An SDNW Proposal

[Darkevilme]

You know, when i first heard of these warp gate things. i kinda assumed that both ends had to be powered up for transit. if you don't want people showing up uninvited at the warp gate you just don't turn it on.

[loomer]

The only problem I have so far with the FTL system proposed is that it means the colourful heraldric fighters of the individualist Airaii can't swarm between stars without a carrier vessel of some variety. But that's not too big a grievance so it doesn't matter.

[Dave]

You know, when i first heard of these warp gate things. i kinda assumed that both ends had to be powered up for transit. if you don't want people showing up uninvited at the warp gate you just don't turn it on.

Indeed. It could be as simple as having a "reject call" button on your stargate.

Which leads me to wonder what a starship waiting in your voicemail would look like...

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Do we honestly need to go with Warp gates? I'd rather we stick to the usual hyperdrive/warp drive travel seen in Star Wars or Warhammer 40K just with more consistency.

[Siege]

Like Fin, I'm not so sure about the warp gates. And I also echo Darkevilme's proposition to replace sectors with individual starsystems. With 20+ points to spare I believe we can all have more than enough systems to not need even more.

[Steve]

I only considered them because I wanted to facilitate the kind of interactions that fueled SDNW2. I mean, how many times did we have Heads of State meeting in SDNW2 and getting along? Warp gates would make this much easier than multi-day trips via hyperspace.

[Dark Hellion]

I don't mean to be condescending but this already has more rules than STGOD2k8 and 2k8's ruleset was in retrospect too complicated and part of the reason it did not function well.

I have argued for strong rulesets in the past, but the strength of the ruleset has to do with its consistency and ability to cover diverse situations. The second you put any real specificity into it you have to balloon it huge. Why don't we just use an abstract ruleset and hand-waved "minkowsky physics" and just enforce good spirited play with actual Mod power?

IE. We get X points of planet potential, Y points of Navy, Z points of Army. We set it so that points of X,Y, and Z are all of the same magnitude. So it takes 1 point of Z to capture and hold 1 point of X. It takes one point of Y to transport 1 point of Z. Every T time you get I(X) industrial points which you can invest at rates X',Y',Z' back into X,Y, and Z. Battles are determined by comparing similar letter points and the context. If someone is continuously a douche a Mod starts chucking posts into the bucket.

It is super simple and runs off of 4 formula (at least 3 of which can be simple proportionality) and 3 set numbers. We just then assume parity. If I have a 100 point fleet consisting of a million battleflies and you have a 100 point fleet consisting of 10 cruisers and we battle then at the end I have 100,000 battleflies and you have 2 half destroyed cruisers each worth 10 points left. The specifics are something for us to fluff out.

I know many of the people playing SDNW are students of history and thus love logistics, but logistics doesn't even have a chance to enter play if we don't know how two forces mechanically interact. I think we need to stop deluding ourselves: invoking the rules is the last resort of an STGOD, after any chance of a "gentleman's agreement" has failed and if we need such strong rulesets to play because we aren't gentlemen enough we should stop playing til we grow up. I like to think we actually all are reasonable people, so I think we can have some pretty broad rules.

That all being said, I will still likely be in. I think I am going to try to resurrect my 2k7 civilization. The Emissaries of XylyX. A lovely bunch of juxtaposition and paradox in the form of fundamentalist AIs. They are a completely militarized society who wishes to benignly bring a time of peaceful, non-violent cooperation between the beings of the galaxy. Once the galaxy is in harmony we can all get together and fight an apocalyptic battle against the extra-universal AI they worship as a god and receive the glorious blessing of being nearly instantly annihilated in waves of hellfire.

Can you not see the grandeur of our purpose? The machine god has ruled the omniverse for billions of years of existential boredom and we have the holy task to provide it with a moment of joyous diversion! Rejoice in our most sacred mission my fellow sentients! Open your eyes to the heavens, for in the moment before you are vaporized you shall witness omnipotence!

(Lets just ignore that they may be utterly insane)

[Steve]

I've not read the STGOD 2k8 ruleset but, honestly, this ruleset is barely more extensive than SDNW2's. You use the points to determine nation size, population, and GDP: GDP in turn translates into points to set up your starting military.

Once in-game people can see what you're building and call shenanigans on you if you're clearly building too much based on your GDP.

Aside from clarification of how carriers and troop transports act, as well as fighters and gunboats, how are these rules complex in any way?

[Dark Hellion]

It is primarily a philosophical difference. The thing is that you state that you have to clarify how troop transports and carriers act but these things are ultimately minutia in the grand scale of things. The only reason we need to know how these work in the long run reduces to fluff. Does it matter if troops are transported by landing craft, drop pods or by a platoon of men generating gestalt psychic powers by doing jumping jacks and teleporting to LOS of their aerobics sergeant as long as they all require the same level/type of investment from the player and have the same strengths and restrictions?

Same thing with planetary numbers and population numbers. Does it really matter if you have 10 billion people and I have 10 copies of superman if we both produce the same and it takes the same investment of troops to subdue? I don't think it does as long as we enforce rule #1) Don't be a douche.

Its actually more unbelievable that numerous civilizations of a variety of species will all utilize land area, resources and manpower at the same general levels of efficiency and build militaries with the same fundamental design philosophy than just a priori assuming egality and general equivalence of civilizations using the fluff to patch the holes.

The rules should be there for situations were two players can't agree on an outcome and a mod has to go "ok, how many points do you each have? Let me roll some dice and see what I get", or a "wait a second, that ain't right" moment. I mean, we don't have rules for intelligence gathering, counter-intelligence, espionage, assassination and economic sabotage even though all these things are tantamount military concerns far more important than the mechanical functioning of carriers. Why are we trusting players to run an aspect that is necessarily sneaky, duplicitous and obscured but not the general vagueries of combat which are either transparent or only important in retrospect?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Sometimes I wonder if we should return to the good o' "Follow a national order of battle template" and simply go from there.

[Siege]

Not surprisingly I find myself agreeing wholeheartedly with Dark Hellion. Simple is better, and it really would be simpler if we reduced fleets to a more general point number -- it already doesn't matter if I have a thousand Flyswatter-class corvettes or one Marduk-class overmatch warmoon if the two boil down to the exact same number of points, so can't we dispense with the bewildering variety of hull-types and judge whether something can land on a planet or not by the already-famous "don't be a douche" rule?

Of course I do agree that there should be a certainly sensibility to what players are allowed to field... Investing your entire fleet allotment in a single thousand-point world-ending battlestation for example might be a bit too much, but why not let people come up with their own ideas in this here OOC thread and then judge whether they are or are not acceptable, or whether they need to adjust the point score per ship of the class? That way we can exploit our creativity to the fullest extent without getting hemmed in by hull types or sublight drives or whatnot.

[loomer]

On the other hand working with them does provide for some interesting concepts. Like my plan to have the Airaii arrive in a system on a long, remote controlled, ritually decorated and designed docking boom with a hyperlight engine on the back and then swarm off it like a crowd of angry gnats.

[Teleros]

Of course I do agree that there should be a certainly sensibility to what players are allowed to field... Investing your entire fleet allotment in a single thousand-point world-ending battlestation for example might be a bit too much, but why not let people come up with their own ideas in this here OOC thread and then judge whether they are or are not acceptable, or whether they need to adjust the point score per ship of the class? That way we can exploit our creativity to the fullest extent without getting hemmed in by hull types or sublight drives or whatnot.

Simplest way: go by the ship's cost and tag a description on the end (ie "this cruiser design is very fast, but has weaker firepower than normal" will do. Given combat is determined more by storytelling than by dice rolls and all that, I don't see why it shouldn't work out okay.

[DarthShady]

I'll have to agree with Siege and Dark Hellion, keep it simple, no unnecessary rules and follow the "Don't be a douche" rule, and we should be fine. Seriously, we don't need to know how many shipyards one has or if his ships fart acid clouds or shoot rainbows, that kind of stuff should simply be considered fluff.

Too many rules will just restrict us, and there is no need for that.

That said, I am going to have a lot of fun creating my biologically advanced insectoid like race of aliens.

[Shroom Man 777]

The Bragulan Star Empire

Government: The BSE is ruled by the great and fair unquestionable will of the mighty Imperator Darvyl Sagatantron Byzon, ruler of all the countless suns and stars flying the flag of Bragule. The center of governance is the world-city of mighty Bragule itself, the seat of the Imperator’s nigh unlimited power, and the dictates made on that great world-throne radiate outwards to span the entire Empire. Subject to these dictates are the various agencies of Imperial governance created by the Imperator to aid him in his most humble and beneviolent rule, and these agencies and branches are innumerable as the moons that orbit the Bragulan worlds themselves. The authority the Imperator has bestowed upon these agencies range from the ceremonial and ineffectual, to so potent as to determine the fates of entire planets and peoples. In its current form, the Bragulan Star Empire has existed, as it always has, for some three hundred years now, constantly illuminated by the light of Imperator Byzon‘s noble rule.

Economy: Mighty Bragule commands vast resources befitting the scope and scale of a great Empire of its standing, and its economic apparatuses are likewise dedicated to the everyday working of the Empire - which every proud, patriotic Bragulan citizen contributes to with their noble and dedicated unending labor for the Imperator. Moons have been strip mined and laid bare in the industrialization of the Bragulan Stars, verdant jungle-worlds denuded for paper that now fills the cabinets and shelves of Imperial bureaucrats, entire agri-planets irrigated and crop-rotating to feed billions of mouths, all great feats that conservationists have protested before they were revealed to be intellectuals and subsequently sent to be de-educated.

Species: The Bragulan Star Empire is a multicultural, multiracial and multi-species nation tolerant of all forms of sentient sapient creatures. The great majority of Bragulans are, in fact, Bragulans, while other species constitute a minute minority. There exist in the Empire a microscopic populace of humans, confined mostly to the green zones of Wild Space or in the various ‘Bragule Hilton’ work camps for prisoners of war. Likewise, there are Zigonian colonists forcefully evicted from their jungle worlds when the trees were all chopped down and turned to paper. There are also a limited population of Apexai, trapped after the war and now kept in walled-in cities for their own safety as Bragulan settlements are built all over the post-Apexai planets. Other species in the Empire include insectoid Karlacks and Scrollian slug men, considered by the Bragulans to be their equals and brothers in arms for their contributions in ridding Bragule of the Apexai menace.

Military: The valiant militaries of the Bragulan Star Empire serve the Imperator, safeguard the Bragulan Stars’ untold billions of citizens, and stand vigilant against the depravities of insidious alien powers and perfidious factions that threaten the Empire’s rule from without and from within. To ensure the unending continuity of the Empire, the Imperial Star Army maintains millions of shock trooper forces to storm entire worlds and ensure that death comes swiftly to the Imperator‘s enemies, and countless of conscripts to occupy said worlds and maintain the ideological purity of its populace. Then there is the Imperial Star Navy, which scours the vast regions of Bragulan Space with armadas of warships, ranging from centuries-old derelict patrol ships to great cruisers festooned with massive devastating weaponry, to battle stations that lord over key Imperial worlds. The Bragulan Star Empire maintains a proud militaristic tradition, with vast numbers of citizens conscripted for patriotic military service, and a history of warfare culminating in the demolition of several Apexai worlds and a seemingly perpetual state of war with the United Solarian Sovereignty that simmers on to this day.

Sectors:

Bragule (Home Sector)

Vanagradheim (Core Sector)

Krygyzstovan (Core Sector)

Vegalyrsk (Core Sector)

Kravrochezwtola (Core Sector)

Drago (Midrange Sector)

Krannisk (Colony Sector)

Omicron (Colony Sector)

Kasanar (Colony Sector)

Population: 1.5 Trillion

Religion: None, the Bragulan Star Empire is an atheist regime and both prosecutes and persecutes religions that are deemed in need of ideological correct and de-education. There are some religions tolerated by the Imperial government, so long as these religions follow the guidelines set by the Imperial People’s Organization of Societal Correctness and the Ministry of Truth. There is also an encouraged, though unofficial, leadership cult dedicated to the evident greatness of the Imperator Darvyl Sagatantron Byzon, however any patriotic Bragulan will be quick to point out that religion is defined as an object of faith, while the Imperator is fact.

(The fringe worlds of the Empire often has troublesome human missionaries from the Sovereignty, often from the Christian denominations, come attempting to convert Bragulans to their faith. The Imperial Bureau of Galactic Vigilence takes care of this problem, however.)

Foreign Policy: The Bragulan Star Empire is a belligerent, isolationist power with few friends in the international interstellar community, where any cooperation or alliance the Bragulans have with other nations is not based on friendship but more on convenience. The Bragulan Star Empire is also in the process of waging an ongoing war with the United Solarian Sovereignty, a war that has lasted for several decades and punctuated with brief but violent outbursts of conflict followed by long simmering periods of tenuous ‘ceasefire’. The official stance of the Bragulan Star Empire, as dictated by the Imperator himself, is that the Sovereignty is a nation comprised primarily of degenerates and deviants, a lawless and perverted permissive people no different than the horrible Apexai before them - and, like the Apexai, in dire need of a good ideological correction, and a moon landing on one of their planets. Or all of them. The Empire and the Sovereignty have a ‘re-militarized’ zone between them known as Wild Space, populated by disowned renegade elements of both nations. Wild Space is considered a free-fire zone with everything in its confines considered a valid target for both Bragulan and Sovereign militaries.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Just a draft!

Imperium of Man

Government

At the head of the Imperium of Man, is the God Emperor of Man, Heraclius XX Komnenos. Revered by many as a God, he is a superhuman who has lived for many hundreds of years, and is a power psyker by right. He rules an Imperium that is xenophobic to the extreme, and the Imperium has exterminated many an alien race that was unfortunate enough to blunder into the Imperium.

However, as theocratic a state as the Imperiunm of Man, it also pursues Science and reveres it; seeing it as a tool required to exterminate all alien races in the galaxy. The main pillars of the Imperium are: The Adeptus Mechanicus, The Adeptus Astartes, the Imperial Guard, the Imperial Navy, the Church of Man, the Imperial Curia, the Adeptus Urban Cohort and the Imperial Inquisition.

Education

All citizens are required to receive compulsory education, provided for by the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Imperial Curia. The scientifically adept are immediately inducted into the Adeptus Mechanicus and given thorough training before becoming an Technician, followed by Engineer. Some who excel in the fundamental Sciences, are given titles such as Academicians.

The remaining citizens are then allowed to join various parts of the Imperial Government, as well as military. Those who meet extremely stringent requirements such as genetics, are inducted into the Adeptus Astartes, the mailed fist of the Imperium. Some become traders, businessmen, while many join the Imperial Guard and Imperial Navy, and perhaps the more gifted join the Curia, or the Imperial Inquisition. The more religious become priests in the Church of Man, venerating the God Emperor.

Economy

The economy of the Imperium of Man is dominated by the Adeptus Mechanicus, though large private corporations exist. Many Engineers of the Adeptus Mechanicus leave to join private corporations or form their own. Much of the heavy industry and defence industry however, is in the purview of the Adeptus Mechanicus. The various forgeworlds are massive factory worlds that produce much of the equipment and weapons and warships for the Imperium's armies, though the forgeworlds do lease part of their land to private companies who work closely with the Adeptus Mechanicus for civilian and defence projects. Much innovation occurs within the Adeptus Mechanicus, as the vie for contracts from the Imperium.

As one would expect, a tax is levied on all the Imperium's citizens, though the Adeptus Mechanicus does receive tax rebates in return for their service and sacrifice to the Imperium, both in the form of technology, research, and their Titan Legions.

Military

Heavily Militarized, the military of the Imperium has 4 main branches: the Titan Legions, the Imperial Guard, the Imperial Navy, and the Adeptus Astartes. The Adeptus Astartes are feared and rightly so. Led by the Strategikons, who are sons of the Emperor, they are genetically modified Superhumans; the epitome of human perfection. Using powered armor, and heavy weapons, they are the mailed fist of the Imperium, and the Strategikons are often called upon to lead a Crusade against Xenos. The Astartes have their own warships to provide transport and firepower required to defeat enemy ships and defences.

The Imperial Navy is composed of carriers, battleships, and myriad cruisers, destroyers, frigates and corvettes. They patrol Imperial space, perform exterminatus, and lead attacks on enemy vessels.

The Imperial Guard is composed of conscripts and professional soldiers who fight and die for the God Emperor. Equiped with Tanks, Superheavy Tanks, armored fighting vehicles, artillery and superheavy artillery, they are the fist that holds the Imperium together.

The Titan legions are composed of Titans and Skitarii. Walking giants, the Titans bring heavy firepower to the battlefiled, and are escorted by the cyborg Skitarii. The firepower of the largest Titans, Warlord and Imperator, carry enough firepower to obliterate whole cities.

The Urban Cohort are not military per se, but they patrol the trade lanes and the cities and ensure that all follow the laws of the Imperium.

Foreign Policy

The Imperium is friend to any human empire, and hostile against xenos. It has recently entered a war with a race of insectoids, and a crusade has been called to exterminate them....

Systems

Constantinople system

• Terra
  Mars
  Saturn

Thessaloniki system

• Vostroya
  Fortis Binary

Sparta system

• Cadia
  Ryza

[Shroom Man 777]

Man, Fin.

[Steve]

It is primarily a philosophical difference. The thing is that you state that you have to clarify how troop transports and carriers act but these things are ultimately minutia in the grand scale of things. The only reason we need to know how these work in the long run reduces to fluff. Does it matter if troops are transported by landing craft, drop pods or by a platoon of men generating gestalt psychic powers by doing jumping jacks and teleporting to LOS of their aerobics sergeant as long as they all require the same level/type of investment from the player and have the same strengths and restrictions?

So let's say we don't quantify such. Let's say people can claim any transport capacity they want. Are you going to accept it when some guy proclaims he has a $100 value hull carrying half a billion troops? No? What if it has $1000 value? $2000, or at least a fleet worth that much? Where is the line between "munchkin" and "acceptable"? Because if it's not clarified at game start in the rules this is going to be an argument that will be hashed out whenever someone thinks someone else has too many troops in their ships.

Same thing with planetary numbers and population numbers. Does it really matter if you have 10 billion people and I have 10 copies of superman if we both produce the same and it takes the same investment of troops to subdue? I don't think it does as long as we enforce rule #1) Don't be a douche.

Invoking "Don't be a douche" sounds all nice and simple and summed up, but how will it work in practice? What quantifies "being a douche"? There are obvious examples, of course,, but what of a case where a player claims something a bit big but not overtly douchery? Is he being a douche or just imaginative? What if someone proclaims him being a douche but he's not intending to be, or proclaims his innocence?

Its actually more unbelievable that numerous civilizations of a variety of species will all utilize land area, resources and manpower at the same general levels of efficiency and build militaries with the same fundamental design philosophy than just a priori assuming egality and general equivalence of civilizations using the fluff to patch the holes.

Militaries with same general design philosophy? The system as written is crafted to permit multiple ideas. There are no "definite" things set up like specific types of battleships or infantry weapons, it's just a rough quality of kit, quality of troops, and hull size system. A Heavy hull could be a space battleship or it could be a carrier or it could be a heavy cruiser or a system defense ship or whatever someone wants it to be.

The manpower thing has no mechanic beyond letting a player have a number to fix on how many people dwell in his state. If he wants he can claim he has a race of giants that take up the equivalent of 10 normal people, ergo his game stated population of 200 billion is really just 20 billion. Or maybe a race of midget insects who procreate far faster than Humans so every figure of population is duplicated five fold for him - 200 billion becomes 1 trillion.

Where the hell are resources even coming into play? GDP figure is a rough readout of the economic and industrial productivity of a nation and its component sectors - how they do it is never mentioned orr considered.

You are arguing at nothing here. There is nothing in this system saying you must have a specific thing, save in terms of systems and sectors, and that's so that everyone has an established national size and characteristics and, of course, a starting military force to list.

The rules should be there for situations were two players can't agree on an outcome and a mod has to go "ok, how many points do you each have? Let me roll some dice and see what I get", or a "wait a second, that ain't right" moment.

Agreed.

I mean, we don't have rules for intelligence gathering, counter-intelligence, espionage, assassination and economic sabotage even though all these things are tantamount military concerns far more important than the mechanical functioning of carriers. Why are we trusting players to run an aspect that is necessarily sneaky, duplicitous and obscured but not the general vagueries of combat which are either transparent or only important in retrospect?

So you are arguing that a player should get to decide how many "fighters" or "gunboats" or what have you his carriers have.

Okay, again, let's look at the "don't be a douche" concept. Again, it looks fine on paper. People who are douches "stand out", so to speak.

Or do they? Take SDNW for example? Is Shep a douche? Generally, albeit usually an entertaining one. There are those, however, that would consider Zor a douche too, or Lonestar, or Fingolfin, even if others don't.

The same thing applies to player actions. Player A might do something that Player D proclaims douchery, but Player A doesn't see that, nor does C or F. The mods look at it and say "nope, not douchery". Is Player D simply going to accept that ruling, or is he going to get mad and assume the mods are being assholes or biased and continue to scream about Player A's douchery?

Fast forward five months. Player B does something just like Player A did before. Player F proclaims him to be a douche. A mod looks over it and agrees, not remembering the prior case. But Players B and D do, and they now have "proof" that the mods are biased for Player A and Player F, even if the mod in this dscision was seeing things form a different angle, didn't recall the prior ruling, or wasn't even involved in it. Cue an OOC flamefest as Players B and D screech "BIAS!", Player A tries to show how what he did was in fact "slightly different" even if it wasn't, and Player F perhaps staying out, backpedaling on his douchery claim against B if he forgot the prior ruling, or maybe accusing B and D of being drama queens. Everyone else picks a side eventually, likely following upon in-game alliances or friendships. And the mods are caught in the middle with a flame war on their hands.

If you have a ruleset where things are laid out, these events can be avoided, because in both cases the players have a ruleset they can quote and say "This is/is not douchery".

As it is, this ruleset is already feather-light. It only really applies at country generation, everything else is rule of thumb. I simply cannot fathom that people still consider it "complicated". About the only complicated thing, I'll grant, are the troop carrier rules, and I'm honestly stymied on how to do that properly and have toyed with just proclaiming everyone gets enough troop transports to carry a quarter of their active army at any given time, allowing me to dumb the calculations part. Because, again, I do not get some perverse thrill out of complicating the ruleset just to torment you peons, er, I mean, players, despite what Siege might accuse me of. (I do, OTOH, get a bit of a chuckle when I make him wail in horror at the sight of an actual ruleset I've derived that's not going the free-form route. )

Honestly, do you know what you're asking of this approach? To have a ruleset that only exists in the minds and thoughts of the mods, which the mods will use, consciously or not, to judge whether something's douchery or not.

[Steve]

Okay, here:

Interstellar Transport Rules:

Having an army is nice and everything, but for interstellar war you need ships to move them in.

Any hull of Light size or greater can be used as a troop carrier while Gunboat and Shuttle spacecraft hulls are capable of being troop dropships.

For starship troop carriers, every $1 of hull value you may carry 1,000 troops with Elite kit, 1,500 with Regular kit, 2,000 with Baseline, or 3,000 with Old kit. A $75 Medium hull configured with $10 worth of troop carrying capacity can carry 10,000 troops with Elite kit, 15,000 with Regular, 20,000 with Baseline, or 30,000 with old. Naturally, a ship configured to carry troops will sacrifice some capacity in firepower or defenses, scaled to the hull value allocated for troop carrying..

For spacecraft troop dropships, a Shuttle Hull of either variety can carry 50 troops and a Gunboat Hull can carry 500.

Troop Transports are ships dedicated solely to carrying troops. They are generally Heavy hulls or larger that use dedicated sublight Yacht and Ultralight hull sized dropships as well as normal ones to ferry troops to a planetary surface. These ships ferry 2,000 troops for every $1 of hull value, as well as the necessary dropships to transport them to a planetary surface: a $125 Transport thus carries 250,000 troops with large quantities of troop landers. They have only minor defensive capability and no weaponry beyond anti-spacecraft weapons and planetary bombardment fire support guns.

All nations are presumed to start with a troop transport fleet sufficient to carry a quarter of their active troops at any given time.


Carrier Rules:

Any Starship Hull can be configured to carry Fighters and Gunboats. Superheavies can be configured to carry Ultralights and Ultraheavies can carry Ultralights and Lights.

A Hull size's carrying capacity is equivalent to half its cost. For example, a Medium Hull ship of $80 cost can carry $40 worth of craft (that's 200 basic Fighter hulls or 40 basic Gunboats as a max exclusive capacity).

The same rules for troop transports' combat capabilities apply to hulls made into carriers, though mostly in terms of anti-starship firepower; a carrier, unlike a troop transport, is presumed to have at least mediocre, if not moderate, defensive capability between armored hull and energy shielding.

Fighters and Gunboats are automatically considered to have a x2 to attack value; a base cost fighter unit of 20 fighters, $4 overall, can inflict damage and defeat a ship at $8 cost. This allows a carrier to be economically viable and practical, but due to their lower defensive value fighters and gunboats are easily destroyed and thus the effectiveness of a force of spacecraft is blunted as it takes losses in a space battle.

If anyone finds something here too complex, please explain what it is you feel is too complex, and I will find a way to simplify it or replace it with something more simple.

[RogueIce]

Thumbs up from me.

[Darkevilme]

$150 pure carrier. $100 for fighter bays, $50 for fighters. Attack strength=100 Defence strength:150

$150 pure cruiser $150 for laser beams and armour. attack strength=150 Defence strength: 150

[Siege]

So let's say we don't quantify such. Let's say people can claim any transport capacity they want. Are you going to accept it when some guy proclaims he has a $100 value hull carrying half a billion troops? No? What if it has $1000 value? $2000, or at least a fleet worth that much? Where is the line between "munchkin" and "acceptable"? Because if it's not clarified at game start in the rules this is going to be an argument that will be hashed out whenever someone thinks someone else has too many troops in their ships.

Isn't that what we'd have a moderator staff for? To make those hard decisions when people can't agree on what's acceptable and what isn't?

Invoking "Don't be a douche" sounds all nice and simple and summed up, but how will it work in practice? What quantifies "being a douche"? There are obvious examples, of course,, but what of a case where a player claims something a bit big but not overtly douchery? Is he being a douche or just imaginative? What if someone proclaims him being a douche but he's not intending to be, or proclaims his innocence?

Then faced with multiple players who think he's being a douche he ought to withdraw or adjust his claims. And if he doesn't he is, in fact, a douche--actions matter more than intentions, after al. And if there really is a gray area where we just can't agree at all... Hello, moderatorial prerogative!

The same thing applies to player actions. Player A might do something that Player D proclaims douchery, but Player A doesn't see that, nor does C or F. The mods look at it and say "nope, not douchery". Is Player D simply going to accept that ruling, or is he going to get mad and assume the mods are being assholes or biased and continue to scream about Player A's douchery?

Who cares? If he gets mad over a bloody game he shouldn't have been playing in the first place, and he's free to leave. You're making this far more complicated than it needs to be, based solely on the half-assed approach to game-modding we took in game #2. I think you're taking exactly the wrong lesson away from that game: if somewhere down the line people genuinely start to lawyer up with moderatorial precedents from five months ago, and this is seen somehow as a valid argument, then we might as well call it quits right then and there, because that obviously means we've taken a wrong turn somewhere.

People should conform to the loosest of pre-game standards before they begin playing; they should resolve in-game conflict by talking with each other (i.e. what Wilkens said: don't treat the game as something you need to "win", treat it as a joint story-telling opportunity instead); and if that for some reason doesn't work out, they can request a moderatorial ruling on their situation. And if they can't accept whatever outcome that produces, they can kindly go fuck off--because if they don't like said ruling they shoulda resolved their issues amongst themselves. That's really all there is to it.

[Steve]

If things go ideally, Siege, you'd be right. But you'll understand if I don't share your optimism in it.

*sighs*

Anyway, are there any actual objections to the concepts I posted? It's just a guideline to help us mods make decisions should the players have difficulties in deciding fleet battles and such.

[Steve]

Oh, a spacefleet for a 26 NCP state:


6 Ultraheavy Hulls @ $600 - $3,600
24 Superheavy Hulls @ $300 - $7,200
60 Heavy Hulls @ $200 - $12,000
12 Heavy Hulls @ $150 - $1,800
10 Medium Hulls @ $120 - $1,200
40 Medium Hulls @ $110 - $4,400
70 Medium Hulls @ $80 - $5,600
180 Light Hulls @ $40 - $7,200
93 Ultralight Hulls @ $20 - $1,860
4 Yacht Hulls @ $10 - $40
20 Yacht Hulls @ $5 - $100

Total Space Expenditure: $45,000

Should give people a feel for how our space fleets will "look" in game.

[Steve]

This is an un-modified, basic appearance of our planned space map, but with a twist.

There will, in fact, be 3-5 of these (have to see our overall player numbers and necessary sectors first) in the game, representing the Z axis - Map 1 will be "above" the other maps, Map 2 above 3 but below 1, etc. We can thus have a "3D" space map without the fuss of Astrosynthesis.

If anyone regards this as too complex and thinks we should just go with a 2D map for simplicity, go ahead and say so now.