STGOD: A Dead Art?

[Starglider]

Starglider, I'm DEEPLY disappointed.

I know this is your playing style Thirdfain but really, this outright dishonest and hence annoying.

There are three elements to this kind of game. The two obvious ones are strategy and tactics - strategy (allies and where you send ships) is generally much more important, but tactics are fun and can make the difference if the strategic picture is finely balanced (not the case here). The third one is imposing your will on the game world. It's a consensual reality, and the better you are at convincing everyone that how you envision things happening is the truth, the closer to your vision of what should happen the narrative will be.

Initially I wasn't really doing this myself (I think most people don't, at least not deliberately), but Thirdfain clearly considers this a major if not the main part of the game, so I've joined in too. Thirdfain's style is psychological, and I've been literally counting off the number of tricks he's tried to employ on my fingers while I've been talking to him. When stuff I've proposed means less casualties for him, he agrees with it. When Dahak's totally non-empirical point of view suits him better, he agrees with that. He tries to present his perception as completely reasonable and anything else as unreasonable using emotive appeals and biased language. He avoids arguing with mods to keep them pleasant. He employs countless other little tricks that I know well from having to use them in business situations.

Generally this is a legitimate way to play the game, and I could respond in kind if I wanted (probably not as well - less experience), but frankly it wouldn't be as fun. The style I am using to promote my view of what should happen is to pay close attention to all the details, and then beat people about the head with basic logic and common sense - whether they are a mod or not - until they are forced to conceed (or failing that, mods are convinced). It's more fun for me, it's more in keeping with the style of this BBS as a whole, and hopefully it's more entertaining for spectators (though that may just be a personal conceit).

All your figures and so on are bullshit,

Just two days ago Thirdfain was praising my 'emprical approach' over IM, and arguing for total concentration of fire, because it would save him a few ships. Of course now he is arguing against such an approach because he would lose a few more ships with it. It's amusing but Thirdfain really, how long can you expect to get away with such blatant flip-flopping? I think you need a more subtle approach.

In the grand tradition of STGODing, you and I NEGOTIATED this entire segment of the battle. You AGREED to a 30-minute intercept period.

And here is the outright lie. Thirdfain informed me over IM that we would detect his ships when they were an hour away from Ruda Slaska, and we were just arriving. I said 'ok, well I want to make a last stand there, I hope that's correct RP for the pirates, obviously I can't speak for White Haven but I expect he'll go for it'. I was wrong on the second point - White Haven did not go for it. As such I had to have the Pirates run away to.

Thirdfain has been breathing down my neck to post since then, pushing the time forward, demanding that the intercept occur before the terrorist intercept is resolved. I have repeatedly told him that I can't do anything until White Haven gets back online (I feel bad enough about running UCB's ships when my IC interests aren't aligned with his), and that he shouldn't either. He has ignored this and pushed ahead to try and anhiliate the enemy ASAP, which he has in fact been doing since the beginning. Had he done it with tactical competence as opposed to pressure-sales techniques, the enemy ships would in fact be dead three times over.

There has been no private negotiation of any sort with regard to what happens after the League decided to ran away, just the lively debate in this thread, which is based on the last thing I heard from White Haven; that he wanted to run directly away from the enemy fleets.

The entire point of STGOD negotiation is to avoid moments like this, which obnoxiously blossom into hhuge arguments.

If this is an 'obnoxious huge argument' then your 'obnoxious attempts at bluster and manipulation' are equally offensive. Let's be kind and say this is a 'lively debate' while you are merely 'going on a charm offensive'. Some things are IMHO over the line though and claiming there was a 'negotiation' when there was no such thing is one of them.

I am quite happy to post all relevant PMs and IM logs should there be a call for it.

You agreed that was a fair outcome for this segment of the engagement. Why are you arguing differently now?

We did not even discuss an outcome to the engagement. We didn't even discuss an outcome to the 'last stand' engagement which I said I thought would happen. This is an outright lie, and seriously bad form on your part Thirdfain. Haven't you got any more subtle ways to misrepresent the situation?

Simply put, Starglider, it's impossible to have deeply accurate game mechanics in an STGOD. The precise locations of all my patrol fleets in Polish space are not logged, for instance, nor are the positions of the allied contingents around Earth. Nor, for that matter, is the location of Ruda Slaska!

It is perfectly possible to have deeply accurate mechanics, if the relevant details are supplied to feed into the process. I have noted that you are all for 'deep accuracy' if it means you will lose less ships. In this, the position of your patrol fleets is unknown to me; all we know is that they weren't moving in the scan range of the enemy fleets on the way in. Which is fine, but AFAIK those little fleets aren't relevant. The position of your allies is well known; you personally established it as 'within minutes of Nowa Masovie' - because you wished to ambush the attackers there with no chance to run, which would've worked if you'd done it better. Initially I wished you hadn't told me that, as it almost unavoidably influenced what I wanted to do after the fleets found out that half their allies weren't coming, but White Haven came up with the 'divert to secondary target' idea without knowing about this, and it was better than my idea anyway, so that was fine.

The location of Ruda Slaska was well established by me, relative to Nowa Massovie, in a post which you had ample opportunity to object to. Assuming your space is full of such minor colonies there was no problem with me specifying which one we were going to. What has not, AFAIK, been well established is the location of Nowa Massovie itself; 'in the middle' was just thrown around in the planning discussion (I honestly can't remember by who - not by me I think) - we went for 'the middle' because it was closest to the League and UCB's hideout for the retreat. But again, you've had ample opportunity to object and you have not.

You seemed pretty on board to me when we made this agreement yesterday.

Ignoring the 'agreement' lie, I have mostly been presenting the position of 'yeah, whatever you want Thirdfain', because I am uneasy about taking over UCB's ships for fear of metagaming. I have been trying to follow White Haven's lead on this attack for that reason. However I got fed up with your 'and it will be so' mentality when ignored my requests to wait for WH to get back and unilaterally teleported your fleet next to the fleeting ships.

EDIT: Thanks for completing the battle log Beowulf.

[Thirdfain]

I'm not even going to respond to all of that crap, It was my understanding from our conversation that at least a brief intercept in the event of your forces fleeing was appropriate, I even used the precise 30-minute figure when talking with you, precisely because I didn't want to put up with this bullshit. If you walked away with a different understanding of events, well, we all make mistakes- but you are being a gigantic asshole. This is pretty typical of people who have made a horrible in-game mistake, which is a real shame.

Moreover, I'd like to ask for a mod ruling on this. I believe that considering the fact that the enemy forces are deep within Polish territory and have only just detected the defending fleets, AND have a major Portuguese force blocking their retreat, that at least a brief intercept is possible. We can bandy about numbers and pull out the fucking rulers, but that's not how I think this STGOD should be played, and it certainly is not how I've ever played it in the past- and I'd like some fucking reward for planning and putting in place this trap, and I'd like to see my enemies punished for forging deeper in to Polish space to blow up more of my colonies when their situation became uncertain.

[Hotfoot]

Okay, enough. I've seen this go back and forth enough over the last few days. I want any conversations relevant to this from AIM, PM, whatever.

And I don't want any more sniping. This may be a game with serious conflict, but you are all working together to tell a story here, so let's cool off for a moment. I'll be working with Nitram on this so it gets resolved quickly and fairly.

[Thirdfain]

Oh, and while I'm here, your entire fucking logic for why the intercept won't work is bullshit. You assume that your squadrons will swing wide from the Portuguese interception fleet and get out safely. This is stupid, because you have NO IDEA the interception fleet is even there. Your fleet commanders would run for the fastest way out of Polish space and towards Requiem, not on some random wide trajectory. It's already been established that a force lying in wait is difficult or impossible to track on long range FTL sensors.

If your forces were to run wide, however, the interception fleet would be able to take advantage of the fact that you are well within my EW network and they are outside your own somewhat more anemic ship-based FTl trackers to position themselves directly in your path on the escape. Wham, bam, done.

For fuck's sake, stop bitching about losing. There's nothing more depressing and obnoxious than becoming a fucking rules lawyer the second you are surrounded, politically outmaneuvered, and outgunned.

[SirNitram]

For fuck's sake, stop bitching about losing. There's nothing more depressing and obnoxious than becoming a fucking rules lawyer the second you are surrounded, politically outmaneuvered, and outgunned.

I can think of something more depressing and obnoxious. It's someone who will happily metagame, lie about previous conversations in a desperate attempt to gain some kind of, I don't know, presumably advantage, and then launch into self-righteous bloviating.

You know, I can't say I expected different. I'm a little too good at patten-recignition to say that. But I did hope for something else. But Thirdfain, here we are again, and I'm just going to say it outloud: Wow, you're a hypocrit.

I've watched this unfold from the word go, and while there was metagaming on Starglider's part, I can clearly see there was plenty on the other side of the fence. But hey, we'll gloss over that, because you like to feel self-righteous.

This is why I turned this over to Hotfoot. Because I thought, perhaps, I might be unfair because, possibly, I was seeing more than was there. Guess I was right in the first place.

[Adrian Laguna]

In other news, myself and Beowulf would like to extend congratulations to Noble Ire for handling the situation with sportsmanship and style. I'm looking forward to our next engagement, hopefully he'll have learned some lessons from the previous one and prove a more challenging adversary.

[InnocentBystander]

You know, I can't say I expected different. I'm a little too good at patten-recignition to say that. But I did hope for something else. But Thirdfain, here we are again, and I'm just going to say it outloud: Wow, you're a hypocrit.

Could you maybe point out the metagaming here, for those of us with poor pattern recognition skills?

[SirNitram]

You know, I can't say I expected different. I'm a little too good at patten-recignition to say that. But I did hope for something else. But Thirdfain, here we are again, and I'm just going to say it outloud: Wow, you're a hypocrit.

Could you maybe point out the metagaming here, for those of us with poor pattern recognition skills?

It helps if you've seen stuff from the mod-side, but I'd say lying about a situation to force a player to agree to something, then when a mod is asked and clarifies, the player railing against this 'mutual agreement' is one example. As is trying to get the other people in an attack to retroactively change what was agreed on because the perfectly sensible IC plan would ruin your contrived betrayal.

[Adrian Laguna]

As is trying to get the other people in an attack to retroactively change what was agreed on because the perfectly sensible IC plan would ruin your contrived betrayal.

That was actually more of a miscommunication. With different parties having different ideas as to what was agreed upon.

[Beowulf]

As is trying to get the other people in an attack to retroactively change what was agreed on because the perfectly sensible IC plan would ruin your contrived betrayal.

Uh... the perfectly sensible IC plan still required Ire and Starglider's fleets to meet mine before driving in towards Polish space. This is the point where my fleet starts shooting. If the fleets don't meet up, what's the point in even having them start near each other?

[SirNitram]

As is trying to get the other people in an attack to retroactively change what was agreed on because the perfectly sensible IC plan would ruin your contrived betrayal.

Uh... the perfectly sensible IC plan still required Ire and Starglider's fleets to meet mine before driving in towards Polish space. This is the point where my fleet starts shooting. If the fleets don't meet up, what's the point in even having them start near each other?

Yet the original plan contained none of that, merely all three meeting when they arrived in the system in what, I would presume someone of your intelligence would know as, a pincer maneuver.

Don't even try this with me, Beowulf. Don't. I lack the patience for this nonsensical justifying when it's all post-hoc.

[InnocentBystander]

I'm guessing there is some sort of heated debate going on somewhere right now but... is there going to be an engagement or not?

[SirNitram]

I'm guessing there is some sort of heated debate going on somewhere right now but... is there going to be an engagement or not?

I suspect there will be one, though keep in mind the difficulty of covering all escape routes from a planet with a finite number of ships. Space is big.

If I were ruling right now.. And this is why I've bowed out... I'd solve it by the star going nova for no reason and killing the fleets and colony involved.

I'm an asshole.

[InnocentBystander]

If I were ruling right now.. And this is why I've bowed out... I'd solve it by the star going nova for no reason and killing the fleets and colony involved.

Elegant, yet spiteful.

[Beowulf]

*digs through PMs*

Hello Beowulf. Sorry about this. Was busy trying to get Redleader to be sane and forgot to forward.

Where's the various fleet elements meeting, in one of the rare systems above the eliptic, or in open space?

The FEA, ARM and Kiro fleet elements are moving to positions in open space, 10 light years or so apart. The later are the only ones under cloak. They will link up right before advancing. They're travelling above the galactic disc but the staging area itself is just out of estimated Polish tracking range plus a 20% safety margin or so, which may actually be inside the galaxy (I'm not sure if the default warning time for incoming fleets approaching a nation's border is hours or days). The League and Pirate elements are forming up in their own territory, I think the League in particular are just going to dash in without warning.

Do you mean '10LY apart' as in they'll drop out for their stopoff point 10LY apart from each other, presumably to diminish chances of all being spotted?

The ships aren't coming in in one big group. My cruisers are arriving one by one, though the cloaking minelayers are in a group of four. I believe Beowulf's are coming in three separate groups each led by a pair of battleshisp. I'm not sure about Noble Ire, but I think they're coming in groups centred on light carriers. This is partly for convenience and partly so that any deep patrols that might detect them see only a small fraction of the fleet. From the vector they could well be on the way to White Haven's territory, unless they're tailed and actually observed to stop in deep space.

The point of separate staging areas is so that spies in the fleet command have a harder time compromising the location of all three forces in one go; the final link-up point is only known by the admirals. The fleets are under strict comms silence (other than close range laser comms) so spies on the ships themselves aren't likely to have a way of sending updates. However the separation between the two large forces may mean only one is detected by scouts/scanners as well (though they're just sitting there in deep space, detecting them will be tough). I don't really have a good idea of how far out detection goes in this game, with and without extra points spent on it, but I'm pretty sure people have spies in each other's militaries. I expect there will be lots of border listening/tracking posts, like NATO early warning radar stations strung across the arctic circle, simply because that gives longer range than relying on planetary detectors alone. Thus the 'send cloaked ships in to destroy tracking stations and obscure incoming fleet strength and vector for an extra 12 hours or so' plan, which is realistically the only way my ships can make a difference in this attack.

This would be shortly after I go "What the hell?" when I learn my fleet is not going to be at the same spot as the FEA and Kiro fleets. Something important to note on this is that Noble Ire was just as confused about this as me. In essence, the only plan was that we meet up before attacking Poland. Everything above was made up by Starglider when you asked him the quoted questions, and he failed to notify me or Ire for a couple days. Even in this revised plan, there's a link up before attacking Poland.

The pincer was not between the FEA, Kiro, and Kitaka fleets, but rather between the above, combined as one fleet, the Pirates, and the League of Thought. The FEA and Kitaka were supposed to attack as one fleet from the very beginning, as shown in the chat log I edited into the IC thread earlier. Ten light-year seperation between the elements of the combined fleet versus 100s to 1000s of light-years between the staging point and the target. It isn't much of a pincer movement when your vectors are approximately parallel.

The attack on the FEA was done at the final link up point before jumping into Polish Space. Since my fleet had the location, it's logically no problem to give that information to the Habsburgs. Since there is a link up before the attack, my plan needed no changes, and no bullying of Starglider or Ire was necessary once I understood what was happening. I've got more to back me up, if you really want to see it.

As for contrived, my nation has perfectly good reasons to betray them. Of the four other attackers, there's a group of heretics (psykers), a group of pirates, and a group that wants to deconvert my people. The only one of them I'd actually like would be the same group that has the least to lose in this whole adventure.

[Hotfoot]

Okay, here's what I'm doing:

First off, Thirdfain, Imperial Overlord, stop complaining about the exit vector. You played your hands early and there's no way you can catch up with them with that fleet alone. You've had your intercept fleet declared for a while now anyway, so deal with it. Thirdfain, you gave away your position for sixty points worth of ships. Them's the breaks. Starglider's exit route is valid, you're trailing a half an hour away.

It's a moot point anyway, as Innocent's interception firmly locks in the fleeing fleet. In a secondary ruling, since I'm tired of the back and forth concerning fleet battles, they last for hours, not minutes or days. Half an hour is plenty of time to get your pursuing fleet into position.

Starglider, you're losing your pirate support. They're going to be breaking off and leaving you to your fate. Since the pirate BB's and EW ship all have +FTL anyway, they're gone, buh-bye. Of course, you're going to die terribly anyway with or without them...

Thirdfain, you really do need to keep an eye on the flip-flopping. Take a position and stick with it unless you are met with evidence against you. That said, Starglider, you do need to communicate some things better.

As far as the modstick goes, Thirdfain, the bombs the pirates placed will detonate. People will die. You might even lose a little production or some such as your factories all shut down in a day of mourning. Feel free to get dramatic. Starglider, Imperial Overlord, we'll...chat.

[Noble Ire]

In other news, myself and Beowulf would like to extend congratulations to Noble Ire for handling the situation with sportsmanship and style. I'm looking forward to our next engagement, hopefully he'll have learned some lessons from the previous one and prove a more challenging adversary.

Thanks. I'll admit, I was caught completely off-guard, and fully out-gunned. There was pretty much no way I was going to make out of the situation well. Still, it was a good opportunity for some dramatic action, and I ran with it. I can only hope that you both will follow my lead when the tables turn.

As for contrived, my nation has perfectly good reasons to betray them. Of the four other attackers, there's a group of heretics (psykers), a group of pirates, and a group that wants to deconvert my people. The only one of them I'd actually like would be the same group that has the least to lose in this whole adventure.

Just for the record, I'm pretty sure that the FEA's anti-religious bias was and still is OOC knowledge. I'll let it slip this time (perhaps the Kitaka happened upon a damaged communication drone or something) but I'd just like to ask people in general to be careful about separating in and out of universe knowledge in the future.

Edit: I'm curious, just how heavily damaged is the Kusari? Hulled, or merely crippled?

[Starglider]

Starglider, you're losing your pirate support. They're going to be breaking off and leaving you to your fate. Since the pirate BB's and EW ship all have +FTL anyway, they're gone, buh-bye. Of course, you're going to die terribly anyway with or without them...

Just to clarify:
The League ships are White Haven's.
The Pirate ships are UCBootie's but I've been RPing them recently.
All the ships from my own nation that were in the general area have long since been killed or run away.

I'll be RPing this, but Hotfoot has supplied a precise description of the Pirate tactics. Here's what will happen:
* The Pirate BBs and CAs will peel off without warning right before the combined fleet hits the Portugese interdiction zone.
* The Krakens and EW ship will try to use their superior speed to scatter in a fairly narrow cone, thus giving them some in-character hope of outrunning pursuit (after all they don't what if any extra-fast ships the enemy may have).
* The Blackblades will cloak and scatter over a much wider arc, trying to make it out of Polish space then loop back round home, hoping the enemy doesn't have the EW resource to hunt them all down before they're too dispersed for this to be practical.
* The marine and cargo ships will try to scatter too. Unfortunately they have neither cloaks nor speed, so at best they're going to be a distraction that ties up enemy resources to hunt down and kill.

Frankly that's completely in character for the pirates. I just didn't have the heart to pull it on White Haven myself.

I can't do this now but I'll try to make time after lunch.

As far as the modstick goes, Thirdfain, the bombs the pirates placed will detonate. People will die.

I'd be happy to do a post of the pirates dying if you tell me what they see incoming. As long as you bring a gaggle of capships and not anything really flimsy (i.e. fighters and 1 point frigates), those ships won't have a hope of damaging the incoming ships before dying themselves.

EDIT: With respect to Beowulf, his betrayal was of course completely in-character. If my characters had known that he and the FEA were mortal enemies, they might've taken more precautions or indeed not gotten the Kitaka involved, but they had no idea so they didn't. Beowulf and Laguna can now attempt to conquer Noble Ire while the NGTO and the CON are occupied with each other.

I have no problem with him retconning my suggestions for seperate FEA/Kitaka staging areas, because they were only suggestions; I obviously can't dictate where other players ships go. The only person who had a right to object to that is Noble Ire, and he was fine with it. It was mildly annoying that my minelayers were sitting next to Noble Ire's ships when there was no good reason for them to be doing so, but the whole betrayal was a cool enough move that I let that one go.

[Starglider]

Between them the Dreaming Doom and the Cruel Trident had emplaced twenty-four fusion charges before the imminent arrival of the Polish flotilla put an end to their activities. Each ship had originally carried twenty of the devices, intended to destroy the infrastructure on Nowy Masovie after the Bootswellington transports had hauled away the highest value items. They were relatively crude, bulky weapons, streamlined metal shells a metre in diameter and three times that in length - but cheap and highly effective on defenceless targets. They closely resembled the strategic bombs of the early 'cold war' era, but direct laser-initiated fusion gave them a rather higher efficiency than those ancient multi-stage devices. One device had a misaligned implosion chamber and fizzled, but the other twenty-three blossomed into thirty megaton fireballs, instantly shattering the asteroids and space stations they were emplaced on into irradiated shrapnel.

The 'fusion charges' are incidentally based on the B41 bomb - they have a similar shape, about half the internal volume, 75% of the mass and a slightly higher yield (30MT vs 25MT). The technology of this setting can certainly do much better than that, but these are 'cheap and cheerful' weapons. Well, as much as city-smashing bombs can every be said to be cheerful. In the original plan, they would have been dropped from cruisers dipping into the upper atmosphere and left to fall on ballistic trajectories onto enemy cities, after the ground defences had been destroyed by direct bombardment.

[Starglider]

Ok done. I'm afraid I did not end up taking very good care of Vice Commander (as he was originally) Damien Thuule in the end.

I will of course edit if White Haven's ships did something other than engage the Portugese force - sadly he doesn't seem to have been online yet so I couldn't check.

[Thirdfain]

I can think of something more depressing and obnoxious. It's someone who will happily metagame, lie about previous conversations in a desperate attempt to gain some kind of, I don't know, presumably advantage, and then launch into self-righteous bloviating.

I'm sorry, I don't think I've metagamed once. If you have some sort of
And I've certainly not lied about previous conversations. I'm damn sorry I didn't keep a log. I contacted Starglider specifically because I didn't want this short of shit happening, and came out of the conversation under the distinct impression that there was going to be a certain chain of events. I only lie in-character.

I've watched this unfold from the word go, and while there was metagaming on Starglider's part, I can clearly see there was plenty on the other side of the fence. But hey, we'll gloss over that, because you like to feel self-righteous.

Was there? I'm completely informed as to my oponent's movements and they are well within my FTL tracking network. In what way have I metagamed?

[Beowulf]

Since it seems to be the fashion, my provisional builds for the turn:

Rei class - class to get named at a later date.
Frigate 1 pts + 3 anti-ship + 2 cloak ( 6 )
(Pennant letter F)
Built around a similar machinery fit to the Asura class. This class focuses much more on long range firepower, with its major weapon being a collection of heavy junami.
7 heavy junami
10 light Larkenseal cannon

Tenno class
Battlecruiser 22 pts + 11 anti-ship + 1 interdictor + 2 speed ( 36 )
(Pennant letter B)
8 very heavy Larkenseal cannon (twin)
12 heavy junami (triple)
110 light Larkenseal cannon
110 light junami
Kaiou, Meiou

Jiyu class
Technical Research Ship 1 pt cloak + 1 pt specialized sensor fit(EW) ( 2 )
(Pennant letter T)
Designed to trawl distant systems for signals intelligence, their stated mission is to conduct research into astronomical and communications phenomena. Existence of a cloaking device onboard is secret. These ships also have the capability to carry small amounts of cargo.

builds:
3 x Tenno ( 108 )
3 x Rei ( 18 )
9 x Ace ( 18 )
3 x Jiyu ( 6 )

[Starglider]

I'm sorry, I don't think I've metagamed once.

To my knowledge, Thirdfain has not metagamed, at least in the usual 'use OOC knowledge instead of IC knowledge' sense. He had a good opportunity to when the two incoming fleets broke comms silence; he could've pretended to have made preparations to immitate the presence of Beowulf's strike fleet and he didn't. Of course I don't know everything that's going on. Thirdfain has pushed events forward, refused to wait for absent players to get online and ignored important details of the situation in order to get the outcome he wants, but this is not metagaming.

AFAIK exactly one person has definitely metagamed; Dark Hellion, and it appears to have been a genuine mistake which was fixed with a retcon. There are three incidents where I was worried about metagaming myself, but they all turned out fine;

* When the Pirate fleet found out that only one of their three allies was on the way, I had to ask myself 'what would UCB's characters do, if they did not know about the FEA/Kitaka battle and also that a huge fleet is waiting for them at the target'. I seriously doubted whether I could answer this question honestly. Fortunately this was not an issue, because White Haven proposed a plan (diverting to a secondary target) which was rather better than mine, AFAIK without being told by Thirdfain about the waiting fleet.

* Having the Kiro commander guess that the Pirate and League fleets might run away. This was just dramatic license - I thought White Haven might have fun with a 'damn those Kitaka scum!' post. The message arrived late enough that it had no game effect.

* Having Captain Robertston recognise the Portugese ships at an implausibly long range. Again, this was just dramatic license to create a cool scene - there wasn't any possibility of a game effect because Hotfoot had already ruled that the pirates were going to scatter.

I realise White Haven's decision to run away could plausibly have been influenced by the knowledge that his homeworld was about to be attacked - though I can't see how getting those ships home with 2000+ pts of pursuers in tow could've helped with that even if had worked. He will have to speak for himself on this point.

And I've certainly not lied about previous conversations.

You have made factually incorrect statements. I will assume you did not do this deliberately.

I'm damn sorry I didn't keep a log.

Well I did have logging enabled, and I sent that log to Hotfoot when requested, and I am quite happy to send it to you if you want it. We went through it in detail and I can see how you could have gotten the impression you did, if you selectively ignored fully half of my statements, including assuming I was speaking for White Haven when I made it very clear that I was not.

I am not going to engage in another tortous dissection of that material here, but if you really want to I will do it again over PM with you. As it happens the actual sequence of events that has occured matches quite closely how I said I expected it to go right after Beowulf's attack post, though of course I did not know exactly what would happen (or that I would be playing UCB's ships) at the time.

-------

I've just reread the first few pages of the thread, and I'd recommend it, it's entertaining and there are some very accurate predictions. Here are some choice ones;

Dahak back when he was arguing for more empiricism:

Personally, I think we still need some point system, even if it's just very simple.

I get the impression this game has more structure than most, and it's going pretty well so far, up past 20 pages certainly (not including 20ish pages of related IC threads):

The STGODs with the most OOC argument and fighting and the least structure were certainly STGODs 1 and 4, with 1 not even having a declared mod, with STGOD2 coming in a distant 3rd. The STGODs with the most structure were definitely the Steam and Steel STGOD, your STGOD on LA, and Spyder's STGOD 2k6. None of these had significant OOC argument; conversely, they also had almost no in-game dissent either, and I don't think any of them ran past 15 pages of game-thread.

This is interesting; without any deliberate intent, the two main alliances that have actually emerged are quite strongly 'experienced players vs new players':

If it starts, we can join up in a new player's alliance. Just to make sure the hyper powers at least feel the speed bump as they run roughshod over us.

I'd like to start on an even basis for all players; alliances should be based on political and social convenience, not how new the players are.

Thirdfain pointing out that arguing in the OOC thread is part of the game, and as such meant to be entertaining:

So what? OOC threads are THERE so that players can work out their problems. Arguing in the OOC thread is a vital part of successful STGODing, and it did not detract from the grand sweep and drama of the game at all.

But if it's only fun when you're winning OOC arguments, something is broken:

And it was still fun!

Just because you had nothing but fun doesn't mean that other people did. You've got to make the game fun for most everyone that's playing in it, not just those that are winning the debates in the OOC thread.

Hotfoot on structure:

The game is both cooperative and combative, and yet people lose sight of that and fail to keep a balance.

If you can't have rules or expectations that show a clear understanding of the reality of the game, then you have no game worth playing. Simply saying "Hey, let's play an STGOD without thinking" has sunk previous STGODs as well.

My point, however, is that by clearly stating expectations and rules, even a shitty player can become moderately skilled, rather than flailing wildly.

[Starglider]

This is one of those horrible ultra-empirical posts, so non-wargamers, please avert your eyes. I added the 'battle of the backstab' to the battles log, and since this is the first major fleet engagement of the game, I took the opportunity to do some analysis:

Code: Select all

Attackers : 708 combat + 138 anti-capship + 60 EW + 24 PD + 12 interdict
Defenders : 272 combat + 50 PD

Effective Ratio                : 2.72
Predicted Losses (square rule) : ~118 pts total

Attacker Total    Losses : 6 points destroyed
Attacker Weighted Losses : 122.2 points

Somewhat surprisingly, the actual losses are bang on what the simple square rule predicts. However I did make two assumptions before I started; I discounted the Asura and Voyager class ships on the basis that they were effectively having a private sub-battle, and I arbitrarily assigned the following 'equivalent points' for the various levels of damage:

'minimal' damage = 20%
'moderate' damage = 40%
'heavy' damage = 60%

[Thirdfain]

OK, looking through the logs I can see the problem.

[00:14] Comissar540: So, let's get to the meat and bones of what I'm suggesting.
[00:15] Comissar540: Your forces will be fairly deep into Polish territory when you're half an hour out from your target.
[00:15] mwdestinystar: They'll be pratically there. At these speeds, that's the final few light years.
[00:15] Comissar540: Intercept courses for my main fleets will be such that you have 2 options- 1, continue to the target world, which will give you about an hour in-system before my fleet can arrive
[00:15] Comissar540: yeah
[00:15] Comissar540: 2, flee immediately.
[00:15] mwdestinystar: Excellent.
[00:16] mwdestinystar: I will certainly go for 1. Hopefully White Haven will too.
[00:16] Comissar540: If you flee immediately, then we'll only be able to match speeds with your force for, say, half an hour of engagement on the way out
[00:16] mwdestinystar: Then there can be a huge battle.
[00:16] Comissar540: If you go in for the colony, you'll basically be able to sack it- but you're going to be assured at LEAST an hour or two of combat, if not more.
[00:16] mwdestinystar: And you'll get extra PR value from some civillian facilities getting trashed.

bolded section- it's apparant that you were stating "Then there can be a huge battle" in reference to your previous statement as opposed to mine. I thought you were responding to "half an hour of engagement on the way out."

I apologize for the misunderstanding.