SDN World 3 Rules Discussion Thread

[Dark Hellion]

I am going to disagree with you here Steve. In my experience in previous STGODs (which may be biased because of the happenings of them) you cannot rely on the players to do so without a lot of prodding. I am not suggesting much of a system. Here is what I came up with based on 5 minutes of thought during a smoke.

Units (arbitrary amount of troops) have a competence rating of 3*army focus. This is then modified by -1 per time unit (arbitrary) spent in the field without R&R, -1 per unit distance (arbitrary) away from command, -X for other situations (cut off logistics, surprised, etc.), +X for favorable situations (defending homeland, capitol, surprise opponent, etc.).

Then we have competence as final modified rating * 10 as a percentage.

This requires less than 5 minutes to calculate the competence, then the players simply have to have someone else roll a d10 (or d100) and tell each player what they rolled. If a player failed then they screw up and don't do as well and must RP as such.

This shouldn't cause someone to lose an obvious victory or make turn around a crushing defeat, but should mean more casualties or allow a chunk of a unit to escape an ambush.

Now, this system clearly isn't complete but could easily be implemented and helps to reflect imperfect communication and training of the era. It also provides more impetus for players to attack (the opponent could screw up) while also helping to avoid juggernaut attacking (you could screw up and lose a lot of guys).

And it makes it really obvious if someone is trying to powergame or not.

[CmdrWilkens]

I'd prefer to have such things RPed, with those failing to open to having it RPed for them. Assigning numbers to it is, IMHO, unnecessary.

I concur. The old STGODs from way back in the day were completely believable and yet we never attempted to actually systemize combat. Its the nature of the beast in the real world that you can't put everything in numbers, which is why combat itself should be RPed with the Mod stepping in for excessively competent militaries. A good STGOD player knows how to let themselves lose forces and have errors and bad ones need the mod hammer.

I like systems but I prefer them for things that are altogether more quantifiable which combat most definitely is not.

[Steve]

One thing we need to consider is the ability for improvement. How would a player go about improving scores in Industry, Infrastructure, Standing Military, and the Focus Scores? (I think territory is self-explainatory and population would be mandated by growth rate, as would Economy to an extent.) Industrial Capacity points are logical for Infrastructure and Standing Military, also the Focus scores to an extent, but how much improvements should cost is to be considered. New ships costing 1 point per thousand tons every quarter of construction time is a start, but we need to determine how much everything else should cost considering that figure.

[Norseman]

The thing is that even if I go all out on building ships it shouldn't bring *all* other new construction to a halt. I mean with the industry rules as they stand any major naval power would be seriously hampered by needing to maintain their navy as well as build up!

How about we do this instead... every now and again (say every decade or every five years, whatever) you get a Improvement Point (IP), which you can use to increase your point average. For instance to increase a stat to a new level you need to pay an IP amount equivalent to the new level, e.g. to go from 2 to 3 you need 3 IP. However if you want to go from 2 to 4 you first need to go to 3. OR you can say that you need to pay the point cost of the next level X2 (e.g. 6IP to go from 2 to 3), OR Next Level^2 (e.g. 9IP to go from 2 to 3). With the latter approach catching up is easier to do, but powers that are already on top of their game have to work far harder to improve further.

This approach has the additional benefit of not needing so much paperwork.

[Steve]

Maybe every year, at most, and I think it better if we allow a budget of such things, consumed every quarter, and it takes so many to raise a level. Your method would forbid any real increase for, hell, the lifespan of the game in all likelihood, given the stated time period preference of 1 game year = 2 RL months.

Eh, as much as I've thought about quantifying this it might be best to let players RP improvement plans and have mods announce when they've done enough to move up a point. As it is every quarter in-game we'll be posting budgets for use of industrial capacity.

One thing I do intend on though is a base quarterly "cost" for all three services. You must spend a minimum of so many points in each area to maintain your manufacturing base (like shipyards being active) or after so long (or so much quantity of under-maintainance spending) your Focus in that area falls. The demand for minimum spending would be set at Focus point level - nation with NF of 5 must spend more on the navy every quarter then a nation with NF of 2, IOW.

[Norseman]

Thing is though that realistically *any* improvement in *any* of the fields would take at least 5 to 10 years. It takes time to build factories, roads, or to conduct reforms. AT any rate I think industry point should go exclusively to military ventures, since it's way too much paperwork to actually sketch out and dedicate points to internal improvement plans too.

[Steve]

Thing is though that realistically *any* improvement in *any* of the fields would take at least 5 to 10 years. It takes time to build factories, roads, or to conduct reforms. AT any rate I think industry point should go exclusively to military ventures, since it's way too much paperwork to actually sketch out and dedicate points to internal improvement plans too.

Norse, your own plan was an IP cost by the next level, IOW, 4 IP to go from 3 to 4. And it would take 20-40 years at 5-10 years to get that.

Sometimes what feels realistic must give way to game considerations.

That said, even an IP a quarter means taking a year to improve from a 3 to a 4, or two stats from 2 to 1.

I'd almost say we should treat this almost like the technology slider in Europa Universalis; every quarter you get a set amount of IPs and you spend them as you please. When each available area (Industry, Economy, Infrastructure, SML, and the Focus scores) hits the threshold under your expenditure you add a point. The higher the point you're reaching for, the more expenditure.

Thus you can, in fact, boot-strap yourself from a 1 to a 5 in airpower in, say, 3-4 game years, but at a cost of not improving much or at all in other areas. Or you can go for a slower but wider approach to improve in multiple categories. Improving in some things, like Industry, would take more time than improving in Standing Military Limit.

[Norade]

I like the 1 IP a quarter idea, it is easy to track and still allows for meaningfully improvement.

[Norseman]

To be honest I'm a bit worried about ahistorical developments here, going from Industry 3 to 4 in a year is just... it's just too damn fast. Maybe we should just play a bit and not worry too much about improvements right now, beyond roleplaying them out?

[K. A. Pital]

I concur. If 1 is pure agrarian (>90% agriculture), 2 is strongly agrarian (80% agriculture), 3 is industrializing (<80% agriculture), 4 is advanced industrialization phase (~50% urbanized and in industry) and 5 is a highly industrialized society (agriculture << industry), the shift cannot happen in 1 year, no matter how much someone can want it.

That's why I advised to keep an eye on historicism as well. Taking real world industrial growth rates and applying a plot to your nation, slightly tweaking it to correspond to events, might be well appropriate.

I mean, Russia went from 1 or 2 to probably 4 in the period 1900-1940, that's 40 years and 20 per point, and that's like, decades. And Russia wasn't the slowest industrializing nation on Earth definetely, it was an industrial leap. Those industrializing more slowly and calmly without forced or rushed industrial superplans might take a little longer.

Also, each new level is easier to attain - for example, rising from 0 to 1 should take 20 years, 1 to 2 a 15 years, 2 to 3 say a decade, 3 to 4 another decade and 4 to 5 - around 5 years. Makes sense for me.

[Bluewolf]

If we went by the IP per quarter system, couldn't we just make stuff like industry and infastructure require a lot of IP's to pull off? That way we can have such system without 1 year industrial leaps.

Though the problem with that is that it may not be worthing a IP system at all due to the slow time.

[CmdrWilkens]

I dislike the IP system mostly because:

A) It could lead to some truly a-historical scenarios. There are some regions of the world which simply will not sustain certain population and economic levels because the resource base (mineral deposits or arable land) are simply too small).

B) I think trying to apply a point system to such growth is just an extra calculation for a category that truly defies broad strokes. While we certainly needed the point system to get started we do need to make sure that we arne't trying to turn this in to too large of a D20 type RPG with rules for everything.

As much as I like systems and I think they can be useful the reason STGODs are effective is that the players and the mods craft stories which flow naturally from the starting circumstances. I think further development of economic and industrial resources is best left to RPing just as I think combat itself should be left to RPing. What systems we do have should be very broad and allow as much leeway as possible while retaining some historical accuracy.

[Norseman]

Actually I agree as well it should be left to RPing, if the game last 5 game years then maybe it's time to increase a point or two, but not before that. Let's try to do the best we can with the countries we've designed, eh?

[Norseman]

By the way... Infrastructure 4 (speed of train) mean I can move my troops at 840 miles a day while Infrastructure 3 means at most 60 miles a day and Infrastructure 2 means 20 miles a day. If I may...this seems a little off... Especially since a Infrastructure 3 country should still have quite a few railways. Could we have some clarification?

In case you're wondering I'm thinking of reducing Infrastructure to 3 and increasing Population to 5, since that fits the nation concept better anyway, but I don't want to do it if it'll cripple me utterly.

[Bluewolf]

I am going ask this. Looking at the Home Territory Score , I just realised that having a high score in it gives you little. Lets consider this:

When it comes to population the main benefit of having a large population is that A. Your reserve is bigger. B. Industry is aided. C. More people do emmigrate or immigrate. To have a good score though, you need good Home Territory or Colonial Score.

Now this is where I see the problem. A good home territory score punishes you. For a start it's a points drain which partly negates the benefits of a high population score. On top of that, it also forces your army to move slower across it's territory. That is fair but there is little balance. Colonial Territory gives you a +2 in population adn +1 in economy. So if you wanted a pop of 4 and a 4 and CT of 4, you'd save two points whereas if you wanted the same with HT instead of CT, it'd cost you two more. Now you could say that HT gives you resoruces but so does CT (thats part of the point in having that). You could say you have to protect CT and that can be hard due to distance but HT can be hard due to distance due to a fast moving enemy on the other side of where your armies are.

Simply it feels like there is little benefit in having a good HT score over a CT one. If there was some kind of bonus, I'd be much more happy.

[Siege]

The distances an army has to travel at home can only be compared to the distances between home and any potential colonies if your HT score is insanely high, in which case you probably won't have many colonies worth mentioning. If you use colonies to boost your population score meanwhile you're burdened with hanging onto them, which from the look of it may prove exceptionally difficult for quite a few of our players. It might seem like a good idea to have fifty percent of your population in the colonies, until the neighbors come knocking and you're suddenly at risk of losing fully half your population to the enemy of the week. Meanwhile the guy who invested in HT has his reserves, garrisons, gendarmes etc. all at home together with his army, his industry, his capital, and everything else he needs to defend, which by rights should make it far easier to cling to every square inch of territory than when half your land is an island on the other side of the world surrounded by territory-hungry neighbors.

[Bluewolf]

That is a good point and I assumed at the colonies would be closer to home then some are. I partially retract my statement though a small bonus would be nice. I wont complain though.

[Norade]

On an aside, how are we assigning values for cavalry, artillery, and armor for starting forces? I could see tanks being done like using the exact same numbers as planes, it's easy and it works. I could also see artillery as being based on army focus in multiples of 2,000 per point, this seems to roughly fit what was used in WWI and would be easy to expand anway. Cavalry/Mechanized Infantry would have to be a bit more touchy feely, but maybe 1 in 4 soldiers could be either mechanized or cavalry; you would change cavalry to mechanized based on industrial score so a 0 would have all horses and a 4 would have 80% of it's former cavalry mounted in vehicles instead.

I don't want to add more rules, but this seems to simplify things as opposed to just leaving them open and arguing later.

[Akhlut]

I imagine the army's composition should be RPed instead of adding more rules. For instance, as Mongolia, it makes sense for my army to be extensively cavalry based (to such an extent that simple infantry are probably limited to garrison forces and gendarmes as opposed to the army proper), whereas other nations might decide to opt for a heavily mechanized force and reduce their numbers of regular infantry. I think adding more rules would just make things needlessly complex and if someone goes for something stupid, it can be dealt with as it comes up.

[Ryan Thunder]

We could just extrapolate based on existing armies of the time, like Skimmer did with Japanistan...

[Norade]

The problem with that is we already can't agree on naval matters and we have rules for them, what happens when somebody tries to run an armored spearhead through somebody else? I just think that having something to work from would be a good idea.

[Ryan Thunder]

The problem with that is we already can't agree on naval matters and we have rules for them, what happens when somebody tries to run an armored spearhead through somebody else? I just think that having something to work from would be a good idea.

I agree, but I'm offering a compromise for cooperation's sake.

[Steve]

If someone tries armored attack without proper support and/or too early, the moderator rules the attack sputters from lack of gas or gets cut off.

I've been contemplating this, and I think it better, grudgingly, if we RP it, otherwise we must extensively overhaul how Army Focus works in terms of giving forces and likely alter SML as well.

Rather, for one's active forces - determined by SML - you'd be alloted a specific amount of units with tanks, vehicles, and artillery depending upon your Industry and Economy scores. The active reserves from a SML of 1 or 2 would get only artillery.

[Steve]

I've contemplated letting players with a high enough HT score to substitute it for colonies in determining Industry. IOW, if your HT is 4 and your CT is only 2 or 3 and you're down a couple points from what you need for the next industry bracket, you can substitute the HT score for the CT score.

Another potential is using high HT scores to give the player a boost to their reserves in Standing Military Limit, especially if it's below 3. Maybe 10 or 20% extra reserves to reflect local militia or local draft/conscript pools.

I agree that industrialization shouldn't happen overnight. However, I still feel that without some quantifying, if very simple though, we're going to have an entirely subjective standard for improving ourselves. And not just industry either, but things like infrastructure or military focus. This shouldn't be possible overnight, obviously. I was thinking allowing a player a capacity for an improvement in Standing Military every year, one Focus category per every two years, an improvement in Infrastructure every 3-5 or so, and Industry maybe 5-10 years, with 5 being the lowest curve to represent a country bootstrapping itself into that next level. Thus it takes 20 years of enormous effort to go from 1 to 5, and that's letting everything else fall behind. A more reasonable use of points would thus see that advance in more like 30-40 years.

Alternatively, though, while this is a game, I think we should avoid making it take too long for people to advance. At the rates we're likely to do, a game year will probably be 1-2 months (I believe the last proposal was 2 months per game year). So it'd take a year of gaming just to bootstrap yourself an industrial point.

And I believe Industry should be the very hardest thing to advance. Military Focuses shouldn't be so hard since it can reflect modernization efforts. Infrastructure can take time to build so it should be up there with Industry. SML should, frankly, be the easiest, taking a couple quarters to go up a point to reflect expansion of military production and the drafting/conscripting/recruitment of new personnel.

[Steve]

Hrm, on second thought letting high HT positively modify SML can encourage using SML as a sink score, especially since we already have negatives for SML + 3.

I suppose we can let it modify economy and/or population as well at 4 and 5. Maybe just population. Not sure if it should modify infrastructure, and it really doesn't make sense for it to modify a military focus.