STGOD2k6 Discussion Thread

[SirNitram]

After having read some of the other OOBs I realized that the station is ridiculously powerful, but it was late and I didn't feel like changing it. Of course, reading some of what others have said, I'm more inclined to keep it now, but I suppose I would be willing to compromise and put it on the map, or at the very least make it so the information to find it is out there somewhere, obtainable if enough effort is put into it. Who knows, maybe you can bribe a disgruntled low-level spy who's been passed over for promotion a dozen times with his own warship or something.

Quite the compromise; that being exactly what would happen anyways. Nothing remains unfindable forever.

I'm also willing to keep it hidden and lower its point value to allocated points for my spies. The only thing here is that my intention isn't for conquest, it's for profit. I have no intention or interest in attacking other fleets, that's not my style. What I would like is for something along the lines of a gameplay mechanic where other players can hire me right before a battle, and, if the mods agreed on it, we could have something like having the fleet strength reduced right before the battle or something like that, to reflect that I just offed the commander or governor.

I can't help but giggle at the idea of someone trying that against the Hekartes, and a little sniper waiting for the chief warrior of a group...

Along comes a XXV Bolo.

Another possible compromise is that when I send operatives in, they accomplish whatever they were going to do, but then invariably get caught, which causes them to self destruct, along with their ship. THat way, there would still be whittling away of my numbers, just through attrition instead of all-out battles.

That you always win? Absolutely, unquestionably denied.

[Pablo Sanchez]

I can't help but giggle at the idea of someone trying that against the Hekartes, and a little sniper waiting for the chief warrior of a group...

Along comes a XXV Bolo.

Even in a more general sense it's stupid and unpracticable. Getting an assassin that close to a commander of a deployed army would be nearly impossible because of all the soldiers, equipment, and firepower arrayed around him. Getting one into killing range of an admiral on a flagship at high alert just before going into battle is just not even remotely possible. Simply put, there is no way to board a ship without them knowing it instantly, and once they are alerted the defenders have absolute advantage.

Finally, what difference would it actually make? Operations are carefully planned out well in advance, and the effect of a general- or flag-officer on the conduct of a battle is difficult to define... but probably minimal.

That you always win? Absolutely, unquestionably denied.

The fact that he even suggested it is slightly disturbing.

[Adrian Laguna]

My feelings on DesertFly's nation, explained rather well by an AIM conversation.

Adrian Laguna: I really want this space-ninja thing to work-out for DesertFly. The fact of the matter is tha it won't, because Ninja weren't exactly that big a thing in reality.
Adrian Laguna: You want something done? Send an army of levies led by samurai, the ninja gives you a slight edge, but there is no way in hell it wins you the battle.

Doom Rubber Duck: Ninja actually meaning Peasant Assassin who poisons or stabs a noble/target and then runs like hell in the historical context.

Adrian Laguna: Actually, it's: MERCENARY SPACE NINJA!!!! That's what DesertFly's idea is best summarized as.

Doom Rubber Duck: Yeah.

Doom Rubber Duck: Plus a Fortress that defends like Spartan Hoplites behind Epic Stone Walls.

Adrian Laguna: Triple-gold-chevron Spartan Hoplites behind Epic Stone Walls.
Adrian Laguna: Ninja were also samurai engaging in guerrilla tactics. Poisoning wells, setting shit on fire, ambushing patrols, etc.

Doom Rubber Duck: That too.
Doom Rubber Duck: Really, saying "Ninja" is like saying "Assasin".
Doom Rubber Duck: Unless you're in 40k, there's no official Assassin school or martial arts style or anything.

Adrian Laguna: 40k or Feudal Japan Fantasy.

On an entirely unrelated note:
People seem to be misunderstanding how point allocations for fighters work. It's kind of like with the ground forces, you assign points, and then distribute those points among planets, bases, and/or ships.

For example:

Heavy Fighter Wing [2][+1 F] x 125
Fighter Interceptor Wing [1] x 250
Strategic Penetration Bomber [3] x 50

This tells me that the US has either 125 2-point, 250 1-point, and 50 3-point escorts; or that he has Heavy Fighters[250], Interceptors[250], and Bombers[150]. It could be construed as it meaning, say: "50 Bomber wings each composed of 3-point squadrons". I just want people to know that under that arrangement they can, if needed, separate a 3-point squadron in two 1.5-point squadrons.

I'm insecure as to the validity of my staments reguarding fighters, could any STGOD mod either call me an idiot and clarify how it works, or confirm that I'm right?

[phongn]

I interpreted it to mean that each Heavy Fighter Wing is worth two points and I have 125 wings. That should also be a bomber wing, as opposed to discrete bombers.

[Adrian Laguna]

Exept that a discrete bomber worth 3 points is really an escort, not a bomber.

[phongn]

Exept that a discrete bomber worth 3 points is really an escort, not a bomber.

It would be treated as an escort-tonnage vessel for point and combat purposes but had I deployed such ships they would operate like I described and not in the 'light escort' role. It is somewhat moot at any rate since they describe a wing of bombers.

[Duckie]

Exept that a discrete bomber worth 3 points is really an escort, not a bomber.

That's what he said. A Bomber Wing worth 3 points is 3/X points per Bomber, where X is the number of planes in a wing. Is it something like 150? That strikes me as familiar for TIE Fighters at least, which would give 0.02 points per bomber or something equally tiny.


Those comments in the excerpt don't really make sense, what I was driving at was the historical type of ninja, not any sort of statement on Desert Fly's nation. Otherwise it would just be weird.

[Adrian Laguna]

Those comments in the excerpt don't really make sense, what I was driving at was the historical type of ninja, not any sort of statement on Desert Fly's nation. Otherwise it would just be weird.

I thought it was obvious that we were discussing real ninja, and how they weren't the uber leet changers of history, deciders of wars, and topplers of nations.

[Nephtys]

Exept that a discrete bomber worth 3 points is really an escort, not a bomber.

That's what he said. A Bomber Wing worth 3 points is 3/X points per Bomber, where X is the number of planes in a wing. Is it something like 150? That strikes me as familiar for TIE Fighters at least, which would give 0.02 points per bomber or something equally tiny.


Those comments in the excerpt don't really make sense, what I was driving at was the historical type of ninja, not any sort of statement on Desert Fly's nation. Otherwise it would just be weird.

I figure the exact size of a fighter/bomber unit varies. But the MINIMUM they can possibly be is one fighter or one bomber.

Let's say you have awesome bombers and fighters? So each individual ship is 1 point. You have 250 points. That works out.

Let's say you have TIE Fighters and bombers. Each squadron of 12 is 1 point. You have 250 points. That also works out.

If an individual fighter is like 2 points, you're either playing Wing Commander, or it should be an escort.

[phongn]

Typical (real-life) USAF fighter wings have three squadrons of eighteen fighters. Bomber wings usually have two squadrons. I plan to roughly mirror this.

I am assuming the WW2 model of fighter costs, as opposed to the modern "I can buy a naval destroyer for the price of five aircraft" model.

EDIT: For the moment, there is no particular reason that I would be snooping around where the diplomatic action is occurring, though I suspect that I'd run into my four closest neighbors soon enough.

[Captain tycho]

I should have my OOB up within a day or two.

[Spyder]

I just want people to know that under that arrangement they can, if needed, separate a 3-point squadron in two 1.5-point squadrons.

I'm insecure as to the validity of my staments reguarding fighters, could any STGOD mod either call me an idiot and clarify how it works, or confirm that I'm right?

I'd prefer it if people didn't seperate their squadrons. If people want to be able to more effectively devide their forces then they need to declare smaller squadrons in their OOBs. Subdiving already made declarations causes a number of problems, firstly when we start getting into decimal places it makes it infinately more difficult to track, especially across multiple players, secondly players at the moment have the ability to describe a 3 point fighter group as a team of decent fighters or some kind of massive superfighter, should they be that way inclined. Having people sub-divide their declarations takes away some of the flexibility, which is never good.

Also, declarations for the placement of fighters never made it into the ruleset, the reason being that it's better if players just declare what they're bringing into a specific battle. You're going to have situations where a ship might be filled to capacity with fighters, other times it might not have any, others it might just be housing what's left over from the last battle. So getting people to declare fighter palcement in OOBs wouldn't work as they'd constantly need to go through and revise the numbers for each ship. The mod team will step in if anyone decides to instantaneously move all their fighters from one battle to another on the opposite side of the galaxy.

Oh DesertFly, I'm going to have to side with Pablo and Nitram on the station issue. The cloaking is also something we're going to need to mention.

[SirNitram]

On a similar note: If your cloaking system works as described, your ship will literally cook to death.

Finally, FUCKING HELL NO on multi-LY range tractor beams. Period. In fact, exclamation point.

[Lancer]

bwahahaha, boarding parties. How will you stealthily board a ship without doing anything noticeable, like, say, compromising armor or breaching shields?

And even then, you would still have to make your way through the interior of the vessel, and not everybody has nice automatic doors that open for intruders with no security to speak of.

[consequences]

For cloaking devices, I'd assume that the tactical advantage they can achieve through stealth offsets the power, mass, and volume cost that the system eats up. So you are harder to hit, but have to make your shots count more, or something along those lines.

I can imagine one way of assembling a near-perfect cloak. It basically involves using a number of small cloaked ships as heatsinks, that go off and vent their stored energy quite noticeably. Even with this excessively complicated setup, it would be easily possible to detect the energy venting if you have someone in sensor range, and it should then be possible to track the heatsink ship back to its point of origin.

[Nephtys]

bwahahaha, boarding parties. How will you stealthily board a ship without doing anything noticeable, like, say, compromising armor or breaching shields?

And even then, you would still have to make your way through the interior of the vessel, and not everybody has nice automatic doors that open for intruders with no security to speak of.

That's what I said. A fleet of 900 one point cloakers sure aren't going to be fighting anything tougher than space mosquitos. A bunch of 7 point carriers packing 100 points of fighters each are going to get killed by whoever gets the first 8 point torpedo frigate to jump 'em. And a handfull of errant destroyers aren't going to change much.

Still. DesertFly, an '100 percent' successrate is never going to be approved, you know that.

[Lancer]

Analyzing your operatives:
Jumping 30 feet & sprinting at 60 mph would require extensive replacement / reengineering of the leg muscles, bones, and connective tissues.

Baseline humans can already lift over 2x their body weight. Internal mechanisms such as pain limit how much you can extert yourself to prevent damage, but they can be overridden.

Wall-climbing relies upon the properties of the surface.

Direct interfacing / hacking computers of completely alien design is laughably stupid. Some powers will probably have moved onto optronics, others will have an interface mechanism completely different from what the Operative is able to use, while other powers (the magic based ones) will have entirely different analogs.

Being able to filter out poisions in the air is all well and nice, but it's the corrosive stuff that you should watch out for. Nothing short of a totally sealed hostile environment suit is going to protect you from those.

And Predator-style cloaks are going to be completely useless in enclosed spaces where the visual distortion is easy to make out, and for the feral species, the Operative's scent is lingering in the air.

And I have to say, hardened skin and closing mucus membranes won't allow somebody to stay alive in vacuum indefinitely. Perhaps they can stay intact in vacuum indefinitely, but they'll still die from lack of oxygen.

[Captain tycho]

My OOB is up. My fleet is, as you may have noticed, is quite top heavy, but this is because of an aborted war against a neighboring nation a short time ago that necessitated the construction of massive capital ships, and the production of escorts didn't keep up adequately. I also decided to keep my OOB simple, instead of having 20 different classes all doing roughly the same thing. Easier on my brain that way.

Also of note, the Felshyn is slowly turning into a dictatorship, so look forward to several internal policy changes and perhaps the abolishment of planetary goverments all together in the near future.

And a final note, I'm still looking at map locations.

[Adrian Laguna]

And a final note, I'm still looking at map locations.

I've got some suggestions:

(your're going to have to click on it to see them)

Also, the most current picture containing the locations of the various nations can be found here, just scroll down a little.

[Captain tycho]

Bah, you insult my honor, Adrian! Time for a duel!





Situated on the perilious edge of known space, teetering over the void! Just waiting to be devoured by extra-galactic horrors beyond imagination!

You know, and so forth.

[Adrian Laguna]

Bah, you insult my honor, Adrian! Time for a duel!

I'd love to, but you went and put yourself on the other side of the darned star cluster. If by some strange miracle half of the Star Cluster falls under my control, I'll go look you up.

[Captain tycho]

Bah, you insult my honor, Adrian! Time for a duel!

I'd love to, but you went and put yourself on the other side of the darned star cluster. If by some strange miracle half of the Star Cluster falls under my control, I'll go look you up.

Well, we can always transmit nasty propoganda about each other.
'The Mekidar Republic reeks of elderberries! And has a private like a woman of unseemly nature!'

[Nephtys]

My OOB is up. My fleet is, as you may have noticed, is quite top heavy, but this is because of an aborted war against a neighboring nation a short time ago that necessitated the construction of massive capital ships, and the production of escorts didn't keep up adequately. I also decided to keep my OOB simple, instead of having 20 different classes all doing roughly the same thing. Easier on my brain that way.

Also of note, the Felshyn is slowly turning into a dictatorship, so look forward to several internal policy changes and perhaps the abolishment of planetary goverments all together in the near future.

And a final note, I'm still looking at map locations.

Curse you, Tycho! For 1-upping my doomship.

[Spyder]

Oh we're going to make sure you guys have plenty of opportunities to butt heads.

[Dahak]

So, if anyone asks, I go for a Peacekeeper-style in clothing, expanded by a Mage-style cloak. Can anyone say Stylish?