STGOD 2k8 Planning thread

Academia Nut · Post by **Academia Nut** » 2007-11-06 11:16pm

Okay, time for another round of trying to boot people back into focused activity. Since we seem to be wanting to quantify standard tech, perhaps we should also quantify the attributes and Imperial tech that people can buy to obtain various global or semi-global bonuses so that we have some sort of comparison.

So how's about everyone post a tech or attribute they would like to see and we can actually hammer out the numbers for them as well as generate the fluff.

How's about this for starters:

Imperial Hyperdrive Cache

Consisting of a number of delicate components, these hyperdrives are the pinnacle of Imperial FTL technology, extremely potent in a small package.

Effects: Ships supplied with Imperial Hyperdrives have a +10% boost to their FTL engine rating at no additional cost
Upkeep: All ships equipped with Imperial Hyperdrives have +5% to their maintenance
Supply: Up to 2000 points of ships may be supplied with Imperial hyperdrives

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2007-11-07 12:04am

Actually, removing my placeholder.

I wanted to say, I think we should make these more generalized. 100 types of tech that only like 8 people are going ot have doesn't sound reasonable. Plus, I doubt you'd have a warehouse of nothing but, say, Imperial Pistols. So I'm going to think it over for a sec.

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2007-11-07 12:07am

The bonuses need to be a lot bigger for anyone to care. Does it matter really if it takes me 9 or 10 days to get to Planet X? Now if it was a 25% to 50% boost... that'd be pretty darn nice! Particularly for 'situational' things such as hyperdrive speed. As we know, ships would usually spend their time at sub-light in a system either on patrol or on maneuvers.

For weapons and stuff, a lesser bonus should be right. Those're going to get used frequently after all.

=== space reserved ===

Spyder · Post by **Spyder** » 2007-11-07 01:09am

Academia Nut wrote:Okay, time for another round of trying to boot people back into focused activity. Since we seem to be wanting to quantify standard tech, perhaps we should also quantify the attributes and Imperial tech that people can buy to obtain various global or semi-global bonuses so that we have some sort of comparison.

So how's about everyone post a tech or attribute they would like to see and we can actually hammer out the numbers for them as well as generate the fluff.

How's about this for starters:

Imperial Hyperdrive Cache

Consisting of a number of delicate components, these hyperdrives are the pinnacle of Imperial FTL technology, extremely potent in a small package.

Effects: Ships supplied with Imperial Hyperdrives have a +10% boost to their FTL engine rating at no additional cost
Upkeep: All ships equipped with Imperial Hyperdrives have +5% to their maintenance
Supply: Up to 2000 points of ships may be supplied with Imperial hyperdrives

Not sure about this. FTL speed consistency gets plenty of abuse as it is without having to track speed differences between the various nations. Nephtys also has a point that the bonuses would need to be significant to be worthwhile and that alone raises the problem of balancing these perks.

There is also the issue that bits of Imperial Tech, as well as surviving engineers that know how to build it, are going to be floating around the galaxy. Unless all fleeing scientists and engineers were killed and the ships they escaped on were destroyed in a serious of unfortunate events which somehow left the crew (except for the engineers) intact then I think it's safe to say most nations are going to either already know or eventually figure out how to pump out Imperial tech.

For structure, we need to focus on simplicity for the sake of making life easier for players and mods. One thing we need to bare in mind is that the structure exists solely to uphold consistency of the roleplaying. The roleplay should be the meat.

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2007-11-07 01:28am

I feel the same way. In thinking of how best to balance this, I really couldn't come up with a very simple way to apply a general bonus to one side or another that isn't unbalancing or just an invitation for trouble.

It'd be fun to make a lot of specific powers, but that seems to be more of a wargame thing than a general STGODs sort of thing, and I bet we'd all prefer to keep this relatively simple to handle, since it's already a big drain on everyone's time having to keep up-to-date on the storylines.

Orignally I figured that cracking open a cache is just a bonus for capturing a planet--you discover a few frigates and a destroyer and suppliment your forces with that, to help recoup losses and encourage actually committing to an attack. I think we're starting to really add too much complexity with all the special unique powers they give.

I think that adding some Imperial ships to your fleets, or some Imperial tanks to your army, is really all the bonus we need. Maybe we can build X number of space or ground forces per month from our caches--IE, refurbishing them for duty. Capturing more just extends that. It's not extra money at all, it just lets you spend your same money either on your ships, or the more expensive but sexy Imperial ships, but limits it to X-amount per month. So if you had 50 points of Imperial Caches, that'd be like either 500 points of ground troops or 50 points of capships. Thus, it might take you 3 months to make an ISD.

How's that sound? That, combined with the chance of getting a small bonus when you seize them.

Crossroads Inc. · Post by **Crossroads Inc.** » 2007-11-07 03:03am

By the by, that reminds me. As of yet, does ANYone have any objections ot me being in posetion of a massive ((50 to 100km?)) long Massive Colony Ship/world built during one of the Imperiums Golden Ages?

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2007-11-07 03:09am

Crossroads Inc. wrote:By the by, that reminds me. As of yet, does ANYone have any objections ot me being in posetion of a massive ((50 to 100km?)) long Massive Colony Ship/world built during one of the Imperiums Golden Ages?

It's in place of a planet, so I can't really say it matters what you call it. Machine world, Space ark, or whatever, it all boils down to being a planet. It's so big we can invade it, bombard it, and that hulking it only will melt the thing down. Seems like a planet to me.

Crossroads Inc. · Post by **Crossroads Inc.** » 2007-11-07 03:16am

I can live with that. However one would imagine a ship built at the height of the Imperium would carry vast Archives and Databanks for the new provance it intends to seet up. Would I have to fudge anything since, obviouslly, my nation won't have such ancient secrets?

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2007-11-07 03:42am

Crossroads Inc. wrote:I can live with that. However one would imagine a ship built at the height of the Imperium would carry vast Archives and Databanks for the new provance it intends to seet up. Would I have to fudge anything since, obviouslly, my nation won't have such ancient secrets?

Honestly, I think you're fine. Your ship's ancient secrets are going to be akin to the ancient secret of making a nuclear weapon. Since when are old techs always superior? Nowhere have we said the Empire has descended into a Dark Age. You can carry all kinds of ancient knowledge if you like, but I think the more modern stuff will not only be more useful, but more powerful. Britian at it's height would certainly be no match for modern day Britian.

Spyder · Post by **Spyder** » 2007-11-07 03:52am

It might add an interesting element to the game if everyone had a huge mothership.

Crossroads Inc. · Post by **Crossroads Inc.** » 2007-11-07 04:13am

Covenant wrote:Honestly, I think you're fine. Your ship's ancient secrets are going to be akin to the ancient secret of making a nuclear weapon. Since when are old techs always superior? Nowhere have we said the Empire has descended into a Dark Age. You can carry all kinds of ancient knowledge if you like, but I think the more modern stuff will not only be more useful, but more powerful. Britian at it's height would certainly be no match for modern day Britian.

Actually thats a good point I think needs to be pointed out.

There should be no Brainbug of "Ancient lost secrets" Everyone should KNOW how to do the amazing things of the Imperium, but no one should have the Resources to do most of them.

Darkevilme · Post by **Darkevilme** » 2007-11-07 08:25am

One thing that occurs to me is that while having these imperial resources all the more desireable is very well but the barbarian powers aren't going to be in a very good position to seize them. The resources will invariably be near or in the hands of imperial remnants and in the case of production and especially the shipyards liable to be near the barbarian inaccessible core of the empire.

Hotfoot somewhere in the earlier half of this thread proposed that their are caps for specialization and ship size and an imperial resource alleviated the first in the case of say 'imperium sensor factory' or the latter in the case of the coveted 'imperium shipyard' so couple that with a suitable one time reward or production bonus that can only be spent on imperial stuff and it shouldn't lead to a situation where to defeat someone with more than two imperial relics a barbarian player has to be several times the relic holders size.

I mean yes a relic should be more desirable than an industrial world, but only cause it gives such things as more flexibility in specialization and shipsize in addition to the economic boost an industrial world also possesses.

And on the subject of learning how to build imperium tech without the appropriate infrastructure. I think the idea is that it would be a major undertaking to build an antimatter cannon factory or what have you due to such things being the pinnacle of imperial technology. Kinda like building a microchip plant on modern earth only on a much larger scale.
So you couldn't build one in the length of time of the STGOD.

Academia Nut · Post by **Academia Nut** » 2007-11-08 04:06pm

Okay, suggestion. While we work on the attributes and Imperial techs, would it be useful to finalize the ship design rules so that people can get cracking on the first draft of their OOBs because we seem to already have industry settled and most of the ship stuff is already set.

So, how's about:
60 points max per ship without something to build bigger
Specializations max out at +10 without some sort of Imperial tech to go over the limit
Specializations that can selected are-
FTL engine improvement (boost based off percentage devoted to engine)
Stealth (same as above... somehow)
Active defence (ECM, point defence, etc)
Active attack (bigger guns, other stuff for taking down large targets, ECCM)
Uhhh... Hotfoot had a really good list somewhere. If he could post that and we could all agree to these details, we could work out a rough fleet and system assets while working on the attributes and tech.

Darkevilme · Post by **Darkevilme** » 2007-11-08 04:18pm

So FTL is limited practically to a 50% bonus? as no one is going to make a ship all engine, what about making it so that 50% equals a ship twice as fast for those speed freaks who want bang for their buck. so therefore the speed boost is percentage x2. Stealth should probably be calculated the same way or at least done as a percentage.

And Academia, you havent said what the starting point totals are and if they're gonna be divided into racial, economy, ships or in any other way you can think of.

How much would it cost to have 70 or 80 point caps on the size of ship i can build as a racial advantage to represent a higher tech base.

Also active defence and active attack specialization division is a lil silly as it amounts to saying flying mountain versus glass cannon. They both do the same damage before being destroyed so why bother specializing. I think this was mentioned in the run up to the last game.

Anti capital ship is a good specialization except, where is the line drawn as to what a capital ship is and what isnt?

Hotfoot · Post by **Hotfoot** » 2007-11-08 04:20pm

On the one hand, Imperial Tech should be awesome and probably something easily applied, but I'd like it to not be "grab the relic and get an automatic +X to whatever", because that can get silly. On the other hand, if it's too hard to apply the bonuses, then it's not that desirable.

Ship Specializations work well as the following:

+FTL (Faster Movement, Interdiction Resistance)
+Interdiction

+Active Defense (ECM/Point Defense, can jam long-range comms)
+Attack (ECCM, Improved Fighter Shields/ECM/whatever, Improved Missiles, etc.)

+Stealth (Decrease Hyperspace Signal, Easier to hide in realspace)
+Sensors/C3 (-Enemy Stealth in realspace, +resistance to ECM jamming)

I'm thinking that Imperial bonuses to ship techs might be fine as just modelling the system as each cache being able to support X points of a bonus at once, and the initial Y points are free, but can't be used until the ships involved are retrofitted. Say, 30/20 small, 60/40 medium, 120/80 large, random out of bum numbers.

Imperial Caches that boost globals are "immediate" bonuses, but are entirely lost after the power loses control of the facility.

Sound decent?

Academia Nut · Post by **Academia Nut** » 2007-11-08 04:27pm

Well, from all the previous discussion it looks like we get 1500 points for fleets and planetary defence, 60 points to buy colonies (10 points for a Class 1, 5 points for a Class 2, 3 points for a Class 3, and 1 point for a Class 4) and an as yet to be determined number of attribute points.

And as I said, we should just get together and finalize what all these specializations mean. Perhaps FTL speed boost gives percentage devoted to engines*10 bonus to FTL speed, so that if you devote 50% to engines you get 500% extra FTL speed. Perhaps its just a straight percentage. What sounds better?

Also, with the rough system we worked out for combat, active attack could add to the damage you do, while active defence would subtract from the damage you take. So with enough active defence, it's conceivable that you might not take any damage at all in a fight, which would make active attack quite useful in overcoming it.

Dark Hellion · Post by **Dark Hellion** » 2007-11-08 04:51pm

Superfast FTL sounds extremely abusable. Look at how good Stargliders faster coms where last game. Bonuses for FTL and com speed should be very low for point investment, as they give huge strategic benefits, where as most of the rest are more about tactical advantage.

Rogue 9 · Post by **Rogue 9** » 2007-11-08 05:49pm

What about the idea of a surviving Imperial warship joining up with one of the provinces as a tech bonus, rather than a hyperdrive cache or comms relay or repair yard?

It'd be a high-risk tech bonus to have, since unlike something on or orbiting one of the power's worlds, a warship is regularly sent into harm's way, and moreover it'd be a high-priority target due to being such a threat. So what would be an appropriately powerful ship proportionate to both the maintenance cost and the level of risk?

Darkevilme · Post by **Darkevilme** » 2007-11-08 05:59pm

how much does each type of colony produce and what are the maintenance fees for ships? can i put five points into each mothership as i have twelve?

And i agree with hellion which is why i put the cap on ftl at 50% = double speed. Sides people cant get more than a frigate moving at twice speed due to the ten point rule on specializations.

And in accordance with the idea that active damage allows you to overwhelm defences i'm definitely giving my big bad destroyer beatdown wagon triple beams of pwning doom.

Academia Nut · Post by **Academia Nut** » 2007-11-08 06:25pm

We seem to have agreed upon a maintenance fee of 20% of a ship's total cost per round, with each colony producing 10 times its cost in industrial points a round. So everyone starts off producing 600 points per turn, but 300 should be locked up in maintaining your ships.

Oh, and for static defences, what say that a planet has "natural" defences capable of repelling ships with a point value less than or equal to a tenth their industrial output (10 points for a Class 1, 5 points for a Class 2, etc), and can have static defences up to its industrial output (100 points for a Class 1, 50 for Class 2, etc). Static defences have a combat value double their cost (so 100 points of defences can hold off 200 points of ships) and a maintenance cost of 10% of their value. Does that sound okay, or should we bump up the defensive values?

Hotfoot · Post by **Hotfoot** » 2007-11-08 07:46pm

Superfast FTL is a no. Even with a bonus, people with boosted FTL should worry about a group ahead of them being able to cut them off at the pass, as it were.

I think it bears noting that having special quickships at no cost to move around diplomats would be fine, but they would have big, huge signatures, paper thin hulls, no weapons, and are actually interdicted more easily than other ships. Any attempt to modify them removes the advantage of speed. Since they bring diplomats and attaches and that's it, I don't see a big deal.

WRT Imperial ships, I would think that having access to Imperial Shipyards would give access to Imperial Ships of up to the given point level. Of course, I would support costing the Imperial Shipyards in such a way that in order to start the game with even the smallest one, you have to not only use all of your global points, but take negatives to your globals. Nobody should be able to start the game with the largest Imperial Shipyards.

As far as defenses, I'd rather support a 1:10 ratio of effectiveness, with an upper limit of what can be supported in a system. This way, defenses are useful against raiding and small forces, but can't stonewall a multiple nation fleet for any reasonable amount of time.

Darkevilme · Post by **Darkevilme** » 2007-11-08 07:54pm

What about starting being able to build ships ten points bigger than everyone elses hotfoot? would that be super expensive as well? what is the smallest imperial shipyard size anyway?

Academia Nut · Post by **Academia Nut** » 2007-11-08 08:34pm

On the one hand, knowing that your colonies can be secured relatively well would hopefully encourage greater use of your fleets offensively, but on the other hand with ten times the points you put into your defences, you could easily have an asteroid colony hold off a small task force (~100 points, or a couple of cruisers and destroyers) indefinitely. Not sure if that would be a good thing or not flavour wise. Perhaps lower the bonus, 5-1 maybe?

That, or would a "Seige" specialization for ships be okay? Perhaps each point devoted to such a specialization would be worth 4 or 5 against planetary defences, but nothing otherwise. Like really huge guns on a ship that are so slow to aim and recharge that they can only hit stationary targets.

Hmmm... perhaps 10-1 defences with the option to make seige guns would be the best idea, that way you can have neat battles with the seige ships trundling in and the defenders trying to knock them down before the hammering starts.

Oh, and Darkevilme: 10 times bigger? That's a 600 point ship. As I'm pretty sure everyone else is going to say: "No fucking way". Getting 100 points ships is probably going to cost every attribute point you have, and then some.

Darkevilme · Post by **Darkevilme** » 2007-11-08 08:43pm

No as in ten extra points. so 70 points for my biggest and baddest beat down wagon and i'll probably only be packing a handful of them, i've made a 3d model of them but meh i'm still not sure if its good or not.

Academia Nut · Post by **Academia Nut** » 2007-11-08 08:48pm

Oh, oops, sorry, Hotfoot's 10-1 got crossed with your ten more points somewhere along the line. As for how much more that would cost?

Well, we certainly haven't decided that yet, but if we put the shipyard rankings at:

Small yard: <=70 points
Medium yard: <=100 points
Large yard: <=200 points
Imperial Superheavy yard: <=500 points

And restrict initial purchases to the first two, and with say 500 attribute points to spend...

Small yard: 250 points
Medium yard: 550 points (so that you have to take penalties)

Then that might be fair, although I'm really just pulling number out of my ass.