STGOD 2k8 Planning thread

[rhoenix]

Right, now it's official. In this thread, let's hash out the logistics of points as they apply to gameplay, with fleet battles, ground combat, and the other concerns as well.

Let the storming of the brains begin!

EDIT: I'll elaborate.

Quantification of ground combat shouldn't be difficult, and shouldn't take too much to hash out, unless everyone's already pretty much satisfied with things as they are now.

As for fleet combat, this is where things get a bit more complicated. My points that I'd like to raise are:

- Ship stealth vs. ship intercept. How should this be handled?
- Ship EW vs. ship ECM. This should be straightforward, but I'd like to hear additional thoughts on this.
- Ship interdiction vs. ship engines. Again, fairly straightforward, but I'd like to hear other opinions.
- Ship self-repair bonuses. What are your thoughts on this?

Also, how should the Imperial fleet's ships be handled? Should they simply not be bound by the "50 point diminishing returns" rule, or should they be even more wanky and worthwhile to get ahold of?

[Hotfoot]

Stealth vs. Intercept is a non-issue. I don't see the point to the "intercept" bonus. What does it do that is not already covered in Electronic Warfare or Early Warning Network?

EW = ECM, as was previously determined. This includes Sensors, ECM, and ECCM. While it might make sense in one sense to split them up, it's more bonuses that just get insane. Again, we want to have as few mechanics as possible while describing as much as possible. The last thing I want is a hundred odd bonuses to worry about. Another solution would be to have detection and concealment. Concealment would include ECM and stealth, while detection would be sensors and ECCM. The problem here is that it breaks up EW into two bonuses that don't fit exactly as well.

Short version, we need to look at bonuses like skills in D&D 4th Edition, not 3.0-3.5 "Stealth" instead of "Hide" and "Move Silently". "Notice" instead of "Spot" and "Listen". Yeah, there are differences between "hiding" and "moving silently", but they result in the same end result, getting past someone undetected. ECM is not about being undetected, it's about throwing dirt in someone's eye in a fight.

The one big question about ships is do we keep the "all ships have the same speed in hyper without bonuses" or do we return to smaller ships being able to outrun bigger ships?

As far as self-repair, no. Ships that are damaged should always have to at least fall back to a rally point after a battle so the fleet tenders, at minimum, can make essential repairs. Easy to repair modifiers should reduce the amount of time the ships need to spend getting repaired. Using the basic damage levels I described in the previous game (Damaged/Crippled/Hulled), we can set basic repair times based on the number of points the ships cost. Points into repair would reduce that time. Simple.

[Rogue 9]

Well, I think I'll try my hand at this again. I don't know what rules were introduced over the last two, so I'll go read the relevant threads to get up to speed.

I was rather fond of the ruleset in STGOD 2k5, myself.

[Covenant]

I'll be short with my input, others seem to have it down nicely

Interdiction: I love interdiction, but I think tying it to range or speed of charge-up is problematic, so I thought up an easier-to-RP way of dealing with it that also still stops the microjumping and orbit-ganking. I also think that we should state that a FTL drive is also an Interdiction device when it is turned to 'idle' mode, and that the bubble it makes is about a lightsecond big.

I propose that we focus on interdiction/noninterdiction devices that control how CLOSELY ships can open hyperspace windows to each other, friendly or otherwise. Jumping into an area that is flush with active interdiction equipment would scatter your fleet and randomize your headings when you get forced out, leaving you relatively easy to pick off as you try to re-establish formation. We'd just RP this as the defenders getting the upper hand in that first exchange--the element of suprise. You'd need to cut engines before you enter, or else stand a chance of running into each other.

A high level of noninterdiction would allow you to come out in a much tighter pattern and all facing the right way--and presumably moving at fullspeed towards the enemy, able to drop missiles or fire beams as soon as you get a firing solution, and get the drop on them instead.

Escape works the same way--but if your fleet is tied up in combat surrounded by other little interction bubbles, they would need to disperse before being able to form stable windows and escape--or they would need to escape a few ships at a time. This kind of retreat is very familiar to us and makes sense from even an oldschool Napoleanic standpoint, so I think it'd be easy to see where the advantage of good interdiction equipment comes in there. Quality equipment lets you slip off on your own.

That was just a convenient way of explaining it in descriptive terms. I think a consistant form of RP-able stuff would work best for Interdiction, not just "It takes longer," since that's kinda hard to describe.

Hyperlimit: I don't see much of a reason to make small ships faster in hyperspace. It may overly encourage large vessels, but small ships are already easier to stealth, so there's no reason to also make them quicker without a bonus. How much faster does a 3 point ship move than a 100 pointer? How slow would a fleet of big guns move? Keep 'em all quick.

Stealth/EW/ECW: I say we merge these. EW and ECW, in space, are essentially jamming/spoofing/detection based techs, and that boils down to stealthing a target against radar used both in finding you and in shooting at you. Plus, it also makes stealth less retarded--no invisible Klingon Warbirds sneaking around, and no partially invisible ones either, since we're not making it an On/Off cloaking switch anymore.

Everyone would have a basic level of ECW/EW on every ship that would make our modern equipment squeal for mercy, but every ship should have a basic level of everything, so only people with advanced stealth or advanced counter-stealth technologies should need to put points into EW/ECW. That also saves us from having to count up every ECW package on both fleets, compute who has the superior screening, what that means, and apply a bonus besides the obvious ones.

[Hawkwings]

The problem is that ECM is making yourself harder to target, while stealth is making yourself harder to find. A black rock has awesome stealth, but no ECM. A dedicated ECM ship may be impossible to target with sensors, but you definitely know that it's there.

Basically, it's the difference between having 0 targets (stealth) vs 1 real target and 1000 fake targets in several thousand cubic kilometers of space (ECM).

[Academia Nut]

AAAAARGH! Stupid Windows accessibility features erasing my stuff!

Ahem, anyway, here is my proposal.

All factions begin the game with 2100 points to be allocated amongst ships, industry, and attributes.

Ships

Below 50 points a ship, points act linearly, such that a 40 point ship is better than a 20 point ship, but equal to 2*20 point ships. Above 50 points, linearity no longer applies, so that a 100 point ship is better than an 80 point ship, but not necessarily better than 3*30 point ships.

Special warfare packages can be added, and count towards the total point cost of the ship. Packages are:

Interdiction
EW
Planetary Assault
Planetary Bombardment
Point Defences (anti-missile/fighter)
Long Range Guns (anti-capship)
Improved Engines
(others to be decided upon later, along with costs and capacities)

Stealth is different in that it is based upon the percentage of points allocated to stealth compared to the rest of the other points.
1-10% Long range IFF scrambling
11-20% Long range IFF camouflage
21-30% Long range type scrambling
31-40% Long range type camouflage
41-50% Long range camouflage
51-60% Medium range camouflage
61-70% Cool running
71-80% Active camouflage
81-90% Limited cloak
90-99% Cloak
100% Perfect cloak

(exact effects to be determined later)

Passive sensors degrade the stealth one grade to a minimum of cool running. Active sensors degrade the stealth all the way to a minimum of medium range camouflage. Use of weapons renders the ship clearly visible to all in system as is. For each point of EW in range, the stealth ship loses 1 grade of stealth to the EW ship and all ships in active, friendly communication with the EW ship.

All ships cost 10% their total cost a turn to maintain. Failure to provide enough points for maintenance will result in the faction being required to sell/scrap/dry-dock ships until they are no longer in a deficit situation. Selling requires another faction to be willing to buy the ships, at an agreed upon price, while scrapping requires no buyer and yields half the cost of the ship into that turn’s point pool. Dry-docking can either be maintained or mothballed. Maintained means that the supply cost is 1% the total per turn, but no degradation takes place. Mothballed means that the ship requires no supply, but loses 10% of its effectiveness a turn, to a minimum of 5%, and must have points allocated to repairs when taken out of dry-dock.

Industry

Industry must be allocated at faction creation to a number of colonies, with colony maxes and minimums shown below:

Earth type planet: 100 points max, 10 points min
Mars type planet: 50 points max, 5 points min
Large moon: 25 points max, 3 points min
Small moon/asteroid field/large industrial space station: 10 points max, 1 point min

All colonies can be reduced below their minimums by combat damage. There is no additional penalty for such a situation.

Each point of industry produces 0.5s per turn, which can be spent on ships, industry, or attributes, as at start up. However, no new colonies may be made, only improved, repaired, or captured from opponents.

Aptitudes

Aptitudes are areas where a faction specializes, usually through brute force methods. They are as follows:

*Improved Industrial Cap: Each point raises the industrial capacity of a planet by 0.5% (so 200 points will double the capacity of all colonies). Round to the nearest full number (so 10 points are needed to get an extra point of industrial capacity out of the smallest colonies)
*Improved Ground Combat: Each point adds 1% to the effectiveness of a planetary assault
*Improved Sensor Nets: Each point decreases the ranking of an enemy stealth ship by 0.5% while inside your territory, and extends your faction sensor range by 1%
Improved Stealth: Each point gives you a 0.5 “virtual percentage increase” vs. EW and enemy Improved Sensor Nets for your stealth ships. Thus 20 points will prevent a degradation of a level by 1 point of EW, and will prevent degradation of rating from an enemy with 20 points in Improved Sensor Nets. This however does not improve your stealth ships beyond their normal maximum ranking, it simply makes them harder to be rooted out by specialists.
*Improved Raiding: When raiding a planet you gain an additional number of points based on how many you could take from the world. If you have 10 points in this aptitude and you raid a 10 point colony, you gain 10 points from the colony + 10 points from the aptitude. If you raid a 20 point colony, you gain 20 + 10. If you have 100 points and raid a 10 point colony, you gain 20 + 20, while a 100 point world gets you 100 + 100. If you raid a 100 point world but only have enough resources to raid 60 points, you get 60 + 60.
*Improved Comms: Each point increases your interstellar communication speed by 2%
*Improved Logistics: Each point increases your repair rate by 0.25% and decreases your supply costs by 0.25% (max 50% for supply costs, no max for repair rate)
(other aptitudes to be determined later)

A faction can also decrease its aptitude in a field, but the benefits have an exponential decrease. Thus while you can take a 10 point penalty to get 10 more points, you have to pay 30 points to get 20 bonus points, 60 for 30, 100 for 40, etc.

Most penalties simply work opposite, but here are a few exceptions:
*Decreased Industrial Cap: Maximum decrease is 50% (100 point penalty for 40 points back)
*Decreased Raiding: If your penalty exceeds the industry of the world, you get a minimum of 1 point from your raid. Raiding becomes pointless at higher levels of this decreased aptitude
*Decreased Logistics: There is no max for increasing your supply costs
(other special cases to be determined later)

Combat
Space combat is as before

Ground combat is to be fully defined, but each point of Planetary Assault installed in ships participating in the assault gives a 10% bonus to the attackers.

Raiding a world destroys a number of industrial points equal to the points of the ships participating in the assault, and gives an immediate number of bonus points to the attacker to spend as they wish. After raiding the assault must be ended as the attackers leave with their loot. Control of the colony is retained by the defender.

Planetary bombardment destroys a number of points of defence invested in a planet equal to the number of attacking ships. Points allocated towards Planetary Bombardment on ships count for quadruple. 10% of the damage inflicted spills over onto industry, and any excess also falls upon industry (so hitting a 40 points of defence with 100 points of bombardment causes 100*0.1 + (100-40) = 70 points of damage to industry). Industry can be targeted instead of defences, in which case the math is reversed.

Planetary conquest involves a protracted war with the defenders, the end result of which is the loss of one side. If the attacker wins, they gain control of the planet. If the defender wins then they retain control, although presumably the attacker still has a fleet in orbit and can call for reinforcements or simply bomb the stubborn planet into submission/annihilation.

---

Okay, that's all I can think of for now. Please procede to take this proposal apart.

[Darkevilme]

Academia, i'm not going to comment on all of this but i'll do stealth and bombardment.
Firstly bombardment it seems a lil too unnecessarily mechanical, i mean there's three things that can happen with bombardment.

1. Attackers cannot defeat defences, get beaten off, do not bombard to any noticeable affect. ((few random places still get nuked though))

2. Attackers defeat defences and commence bombardment before being driven off by the relief fleet, marginal bombardment. ((A few cities get removed from the map))

3. Attackers defeat defences, commence bombardment uncontested, nothing not deep underground will survive this as well, Hotfoot has already said the average attack fleet can bomb damned fast when they put their mind to it.

So really i reckon we only need a rule of sorts for situation two and normally wouldnt the people normally just come to an agreement as to what state the planet is left in after a partial nuking?

As for stealth, i'm sure stealth and active sensors are mutually exclusive due to the whole ping business. I'd also say that the descriptions for the levels are somewhat odd, we're supposed to pay for 'camouflage', ie black paint jobs, and shutting down the IFF transponders? I think only the later levels are the actual stealth kit you'd have to actually work to get. Turning off the transponder and painting the ship a suitable colour sounds like Hotfoot's 'built in default capability'. There's also no 'doesnt show up on active scans' i think an alternative stealth level system would be.
Cold running( ship immissions minimal), partial active signature(only shows up on active at close range), no active signature(radar absorbent tiles and what have you to deal with active sensors), Cloaking system.(passive sensors cannot see the ship unless at close range.)

[Academia Nut]

Huh... knew I forgot something after the deletion, namely the descriptions of what is actually happening. Anyway, I was never quite happy with the stealth levels, but the general idea was at the lower levels you would have dedicated systems to mask your ship's allegiance and type at long range. As in interstellar range. So when it says long range IFF camouflage, that means that when the enemy is looking at you from several light years away, they see you as a different nationality unless they do a close examination. The type camouflauge is that instead of seeing a cruiser they see a cargo ship or a destroyer or a dreadnought. Thus at the lower levels you might not be able to sneak in unnoticed, but you still get the option of all sorts of sneaky behaviour and misdirections. So its more involved than just changing the paint job or turning off your transponder. Does that make more sense?

[Covenant]

I think people are overestimating the degree of stealth that can be achieved via passive means. Paint and running 'cold' are barely solutions at all. A vessel would still be significantly warmer than the space around it to a degree that even modern telescopes would be able to spot you. The engines could be off, and it'll still be warmer. Unless we actually rewrite real science, ban people from using it due to some sort of writer's fiat, or give people access to Cloaking Devices, there's going to be little besides ECW to keep someone from easily seeing you.

[Hotfoot]

I'll be short with my input, others seem to have it down nicely

Interdiction: I love interdiction, but I think tying it to range or speed of charge-up is problematic, so I thought up an easier-to-RP way of dealing with it that also still stops the microjumping and orbit-ganking. I also think that we should state that a FTL drive is also an Interdiction device when it is turned to 'idle' mode, and that the bubble it makes is about a lightsecond big.

The general method of generating the interdiction bubble doesn't really matter, but that's a good way of justifying it for a given nation.

I propose that we focus on interdiction/noninterdiction devices that control how CLOSELY ships can open hyperspace windows to each other, friendly or otherwise. Jumping into an area that is flush with active interdiction equipment would scatter your fleet and randomize your headings when you get forced out, leaving you relatively easy to pick off as you try to re-establish formation. We'd just RP this as the defenders getting the upper hand in that first exchange--the element of suprise. You'd need to cut engines before you enter, or else stand a chance of running into each other.

A high level of noninterdiction would allow you to come out in a much tighter pattern and all facing the right way--and presumably moving at fullspeed towards the enemy, able to drop missiles or fire beams as soon as you get a firing solution, and get the drop on them instead.

Escape works the same way--but if your fleet is tied up in combat surrounded by other little interction bubbles, they would need to disperse before being able to form stable windows and escape--or they would need to escape a few ships at a time. This kind of retreat is very familiar to us and makes sense from even an oldschool Napoleanic standpoint, so I think it'd be easy to see where the advantage of good interdiction equipment comes in there. Quality equipment lets you slip off on your own.

That was just a convenient way of explaining it in descriptive terms. I think a consistant form of RP-able stuff would work best for Interdiction, not just "It takes longer," since that's kinda hard to describe.

The solution to interdiction and hyperspace is simple, and more importantly, it's already been done. Hate to say it, you're reinventing the wheel here. We have a perfectly acceptable system for interdiction and hyperspace. Interdiction causes interference with a ship's ability to enter hyperspace. Since it takes longer to enter hyperspace under interdiction, it only makes sense that it takes longer for interdiction to affect ships with better hyperdrives. If a fleet with FTL +10 enters a standard interdiction field, they'll come in at an edge, and slip out with very little chance for anyone to get a shot. It's that simple.

Hyperlimit: I don't see much of a reason to make small ships faster in hyperspace. It may overly encourage large vessels, but small ships are already easier to stealth, so there's no reason to also make them quicker without a bonus. How much faster does a 3 point ship move than a 100 pointer? How slow would a fleet of big guns move? Keep 'em all quick.

The idea is that smaller ships are easier to use for patrols, maintaining trade lanes, interception duties, etc. These tasks are ones usually applied to smaller ships. I honestly don't care either way, but it's something that needs to be considered as it does seriously affect strategic level combat.

Stealth/EW/ECW: I say we merge these. EW and ECW, in space, are essentially jamming/spoofing/detection based techs, and that boils down to stealthing a target against radar used both in finding you and in shooting at you. Plus, it also makes stealth less retarded--no invisible Klingon Warbirds sneaking around, and no partially invisible ones either, since we're not making it an On/Off cloaking switch anymore.

Again, this is the difference between an ambush and the fog of war. ECM does not in ANY way help in an ambush except AFTER the trap has been sprung. ECM is kicking dust in your opponent's eyes, screaming loudly, and otherwise blinding your opponent and preventing them from applying force appropriately. Stealth is moving into position covertly. EW is in itself already on the edge of too much in one place to be honest. We could, in theory, break it into Sensors, Stealth, ECM, and ECCM, but that crosses the line on complexity. I'd rather lump all EW together and keep stealth seperate as it makes more sense in-game to have a jamming ship that doesn't have super-stealth tech. Again, this is about making a list of abilities that do specific jobs. Stealth is not perfect, it can't be, but the idea is that it can work. Again, STEALTH IS NOT CLOAK. You don't EVER become invisible. Stealth +10 does not make it so you can fly up to an enemy ship and dump waste on it, from 2m away without being detected.

Everyone would have a basic level of ECW/EW on every ship that would make our modern equipment squeal for mercy, but every ship should have a basic level of everything, so only people with advanced stealth or advanced counter-stealth technologies should need to put points into EW/ECW. That also saves us from having to count up every ECW package on both fleets, compute who has the superior screening, what that means, and apply a bonus besides the obvious ones.

I see where it's coming from on this, but I'm having trouble justifying it because of the severe differences between the uses of Stealth and ECM.

Academia Nut
Agree on ship scaling. Also add that players cannot make ships larger than 100 points. Ship scales could work as follows:
-Escort: 1-15 points
-Cruiser: 16-30 points
-Capital: 31-60 points
-Heavy Capital: 61-100
-Superheavy Capital: 101+

-Interdiction: Agreed
-EW: Agreed
-Planetary Assault: Um...what? How would this work? What is the point? We use ground forces for this. Planetary Bombardment already gives improved orbital fire support, and the flat 10% you mention later makes no sense.
-Planetary Bombardment: Maybe, see later discussion on such.
PD: Agreed
Anti-Capship: Agreed, but this is more about overpowering weapon arrays, more space allocated to guns, etc. Range really doesn't matter overly much, as we don't model range into space combat because it's a level of complexity that doesn't really add much to the game. Remember, this can be used to include missiles, fighters, etc., not just direct fire cannons.
Improved Engines: I assume this means FTL boost, because this is an ambiguous name and suggests an increase in STL speed as well.

One possible way we can reorganize these is as follows:
-Active Defense (ECM/Point Defense): Defends against Anti-Capship, can jam Sensors/Comm
-Sensors/Communication: C3 and stealth detection
-Interdiction: Same as above, keeps enemies in the fight longer.
-Improved FTL: Better FTL speed and improved resistance to Interdiction
-Anti-Capship: ECCM/improved missiles/fighters/whatever.
-Stealth: Covert movement/positioning, better able to set traps

The less ships can support troops, the better. When ships enter into combat on planets, lots of shit dies, and infrastructure is damaged, end of story. I don't think it's a good idea to make it so a ship can support from space and just pick off all of the defenders without consequence.

As far as the effects of stealth, that's both a bit above and below what I had in mind. Any ship can broadcast a bogus IFF with the right prep work ahead of time, and we should NOT have perfect cloak, even with Imperial tech, because perfect cloak is broken. 41%-70% is the range I had in mind.

Upkeep at 10% is a start, and it may well be good enough, but I may say go as high as 20%, with 30-40% for Imperial tech. I'd say that a fleet of 1.5-2 times the starting fleet should be the maximum a nation could sustain without grabbing more resources, while coming back to starting strength is relatively easy. Mothballing is a good idea, though I might make it a flat cost to reactivate them just to keep things simple.

Industry: Minimum should be MUCH higher. Again, these worlds were almost all part of a large empire that relied on its colonies to sustain itself. It would build things up as much as possible. No world should have less than 80% of it's maximum.

Aptitudes:
-Improved Industry: No. Christ no. EVERYONE will take this and anyone who doesn't is a moron. Again, anything that encourages turtling is not a good idea.
-Ground Combat: Yes.
-Sensor Nets: Early Warning Networks, yes. Used to track ships in or near your space, or to get general trends of traffic from nearby star nations. More likely to detect stealth, yes.
-Improved Stealth: No. This goes DIRECTLY to the idea that globals should NEVER intersect with ship bonuses.
-Improved Raiding: Let's put this on hold until we work out an actual raiding mechanic first. We should make it so raiding or pirating is less effective than taking the planet, because it's a LOT easier. What worries me about this bonus is that raiding will become preferable to capturing because it's so much easier, lower risk, and with this bonus, better pound for pound.
-Improved Comms: A good start, but there should be a cap for realtime comms.
-Improved Logistics: Boosts might be too low. Boost for repair is fine, boost for upkeep is not a good idea. This bonus goes from "gosh, this is nice, I can bounce back faster" into "look, I can sustain a larger fleet than other people."

The other problem is that you're pulling from a huge universal pool, so there's virtually no reason to have any negatives. Lose a few frigates here and there and, hey, be awesome. Make the aptitudes set at the beginning and keep them that way, and have them pull from a limited aptitude pool early on and then that's it. Say, 100-400 points to play with, and if you wanted more, you have to take some penalties to other things.

Combat:
Knocking out defenses for a system shouldn't hurt the industry. Especially given the fact that defenses are essentially ships without engines and such. Save industry raping for ground combat. You can win the ground combat faster if you use orbital bombardment, but you blow up facilities.

Space combat should last in the realm of hours, ground combat should last in terms of days to weeks. Nice as it would be to say that we should do more realistic timeframes, it's not going to work well for the purposes of this game.

Raiding, as it is stated, seems far too powerful and not connected with the reality of the game. Again, 2,000-6,000 point fleets are common, even as raiding forces. Unless you've got a 10,000 point planet, that doesn't work. Meanwhile, you've totally denied that system to your enemy and you've made off with all their resources (plus bonus resources from any raiding boost), all without risking an extended battle on the ground. Control of the colony won't mean shit if it takes 40 points to replace the 40 points you've lost.

I mean, seriously, as stated, raiding can RAPE an entire nation's production in one turn, while giving all the resources to an enemy.

Raiding, frankly, should be the realm of pirates. You hit trade lanes and make out with small fractions of a total production. Something that's so low-risk should have an equally low reward.

Additionally, there should be no reward for scorched earth other than totally denying an enemy access to resources. That alone is enough from a strategic point of view.

[Academia Nut]

Okay, see, this is why we need to do brainstorming. I will admit to going a bit raid happy, and in retrospect, the mechanics I presented were pretty lopsided. We definitely need to work out how to steal people's goods though.

For a lot of the ground combat stuff I was pulling numbers out of my ass, so I should have explained it better. The idea I had was for planetary assault pods to be like dedicated troop landing and support functions, probably that can't be installed on anything larger than an escort size ship so that you can quickly deploy and evacuate troops to hostile battlefields while giving close overwatch. Definitely an idea I would need to refine more.

I definitely like your classifications better though, they group things a bit better.

I cranked out a bit of math, and if we start with 2100 points like I inititially proposed, you can start the game with about 1900 points of ships and 190 points of industry and you will be able to support yourself, although you can't build new stuff without conquest first as pretty much all of your industry is going into maintenance when you have a set up like that. If, on the other hand, you start with 1500 points of ships and 600 points of industry, you will have 3000 points of ships when you finally hit your maintenance cap, or double what you started with. Or, if you're nuts, and you start with 1000 points of ships and 1000 points of industry, you can maintain a fleet of 5000 points before you hit your cap. How're you're going last that long I have no idea, but its possible.

On the other hand, with a 15% maintenance rate your max start is 1825, your balanced max is 2000, and your industrial supergiant is 3333. Of course, what none of these analyses take into account is that as you add more ships you will build new ones more slowly, so getting to the cap will take a while. 10% seems reasonable from that number crunching. Of course, if things get really unbalanced unexpectedly we could probably do a "Sudden economic collapse, maintenance suddenly becomes harder" sort of thing and bump it up. A bit of a kludge, but at least we can make adjustments like that in game if absolute necessary. Might screw over some people with overlarge fleets, but they're the ones most likely to be abusing the system in the first place.

Comms, could easily put a cap there, but at least its impossible to have infinite comms speed with the system I proposed.

No improved industry... I agree and with you to a certain extent. It is really good, probably too good, in that it makes conquered worlds more valuable and your own worlds easier to defend by concentrating resources, but it also represents a wide array of fluff things from improved AI factories to hive cities to group minds... but yeah, definitely too good in its current incarnation. What if say we drop it down a 0.1% improvement per point? That way to get a 10% bonus you have to spend 100 points, and if you make the aptitude bonuses come from a different pool, that would mean you would have to spend all of your points get just that? Does that sound more balanced?

Logistics, again, you're probably right, although I made the bonuses smaller than usual because I knew the decreased maintenance cost would be too damn useful, so I split it up with an improved repair rate. I supposed we just have the repair rate and call it Improved Repair Rate, but there must be some other way to represent having an excellent logistics supply train. Any ideas?

But yeah, I'm not going to suggest any mechanics for raiding or ground combat anymore, just offer suggestions to other's proposals because I have a strong bias towards wanting to swoop down on an enemy world and trash it before carrying off with as much loot as I can carry.

[SirNitram]

Honestly, I want nothing that can let you turtle and build up industry without expansion.

I wouldn't mind an aptitude for getting captured territory working for you faster, though.

[Academia Nut]

Hmmm... okay, that sounds more fair. Hmmm... perhaps that could be the other affect for improved logistics? You can build up industry at a lower cost (effectively meaning faster), and since we're going to have a minimum of 80% industrial capacity to start with, such a thing will only have an affect when you capture planets if it includes the rule: "this reduction in cost does not affect your starting industry". That way it will only be useful if you go out and beat someone up and take their land, or if you get attacked and your factories blown up you can bounce back faster.

Alternatively, or perhaps in parallel, there could be an attribute that allows you to passify captured worlds faster.

If anyone can see a gap, or has an idea they want to use and need a mechanic for, go right ahead and suggest them.

[Covenant]

If a fleet with FTL +10 enters a standard interdiction field, they'll come in at an edge, and slip out with very little chance for anyone to get a shot. It's that simple.

It just seems extremely hard to quantify when the only difference is time spent before the jump. That's probably just me, but I could eeeeasily see an argument cropping up about how many vessels get killed in the time it takes to leap out. I'll trust your experience though, if this hasn't been a problem in the past, I won't anticipate it being one in the future.

]The idea is that smaller ships are easier to use for patrols, maintaining trade lanes, interception duties, etc. These tasks are ones usually applied to smaller ships.

I'd say that escort vessels are specifically designed to be faster. That's relatively easy to imagine, and a lot less cumbersome from a gameplay perspective than assigning different speeds to different classes of warships. People can easily make their small ships fast, they just need to increase the amount of points put towards engines. That's just like real life--increasing the thrust to mass ratio.

I see where it's coming from on this, but I'm having trouble justifying it because of the severe differences between the uses of Stealth and ECM.

I can see it your way too, but I don't believe in Space Stealth. I don't think it exists. Just about any method of spaceflight or maneuver seems to kick out an absolute crapton of stuff that's very easy to see, ships themselves stand out like a roman candle in space, and even the most basic technologies are capable of locating such a vessel nowadays. I'm not sure where a 'stealth' stat can arise from besides active countermeasures. We'll want to come up with a plot device beforehand and quantify it, because otherwise it's just not logically consistant.

[Noble Ire]

This might vary a bit from the current tone of the thread, but I still have a few preliminary questions on the nature of the game that were lost in the previous thread:

- Will alien powers be allowed?
- Would it be possible to create multi-player powers (IE, combined point totals), even on a limited basis?

[Hotfoot]

Hehe, brainstorming is fun.

A few things to add before I get to responses:
Let players start off with a random Imperial bonus. Major nations should rise from something they supplied to the empire. This provides incentives to go to war. Attempting to supply these bonuses to allies results in increased pirate attention to any given convoy, as these parts are massively valuable to the highest bidder. This might be something one can purchase with some sort of points, but only at the beginning of the game.

No more "Beyond the Rim". With the exception of rare cases subject to mod approval. I was highly irritated when nearly a third of the players in the last game decided to sit outside the rim. There is plenty of space inside the map, and if anyone ever leaves their space without a sufficient defense force, it's going to become hamburger, one way or another.

Academia Nut
As far as starting points, I like your planet classification scale, going from major world to colonies and so forth. I'd say to simplify the system. You get X number of Planetary Points to buy your worlds with. You should have at least one of each type to have a viable space empire. Beyond that, set things up however you like. Each planet comes into play with its maximum points.

You then get Y number of "racial" points with which to buy global bonuses.

After that, you get Z number of "Industry" points with which to buy system defenses, ships, etc. It should be noted that one could conceivably use "sensors/comms" for system defenses instead of an early warning/comms global bonus, but that's another deviation.

Remember that the idea is that people will be losing ships and having to grab more territory to pay for increasing their fleets. The idea is that if you twiddle your thumbs, you should be punished compared to someone who is risking their ships to grab resources, so for someone to only double their fleets by sitting around is still pretty serious, since most games allow for a doubling of the fleet in the first two turns.

The last game had a cap on comms at "realtime". That's all that's really needed. Set the limit for realtime and work down from there, and set the minimum speed. If necessary, put in a gap between "improved" and "realtime".

Again, with improved industry, I think we just need a simple mechanic to repair damage after scorched earth or invasion damage. Something like 1 point to repair 2 points of damage or something should work well. Or we make it straight one to one and go with the next part as well.

In order to make improved repair "better", include economic repair in the equation. That way ships get fixed faster, and infrastructure gets repaired faster or cheaper. I'd probably go with faster, just because cheaper can lead to nearly BDZing a world and having it bounce back almost immediately.

Raiding is best combined with a trade mechanic. That way, raiding does what it is supposed to, disrupt trade. The problem comes with how to implement a trade system that is useful, but again isn't overpowered.

Offhand, I'd say that each system can trade with one or two other systems. Each trade lane can generate a number of resources equal to, say 5% of the system it is trading with. Hitting trade lanes requires a dedicated group doing prolonged raids on the lane, and can subvert the lane to use by the attacker.

Covenant
The key thing in the argument of how many ships die in the time it takes to jump out is the fact that there's a huge specter that's haunted STGOD discussions that nobody wants to seem to deal with: how long does combat take? How long does it take one ship to kill another, and then how does that scale into larger-scale combat? This is something that needs to be handled before we can realistically discuss these other aspects, like how much longer interdiction keeps you around.

As far as smaller ships being faster, this again comes to the difference between small and large ships. It takes the same points to make a large ship fast in FTL as a small ship. In realspace, sure, smaller ships are faster and that plays a role in tactical combat, but in strategic combat, size doesn't matter if all ships move at the same speed in FTL.

With regards to stealth, well, stealth is achievable in space, especially with crazy future-tech. The idea, however, is that this tech is not a perfect cloak. Having adaptive camo or heat dumps that remove heat in a directional fashion, or shields that block heat from leaving, or whatever else you can think of. I mean, come on, we've got energy shields that block nuclear blasts and faster than light communications and transportation. A passive form of stealth is hardly a huge leap once you rationalize FTL travel that doesn't rape causality. The idea is not necessarily what is realistic, though rational explanations are useful in the game, but rather what makes the game work well. Remember, if we go for 100% realism, we're all humans in Sol without FTL and the only weapons will be missiles and point defense lasers.

[Hotfoot]

I'll respond to this one separately so it's not lost in these monster posts

This might vary a bit from the current tone of the thread, but I still have a few preliminary questions on the nature of the game that were lost in the previous thread:

- Will alien powers be allowed?

I don't see why not, sure.

- Would it be possible to create multi-player powers (IE, combined point totals), even on a limited basis?

...aren't these usually called "alliances"?

Anything more than that and logistics become, well, difficult to say the least. Especially if one player drops out.

Edit: Aliens with more than one civilization per species, however, would be cool.

[Academia Nut]

Hotfoot beat me to Noble Ire's post, but I'll post my thoughts anyway.

Alien powers look a-okay at the moment, either as invaders from beyond like what Darkevilme wants, or as powers suppressed and contained by the xenophobic empire before it collapsed (although with point maxes for worlds that might present a major economic problem). This can certainly be tweaked though. And if people want to share alien species, then power to them, so long as they are a quarrelsome lot as the humans.

As for multi-player powers, I'm going to be presumptuous and say, "Fuck no!" Just that one sentence brings up all sorts of headaches, and I doubt I'll ever be a mod in one of these games. Arguing and infight amongst the players over what to do with their power could rapidly derail things, at which point everyone was probably better off just forming a damn alliance in the first place instead of arguing even more over who gets what when the whole thing falls apart.

Plus something that big could be very game breaking indeed.

Oh, and a thought for discussion. What about those players that want to have space-born industry on their motherships? Can we do that, and if so, how?

[Covenant]

Hotfoot, I agree with your thought process. If we can figure out the time stuff, we'll be good. As for Stealth, okay, I'll just suspend my disbelief of that. I think that FTL speed should be equal still... I don't know what method we're using of FTL, but shouldn't it simply scale up equally? Sure, maybe it costs MORE to upgrade a big ship to a +1 speed bonus, but shouldn't it move the same baseline as everything else?

[Hotfoot]

Starship economies strike me as being a bad idea, just because it's way too easy to shove your motherships out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere above the galactic plane or way outside of known space and just call in ships to rain down hell.

If they want their planets to be giant mechanical monstrosities in artificial orbits around nearly dead stars, mining the star for resources or something, that would be cool.

I'd rather leave proper "pirate forces" to the discretion of mods to call down on people who have been naughty, but I suppose it could be possible that a few good players could have control of groups of pilots, subject to mod approval, but I'd be hesitant to do so.

[Covenant]

Ugh, motherships. Those things are a pain to balance--do we really need to have motherships that build smaller ships?

I think a multi-person power is just a fancy alliance who all basically use the same OOB. And that if they eventually hate each other, they have a civil war. I don't see anything wrong with that. Essentially, we were all a single multiperson faction until something happened and now we're balkanized. ;D

[Academia Nut]

Now, onto the crunchier stuff.

Hotfoot, your Planetary Purchase Points idea is a pretty good idea, although the only objection I have is that pretty much everyone will thus start off with the same level of industry, and all that will be affected is how they are distributed. Simply something to think about.

Now, here is an analysis of just how fast you can build ships under my industrial system, assuming 10% maintenace and each point to industry gives half a point a turn.

Start with 1500 points in ships, 600 in industry. 300 points tied up in maintenance.
Turn 1: Build 150 points of ships. 1650 points of ships. 330 points tied up in maintenance.
Turn 2: Build 135 points of ships. 1785 points of ships. 357 points tied up in mainteance.
You get the idea I think. You can't build up to your max in just a few rounds under this sort of system.

Of course, if we decide to have planetary points we can up industry to a full point for point basis, but we would need to double maintenance costs to keep up, and it would favour construction of new vessels.

Also, I think we should generate a list of Imperial Installations to be handed out to players who want to be part of the former Empire to have as their goodie (Imperial shipyard should be protected by an NPC rape-fleet though). I'm willing to suggest that barbarians living on the edge of the empire get none of these goodies in exchange for not having to declare another faction to be in a blood feud with. Or would that be too unfair to either group?

I also like your trade suggestion, although by system do you mean each colony, star system, or each faction? If you can do internal trading, then how would the trade networks be managed?

[Hotfoot]

Now, onto the crunchier stuff.

Hotfoot, your Planetary Purchase Points idea is a pretty good idea, although the only objection I have is that pretty much everyone will thus start off with the same level of industry, and all that will be affected is how they are distributed. Simply something to think about.

Yeah, we've tried tier systems in the past, and it just didn't really achieve the desired effect. Everyone starting equal gives people equal opportunity, so if they fuck up, they have one less thing they can blame on other people. Seems silly, I suppose, but if you have shared system you have two issues that can evolve:
A. Someone builds a superfleet and one planet. Conquers like mad.
B. Someone takes a shitty fleet and a huge territory. Manages to avoid getting hit, and then builds (and sustains) a superfleet.

Plus it makes things a touch easier for mods by giving them a good baseline to look for right off the bat.

Now, here is an analysis of just how fast you can build ships under my industrial system, assuming 10% maintenace and each point to industry gives half a point a turn.

Start with 1500 points in ships, 600 in industry. 300 points tied up in maintenance.
Turn 1: Build 150 points of ships. 1650 points of ships. 330 points tied up in maintenance.
Turn 2: Build 135 points of ships. 1785 points of ships. 357 points tied up in mainteance.
You get the idea I think. You can't build up to your max in just a few rounds under this sort of system.

Of course, if we decide to have planetary points we can up industry to a full point for point basis, but we would need to double maintenance costs to keep up, and it would favour construction of new vessels.

Yeah, point for point would be best. We can always increase some costs to match. Of course, as Imperial Tech could increase maintenance costs, people upgrading ships could hit their limits faster than anticipated.

Also, I think we should generate a list of Imperial Installations to be handed out to players who want to be part of the former Empire to have as their goodie (Imperial shipyard should be protected by an NPC rape-fleet though). I'm willing to suggest that barbarians living on the edge of the empire get none of these goodies in exchange for not having to declare another faction to be in a blood feud with. Or would that be too unfair to either group?

It's a good question if we're going to have a serious dichotomy, but giving people the option of buying a random Imperial upgrade has its own inherent downside: people will want to take it for themselves. Being a barbarian near the fringe has its own inherent advantage: nobody gives a shit about you, most of the focus will be towards the center of the known world.

I also like your trade suggestion, although by system do you mean each colony, star system, or each faction? If you can do internal trading, then how would the trade networks be managed?

I think that it's implied that there's trade lanes with your own nation, and that those lanes are extensive. I'm talking about trade with other nation's star systems. Since I'm looking at this from a system level, one star system could trade with up to two other star systems from other nations. It may be too complex as it can set up some very complex trade lanes, but it's a possibility. The other option is simply that each nation can trade with up to two other nations, and work out the equations from there. After all, we want to determine the effect we want and come up with the simplest formula that describes that.

[Covenant]

People could just agree to have trade lanes with each other. The more they have, the more they make, but the more they risk to lose from Barbarian Insane Persons. Or someone could raid their own trade lanes just to prey on the other guy's shipping--or pay a barbarian to raid the shipping lanes and give them a fraction of the profits, or so on.

No reason to overly complicate it! Could just be as easy as saying "I'm gonna have these people trade with these people."

[Hotfoot]

People could just agree to have trade lanes with each other. The more they have, the more they make, but the more they risk to lose from Barbarian Insane Persons. Or someone could raid their own trade lanes just to prey on the other guy's shipping--or pay a barbarian to raid the shipping lanes and give them a fraction of the profits, or so on.

No reason to overly complicate it! Could just be as easy as saying "I'm gonna have these people trade with these people."

Again, we want to discourage turtling, and unlimited trade works against that. If there is no limit on trade, well, you get the idea of what can happen.

I suppose having to dedicate ships to trade lane defense could be the limited in itself. Trade lane combat would be lower key, taking place in deep space, with resources on the line. Sure, you could beef up your trade lane defense, but then your home defense could suffer, or you can't grab as much territory.