STGOD: A Dead Art?

[nt01jones]

Couldn't you just have your Factory/Battleship thingy fall under the 'Too big to be effective' syndrome Nitram had. They're not supposed to be frontline ships I assume, they'd be quite different from a pure combat ship and being factories that'd justify their size.

[Adrian Laguna]

I have a question relating to starship defences. Since my ships are Space Galleons I think it would fit the general flavour better to not have magical or technobabble thingies protecting the hull. Will my ships not having shields affect my nation in some negative way? I would expect not, but want to check to make sure.

[Covenant]

I have a question relating to starship defences. Since my ships are Space Galleons I think it would fit the general flavour better to not have magical or technobabble thingies protecting the hull. Will my ships not having shields affect my nation in some negative way? I would expect not, but want to check to make sure.

Presumably they wouldn't be made out of wood. Why couldn't you have armored hulls that are as good as shields?

[Adrian Laguna]

Presumably they wouldn't be made out of wood. Why couldn't you have armored hulls that are as good as shields?

You know as obvious your answer is, it hadn't occurred to me. I was thinking that I've have problems with having to effect repairs for even minor damage. But if the hull is such that it absorbs energy for a while before actually failing, that would work. Thanks.

[Noble Ire]

Let's say that my fleet lacks any huge, heavy-hitting battleships. In their place, however, I have a class of supercarrier ships that carry literally hundreds of thousands of drone starfighters and missiles. How would that translate into a point value?

[Tasoth]

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

The race deals in information and delivery of messages through really fast little ships. They hold carnivals when they show up on a planet, in there huuuuge motherships where they attempt to siphon up as much information as possible through battering for it. About the only they make to sell is art, either music, digital or traditional. Outside of that, they just float around through space like nomads.

Couldn't you just have your Factory/Battleship thingy fall under the 'Too big to be effective' syndrome Nitram had. They're not supposed to be frontline ships I assume, they'd be quite different from a pure combat ship and being factories that'd justify their size.

Elaborate. Other then being the main vehicle for moving the various families between stars, the big ol' motherships are a last ditch weapon. The Vak don't go out of their way to start trouble and only get violent when a vessel or member of the family is intentionally hurt/disassembled/what have you.

[Thirdfain]

Let's say that my fleet lacks any huge, heavy-hitting battleships. In their place, however, I have a class of supercarrier ships that carry literally hundreds of thousands of drone starfighters and missiles. How would that translate into a point value?

I'm doing the same. Don't even worry, it's the same rules as battleships in terms of points.

[Covenant]

No problem!

I've actually got a related question. If I want to revive my Battlebrick from the Needle versus Brick thread, could I spend 10 points into a faction-wide armor upgrade? Similar to engines or FTL or sensors, something that specialized ships would be better at, but something with reflects a nation-wide interest? The idea being that a 10 point ship would only fight as a 10 pointer, but count as 11 or whatever when on defense. I'm looking for something unusual, and it seems that going for something armory and not very offensively powerful is a motif rarely taken herebouts.

[Hawkwings]

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

The race deals in information and delivery of messages through really fast little ships. They hold carnivals when they show up on a planet, in there huuuuge motherships where they attempt to siphon up as much information as possible through battering for it. About the only they make to sell is art, either music, digital or traditional. Outside of that, they just float around through space like nomads.

I mean, a ship cannot have as much industrial capability as a whole planet, unless it's a planet-sized ship. So basically you're putting a third of your fleet points into your "planets", while the rest of us have planets for production.

[Covenant]

Couldn't you just have your Factory/Battleship thingy fall under the 'Too big to be effective' syndrome Nitram had. They're not supposed to be frontline ships I assume, they'd be quite different from a pure combat ship and being factories that'd justify their size.

Elaborate. Other then being the main vehicle for moving the various families between stars, the big ol' motherships are a last ditch weapon. The Vak don't go out of their way to start trouble and only get violent when a vessel or member of the family is intentionally hurt/disassembled/what have you.

If your Motherships are so massive that they can barely lumber into battle and are so impressively powerful that they are only risked in the most dire of circumstances... why not just count them as planets? Take 3 of them and pay 100 points each to upgrade them to a 200 point planet.

[Tasoth]

Couldn't you just have your Factory/Battleship thingy fall under the 'Too big to be effective' syndrome Nitram had. They're not supposed to be frontline ships I assume, they'd be quite different from a pure combat ship and being factories that'd justify their size.

Elaborate. Other then being the main vehicle for moving the various families between stars, the big ol' motherships are a last ditch weapon. The Vak don't go out of their way to start trouble and only get violent when a vessel or member of the family is intentionally hurt/disassembled/what have you.

If your Motherships are so massive that they can barely lumber into battle and are so impressively powerful that they are only risked in the most dire of circumstances... why not just count them as planets? Take 3 of them and pay 100 points each to upgrade them to a 200 point planet.

Problem is I already designed the whole Vak mothership and it's something like 500m tall with a diameter of something like 500m. They're not massive trundling monsters the size of small moons. It's hard to explain. But they only haul information, members of the Vak and art work they've created. The whole maintenance and production is taken care of by 'infant' vak and even then, they really don't produce much unless something is broke. I just kinda want listless robotic space nomads I guess and something that represents they've been around for a very long time, travelling the galaxy and learning, just not something that instantly breaks the game on account of them being ludicrously overpowered.

[Covenant]

If they're not supposed to be very powerful, why not just make them a 40 point ship (bigger than your average battleship, bigger than a small squadron of heavily armed cruisers) that is simply extremely large for it's firepower. Like a Borg Cube--massive size, itty bitty output. I wager your ships can be almost as big as you feel like, so long as their point values reflect any amount of 'power' they have.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Hold on a sec... Tasoths "Mothership" is only 500 Meters?

Thats the size of one my Destroyers, and my BB's are 1000 meters... Am I too big or is Tasoth too small?

[nt01jones]

Elaborate. Other then being the main vehicle for moving the various families between stars, the big ol' motherships are a last ditch weapon. The Vak don't go out of their way to start trouble and only get violent when a vessel or member of the family is intentionally hurt/disassembled/what have you.

Eh, I was operating under the assumption that you were essentially wanting a Mobile starbase/planet style ship (in function, not size). I figured that it wouldn't really need to be under 50 points as it wasn't supposed to be a normal battleship. If for RP reasons you wanted to use fleet resources for that.

But Covenant and Hawkings have better suggestions then what I had.

On a similar subject. I want to have a massed produced Merchant ship That I'll have listed in my fleet listing (Like the liberty freighters the US made during WW2) Would I need to use points for that? (I'm thinking I might have to do so, If I'm diverting a portion of my economy on producing said ships) if so how many points would be reasonable to use.

Edit: Fixed quote tag

[Hawkwings]

So for those of us sharing Earth, do we each get our own defenses, strong as a normal capital planet, and stacked to make Earth a fortress, or do we split the defenses, with the result being Earth no better defended than any other major planet?

[SirNitram]

So for those of us sharing Earth, do we each get our own defenses, strong as a normal capital planet, and stacked to make Earth a fortress, or do we split the defenses, with the result being Earth no better defended than any other major planet?

We run into a Quad Entente problem here. If we make it cumulative, each power is properly defended, even from each other.. But if you all ally together, you're basically unassailiable in your little world.

[SirNitram]

As for the 'liberty' ships.. What do you plan to do with them? Send a PM if you'd rather it be secret.

[Tasoth]

Hold on a sec... Tasoths "Mothership" is only 500 Meters?

Thats the size of one my Destroyers, and my BB's are 1000 meters... Am I too big or is Tasoth too small?

I'm probably too small. Also remember, they're cylindrical, so they have a huge volume. Using this, which is an applet to calculate the volume of a cylinder, a 500m height and a radius 175m results in a volume of 48124999.99 cubic meters. I do it the ol' arithmetic way (Pi * Radius^2 * height from here), and I get 48100000 cubic meters when I use 3.14 for pi (yea, I shorted Pi, but I only used 3 significant figures in the answer!). While I have small ships, the vak really don't have anything much bigger then a human aboard and most of the maintenance building is done by 'infant' version of themselves about the size of a human hand.

There was going to be something about cubic kilometers or some such, but I screwed the conversion, double checked and realize that the cubic meters just sounds more impressive...

[Crossroads Inc.]

Maybe not too too small.. I just remembered we are using Trek age Tech.

The largest Trek ship put into production was the "Negh'Var" at 680 Meters. The standard Galaxy class ship was only 640 meters. My ships run (roughly) 1100 meters for a BB, 800 meters for a Cruiser, 500 meters for a Destroyer, and 230 meters for a Corvette.

By conventional Trek standards the 1100 and 800m ships are massive. However, I am guessing I won't have nearly as many ships in the end as other players, so perhaps it will even out.

[nt01jones]

Eh, nothing devious enough for a PM. Simply have a shipyard pump out a cheap and (relatively) reliable cookie cutter ship for commerce, both internal and external . Might even sell them to other empires Ala Boeing.

Reason I was wondering is that, like I said, I'd be dedicating a entire shipyard to the suckers. Kinda reestablishing trade in a post imperial/dark age Environment.

[SirNitram]

Commerce ships, unless they are Q-ships or outfitted with intel gear, are not really something I'll worry about. I'll generally assume they can run away from a 1 point warship(So a 2 point warship is needed per merchant to make a reliable kill/capture). That counts for everyone, as post Dark-Age, there will be paranoia about shipping.

[Noble Ire]

I've designed a specialized FTL system for my starships, although I'm not sure if it would warrant extra point expenditure:

FTL: Preeminence warships employ Void Immersion Drives. The devices use the ship’s skin-tight deflector field that pushes it into a parallel dimension. Distances within this dimension are greatly reduced, so a ship must only move a fraction of the distance necessary in realspace and “emerge” to traverse light-years. This dimension does not interact at all with realspace, so interdiction by any known means is impossible; however, communication in and out of the Void is also impossible, and if a vessel loses its field containment while in transit, it is lost forever. Compared to other FTL systems, VIDs are fractionally slower than average, but if used to transport a vessel to a point within its light-minutes sensor range, it is extremely precise. Longer voyages require extended cool-down times, especially for smaller vessels, and even larger vessels emerge for cool-down during longer journeys. Due to the fact that their deflector fields are part of the FTL system, warships too small to have layered shielding are vulnerable to attack in the moments before and after FTL transit.

Weighing its advantages and disadvantages, what do people think?

[nt01jones]

Commerce ships, unless they are Q-ships or outfitted with intel gear, are not really something I'll worry about. I'll generally assume they can run away from a 1 point warship(So a 2 point warship is needed per merchant to make a reliable kill/capture). That counts for everyone, as post Dark-Age, there will be paranoia about shipping.

Alright Cool, That answers my question nicely as well as another was gonna bring up.

[SirNitram]

If you want to invest points in being harder to interdict, you will basically get a 10-1 parity: for +10 points to your engine, you can escape a ship which has (+1 Interdictor Unit Onboard) or however people notate such. If no one invests extra points in interdictors, that'd be a big gain for small cost. But.

No system is 'immune' from anything. Your super-comm can be spoofed, jammed, and intercepted if the other guy invested more. I've had enough of super-duper things declared because people don't want to exercise the slightest sense.

[Thirdfain]

500 meters is small, in this game prolly... I would expect a big capital ship to be kilometers in length.