An SDNW Proposal

[Steve]

I will admit that my writing was unclear as to my intention. It does, indeed, make it seem that I'm ready to start this week or something.

While I don't think the ruleset has much more to go - not with the free-form elements returning - I don't want to rush into the game and I think we're probably 2 weeks from a start at minimum. I am not starting the game, though, until I know our ruleset is as workable as it can be.

[A-Wing_Slash]

I'm in, hopefully the muse will strike me for my nation by the time things get going.

One question in regards to carriers - fighters are listed as their own selection, so if I wanted to field a carrier would I have to buy x amount of fighters, and then also a big ship to haul them around? Or could I just buy, say, a $250 ship, say its a carrier, and then treat it as being just as powerful as any other $250 ship, whether they are armed with railguns, carebear cannons, or fighter bombers? I'm liking the simpler rules set, and so I'd assume the later.

[Steve]

Actually I was leaning toward buying fighters and gunboats separate. Given they're, y'know, really cheap at basic cost.

[Master_Baerne]

In that case I'm gonna buy lots and lots of ultralight ships and stuff them with antifighter guns. Less trouble that way.

[Setzer]

Just a suggestion, can we have Veteran as a rank between Elite and Regular? That way there's two grades of skill both above and below regular grade.

[Steve]

No. It's not a skill level, it's a quality of troops level. Elites are specially trained professional, Regulars are professional.

[A-Wing_Slash]

Actually I was leaning toward buying fighters and gunboats separate. Given they're, y'know, really cheap at basic cost.

I disagree with them being cheap. First, the only standard of comparison we have is points (dollars I guess) spent. While 5 fighters for $1 may sound cheap, the number of fighters is irrelevant - when determining the outcome of battle it doesn't matter if its 5 or 5,000 fighters, if they were bought for $1 they are going to be assumed to have roughly $1 worth of combat power, and so x fighter buys would be a threat to a single ship of x size. Secondly, they don't have the legs to be used on a strategic level, so they will require a separate carrier to be bought to haul them around, increasing the overall cost above that of other combatants.

Also, I was under the impression that we were going for a simpler and more intuitive rule set, and separate carrier buys raise a whole host of unnecessary questions:
How many fighters can be carried by a given size ship? How many gunboats?
What kind of combat value would a carrier ship have, devoid of its fighter group? I'd assume its not going to be treated like any other ship of equal tonnage, but would it necessarily be a hangar with a set of engines and shields tacked on, or would there be a method for quantifying an intermediate battle carrier?
If fighters' main armament are torpedoes and missiles, then is the basic 5 for $1 fighter buy inclusive of the facilities to rearm them during battle? How would this ability affect the cost of a carrier ship?

I don't mean to be a dick about this, I just feel that there's a lot of value to having things be simpler and more straightforward, and I think it'd be better if people could buy carriers as package deals, and then have them behave in combat at the same assumed value as any other ship of that size. The current ruleset doesn't make any distinction between ships that have a purely missile armament and ships that only have energy weapons, and its my view that fighter groups should get the same treatment. Obviously, people should also be able to buy fighters separately for system defense roles.

That being said, I'm still working out my nation concept, and will definitely be excited to participate regardless of what gets decided here.

[Master_Baerne]

Seconded. Otherwise, carriers are only 1/2 as effective as line-of-battle ships of the same size, beause they can carry at maximum half their construction cost in parasite craft.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Most of the cost of a modern day carrier comes from the hull and the built in facilities. The fighters are treated as separate. Hanger handling facilities, machine shops etc. take up the volume of the hull. So why should fighters be treated as part of the cost? As it is, a carrier has separate set of demands, such as fast sublight speed so that it can stay out of range of the big guns and run away if required. A slow carrier will just be mince meat for battleships.

[Master_Baerne]

My issue was that it would take twice the powerful. of any given carrier to equal a battleship of equal size. It does make sense, from a realism perspective, but I'm worried that it would make carrier-based fleets extremely underpowered, as every carrier would cost 1.5 times the price of an equal-sized battleship (half for the cost of parasites, plus the cost of the hull), and be only half as powerful.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

My issue was that it would take twice the powerful. of any given carrier to equal a battleship of equal size. It does make sense, from a realism perspective, but I'm worried that it would make carrier-based fleets extremely underpowered, as every carrier would cost 1.5 times the price of an equal-sized battleship (half for the cost of parasites, plus the cost of the hull), and be only half as powerful.

From the realism perspective, fighters aren't strong enough to take down battleships anyway. Battleships anyhow trade strategic and tactical mobility for close range firepower. And I would expect that carriers have more powerful sublight drives to drive the ship anyhow.

[Master_Baerne]

Fair points all, you win.

[A-Wing_Slash]

I'm still against nerfing carriers, but you make perfectly fair points and if the consensus is separate fighters and carriers then I'll drop it after this post. I don't think its going to affect my kernel of an idea for a nation either way, and I don't want to be a dick. That being said, I'd like to respond for the record:

Most of the cost of a modern day carrier comes from the hull and the built in facilities. The fighters are treated as separate. Hanger handling facilities, machine shops etc. take up the volume of the hull. So why should fighters be treated as part of the cost? As it is, a carrier has separate set of demands, such as fast sublight speed so that it can stay out of range of the big guns and run away if required. A slow carrier will just be mince meat for battleships.

My understanding was that the dollar cost of 5 fighters is assumed to include the necessary amount of hanger facilities, machine shops, etc, albeit at a planetary or orbital launching base. If you buy dedicated carrier fighters, and the cost of the carrier includes those facilities, then it seems you are overpaying for support infrastructure. And, if fighters are only a small part of a carrier's cost, then wouldn't be simpler just to round them in as part of a package deal? Also, I fail to see why carriers can't be treated akin to missile ships. To follow your example, a missile ship needs speed to stay away from battleships, and if the BB gets in close the missile ship is dead. If the missile ship can keep the range open long enough, however, then it is the battleship which is going to take a beating, and I think carriers could function the same way.

My issue was that it would take twice the powerful. of any given carrier to equal a battleship of equal size. It does make sense, from a realism perspective, but I'm worried that it would make carrier-based fleets extremely underpowered, as every carrier would cost 1.5 times the price of an equal-sized battleship (half for the cost of parasites, plus the cost of the hull), and be only half as powerful.

From the realism perspective, fighters aren't strong enough to take down battleships anyway. Battleships anyhow trade strategic and tactical mobility for close range firepower. And I would expect that carriers have more powerful sublight drives to drive the ship anyhow.

Depending on the technobabble allowed in the universe, fighters definitely could be strong enough to take down battleships. For example, fighter launched anti-ship torpedoes could be able to bypass much of the battleship's electronic countermeasures, or due to -technobabble- have an advantage in penetrating a target's shields that ship launched missiles or energy weapons don't have. And while you're right that weaker fighters makes sense from a realism perspective, if we're going for something simpler and more free form I'm hesitant to push the technical realism too far.

Alright, whining over, I can live with this system. Even if carriers are underpowered, I could see them fitting into a role similar to that of LAC carriers in the Honorverse, which are unable to face off against all but the least prepared wall of battle, but are very useful in scouting, screening, and independent raiding roles.

My one big question remains unanswered, however: how many fighters/gunboats can a ship of a given size carry? Half its points value, in points value (this seems quite small)? Does a ship with maxed out fighter compliment still retain any meaningful combat ability?

[KroLazuxy_87]

How about using ratios for figuring out the damage and carry size? It'll be a simple conversion, and is easy to calculate without getting weighed down into details such as this:
"What kind of combat value would a carrier ship have, devoid of its fighter group? I'd assume its not going to be treated like any other ship of equal tonnage, but would it necessarily be a hangar with a set of engines and shields tacked on, or would there be a method for quantifying an intermediate battle carrier?" -Thanks to: A-Wing_Slash



--I use these examples purely to illustrate the point, not as ideas of actual values.--

A Carrier can carry fighters, gunships, or both. If we use ratios when comparing the price of one ship to another we can get realistic results in regards to carrier loading and damage, without changing the price. All while still using the price as a basic value of the ship.

Carrier: $250
Fighter: $1 for 5
Gunship: $1
Using direct comparison the same carrier can support 250 Gunships or 1,250 Fighters.

If we use ratios for the comparison, it becomes more realistic.

Fighter to Carrier Ratio: 4:1
Gunship to Carrier Ratio: 1:1

Carrier: $250
Fighter: $1 for 5
Gunship: $5
Using the ratios gives us a carrier that can hold 250 gunships or 500 Fighters

The same ratio could be used for damage. A carrier loaded with all gunships and a carrier loaded with all fighters would not be equal. The ratios allow for the gunships to be more damaging to the opposing carrier.(<Note: If it were a fighter versus a battleship, you would look up the ratio for fighter to battleship>)

Carrier A(Gunships): 250 gunships with the Gunship->Carrier ratio: 1:1
Damage: 250 - Destroys Carrier B
Carrier B(Fighters): 500 fighters with Fighter->Carrier ratio: 4:
Damage: 125- Does not destroy Carrier A

If using turns, Carrier B does destroy Carrier A, but it takes two turns. Or just simply say Carrier A kills Carrier B twice as fast.


All ships would need a ratio to every other ship. This may seem like a lot, but systematically going through them wouldn't be too bad, plus it gives everyone a GOOD idea of what ships are stronger and by how much. Once the ratios are set, keeping them in a table is pretty damned simple.

Couple More Examples:
Fighters->Heavy Hull: 20:1
Gunship->Heavy Hull: 5:1
Medium Hull->Heavy Hull: 3:1


Instead of arguing about typical payloads of torpedoes versus that of missiles, we just need to agree on a simple ratio.

K.I.S.S.!!

Keep It Simple Stupid!!

[Darkevilme]

To store $1's worth of auxiliary ships such as fighters and gunships requires $2s worth of base ship.

So to buy $1 worth of fighter or gunship combat power it costs $3.

If we're gonna insist on having this nod to realism that these things are bought seperately then i suggest we take Krolazuxy's idea in a manner of speaking.
each $ worth of fighters or gunships is worth three times its value in combat. For carriers this balances out as just being fair as now a $400 carrier which includes in its price $100 of fighters is on equal footing to a $400 missile cruiser.

For base launched fighters and gunships this balances out with their lack of strategic mobility.

[Ryan Thunder]

My issue was that it would take twice the powerful. of any given carrier to equal a battleship of equal size. It does make sense, from a realism perspective, but I'm worried that it would make carrier-based fleets extremely underpowered, as every carrier would cost 1.5 times the price of an equal-sized battleship (half for the cost of parasites, plus the cost of the hull), and be only half as powerful.

A carrier's parasite craft are more powerful than similar hyperdrive-equipped craft. So my Ultraheavies can carry a few powerful Lights.

[Simon_Jester]

I'm definitely still interested, but it's just as well for me if this game doesn't start for a good long while.

On the carrier issue, I think I agree with Darkevilme. I suggest treating carrier-based fighters as being functionally equivalent to munitions, the same way I'd treat a battleship built by a player who favors long range missile bombardments and says that his ships are like missile submarines. The carrier "fires" so and so many fighters at the enemy, they do damage commensurate with the cost of the ship (modified for other factors), some of them come back, and some don't. The ones that don't get rolled into the ship's ongoing upkeep costs, if any, just like expended fuel or munitions would.

There's really no reason I can see why this should be treated any differently from a ship that fires guided missiles. Especially since a probable space fighter has a lot in common with a missile.*

*One of the best arguments for not building fighters is that for reaction drives, a missile of equal mass can carry out the same strike while dedicating less of its mass to fuel tankage. Because it doesn't have to brake to a stop after hitting the target and then fly home. Not that that needs to hold true in the game we're playing.

[Ryan Thunder]

A fighter could carry more expensive weapons than a missile could, since you'd want those weapons back afterward.

[Ryan Thunder]

Then again, you could mount bigger versions of the more expensive weapons on bigger ships, I suppose.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Path... all this talk about fighters and Oscars in Space simply mean that there's a need for dedicated Aegis type cruisers/destroyers, to support my fleet of battleships, carriers and Battle Barges.

[Darkevilme]

I'm definitely still interested, but it's just as well for me if this game doesn't start for a good long while.

On the carrier issue, I think I agree with Darkevilme. I suggest treating carrier-based fighters as being functionally equivalent to munitions, the same way I'd treat a battleship built by a player who favors long range missile bombardments and says that his ships are like missile submarines. The carrier "fires" so and so many fighters at the enemy, they do damage commensurate with the cost of the ship (modified for other factors), some of them come back, and some don't. The ones that don't get rolled into the ship's ongoing upkeep costs, if any, just like expended fuel or munitions would.

There's really no reason I can see why this should be treated any differently from a ship that fires guided missiles. Especially since a probable space fighter has a lot in common with a missile.*

*One of the best arguments for not building fighters is that for reaction drives, a missile of equal mass can carry out the same strike while dedicating less of its mass to fuel tankage. Because it doesn't have to brake to a stop after hitting the target and then fly home. Not that that needs to hold true in the game we're playing.

This is pretty much how we used to do it in STGOD 2k? .

A five hundred point/dollar ship is a five hundred point ship. It doesn't matter from a rules perspective whether it attacks by cutting its enemies apart with lasers, bombarding them from afar with nuclear missiles, launching fighter wings or whatever. Its a five hundred point ship.

[loomer]

I still like the old dramatic rule of 'yes, but a starfighter is cool.'

Because it is. Sure, gunships and missile-drones are probably better dollar for dollar, all that jazz, but you can invent some cultural justification for it.

I mean, the Ariaii of the Borderlands fly elaborately decorated fighters because they never really got over the idea that war should be nothing more than a large number of individual fights. Stayed the same way for most of their history (or at least that of the dominant culture) and spread among their spacers.

Oh, yes. So far I've got three distinct aliens purely for this.

The Mari - essentially gigantic carnivorous swamp-rhinos in appearance, who live on their worldship and spend most of their days asleep, occasionally fucking each other and producing works of beauty (including incredibly finely tuned perfumes for export. They don't believe in perfumes for themselves - since they communicate mostly by pheromone release, even with their bloodhound like level of sensitivity and discriminatory sense of smell, they consider it dishonest) or creativity. They've fallen a long way since they lost their actual world, but part of that is the inability for such large carnivores to be particularly active on a limited caloric supply.

The Tym - these guys are on the worldship as well in higher numbers than the Mari themselves, but have a completely different origin. They're a very small critter, also carnivorous, with eight limbs and a natural tendency towards tight spaces and burrowing. They're also very intelligent, have six hands (four of them are also feet but are dextrous enough for any work a man's hands could do, and the last pair are particularly nimble). They have amazing hearing and use it as their primary sense - same way as a bat, essentially. The oddest part is that they spawn dozens of eggs in pools every few years.

Those are the larvae, which are as smart as your average dog and just exist to grow. They're swamp natives and herbivores - and this is part of why they do so well in the habitats of the Mari. They're small enough to escape being eaten by the lumbering beasts and have similar climactic needs. Average maturation is two to three years and then they find a spot to cocoon themselves in safety and undergo their metamorphosis.

The Ariaii, who I'll detail later, but who are particularly warlike. Which, in their case, actually makes them less of a threat to other species because they're a very politically and socially fractured group even by human standards and spend half their days in small, personal scale wars against themselves and other Outland Commissions. There's just no one really left to go fight beyond the Commissions except when a sufficient cause galvanizes them.

[PeZook]

Whether or not fighters are a good idea depends on the tech base.

If engines are the most expensive part of your spacecraft, you'd want fighters so that you can use a single high-performance engine to deliver a dozen warheads close to the target. If engines are relatively cheap, you can afford to throw them away.

[Darkevilme]

Also. I've decided to basically keep the Chamaran backstory but for the change of the outsiders being replaced by a big question mark. Someone dropped the Chamarans into the frontier with false memories that they were the vanguard invasion force of a great Chamaran empire. The Revelation still occured when they realized A. that they were clear products of genetic engineering from human stock B. that their vessel's weren't defrosting cryotrays of chamarans when they needed more personnel but cloning them with only a few thousand variants and sets of memories between them and that C. their empire wasn't replying to their transmissions home.

[RogueIce]

I'd think a simple way is this:

You have your non-FTL fighters/bombers in a dedicated "attack carrier" that is, essentially, the same combat value as any other ship of a given size/price. You can also have more general "fleet carriers" that carry FTL-equipped fighters/bombers (they can have that limited FTL, right?) and those probably are underpowered for the cost as you buy the fighters seperate from the carrier (thus adding their cost to the ship).

This should be reasonable, as your non-FTL fighters can devote more space to carrying a larger payload, more power to their pew-pew lasers, etc. Whereas FTL fighters are sacrificing some of that striking power for the sake of flexibility: they can do advanced scouting, do raids against enemies without bringing the carrier into the open, etc. They should still be able to take down lighter capships given sufficient numbers, I think (freeform FTW) though obviously not so crazy overpowered as a squadron of X-wings generic non-copyright infringing fighters taking down a Star Destroyer Heavy capship.

There's room for balance and playtesting here, to be sure, so that people who enjoy the idea of space fighters don't get screwed (and also for non-FTL planetary defense fighters and so forth) by the space BB/BBG crowd. And since we're already breaking physics with FTL in the first place, I say fuck it: why not? Also why I posted earlier about not "nerfing" mechs just because some people get their panties in a twist over the concept. If people like mechs they can use them as far as I'm concerned, so long as they're semi-reasonable in the setting (no aircraft carrier sized Transformers generic transforming robot which may or may not be in disguise).