STGOD 2k8 Planning thread

[Academia Nut]

Interesting trade idea: For each piece of Imperial Tech, attach a maintenace cost to the technology based on how many points worth of ships it is installed in. So if you have control of the Imperial Point Defence systems and install it on 1000 points of ships and it has a 10% upkeep cost, then you have to pay 100 points a turn to have it. Now, if you let another faction use it, then what they pay for maintenance (or perhaps a percentage of it) goes into your coffers, plus perhaps extra negotiated beforehand for the service. Maybe give each tech a maximum number of points it can support, with the better techs having higher support costs and lower maxes, while the lesser ones cost less and be supplied to more ships.

And okay, I can accept your give everyone equal industry thing. Let's see here... taking Class 1 at 100, Class 2 at 50, Class 3 at 30, and Class 4 at 10, we could say that every 1 PP net you 10 industrial points, but you have to buy them in discrete chunks, and each industrial point gives you a full point to spend...

At 10% maintenance and 1500 fleet points you would need a minimum of 150 industrial points to maintain your fleet, so 15 PP. If we give everyone an initial production of 1/10th their initial fleet, that's an extra 15 points, for 30 PP to distritubute as you wish.

Start: 1500 points, 300 industrial total, 150 tied up in resupply, 150 remaining
1 Turn: 150 points new ships, 1650 points total, 165 tied up in resupply, 135 remaining
2 Turn: 135 points new ships, 1785 points total, 179 tied up in resupply, 121 remaining
3 Turn: 121 points new ships, 1906 points total, 191 tied up in resupply, 109 points remaining

This of course assumes no extra maintenance fees from Imperial Tech.

Yeah, if we give 30 PP to distribute, with each giving 10 industrial capacity, and a 10% maintenance fee per turn then that should work. 30 PP would give 3 Earth type worlds; 1 Earth type, 2 Mars, 2 Moon, and 4 Mining Station colonies; or other combinations. We could double the number of PP to give more worlds, and double maintenance to compensate, but I'm pretty sure that favours construction

1500 point fleet, 600 industry, 300 resupply, 300 new
1800 point fleet, 600 industry, 360 resupply, 240 new
2040 point fleet, 600 industry, 408 resupply, 192 new
2232 point fleet, 600 industry, 446 resupply, 154 new
2386 point fleet, 600 industry, 477 resupply, 123 new

Yeah, that could work. Or, if we give 45 PP with a 20% maintenance that would produce the same affect as the first scenario. A bit of numbers juggling there.

[Beowulf]

Ok, obviously, splitting stealth is out.

Planetary assault bonuses seem... bad.

Disallowing new colonies seems weird to me. Making it expensive to do so wouldn't be a bad idea if we do allow new colonies though. Maybe 2-3x more than if they'd just bought the colonies at the start, and maybe limited in size (small asteroid et al). Most Earth like worlds could probably be reasonably said to be either already under someone's control or glassed in the earlier fighting (and therefore no longer Earth like).

Something else that might be making people cautious is the tendency for a small loss to snowball into a power death really rapidly. Being able to more rapidly bounce back from a minor loss would encourage people to get into fights faster, because losing a fight wouldn't be as catastrophic as it is now. Maybe just making it easier for losing fleets to flee would be enough, since we're making it so that they need to be repaired for points anyway.

I like the idea of different powers getting the chance to buy an Imperial technology. We need to make up a list. I could foresee different powers ending up with the same tech.

I agree that raiding shouldn't be so seemingly effective against planets as it is proposed right now.

I kinda dislike the idea of fixed brackets for ship sizes. Part of it is me not seeing the point, quite. Sure, you can say that escorts go faster than cruisers, and so forth, but you could also just say ships with less points go faster.

[Hawkwings]

I like the each faction gets an Imperial tech idea, but I think it should be random. Draw up a list and fire up the random-number generator. Whatever the faction gets, they're stuck with it. So some faction might get a +10 Hull Plating of Awesome factory while another might get advanced AIs, and another might get access codes to an old Imperial sensor network.

[Hotfoot]

Beowulf
The problem with colonization is that the option effectively adds nothing to the game. It's nearly impossible to make it worthwhile given the timespan of the game without marginalizing conquest. There is no risk to colonization at all, but there is extreme tangible gain. The only way to balance out the cost is to make it totally worthless for the length of the average game, which means that including it is essentially pointless, as it's nothing more than a detriment to the game as a whole as the only people to partake in it will be people who don't realize how worthless it is. If you want to RP marking worlds for colonization "once the wars have settled down", hey, knock yourself out, but there has yet to be a colonization mechanic that works out well.

Academia Nut has a good idea with limiting the Imperial caches in various ways. I was toying with the idea but I was unsure how to implement it. Limited caches means that people will be less likely to loan out the tech, and more likely to search out more of the same to keep their fleets growing at a steady pace.

The ship classifications are more a general guideline for what people consider to be various weight classes. Obviously a 1-point escort should move faster than a 5-point destroyer. Since there is no realspace speed buff (nor should there be, really), it all works out. Of course, a swarm of 1-point ships that rush in front of the battle line are likely to get killed a little more quickly, because they're all individually weak as hell, but that's another story.

A story that we should really focus on. I'm inclined to say a round of battle posts should be the metric for most battles, with each set of posts being, say, 30-60 minutes of approximate time, with more or less time spent depending on the needs of the battle. An entire battle can be done in one post if all sides consent, of course, but a good baseline for combat should be decided upon. Standard interdiction, for example, should last at least one "turn" for ships without improved drives. In that time, however, what sorts of damages should be expected, given equal forces? Given 2:1 odds? 3:1? 5:1? 3:2? 4:3? 6:5?

Ideally, we'd want a battle in space to last for 2-3 hours, so that reinforcements could conceivably arrive from nearby systems in an invasion scenario. Of course, the larger the disparity in fleets and the closer the range, the more this time gets chopped down.

[Academia Nut]

Hmmm... if we give everyone 60 PP and 1500 ship points to start with, then the max fleet they can sustain would be 3000 points worth, but they can build faster and thus bounce back from losses faster. Even if you turtle it will take quite a while to build up, and you probably won't be stronger than any two, certainly not any three other nations.

And I think that the Imperial Technology will have a list created and then it will be first come, first serve as to who gets to buy that tech, and they have control of that technology until someone wrests it from them.

And yeah, we've definitely scrapped the initial proposal for raiding. So we still need to figure out a mechanic that will let people loot instead of capture if they want to be a bunch of pillaging, burning dicks. The trick will be to make looting useful, but not overpowering, and so that it doesn't completely ass rape the guy getting his planet pillaged.

As for trade... how about this: you get three trade routes that connect your capitals. When you open up a trade route, you get a bonus of 5% whatever production the other capital makes, and your trading partner gets a similar bonus based on your capital. This bonus includes all industries, income from traded tech, and trading routes with other nations. So if you are trading with a planet with 100 industry, +50 income from traded technology, +10 from other trading, you get 8 bonus points from that route. But to protect that route from piracy, you must invest twice its value in points of ships to defend it or you will take losses.

A bit of a complex rule, but with a bit of bookkeeping it shouldn't be that bad. Still, that is definitely more of a "maybe" idea.

[Dark Hellion]

Ok, so I just had a relatively awesome idea inspired by some of what the others of you said. What if we have a list of feats and we draft them like football. Get a list of people playing, assign a random number, make a list of feats about 3 times more than the players, then draft 1-x, then x-1, leaving some feats as free agents for newly joining players. Afterwards, we could trade feats around, back room banter for trying to pick up the bonuses we really want, and this would force people into alliances of convenience that can't really hold and speed along the game.

[Beowulf]

Another idea is to reduce the points each world is worth to get more planets, rather than just doubling the planets and the upkeep cost. It would reduce the effect of trade though.

[Nephtys]

I'd suggest we quantify a lot of these with simple, but mathematical rules. So we can know what X points of industry actually DOES. And then we have them develop with say, 3-6 month 'turns' that can be declared by the mods between lulls of action or extended periods of war. Not too big a jump.

For combat, maybe a relatively simple mathematical formula can be made, with a random factor plus a factor for mod's discretion based on situation, tactics, etc. Such as a large number of small ships > big ship, but big ship is able to destroy large numbers of small ships while taking reparable damage. As it is last match for example, much of the game's combat damage is done by rather arbitrary means. I'd feel better if there was a loose guideline or formula we'd follow. Such as Fleet A fights Fleet B. Fleet A takes 200 pts damage (distributed how you like), fleet B takes 120 pts damage (again, how you like). Damage is based on the square root of the points you've fielded multiplied by some random factor a mod grants. If a fleet outnumbers the enemy, the root of their difference in numbers is added in.

You cannot distribute points of friendly-absorbed damage to more ships than the enemy has, thus resulting in more firepower for swarms of ships, but many will be destroyed... while large hulks will all suffer great damage, but survive for repairs.

Example of Combat:
Race A: 1000x1pt 'Bug' class Frigates
Race B: 10x100pt 'X-Box Controller' class Superdreadnaughts
Race A outnumbers Race B by 100 times. But both have 1000 points in the field.

Turn 1: (say, 10 minutes of combat, no mod rulings for multipliers based on position, range, ecm use, surprise, cylon sabotage, etc.)
Race A deals 31.6 dmg(root of 1000 pts) + 10 dmg (root of 100, the force ratio)
Race B deals 31.6 dmg(root of 1000 pts).

Race A loses 31 frigates
Race B distributes the 41.6 points of damage however it likes amongst the dreadnaughts.

... Combatants decide if they want to continue or disengage or whatever. Additional mod modifiers may be added. If you want to make a battle 'more decisive', apply a flat multiplier of 2x or 3x to the engagement's damage output. I'd also suggest maybe multiplying the damage numbers by a random value (+- 50 percent?) to account for chance in each fight.

How's just a basic thing like that sound to keep some things regulated? It only takes about 30 seconds of math to do, and would make things a lot easier on how to handle ship losses and damages.

[Covenant]

Wouldn't Race A lose 10 ships, due to the fact that you can't divide firepower across a greater number of ships than the enemy has?

[Hotfoot]

Wouldn't Race A lose 10 ships, due to the fact that you can't divide firepower across a greater number of ships than the enemy has?

That would only make sense if the 100point ships had only one gun that could be fired only once every ten minutes or so. Usually, we're dealing with batteries of weapons that can be as spread or as focused as needed. What matters, at the end of the day, is what the effective damage output is.

In this case, what would matter more is the fact that the 100pt ships from Race B would face diminishing returns for being over 50 points. I don't know if there should necessarily be a bonus for physically outnumbering the enemy, but it's something to consider. Still, with diminishing returns on the table, big single ships become a liability.

Add to that the fact that as force disparity increases, so does initial losses for the outnumbered side.

[Covenant]

Well, I realize that the idea of them having just one gun that hits just one target is absurd--I was just questioning the validity of the math she stated. If, as she says, I can't divide my 'damage taken' across more targets than they have ships, that would mean 10 ships die. Which is, of course, patently absurd!

Also, what about focusing fire? Am I allowed to fire at a specific ship i want dead? If the enemy gets to distribute the damage as they see fit, isn't that going to make it extremely difficult to actually hit the ship I want to hit?

Anyway, that's not directed at you, since I think we're on the same wavelength when it comes to the issue. I was just critiquing it Socratically, not honestly asking if that's the right way to do it.

[Nephtys]

Oops. Scratch that part then about max targets. In any case, I figured that basically the balance was that tiny ships did more damage (and thus were more likely to win in an 'even' fight), but lose damage faster over time from losses, as well as losing small numbers every time they attacked a superior foe.

But does this system for losses and such make sense? This skips the entire vague area of 'somehow, superbig ships are less effective, but actually quantifying it. That outnumbered factor and all..

Edit: Heck. I have an idea. If you want to focus fire as a mob of ships on particular targets, you discard any of your built-in 'mob bonus' of outnumbering the enemy to do so. Since a huge fleet is unwieldly in attempting to bring every vessel into firing position, or getting solutions with sensor interference from other shots, and whatever. this gives a swarm of ships more firepower when they need it, and the ability to pick out a target in other cases... while in both, making them more vulnerable to attritional losses.

[Covenant]

I dunno. I think that firepower should be firepower. A mass of X-Wings would really have a lot of trouble against a Star Destroyer if the thing's shields were up and the X-Wings weren't packing any variety of specialized anti-cap gear. Simply having more of them doesn't mean anything unless their combined firepower is big enough to bust the SD's shields.

What's more likely is that these big ships may lack adequate firepower coverage for all types of threats. Part of the reason that the Bismark got sunk by planes was it's relatively cruddy AA, but the Iowa class had a shitload of small guns to keep planes away.

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This strays into dangerous territory. Do we standardize weaponry like Star Wars and Star Trek do, roughly? Do all memberstates of the Empire use similar guns? And how well do these hit small things? Those are rhetorical questions, I don't think it's necessary.

The big issue stated is, of course, how easily can a SuperDreadnaught hit an escort vessel? If it's designed like an SSD (ie, a fucking horde of relatively light guns compared to it's mass) we can assume it'll do alright. TL's can hit fighters, afterall. I doubt our nations would be that different. There's room for variation as well:

If a 10 point ship is assumed to be carrying 10 points of Turbolasers, it is generally assumed that it can hit roughly all targets equally. However, if we made it an 8 point ship with +2 points of Anti-Cap equipment then we can assume it's partly dedicated to larger and unwieldy guns. But we already have a mechanic for that. Same goes for PD/Small Weapons.

So I think it's reasonable to assume that a completely boring 25 point ship is armed with a 25 point loadout of average weapons. An ISD would be a 100 point vessel in that sense, it has some HTLs but it's basically able to accurately track even a fast-moving and agile freighter with it's big guns. But the Bismark from WWII followed a more 50+50Anti-Cap design scheme... it had a lot of big guns, but shoddy as fuck AA, and it paid the price.

I think that's reasonable. Specializations should be the exception, not the rule. Superbig ships have no reason to be less effective if they simply carry larger numbers of the same kind of gun as smaller ships.

Honestly, the REAL issue with superdreads is that if you do manage to gut one, you lose the whole thing right there. If your fleet stumbles into a trap, it might be able to get away mostly intact, but if a superdread bumbles into an ambush it might be taken out of the fight for months or years of repair time.

They're also less able to be in multiple places. If I have 3 Superdreads, and 4 planets to protect... then I'm about to lose one of my planets to someone who has a nice mix of 500 or so lesser vessels. No reason to make extra rules there--good old gamesmanship will keep people from overspecializing in big ships. It's hard to wage an effective offensive if you can't even defend the worlds you just took or effectively redistribute the losses.

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Also, can we start ruminating about our factions? I'd like to 'plant a flag' in regards to a concept if I could, so nobody calls it. Especially if we end up dividing up the Imperial Remnant equipment manufacturing centers amongst our people (not hard to imagine the Kuats of the galaxy rising as independant powers), I'd like to have as few suprises as possible amongst the Empires. So we can make alliances and enemies now, during the planning phase. The other thread is a bit of a mess, but might be an okay way of at least discussing some ideas, and their plausability and their impact on the rest of the game. I'll make a post to that effect. If we want to split it or conduct that elsewhere, that's fine too.

[Darkevilme]

Starship economies strike me as being a bad idea, just because it's way too easy to shove your motherships out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere above the galactic plane or way outside of known space and just call in ships to rain down hell.

I was working on the idea that the motherships, at least in my case, cant build ships only provide economic energy for repairs and upkeep for the rest of the fleet, as the things cant make a billion tons of metal appear by magic and often have to scrounge rocks for enough to make spare parts for my fleet.

Course once i swipe someone's mining complexes i can maybe use captured asset+(captured asset worth of mothership factory power) to build new ships.

[Covenant]

The danger of a mothership is that it's a planet, basically, but it moves. Most planets can't relocate. If it was mostly inert around one area, then it's basically just a cool planet--but being able to zip away from danger is... aggrivating!

[Darkevilme]

Planets can build stuff as well, this is mostly so i can do my spacenomads thing without my ships falling apart within a month due to lack of curved widgets.

[Rogue 9]

Also, can we start ruminating about our factions? I'd like to 'plant a flag' in regards to a concept if I could, so nobody calls it. Especially if we end up dividing up the Imperial Remnant equipment manufacturing centers amongst our people (not hard to imagine the Kuats of the galaxy rising as independant powers), I'd like to have as few suprises as possible amongst the Empires. So we can make alliances and enemies now, during the planning phase. The other thread is a bit of a mess, but might be an okay way of at least discussing some ideas, and their plausability and their impact on the rest of the game. I'll make a post to that effect. If we want to split it or conduct that elsewhere, that's fine too.

Being the lazy son of a bitch that I am, I'll probably do another adaptation of Nashtar, unless the Imperial situation is so vastly different that such would be implausible.

Anyway, what's the deal with the Imperial tech? I think we need to know that before we start designing powers; if someone were to build a raider power possessed of swarms of light cruisers and then draw the Uber-Armor and Dreadnought Guns of PWNING DOOM! as his Imperial tech options, then he'd have to totally rebuild his nation.

[Academia Nut]

I think first we should draw up a list of technologies and what they do before we get overly concerned about how we're going to hand them out. Personally though I think it should definitely be a "first come, first serve" sort of thing. If we generate enough then everyone should find what they want, or be able to adapt either their group or their use of the Tech accordingly.

Here's a short list of things I could come up with, some of which could conceivably be used more than once:

Imperial Comms Net
Imperial Infantry Academy
Imperial Sensor Net
Imperial Archives
Imperial Armour Manufacturing Centre
Imperial Weapons Plant
Imperial Combat Computer Factory
Imperial Stealth Plating Factory
Imperial Power Plant (iffy on this one, but a single planet gets a manufacturing bonus maybe?)
Imperial Distribution Hub (logistics?)

Ehhh... running out of time before I have to go, and running out of ideas, but that should generate some conversation.

Also, should we give a pool of points of say, 400 points to buy attributes and tech? No less than 100 points I would imagine.

[Hawkwings]

Here's some more:

Imperial Engine Factory
Imperial Starfighter Factory
Imperial Mining Operations
Imperial Combat Networking Systems
Imperial Combat Robot Factory
Imperial Propaganda Center
Imperial Repair Yard
Imperial Hyperdrive Factory
Imperial Interdictor Factory
Imperial Hypercomm Factory

And of course, the

Imperial Uber-Shipyards

which nobody owns and is guarded by the NPC rape-fleet.

Plus, there could be "Imperial Supply Caches" that work like one of these bonuses, except it only provides a limited bonus. So maybe you find a cache of Imperial Hull Plates, that might be enough to build/refit 100 points of ships with. Or maybe you find a cache of Sensor buoys, which you can deploy and will give you 1/10 of the sensor net of the real thing.

[Darkevilme]

For those who are playing aliens from beyond the rim/aliens in general who arent part of the grand terran imperium is there an equivalent of the imperial goodybag of production facilities and such?

I mean personally i'd just take the motherships as my equivalent, i'm certainly not gonna be building any more city sized starships unless i get my hands on the imperial shipyards or spend longer than the duration of an STGOD to build one.

[Covenant]

For those who are playing aliens from beyond the rim/aliens in general who arent part of the grand terran imperium is there an equivalent of the imperial goodybag of production facilities and such?

I mean personally i'd just take the motherships as my equivalent, i'm certainly not gonna be building any more city sized starships unless i get my hands on the imperial shipyards or spend longer than the duration of an STGOD to build one.

I'd say that non-rim forces get the Barbarian set of advantages. The price of getting an Imperial Cache is everyone knowing you have it, where you are, what it does, and having you be easily accessible somewhere within the Empire proper. If you're from over the hill and far away, that's your advantage right there. Don't underestimate the uselessness of a technology you can't afford to exploit, or the usefulness of being so far away that nobody can come to nuke your homeworlds.

[Hotfoot]

I'd err on having duplicates of various facilities more than creating lots of facilities that give similar but different bonuses. If someone has a fighter-heavy nation and they get the Imperial Heavy Missile cache, it dramatically changes how they would normally go to war. If we're going to limit how much they can support anyway, there's still an impetus to go to war over ones of the same type.

Nephtys
You bring up an interesting point. I'm hesitant to give it full support at the moment simply because it does not directly address "anything above 50 points gives diminishing returns", it says, instead, "anything above 2 points gives diminishing returns". While it effectively achieves the issue of several 50 point ships vs. a fewer number of 100 point ships, it adds on to that the idea that those 50 point ships would be at a similar disadvantage to a swarm of 1 point ships.

On the other hand, since it could be argued that the advantage of larger ships is inherantly the fact that they can soak up a fair amount of damage before dying, this bonus damage from swarming could effectively be balanced out.

I think what we really need to do, instead of a simple test with easy numbers, is take a look at a few fleet styles and run them through the equation. Take 3,000 points of various styles, capship heavy, cruiser heavy, escort heavy, and mixed, and see how well each one does in a various engagement, with no other factors than straight up points. Start with mixes of 60/20/20 for the "focused" fleets and 33/33/33 for the balanced.

The second question is how to allocate damage. Generally speaking, escorts tend to be targeted first, because it's the most surefire way to lower the enemy's firepower in a quick and efficient fashion. It's also the best way to ensure lasting damage to your foe. I'd say let each side declare what they are targeting, and then the other side has to start damage allocation with that target first, then distribute as required.

An interesting side point here: Escorts, due to their low battle life expectancy, become infinitely more desirable in the trade lane defense role. I'm going to go on a bit of a deviation and go back to talking about trade.

I think having "unlimited" trade might actually work, given the following restrictions: However much resources you make in trade, you should allocate at least this number, if not twice that, in smaller ships (a dreadnought can't effectively defend a trade lane). To this end, each "point" can only be escorted by a given number of ships. Each attempt to raid a given lane can make off with a "point", but has to fight the randomly assigned defenders. This encourages people to put a fair number of ships into trade lane defense instead of the main battle fleet, prevents using superheavy ships to do the job of escorts, and gives a "peaceful" method of growing that's not 100% risk-free. The more lanes you have, the less ships you have for defense or attack at any given time.

That said, trade lanes will likely have shared defense so that both nations in the trade agreement supply ships to the defense of the lanes, but that would only partially allieviate the problem. It also makes for nice potential backstab material when one nation enters into an agreement with another to provide ALL the support to a trade lane in return for, say, Imperial Tech. Then with all of their escorts and cruisers away, they get backstabbed by their buddy and his three friends or something.


Darkevilme
With regards to motherships, again, it's difficult to balance, especially because with planets, people know where you're coming from and have a general idea of what you're doing. Nomad states simply are not sustainable for a long period of time, and unless we give you a huge bonus to your initial fleet (which I'm loathe to do for obvious reasons), you're going to get wiped out in short order because you simply cannot keep up. You can repair damaged ships, sure, but you can't make replacements. The second you enter into a war to grab land, if you're pushed off, that's it, you're done. All you can do is run away with your tail between your legs. So in short, if all you have is the freedom to fuck up whoever you want from the word go in exchange for not having any production, you're going to get assassinated pretty early on.

[Academia Nut]

Hell, maybe we could make "Barbarian Nation" an attribute in of itself, mutually exclusive from Imperial Tech, perhaps conferring some sort of small inherent counter-intelligence bonus as your worlds are poorly mapped in comparison to the Imperial worlds and your culture is so different (of course, the opposite could be said, perhaps causing an intelligence penalty) from Imperial norms. Even the weirder parts of the Empire were probably forced to learn a standardized language and conform to some common political guidelines. So even the transhuman AIs know how to properly greet the Arch-Chancellor of the Orion Trade Guild, but the barbarians have no such knowledge.

Bah! I'm probably trying to force mechanics into what should be roleplay. Still, something to think about, having to buy a "Barbarian" attribute instead of Imperial Tech to be able to play on the edges with the advantages that gives.

[Darkevilme]

Hmm, yes i suppose you're right. Okay new plan, the motherships after taking the Chamaran civilization across the gap between galaxies, after the engines were running flat out for the better part of a century, simply broke down after one last push to their limits to get them to the edge of this galaxy.

Which means i happily take Covenants 'no one knows where the fuck i came from' advantage as effectively my home system is now a bunch of age wearied motherships hanging in orbit around a star on the rim which didnt have anything in it originally. Probably one of those systems where the only stuff is lifeless rocks, asteroids, gas and dust.

[Academia Nut]

Now that I'm no longer studying for my midterm, I think having trade routes could be a very good idea, if only because it will add another way of doing "Meanwhile..." if things start to slow down. The more options we have for action, even if that action isn't epic space battles with thousands of points on each side, the better. With piracy, you can have lots of low scale conflicts as two sides simmer angrily over one another due to predation on shipping, but neither one is quite ready to go to war over it.

Not only that, but it actually gives a point for having escorts. Escorts were designed to patrol the waters, protecting bigger, slower ships from raiding by things like submarines, especially when those bigger, slower ships are things with minimal teeth, like freighters. In an upfront engagement between fleets, escorts will always get bitchslapped. It's not their role to take on super dreadnoughts, its their role to protect the economy so that you can build more super dreadnoughts than the enemy.