STGOD: A Dead Art?

[Bugsby]

This is a little more complicated. I've got some ships which are very slow. The intent is that they can be moved around to reinforce or subtract from defences in my empire (maybe adjacent ones), but that they are pretty much useless for offensive operations. RedLeader34 has bought some 'defence platforms' as if they were normal ships. I suggest he takes some points off them to represent the fact they're immobile (he's over-target by my tally anyway), but they're an improvement on just planetary defences in that they have to be taken out to blockade the system.

Well, it's not written anywhere that "planetary defenses" HAVE to be ground based. Some of those could be sublight-only defensive ships. They get the extra boost in effectiveness (as suggested by the points system Nitram outlined) in exchange for their immobility. If you want to give them extra mobility, so that you can easily shuffle them between your home systems... well, that's fine. But the more mobility you give them, the less effective they are. Think of it as a continuum. On one end you have badass hunks of metal sitting at a fixed point in space. On the other end you have regular-strength ships with full mobility. Place your ships anywhere along that continuum you want.

A single-system nation? No way, not without penalties to national production.

Some people have done this (e.g. Nitram). I just assumed it was an 'eggs in one basket' risk. Are you penalising their production as well? I suppose UCbooties at least can get some production back by raiding and stealing cargo.

You have to suffer more than just an 'eggs in one basket' penalty IMO, because if you have only one nation, that basket is REALLY easy to defend. Defense logistics are cake when your entire fleet only has to defend one place, instead of having to make a balanced spread across a couple systems. Up to the mods to determine exactly how this would balance.

[brianeyci]

Speaking from the point of view of someone who intends to play one planet, I do not particularly mind if my production is lower than others.

But eventually you just begin to strain credibility. A single solar system can provide enough nickel-iron from asteroids to produce enough kilometer long craft for billions of ships, nevermind a handful.

I don't see any of this points arguing in any of the other older STGODS. It's primarily people who are new, who are worried about game balance. Yes, it would take 550 points to defeat me and even begin to launch a ground invasion. Yes, that means when attacking me, an empire would have to commit more than a third of their military to destruction, and keep significant forces in system to prevent partisans and loyalists from whittling occupation forces to nothing. Yes, I intend to RP my civilians as extremely brainwashed to the point each one of them are willing to throw hovercar bombs and die for the cause if they're ever occupied. Yes, if the shit hits the fan, my 100 internal security units I plan to RP as officers of a resistance force, loyalists who could never be converted.

But so what? I'm playing at a nerf already, and I don't intend to be stupid and go around advertising my evil, or declaring war on a hundred different star nations at once. Set piece battles are boring as hell. There's a huge difference between someone who has one planet and RP's well compared to a person who has one planet and 1500 points max-minned so they can go around taking over the galaxy with minimal repercussions to their home turf.

So in short, big deal about owning a single planet. I think the moderation will deal with single planet empires on a case-by-case basis. If someone is going around powergaming I fully expect production penalties, but I don't see why it's necessarily a given that all single planet empires playing the cloak and dagger thing have to be nerfed.

[InnocentBystander]

What benefit do points spent into your diplomatic corp give you?

None, the quality of your diplomacy is going to depend on your actual personal acumen in negotiations and planning with others. Sorry! No way to model points effects in on that...

Just a suggestion but if we continue the tradition of previous STGODs of assuming that there are NPC nations about that represent the smaller fish in the galatic pond, wouldn't spending some points on a diplomatic corps be a valid option there? I'd personally like to see NPC nations exist as they did a lot to open up options for diplomacy, warfare, and general intrigue with out forcing the kind of apocalyptic confrontation between player nations that usually ends an STGOD. If they're under mod control (and the players don't just ignore them) I'd say that would be a fair way if handling them.

As a note, I've rather assumed that such nations will exist. If that's not going to happen I'd like to know so I can make the appropriate changes.

I would say that your 'diplomatic quality' should be based on entirely how well you conduct yourself in the story thread. Of course ideally you are going to be interacting mostly with mostly player nations instead of NPCs. Of course if you want to invade some people for kicks... be my guest

[Thirdfain]

But eventually you just begin to strain credibility. A single solar system can provide enough nickel-iron from asteroids to produce enough kilometer long craft for billions of ships, nevermind a handful.

But can it produce enough finances, population, and other resources to support such an infrastructure?

So in short, big deal about owning a single planet. I think the moderation will deal with single planet empires on a case-by-case basis.

I agree strongly with this statement.

[brianeyci]

To put it bluntly, yes. A single solar system could make a Dyson Sphere or Ringworld. In a hard science fiction setting, you could have six asteroids set up on an elliptical orbit to bring back raw materials from the asteroid belt every two months. Eventually you reach enough critical mass that every single citizen is wealthy beyond imagination even in an early spacefaring civilization, and a single Type II civilization supporting millions of ships doesn't seem so unreasonable in a Star Trek like setting. But that doesn't really matter: it's obvious having so many ships is unmanageable (unless you do what Nephtys is doing) so I understand a low point limit.

For people who are too worried about game balance or too worried about points, if someone wanted to powergame they could do it already. All they'd have to do is a single planet. Their entire fleet is made up of 50 point battleships, with +1 or +5 to small irrelevant statistics that most people overlook. Look, my merchant ships have +1, you don't even mention merchant ships in your OOB, so mine are winnar! Make sure to read every single science fiction book and know a lot of science so you can argue with mods about things like planetary bombardment and each starship being a planet killer all on its own. They could go around with these 50 point battleships gallavanting around the galaxy taking over empires one by one and have their single homeworld protected by a ring of orbital defenses, juggernauts and a planetary self-destruct.

If anybody is seriously worried about something like this happening, I suggest they join something with a full rules set, like our Space Empires game. I'm not worried about powergaming freaks at all, because we have moderation.

[Redleader34]

Problem what if the other empires band together, work on a (or many) planet killer(s), and blow up your fleets with their combined fleet, and destroy your world with their 3-4 planet killers?Then as Mr Wanka would say,

YOU LOOSE, GOOD DAY SIR

This approach isn't very smart, as there are already common defense pacts brewing, and their is at least one civilization with a planet killer in the works.

[SirNitram]

I should note that planetcide is going to be an atrocity of atrocities. At this tech level, terraforming is a PITA. There's planetbusting capacity, but it's like blowing away the Eastern Seaboard of the USA.

[Academia Nut]

The counter to that is to form your own pacts, and/or avoid being a dick. I suppose a clever way is that all of these pacts tend to be defensive, so if you can manuever a member into launching an offensive assault on you, you could claim innocence and diplomat your way out of having to fight all members of the alliance. There are all sorts of ways to do this.

Plus, since this is a cooperative game as much, if not more, than it is competitive, if you really start to get your ass handed to you, you could sue for peace. Only a couple of empires are inherently dickish to keep going under such circumstances, and those ones will tend to be the ones that get leapt on with both feet anyway. And the people playing those empires for the most part want to get leapt on with both feet cause that's part of the fun.

EDIT: I just came up with an interesting question for the mods. Would economic pacts between empires have any in-game effect, or would it just be there for roleplay?

[Bugsby]

"The Co-Operative would gladly volunteer their oldest vessels" to guard Earth, as the duty is primarily ceremonial. If previous STGODs have taught us anything, it's that Earth NEVER gets attacked.
<_<
>_>

[Covenant]

Anyone see any issues so far with my OOB? I'm going to start putting ships up otherwise. So far so good?

I've also got a question, could we have armament-switching units? Like a vessel that had a missile rack that could be outfitted with anti-ship or anti-fighter missiles, and we would declare before battle which loadout spread we were using? IE, a non-balanced design that is variable? It sounds like a headache, but I just wanted to ask, as adjusting payload loadouts are one of the ways to adjust a force to fight a new side.

[InnocentBystander]

"The Co-Operative would gladly volunteer their oldest vessels" to guard Earth, as the duty is primarily ceremonial. If previous STGODs have taught us anything, it's that Earth NEVER gets attacked.
<_<
>_>

The difference between the Earth of STGOD 4 and this STGOD is something like 500 equiv points of statis defense, plus whatever ships everyone has there guarding it.

[Starglider]

I've also got a question, could we have armament-switching units? Like a vessel that had a missile rack that could be outfitted with anti-ship or anti-fighter missiles, and we would declare before battle which loadout spread we were using? IE, a non-balanced design that is variable? It sounds like a headache, but I just wanted to ask, as adjusting payload loadouts are one of the ways to adjust a force to fight a new side.

Sure. Put it in the fluff. It has no game effect. Your ship is a simple X point vessel, if it works equally well against everything.

The difference between the Earth of STGOD 4 and this STGOD is something like 500 equiv points of statis defense, plus whatever ships everyone has there guarding it.

Earth has something like 10,000 points of potential defences, before even calling in favours. But of course the earth powers aren't guaranteed to stay friendly with each other in the long haul.

[Covenant]

I've also got a question, could we have armament-switching units? Like a vessel that had a missile rack that could be outfitted with anti-ship or anti-fighter missiles, and we would declare before battle which loadout spread we were using? IE, a non-balanced design that is variable? It sounds like a headache, but I just wanted to ask, as adjusting payload loadouts are one of the ways to adjust a force to fight a new side.

Sure. Put it in the fluff. It has no game effect. Your ship is a simple X point vessel, if it works equally well against everything.

The idea was for it's +value to shift depending on loadout. Making it a straight-up unit isn't what I was going for, but if it's a hassle then I can go without it. Not armament switching as in-flight, but as in "I'm carrying a massive torpedo instead of 10 missiles, I'm way better at killing caps but can't hurt fighters now" sort of way.

New Question: I'm confused about the ground forces. Are we still allowing across-the-board upgrades, or are we upgrading individual units, or what? I'm seeing some unupdated OOB's and I'm a little hazy. The way I read it, we were treating ground units like ships, rather than a national upgrade. Otherwise, it just seems way too easy to give yourself an uber upgrade right now and pay it off later by having dominating ground forces.

I ask because powersuited T-Rexes would be different than standard levvy troops, and would be terrifyingly potent units, but I don't want to just go "lolz +100 to ground f0rcez" if I don't have to.

[Flameblade]

Okay, I now have the following questions:
How much time does X points give you to prepare (Early Warning)?
How many points are needed to have near-realtime communications?
If you conquer another player's planet, do you get that planet's share of resource production?
If not, why conquer a planet? Why not just nuke the world?

[Starglider]

The idea was for it's +value to shift depending on loadout. Making it a straight-up unit isn't what I was going for, but if it's a hassle then I can go without it.

If you can switch loadouts between battles, then it functions like a general purpose unit. I suppose there's the chance of being surprised (by uncloaking ships say) while you have a suboptimal loadout, but those sort of really rare situations can just be RPed (and generally surprise attacks are an advantage anyway, which is why cloaks cost points in the first place).

Not armament switching as in-flight, but as in "I'm carrying a massive torpedo instead of 10 missiles, I'm way better at killing caps but can't hurt fighters now" sort of way.

Battles don't have mechanics. The players just go 'I have this force of X points with Y specials, you have Z points and Q specials, what do you think sensible losses are?'. Then you RP based on that. So I really can't see this making a difference. As I said, sounds like you'd prefer to be playing a much more rules-heavy game (in which case wait a bit, there's bound to be a new one starting sometime soon).

Are we still allowing across-the-board upgrades, or are we upgrading individual units, or what?

I doubt it makes much difference in game terms. Crack units will probably be spearheading all your invasions anyway. Personally I think crack units are more fun to write about than 'my tech works better than yours'. You get to do plenty of fluff-based tech description anyway without needing mechanics for it.

How many points are needed to have near-realtime communications?

This came up earlier, the ruling was 50 points.

[Covenant]

Okie dokie then, I'll just fill my posts with delicious RP fluff rather than choke it full of math! I just wanted to make sure I've got the right idea about stuff, so as I don't get devoured by replicating space robots or brainsuckered or something due to my poor fleet choice.

[Bugsby]

Battles don't have mechanics. The players just go 'I have this force of X points with Y specials, you have Z points and Q specials, what do you think sensible losses are?'. Then you RP based on that. So I really can't see this making a difference. As I said, sounds like you'd prefer to be playing a much more rules-heavy game (in which case wait a bit, there's bound to be a new one starting sometime soon).

That's not exactly true. There are no mechanics as in a table of who fires when and where, but battles are much more complicated than just "I have 300 points worth of ships and you have 200, so you lose about 150 points." You gotsta command your fleets. The points give an idea of relative ship strengths... when I say my Aeterna-class dreadnaught is firing, the fact that it is a 50 point dreadnaught gives an idea of how much oomph is behind the salvo. But just having more points is no guarantee of success. A brilliant commander with a 200-point fleet can defeat an inept commander with a 300-point fleet. Tactics do play a significant role. Of course, sending one 2-point destroyer against a full 500-point armada, it doesnt matter HOW good a commander you are.

[Starglider]

Incidentally an important factor for modelling the battles themselves is how much fire can be concentrated. This is what a battle between two fleets of equally capable ships looks like when they can concentrate fire perfectly on one enemy target at a time:

Code: Select all

100 ships V 5 ships   : 100 ships remaining
100 ships V 10 ships  : 100 ships remaining
100 ships V 15 ships  : 99 ships remaining
100 ships V 20 ships  : 98 ships remaining
100 ships V 25 ships  : 97 ships remaining
100 ships V 30 ships  : 96 ships remaining
100 ships V 35 ships  : 94 ships remaining
100 ships V 40 ships  : 92 ships remaining
100 ships V 45 ships  : 90 ships remaining
100 ships V 50 ships  : 87 ships remaining
100 ships V 55 ships  : 84 ships remaining
100 ships V 60 ships  : 80 ships remaining
100 ships V 65 ships  : 76 ships remaining
100 ships V 70 ships  : 72 ships remaining
100 ships V 75 ships  : 66 ships remaining
100 ships V 80 ships  : 60 ships remaining
100 ships V 85 ships  : 53 ships remaining
100 ships V 90 ships  : 44 ships remaining
100 ships V 95 ships  : 31 ships remaining
100 ships V 100 ships : 0 ships remaining

A five ship initial advantage is enough to win the fight by over 30 ships. With less perfect concentration of fire the low end cases will be even more of a massacre (100 ships against 25 will likely take no losses), but the high end cases will be more even (100 ships against 80 will lose two thirds of their force). Of course real battles with multiple ship sizes and types will be much more complex, this is just to highlight the 'N-squared rule' of naval gunnery that tends to exaggerate small advantages.

[Flameblade]

So how do you determine the skill of your commander? Or is it based on your skill as a commander? Either way, the tactics vary based on the technology and that's something that's been made generic for this game.

Sorry if I seem to be something of a downer, but loosely defined rules and terms for a game can lead to huge arguments and can easily kill a game. I'm just wanting to know what the hell is the "Structured" part of STGOD so that I don't get modhammered or play the gimp.

I understand that the main body of the game is narration, I'm just wondering what the points and rules are so that I know how to assemble an OoB without violating some unwritten rule.

[Crossroads Inc.]

I imagine, when they say it comes down to your 'commanders' In battle, someone with a 200 point fleet might loost to someone with a 150 fleet under circumstances such as:

((200point fleet))
I shoot you! pew pew pew!

((150point fleet))
*responds with three pages of Well RP'ed fluff and bravado*

EDIT: Ah, from Phoenix? enjoying the 105 degree day?

[Adrian Laguna]

To put it bluntly, yes. A single solar system could make a Dyson Sphere or Ringworld. In a hard science fiction setting, you could have six asteroids set up on an elliptical orbit to bring back raw materials from the asteroid belt every two months. Eventually you reach enough critical mass that every single citizen is wealthy beyond imagination even in an early spacefaring civilization, and a single Type II civilization supporting millions of ships doesn't seem so unreasonable in a Star Trek like setting. But that doesn't really matter: it's obvious having so many ships is unmanageable (unless you do what Nephtys is doing) so I understand a low point limit.

Brian you are committing a classic mistake in assuming that the cost of the ship is the materials. It's not, the true cost of the ship is the electronics, power plant, engines, weapons systems, and crew. All of these things require a large number of trained professionals to obtain. Military grade systems are almost by definition expensive as fuck.

[Hotfoot]

So how do you determine the skill of your commander? Or is it based on your skill as a commander? Either way, the tactics vary based on the technology and that's something that's been made generic for this game.

Good writing = commander skills. That's pretty much the gist of it. That is the part of the game that's much more subjective, but it is important. You don't put points into commanders, they're just named characters that you get to control and stuff.

Sorry if I seem to be something of a downer, but loosely defined rules and terms for a game can lead to huge arguments and can easily kill a game. I'm just wanting to know what the hell is the "Structured" part of STGOD so that I don't get modhammered or play the gimp.

I think you're overcomplicating it. The points are rough measures of how effective various aspects of your empire are at doing whatever. Certain baseline things are assumed, like the ones I listed earlier. Points can improve some aspects, like ships, special techs, etc. The primary purpose for this rough measure is to stop people from becoming absurd and saying "lol I rock at everything except I'm not so good at this thing that doesn't matter at all" and giving the mods a hard time of moderating disagreements. By having this rough measure, players can say "okay, I've got this here, and you've got that there. I do this, and you do that, let's say I fall for the trap and lose X, but in doing so I score a lot of good hits on your forward force, and you lose Y. Sound good?" If the answer is yes, then you move on. If the answer is no, and you can't come to an agreement, then you move to mod intervention. The mod can look at the points to get a rough approximation of the total forces applied, then at the tactics, the writing, and from those two things come up with a solution that is as fair as you can get given the nature of the game. Frankly, the numbers bit is already there even if this was more freeform, the points system just brings them to the fore so it's easier to get an idea what is going on. Because an ambush of X might work pretty well against a force of Y, but maybe not so well against a force of Z.

I understand that the main body of the game is narration, I'm just wondering what the points and rules are so that I know how to assemble an OoB without violating some unwritten rule.

General rule, the bulk of your points will be spent on your fleet. After that, you can get some general techs, like instant communications, slightly better ground forces, better intel/counterintel, and so on. That's pretty much it.

[Flameblade]

Ah, okay. Thank you for the clarification on that.

EDIT: And yes Crossroads, I am enjoying the day... inside my home with the AC set to 68F

ADDENDUM: Plus, the northern area of the valley doesn't get nearly as hot as around Sky Harbour

[Flameblade]

Okay, I have another, much more important question:

How is Intelligence going to work?

Pure mod fiat with a quick point comparison?

[Bugsby]

Okay, I have another, much more important question:

How is Intelligence going to work?

Pure mod fiat with a quick point comparison?

As I understand it, your Intel points modify two things: the amount of information your nation receives from other nations, and the success chance of hostile espionage missions to blow up factories and suchlike. Hostile espionage missions are going to be difficult in any circumstances, but a higher score in intel means you've got better agents on the job.

As for information gathering, pretty much anything posted in the game thread is going to be available for you to find out. But that doesn't mean that you automatically know something that is posted in the game thread. If you think your nation would have knowledge of a certain event or memo or what have you, you need to have some sort of explanation of why you would have that knowledge. Maybe the memo was sent to you. Or maybe the memo was sent to an ally with whom you have very open diplomatic channels. Or maybe it's a non-secret event - like a state dinner - where you would have learned some things from news coverage. But if you want to know what was said at that state dinner - or the contents of a memo not sent to you - well, that's spy work. The better your intel score, the more liberties you can take with your information gathering. Although all data gathering is subject to mod censure. No intel network is perfect.

Finding things out - or playing as though you have found things out - when you have no suitable intelligence force equal to the task is called metagaming, and it is a CRIME.