STGOD: A Dead Art?

[SirNitram]

'The Rules: STGOD Dead Artist's Society'

Every nation gets 1500 points to distribute as they wish.

Points are a general measure of 'How good' something is at a particular job. Your bog-standard Ship Of The Wall is 30 points. Cruisers are 10. Destroyers 2. The largest a ship can be before it starts suffering from the 'Too big to be effective' syndrome is 50 points: Once a ship passes this threshold, the Mods don't have to enforce a straight 1 point for 1 point parity in straight fights.

Average number of planets is 10, and each get enough defenses(Be creative in their description, but realize that the mod will laugh at you if you go 'Well, my defenses auto-magically render this a waste of resources for the attacker') to hold off troop carriers alone. Warships of at least cruiser grade must be in-system to invade.

Planetary defenses above and beyond this can be bought, with a maximum of 100 points. These defenses mean that your opponent has to bring twice as many points worth of warships to suppress the world and allow troop ships to land or teleport guys down. Yes, a world with a maximum strength shield would require twenty cruisers to serve as assistants in an invasion!

Once a planet is taken, a pacification force equal to that which allowed the power to invade must remain for a Mod-decided amount of time to gain full control.

Those interested in giant BANGS can invest in one-shot planetary immolators of various designs. Rendering a planet uninhabitable costs 100 points.. And is an expended weapon. Those desiring simply to suppress a planet's use to the enemy can destroy it's industrial use with the presense of a Battleship in addition to sufficient force to suppress defenses.

Finally, points can be spent on more than just ships, and things will generally be resolved in a 'Who put more points into that' manner. If you absolutely must have your species able to communicate in realtime, a Mod will adjunct a point value for it; making it secure will cost additional!



First draft, of course.

[Thirdfain]

Cool, I like it. *nods*

[Noble Ire]

How are ground forces to be handled? Do we need to detail the composition of invasion forces, and are all ground units assumed to be equal unless one boosts them with points in one way or another?

[Starglider]

Good start.

Could I get some clarification on whether anyone can attack anyone else at any time, or whether there are borders and long transit times and such? What is the relevance of realtime and secure comms?

[SirNitram]

All ground troops are roughly considered equal and to utilize combined arms. Since the source for general 'tech level' lacks these, we'll generally say the ground forces are roughly the same as modern day, only alot bigger, obviously. Generally, a Mod will have to make a judgement call on the target; is it a homeworld, built up, militaristic, etc, to determine the likelihood of success as two forces grind at each other, if they can't work it out between themselves.

Transit times should be in days and comm times in hours, much like Trek. Secure comms means less worrying about someone else having a chance of listening in and hearing what you're planning. We'll have none of that 'I declare I'm using an ansible, now I can't be listened in on.' here.

[Academia Nut]

An idea for the whole 'more points is better' thing, could we spend points to upgrade our engines? So a 40 point ship with 2 points spent on engines would count as a 38 point ship in combat, but would be faster than standard ships, giving them an advantage in terms of speed. Depending on how to rule this, this speed advantage could be for both STL and FTL speeds, or only for one (thus if you want both you have to spend extra). This could also help the pirates, as they could spend extra points making their ships faster for hit and runs.

[Hawkwings]

Are stargate-type wormholes allowed? If so, how much would they cost?

[SirNitram]

I'm thinking on transit right now, actually. I'm looking at it like this:

A ship with a few points spent extra on it will outrun everything of it's class. If you spent on your engine tech in general, you'll be damn fast all over; but almost always a specialized ship with points thrown into just it will still outrun you.

Stargate wormholes? You mean like instant, world to world access? Gonna have to say no.

One big bone of contention was interdiction and hit and run. In short, you can't hit and run. You can attack and fight a retreat, but if you simply turned around and powered up your drives, you'd be ripped apart because engines are still intensely power-intensive. Retreating will be allowed once a fight is going, but it's a fighting retreat.

Actual interdictors to hold your opponent in place can be bought, of course.

[Academia Nut]

Okay then, how much does a general tech purchase cost? Or does that need to be abjucated on a case by case basis?

Also, perhaps I should have said less 'hit and run' and more 'smash and grab'. Use superior speed to move into an undefended area, take/bomb what you can, and then run before an engagement can be reached. Obviously this tactic needs to be monitered closely, but it is a useful method of waging the kind of asymmetric battles pirates would prefer.

[Starglider]

One big bone of contention was interdiction and hit and run. In short, you can't hit and run. You can attack and fight a retreat, but if you simply turned around and powered up your drives, you'd be ripped apart because engines are still intensely power-intensive. Retreating will be allowed once a fight is going, but it's a fighting retreat.

How about cloaking? That's Trek-level tech, and has its uses, but what's the game effect? Sounds like it would allow quick retreats and surprise attacks, but obviously won't help with transit time.

Spending extra points on STL speed sounds pointless, since that's just rolled into combat effectiveness anyway (assuming no-one is really using tactical FTL at this tech level). Extra points on FTL is presumably useful though, for outrunning people and being first to the fight.

[SirNitram]

I'd like to hear player opinions on cloaks. General tech buys will generally be adjucated, but here's a rule of thumb: A specialized ship will generally still beat you. If you buy up electronic warfare in general, a single ship based around it will still drown you out.

[Academia Nut]

I have no problem with cloaks, so long as there are ways to defeat them and they have limitations. The two best limitations that come to mind are 'no shields' and 'double blind'. Combined together they could make for interesting submarine type battles as the cloaked but fragile ship plays out a deadly hunt with another ship, both looking for the other without giving away their position.

And in general, how much would a tech upgrade along the lines of faster, harder to track FTL cost?

[Starglider]

I have no problem with cloaks, so long as there are ways to defeat them and they have limitations. The two best limitations that come to mind are 'no shields' and 'double blind'. Combined together they could make for interesting submarine type battles as the cloaked but fragile ship plays out a deadly hunt with another ship, both looking for the other without giving away their position.

That's fine, but it's narrative, not game mechanics. I suppose cloaking ships could have extra effectiveness against ships that don't emphasise EW, but are very vulnerable to those that do.

[Thirdfain]

A traditional way to handle cloaks has been to have cloaks be detectable in situations when it is being actively searched for with powerful active scanners.

[Starglider]

A traditional way to handle cloaks has been to have cloaks be detectable in situations when it is being actively searched for with powerful active scanners.

Doesn't that make them pretty much useless unless you also take 'untracable/encrypted comms' so that the enemy doesn't know you're coming?

[Thirdfain]

A traditional way to handle cloaks has been to have cloaks be detectable in situations when it is being actively searched for with powerful active scanners.

Doesn't that make them pretty much useless unless you also take 'untracable/encrypted comms' so that the enemy doesn't know you're coming?

Hmmm? Why would it matter? It's not like the enemy will be able to read ALL your mail, or something. It's not super0hard to plan a raid by cloaked ships or whatever without alerting the enemy.

[SirNitram]

Keep in mind, even if you invest heavily in intelligence assets, you'll never get full data. There's no 'perfect systems' in the STGOD.

[nt01jones]

Theres any number of stratagies you could use with cloaked ships under that restriction. I can imagine pirates loving them, have an interdictor in a nice spot along the trade lanes and have the cloaked vessels waiting around for a nice target.

Hmm, Might be fun to employ some privateers.

[Tasoth]

alright, before I start writing, would a 45 point battleship be admissible for something that not only functions as a factory, but home, nursery and massive cargo liner? I think I'm only going to have something like 10 of them in existence, make up the rest of my fleet and then just use what's left over to construct Mothership Prime or however I'll dub it. I'd rather have someone whack me now and tell me no then go ahead and do it and get bitch slapped by a game mod.

[Hawkwings]

Well, probably, since its under the 50 pt limit, but that's a third of your fleet tied up in people transport and nurturing.

[Thirdfain]

Theres any number of stratagies you could use with cloaked ships under that restriction. I can imagine pirates loving them, have an interdictor in a nice spot along the trade lanes and have the cloaked vessels waiting around for a nice target.

Hmm, Might be fun to employ some privateers.

This here is good thinking.

[HSRTG]

SirNitram: I'm thinking of having my species never bother with artificial gravity due to cultural issues. Exact reasons not important at the moment. The obvious byproduct of this stupidity is that their ground forces be weakened (significantly, if they spend any time in space) when they attack a planet.

Simply put, because of this weakness in gravity technology their inertial dampeners are also not up to par with the rest of the galaxy. So my ships would be slower, and my troops weaker as it stands. To compensate for this, I'm planning on giving them a slight advantage, pound for pound, over other races when it comes to defenses and weapons, since they wouldn't have to devote space to gravity generators. Would this sort of RP be acceptable, or if not, what could I do to make it so?

[Tasoth]

Well, probably, since its under the 50 pt limit, but that's a third of your fleet tied up in people transport and nurturing.

Considering they're a race of robots and really don't need much in the way of materials since they can just drop in on a gas giant or oort cloud and have at it, the only thing they really are used for is transport between star systems and acting as a repository for all the info they archive. They really don't have an assembly line since they're 'birthed' by each mothership's queen and slowly accumulate components and bits from then on, slowly shaping themselves into their races likeness.

[Hawkwings]

But then you'd have a major disadvantage, unless those 10 battleships each produce the same amount of stuff as 10 major planets.

[Starglider]

Nitram do you have enough rules detail to summarise into the first post of the OOB thread now?