Space Empires Gold B5 Game (The Second)

Kojiro · Post by **Kojiro** » 2006-09-25 03:15am

Arthur, do me a favour and spare me the personal thoughts of your PCs. Paritculaly the ones that come of as little more than personal attacks. It's just irritating and pisses me off for obvious reasons.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-09-25 07:16am

I don't see why he should. Marxis was a xenophobic, fearmongering, racist liar.

If you're pissed then his writing did its job. Writing isn't supposed to make a person happy... it's supposed to satisfy, see thrillers and mystery novels. As long as narrative voice isn't misleading, I don't see why he should alter his RP at all. If it's irritating because you can't respond to it you could always reply with your own thoughts somehow.

"Lyta scanned the Council Chamber for Ambassador Kullenbrach. Apparently the Brakiri hadn't taken this seriously enough to even be here. She smiled. Others would notice the Brakiri's arrogance."

Of course something like that is okay, because Tux RPed Krull not being there in the first place. If he didn't RP Krull's absence... well you'd have to get a little more creative.

"Lyta waited for the Brakiri Ambassador to respond. He said nothing. So Kullenbrach didn't have anything to say. She smiled. He wasn't so sharp witted after all."

If it still pisses you off, think that thoughts cannot be used in other people's RP, and in general shouldn't be used to affect game decisions.

Something like this is bound to come up in the future. Tuxedo's already gone over the basic things like not using narrative voice to mislead, etc., but just a couple more guidelines before I disappear into the woodwork (not necessarily for you Kojiro, I noticed it with others). It's polite I think to ask other people before you use their named characters, or even use their characters in general. Also, as far as I'm concerned, whoever wins a battle writes its RP, as long as that person doesn't use any of the other side's named characters or RP's anything the other side wouldn't do. Sorry about that U235, kind of jumped the gun in our first skirmish when I lost

.

As for the "my civilian ships wouldn't fly into a swarm of enemy warships" I remember BVR combat in Into the Fire. For the future if this happens again, what in general happens is a fleet opens fire before enemy ships come into visual range, if they don't have a friend or foe transponder. If a ship goes through a jump gate and it's destroyed by defenders, if it's a single ship or a small number of ships, in general defensive satellites and fleets would open fire immediately if it didn't send the proper codes through hyperwave. This would be a "worst case scenario" when both parties can't agree to what happened due to game mechanics. Of course if you tell your fleet captains to fire on civilian ships when they get close, none of this applies

. Not that what really happens even matters at all, it shouldn't, since everything Kullenbrach said in Council chambers was dialogue and lying is okay.

Game mechanics are limiting, because you can't exactly order your warships to leave civilian crewed ships alone, which could presumably be armed for any number of reasons, or even be troop transports or unarmed ramming ships. Minesweepers count as weapons too. BVR combat is a nice way of resolving that IMO.

Kojiro · Post by **Kojiro** » 2006-09-25 08:04am

I don't mind internal exposition of characters and their thoughts, I object to snide thoughts as the totality of a post. There's little to no value in a piece of writing that amounts to a derogatory thought. Even with Marxis, there would need to be a reason for us to 'see' him thinking 'Aliens scum blah blah blah...' A simple comment, especially tacked onto an argument of 'So and so thought they were stupid' adds precisely nothing to the story. In fact in RPG terms, I'd rather not hear his internal monologue. The way he's using it is as an attack that cannot be responded to. The idea of hearing people's thoughts has always carried a level of caution with it, and this is exactly what is bothering me, yet I can't confront it in any way. I could add 'God what a tool, I bet he has a small dick' on the end of a post, or even as the totality of a post but it wouldn't exactly enhance the story.

Krull watched the feed from the council chambers and smiled. He didn't need to respond to this. The "immortal creatures" line would do more damage than he could ever hope to. The sad thing was they probably didn't even realize how arrogant they were.

See the thing is he has responded, he's taken his shot. In the game world Lyta just made an accusation and the Brakiri have gone silent, which would be terribly embarrasing (or would be if the illusion of a response wasn't present).

I guess what I'm saying is that I don't believe Kullenbranch's thoughts were his thoughts so much as they were Arthur's retort.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-09-25 08:29am

I guess it's more of a style thing than anything. You can tag/italicize thoughts, or choose not to, in any combination.

Krull watched the feed from the council chambers and smiled. He didn't need to respond to this, he thought. The "immortal creatures" line would do more damage than he could ever hope to. The sad thing was they probably didn't even realize how arrogant they were.

Krull watched the feed from the council chambers and smiled. He didn't need to respond to this, he thought. The "immortal creatures" line would do more damage than he could ever hope to. The sad thing was they probably didn't even realize how arrogant they were.

Krull watched the feed from the council chambers and smiled. He didn't need to respond to this. The "immortal creatures" line would do more damage than he could ever hope to. The sad thing was they probably didn't even realize how arrogant they were.

Or you can do what Tux did and have it streamlined, which in general is better than all of the above since you're not signposting. But it only works if you've established beforehand that you can go into a character's head, and since the RP's disjointed it's understandable that you think Tux was taking a snipe at you. That's the nature of the beast when there's a dozen people writing with different mechanics.

And by the way, as far as the Corporate Sector's Chen is concerned, the Vorlons brought up an irrelevant point and were boring as hell, and were a touch arrogant. Because there is no way in game mechanics to order ships not to fire on civilian vessels, we basically have to resort to an ad-hoc explanation like BVR combat. And if you think "shoot ships only with weapons" works, it doesn't as Trogdor knows with Tobor's troop transports, and as everybody will soon know when I spam the galaxy with thousands of sidewinder missiles. As far as Chen's concerned, the Vorlons were stupid and flew their ship into the Brakiri's blockade, just like it would've been stupid for the CS to fly a colony ship into a fleet of Earth Alliance ships. I can't exactly claim the EA were genocidal if it happened... the worst would be an accident (but of course Marxis could lie). So Krull wasn't embarassed at all to the Corporates, the Vorlons were, and now Chen thinks the Vorlons hypocrites

.

Of course for planets it is different, because you could conceviably order "do not target planet" and run to the edge of the screen avoiding planetary batteries. Capture planet too allows you to move in and shoot a planet until its defenses are down if you choose "drop troops" primary and "optimal firing range" secondary, though you take risks whenever you bombard orbitally. So if you wipe a planet clean of inhabitants, you take the consequences in RP as far as I'm concerned, since game mechanics are the final judge and jury. Everybody is going to remember the Vorlon ships killing off the Narn (IIRC the Minbari ships didn't fire). Though you made a good explanation with your "attack dogs" argument OOC, IC it's understandable nobody buys it. Plus the Vorlons are pretty genocidal in the show anyway.

Finally a lot of my own posts are "pointless" and so are a lot of people's. There's no way to really tell what has a point or not. I see a point in Krull's post, that is wanted to RP he left, and wanted more substance than "Krull left the Council Chamber after his speech and watched from his quarters."

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-09-25 02:47pm

I don't agree that there was anything wrong with my post, Kojiro, but you're correct that part of it was a shot at you. Take it like a man, fire back. Don't come admonishing me in the OOC thread.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-09-25 10:34pm

Players /= Characters. Krull and Lyta can hate each other all they want. They can RP about how much they hate each other.

I hope nobody has invested much of themselves in their RP characters.

(I want to know how the words in this page triggered "God Is Love" Google ads).

EDIT: Oh, of course, Kojiro's signature.

Kojiro · Post by **Kojiro** » 2006-09-25 11:55pm

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:I don't agree that there was anything wrong with my post, Kojiro, but you're correct that part of it was a shot at you. Take it like a man, fire back. Don't come admonishing me in the OOC thread.

And how exactly and I to respond to thoughts that are, as Brian said, unusable in RP? I'm more than happy to respond to what I can, but a characters private thoughts are well outside of my ability to do so.

In case it needs to be said, this is a game and personal attacks should have no place in it. Guppy is right, the characters can hate each other all they want but as soon as you start attacking me all the fun is gone. The RP is not, nor should it be, a place to snipe at players.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-09-26 12:47am

The whole point of the thoughts were that you couldn't respond. There was nothing really more to say, so no reason to go back and forth with repitive posts. I was trying to nip it in the bud.

I also thought it might piss you off, which it clearly did, and I suppose that was wrong of me, but the fact remains that I wouldn't have gotten personally upset if you had used the RP to mock me through my character. I would have smiled and perhaps fired back with a barb of my own. This is SDN, after all, where people are supposed to have thick skins. You say I'm taking it too seriously because I took a swipe at you in the RP, but you're the one making an issue out of it.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-09-26 01:42am

Someone sent this to SDN Secrets but I didn't think most folks would really get the humor in that thread...

I am planning to saturate the galaxy with tens of thousands of starfighters, spurring a galactic arms race. Also, a certain deposed dictator will reappear and send 1000 ships to Earth to glass it. While Ride of the Valkyries roars in the background, I will make the annoying President my manwhore, and he will suck my cock in the oval office and I'll cum in his asshole.

...wow.

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-09-26 12:06pm

President Alshain never gets it easy, regardless of universe, does he?

Tobor · Post by **Tobor** » 2006-09-26 09:51pm

looks like you cant hotwire the turn Brian, because uranium never submitted a turn

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-09-28 08:32pm

No way I can get my turn in since I was asleep when the reminder came through, and went straight to work this morning - if you guys are waiting, I give permission to do the turn without me.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-09-28 09:06pm

Turn moved 24 hours ahead.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-10-04 02:33am

Oh well, "gg"

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-10-05 11:52pm

I'm going away for the weekend and probably won't be able to do my turns until Monday evening. Tux, after this turn would you please extend the deadline? I'd normally let it roll without me, but I'll be getting some territory in a rather volatile region next turn.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-10-07 12:59am

WTF did everyone call the Shadow ships "Death Cloud"s?

They were Dark Shroud-class.

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-10-08 08:09pm

I'm back earlier than expected and will be doing my turns shortly. Apologies for getting the game set to ALPU needlessly.

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-10-12 09:10pm

Um, can we go back to automatic turns, please? I don't want to sound whiny, but it's been several days.

Kojiro · Post by **Kojiro** » 2006-10-17 03:30am

Trogs, just so you know, that Ancient Shipyard actually was constructed by me. It really is of Vorlon design.

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-10-17 11:24am

I upgraded the shipyard on the planet, so now it's of Centauri construction. So there!

Kojiro · Post by **Kojiro** » 2006-10-17 11:26am

Upgraded! Well that settles it. We'll just have to destroy the planet. :

Any excuse to let one of those big nasty bastards fire.

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-10-17 11:35am

Do that and you can be damn sure that Reefa and even Vir will do their best to get an Army of Darkness going to destroy the Vorlon Empire.

It's just a normal Shipyard III, anyway. Hell, I didn't even notice it was anything other than a normal Shipyard I before.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-10-17 06:48pm

Would anyone mind terribly if we rolled back? I got so busy for two days I couldn't get to my turn, and the AI messed it up so badly that it would take hours upon hours to figure out all the things it did, and I still wouldn't be able to set it completely right, since it scrapped important things and broke treaties. I forgot to set "AI does not make changes" since I never expected to miss a turn. First time I've let it happen in almost a year since we started the original Star Trek game, after all.

Kojiro · Post by **Kojiro** » 2006-10-18 03:36am

Wouldn't overly bother me, I actually messed something up that I'd like to fix.

Don't worry, Trogs, the Vorlons won't be blowing up any planets soon. I only have the one *actual* planet killer and he's a distance away from there.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-10-19 12:54am

Tobor. You might want to check your facts first before waffling in RP.

If I wanted to dick you over, I'd have just handed your empire over to the Shadows and been done with it.