STGOD: A Dead Art? (II)

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Post by Hotfoot »

Dahak wrote:I'd like also to offer the idea that we should all decide on a set (or general level) of available technologies, especially for the FTL drives.
There have been numerous occasions, and I'm not quite innocent myself here, were player A said "I'm doing XXX" and player B answered "Not possible because of property XXX of my FTL drive". If we all could decide on one drive with a fixed set of properties, it would make things easier.
I'm not even sure why you're bringing this up, as in this previous STGOD, that is exactly what happened. There was a set of defined properties that defined how FTL worked, and while people could get a little creative in describing the mechanism, unless they paid points into certain properties, it all worked functionally the same.

As far as investing peacefully in one's own economy, um, yeah, that's going to be a detriment to the "reach out and grab resources" idea. If player A can sit on his ass and increase his own economy without risking his precious widdle fleet, why should he do anything but that? Next there will be people going "well why can't I make a shit-ton of worthless mining colonies", and then to counter that there will be a second resource and blah blah blah down to where the game ceases to be about a struggle to grab power and territory and a big old game of Supreme Commander where everyone micromanages their economy until they can field a fleet of super-units.

Now, I'm not saying we can't have some level of self-improvement available, but it should be extremely minor compared to the spoils of war. Going out and capturing worlds should be richly rewarded compared to people who want to be non-confrontational. That said, if there were a way for people to diplomatically "capture" territory, that might be interesting as well, but crafting that mechanic can be difficult to say the least.

As far as ship modules, I would like to clarify some misconceptions:

A. Cloak in the previous game was not simply a set module, there were 9 different levels of power for cloaking devices. It was NOT, in fact, free. The difference in the ten points between the power of the ship was the price of the cloak.
B. Cloak was, perhaps, the worst implemented of the modules because it was essentially an all or nothing module with the limits being poorly defined.
C. "Module" upgrades assume that ships do not normally have capacity X, Y, or Z. It's simpler to assume that all ships have a basic capability for something than to assume they don't. Yes, this means that I am implying that all ships should have a basic functionality for interdiction. This is to prevent hit and runs and the idiocy that is microjumping.

For my part, I'd rather cloaks were done away with entirely and the bonus replaced with a stealth function, which is countered by sensors. Any ship has a basic functionality for stealth, running cool, turning off all non-critical systems, etc. Additional stealth ratings make it harder to detect, allowing for covert missions, ambushes, etc. Stealth can run the gamut from allowing the military ship to mimic a civilian vessel (Q-Ship) to making it nearly invisible to sensors. Larger ships have to spend more on stealth for it to make it worthwhile, because larger ships kick out more heat and are harder to disguise as civilian vessels. As a quick out of my hat equation, the maximum amount of points one can spend on stealth is equal to all the other points the ship is constructed of combined, so a 10 point ship could have another 10 points spent on "stealth", resulting in an extremely stealthy ship. For a 100 point dreadnought to achieve the same level of stealth, it would have to spend another 100 points on stealth. As a counter to this, sensors would not need to scale.

I do think, however, that hard limits on the bonuses would not be a bad idea. Especially with the Imperial Relic aspect of the game, limiting bonuses for things players can build gives extra incentive to find Imperial Ships or even Imperial Shipyards or Ship Component Plants. As another quick number pulled from a hat, I'd say no more than 10 points (or equivalent, for stealth), can be spent on a given "aspect", like fire control, sensors, FTL, Interdiction, etc. Imperial ships, meanwhile, could have more. Capturing the Imperial Sensor plant, meanwhile, might grant you the ability to boost your existing ships with +20 Imperial Sensors after an appropriate refit.

As far as point allocation per turn, I say that every player starts with a certain number of points, which they can allocate between X number of systems, with Y being the minimum and Z being the maximum. With each system worth X resources, the specific rewards of conquest become much clearer. Allow military spending to be spent on "defense", on which there is a hard limit of 10 for each system (unless you capture some Imperial defense systems). Each point can "hold out" against, say, 100 points of enemy ships or so for enough time for reinforcements to arrive from neighboring systems, say a few hours to a day at most. After that, they fail, and troops can be dropped or continents can be glassed.

It should be noted that with the firepower you guys are setting for this game, Base Delta Zero is well within the means of any warfleet. Remember that fleets of 2,000-6,000 points are generally the norm for this style of game, and that is unlikely to change anytime soon. If one ship has GT-level firepower, then a fleet of dozens of them can glass a planet in a reasonably amount of time, or simply murder every major city in very short order.
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Post by Academia Nut »

Okay, I can accept that sort of objection, although we could still let people build up their economies, it would just have to be so much slower that raiding and seizing territory will be more worth it. The primary reasoning I had behind letting people expand their economies is so that they could rebuild after being attacked. The secondary reasoning was to let players know where the good targets to raid were.

Perhaps a good method of control would be to give Industrial capacity ratings to places. Say something like:

*Earth type habitable planet: 100 points max
*Colonizable planet (think Mars): 50 points max
*Colonizable moon: 25 points max
*Asteroid field mining colony: 10 points max

But you have to declare you are beginning colonization of a new world in the one turn, invest in the project at the end of that turn, say something like 10% of the max capacity minimum investment, 25% max investment, and start getting the payoff at the end of the second turn after declaring your project. So for two turns your new colony is vulnerable to attack, and during one of those turns so is your investment. Once you have a colony established you can begin upgrading its industry at say a quarter of the max per turn.

Thus it would take you 5 turns minimum to add on a 100 points of additional industry to your empire, assuming you find an Earth-like world with no-one living there powerful enough to oppose you (ignoring of course parallel investments). During that time you could have raided or captured many times that amount of industry. Still, if you really want to make that sort of investment, the option is still open to you. And if one of your planets get pillaged and burned, destroying its industry but leaving it in your possession, you can rebuild in 4 turns (25% a turn).

Industrial caps for planets also lets us have a new, easily quantifiable technology: industrial cap max improvement. Say for every point you spend you increase your industrial caps by 0.5%. So if you spend 200 points on this technology, you can double your industrial caps, allowing for more concentration of industry and faster expansion of your economy. Of course, 200 points is a lot to spend on a technology like that, but at least you'll have the option.

Also, I have in mind another tech that would be the opposite of industrial cap max: raiding bonus. For every point you invest in this technology, you get an addititional point of economy when you raid a world instead of capturing it, up to the max allowable for that raid. So if you spent 10 points on the technology and you hit an asteroid colony, you get 20 points of economy immediately afterwards. If you hit a moon on the otherhand you get 35 points, 25 from the colony and 10 from the tech. If you invest 100 points in this tech and hit a moon, you get 50 points, 25 from the colony, 25 from the tech. If on the otherhand you hit an Earth-like world, you 200 points. Of course, if you only have enough ships to raid 60 points from an Earth like world, you only get 120 points.

Make sense?

As far as tech upgrading goes, perhaps an investment of 10 points per turn would be fair, unless you had an Imperial Archive or a Imperial Research facility in your control, in which case the cap might be higher.

What do you all think of these proposals?
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Post by Darkevilme »

I know i may sound whiney but uh, when was it decided that we're going with gigaton level firepower and fleets of a thousand ships? I mean if everyone wants to go with it fine i'll see if i can wrangle having motherships which through their powers combined can shatter a planet for raw materials but so far i've only seen Dahak pushing for being able to shoot through moons and Adrian pushing for megaton firepower so he can write about the shellshocked bunkerbound survivors of an alien orbital bombardment. What's everyone elses opinion?
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Post by Academia Nut »

I thought we were going for megaton level firepower too, maybe low gigaton for your biggest, baddest ships and bombs. Plus technically Hotfoot said 2000-5000 points worth of ships, not the ships themselves. Mid megaton to low gigaton seems like a reasonable level for the firepower, because you can wreck a planet's industry and infrastructure without actually killing the planet.
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Post by Dahak »

Darkevilme wrote:I know i may sound whiney but uh, when was it decided that we're going with gigaton level firepower and fleets of a thousand ships? I mean if everyone wants to go with it fine i'll see if i can wrangle having motherships which through their powers combined can shatter a planet for raw materials but so far i've only seen Dahak pushing for being able to shoot through moons and Adrian pushing for megaton firepower so he can write about the shellshocked bunkerbound survivors of an alien orbital bombardment. What's everyone elses opinion?
While I've destroyed my share of planets in previous STGODs, I'm by no means "pushing for it". I can live with either, it's just that I have a preference for a bit more high-tech level than the previous (and I didn't restrict this to the size of the hammer, so to speak).
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Post by Beowulf »

Nuclear bombs!
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Post by Hotfoot »

I honestly think that "research" and "investment" are unsustainable in the long term. Research will degrade the effect of Imperial Relics, which should be something you can lose or gain, but are effectively resources. You loot the Imperial Datacache/Depot, and you put the stuff to immediate use, and maybe you hang on to some for later study, but with the galaxy in the state it's in, if you just sit on it without using it, you're wasting it.

If the game is successful, and goes on to have a sequel or something, then players who successfully looted Imperial supplies can go on to have super-awesome stuff in a later game, but for the purposes of this game, it's not a needed mechanic.

As far as investment, I'd rather a mechanic that repairs damage done by raiding or combat, rather than one that magically builds up things. To that note, allowing planets to come into play damaged, or having groups of worlds that are easy to repair nearby would suffice, but long-term investment is something that's better suited to a game that can go on for a longer period of time than the STGODs do. Yeah, I know, it's a little silly that we can build huge warships in small periods of time, but that's a concession we make so people are willing to go to war and not worry about taking losses. Adding in an upkeep mechanic allows people to worry less about going to war because being able to easily replace/repair ships but making it harder to have huge doom fleets makes it easier for people to remain aggressive instead of letting them just sit on their asses, not risk ships, and keep building a doom fleet that people will be progressively less inclined to attack, which of course encourages the alliance circle-jerk.

As far as firepower, honestly, once you have hundreds of ships with even KT level firepower, killing cities becomes super-easy once the shields go down. It's a matter of how fast they can glass all life from the planet once those shields go down. Of course, glassing, to be honest, is less than optimal unless you're raiding, but then raiding is super easy, so raiding someone and busting the system is something that is going to be a common tactic by the less scrupulous nations. Hence a "rebuild shattered world" dynamic is, in my mind, more worthwhile than a "build new colony" mechanic.
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Post by Darkevilme »

Amen Beowulf, though i have an urge when i get to bombard a planet to use radiation bombs Gamilon style.

Ah my mistake, what toys does Dahak want to play with specifically?
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Post by Darkevilme »

Oh and what's the hyperlimit in this game, particularly with regards to inhabited planets. Does Hotfoot's idea of having built in interdiction on ships extend to having it on planets to stop the 'appear in Low orbit with missile ports open'?
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Post by Academia Nut »

Fair enough points. I probably should have made it a bit more clear that I knew that STGOD's don't tend to go on for very long which is why I made building things up take so long. In the end its probably not going to be worth it because it won't get that far, but if we manage to spawn a sequel it might be worth it for the extra points later.

Hmmm... perhaps we should have "Aptitudes" and "Technology". Aptitudes are things like bonuses to ground combat, technology is the goodies you get by gaining control of Imperial stuff. Maybe we could have it so that no one can start with Tech, because Tech has fleet wide bonuses to your fleet (which is why we had to ban it last game), but you if you capture Imperial installations you can have the option of upgrading all your ships with better sensors or engines or such, at the cost of extra maintenace per turn. Aptitudes on the other hand would be the other stuff, like ground combat bonuses or espionage or counter-intelligence. They can up "upgraded" to represent spending more resources in that area, rather than refining the technology behind it. Tech is building a better gun using Imperial designs, Aptitudes is bringing more guns to the fight.

So yeah... I think instead of colonizing new worlds, we should just start with everyone declaring the allocation of their economic resources using a system similar to the industrial max capacity I presented earlier. You can't take them above their max, but you can bring them up to their max as fast as you can pay for the. So if you want to start with a bunch of lightly industrialized worlds to pump them up later, you can, but you're going to be spreading your resources thin and taking points that you should probably want to go to ships in the hopes that you can start cranking out uberfleets before you get your ass stomped by someone with more concentrated firepower.

That sound good?
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Post by Hotfoot »

Darkevilme wrote:Oh and what's the hyperlimit in this game, particularly with regards to inhabited planets. Does Hotfoot's idea of having built in interdiction on ships extend to having it on planets to stop the 'appear in Low orbit with missile ports open'?
If I had my druthers, I'd say yes, and that the interdiction field pulls ships out of hyper well outside of the green zone of a system. That said, being able to escape from a field is something any ship can do, it just takes longer to escape from a stronger field.

On the same note, stronger FTL drives can penetrate deeper into a field, so high strength drives can get much closer, but still not low orbit.
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Post by Hotfoot »

I think as far as planets go, there should be a minimum and a maximum. I'd really rather not see another single planet empire, or a super-thin superbuilder nation out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. These are supposed to be nations that have survived in an existing empire, and as such should be at close to their existing maximum capacity, to keep up with taxes, tributes, etc. Having a few get damaged in the prologue might work, assuming we can work out a reasonable benefit that's costed appropriately for not having full industrial capacity.

As far as bonuses, here's a thought I have:

Players cannot build ships above X points (maybe 100). This includes the stealth bonus, so a 100 ship cannot have stealth added on. The exception comes with Imperial Technology. Capture an Imperial Covert Hull Plating factory, and you can pump out a 100 point steath covering to your normal battleship.

Things like FTL Boost, Interdiction, EW, PD, Anti-Ship, Stealth, etc. are limited at 10 points (or equivalent for steallth). The limits can be either raised or removed when an Imperial stockpile is captured, but the stockpiles themselves should be limited, like they can only go up to 20, or can only refit so many points per "turn".

Meanwhile, if you can get your hands on an Imperial Shipyard (super-awesome), you can make Imperial Ships, which are going to be ridiculous, or make custom ships using full Imperial Tech.

In this way, ships remain individually built, which makes individual ships more valuable, and thus it will suck to lose your Imperially Enhanced ships, especially if you lost your cache in the same battle.

The global bonuses should not directly interact with the ships with the one exception of "faster repair".

Now, as far as other globals, I'm tempted to say there should be a separate pool for the globals to prevent people from getting some ridiculous numbers, like +500 ground combat. If you want to take larger numbers, you have to take negatives to get them. Part of me says that to avoid further min-maxing, 2 points of negatives are needed for 1 point of bonus. That, or limiting negatives to a certain amount to prevent people from taking -1,000 in ground combat to get stupid bonuses elsewhere.
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Post by Beowulf »

Hey, with a -1000 in ground combat, they'd need to glass the planet to stop a guy with a butter knife. :) I think exponential negatives might be best for stopping massive negatives to get bonuses. Sure, you can lose 10 points in a spot to get 10 extra for something else, but if you want to get another 10 points by losing stuff from the same spot, you'd need to lose 20. Then 40, and so on. If someone wants to put 500 points into ground combat, they better hope they're unopposed in space, because you should be able to glass combat areas decently well.

Locations for production should be fixed. If I say I've got a dozen planets, I need to name and give a production amount for each of that dozen planets.

Another note about stealth is maybe allow specialization towards either long range or short range sensors. If I give a ship a specialization towards long range stealth, it'd be harder to pick up on interstellar(FTL) sensors, but not be as difficult to pick up on targetting sensors. And vice versa. Same limits apply. Long range stealth would be useful for moving ships around the galaxy covertly, but wouldn't really help in battle. Short range is naturally the opposite.
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Post by rhoenix »

I think splitting it into "short range stealth" and "long range stealth" is a bad idea, if only because it starts edging into the territory of non-conciseness.

Perhaps with (as an arbitrary example), on a 20 point ship, 2 points of stealth tech would mask you pretty well from STL sensors, though would be defeated with 3+ points of intercept looking in the same area, and would give one no protection versus FTL sensors. 4 points of stealth would get you sneakiness from STL and FTL sensors, but again would be defeated in either case from 5+ points of intercept all looking in the same general area.

In this example, you could pay 10% of the point base of the given ship for basic stealth, and you could pay 20% of the point base added on for advanced stealth tech. This same basic ratio could apply to FTL speeds, ship repair, and others for the sake of conciseness.

I also threw out the 10%/20% arbitrarily; one could make it 15%/30% if it made more sense balance-wise, but I'd personally vote for keeping the ratio the same across technologies (i.e. interdiction vs. engines, intercept vs. stealth, and ship repair).
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Post by Hotfoot »

Beowulf wrote:Hey, with a -1000 in ground combat, they'd need to glass the planet to stop a guy with a butter knife. :)
Yeah, but the point is that ground combat can easily be bypassed if all you do is raids.
I think exponential negatives might be best for stopping massive negatives to get bonuses. Sure, you can lose 10 points in a spot to get 10 extra for something else, but if you want to get another 10 points by losing stuff from the same spot, you'd need to lose 20. Then 40, and so on. If someone wants to put 500 points into ground combat, they better hope they're unopposed in space, because you should be able to glass combat areas decently well.
Yeah, increasing negatives would be best, the question is how complex do we want to make the equation.
Locations for production should be fixed. If I say I've got a dozen planets, I need to name and give a production amount for each of that dozen planets.
Yeah, but remember that system is the level of detail we really want here, not just planets. A successful capture of a system should involve landings on 2-3 planets, numerous stations, etc.
Another note about stealth is maybe allow specialization towards either long range or short range sensors. If I give a ship a specialization towards long range stealth, it'd be harder to pick up on interstellar(FTL) sensors, but not be as difficult to pick up on targetting sensors. And vice versa. Same limits apply. Long range stealth would be useful for moving ships around the galaxy covertly, but wouldn't really help in battle. Short range is naturally the opposite.
There's already a counter to early warning networks on the assault, it's called faster FTL.

Stealth is really more of a strategic tool as is. You use it to set up ambushes or slip into enemy territory unnoticed. Stealth in realspace is useless without stealth in hyperspace, with the exception being a defensive operation. To get hit less once the shooting starts, you use EW.

Ships should not themselves have "long range" networks of course. That is more the purview of early warning networks and the like. When you invade, your sensor net is severely limited.

I might, however, be willing to split "sensors" and "jamming", instead of having them lumped together in EW, but I'd rather have fewer, more comprehensive bonuses than a slew of similar but slightly different bonuses.
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Post by Academia Nut »

Hmmm... we're definitely getting into the area now where I think a new thread might be necessary simply for logistics purposes. We have a lot of "crunch" to work out and refine, and having a new thread specifically devoted to working the numbers might be useful as we can have the first post continuously updated to reflect the most recent set of rules so that people can come in an see where things are at without having to dig through the thread to see if anything has changed, or constantly reposting the refinements. Just a thought though.

For example, are we going to differentiate between points for ships, points for industry, points for aptitudes, etc? Because while that could work, its a bit more restricting. If you want to be balanced then dividing the points out won't make much difference, but if you want to be lopsided with a strong specialization in one area and a weakness in another, then that makes things a bit trickier. I do agree that there should be diminishing returns for taking penalties if we allow such things.

I think we also need to clearly establish up front what aptitudes/technologies/etc we can improve or penalize, and what different kinds of technology you can put on your ships. For stealth, we should probably establish a table with some rough ranges of the percentage of the ship's points you've put into stealth and what the effects are.

Of course, these are all going to generate some space consuming tables, which is why I reiterate the percieved need for the creation of some sort of rules discussion thread where this can all be arranged neatly in the first post.
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Post by rhoenix »

Academia Nut, you make an excellent point. All of us are past the point of "yeah, a new game sounds like a good idea," and we're already into the logistics and planning of it. As such, it doesn't seem right to continue using this old thread.

So, I'll fix that. ;)
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Post by Covenant »

Argh, I tried to make a post, so I'll just throw in a little one.

As I said in the other thread, I'd like to announce the egg for an idea I've got. If we're going Transhuman, I was going to explore the rather abstract machine end of it--either massively cyborged, or AI'd, but extreme in their nonstandard nature. I'm not sure on the specifics yet, as I'm not sure how AI will fit into our galaxy and what role they might play. I doubt I'll be the only machine race, but I wanted to put my hat out there, so that if someone else wanted to make something like that, we could discuss stuff so there's no big suprises and that everything fits in SL-wise.
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Post by Dahak »

For the record, I might be not online for the weekend, so no one starts without me :P
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Post by Academia Nut »

Don't worry Dahak, we're at least a week or two from starting, if not a month or so.

But yeah, as far as the various factions are concerned, I have this idea of many of them being little enclaves of specialists that were all shoved into one corner of the empire because they were useful, but "deviant from the norm". So depending on your AIs, they might have been used for construction or research, or hell, maybe just accounting. That way there is a reasonable reason for why some people are weirder than others. If you think you're too weird, you could ask to play a barbarian and be shuffled off to the edge of the former empire, if not the edge of known space to keep things fast and tightly paced. You start on the uncivilized side of the Rhine so to speak.

Does that sort of set-up sound good to everyone?
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Post by Covenant »

Alright, let's write some speculative history stuff for our Zomg Empire. Here's my take on what we've bantered about so far. Lemme be clear--I've got no attachment to this story other than that I think it allows us to have a) aliens b) transhuman factions of variety c) Nitram's forces d) Imperial caches and remnants and e) a lack of sureness about if we should turn on each other like cannibals, try to ad-hoc a system for trade, or just wait for mommy and daddy to get back. It's the old Stranded Guy problem. How long do you wait for the coast guard before you kill your friend for food?

Mine is just one idea of many, but I decided to flesh it out a bit so someone else can either refine it, correct it, or replace it--but so we, at least, have a more cogent place to start working from. Oh, and, I didn't mean to make it so 40k. I called it Fortress Terra as a joke about our previous game. ;D

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A radius of around 350 Lightyears from Sol, the Holy Solar Empire of Fortress Terra was a regime built upon state-enforced fear and a distributed network of relatively small feudal powers that all gave Terra Proper what it demanded in exchange for protection, both from forces outside and unknown and from Terra's own Star-Smashing Armadas.

Transhumanism had taken humanity to great heights, but internal and external pressures had forced Fortress Terra to comprise between total control and regional autonomy. Growth was encouraged, but at a price. Controlling interplanetary commerce, the dukedoms of the Holy Solar Empire were beholden to Fortress Terra for their own vitality. Compliance to a distant power was a small price to pay for a modicum self government. There was a draft to be complied with, several taxes and Holy Observances to be followed to bribed away, and the demand that each force levvy and supply the Empire with elements of it's own war machine. No single world would ever build a vessel--much to their own credit, they engineered vessels so labyrinthine that no single power knew all elements of their design, and instead supplied materials and parts.

With their ships of immense power, Terra projected power far beyond their actual boundaries, establishing a network of Deadlands around the core systems that were patrolled, monitored, and zealously defended from outside encroachment. Alien forces were known of, but only dimly, spoken of in the same terms as Demons and Angels--half believed, but completely feared.

At it's height, the Empire was an impenetrable wall of humanity's might, and all foreign powers knew better than to test their patience. The few that were unlucky enough to have begun developing near Terran Space were obliterated and chased within a year of Sol, an ever-increasing Deadland that threatened to one day turn the entire nonhuman galaxy to Wasteland.

But as with all heights, there was threat of a fall. With every expansion of it's sphere of influence, new Empires of enemies were created, destroyed, and scattered to the void between stars. Here they waited, learning of each-other's presence, and gathered strength. It was harder to patrol these voids, and barbarians gnawed at the edges of Terra's deadlands--like Rats in Versailles. (Damn you Ryan, how do you spell that?) Control of the Empire depended on isolation and fear, not from actual fears that couldn't be controlled and disposed of successfully.

As new strategies were contemplated, methods to shrink the demands of a boisterous Empire and quell the rivalries between factions, something happened. Maybe the arrival of Nitram's forces, powerful as they were, set off a chain reaction of terror down the authoritarian ranks. New enemies posessing of vessels of nearly equal power, travelling enmasse to the Solar Empire's root. Perimeter fleets have already clashed with them--gutting many of the outsider's vessels and leaving them with a mere fraction of their original fleet, but the advance has torn a hole in the Imperial defenses, through which are pouring a number of vengeful barbarian forces. Enemies far outside, still strong and long prepared for an eventual clash with Earth, turn attentively towards the scuffles.

When it becomes clear the invaders are humans--true humans in blood and mind and all, terror sweeps over Terra, and in an orgy of Xenophobia and body-snatcher style hysteria, the Empire descends into chaos as Fortress Terra obliterates the surrounding sectors and walls itself off. It is unknown if Terra survives at all, but the Imperial Remnants flail about without orders from Earth, and the peacekeeping vessels have either returned to Sol, or left abandoned in their stardocks.

The galaxy sits, breathlessly, awaiting the next move--what next? Do they wait for the Empire's vessels to return, bringing the resources and security they need to survive? Or would they commit a Cardinal Sin, and seize the great ships for themselves, and take what they need from their neighbors? Or will they all wait around like retards and attack only the first person to send a fleet anywhere? Only time can tell.

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Post by Shinn Langley Soryu »

With all the fury going into planning for the next STGOD, I wonder just what happened to the Viking funeral we were going to give the previous one.
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Post by SirNitram »

Shinn Langley Soryu wrote:With all the fury going into planning for the next STGOD, I wonder just what happened to the Viking funeral we were going to give the previous one.
It was decided against, as it'd just sap attention away from the new one.
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Post by consequences »

SirNitram wrote:
Shinn Langley Soryu wrote:With all the fury going into planning for the next STGOD, I wonder just what happened to the Viking funeral we were going to give the previous one.
It was decided against, as it'd just sap attention away from the new one.
So, want to go for the big reveal then?
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Post by SirNitram »

To do the big reveal:

Earth and most of the human powers had a serious problem. This problem is manifest in the psykkers sitting to the south. See, they weren't just paranoid about humanity. The hated it. They were a psychic gestalt that got stuck in a recursive loop of Hate. The Houses tried to mitigate it, but prolonged contact made them parts of the Gestalt.

So, my power set out to make friends. Them was one of the allies; the long term goal was to develop a way for a Multitude psykker to act as a director for the massive swarm, psionically dominating them just enough to guide their feeding towards Earth. There was also going to be use of Nephtys' megaswarm, by much the same means.

Of course, that's the obvious and final act. Before that, the Southern 'sane' nations were gradually being forged into an alliance ostensibly to remain independent of the resurgent 'Terran Empire'.. A thing which never existed, unless you stood too close to a Wanderer for too long without extensive psion shielding. The Obers were particularly handy there, as the young, brash heir was getting tutored by a Wanderer who was feeding his ego with images of Terran worlds burning. He would lash out, the Terrans would be angry, the Obers would offer him up and offer to pay reparations, Thirdfain would do as he always does and attempt to leverage it into an invasion.. And the Wanderers would paint Humanity as thirsty for an empire. And when the massive combined fleets meet at the Ober worlds? The swarms descend through the warning nets.

Terra burns.

If I could get away with it, the Ring would even jump into the system and ram the planet, breaking up under enemy fire, just to burn away the tainted world that the Wanderers psychotically, irrationally, insanely hated. The Wanderers would be exterminated, the slave races they shielded survive only in lifeboat communities hidden away.

They were crazy.
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