STGOD 2K5 OOC Thread

[Beowulf]

I'm tempted to join but is there anywhere I can get a quick overview of the rules?

No. Much like the English constitution, STGOD rules have been built up over time with unwritten understandings and tradition. The most important rules are:

1) In combat, there are no called hits. The attacker makes a post saying what he is doing, and the defender replies with a post explaining the results.
2) Write a proper OOB and stick to it. Any possessions of less than everyday significance must appear in the OOB or it will likely as not be disallowed.
3) The mods' word is law.

The rest is actually pretty easy to pick up.

Modification to 1: Called hits are permissible if and only if the defender has agreed to it (i.e. you talk beforehand and make a massive post about it, partially written by both parties.)

[Dahak]

Oh, we still have a pulse?

[Thirdfain]

I've been posting, I dunno about the rest of you monkeys!

[Thirdfain]

Vanas, your fleet would get raped by any nation in the game. Your missile loadouts suck, so you'll have no capability to fight long distance battles. A handful of cruisers with heavy LRM batteries would be able to take even your largest vessels apart.

Kiloton to megaton missiles? This is a Star Wars scale game. A single destroyer mounts the firepower to clense a planet of all life in about an hour. A kiloton-range missile is only good for point defense.

Other than the low scale, it's a good oob.

-edit- never mind most of your capital ships are roughly the size of most other nation's cruisers....

[Vanas]

Yeah, we're only new to space and are getting more advanced tech from beating up pirates. What'd you expect? Though perhaps I'll up the missile ratings.

Thank goodness I didn't put up stats for the rest. *envisages adding lots of zeroes*

As for missiles, I'm going for point defense to take out most of them.

[Rogue 9]

Vanas, your fleet would get raped by any nation in the game. Your missile loadouts suck, so you'll have no capability to fight long distance battles. A handful of cruisers with heavy LRM batteries would be able to take even your largest vessels apart.

Kiloton to megaton missiles? This is a Star Wars scale game. A single destroyer mounts the firepower to clense a planet of all life in about an hour. A kiloton-range missile is only good for point defense.

Other than the low scale, it's a good oob.

-edit- never mind most of your capital ships are roughly the size of most other nation's cruisers....

My ships are pretty small, as ships go in this game. They're just solidly built so that they can keep up with all the phallic compensators running around.

[Thirdfain]

As for missiles, I'm going for point defense to take out most of them.

Good luck with that. Hypermissiles are common, though expensive, and you'll find yourself unable to contend with missile-pod armed fast cruisers, which can swamp PD with a storm of incoming projectiles mixed with EW birds.

[Vanas]

The defence field's useful for that. Considering it can shunt small fast things away, it'd at least slow down your incoming enough for targeting of some.

...ah hell, I'll go add a few zeroes. I get the feeling I forgot to up the number of hardpoints in time with the ships. o.o;

[White Haven]

The Sixth doesn't bother with hyper-missiles, simply because 98 percent of the time, they're fighting in interdictor fields of some sort. In fact, I'm surprised anyone bothers with them, as simple as it would be to use local interdictors to drop them out of hyper short of their targets...

[Thirdfain]

The defence field's useful for that. Considering it can shunt small fast things away, it'd at least slow down your incoming enough for targeting of some.

...ah hell, I'll go add a few zeroes. I get the feeling I forgot to up the number of hardpoints in time with the ships. o.o;

Say what you will, ships without long-range weapons will get smashed in combat.

The Sixth doesn't bother with hyper-missiles, simply because 98 percent of the time, they're fighting in interdictor fields of some sort. In fact, I'm surprised anyone bothers with them, as simple as it would be to use local interdictors to drop them out of hyper short of their targets...

Hypermissles are very, very common weapons. They are small projectiles, so they can be equipped to bust through interdiction fields of a low enough power that it's better to just shunt the power into hypershields, which every warship is automatically assumed to have. Escorts are assumed to have frequency-agile hypershields, while capships have all-frequency hypershields.

[InnocentBystander]

That, and the fact that modern shields can pretty much defend against hyper missiles as well as normal ones. I like to think that missles are best used in large swarms to overwhelm PD, the volume you can put out by using STL is significant. Shielded torpedoes on the other hand...

[White Haven]

Wasn't there an engagement a good while ago where hypermissiles were restricted to sublight speeds by an interdictor? I'd have to find it, was early-to-mid-thread. At work, so I can't sift through it now.

[Thirdfain]

Wasn't there an engagement a good while ago where hypermissiles were restricted to sublight speeds by an interdictor? I'd have to find it, was early-to-mid-thread. At work, so I can't sift through it now.

Huh? That was certainly not the case in STGOD 2. Hypermissiles are a fact of life in combat. They are hardly a "superweapon," merely another angle of attack from which to assault an enemy ship.

[InnocentBystander]

In STGOD4 interdiction was concluded to stop FTL travel by eithor small objects (missiles) or large objects (ships). There was a stupid little engagment at the beginning of this game involving myself and the guy who played Roman Republic (if I recall correctly) where there was a minor dispute over FTL, (pirates had one!) not sure if missiles were involved.

Guess it's a fair Q for the mods:
Does my interdiction platform work on all FTL, or do you have to pick one (ships or missiles) for this game?

[Thirdfain]

That, and the fact that modern shields can pretty much defend against hyper missiles as well as normal ones. I like to think that missles are best used in large swarms to overwhelm PD, the volume you can put out by using STL is significant. Shielded torpedoes on the other hand...

What about shielded torpedoes? They won't be especially effective against PD...

And nitpick, modern shields don't stop hypermissiles at all. Modern hypershields, a totally different system, do.

[Thirdfain]

In STGOD4 interdiction was concluded to stop FTL travel by eithor small objects (missiles) or large objects (ships). There was a stupid little engagment at the beginning of this game involving myself and the guy who played Roman Republic (if I recall correctly) where there was a minor dispute over FTL, (pirates had one!) not sure if missiles were involved.

Guess it's a fair Q for the mods:
Does my interdiction platform work on all FTL, or do you have to pick one (ships or missiles) for this game?

Screw interdictors stopping hypermissiles. We've all got hypershields anyways, by mod-decreed default.

[Dahak]

As evidences, I like to throw out Hypermissiles, and then STL missiles as backup. At least it shakes up the enemy a bit before one gets into close combat

[Thirdfain]

As evidences, I like to throw out Hypermissiles, and then STL missiles as backup. At least it shakes up the enemy a bit before one gets into close combat

Exactly.

[Marcao]

Heya guys, I just felt like dropping in my two cents on a couple of these topics.

1. STGOD 2 tech is a completely different bird from STGOD 4 tech. STGOD 2 tech (and this game) had a much higher tech limit, and as such hypershields are assumed to be standard on all sorts of warships. This means, that hypermissiles are not as nasty as they had the potential to be in STGOD 4. Where this leaves Interdictors I am not sure, keep in mind that I have dedicated interdictor cruisers which I paid for directly from my fleet counts, so I have a direct stake in this. Will they affect hyperdrives of larger ships? absolutely. But what effect they will have on hypermissiles is something I will chat up with Pablo and others before we come to any sort of concrete conclusion. Every navy should be utilizing some sort of hypermissile design.

2. Shielded missiles is a fun concept that has existed in every STGOD since memory. Unfortunately, its not as easy as you may think. A shielded missile has to be larger than an unshieded version, and the energy shield will increase its signature against PD. What does this mean? it means that if you are putting up larger, energy shielded missiles the advantages you will derive will not be stellar. larger missiles leads to smaller salvos or smaller payloads. powerful shields will allow point defense systems to track the incoming target more accurately. There are several ways of improving your missile designs, but its always a catch up game between missile technology and point defense capability.

3. Hypershields. Every naval ship is expected to mount some form of hypershields (if you don't you are dead). If memory serves, there were two dominant types of hypershield systems in STGOD 2. The frequency agile system and the broad spectrum. Since this STGOD relies heavily on numbers for naval strenght, I am inclined towards utilizing a following modification. I do not like the idea of a swarm navy, composed mostly of substandard ships (lower than 1.0 quality on average) to be able to mount broad spectrum hypershields. The Quality of a warship represents its cost and capability, and I see no particular reason why a ship that is easy to produce and cheap to build should mount state of the art and expensive broad spectrum hypershields. As such, It is my opinion that only ships with a score of 1.0 or higher in their respective quality be allowed to mount broad spectrum shields. Anything less than 1.0 and you are stuck with frequency agile hyper shields. As in most things in life, you get what you pay for.

[Marcao]

Oh, I almost forgot. I will not be available this weekend as I will be heading to Stony Brook in order to participate in Icon. Until then, I leave you in the very capable hands of Pablo Sanchez.

[Nephtys]

Hrm. A lot of this stuff sounds new to me. Could someone perhaps read over my OOB and point out any oh... 'totally out of scale' kinda things to me? White Haven's already got me to fix my fightercount. Anything else needs fixing?

[White Haven]

Hehe. You should have seen my first-run OOB...suffice to say I hadn't grasped the 'Escorts are Star Destroyers' bit yet. Once I realized that, my landing craft got quite an upgrade...

[Thirdfain]

Hrm. A lot of this stuff sounds new to me. Could someone perhaps read over my OOB and point out any oh... 'totally out of scale' kinda things to me? White Haven's already got me to fix my fightercount. Anything else needs fixing?

Nope, looks pretty darn good. Your population is low, but that's sort of a flavor thing and not a big deal.

[Kyle]

Heya guys, I just felt like dropping in my two cents on a couple of these topics.

1. STGOD 2 tech is a completely different bird from STGOD 4 tech. STGOD 2 tech (and this game) had a much higher tech limit, and as such hypershields are assumed to be standard on all sorts of warships. This means, that hypermissiles are not as nasty as they had the potential to be in STGOD 4. Where this leaves Interdictors I am not sure, keep in mind that I have dedicated interdictor cruisers which I paid for directly from my fleet counts, so I have a direct stake in this. Will they affect hyperdrives of larger ships? absolutely. But what effect they will have on hypermissiles is something I will chat up with Pablo and others before we come to any sort of concrete conclusion. Every navy should be utilizing some sort of hypermissile design.
.

Regarding the effect of interdictors on hypermissiles. I'd say that missiles are unaffected because the drives are single use. They're desigend to be burned out, so interdictors should ahve a lesser effect. Maybe slightly reduced range and accuracy when an interdictor is present.

Also a little note about hypermissiles. There are two types of hypermissiles, both with advantages and disadvantages. Internally launched and externally launched.

Externally launched are the most common. In this version a missile si equipedw itha hyperdrive and is launched from the warship and then goes FTL. The advantages of this type is a faster rate of fire and larger salvoes. Disadvantages are a high cost per missile, and lower magazine capacity

Internally launched are much rarer, in fact I think the UTR might be the only nation using them. Though I'm not sure. These missiles use a specialized launching chamber that generates a hyperfield around the missile to send it FTL.

The advantages of this type are larger magazine capacity and cheaper missiles, as well as superior armor protection since it does not require holes in the armor belt for missile tubes. Disadvantages are the much higher cost of installation for the launchers plus a slower rate of fire and higher energy costs for the launchers.

[Marcao]

Internally launched are much rarer, in fact I think the UTR might be the only nation using them. Though I'm not sure. These missiles use a specialized launching chamber that generates a hyperfield around the missile to send it FTL.

I think that the TSC has been using internal magazines since STGOD 2. the Indashani never had the chance to use theirs, but they were envisoned as being internal as well. The Sabai hypermissile and launcher designs are probably going to be improved versions of the Indashani, sooo, odds are I will be using internal launchers as well.