SD.Net World Redux Comment Thread X

[Steve]

I don't like the idea of eliminating player freedoms to make up their own stuff. I like using the real world as the basis but then we can mess with it as we see fit.

[Bluewolf]

I would not mind that idea either to be honest. Given that we were inserting real world country maps in anyway, we might as well take a real world, mess with it, cut it up etc until it looks like something we want.

Also Wikens, I did not mean to blame. I was just giving an example. I hope that makes sense.

[Siege]

Hmm...but the early 20th Century the "tech gap" was such that even a "smallish" country could afford to play a role on the world stage, if only through the possession of a handful of BBs.

(Hell Belgium took over the entire Congo watershed)

A fair point, even though more accurately King Leopold was handed the Congo by Bismarck et al... Moreover if I'm on Frequesue that probably means I'm the Congo, not Belgium .

Seriously though for all its faults I've grown kinda fond of our little old world and all its sillyness, but I still feel we can do better. It's utterly pointless to blame anyone for any shortcomings in the current game; it's already a marked improvement in terms of realism over the first incarnation, and after what happened in SDNW #1 I can understand why MESS nations would want to stick together on a single continent. If I were a member I'd've probably gone for the same sort of setup.

Personally I'm not sure if going for the real world map is the answer to all our woes, imaged or not (the planet might be too big, leaving too many NPCs, depending on how we divide the map) but it sure sounds like it would be interesting. Honestly I think we've kind of exhausted the storytelling possibilities of the current world. How many times can we crow 'MESS/CATO antagonism!' before it gets stale? No-one can wage a proper war because any war means Operation: Instant Sunrise, meaning the rhetoric gets real old real fast.

Meanwhile in 1935 we can march our inept armies across the border and use our newfangled tanks wholly improperly, or accuse each other of appeasement whilst the Eternal Enemy annexes the Sudetenland. We can have dive-bombers with sirens on 'em, we can have Bands of Brothers, Napkinwaffe and, in a few years, rocket interceptors. That sounds pretty sweet to me...

[Bluewolf]

Personally I'm not sure if going for the real world map is the answer to all our woes, imaged or not (the planet might be too big, leaving too many NPCs, depending on how we divide the map) but it sure sounds like it would be interesting. Honestly I think we've kind of exhausted the storytelling possibilities of the current world. How many times can we crow 'MESS/CATO antagonism!' before it gets stale? No-one can wage a proper war because any war means Operation: Instant Sunrise, meaning the rhetoric gets real old real fast.

As said, I would like to cut up all continents, take what we need and modify it and add to it if we need to and then put in on a world map, we can create out own world in a sense and it does not have to be as broken up as SDNW 2 is like. In fact I'd perfer larger continents really and plenty of islands.

[CmdrWilkens]

I would not mind that idea either to be honest. Given that we were inserting real world country maps in anyway, we might as well take a real world, mess with it, cut it up etc until it looks like something we want.

Also Wikens, I did not mean to blame. I was just giving an example. I hope that makes sense.

Makes sense, no worries.



Also Steve the reason I was saying "shake it up" would be to allow for a certain degree of freedom. Say re-writing the last century or so of a real world nation's history to try and get a bit better representation of what one is going for while still retaining much of the available back story that real world history provides. As a for instance say we start in 1890, but then allow for some deviation going back to 1790, this would allow for somebody to claim a Confederate States perhaps with holdings in the Caribbean and Mexico, or maybe allow for a Catholic Bavarian-Austrian nation emerging from the 1860s-1870s while Hungary separates as a Kingdom that continues to influence the hugely fractured Balkans (now with 20% more Ottoman interest). So those are just some thoughts for how we could run things but the basic idea is that if we take a start point we allow folks to change the back story of their nation for perhaps a century or so in to the past.

This should balance individual creativity against the need for a richer historical backdrop against which to work. Moreover it would give us very real political, social, and economic guidelines. We could likely intersperse the sorts of economic conflagrations that occasionally took hold like the Long Depression, the 1907 US and 1893 Austrian banking panics as well as boom times like the 1920s. Anyway I think its better than trying to create the world whole cloth because it is so easy to miss the hundreds of thousands of little interconnected details that fill up the real world and which should exist in any created world.

[Steve]

I understand that concern but it also forbids players from doing anything really unique. Cascadia, for instance, can't really exist in your proposal, not as I'd like it. Shepistan's also blatantly impossible in a world based heavily off history, as is Shroomania.

Now, if we were to, say, use Earth history as well as a basis just like we are Earth, but then making alterations as we require to accommodate unique nations and such, that's different. But simply making this a hard or soft alt-history is too limiting IMHO.

[Master_Baerne]

I happen to agree. Earth History as a cut-to-size basis is an excellent idea; Earth History as a rigid set of rules is not.

[Steve]

That, of course, is just one possibility. Another is that we generally allow ourselves to make history as we desire it and try to set up a more complex, involved background to provide things like national rivalries, progression of wars and tactics, etc.

[K. A. Pital]

For an alternative, I can play a Czarist Russia. Haw-haw-haw.

"Your Highness high Duke blah blah, would you please get down from your high horse and enter that "Emperor Nicholas" class tank!"

[Steve]

For an alternative, I can play a Czarist Russia. Haw-haw-haw.

"Your Highness high Duke blah blah, would you please get down from your high horse and enter that "Emperor Nicholas" class tank!"

Hrm... would that be like asking Shep to play a pacifist monarchy that abhors violence?

[Ryan Thunder]

Also I'm going to echo Siege's concerns. Unassailable MESS superbloc + bad roleplayers with superpower nations = epic pain in the ass.

I'm not sure someone playing as a landlocked country with a good-sized navy should be allowed to accuse others of "bad Roleplaying"

"Good-sized"? Are you functionally retarded?

Anybody, and I mean anybody with a few destroyers could utterly steamroll my navy with little to no opposition from anything besides my two little diesel/electric submarines. Oh and I have a river patrol with cruise missiles. That could hurt, except that they're useless for blue-water ops.

[K. A. Pital]

Hrm... would that be like asking Shep to play a pacifist monarchy that abhors violence?

No, why? So as long as it has some solid Russian history roots, I'm fine with any state.

[CmdrWilkens]

I understand that concern but it also forbids players from doing anything really unique. Cascadia, for instance, can't really exist in your proposal, not as I'd like it. Shepistan's also blatantly impossible in a world based heavily off history, as is Shroomania.

Now, if we were to, say, use Earth history as well as a basis just like we are Earth, but then making alterations as we require to accommodate unique nations and such, that's different. But simply making this a hard or soft alt-history is too limiting IMHO.

100 + years of altered back story can provide a HUGE change in narrative. Honestly I'll go back to my example which was an 1890 start meaning you could edit history back to the 1780-1790s (maybe a bit further as needed). I think just comparing world political maps from those two points shows just how much change a century (particularly the 19th century) can bring about. Cascadia would be almost child's play to bring about in that you could have California settled early due French influence that leads to British settlers moving there in the late 1700s then gold attracting more settlers all of whom disclaim involvement with the US and its craziness over the slavery question so by the 1850s or 60s you would have a functional independent country comprising the entire western US and Canadian coast exporting lumber and mineral wealth while building a nascent industry. Shroomania would be a bit harder to do but you could probably screw around with Italy enough to create a nation resembling his nation AND the constant exodus of natives would lead to an international diaspora that still looks back fondly on the homeland.

Anyway my point is that I think allowing for a century or so (and I'd be flexible on that number) of re-written history gives everybody a combination of leeway to create the nation they want while also giving everyone else a rich background of information with which to interact in the world. I actually think the biggest issue would be the ungodly number of NPCs we would need since Africa, India, and the Americas despite colonization taking hold would have a huge array of proto-states and tribal groups.

[Bluewolf]

As said Wilkens, is there any reason we can't just alter history enough to get rid of a lot of NPC nations, change continent sizes. I mean as said, we don't need the entire world for this game, just bits that are of use to us.

I also don't mind an 1890's game either, I am partial to both.

[Steve]

Hrm... would that be like asking Shep to play a pacifist monarchy that abhors violence?

No, why? So as long as it has some solid Russian history roots, I'm fine with any state.

I was trying to be humorous.

And when it comes to adapting Earth history, while I agree with the desire for a more developed background history, I don't think it should become so constricting as to limit creative freedom for country generation. Ultimately we're not looking for an actual counterfactual history to play in but simply a generated world we can plug our own stuff into and have fun.

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

If we're gonna go back in time for SDN World 3, I'm extremely averse towards starting any earlier than the Spanish Civil War, mainly due to a lack of knowledge of warfighting equipment prior to that time period.

[Steve]

A further note. How number-crunchy and involved do we want to make this? Do we want things like tech trees? Allocation of "Construction Points" or what have you toward improving infrastructure, research capability, enlarging or upgrading the military, etc? An enforced budget to determine how much we can spend on research, diplomacy, espionage, military expansion?

I'm of the opinion that we'd be better off with a bit of number crunching at the beginning, representing OrBat building and the idea of points to determine focus upon the three service types, then a lot of leeway afterward with mod oversight to prevent blatant powergaming. But I'm not adverse to some more structure if it helps the game run smoothly and players are willing to accept it.

[Ryan Thunder]

I'd support that.

[Bluewolf]

I'd be interested in see that done. It sounds like a way to have a much smoother start.

[RogueIce]

A further note. How number-crunchy and involved do we want to make this? Do we want things like tech trees? Allocation of "Construction Points" or what have you toward improving infrastructure, research capability, enlarging or upgrading the military, etc? An enforced budget to determine how much we can spend on research, diplomacy, espionage, military expansion?

I'm of the opinion that we'd be better off with a bit of number crunching at the beginning, representing OrBat building and the idea of points to determine focus upon the three service types, then a lot of leeway afterward with mod oversight to prevent blatant powergaming. But I'm not adverse to some more structure if it helps the game run smoothly and players are willing to accept it.

We could bastardize the SDN Wars ruleset. Most of it is in the setup, but it does provide a guide for things like ship building, budgets, army size, etc. Because it costs points to buy shit, and then points to maintain each year, so there's an eventual limit you'd hit without some method of expansion. It even provides a mechanism for limiting ship building by determining shipyard size, length of build time, etc. (in a way, sort of like SDN World 1 did with the ISCA and DWT).

We'd have to modify it to fit here, but it's a pretty decent base for things.

[Bluewolf]

If we went with the SDN Wars rulset or a hybrid, how about just eliminating the post count system all together and just having a fixed amounnt of points? I don't see a problem with it personally, People would rise and fall due to their own strategy and it does not mean we have to waste time curving our current system.

[Thanas]

As being the one who was largely responsible for writing the current set of rules of SDNWars, I suggest that the point values etc. however be significantly changed. Because otherwise, you would end up with fleets of several hundreds of drednoughts.

[Bluewolf]

Oh and on the points system, after talking with Thanas I am now a bit more open to the a lower power curved system of the normal points system so that small nations can do more. I would like to see how it'd hypothetically look though I mean would it go:

0-1000 Small
1000-5000- Normal
5000-10,000 Big

I am quite curious on this.

[RogueIce]

As being the one who was largely responsible for writing the current set of rules of SDNWars, I suggest that the point values etc. however be significantly changed. Because otherwise, you would end up with fleets of several hundreds of drednoughts.

Definately. The scale for a Star Wars game is way different than some early 20th century Earth type of game.

By the way, if we did it, would you sign on as a version of Germany?

[Thanas]

Germany or royalist Spain, maybe.

EDIT: I do however would like to make it clear at this point that I would only join the game as a player, not as a mod. Steve already does a good job on that, methinks and I do not think I have the time either. I'd be up to review a finalized point system for inaccuracies, but I will not write nor mod one.