanical bonus do you want? C3? If so, then just put the points into Improved C3, so if you spend 100 points in it, you can add an additional 10 C3 to your ships, for a total of a 20 C3 cap on your ships.

As for defenders, well, *someone* needs to be a victim, right? I'm not an aggressor nation, neither is the Enclave, I can't think of others off the top of my head.

We put in the aggressor bonus to encourage, actually force, people to attack, instead of waiting, building up forces, and creating defense pacts that would kill the game. There's no mechanical advantage to being a defender because that might encourage people to all defend, build up forces, and create defense pacts.

RP-wise, there's a lot of bonus to being a defender. You're justified in defending yourself, and you can ask for help from possibly friendly nations for a Completely Just WarTM. Plus you are more flexible. Everyone knows that aggressor nations will attack the first turn. And they must attack with at least 200 points of ships. I don't know about them, but if I were to attack, I'd want to gain something. I would likely attack with more than just the 200 pt free fleet. And that means that if you beat back the attack with minimal losses, you can counterattack with great effect later that turn, or even next turn.

I would advocate for some bonus to defender nations, but not taking effect immediately. Maybe defenders get 100 extra points in production on turn two, but only if you were attacked on turn one. This would represent the war frenzy/patriotism in your nation as a result of being attacked.

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2007-12-21 04:15pm

Defense is not advantageous. If you want to sit and build up, you are certainly free to do so. The defender bonus is fighting in a friendly system, with planetary support and reinforcements nearby. That's it.

People need encouragement to attack, they don't need encouragement to turtle.

Darkevilme · Post by **Darkevilme** » 2007-12-21 05:37pm

*amusement* hmm well that's two out of three, does the kingdom of Achea want to come over and join the party at the makay province? we are obligated to inform you there will be cake.

Crossroads Inc. · Post by **Crossroads Inc.** » 2007-12-21 09:32pm

Are we to be "baked" before cake is to be served? Or will the 'baking' happen after your invasion starts?

But I am sure that my people shall have a respeccted diplomatic meeting between our envoy and the good and open people of Makay. The do not have cake, but Any Diplomatic Envoy is bounfd to have lots of free food at thier parties.

Giant Robots? No, we have none of those, and they certainlly arn't cloaked or anything.. LOOK over there! A Demonic duck!

Hawkwings · Post by **Hawkwings** » 2007-12-22 11:00pm

Alright, so I just read through the *entire* thread. Whew.

A couple points:

1. Do we want the "Imperial Special Resources"?

Imperial Comms Net
Imperial Infantry Academy
Imperial Sensor Net
Imperial Archives
Imperial Armour Manufacturing Centre
Imperial Weapons Plant
Imperial Combat Computer Factory
Imperial Stealth Plating Factory
Imperial Power Plant (iffy on this one, but a single planet gets a manufacturing bonus maybe?)
Imperial Distribution Hub (logistics?)
Imperial Engine Factory
Imperial Starfighter Factory
Imperial Mining Operations
Imperial Combat Networking Systems
Imperial Combat Robot Factory
Imperial Propaganda Center
Imperial Repair Yard
Imperial Hyperdrive Factory
Imperial Interdictor Factory
Imperial Hypercomm Factory
Imperial Uber-Shipyards

They would have to be captured from NPC guard fleets, and offer super special Imperial bonuses.

2. Combat and repair

There were no real fleet combat rules set out until that post I made a few days ago. If nobody has any objections, we can just change the number to 20% and plug it into the rules.

Same thing with repair. Does anyone have objections? If not, into the wiki it goes.

consequences · Post by **consequences** » 2007-12-26 01:28pm

Well, since no one seems to have noticed(or cared anyway) about my blatant munchkinism in the OoB thread, I'll lay it out here:

There's an issue with the the planet based fleet bonus rules. As written, a one point podunk colony has the same level of jamming/sensors/orbitting death arrays as a ten point thriving primary world, and all worlds in a system stack. So a power-gaming piece of crap(in this instance me), could have 25 individually nearly worthless worlds in a system, and thus gain 25 fleet points per fifty racial points spent, as opposed to the much smaller number gained for a sane system setup. A more thorough power-gaming piece of crap could start with four systems like that, and a total of a thousand virtual fleet points on the defense. Leaving aside twinkery and game balance issues, it's also extremely silly to say that, for instance, Tatooine and Coruscant would have the same levels of fortification given a certain general level of attention payed to planetary defense.

Some possible solutions:

1: Planetary based fleet bonus points count for each point of a world(possibly including the base C3 and interdiction bonuses worlds provide as a default). This makes a total dedication to such a thousand point defensive fleet enhancement, and all other enhancements would have to be based around that level of approximate game influence.

2: As above, but a certain number of planet points are required for each point of benefit, whether it be two, three, five, 4.78964237, or whatever.

3: One point colonies simply don't count at all for defensive calculations. This neatly slaps me down for my attempts to be an annoying pain in the ass, and establishes a precedent for butt-fucking anyone who tries for a blatant rules exploit in the future.

Thoughts?

Darkevilme · Post by **Darkevilme** » 2007-12-26 02:21pm

I may have missed this but uh, whos bright idea was it to make these things racial? It's essentially a ship that cant leave the system but can use its powers in the system so treat it as such and maybe, maybe, give it a point break for not having FTL. this means system jamming installation becomes essentially ship(defensive only) 2+10D, orbital fort is the same only with offense or heck whatever else you want. not sure if this is a good system for the early warning network but it makes a darn sight more sense for defences.

And i think everyone hasnt noticed due to this being the christmas period and that.

Oh and if someone wants early warning to stack in a system and we're not using the 'treat early warning stations as ships' rule then i will declare them silly.

Hawkwings · Post by **Hawkwings** » 2007-12-26 05:32pm

I think the racial planetary defense/offense/C3 was meant to be stations orbiting the planet. The intra-system patrol ships idea still works though.

It's not inconceivable that a 1 pt world has the same defenses as a 10 pt world. Remember that the points only mean industrial output. Maybe the 10pt world is a hellish mining colony, and the 1pt world is a major commercial center.

As for a fix, I would advocate something like this:

You purchase them with racial points, and they act as "free" ships.
The defender may use these ships only during defensive actions
The ship stats are 1+1X, where X is O, D, or C3.
50 pts buys 1 of these ships per planet point in that system. So a system with 25 pts of planets would get 25 of these ships.
These ships do not count as ships in your fleet, do not take maintenance, and are replaced for free at the beginning of each turn.

So in effect, you can buy 1+1X patrol boats for home defense with your racial points. They're better than normal ships because they're "free" but they're worse because they cost racial points, and they cannot leave the system.

EDIT: Actually, that's too powerful. Way to powerful. Will think some more on this.

-----

On a completely separate point, I would like to propose the racial bonus of "Sensor nets" which would give you advance warning of enemy ships entering your territory. Say 100 points gives you 1-day advance warning of ships traveling at normal hyperspeed. Similarly, a ship travelling at 2x normal hyperspeed would only give you 12 hours warning. This gives a counter to really fast raiders entering your territory.

Crossroads Inc. · Post by **Crossroads Inc.** » 2008-01-01 10:22am

Christmass is over, NewYears is passed, Lets get down to Blowing things up!!!

Academia Nut · Post by **Academia Nut** » 2008-01-01 07:45pm

Indeed, we can definitely move on to more explosions now I think.

As for the whole planetary jamming and weapons platforms thing, well at 50 points apiece to a certain extent it really only helps if you take an obscene number of small worlds like that, and they can only support one another if you have a fleet in place to actually gain the bonuses, otherwise their individual small size will end with them being steamrolled.

Plus we may or may not have said that only like 30 or 40% of any given planetary size could be taken. The objective of that was to avoid people taking all 10pt worlds. The 25 point limit per system sort of helps in that regard as you would have to really spread out your resources, but doesn't really address the issue. In any case, if there were a limit on the percentages then that would quite nicely push things back into balance as it would be nearly impossible to start with more than 50 worlds.

Hawkwings · Post by **Hawkwings** » 2008-01-01 09:39pm

I don't think we want to impose limits on the planets you can take, otherwise we'll all end up having just about the same kind of systems. Unless they're really loose restrictions, which kinda undermines the whole point.

Revising my earlier proposal. Changes in bold.

You purchase defenses with racial points, and they act as "free" ships.
The defender may use these ships only during defensive actions.
The ship stats are 1+1X, where X is O, D, or C3.
100 pts buys 1 of these ships per planet point in that system. So a system with 25 pts of planets would get 25 of these ships. 200 points buys 2 per planet point, etc.
These ships do not count as ships in your fleet, do not take maintenance, and are replaced for free at the beginning of each turn.
Patrol boats have no normal attack.
For every 100 racial points in this bonus, you can only use as many of these ships as a quarter the point value of normal ships in-system. That means a nation with 100 points in orbital defenses, with 25 points of planets and 50 points of ships in system, would have the 100 point fleet plus 12 1+1D patrol boats. If they spend 200 racial points in this, then they would get the 50 pt fleet plus 25 patrol boats. If they spent 200 racials and have a 100-pt fleet in-system, then they get the full 50 patrol boats that the system has. So it only takes 100 points of normal ships in-system to get the full system defense bonus.