An SDNW Proposal

[Steve]

Dunno, although if they can't be dialed I think the option to have some (one?) internal one would be nice. Helps knit nations together: part of the idea I have for the Altacar Empire is that it's a geographically fairly small but well-joined-up and developed nation - if SDNW 4 was in... let's say the mid-19th Century Earth, the Altacar Empire would be somewhere like the Netherlands or UK, as opposed to a big country with lots of potential internal growth like the USA.

Warp Gates aren't intended to be big enough to allow really high volume trade. It's for people to use for plot devices for PC interactions primarily - in universe it'd probably be used solely by high class passenger liners or transports carrying special goods that have to be shipped quickly or what have you.

Anyway, that "all core sector" one was more of an exercise in powergaming as I'd be using (or hope to use) the first one I posted. The big thing it depends on is how population & GDP grow over time in Midrange & Colony sectors. On the other hand... too fast growth pop / GDP growth and you'll be seeing loads of Midrange- / Colony- dominated nations .

I'd intended that pop growth in a Core Sector is probably something akin to .5%-1%. Home Sectors can get up to 1.5% (to reflect people moving in to take advantage of specialized jobs in research, civil service, etc, and the economic activity thus fueled). Midrange Colonies will likely get something like 2.5%. Colonies, I might very well max them to 20% depending on a player's circumstances, meaning a doubling of population every 5 years. (Can reduce if that's too good, consider 10% instead). Might institute a "cap" where once a Colony Sector's population reaches 20 billion or whatever it's growth rate plummets as the factors that attracted immigrants dissipate - land's been taken up, jobs aren't as plentiful, and unlike other sectors the Terraforming worlds are still in early phase and can't sustain large populations in their atmospheric domes.

What about 1 Core Sector per non-Core Sector (inc Home Sector)?

Hrm, that might encourage people to ignore Midrange Sectors and try to buy Colony and Core Sectors in pairs after they get their first Core.

Instead of coming up with some convoluted required mixture of Cores and Midranges, better I think to just limit people to 3 Cores.

*Regarding the possibility of acquiring unclaimed territory during the game... will it have to be adjacent to your existing sectors? Logically I don't think there's much reason why it would have to be, although there would of course be advantages in terms of defence, travel times, blockades and such.

Wouldn't require it, though skipping a sector isn't always advisable.

I'm contemplating Skimmer's "hyperspace dredging" concept as going hand-in-hand with colony founding. Open Sectors will tend to be "off-network" ones, they only have major distance-traversing lanes through them and not Junctions and branches to permit wider economic use. Players thus use hyperspace dredging to establish a sector for colonization. Somewhat time consuming to prevent people from land-rushing, and costly.

[Steve]

I'm putting together a prospective list of hull types people base their fleets on. Note that the costs are the "basic cost" to have the aforementioned unit: you can spend extra to simulate the unit being a unique class that is qualitatively superior to the basic units or, well, anyone who doesn't spend as much as you.

All Basic Costs are placeholders for the moment. For the Hull types I haven't finished giving full descriptions to yet, I've listed some "examples" of what generally fits into that hull size.



For Spacecraft, the unit type will be designated by "Hull size" with potential uses specified, though not required. The names for the sizes are generally for approximation, not required for actual use.

Spacecraft:
Shuttle
Basic Cost: 10 per $1
Build Time: N/A
A small spacecraft hull with atmospheric and sublight space flight capability. Examples would include space-to-planet shuttles. Used primarily for short-range, intra-system transport. Hull type can potentially be armed and shielded for use as raiding, landing, or boarding craft by pirates.

Hyperlight Shuttle
Basic Cost: 5 per $1
Build Time: N/A
A Shuttle with a gravito-magnetic drive that permits slight FTL speed capability, up to 53c. It lacks the fuel reserves for interstellar voyage but can be used for intra-system transport in much shorter times than the strictly sub-light Shuttle. Hull type can potentially be armed and shielded for use as raiding, landing, or boarding craft by pirates.

Fighter
Basic Cost: 5 for $1
Build Time: N/A
A small spacecraft hull with Shuttle flight capabilities and some armament and defenses. The smallest combat vessel available. Can mount projectile weapons (torpedoes/missile armament) that can damage even the largest starship hull classes but not capable of fighting full-sized spacecraft effectively.

Gunboat
Basic Cost: $1
Build Time: 1 Week
A small spacecraft hull with all flight capabilities, including very-short-ranged interstellar hyperspace trips, though it is not capable of traveling between sectors. Greater combat power than a fighter though it lacks the base manueverability of a fighter hull.

Yacht
Basic Cost: $1
Build Time: 1 Month
A small starship hull with Shuttle flight capabilities and a small hyperdrive. Capable of short-range hyperspace travel on standard fuel reserves. Private luxury spacecraft or official traveling ships are examples. Can carry ECM and light deflector screens for self-defense but will typically be unarmed. Think of it as a space version of Air Force One.

Ultra Light
Basic Cost: $15
Build Time: 3 Months
A very small starship hull that can land on planetary surfaces. A vessel this size will ultimately be very specialized, likely in the role of a border scout, an interceptor vessel, or a light fleet screen.

Light
Basic Cost: $40
Build Time: 6 Months
A small starship hull that can land on planetary surfaces. Vessels of this size will be the main fleet screens among other various potential roles that the hull size permits.

Medium
Basic Cost: $70
Build Time: 1 Year
A medium starship hull that can land on planetary surfaces. A Medium hulled ship has the capacity to perform cruiser-orientated roles in a star navy.

Heavy
Basic Cost: $125
Build Time: 2 Years
A heavy starship hull, incapable of planetary landing. A large starship hull; while it can be fairly well specialized most will likely use it to form the striking power of their battle fleets around.

Superheavy
Basic Cost: $250
Build Time: 3 Years
A large starship hull, incapable of planetary landing. At this size you're getting to vessels that will be the heavy hitters of your fleet, if not outright fleet flagships, whether it is supporting massive forces of Fighters and Gunboats or employing massive weapons banks for direct combat, or some combination thereof.

Ultra-Heavy
Basic Cost: $500
Build Time: 4 Years
A massive starship hull, incapable of planetary landing. Ultra-Heavy hull sizes create behemoth warships that are highly expensive and are thus comparitively rare; they represent the largest possible hull size that modern starship construction can manage.

Edit: Changed the CVE and CVL hull affiliations.

Edit 2: Added Build times and normal descriptions. Note that Fighters, Shuttles, and Hyperlight Shuttles get no Build Time, as they are presumed to be so small and so cheap - in part due to lacking Hyperdrives - that you can produce them in our setting almost like you'd produce an automobile in modern day Earth. I may yet quantify Fighter build times however, to reflect that it has electronics gear and weaponry that might impact its ability to be so easily mass-produced.

[Setzer]

Would there be any advantages from buying all colony sectors? You'd be weak at first, but your potential for growth might compensate that.

[Ryan Thunder]

Must I have a hyperdrive on all craft above a certain size, or is it just cheap enough that I might as well have it anyway?

[Darkevilme]

Just for Reference purposes: Here is the system from the STGOD series 2k? as i remember it.

You get 1000 fleet points to spend on ships with a limit of 50 points per ship. Fighters and supplementary craft like shuttles are considered free as they cannot move on a strategic level.
You get 100 industrial points to spend on your worlds/orbitals/industrial facilities or locations.

You had 500 points to spend on racial or cultural modifiers for things like ground combat and espionage.

Your fleet cost 20% of its overral value in production to maintain each industrial turn and each industrial point from planets or whatever translated into more than 1 point of production each turn(I forget the multiplier). Any remaining production after maintenance was deducted could be fed into building new ships.

In battle whoever had more points worth of ships had the advantage.

That was pretty much it.

[Sea Skimmer]

Would there be any advantages from buying all colony sectors? You'd be weak at first, but your potential for growth might compensate that.

It’d be a pain in the ass defending them at all, and a highly dispersed industrial base is less efficient, if more survivable. I think the advantages would depend on the nature of your power, as well as the transportation setup in that area, lots of hyperspace lanes would make dispersion more attractive. If you play a species that breeds quick and doesn’t give a damn about high end luxury then constantly spreading and being all colonies might make whole lot sense. But for say humans, people are naturally going to congregate on worlds and be reluctant to constantly spread. Plus it will take you a long ass time to ever develop any of the worlds.

You could easily have a self contained industrial base on a planet with only ~50-100 million people on it, perhaps even less, but that doesn’t mean people will like living on it or that it will be able to produce more weapons and concrete then it requires just to meet its basic terminal defense and civil defense requirements.

[Steve]

Would there be any advantages from buying all colony sectors? You'd be weak at first, but your potential for growth might compensate that.

That's why I'm considering the growth rates and potential caps on Colony Sectors' stats (to reflect that aside from their Earth-like planet these sectors don't have the worlds to hold a population at the level of a Midrange Sector's or a Core Sector's.

But I doubt you'd have awesome advantages; unless you do it for RP purpose such a nation will have a lower GDP and population, even if it might draw immigrants.

Also read Skimmer's answer.

Must I have a hyperdrive on all craft above a certain size, or is it just cheap enough that I might as well have it anyway?

I'd say that if you want to say you have non-FTL-using ships of those sizes, you could possibly spend base cost and presume they have slightly superior armament and/or defenses to a hyperspace-capable ship. Of course, they have no strategic maneuver capability, so that's a lot of money for a ship that is stuck in one system and will be unable to flee a losing fleet battle.

That said, I'm not yet sold on the prospect.

[Sea Skimmer]

If we are going to allow FTL on small craft, basically things which are so small they just have pilots (though maybe more like a whole bomber crew) rather then proper crews which can stand multiple watches then they’d better have a major range limitation. Smaller platforms should also suffer from limited sensor range as well, since this is just a fundamental physical limitation. A towed array could help, but that’d limit maneuverability while its deployed.

[Steve]

If we are going to allow FTL on small craft, basically things which are so small they just have pilots (though maybe more like a whole bomber crew) rather then proper crews which can stand multiple watches then they’d better have a major range limitation. Smaller platforms should also suffer from limited sensor range as well, since this is just a fundamental physical limitation. A towed array could help, but that’d limit maneuverability while its deployed.

I wrote up Gunboats as being hyper-capable but lacking the ability to travel between sectors, probably also speed issues. You can launch them for light hour or light week-ranged strike operations but they won't do so good beyond that. "Yachts" would be bigger with a passenger capacity in the upper two digit range at the very least and it'd require refueling every sector.

I'd agree with the rest. One potential use for an Ultralight Hull or even a Gunboat Hull would be for E-warfare craft that are basically all-electronics and help direct other craft lacking in such.

[Ryan Thunder]

Of course, they have no strategic maneuver capability

Carriers?

[Teleros]

The one thing I'll say about ship costs & such Steve is to raise the possibility of a little more info on shipyards / dry docks and such. I know you don't want to make it too complicated, but to use the Napoleonic Wars example, Britain had a distinct advantage when it came to repairing / replacing ships vs France thanks to a large number of shipyards given the population & economy (when compared to France's). Perhaps something like this (from the ideas I sent you):

Shipyards are responsible for building and maintaining your warships. Each shipyard can build up to £5 of starships a month, and can work together if in the same system. For example, if you are building a new £500 super-dreadnought, you can either have 1 shipyard take 100 months to build it, or have 2 shipyards in the same system build it in 50 months, and so on. Shipyards not in use by your military forces are assumed to be contracted out to private interests, and generate £100 in revenues for each year (or whatever period of time we use) they are used like this. Building a new shipyard costs £1000 and takes 4 years to build. Of your starting systems, your Home Sector comes with 4 Shipyards, Core Sectors with 3, Midrange Sectors with 2, and Colony Sectors with 0. You may also spend 1 NCP to buy 2 Shipyards.

That should put the build times at roughly the same as your list above. It also lets players speed up ship construction if they need to: if I really want my £500 super-dreadnought built ASAP then I can build it in about 2 years in my Home Sector, but at a cost of not building anything else in the mean time - and other players would be expected to notice this as well. Hopefully the cost of buying new ones is enough that you can't just spam shipyard construction without a noticeable effect on the budget for your actual ships.

Oh, and for a 10% fee the Altacar Empire will sell shipyard slots, subject to terms and conditions .

[Steve]

Hrm.... I'm contemplating it, but in abstract form. If anything I'd probably state that only Home, Core, and Midrange Sectors get yards and capacity, in declining order there (As in Midrange has the least, Home the most), so if anyone tries Setzer's proposed build of "1 Home and all Colonies" it would be a further tradeoff they'd have to consider.

Though the capacities might simply be expressed in cash figures to reflect the logical yard capacity of an interstellar state for its actual productivity and needs.

[loomer]

The Outlander Commissions are looking less and less likely to fit in easily with the system developing.

[Steve]

The Outlander Commissions are looking less and less likely to fit in easily with the system developing.

In what way?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Well, he has a high GDP, but others will likely surpass him during the game because they have Midrange and Colony Sectors that can grow.

It is an issue to consider for balance. I was hoping to avoid the "may only have so many Core Sectors per country" thing but I may have to consider it if we can't find a way to balance it out and make such min-max builds have sufficiently painful tradeoffs.

Well that depends on what sort of development scale we want for our planets. If we go realism, then the development scale will be exponential in nature and more incentive to have core planets which are churning out tonnes from the start. Colony worlds will also take forever to even get to the mid level as well.

If we are going for balance, then that changes everything really because realism will be tossed out.

[loomer]

The Outlander Commissions are looking less and less likely to fit in easily with the system developing.

In what way?

Well for one, it's got three systems that'd qualify as 'homeworlds'.

[Akhlut]

Just out of curiosity, what level of whackiness are we accepting for this STGOD? I know the banter here is pretty silly, but what limits are we going to have, just out of curiosity?

Because I'm certainly not planning on basing anything off of GWAR or the P-Funk All-Stars and their Mothership. >.>

[Steve]

The Outlander Commissions are looking less and less likely to fit in easily with the system developing.

In what way?

Well for one, it's got three systems that'd qualify as 'homeworlds'.

Core Sectors and Midrange Sectors can also have "Homeworlds". Or your Home sector can have all three.

[Steve]

Just out of curiosity, what level of whackiness are we accepting for this STGOD? I know the banter here is pretty silly, but what limits are we going to have, just out of curiosity?

Because I'm certainly not planning on basing anything off of GWAR or the P-Funk All-Stars and their Mothership. >.>

With Shroom, I can't be sure.

How about I warn you if it's too wacky to be accepted? Warning in lieu of a smack to the head with Modnir.

[Akhlut]

Well, I have a few ideas that I can't really decide between.

Semi-serious: some 100 million years ago, a whole solar system was spat through an interdimensional rift. It was, in fact, an alternate earth. On one of the earths, an asteroid obliterated the dinosaurs. On the other, dinosaurs continued to exist, and two sapient races of dinosaurs evolved: a race of oviraptors and one of allosauruses. The oviraptors are smaller, smarter, and more adept at tool-making, while the allosauruses are more manual labor, though they have a strong martial tradition.

Not-serious in the least: The Despotate of the Scumdogs of the Universe exists to perpetuate the extreme decadence of the Scumdogs of the Universe, a group of mercenary overlords who have conquered system after system and have enslaved nearly everyone they can. They are heavily based off of GWAR, if I don't decide to outright make them GWAR.

Same as above: The Parliament of the Holy Funk is a quasi-theocracy out to spread Funk from their Mothership, led by the Starchild and Dr. Funkenstein. Society has a heavy agricultural base (reefer) and everyone is mostly content, though GDP is a bit lower than would be expected, due to a 2 day work week and 4 months of vacation time every year. Crazy contraptions galore, due to the efforts of a legion of scientists working for Funk.

[Steve]

GWAR?

The dinosaur one... is interesting. The last one is way too wacky.

[Akhlut]

GWAR?

The dinosaur one... is interesting. The last one is way too wacky.

If P-Funk is too whacky, I'm pretty sure GWAR is too whacky. Just wiki GWAR for more info, but they're pretty crazy themselves.

The dinosaur one is going to be done fairly seriously, aside from the origin story.

[Steve]

GWAR?

The dinosaur one... is interesting. The last one is way too wacky.

If P-Funk is too whacky, I'm pretty sure GWAR is too whacky. Just wiki GWAR for more info, but they're pretty crazy themselves.

The dinosaur one is going to be done fairly seriously, aside from the origin story.

You mean they're based on some weird band with entirely too much BDSM overtones?

[Akhlut]

Not BDSM. More demon/40k/fantasy basis. And drugs. Lots of drugs.

[Ryan Thunder]

Got my flag worked out. Well, a couple of them, anyway.