STGOD 2k8 Planning thread

[Academia Nut]

I figure the best way is to establish the pieces and then play it out publicly with all the numbers on display so we can bug-hunt the math. We can keep the RP to simple tactics at first and then hammer out a deeper story-line later if you don't have time for stirring (or rather in your case, psychotic) speeches. Since this will all be pregame and won't affect the final OOB, we both get a chance to screw up and not pay for it later.

[A-Wing_Slash]

I don't mean to be a whiner, but are we ever going to play this game? We've spent well over a month trying to hammer out rules, and though we're knee deep in numbers, formulae, and minutia, we don't seem any closer to a finalized set of rules. We know have three, count 'em three different pools of points, an unspecified numberof racial attributes, an unspecified number of points we can spend in those three pools, a complex and unfinished ground combat system, and a highly formulized and convoluted space combat system.

I don't mean to be a dick, but at this pace we're not going to get this game off the ground for quite a while yet. I'll play, regardless of when we start, but it seems pretty clear that the interest we had a month ago has dwindled as we've devled deeper and deeper into rules discussions. It would be one thing if these new rules were the pinnacle of STGODing, but they just seem to have nothing more than added complexity. Were previous rulesets really that fundementally bad?

In response to the ship to ship rules being developed:

1) We need to make sure not to overpower the specials, and +O in particular. In my mind, a 1v1 between a 50pt and a 40+10O should result in the balanced ship winning every time. The true strength of specialized ships should be in large fleet battles, where the specialized ships function in a supporting role, in O's case by adding extra firepower while the balanced ships take the brunt of the enemies fire.

2) Ship degradation is easy. Say I do 10pts of damage a turn. If I hit a 10pt ship, its destroyed outright. If I hit a 20pt ship, then until that ship can reach a drydock, it counts as a 10pt ship. Special points get eliminated first.

[Adrian Laguna]

I'll echo that. While rules are nice, I think it has gotten out of hand. This is an STGOD not Space Empires. I like detail and realism, I also like being able to just engage in story telling. We should have a few hard and fast rules, a couple of systems for comparing things, and let everything else be abstracted. It doesn't need to be exact we players are capable of making judgment calls, and if our judgments differ we call the mods. Editing posts is possible in this forum, so if a fuck-up happens it would not be set in stone.

[Covenant]

I agree.

I too wonder if we're ever gonna get off the ground, but the rule debate mirrors a future debate we'd have been having anyway. Without the rules, the different interpertations of C3 or Hyperspace mods or +defense modifiers would have come up Mid-Battle when people's conceptions of how these things work grinds against some else's.

If Nut and I had not had this discussion now, we may have turned the game into a massive flamewar as we argue about the differing ideas for ground invasion during the ground invasion in question. I think everyone would agree that getting these things figured out BEFORE they come up is better than trying to argue about them when we have an even less objective POV.

Ideally, none of these rules are set in stone, and only used by the mods to provide a rough estimation of how the combat should go. Players shouldn't even really concern themselves much with the rules. When the two fleets meet up, everyone would know basically how much damage should be done, but those are merely guidelines, and the actual damage would be a value agreed on by the players. If the values they agree on completely ignore any and all sense the rules provide, then the rules take a backseat to player intent.

Afterall, the rules should only be there when people aren't playing nice, to act as an impartial arbiter of the dispute. If people agree to damage values and ship losses that both parties find equitable enough then we won't need rules.

It's just that people have, in the past, behaved somewhat poorly abused the freeform nature of the game to make it unbalanced (ansibles) or used different RP conventions to different ends (the debates about what happened when Neph's forces flew to Terra space last game) and it ends up being blah.

Anyway, yeah, the enthusiasm is dulled. Maybe the rules themselves will benefit the next game, as devising a new game with a good, concise, easy-to-interpert ruleset will remove ALL the setup that normally comes with these and turn it into a quick session of OOB writing and right to gameplay.

[Spyder]

Fuck it, let's just start the game.

[Academia Nut]

To a degree, I agree with Spyder. Let's say 2000 ship points (+175 if you promise to be an aggressor and the mods feel you will live up to that promise), 100 planet points, and 500 attribute points so we can finish construction on our OOBs and we can nitpick whatever things people come up with while we finalize everything else. We're really close as it is, and I think there's enough chomping on the bit that people are going to start losing interest if we don't go within a couple of days.

If we have, say two days to post our OOBs before the main game thread kicks in, then we can get space combat finalized. The first couple of days of main game play can be scheming as everyone figures out the disposition of everyone else. Incidentally, if someone would like to start drawing up a map so a mod can start semi-randomly distributing the players that would be nice.

Also, because it has and will cause fights, how's about no Improved Ground Combat? As a nation that has ground combat pretty central to my ideas, I'm willing to sacrifice that attribute and just say that we bring an overwhelming concentration of firepower to the party.

[A-Wing_Slash]

To a degree, I agree with Spyder. Let's say 2000 ship points (+175 if you promise to be an aggressor and the mods feel you will live up to that promise), 100 planet points, and 500 attribute points so we can finish construction on our OOBs and we can nitpick whatever things people come up with while we finalize everything else.

A quick point: The few OOBs that have already been writen have been for 1500pts. We did 1500pts last time as well, and with an unupgraded max of 50pts/ship I think that 1500pts would be a better number.

Also, with the current 10pts/planet max, as I understand it, each player will be able to have 10 full on fortress worlds. I think it would be better to only have 50pts for planets, so that we don't make our holdings too expansive. I don't want to have to even think up names for a whole ten planets, much less, carefully pore over a map of just the oher guy's territory each time I go on the offense. How many planets do we need? 50pts, now that I think about it, might actually still be too many, but at some point the number just doesn't matter. Whatever other people decide.

Is there a list somewhere for what I can spend racial points on? I think it was shipyards, improved logistics, and maybe a few more? They should be expensive enough so that people can't go overboard with them.

Lastly, where would I by an early warning network, and how much should I expect it to cost?

[Crossroads Inc.]

sorry i have to disagree. AN extra 500 points means we have that many more ships to screw around with. With few ships we are all more reluctant to actually DO stuff. With a surpless we can screw around, get ships blown up,m and it wiotn matter as much. Again, more points = more carnage. and THAT is what a STGOD is all abouyt.

[Hawkwings]

Or we could start everyone off with more ships than they could maintain, so you'd have to fight in order to get more production.

[Beowulf]

The more planets, the better it will be, because losing one will make less of a difference, thereby encouraging offense. Similarly, large number of ships is better, because it losing a small fleet isn't as buttfucking as it is with a smaller number of ships.

If you can't come up with 10 planet names, you probably don't have the imagination to play a STGOD.

[Adrian Laguna]

If you can't come up with 10 planet names, you probably don't have the imagination to play a STGOD.

Some people suck really bad at names. I can come-up with all sorts of crazy shit, except names. However, you can very easily just crib from already existing places.

[A-Wing_Slash]

If you can't come up with 10 planet names, you probably don't have the imagination to play a STGOD.

Fair enough. But under a 100pt system, nobody is going to have more than ten planets, and all ten are going to be maxed out. Not only is this unrealistic to have every planet have equal strength, but it will enforce a uniformity to our planets.

It also takes some strategic depth out of the system. Whereas under a 50pt, or 60pt as Acedamia Nut suggested earlier, you have to make a concious decision between a small number of fortress worlds and a larger number of less well defended worlds, with 100pts you can easily have both numbers and strength. You also wouldn't have to make decisions between defending your core worlds and your outer colonies, because by points values everything is just as valuable.

Moreover, while a larger number will make people more willing to risk their planets, large numbers of fortress worlds will restrict attacks. If you have to have 1000 pts of ships to overcome a planets defenses, even after you defeat the enemy fleet, even with 2000pts of ships that is not going to be an action you take lightly, and it will take quite a long while to hit ten planets so defended. It will require a large alliance to dismember a single player, and we all know what happens when large alliance blocks form.

If people have a few 3, 4, or 5 point planets, then you can whittle down their industrial strength with much smaller task forces. People will be much more willing to attack because they know they can defeat another player, and get noticable industrial gains, without having to call in all their friends.

With so many planetary defenses we run the risk of having one persons fleet defeat another's, without enough ships left over to actually conquer the defeated's planets. We'll either see third parties swoop in to pick up the spoils of war, or more likely see people unwilling to commit to decisive battle without truly overwhelming numerical superiority.

Ideally, we want people to be able to have some chance of defeating another player with no more than one ally. We do not want to force people into recreating the alliance blocks that ruined the last game.

[Academia Nut]

There's a simple fix for all this: say that every star system can support something like 25pts of worlds, with a max number of worlds of a certain size in each, and there is a minimum separation between worlds of certain sizes, say 1 hour's standard travel per point for any world over 5pts or something like that. So if you have ten 10pts the densest you can have is a regular nonagon with side lengths of ten hours. That will be a bitch to defend if you have clever opponents. Much more effective would be to have a bunch of small worlds in the same system, but that means that you can't have a bunch of fortresses.

[Beowulf]

Another simple fix is having max points per world type. Say, no more than 30% of points can be in any given world type.

[Academia Nut]

Good idea. A combination of max points per system, max amount of distribution, and some sort of minimum distance between the largest worlds would make sure no one gets a bunch of fortress worlds tightly clustered together.

[Covenant]

What rules are we gonna run with? I'm working on putting them up into the SDN wiki so that they can be referenced easily and cleanly and hotlinked. Having to save a place in-thread is a bit annoying. Plus, it'll make it waaay clearer, and easier to read.

And it'll help us generalize them for an FTGOD or a CTGOD (Cthulhu!) or a ZTGOD (Zombies!) or a QTGOD (Cuties!).

[Darkevilme]

Hmm, gonna have to rewrite my OOB as the Chamaran's being slightly further ahead on their conquest plans then so they have more than one system. I now need four systems correct?

[Covenant]

TGOD wiki entry.

Feel free to add info and clean up some stuff. I'd ask that people not debate the rules and such on there, but keep it here, and use the discussion page there for people to talk about layout and such. Right now I'm just plopping in the stuff we have already talked about and not very far along.

Hopefully we can still use these rules for the upcoming STGOD, but I feel the most important section of the wiki entry I've started is the emphasis put on avoiding the use of mechanics. They're great for the Moderators to use to give a 'rough approximiation' of what could happen, but ideally they'll never be required for play. I know, however, that they're solid for helping people get an idea at least for how their ships work and how to size up an enemy. That's what they should really be for. Threat assessment.

[Crossroads Inc.]

so.... 1500pts or 2000pts?

[Academia Nut]

I can go either 1500 points or 2000, although I would prefer 2000 because that has more boom to it. True, it make attacking harder because there are more defenders, but it also reduces the chances of being ganked when I do attack. For those thinking of more defensive roles, just reverse my logic.

[Beowulf]

I prefer 2000 because it makes the game a bit more epic, and also makes losses less noteworthy, thereby encouraging attacking. I think first strike attackers should get +200, simply because it makes for a rounder number.

[Covenant]

I like round numbers.

So to repeat myself a tad, are we using the ruleset we've come up with so far, sans ground combat, which is still divisive? And like I've said a zillion times, just use it for ballparking and not enforcement? Check the wiki link I posted above.

Oh, and here's a wierd idea. What if losses were 20% per turn (and 10% during an escape) leading to a two-turn loss value of 50%ish... and if sniper damage did acutally a lower amount: 10%?

It'd make the insanely useful ability to plink a target less overpowered. You'd do less with sniper than normal stuff, but you'd also have a higher kill ratio. Seem more fair? Defense would provide .25 soak and not touch Offense, as usual.

[Academia Nut]

That sounds fair I would think, no objections to that really. It also prevents the swarm of 1+1O with some bruisers to soak damage from being a cheap tactic.

So 2000 points to start, 100 points for worlds, and +200 if you're an aggressor? I can have my OOB complete (other than nitpick revisions and the final fluff) within an hour then.

[Tanasinn]

Are we going to post a finalized list of ship options, or is it going to be a bit open-ended like the last game?

[Academia Nut]

The ship options are all on the Wiki and work pretty much the way they sound. Throw in a seige option too, which again works pretty much the way it sounds (x5 vs planets, 0 against ships) as there has been no opposition to the mechanic.