STGOD 2k8 Planning thread

Dark Hellion · Post by **Dark Hellion** » 2008-01-19 06:03pm

I am still in this, and I have a ton of fluff to add, but I am very time crunched, so I might end up info dumping the hell outta a few posts, then being quiet for a while. I hope no one minds. I am gonna try to put up my points, expand my dramatis persona (I believe I have around 30 characters now) and expand my history and technology. Hopefully I'll get this bit done this weekend, then I can get into familial histories, feuds, the interworkings of the nobility, the relationship to the old empire, and many of my other notes. If any Imperial Territories want to discuss our diplomatic relationships, or any barbarian groups want to discuss our past conflicts just PM me.

Academia Nut · Post by **Academia Nut** » 2008-01-19 11:07pm

Does that count as shit stirred in the main game thread?

Oh, and Thirdfain, your OOB still shows you with 1500 points of ships, you should have 2000.

Thirdfain · Post by **Thirdfain** » 2008-01-20 12:06am

Yeah, Academia, I haven't gotten around to finishing Racials yet... I'll see if I can't finish it off tonight.

Academia Nut · Post by **Academia Nut** » 2008-01-20 12:09am

I figured a boot to the ass THAT big would encourage everyone currently in this to finish up the planning pretty quickly and get to the explosions and the dying and the maiming and the "Not in the face! Not in the face!"

Feel free to send an appropriate response, we can glare at one another in deep space until the game starts if necessary. Not like pre-game stopped you from capturing a small task force last time.

Thirdfain · Post by **Thirdfain** » 2008-01-20 12:11am

Hey, I've got a raging hard-on for early game violence. You can quote me on that.

Academia Nut · Post by **Academia Nut** » 2008-01-20 12:17am

Thirdfain wrote:Hey, I've got a raging hard-on for early game violence. You can quote me on that.

Okay.

Less cheekily, I think that things will pretty violent pretty quick so long as this game doesn't die a slow, lingering death. Ironically, the only one more violent than me, consequences seems to be the only one still playing who hasn't found a rumba partner yet. I'm sure his psychopaths will find someone to sink their teeth into though. The rest of the galaxy seems ready to blow.

Crossroads Inc. · Post by **Crossroads Inc.** » 2008-01-20 12:19am

I

Acanut~!

Academia Nut · Post by **Academia Nut** » 2008-01-20 12:41am

After picking up the Volkerball CD/DVD pack today (finally!) there was no way I was going to not finally start rocking out.

The Immigrant Song is of course reserved for when the invasion actually begins, Feuer Frei when we first bombard a planet, the March of Mephisto (by Kamelot) for when troops begin landing, and this little ditty whenever it looks cool enough.

Thirdfain · Post by **Thirdfain** » 2008-01-20 01:11am

I counter your clever usage of modern music with far and away the most hideous national color scheme ever. Navy blue and fuscia? What were they thinking?

Academia Nut · Post by **Academia Nut** » 2008-01-20 02:22am

Hawkwings, the map you're using is a little out of date. Here's the most up to date one.

Hawkwings · Post by **Hawkwings** » 2008-01-20 02:24am

Noted and fixed. Thanks to both of you for pointing this out

Darkevilme · Post by **Darkevilme** » 2008-01-20 07:31am

What we need is for a mod to come in and declare this week 1 so that.
1. Kushwani can deliver their emmissary to Makay.
2. Achea or BETAC can launch their first attack on Makay.
3. Metal barbarians and workers unions run amock can lock horns.

Academia Nut · Post by **Academia Nut** » 2008-01-20 11:18am

D'oh! Sorry Thirdfain, I just realized that I forgot to declare the class of the Nyl Maymin! You probably took a look at my OOB and saw that there were only three possibilities, right? Because I only have three classes with interdiction technology: the Cacofonix, the Rammstein, and the Megadeth. Obviously its not a Megadeth because I would have said that outright because its such a huge ship. Thus its either a Cacofonix or a Rammstein, and the description certainly fits the Cacofonix better. Which it is. So currently your ships are running from two Dragons and a Cacofonix.

That means I have D equal to your entire ship weight present (10+2+2) and enough firepower to destroy every last one of your ships in a single turn. And since you were dumped out into an interdiction field, you're stuck for at least two turns. So I'll leave it up to a mod to know whether or not you can get a message out. I'll also wait for a mod to declare it open season before I hull your ships.

Oh, and sure, you can invest in Indy Ruckers. I'm sure we've captured some Syndicalists in the past. Hell, branches of them probably serve aboard the Cacofonix class ships where the Konige let their more annoying warbands serve. They're not going to be able to affect this situation however.

Thirdfain · Post by **Thirdfain** » 2008-01-20 12:19pm

Actually, it's only 6+2 you've caught; the other two frigates of the squadron dropped from FTL at range, on purpose- if you'd been further away, the third frigate would have done the same. The Patrol has dealt with the Konig before and has a rough idea as to it's capabilities.

Also, my fleet is running in realspace, not at FTL, and is running immediately. Since my largest ship is half the size of your smallest, it should be able to pull much better acceleration.

Hawkwings · Post by **Hawkwings** » 2008-01-20 12:42pm

By the beta rules we have so far, that 45 points of base weight does 9 damage per turn, capable of wiping out the ships that are caught.

For the two ships that were pulled out of hyperspace and are now running, I think the barbarians should get a turn of shooting at, since they were pulled out. Unless, of course, the frigates started running as soon as they saw the Konige fleet that was talking instead of fighting. If they both were stopped and talking, free shot seems appropriate. The frigate that dropped out could run away at STL or FTL safely in either case.

Thirdfain · Post by **Thirdfain** » 2008-01-20 01:23pm

Allow me to post an illustration.

As the Patrol advanced it left a "lifeline." After all, they could detect the fact that there was a huge EW field, and knew that the same force which was making tracking impossible would make conventional communications difficult. The other two pickets did not get caught in the interdiction field; they are not in any position to affect any combat which would develop either.

The "lifeline" is essentially a string of beacons; close enough that a simple, brief, tightbeam message with most of the ship's weapons power behind it can teach the nearest picket, which can then punch a message to the ship furthest back, which is in a position to relay the transmission back home.

Post by **Beowulf** » 2008-01-20 02:49pm

Darkevilme wrote:What we need is for a mod to come in and declare this week 1 so that.
1. Kushwani can deliver their emmissary to Makay.
2. Achea or BETAC can launch their first attack on Makay.
3. Metal barbarians and workers unions run amock can lock horns.

Since it appears that I'm the only one nominated to be moderator who's still paying attention: Let the game begin!

Academia Nut · Post by **Academia Nut** » 2008-01-20 05:02pm

So yeah, if the Syndicalist ships are doing nothing but fleeing, and they dropped some of their ships behind them in order to form a life line, I'm going to shoot to disable and then board the ships. My intelligence agents will want data. And unless Thirdfain has some stealthed ships I'm not aware of, I can take my time too as I have a good three hour warning against any newcomers with the sensors on my ships. Can I just say that I take out the Syndicalist ships in my post? Also, exactly how many ships do you have on site at the moment Thirdfain?

I'll leave it up to you Beowulf to decide whether or not the message gets through.

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2008-01-20 05:45pm

Beowulf wrote:
Darkevilme wrote:What we need is for a mod to come in and declare this week 1 so that.
1. Kushwani can deliver their emmissary to Makay.
2. Achea or BETAC can launch their first attack on Makay.
3. Metal barbarians and workers unions run amock can lock horns.
Since it appears that I'm the only one nominated to be moderator who's still paying attention: Let the game begin!

Well, we needed a vote or something. As nothing has happened yet, I had no reason to lower the signal to noise ratio just by posting. I'm around--did anyone want to do anything? Someone COULD just PM me ya' know.

Post by **Beowulf** » 2008-01-20 05:55pm

I'm still trying to get the actual ship values straight, since the OOBs disagree with the post, which is fine for now, since Thirdfain still hasn't updated his OOB with the correct number of points. He needs to do that ASAP though.

It looks like the fleet compositions at the current contact point are the following:

Syndicalist:
2 Inestimable frigates
1 Inimical Fleet Picket
<14 pt?

Rucker:
2 Dragon
1 Cacofonix
45 + 14D + 6O + xX pt

That should be enough to just take out the Syndicalist ships in your post, however, you're still going to have to do it with style.

I'll let the message get through, however. It's a sensible explanation, and he did set it up.

--

Unrelated to the above, a note on hyperdrive and interdictor interaction: more +I ships give a larger interdiction field, more +I on a ship gives a "deeper" interdiction field. I doesn't really stack, unlike some other ship bonuses, by which I mean, fleet totals don't matter.

Academia Nut · Post by **Academia Nut** » 2008-01-20 08:14pm

Very well then, although I await to see what exactly message of importance other than "There's a shit-ton of Konige warships out here!" he could get off. We're definitely going to have to be a bit more careful with our information flow though since I think I should have theoretically been able to see how he was setting them up, but I won't quibble the point. Why hell, I might have wanted him to get a message out.

Since the rules are fuzzy (as in we discussed them like a month ago but they were never properly formalized), do we want to finish off the range of C3 now? I think getting 1 hour's travel time FTL (for regular speed ships) detection radius for each point of C3 seems fair, and if we want to make it more complicated we can have the strength drop off by 1 for each hour. So, for example, my Dragons can see out 3 hours around them, with three concentric rings of 0-1 hour having the full 3, 1-2 having only 2C3, and 2-3 hours away only having 1C3 equivalent strength of sensors.

We can increase the range for planets if we want (I in fact support at least tripling the range of planetary sensors and deep space listening posts), considering unless Thirdfain invests attribute points in a monitoring net this would put my fleets an hour out from his nearest system, in which case I would see him scrambling a bigger reponse than a simple patrol.

Now for tour security to teach these guys why trying to crash a jamm session without backstage passes is both impolite and a bad idea.

Academia Nut · Post by **Academia Nut** » 2008-01-20 11:27pm

A note should be made, because of Improved Salvage I should be able to add .9 extra points on next turn's production for the 9 points of ships destroyed today. Should the quick reference thread be used to track battle outcomes and such, or some other thread?

Hawkwings · Post by **Hawkwings** » 2008-01-20 11:34pm

That's rather bold of you, seeing as how there are no rules for improved salvage yet

I'm going to be editing the wiki in the next few minutes, filling in as much info as I can. Notably, combat stuff and descriptions of racial bonuses.

Anyone have any idea what "Improved Logistics" should do?

Thirdfain · Post by **Thirdfain** » 2008-01-20 11:39pm

I object pretty heavily to your boarders capturing entire bridge crews in a matter of seconds. After all, the bridges in warships would be at the deepest, most armoured parts of the ship, the hardest to reach, and they had only 8 seconds. Come on.

Academia Nut · Post by **Academia Nut** » 2008-01-20 11:44pm

Improved Logistics is meant to increase repair speeds of ships, and if its high enough you can do major repairs without having to return to base or even drydock. It would represent everything from a truly stupendous supply chain to regenerative naninte swarms capable of bringing a nearly hulled ship back to full fighting form. It might also have some effect on ground combat, but we won't get into that now.

As for Improved Salvage, well with regular salvage you get 5% of every destroyed ship's (friend and foe alike) total cost added to your next turn's production after a battle where you end with control of the debris field region. Improved Salvage simply increases how much you can recover, with every 20 points spent getting you an extra 1% (ie 100 points spent on it doubles the amount you can salvage).

And my Valkyries did not have 8 seconds, they had a good 20 to 30 seconds between the end of the bombardment and the first shuttle attaching to teleport in and out of your bridges. I object to the fact that you think that my guys wouldn't notice nuclear weapons with their sensors and not blown them away before deploying boarding parties, but I decided to just roll with it. If a mod wants, I'll change it, but its all just fluff anyway because they can't do that in combat, only to a disabled ship with its engine shut down.