STGOD: A Dead Art? (II)

[Battlehymn Republic]

Is there any particular reason why most of the factions from the last STGOD were human?

Additionally, setting-wise, would it be too much to constrain it to one where all the nations are humans or human-descended (transhumans, robots from Earth, etc.)? Because if you restrict it to a Red Dwarf or Firefly-type 'verse where there haven't been any alien life (or at least intelligent life) discovered yet, it opens up to all kinds of neat story possibilities.

However, if the game is the standard MOO type universe, I hope some players might play the same alien race. It's kind of weird how there's a dozen human nations, while the aliens are all unified behind their own racial governments. That's a cliche in sci-fi.

[Academia Nut]

Well, you'll note that I did say "adequately reply", although I do admit to some waffling over the word choice, since I was originally considering saying "resolving", but yeah. Also, I do acknowledge that there are momentum breakers outside of battles, those are simply the most obvious and annoying ones because there is so little wiggle room in terms of timing.

I figured the best method would be to create a core of ironclad rules, and then support with some more flexible ones more open to interpretation by the mods. While technically everything is up to the mods, if the players go in knowing that there are certain things that will get them blown up without hesitation, then that will hopefully make people more conscious of how long they are taking. Obviously the mods should be sending PMs and such as time starts to run out.

Oh, and Battlehymn, I think part of the "humans fractious/aliens united" stuff comes from the fact that we sort of went about willy-nilly with the formation of our nations. Those that wanted to play aliens usually weren't willing to share, because making the aliens is half the fun. Humans on the other hand are easier to deal with so you can skip the biology and go straight to the culture, but that means you get half a billion different nations all claiming a single planet as their homeworld.

While I'm sure there will be complaints, having all species "terrestrial based" (even if there is no Earth) could work, so long as there is the ability to have wild modifications to form as well, including cyborgs, uplifts, AIs, etc. etc. The other choice would be to have a couple of alien species worked out beforehand that can be drawn from. That or we just don't care and do things the way we always have except for the whole Fortress Terra bullshit.

[Covenant]

I apologize for the length of this, but this attack on me is absurd. Nobody liked Fortress Terra, and it's pretty goofy to believe it would have happened with anyone but Earth or some otherwise very popular faction--which is what my snipe was at. I was initially criticizing what I thought to be a future Legion of Elves and Dwarfs for a Fantasy game, not other people's space empires.

I do think it needs to be clear in the future though that the humans must not want to band together out of some feelings of Brotherhood with their species, and since most people tend to be human, nearhumans, or transhumans, they tend to be the ones most likely to do this. Runaway alliance formation leads to cold war scenarios, and thus we get scrapped games because one person can't do anything without getting massacred. You'd have to be retarded to not agree that people are more inclined to create these kinds of Empires when they're Humans with an Earth being threatened. If we assume, as we're making the game, that these forces will 'ally' at the startup then that's all perfect. Let's just do that this time, which is what I've said from the beginning, Hotfoot.

Which is why I'd like anyone with a legacy to Earth to be blocked--let them owe their loyalties to Corellia, and not Earth. Plus, I'm not the only one who thought there was an issue there. Since I never seriously wanted to ban furries, space elves, and human cyborg pirate nomads I'll cede that bit, but if I've wounded your widdle ego about some sort of flippant "The Less Earth the Better" statement then I think you need to chill out. I'm obviously not the only one who had some concerns about that aspect:

Do you have some sort of issue with these so-called 'real aliens,' Hotfoot? I think it's fun to see a wide range of people, from Psychic Warlords to giant swarms of Biowank Battlebugs to my extremely humanlike Dinosaurs. Plus, look around, I'm not the only one with this idea:

Is there any particular reason why most of the factions from the last STGOD were human?

Additionally, setting-wise, would it be too much to constrain it to one where all the nations are humans or human-descended (transhumans, robots from Earth, etc.)? Because if you restrict it to a Red Dwarf or Firefly-type 'verse where there haven't been any alien life (or at least intelligent life) discovered yet, it opens up to all kinds of neat story possibilities.

However, if the game is the standard MOO type universe, I hope some players might play the same alien race. It's kind of weird how there's a dozen human nations, while the aliens are all unified behind their own racial governments. That's a cliche in sci-fi.

Oh, and Battlehymn, I think part of the "humans fractious/aliens united" stuff comes from the fact that we sort of went about willy-nilly with the formation of our nations. Those that wanted to play aliens usually weren't willing to share, because making the aliens is half the fun. Humans on the other hand are easier to deal with so you can skip the biology and go straight to the culture, but that means you get half a billion different nations all claiming a single planet as their homeworld.

Which is exactly why I said what I said. Not every human was in the Holy Terra Alliance, but I think that an unwillingness to get out of the solar system definately contributed to the formation of that fortress world, and you'd have to be insane to think otherwise.

So let's just stop this derail. People can be whatever they like--and if this is a crumbling Empire of some sort, then we'll probably have humans in several factions and it'll all work out hunky dorey. What I should have said was that it's a mistake to have so many people with so much in common, and so little reason to fight each other. Since we know that several people (perhaps between a fourth to a half) are going to play humans on general principle, and apparently nobody wants to do anything other than Sci-Fi (which might lead to a more natural "everyone is human" situation that solves the problem of homelands), I think that's a legitimate concern.

And before you try anything cute and say you want me to cede on my REAL point, that I'm secretly a misshapen orb of floating metal and hate a hate for all the Man-Things and you're trying to out me as anti-Symmetrist or something, the VAST MAJORITY of my 'less snide' statements before and after were about fucking Fortress Earth.

I'd go a step further and ban all humans, near-humans, furries, humanoids, or beings with roughly bipedal movement and bilateral symmetry. When someone goes "I call the humans" it's basically downhill from there.

Getting rid of Earth, at least, solves the biggest problem. But I'm also really tired of a variety of Well Known Very Popular forces that encourage multiples of the same species. It's essentially a force multiplier to take a single species, multiply it's power by as many Players want to also be them, and then act as if they won't ever ally.

If people want to be a union of human colonies, okay, but we need to treat them as people who'll eventually ally up anyway. Let's clamp down on the metagame once we get started, but let's just be honest before we get going. Claiming Earth would infight was not honest. ;P

So what the fuck is your problem? Did you currently have a hard-on for a species from Earth, and are pissing to mark your territory now? Look, I said if we got rid of Earth, we get rid of the major problem. That puts me squarely in the "Fortress Worlds Bad" catagory that you're also in. I also said that having multiples of the same species is dangerous, because it is. But as I said at the end, if people want to all be far-flung descendents of man who have to ties of kinship to each other (I'm from Alderaan, not from Coruscant, what do I care about them?) then that fixes the fucking problem.

But that if we don't, then we have either 3 Nations Of Space Furries that all decide to unite when their furry bretheren get attacked, a group of Humans who ally following the discovery of an aggressor force, and so on and so forth. If people want to all be very, very similar, alright, but we need to assume such people are going to fall into an alliance just as we need to assume nearby people are going to fall into an alliance.

Alliances are part of the game, but they make-or-break nations. People leave when it gets too time-consuming, when they're not winning anymore, and when they become utterly irrelevent and don't care. The real issue is the formation of the alliances, really. If we get one Massive Uberalliance then that breaks the game. I don't think we should encourage a situation that makes that easier to happen. Do you really believe that people who choose humans are no more likely to ally with each other than people who take a mix of bizzare nonsensical aliens?

That's all I was saying. I don't need a reply to this because I think we're all on the same side. If there's some sort of simmering "It's better to make real aliens!" tension around, that's not what I meant. My concern is not punishing someone for their uniqueness, in the formation of alliances, but I don't have any hidden favoritism for 'real aliens' in a game like this. I didn't make "real aliens" last time either, I just copied Dinosaurs and put them in human spaceships with human activities (making tea), so I wouldn't even be immune from my own snipe if I had really intended to make it. So can we be done with this now Hotfoot, and just call it a misunderstanding? Or take it to pages.

[Tanasinn]

Just clarifying a bit: I myself support a STGOD set in a sci-fi setting, immediately after or during the disintegration of an over-empire. Having mod-controlled "super-nations" might be an interesting element for the players to compete against and work around, too.

[Covenant]

Err... I dunno. In the last one, the Mod-controlled Empires were not uniformly well behaved. During Neph's strike at the Sun, it was also Mod-controlled Empires that metagamed and went way out of the roleplay with the instant assumption that the ships encountered were weak, and rushed in, etc.

I'm all for mods having direct advisory power, but I think it'd be less likely to cause problems if their factions were no bigger than the rest of ours. I don't want to encourage people to gang up on moderators. That'd distract them, as well as punish them in a backhadnded sort of way.

I'd happily give them Political Power though. Militarily, make them even with everyone else, but make them the distinct warring members of the Royal Family who we rally our banners around. That way the mods have the ability to help balance the power (by leading their alliance to war and keeping the conflicts going) without resorting to extreme differentials of power.

I'm still a fan of the pre-made Alliances thing, as you can see, though I'd understand if people were uncomfortable with the idea of needing to sign up for a team beforehand.

[rhoenix]

Err... I dunno. In the last one, the Mod-controlled Empires were not uniformly well behaved. During Neph's strike at the Sun, it was also Mod-controlled Empires that metagamed and went way out of the roleplay with the instant assumption that the ships encountered were weak, and rushed in, etc.

There was precisely one mod that did this as a player, and I'd rather he not be in the next game, due his behavior in this one.

I'm all for mods having direct advisory power, but I think it'd be less likely to cause problems if their factions were no bigger than the rest of ours. I don't want to encourage people to gang up on moderators. That'd distract them, as well as punish them in a backhadnded sort of way.

If we simply have the mods be in charge of the decaying and crumbling empire's actions, I think it would work fine. With this idea, all mods would have to collaborate and would effectively share the faction all the players are tussling with, as well as one another. This creates a built-in failsafe of the mods having to agree before one of them posts an "And then..." post.

[Covenant]

Oooh, like, put them in control of the Imperial Remnants? That could work. It does the same thing as my idea, as well as the "Rocks From Beyond" punishment. Failure to act properly could result in the Empire's dying core flinging a contingent of Imperium Sundemolishers your way.

[rhoenix]

Oooh, like, put them in control of the Imperial Remnants? That could work. It does the same thing as my idea, as well as the "Rocks From Beyond" punishment. Failure to act properly could result in the Empire's dying core flinging a contingent of Imperium Sundemolishers your way.

Exactly - it still allows the mods the freedom to do their job to keep the game entertaining and fun from their angle, while allowing the players the just as important freedom to do the same both for themselves, and for the other players. More importantly, it forces collaboration more closely than before.

[Battlehymn Republic]

I wasn't thinking about the Fortress Terra idea at all. I was just thinking about possible settings. I must confess having any sort of faction at all does turn me off the game concept a bit, so I was thinking of some sort of small limit we can make. But I suppose it's okay any way, as long as we don't bring magic magic (as opposed to Clarke's Third magic) into a space setting.

For a 'human-descended only' setting, I was thinking of humanocentric universes such as Dune, Foundationverse, the Fading Suns universe, even ones such as Escape Velocity (the original), Freelancer, and so on. There doesn't have to be a complete ban on alien life (though the prospect of a Red Dwarf type universe is kind of intriguing), but that was just my idea.

[Hawkwings]

I'm up for the massive exploding destruction to kill this STGOD.

As for the next one...

I support the dying empire idea, with the players acting as internal or external enemies, and the dying empire being run by the mods. That way there *is* clear "us vs them" but at the same time, there can also be quite a bit of intrigue and backstabbing.

[Academia Nut]

Thank you for elucidating so much more clearly what I was trying to get at when I first suggested the mods have control over the dying empire. They have control over all the super weapons goodies, but they're too busy bickering in the Senate and constantly replacing their emperors to do anything unless it becomes a clear and present danger, in which case they are more likely to pay someone else off to do it for them than to actually crack out their increasingly rare planet killers.

Also, might I suggest a Balkans policy to former territories of the empire? As in you were held together by outside force, and the delimitations of your territory are based on around where you stop calling the people living there friends and start calling them enemies. This will make large alliances pretty much impossible because you will always share at least one border with someone whose guts you despise. Will also mean that we could get to fighting faster as we could have paired off before the start of the game with enemies to start with.

Oh, and since at least a couple people will want to play space barbarians (I know I do), perhaps we should discuss rules about bribery, mercenary work, and most of all: pillaging and looting! Because no empire collapsed without some pillaging and looting along the way.

[rhoenix]

No problem, Academia Nut - I was having the same problem until Hotfoot messaged me at random early this morning, and we got to talking about the past games, and what to look for in this new one.

As he and I discussed, the best approach seems to be the most concise one - this scenario would allow for all the fun nearly all of us were hoping for, as well as the little details to be considered before we start. Since now we've all gone through this game and have observed first-hand the pitfalls with certain things, we could either work those to our advantage, or set better rules for the next one, while not overburdening the players with minutiae.

[Noble Ire]

I'm up for either a Scifi or Fantasy setting, although I would strongly prefer one that allowed for distinctly non-human participants. I've got a bang-bus, game-motivating power in the works that could be incorporated into either setting, but they don't really work as humans.

[Starglider]

Starglider, your mention of Hivers and Motiles, you talking about SotS? The fanmade custom race stuff, perhaps?

Moties are from Niven and Pournelle's 'A Mote In God's Eye', one of the all time classic sci-fi novels. Hivers are the giant starfish-like aliens from Traveller. Traveller has quite a few decent xeno designs, though some of them are rather furry-like; presonally I prefer the Droyne, they're so cute.

[Darkevilme]

For those who still want to nuke the old game in a blaze of glory there's the problem it rather detracts energy from the next STGOD. Me i'm hybridizing the two ideas, i'm using the Chamaran's again, as extragalactic invaders with a dream of the promised land and a species superiority complex, conquer the galaxy or die trying. Probably the latter but i can say i tried at least.

[Starglider]

One way to keep complexity down would be to remove the need to run a whole government. We could go for a RAR style scenario, e.g.

'You are the commander of the 15th fleet of the Imperium of (whatever), which nicely dominates known space. You're escorting a colonising expedition to star cluster X, when suddenly your entire fleet is teleported away. You don't recognise the stars; you are in an entirely new galaxy.'

'(Q like being) appears on the bridge of your flagship. He says that he has teleported similar fleets of the twenty most powerful and promising species in the universe (who have had no former contact) to this uninhabited galaxy. It will be a fight to the death, and whoever wins here will be elevated to the ranks of the immortals and join the Q in omnipotence. The home civilisations of the losers will be wiped out, allowing the cycle to being anew. You may open communications and ally as you see fit, but you may not try and hide it out, because Q will utterly destroy any race that fails to entertain him. The Q may teleport in new races as they see fit to keep things interesting.'

Players would be in a newBSG-like situation, though probably with five to ten times as many ships. You'd be able to colonise two or three new planets when you arrive but that would be it. New ship construction would be minimal, salvaging and repairing ships would be critical. Every contact would be a first contact situation. Players disappearing off the face of the galaxy would be a regular and expected occurence. Oh as a final touch, the Q can give every admiral an indestructible magically updating scoreboard, to show how many races are out there and how many ships each has left.

[Academia Nut]

Mmmmmm... as much as a RAR scenario would clear up some of our problems logistically, it just doesn't seem as... flavourful. Plus the early stage is going to be even more of a bitch than usual because we'd want to feel our way around, see who and what would be useful in the scenario and who needs attacking first. Plus in that sort of thing where there is explicit annihilation in mind, the smartest thing to do is for a bunch of groups to gang up and pounce on an individual, unleash a curb stomping, and continue until only members of the alliance remain, at which point you backstab the least aware, or most out of position, member and repeat until the remaining two slug it out after having backstabbed everyone else.

And that is what is called Survivor in TV Land. *shudder*

So while it certainly could work, I'm not much of a fan of the idea. Better in my mind to spend the extra time to work out beforehand that your group really hates other groups and then have it from there.

[Starglider]

So while it certainly could work, I'm not much of a fan of the idea. Better in my mind to spend the extra time to work out beforehand that your group really hates other groups and then have it from there.

Yeah, arguably we should've been pre-arranging vendettas, smouldering border conflicts and ancient hatreds in the last STGOD, as opposed to pre-arranging alliances and reasons to trust each other.

[Academia Nut]

Yeah, I think ironically what happened was that there were a bunch of bright shiny n00bs because all the old players had become bitter and jaded from previous games, when what we needed was more bitter, jaded players to try and fuck things up for everyone. We were arranging alliances between sparkling clean nations when we should really have been arranging feuds between genocidal psychopaths. Ah well, live and learn.

Or perhaps in this instance it should be "die in a thermonuclear fireball and try again in a later incarnation".

[Covenant]

Well, the issue with psychos is that they're bad at alliances. With so many people on Earth who were relatively friendly with each other (but such a tempting target for a planetbuster!), any evil raving lunatic faction would be unable to gain a foothold.

Usually, Horrors From Beyond are extremely powerful, which justifies the fact that people are afraid and ally against them. Unless we have 3 players all app the same "Horde of Evil" type of guys, you're never going to have a situation where a badguy faction will be able to be an aggressive badguy faction and survive.

There's really very little incentive to attack first. By committing your forces to a smallscale attack on a comperable size enemy, you'll basically only whittle down both your forces. Outside of an alliance or trechery, there's no feasible way for me to say, go attack you, without weakening both of us to our neighbors. It's like the Cold War. Even if I fire my missiles first, and obliterate you, it's likely that I'm also going to be obliterated. Success or failure, I've now expended a large measure of my strength, and am open to attack from anyone else. Very bad news.

Strategy game solved this a long time ago by giving you outside assets to seize. Overly cautious play lets someone more reckless seize the assets, and get powerful enough to beat your caution. Overly aggressive play won't allow you to exploit the assets under your control well enough to attack with an overwhelming advantage. When our industrial output is essentially fixed, and there's no neutrla territory to seize, it's a bit harder to encourage people to do anything other than hunker down and build up.

[Academia Nut]

Well, to a degree when I meant psychos, I meant that there would be certain issues that would just set them off, such that while not stupid, there is a certain level of inherent belligerence that is irreconcilable. Which is why we definitely need to Balkanize this game early on. You will have neighbours who hate each other's guts, knowing that they are in a precarious balance and looking for any slight advantage they might be able to extract from outside sources to finally enact their dread plans.

Hmmm... as a balance of power issue, perhaps we should give anyone wanting to play a marauding barbarian horde some sort of mechanical penalty, probably economic in nature, in exchange for the fact that if they play their cards right they can massively fuck over other people by selling their services to the highest bidder, those services being changing their path of destruction to the side a little to wipe out on group instead of another. Something to think about at least.

[Hotfoot]

I apologize for the length of this, but this attack on me is absurd. Nobody liked Fortress Terra, and it's pretty goofy to believe it would have happened with anyone but Earth or some otherwise very popular faction--which is what my snipe was at. I was initially criticizing what I thought to be a future Legion of Elves and Dwarfs for a Fantasy game, not other people's space empires.

I do think it needs to be clear in the future though that the humans must not want to band together out of some feelings of Brotherhood with their species, and since most people tend to be human, nearhumans, or transhumans, they tend to be the ones most likely to do this. Runaway alliance formation leads to cold war scenarios, and thus we get scrapped games because one person can't do anything without getting massacred. You'd have to be retarded to not agree that people are more inclined to create these kinds of Empires when they're Humans with an Earth being threatened. If we assume, as we're making the game, that these forces will 'ally' at the startup then that's all perfect. Let's just do that this time, which is what I've said from the beginning, Hotfoot.

Your rambling is getting increasingly difficult to follow. First you say that your statement was about elves and dwarves, which it clearly wasn't as the terms "human" and "alien" are clearly stated in your comment, which you clearly quote later.

Fortress Earth was created because, shock, multiple nations SHARED LAND ON THE SAME HOMEWORLD. Not because they were human or near human. Also not because they even shared the same homeworld. In STGOD4 all the human nations technically shared Earth as a "homeworld", but there was no uberalliance centered around humans or Earth. At least not one that went more beyond an alliance of convenience because of the Machines, which didn't just attack Earth, they attacked all civilized nations at the major diplomatic summit. Nobody gave a shit about Earth beyond some talking points.

Yeah, removing a central homeworld can remove some of the issues, but what you'll find if you look at past situations and real world examples is that if you've got a spot of land that someone else wants, they might just fight you for it. If you share that land freely with someone else and have found a way to peacefully co-exist, they're less likely to punch you in the nose, especially if you're both faced with another threat.

Which is why I'd like anyone with a legacy to Earth to be blocked--let them owe their loyalties to Corellia, and not Earth. Plus, I'm not the only one who thought there was an issue there. Since I never seriously wanted to ban furries, space elves, and human cyborg pirate nomads I'll cede that bit, but if I've wounded your widdle ego about some sort of flippant "The Less Earth the Better" statement then I think you need to chill out. I'm obviously not the only one who had some concerns about that aspect:

What pissed me off most was that you were being oh-so-superior about your "real aliens" crap. You'll note that was the primary objection I made, but hey, far be it from me to stop you from strawmanning.

Less Earth is generally better, it's true, but it is entirely possible to run an STGOD with Earth in control of a single power. The fact is we had TONS of powers on Earth, none of which were willing to beat the crap out of each other, especially since they had to face numerous external threats. While yes, theoretically, some humans or near-humans might be slightly more inclined to defend Earth on principle, they can be just as likely want to conquer it themselves or destroy it out of spite, depending on the backstory involved.

Do you have some sort of issue with these so-called 'real aliens,' Hotfoot? I think it's fun to see a wide range of people, from Psychic Warlords to giant swarms of Biowank Battlebugs to my extremely humanlike Dinosaurs. Plus, look around, I'm not the only one with this idea:

I don't have a problem with the idea of "real aliens" you dipshit. I have a problem with your fucking retarded assertion that that was the ONLY way to go, and nothing else was worth wasting time on and that anyone who did it was lazy/stupid/whatever. But hey, now that you're backpedaling after Nitram and I called you on it, why not make a strawman to make me seem less rational about it? All the cool kids are doing it, I hear.

Which is exactly why I said what I said. Not every human was in the Holy Terra Alliance, but I think that an unwillingness to get out of the solar system definately contributed to the formation of that fortress world, and you'd have to be insane to think otherwise.

There is the key issue. The unwillingness for Earthborn nations to leave Sol was the problem, not Sol itself. I agree that eliminating Sol does fix the problem, but I'm saying it's not necessary to go that far to enact a solution. Previous games have run well with Sol being alive and well.

There are, of course, added benefits to nuking Sol, as it gives us much more freedom with the map, but that's another discussion altogether.

So let's just stop this derail.

Listen, as a point of fact, it's poor form to come in with a post with strawmen and insults and then try to pretend you've got the moral high ground by wanting to stop this. If you wanted to fucking stop, you could have taken this to PM, AIM, or just simply said you cede the point about humans and near-humans, argued the benefits of excluding Sol in the next STGOD, and moved on. Clearly you wanted to continue the debate since you continued and escalated, so please, don't insult the collective intelligence of the posters on this thread by posturing so transparently.

People can be whatever they like--and if this is a crumbling Empire of some sort, then we'll probably have humans in several factions and it'll all work out hunky dorey. What I should have said was that it's a mistake to have so many people with so much in common, and so little reason to fight each other. Since we know that several people (perhaps between a fourth to a half) are going to play humans on general principle, and apparently nobody wants to do anything other than Sci-Fi (which might lead to a more natural "everyone is human" situation that solves the problem of homelands), I think that's a legitimate concern.

We could simply say "everyone is human" and ban aliens altogether. It's not like humans don't have enough reasons to kill each other as is. The problem comes with, as others have said, everyone making "feelgood" societies interested in maintaining the status quo. Since many STGODs start off in periods of relative peace, this creates a problem.

And before you try anything cute and say you want me to cede on my REAL point, that I'm secretly a misshapen orb of floating metal and hate a hate for all the Man-Things and you're trying to out me as anti-Symmetrist or something, the VAST MAJORITY of my 'less snide' statements before and after were about fucking Fortress Earth.</snip>

Yes, and remember my primary complaint was about your snide bullshit about humans and near humans, with another on your limited interpretation of the problem with Fortress Earth, both of which I've covered earlier. But hey, let's see how your next section plays with your "let's stop this derail" happy vibe you were pulling earlier, shall we?

So what the fuck is your problem? Did you currently have a hard-on for a species from Earth, and are pissing to mark your territory now? Look, I said if we got rid of Earth, we get rid of the major problem. That puts me squarely in the "Fortress Worlds Bad" catagory that you're also in. I also said that having multiples of the same species is dangerous, because it is. But as I said at the end, if people want to all be far-flung descendents of man who have to ties of kinship to each other (I'm from Alderaan, not from Coruscant, what do I care about them?) then that fixes the fucking problem.

Previous STGODs have had multiples of the same species and they sure as hell didn't have problems killing each other. Please try again. Nice job stopping the derail though.

But that if we don't, then we have either 3 Nations Of Space Furries that all decide to unite when their furry bretheren get attacked, a group of Humans who ally following the discovery of an aggressor force, and so on and so forth. If people want to all be very, very similar, alright, but we need to assume such people are going to fall into an alliance just as we need to assume nearby people are going to fall into an alliance.

Hey, know what happens when you assume? You're a fucking idiot. Why not look at previous games and the trends that formed in those games? Humans allied with aliens, humans killed humans, aliens killed aliens, aliens allied with aliens. The type of society matters a hell of a lot more in this type of game than the shape of your body or how many chromosomes you share.

I'm beginning to wonder how deep this racially motivated drivel goes at this point, since you seem to be entirely ignoring the impact of societies in STGOD diplomacy and warfare.

Alliances are part of the game, but they make-or-break nations. People leave when it gets too time-consuming, when they're not winning anymore, and when they become utterly irrelevent and don't care. The real issue is the formation of the alliances, really. If we get one Massive Uberalliance then that breaks the game. I don't think we should encourage a situation that makes that easier to happen. Do you really believe that people who choose humans are no more likely to ally with each other than people who take a mix of bizzare nonsensical aliens?

God, you go on about this. This is taking overreaction to a whole new level. See my above.

That's all I was saying. I don't need a reply to this because I think we're all on the same side. If there's some sort of simmering "It's better to make real aliens!" tension around, that's not what I meant. My concern is not punishing someone for their uniqueness, in the formation of alliances, but I don't have any hidden favoritism for 'real aliens' in a game like this. I didn't make "real aliens" last time either, I just copied Dinosaurs and put them in human spaceships with human activities (making tea), so I wouldn't even be immune from my own snipe if I had really intended to make it. So can we be done with this now Hotfoot, and just call it a misunderstanding? Or take it to pages.

"Let's end this derailing" "I don't need a reply" "Can we be done with this now?"

These words are entirely out of place with the following:
"what the fuck is your problem? Did you currently have a hard-on for a species from Earth, and are pissing to mark your territory now?"
"Do you have some sort of issue with these so-called 'real aliens,' Hotfoot?"
"if I've wounded your widdle ego about some sort of flippant "The Less Earth the Better" statement then I think you need to chill out."

And of course all your arguments, strawmen, etc.

If you really want this to end, it's simple, stop ranting like a lunatic. You had a decent point in that there shouldn't be a fortress world shared between players, because it creates a crazy alliance that can be game-breaking. However, you lost it when you focused on all the batshit crazy "race" stuff. It shows a clear lack of knowledge with previous STGODs and with how these games tend to run, and even how this last game was run. Alliances are made along idealogical lines or mutual defense, not racial ones unless the parties involved are, themselves, racist, which usually does not make them popular in most "civilized" sci-fi settings.

[SirNitram]

I've come up with a basic idea that fits the 'Transhuman/human descended' 'fallen empire' and 'no one controls Earth' concepts nicely enough. Though I will admit I'm writing in a major part for my own power. Feel free to spit on this if you don't like it.

The Terran Empire was, for all intents and purposes, the only game in town. It had spread out unchallenged, changed over the years, become powerful, huge, and wealthy. Small independent nations technically existed, but mostly at the whim of the Empire and the steady flow of resources from it's worlds. The Sol system was the crown jewel of the Empire, transformed into a paradise of perfect ecosystems on the planets, pristine and uncluttered, and massive gems of cities in the void.

What would ultimately start the road to ruin would be the one event no one could predict. While many expected to find evidence of other species in space, no one expected the first flottila encountered to be not merely vastly more advanced technologically, but populated and operated by humans. A long range recon fleet, operating decades from their home even at their remarkable FTL speeds, searching on a wild myth of a place called Earth.

It quickly spiralled downhill. Apprehension at the newcomers turned to fear of outright attack by a superior foe when the diplomatic teams were revived from stasis and, as they were trained, made their opening request high in order to barter it down: Massive tracks of land on Terra itself, corresponding to a number of ancient empires. The negotiating trick backfired as those eager for a reason to raise hell and their own power used fiery rhetoric to condemn the newcomers and the appeasing diplomats who were trying to conduct negotiations. Religious apocalyst cults sprang up, proclaiming the strangers to be habringers of doom and judgement.

It would culminate in the total destruction of the Sol system, once the jewel of known space, into a massive debris field orbiting a damaged star.

The loss of Sol revealed the true nature of the Empire: Dozens of powerbrokers of varying power and clot, all held in check mostly by Terra's threat of system-obliterating weaponry. With that weaponry expended on Terra and it's sister-planets, nothing prevents the would-be idealists, warlords, emperors, kings, and comrades from seizing power. Weapons caches, shipyards, system-wide mining operations, and more, all sit ready to be seized by the first person ready to jump.

[Covenant]

I think it works well, Nitram. We remove the risk of several people all wanting to have a foothold on the same homeworld while also making it an extremely level playing field.

Question is, does this mean there are no droids, wookies, or anything else besides humans? I'd be happy with an agreed-upon set of technology, but I'd like to know if we're banning BioWank and Magic/Psychic stuff.

Which is why we definitely need to Balkanize this game early on. You will have neighbours who hate each other's guts, knowing that they are in a precarious balance and looking for any slight advantage they might be able to extract from outside sources to finally enact their dread plans.

I think the Balkanization plan depends a lot on the good faith of the undersigned, though. If you and I agree to be Unhappy Neighbors, does that mean we simply can't ally? Is it possible we'd just glare angrily at each other, but not start shooting? Two forces that agree to disagree until they've wiped out everyone else is not much better than an alliance.

I'm just coming from the perspective of wanting to engage in Warfare, but not wanting to simply grind myself down to nothing and be swallowed up by an opportunist. I'm okay with a Balkanization plan so long as people can be trusted not to just treat it with a "wink and a nod" type of nonaggression pact. They may hate each other, but without a causus belli, never attack.

[SirNitram]

I think it works well, Nitram. We remove the risk of several people all wanting to have a foothold on the same homeworld while also making it an extremely level playing field.

Question is, does this mean there are no droids, wookies, or anything else besides humans? I'd be happy with an agreed-upon set of technology, but I'd like to know if we're banning BioWank and Magic/Psychic stuff.

I'm not particularly against magic/psi/bioengineered stuff, as long as it's done sensibly. AI and androids should be fine.

I'm just liking the idea that my power will be the quintessential 'Means well, but only has a hammer'. Their primary motivation will be nothing more than securing the remaining strategic-level weapons of the Empire from the various warring factions. But between the fact they will likely be seen as the reason the Empire fell, and the fact I doubt anyone will want these people marching into their worlds and demanding all the big weaponry, it should keep the conflict tempo up.

It also gives me a narratively intereting thing: They're a century from Andromeda, so no reinforcements, and no infrastructure. Therefore, the 'build points' are repair points except when I'm bringing captured strategics online. My ships will always limp slowly away, to be repaired at the end of the next cycle, instead of new shiny ones.