STGOD 2k8 Planning thread

[SirNitram]

Ugh, I'm just going to state that for STGODs, node/wormhole/jumplines really strike me as a great, perfect way to acheive strategic paralysis. Chokepoints!

And? The other way doesn't work either; the first person to attack will get reamed by everybody else, as always, because he's the one who doesn't have his full fleet at home to prevent it. You get strategic paralysis either way.

The idiocy of SDN's sad tradition of ganging up on the first assault will be dealt with seperately, not by creating yet more reasons why it'll all be paralyzed.

Mind you, if you think it's hopeless anyway, there's the door.

[Beowulf]

The third possibility is that you have people forming an alliance before attacking to avoid getting ganked. At which point a counter alliance will form, and you've got strategic paralysis.

The gankers have usually found a friend a two, which, in conjuction with the low home fleet level of the defender, means they usually don't have a problem with getting attacked themselves. Also, people usually get the weak guy rather than the not as weak guy attacking the weak guy.

The problem basically is that anyone who begins to lose will typically lose everything. So, being afraid of losing everything, people don't move until they think they'll win. This is related to the bangbus.

[Academia Nut]

I had a thought, that we could have both space lanes and freer travel methods. So if you want to go fast, you use the Roman roads to get say a x10 speed boost, but your approach vector is easily determined and there can be lots of advance warning. But, if you want, you can also strike off into open space and try and get around the Maginot line by pushing through the Ardennes.

But how do you propose we stop people from ganking each other the moment someone attacks Nitram? I'm interested to hear your ideas.

[Covenant]

I had a thought, that we could have both space lanes and freer travel methods. So if you want to go fast, you use the Roman roads to get say a x10 speed boost, but your approach vector is easily determined and there can be lots of advance warning. But, if you want, you can also strike off into open space and try and get around the Maginot line by pushing through the Ardennes.

But how do you propose we stop people from ganking each other the moment someone attacks Nitram? I'm interested to hear your ideas.

How do you stop someone from ganking someone who ganks the person who ganks nitram?

Really, it's never-ending if you look at it that way. I don't think it will. I mean, it's not as if the idea is at odds with reality--Rome did a fucking lameass gank-strike on Carthage rather than man-up and fight Hannibal at home. The US BDZ'd two Japanese planets rather than invade Space Home Island 1. It's bound to happen. But once eveyone slaps their wang around and the gankdust settles, we'll have a few winners, a few losers, and we'll no longer have a bunch of pacifists. Once there's blood in the water then we won't have nearly as many issues.

[rhoenix]

After taking some time to think about this, and especially after reading people's responses, my idea really would add unnecessary complexity to the game, which is something we're trying to avoid.

For this reason as well, adding arbitrary FTL speed differentials at different points goes more toward the unnecessary complexity route as well, as it wouldn't add enough to actual gameplay to be worthwhile as a mechanism.

As Covenant pointed out, having the simple realspace FTL idea encourages the very scenario we're all tentatively fleshing out now, which is "barbarians picking the decaying edges of the Imperial empire." It also keeps things more firmly in the realm of roleplaying and tactics, and not relying as much on a large ruleset to make gameplay fun, which really is the whole point.

[Spyder]

I'm going to retender a suggtestion I made for the last STGOD. Change the declaration rules so that the minimum requirement is percentage specification rather then point values. I think this would add for much greater flexibility for experienced players and make the game more accessable for newer players.

For example, everyone will be assumed to have equal forces. So if one power decides to devote 8% to a battle and someone else comes in with 16% then whatever the second player shows up with will automatically be double whatever the first has.

Now, what this will mean is that we'll still be able to have traditional OOBs. People can still declare each ship and what % of their forces each ship (or group of ships takes up) but it also gives us a framework for OOBs on the fly, sending out ships that might not have their full fighter compliments, or ordinance loadouts or any other issues, thus don't represent the % they normally would, or they might be carrying heavier weapons then they normally would, or maybe someone wants to suddenly start strapping guns on freights and on the fly produce a shitload of cheap "tacticals."

[Darkevilme]

Spyder, what happens to your percentage system after the first round of production? do we get 116 percent totals for our empires? do you recalculate the percentage of everything to reflect the larger empire? And what about losses?

[Rogue 9]

Ugh, I'm just going to state that for STGODs, node/wormhole/jumplines really strike me as a great, perfect way to acheive strategic paralysis. Chokepoints!

And? The other way doesn't work either; the first person to attack will get reamed by everybody else, as always, because he's the one who doesn't have his full fleet at home to prevent it. You get strategic paralysis either way.

The idiocy of SDN's sad tradition of ganging up on the first assault will be dealt with seperately, not by creating yet more reasons why it'll all be paralyzed.

Mind you, if you think it's hopeless anyway, there's the door.

I'm not quitting over it, Nitram; I knew it was a problem going in. It's a problem that had to be brought up in hopes of being addressed, so I brought it up. Chill.

The opening bangbus isn't a problem for me anyway, because I don't much care for playing aggressive imperial powers. So yeah, if the traditional bangbus happens, I'll just have my traditional chuckle before becoming the traditional third course.

[Academia Nut]

The whole ganking thing is why I suggested we have the successor states to the empire be having feuds with one another, so that action will start right away and you can't really get ganked by a third party because everyone else will be involved in their own squabbles. Of course, this would create its own metastatic system with everyone too occupied with their current wars to contemplate other fronts until one of the opponents falls. The addition of outsiders would produce a destabilizing influence, but that's where politicking and such come into play.

[Covenant]

If it helps, some of us can promise to be aggressors. If we get three or four aggressors, the bangbus gets much smaller, as they start realizing they have more pressing matters than gangraping someone halfway across the galaxy. Nitram seems to want to lead the charge, and I'd happily declare myself as an aggressor if it settles this problem. I know we have a few barbarians as well--won't they be aggressors?

However, if we do that, I'd prefer if it wasn't called "Aggressor" but "First Strike." A first strike faction needn't be a raving lunatic aggressor. Give us a small bonus force (deployed to our homeworld) if the first combat we're in is one that we start on someone else's soil. You don't get it if someone else attacks you first. If that's not an incentive to hit first, I dunno what is. It takes the edge off that first hit.

So it looks like the bangbus just got surrounded by Vikings. I can't imagine there will be much ganging up on people that way. If we give EVERYONE that bonus, a "First Strike" bonus I suppose, then it really becomes much less attractive to hang back.

[Academia Nut]

Since I'm pretty much playing literal Vikings, I would gladly hop on a First Strike wagon. I suppose we could say that in the immediate aftermath there is still a bunch of stuff sitting around, so if you launch an attack first then you will have the initiative to discover some forgotten Imperial warships in drydock and take them back to your homeworld to be restored. Massive incentive to strike first.

Also, hows about this for the FTL problem:

Connecting every star in the galaxy is a thin strand of dark matter, and in fact the nexus points are why stars form in the first place. By riding these lanes, an enormous speed bonus can be gained. The Empire took even greater advantage of these natural paths and added warp gates that allow for even faster travel. Still, one can choose to forego these paths if they have the time

So we have some really fast lanes that are so ridiculously easy to defend no one would be stupid enough to actually use them to attack from, but with the millions of stars in the territory defined, there are a hell of a lot of back routes available too, and you can even strike out across the wilderness if you want. This lets the defenders quickly summon up reinforcements along the best defined paths, but attackers can still strike from any angle.

Also, can we agree that having ~40 Earth-like worlds in the empire and 400 Mars-like ones would be acceptable? There would be practically unlimited moons and asteroids to settle as well.

[Darkevilme]

Wouldn't it be possible for the attacker to deploy macross missile massacre frigates to picket the likely lane exit points as well to prevent reinforcements or at least mess with them? Ideally the battle should go on so a fraction of its completed before the reinforcements arrive and change the course of it.

Also what would this mean for the Chamarans, that they've got a drive not dependent on fast lanes or that there's a fast lane to the dead galaxy they came from?

[Academia Nut]

Well, if we go with the lanes thing, then I could see the Chammarans using a lane to get from there to here, but it would still take a very long time. I'm thinking ~9000c for stabilized paths, ~4500c for regular paths, and ~450c for striking out across open void.

With ~1 or 2 parsecs between planets on average, there should always be a nearby star so that you travel across the void in a week or less. With this system a standard system seige would be to attack all the minor stars surrounding the target world and destroy listen posts and relay stations, thus cutting off communication and knowledge of where exactly the attacking fleet is. They can then jump in from a random angle. And instead of having jump points, you could have jump vectors stretching out from a system's star. Thus an attacker could drop out far away and avoid likely ambushes, or hope that they have full suprise and drop in closer to the core where the targetted worlds would be.

[Darkevilme]

I'm working on the basis it took them most of a century to get here. Assuming your 9000c velocity that means i came from anywhere within 900,000 lightyears of the playing field. We Can even assume they used up some handwavium fairy powder to gain that speed.

So unfriendly travel takes weeks and friendly travel takes hours or days under this system correct? i suppose this works for the 'battle rages for several hours before relief comes for the defenders'

[Rogue 9]

Hmmmm. It's dawning on me that a 1500 point fleet with the ship strength breakdowns proposed results in a much smaller fleet than the multi-tiered point system in STGOD 2k5 allowed for. This is going to take more adaptation than I thought.

[Covenant]

Hmmmm. It's dawning on me that a 1500 point fleet with the ship strength breakdowns proposed results in a much smaller fleet than the multi-tiered point system in STGOD 2k5 allowed for. This is going to take more adaptation than I thought.

What's that mean in layman's terms? Isn't a 1500 point fleet just 1500 points of ships, regardless?

[Rogue 9]

What it means is that in the last STGOD I was in, there were three point pools, one for capital ships, one for cruisers, and one for escorts, instead of the single point pool we have now with ship ratings classified by how many points are spent on them. The pools were such that you could have more ships of each class; my nation in that one had no less than ten capital ships and two superheavies in service, along with 25 heavy cruiser equivalents, 20 light cruisers, etc. Whereas with 1500 points and a capital ship defined as between 30-50 points, the fleet is by necessity smaller. Which isn't a bad thing; it just means I'll have to rework my typical fleet structure.

To illustrate what I'm talking about, this is STGOD 2k5's OOB thread, with allowed point totals in the first post. This is my ORBAT from the same game. (I was a regional power; obviously we're not doing power tiers this time out, unless the current proposed rules change course quite a bit.)

[Darkevilme]

I like small fleets personally, quality over quantity. Speaking of which what would it cost if i wanted to say reflect having higher tech by having a higher maximum for ship values. so instead of being limited to 50 points as my biggest ships i'm limited to 60 or 70 points as my biggest ships.

[Rogue 9]

Hey, I like quantity over quality as well; none of my capital ships were worth less than two capital points, and 1 point ships in any class were in the distinct minority. Even under 2k5's system, I could have had a much larger fleet.

Anyway, I've usually set up my powers with 5 main battle fleets plus a patrol fleet for the colonies; I'm going to have to cut that down to 3 battle fleets with no separate patrol unit (and each fleet with fewer ships) this time out. Which isn't a problem; it just means I can't do a direct conversion of my ORBAT.

[Academia Nut]

Yeah, we did away with the capital/cruiser/escort differentiation because of the arguments about what counted for what. How many escorts were needed to take out a cruiser to take out a capital ship? So we settled on 50 1 pt frigates = 1 50 point dreadnought for simplicity's sake.

Oh, and Darkevilme, here's a list of the galaxies in our local group so that you can figure out either how fast you were going or how long you were travelling.

[Rogue 9]

Well, yes, I know why the change was made; I was just saying that with a 1500 point pool, fleets are going to be smaller than even a minor power's in previous STGODs.

[Academia Nut]

We could always bump the numbers up, nothing is set yet. We would probably have to either increase the amount of industry you get or decrease the maintenance costs. 1500 seems good at the moment though, although perhaps bigger fleets would make it seem less damaging when you lose some ships and thus encourage more fighting.

[Rogue 9]

Well, so we have a direct comparison, I worked out a preliminary fleet breakdown using 1500 points and the system for how many points constitute what class of ship. Using my old class names for now, here's the tentative composition of a battle fleet:

1 Dauntless class battleship -- 50 (50)
1 Intrepid class fleet carrier -- 50 (50)

2 Kensington class heavy cruisers -- 50 (25)
2 Galahad class attack carriers -- 50 (25)
3 Guardian class light cruisers -- 60 (20)

8 Polaris class destroyers -- 80 (10)
7 Sunburst class escort carriers -- 70 (10)
10 Bandit class frigates -- 50 (5)
3 Shadow class stealth frigates -- 21 (7)
4 Praetor class planetary assault ships -- 16 (4)

3 points left over

The numbers in parentheses are how much an individual ship of the class is worth; the primary number to the left is how many points of that class are in the fleet. (Keep in mind that this is only one fleet; I would have three of these.) For comparison, here's the 5th Main Battle Fleet from STGOD 2k5 (without point costs, because that's irrelevant to the discussion given the different point system):

1 Halcyon class heavy battleship
1 Dauntless class battleship
1 Intrepid class fleet carrier

3 Kensington class heavy cruisers
2 Galahad class attack carriers
3 Guardian class light cruisers

16 Starlight class destroyers
8 Sun Striker class escort carriers
18 Bandit class frigates
3 Shadow class stealth frigates
6 Praetor class planetary assault ships

As you can see, fleet sizes are smaller, and one can afford fewer fleets. That's all I meant by what I said. Though yes, it would hurt a lot more to lose a capital ship under the current point pool.

[Covenant]

If you think about it, all of us are fragments of a larger Empire, so it makes sense that our fleets are smaller--as we are only small parts of a single infrastructure in the midst of a devastating upheval that has led to civil war. Plus, you can always make smaller ships. Nobody says you need any 50 pointers at all. That'd be five 10-point vessels or ten 5-pointers! Might be more useful to divide a fleet up.

Anyway, these are just starting forces. Our fleets may swell to ginormous size in a few months of military production, but for the moment each of our factions are basically in control of a Single SpaceRoman Legion, rather than an entire Rome. You can do a lot of damage with a single Legion. It's just a matter of scale!

Sure, your fleets are smaller, but so are your opponent's. Just redefine a 15 pointer as a "Battleship" for your fleet if you want. ;D

[Rogue 9]

I refuse to have essentially a gigantic Coast Guard and call it a battle fleet. I will make do with fewer ships; I've always been a fan of quality over quantity.