SDNWorld 3.0 Poll - Third time's the charm?

[Norseman]

The historical era you're putting it in makes the whole "Argument over 'can technology X do Y'" thing disappear overnight, certainly.

Yes! Good lord yes! And the 1850s-1870s is a great starting point since there were tons of whacky new ships and weapons coming out just then. Also no chance of wrecking the entire world.

[Shroom Man 777]

I say when the game is over, instead of going for Version 3, we can go start writing stories about SDN World (1 and 2, combined!) in Fanfics.



The Further Adventures of Prime Minister Shroom!

[Steve]

No to a complete restart, no to the fucking 19th Century as a start point, and absolutely fucking no to getting rid of Imperiums and Duchies.

I would rather have Q smack Shep a bit and reset our timeline from the point of the initial bomber strike on Lonestar's CVs by having all his bombers suddenly fail to get off the runways due to widespread equipment failures, if their peace talks go nowhere.

[Steve]

To further elaborate, since this is the first thread I visited upon waking up and now I've caught up with everything that has happened.

A restart is not necessary yet. If it becomes so, I propose that we stay with a modern day setting. If there are no nuclear weapons, it might work better if it's because some were used in a war in the 40s or 50s and the world decided to outlaw them: unofficially, a number of big powers may keep secret stockpiles for "contingencies", but they'd never be used and Q would make sure of that. We go to a full Earth-sized planet, if not just using a modification of Earth itself (though for sake of fun we could make it different enough to permit alternative sources of various key resources), assigning NPCs as necessary. The points system becomes mandated this time, but is overhauled and is also no longer subjected to hard caps per national power level. Instead of a Tsardom only getting 1500 points period, they'd get a point level determined by the percentage of their GDP spent on the military (And the higher that is, the worse shape your country is in economically, I needn't remind you).

We do not get rid of Duchies, but we do give all the rankings a little power boost. Instead of a system where each level is half the higher one (until Principality and Duchy skew it a bit where they were beefed up this time), we raise 'em a bit. To use the GDPs as an example, an Imperium gets five trillion, a Tsardom three and a half, a Kingdom two trillion, a Principality one to one point two trillion, a Duchy seven hundred billion. Population would then be adjusted accordingly (of course, the population limits last time would've had Kingdoms at max 1st World population limit with $41,333 per capita, about $8,000 more than France).

Note that these are just suggestions if a restart becomes necessary. Again I'd prefer just turning the clock back to Shep escalating things and have him hold off the bombers. He did state some time ago that he was years away from being ready for a confrontation, and it hasn't been years in-game yet.

[Setzer]

If a restart is necessary, I say we move it further back in time, to the Medieval or Classical eras. Get rid of the techno thriller angle once and for all.

[Czechmate]

Who has the power to delete this gatecrashed abortion of a thread? Certain dumbfuck Old Boy players have decided they'd rather crash it than consider it.

[Shroom Man 777]

As much as I love wigs (:P), I think a Classical or Medieval SDN World STGOD wouldn't work. What would we do? Trade hoes and seeds and root crops? Die of plague? War with horses and shit?

Our choices for dickeries and adventures would be meh. I like it better this way, with me being able to sell Degenatrons, vodka, stratellites, F-16s, and whores.

We'd have whores in the Medieval Era too, but they would have the Black Death - so, no thanks!


How's about we finish that whole FUN celebration thing and have Shroom totally hit on Lady Anethga?

[Sea Skimmer]

Who has the power to delete this gatecrashed abortion of a thread? Certain dumbfuck Old Boy players have decided they'd rather crash it than consider it.

Who the do you think you’re trying to impress exactly by acting like a retarded attention whore?

[Shroom Man 777]

What is he talking about, anyway?

[Setzer]

As much as I love wigs (:P), I think a Classical or Medieval SDN World STGOD wouldn't work. What would we do? Trade hoes and seeds and root crops? Die of plague? War with horses and shit?

I was thinking something more like the Diadochoi. We'd all be despots that had divided a once larger kingdom amongst ourselves.

There's all sorts of shit we could do. One that comes to mind is seeing if a decently supported Macedonian type army could beat a Roman type army.

Also. they traded all sorts of shit in the Ancient Mediterraenean. You could be like Carthage, or one of the Italian cities.

Our choices for dickeries and adventures would be meh. I like it better this way, with me being able to sell Degenatrons, vodka, stratellites, F-16s, and whores.We'd have whores in the Medieval Era too, but they would have the Black Death - so, no thanks!

I don't think the Black Death was an STD. And I disagree about the dickery thing. We could have wars over vassal states, like the Romans and Persians fighting over Armenia.

How's about we finish that whole FUN celebration thing and have Shroom totally hit on Lady Anethga?

Yeah, I can do that. I was postponing it until the war was over.

[Steve]

He's whining because instead of everyone supporting him, they either want to keep with the current game or make any new one keep stuff he doesn't want. He wants to get rid of the Duchy level so he can be a Principality, and thus more powerful, and if Imperiums are done away with and Tsardoms are the top rank it effectively makes him more powerful in the world.

And before he protests this, he's already griped in the IRC chats about being a Duchy and how Duchies suck and shouldn't be in the game. Those who've been in those chats may remember this.

Also, apparently I'm one of the "dumbfuck Old Boy players" despite this being my first STGOD and my nation being a mere Kingdom.

Also, for those griping about the points system and pointing at Skimmer, Skimmer didn't use the points. Nor did Shep IIRC. They built their militaries the hard way by considering the budgets. That, frankly, is something that would need to be changed in any future game. The points system must be mandatory or not exist at all.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

DUCKIE banned him from the IRC chat we run, too, he's so damned whiny. Not me, not Phong, but DUCKIE, our eighteen year old personification of cute and friendliness, because all he can do is whine like a manbitch no matter where he is.

[Czechmate]

Oh, yes. How DARE I offer an alternative to the clusterfuck of one-upmanship and rules-lawyer bullshit that has overtaken the game, intended to prevent a repeat of the last two miserable endings.

How DARE I actually try to smoothe out the game's imbalance issues by suggesting both Imperium AND Duchy be removed, to smooth out the bell curve and create more of a MAD situation to prevent stupid shit like what we're experiencing.

I welcome a better suggestion, o high-and-mighties. And Marina? Perhaps you could moderate between the involved parties and assure a satisfactory conclusion to the game's current issues? Or is that out of the purview of the game's moderator?

[Steve]

You mean an alternative that gets you what you want, increasing your in-game power from both ends?

I don't see Raj, Siegetank, Karmic, etc. complaining about being weaker polities. That's because they're willing to see it as a challenge to be played well. You, OTOH, have done nothing but gripe about your imposed power limit, and in-game the only thing you've done was set up a convenient NPC strawman that you could have attack you, justifying your enormous military expense, then try to get into MESS. After that failed you decided that you were a former Tian Xia colony and your actual name was Tian Jiao instead of Westchester and made yourself Beo's SAR province, a convenient outcome given your attempts to get into MESS.

Yes, the system needs fixing. But not that way.

My proposal would actually make you more powerful, it would pretty much make you the equivalent of a current Principality, and it wouldn't increase the power of the Imperiums - it only bumps up the other ranks and smooths the curve further. Which is what is needed, not cutting down the potential country sizes even further.

As for MESS, well, I like the MESS guys, but it really is unbalancing. It might work better in-game if the MESS is more of an economic alliance and not a NATO-esque military alliance.

Nor do I begrude Shep his carefully planned strategy. My only concern is that it's a bit unfair to expect players to either equal his research capabilities for miltech arcana or to have it assumed that their militaries would simply have copies of RL ones without regard for the planning and security issues that determines what RL ships are armed with. I'd rather amend the point system a bit, perhaps, to permit people to alter the point costs of ships to permit having, say, a Nimitz-like CVN but with advanced hedgehog close-range ATORP/ASW equipment. A player can then decide on his likely threats and if a certain system is necessary given what he's using his military for and the likely threats.

[DarthShady]

NO.

Just no. Forcibly stop the war in SDNW 2. That's it.

What he said.

[Beowulf]

Not time yet, I think.

[Raj Ahten]

Mk 2 isn't dead yet and I refuse to start a new game when the old one still has signs of life.

[Coyote]

It can still be worked out. There's just some old bumps in the road that never got completely worked out before we went to press, so to speak.

[Shroom Man 777]

I say before war breaks out, both parties should really talk to one another and decide on the outcomes - to prevent any bitchfests and stuff.

On that note, CONTINUE THE GAME!

Your injured MESS soldiers will be receiving their mannequin legs soon, btw.

EDIT:

And we'll make an absolute killing in reconstruction contracts!

[Master_Baerne]

<snip>

Sirrah, I strongly recommend that a certain degree of ration and prudence be utilized - starting with paying attention the points raised by others instead of lashing out in blind frustration that they weren't the same points you raised, continuing with not frustrating Her Grace the Duchess, who runs the world, and finishing with a moratorium on posts until you've had time to calm down.

[TimothyC]

I must agree that the MESS is a very unbalancing force - even IF they don't go about Shep/Skim dickeries.

I mean, look at them! A coalition of Tsardom+ nations who've banded up together so they all share the same continent without any opposition: MESSamerica.

I'm on the land mass, and I'm not a member of the MESS, so they need to remember that if they do to much, I can do some serious damage before I die.

[phongn]

Cascadia and Alaska are relatively small powers, though, and while the IRT is a pretty big one, it's only one Imperium.

[CDiehl]

I have a suggestion concerning those players who'd end up running Duchies. It's based on a suggestion someone else made early in this thread, that Duchies would effectively be colonies of more powerful countries.

My suggestion is that, if a third SDNWorld game starts eventually, perhaps Duchies could have the option of being part of a larger country, with the players playing them acting as important people within the larger government and as advocates for their home regions. They could be powerful nobles, members of the legislature representing said regions, governors of said regions, high-ranking military commanders. If not affiliated with the government, they could be powerful members of the clergy, famous scientists, celebrities, or even terrorists or leaders of political movements based in that particular Duchy.

Duchies could start out as parts of more powerful countries and try to gain their independence, with their players becoming leaders of those newly-established countries. Also, several independent Duchies could be placed in one area, and one or more of them is trying to unify them into a larger country.

If Duchies are eliminated, perhaps players who would otherwise have been rulers of them could instead play as important figures in larger countries. This would allow the work of playing the events of those countries to be spread out among multiple people. In this case, the number of lower-echelon players in a country could be based on the size of the country. For example, a Kingodm can have 1, a Tsardom could have 3 and an Imperium could have 5.