STGOD 2k8 Planning thread

[Beowulf]

Since it seems to be the fashion:

Titan-class frigate
40pts + 10X
These ships have been designed to carry a mission module. These modules are not easily interchangeable, but made it easy to customize the ships to different uses. Subclasses are:
Titan-A - 10D
Titan-B - 10C3
Titan-C - 10I
Titan-D - 10O
The philosophy was that it was better to have one ship with strong abilities in a specific area, and combine it with other ships with abilities in other areas, than to have lesser abilities on every frigate. Designed to jointly beat the enemy into submission.

What, I have to have more than one class? Fine:

Furtim-class attack ship
1pt + 1S
Purpose designed as pack hunters. Rarely found in groups less than 3, if they are found. Used for duties such as convoy escort, and ship inspection. Furtim Flight II ships have lost the stealth plating and systems in exchange for an upgraded hyperdrive. Such vessels are primarily used for courier duties.


As far as what the stats do is concerned, Defense should do more than negate 1 weight, or it's not as good as just increasing the weight of the ship. In essence, as it stands right now, defense is an extra .1 of a hitpoint per turn. So you assume a 2 turn battle, you only have an extra .25 of a hitpoint per defense point. If it's increased to 2.5, then you end up with a nice bit of symmetry between the two, I think.

With regards to fleet sizes, a larger fleet will be better, because it makes it more likely people will risk ships, since each ship is worth less. This encourages conflict.

[Covenant]

I'd probably say that ships come in at the edge of a bubble, but that such a bubble is within firing distance--otherwise interceptions wouldn't be advantageous! You'd yank someone out too far away to engage them, and they'd just spool up their drives and leave again. You need them to be within cannon range so you can target and fire when they're confused.

I'd also say that they shouldn't decrease as a function of damage. No need for it, really. It does encourage being a bit of a doofus and leaving as many ships with 1 HP as possible, but that's part of the strategy (and part of why +Offense is useful) and it'd be a nightmare trying to do the numbers for an entire 1000 point fleet.

As for the actual value for the defense boost, I dunno, but you have the right idea. Once we figure out how much damage we want to do (people might say they prefer a 2 turn battle doing 50 percent casualties, meaning that we'd lose 20 percent per turn rather than 10) we can balance and adjust the value to be proper.

[Academia Nut]

Hmmm... yes, definitely needs a little more kick to make it worthwhile. Comparing a 50 point dreadnought and a 40+10D dreadnought, the 50 pointer will always win, presuming that there is a straight, linear relationship between offensive ability and total remaining health. Of course, the battle will take several days to run out to full destruction unless we can figure out a fair method of damaging extras.

Same ships, but with D block 0.15 damage per turn, the 40+10D will always win, but it takes until turn 13 for the active defence ship to start out damaging it's counterpart. At turn 15 it stops taking damage. It takes 22 rounds to completely destroy the enemy ship.

At 0.2 damage per round, it takes until round 9 for the D ship to have the advantage. At round 11 it stops taking damage, and at round 19 it completely destroys the enemy ship.

At 0.25, it takes 7 rounds for the D to have the advantage. At round 9 it stops taking damage, and it takes 16 rounds to completely destroy the enemy ship.

Of course, these are crude approximations, but it would appear that letting each point of D completely block .2 to .25 points of damage under the current system seems fair. D's primary purpose is to give an advantage in a long slugging match.

[Covenant]

.25 sounds like a good value to me, especially if the damage modifier for +O is .25 instead of .1 as well.

[Academia Nut]

Yeah, in fact, with O's ability to slice through D and its damage multiplier and its sniper ability, D might be able to get away with a little higher, especially if it can be damaged, although right now both stats are pretty kick-ass. If not for the fact that having no C3 ships would invite you to get faked out a lot and shanked by heavy S and D ships, it would be all but useless. We could maybe make it more useful if it served not only to keep you from being jumped, but perhaps as some sort of multiplier effect. Maybe C3 could improve other specialized functions by 1+C3/10. So if you have faster engines you can find quicker routes, you can target your guns even better, you can predict fire enemy fire patterns and improve spoofing, those sorts of things. That would make it a hell of a lot more useful though, maybe too useful, especially if combined with pimped out ships with lots of other functions. Also adds an extra layer of complexity in that to be fair it would have to be done on a ship by ship basis.

[Covenant]

I think that a noticably high C3 should really be taken into account via RP, but not via a hard-and-fast stat. Offense and Defense have numbers, but neither of them provide hitpoints or ground attack, so the attack and defense values are not infinitely useful. A ship with +10O and +10D would have 20 less HP's, and that's an extremely large amount of hitpoints to give up.

Sniping is strong enough as-is, and shouldn't supplant normal damage. Otherwise someone with a big, beefy ship will weep bitter tears that their craft just sux versus someone with a few points of extra O.

[Academia Nut]

Actually, now that you mention it, is the sniping function an AND state or an OR state. So to get the sniping, do you have to sacrifice the extra damage and visa versa, or do you automatically get the sniping and the bonus damage. Because in a fleet engagement this is a big deal.

[Crossroads Inc.]

With regards to fleet sizes, a larger fleet will be better, because it makes it more likely people will risk ships, since each ship is worth less. This encourages conflict.

I have to agree with this. If we all had a huge fleet, we would be FAR less likely to hold ou ships back and play cautious.

I was always afraid of commiting my ships last game because I had fewer ships in regard to everyone else, also "time" pased so slow, that if I lost one, I wouldn't have it replaced for ages.

Really, if I knew I could loose z dozen ships or so, and it not make a difference, things might get interesting quickly

And isn;t that what the game is all about?

[Academia Nut]

Because of the way the maintenance works, there are certain number of ships you can risk a round.

With 1500 points to start, 600 industrial points, and 20% maintenance, you can risk 375 points per production turn. With 2000 points to start, and 600 industrial points, you can risk 250 points per turn. With 2000 points to start and 100 industrial points, you can risk 750 points per turn. If those values of ships get blown up in a turn, then you will be able to produce enough ships to back where you started.

I'm some what partial to the last figure as that is a lot of boom every turn.

[Beowulf]

Did a calc for assuming no degradation:

50pt vs 40pt +10D

In all cases, the balanced ship is destroyed in round 13
.1: D destroyed in 10
.15: D destroyed in 12
.175: D destroyed in 13
.2: D destroyed in 14
.25: D destroyed in 16

So, for equivalent max point value ships, to balance the stats, a reduction of .175 pts of damage/defense point seems to be about optimal. The fighting will take longer than 10 turns though.

[Academia Nut]

Yes, the ships take a hell of a lot of pounding to go down, although I'm fairly certain some form of degradation to combat ability will occur as ships take more and more pounding. Guns being blown off and all that. This favours the balanced ship as it has more weapon mounts to burn through, or its big guns are more armoured, or whatever. Assuming we have a combat degredation mechanic, then a slight increase in the effects of D will be required.

Of course, balance wise, O is kind of out of whack right now, in that it is much better than any other equivalent in ships.

40+10O destroys a 50 in 12 rounds, assuming degradation. No degradation, they both blow up at the end of round 8. It's ability to cut through D means that a 30+10O is equivalent to a 40+10D, if not better if extra damage and the D bypassing function stack. I don't think they should actually, in which case the O ship is still better, but not as drastically so. I think O should be able to do extra damage OR target specific ships and bypass D, looking at it all together. Under those circumstances, equal point O and D ships will always have the O ship win, but not as drastically.

[Covenant]

Actually, now that you mention it, is the sniping function an AND state or an OR state. So to get the sniping, do you have to sacrifice the extra damage and visa versa, or do you automatically get the sniping and the bonus damage. Because in a fleet engagement this is a big deal.

You get both. Sniping AND bonus damage. Things already operate, generally, in defender's favor when it comes to damage allotment. The advantage of defense is that it can be carried on ships to aid other ships, making it more useful in a diffuse sense since it always decreases the amount of damage you take. The majority of damage will always come from non-snipe damage, unless you have a horde of ships that are extremely thin on hitpoints, which would make you also rather weak.

I suppose we could remove the function, in which case we should retain sniping and remove bonus damage. Sniping is more useful, more strategic, less minmaxy and expands play options more.

Remember, +O was the new name for 'anti-cap' and +D was the new name for 'point-defense' so they're not supposed to be counters for each other. They operate on totally different ideas, so it's natural for a +O ship to do more damage faster, while +D diminishes 'basic' attack.

There's a lot more than a 1v1 situation at play. When you're talking about jumbles of ships adding up to around 750 each, per battle, there's a lot of nooks and crannies to shuffle that damage off to, so there's plenty of reasons why a fleet with more hitpoints and less sniping could outlast a foe who simply runs out of places to put the extra damage.

Figuring out the balance is good though. Still, at some point, there will be a level of inherent nonequality between the stats. They need to favor one situation or another at some juncture or else people will have no reason not to just take Basic Bland Ships without any specials on them at all.

I still think degrading values is a pointless and far too nitpicky affair. It'll be extremely difficult to actually keep track of that.

[Academia Nut]

Then O is extraordinarily powerful. Assuming degradation, a 30+10O can take on a 40+10D and win at the end of the 11th turn, with 11HP remaining. It can take a 45 balanced and win at the end of the 12th round with 4.8HP remaining. Without degradation it slightly favours the balanced ships of equal weight. Actually, the smaller the base points, the more it favours the balanced ship.

But yeah, a fleet action will be considerably stickier. We should probably play test a few rounds with some sample fleets.

[Covenant]

Also, remember, a 30+10O heavy torpedo cruiser is NOT a fair match for a bloated 40+10D carrier with enhanced flak batteries. Even though the 40+10 costs more than the 30+10, there are going to be situations where they are not equal. You'd really want to have your own snipe ships take down that giant torpedo-spewing monster of a ship if you could, but yeah. Remember that fleets will be made of a variety of unusual ships, not all just the same.

I've got no idea what the proper balance is yet, so I'm just happy people are testing things out. We don't want +offense or +defense to be supreme over the other in all cases.

If I could, I'd be all for degrading ships--but honestly, how are we going to manage that? If we do that, we should make it so ships can cost into the 100 or so range so that we will have less ships to track. But if I throw a 900 point fleet into combat and it might have, geez, over 100 ships total... it's going to be fucking HELL to assign damage to them all.

Well... okay, I'll entertain the idea. If I was goign to do it...

Really, the real issue isn't the default attack/hitpoint values. The real issue is the special systems. If anything, we want ships to lose their SPECIAL SYSTEMS when they get damaged.

We could make it so that a ship's special systems can't exceed the value of it's basic cost? And then we allow degredation, so if I have a 25+25 ship lose 20 of it's hitpoints, that same ship loses 2 of it's DPS accordingly, and also has 20 points of special systems evaporate as well. Harsh, but it favors meaty vessels.

People are going to need to track damages anyway. It's just par-for-the-course, so I suppose if they just use their current HP value (fleetwide) for their damage modifier and make sure that no single ship has an excess of special on it, it'd be not THAT much trouble, for two or three rounds.

It'd also stop people from making 1+5O ships, which is kinda sad, but I suppose it's hardly the worst option.

[Academia Nut]

Yes, this is all a bunch of sticky widgets, but at least we're all on the same page here and trying to figure out how to crunch the math to make it fair. Pretty much the only thing I can see for reducing specials is to have them go down in proportion to the loss of the rest of the ship. We could probably leave O alone then, but we would need to beef up D to probably at least .225 or .25 to put it in line with a balanced ship.

And once again, I invite consequences to, if he has the time, engage in a pre-game battle where we can do some play testing and see how things work. I have probably one of the more unhomogenous fleets out there, with all forms of special represented in one form or another.

[Covenant]

Decreasing in proportion worries me because it involves fractions, but also because someone with a 45+5C3 or so shouldn't really have to lose a point of sensors every time he takes a few hits. His ship is so large that he SHOULD be able to preserve it for quite some time. Seems only fair!

[Academia Nut]

Definitely. Perhaps once you're below 50% health you start taking damage to your specials? Say a tenth of the damage goes to your specials...

Hmmm... well, if we keep D at say .225 then it will actually never drop below 50% health in the standard scenario being used. Of course, it takes forever to get down to 50% using decaying values. It's a pain in the ass to track the numbers in this system even with a spreadsheet too, so I'm going to put this out here as one that doesn't really work so we can avoid this sort of thing later.

We do need some sort of cut-off point where sub-systems start taking damage along with the primaries.

[Covenant]

Do we really though? Isn't that adding too much numbering to the small parts of the game too? Where's the RP going to be, really? While I hate to mirror my previous critics, at what point are we just designing a space sim?

[Academia Nut]

Well some sort of cut-off is needed, otherwise no one will roleplay it the same, at which point munchkining kicks in. To a certain degree we could say that if a ship takes such a pounding that it is down to say 25% of its full health then special systems just cut out. Somewhat harsh, but at that point your ship is Swiss cheese anyway and you probably should have tried to retreat.

[Covenant]

Well, it still seems sticky. I was, for example, going to make a horde of 2+1 ships. I'm sure other people are going to take a variety of odd vessels as well. The numbers get all funky pretty fast. I think keeping track of individual ship status is pretty complicated and time-intensive unless they're large vessels.

Why don't we just make sure fleets are large, and just realize that the fleet itself is going to degrade according to damage, instead of making the individual ships do it?

[Academia Nut]

That could work, although figuring out losses could be sticky, excepting anything blown up with concentrated sniper fire from O. I suppose losses could just be figured out post battle.

[Covenant]

Well, we can figure losses in-battle just fine, but I mean for the purposes of us wanting to degrade certain ships, that might be hard. We might just need to accept the conclusion that ships are going to be hard to enforce degradation on.

I'd love to do it if we could make, like, an interactive spreadsheet thing that did it for us--but that's basically a videogame and not a STGOD. I'd prefer to play a videogame than a STGOD, but we gotta work with what we got. ;D

[Darkevilme]

I suppose what we could do is have long range sensors on planets have their range in days, while ships have a range of hours. So the standard nets will spot foreign traffic a day out and thus have to deploy intrepid scouts really close to the enemy formations to get a good read on them if they have any significant form of active defences up and running. This would give enough time for most nations to mobilize in the face of an attack.

If the sensor net is measured in FTL days then the defenders can be very very ready by the time the attackers arrive, and in a galaxy like this they'll start getting ready when a large unidentified FTL signature appears heading straight for them as it's stupid not to. Also if the playing space is already two weeks across then this means you're peeking over your neighbours fence with your early warning net. They'll also if they're really paranoid, or more likely metagaming, call for reinforcements when they spot the unknown contact which means the reinforcements are most of their way there or indeed there by the time the attackers arrive.

It should be possible to have a mid length battle before the reinforcements arrive, however long a mid length one is, enough time to defeat a fraction of the enemy fleet.

So if we're going to have FTL take hours, and combat take a smaller number of hours the early warning networks should work on a similar timescale or attacking will only be done with full fleet weight or an alliance.

[Tanasinn]

I've noticed that earlier posts classify EW ships with defensive upgrades in general. This seems a bit odd to me: things like weapons and communication jammers wouldn't necessarily be limited to defending only the gear carrier, unlike heavy shields/armor and (arguably) point-defense.

[consequences]

And once again, I invite consequences to, if he has the time, engage in a pre-game battle where we can do some play testing and see how things work. I have probably one of the more unhomogenous fleets out there, with all forms of special represented in one form or another.

Sorry, I haven't been keeping up as well as I should lately. I'm still up for that, it just may take some time to hammer out.