An SDNW Proposal

[Teleros]

Why would you need Excel?

Well or you can grab a calculator, my point was more that there'd be a little number crunching involved, which it seems we're trying to avoid for this.

[loomer]

Since when was basic addition of a dozen or so numbers crunching? Bloody hell, if you need Excel for that you may need to break your reliance on technology.

[Steve]

I noticed a question about sectors.

My intention is each sector has one, and only one, natural planet with Earth or Near Earth features that permit pretty much any lifeform to dwell on it. In addition, each sector has four further planets that are fit for terraforming, a long, arduous process that lasts centuries.

In Home and Core Sectors all planets have been terraformed. In Midrange Sectors the other four planets are in the later stages of it; in Colony Sectors, they're in the first stages.

[Darkevilme]

What about the idea of using individual star systems instead of sectors as the discrete unit of industry( and lets be honest, NCPs are hellion's industry points with some odd scaling thrown in for good measure). i know it garnered support so i wanna bring it up again. Even if it is essentially an issue of personal preference.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

What about the idea of using individual star systems instead of sectors as the discrete unit of industry( and lets be honest, NCPs are hellion's industry points with some odd scaling thrown in for good measure). i know it garnered support so i wanna bring it up again. Even if it is essentially an issue of personal preference.

I'd prefer to think that we are doing things on the large scale instead of a small one, and people can go define their sectors as so wished.

[Setzer]

I had some ideas for mercenary units, but I'm not sure how to implement them in game. Should they subtract GDP but no population, or what?

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

Since several people have already put up drafts of their nation concepts, here's mine.

The Holy Empire of Haruhi Suzumiya

Government: The Holy Empire of Haruhi Suzumiya is a constitutional monarchy led by none other than Haruhi Suzumiya herself. Haruhi is quite similar to God-Emperor Heraclius XX Komnenos of the Imperium of Man in many ways, as both are long-lived and extremely powerful psykers revered as deities by their respective nations. She is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, has the ability to veto legislation, and appoints both the Supreme Court and her Cabinet (among a great many other powers). While Haruhi herself holds nigh-unlimited power, most of the Empire's daily affairs are run by the numerous agencies that comprise her Cabinet.

The legislative branch is a bicameral Congress, divided into a National Assembly (proportional representation) and a Senate (equal representation). Judicial power is held by the Supreme Court and various lower courts. However, these two branches of the government often tend to be overpowered by the executive.

Economy: The Haruhiist economy, much like that of the Pfhor Empire and the Bragulan Star Empire, tends to focus extensively on (military) heavy industry, resource extraction, and refining. While there are some national industries, the economy is largely dominated by private megacorporations.

Military: The Haruhiists maintain a massive military modeled loosely on those of the Imperium of Man (sans Titan Legions, because Haruhi thinks mecha suck) and the United Solarian Sovereignty.

The SOS Imperial Guard is a conscript force tasked with planetary defense, local counter-insurgency and occupation, and the occasional bug hunt. The SOS Imperial Marine Corps is a fully professional force tasked with planetary assault, boarding actions, and generally providing additional firepower if the Imperial Guard isn't sufficient to accomplish a task. The SOS Imperial Navy comprises all of the Empire's space assets, which range from old warships seized as spoils of war from conquered powers to the most sophisticated designs to come from the Haruhiist shipyards; it is tasked with patrolling Haruhiist space and spearheading assaults on enemy territory.

Species: For a society that is supposedly highly tolerant of xenos, there are surprisingly few of them within the Haruhiist populace. Humans are by and large the dominant species. Asides from immigrants, expatriates, and refugees from the other factions, there are quite a few interesting sapient and semi-sapient species native to Haruhiist space, mostly located in the colonial sectors.

Sectors: (26 NCPs, names TBD, all GDP and population figures based on latest revision of the rules)

1 Home Sector (free, total population 60 billion, total GDP $14000)
1 Core Sector w/ Hyperspace Junction (8 points, total population 50 billion, total GDP $12000)
3 Midrange Sectors w/ Warp Gates (12 points, total population 90 billion, total GDP $21000)
6 Colony Sectors (6 points, total population 60 billion, total GDP $12000)

Population: 260 billion

GDP: $59000

Religion: Haruhiism is the official state religion of the Holy Empire of Haruhi Suzumiya (naturally). Other religions are tolerated, though their followers only form a tiny minority of the populace.

Foreign Relations: With the exceptions of the United Solarian Sovereignty and possibly the Ascendancy, the Haruhiists tend to be on poor terms with the rest of the galaxy. The Imperium of Man takes a dim view of the Haruhiists' general tolerance of xenos, though its opinion may change with the fact that the Haruhiists hate bugs too. The Bragulans find the Haruhiists' religiosity to be quite irritating, though they also grudgingly admire Haruhi for her similarities to Imperator Byzon. The SOS Imperial Navy has shoot-on-sight orders for any Pfhor ships that enter Haruhiist space.

Other franchises I plan on "taking inspiration" from: Battlestar Galactica, Code Geass, Command & Conquer, Fallout, Firefly, Gears of War, Gundam, Half-Life, Halo, Killzone, Macross, Resistance, Robotech, StarCraft, Starship Troopers (movie, not book)

[Simon_Jester]

I remove the entire "troop quality/kit quality" setup last night, even before Hellion made his next post on it. As some of you might have noticed.

What? Darn it!

Look, it's all very well to have simple rules, but when you sacrifice all customizability to the point where everyone's society is mechanically identical... it kills some of the joy for me.

[Norade]

I agree, having everything be equal in the end wold be boring, it'd be like playing rock, rock, rock and just calling each one something else to add fun.

[Darkevilme]

To be fair troop training and kit quality were only rough guidelines for how many points to pay per 50,000 really. And it was never anything but playing rock rock rock, except its a matter of rock, Rock, ROCK. for instance Chamarans spend a LOT on their troop equipment so their troops are more expensive, more so than the troops of your average conscript reliant nation but less than fingolfin's power armoured uber men or bragulan battle bears are probably worth.

[Norade]

True enough, I'd like to have some system where one could go with better weapons or better mobility and only pay points for that, I only want them sort of elite but I want to use them in a way that negates their weakness for a net gain over just throwing more troops at the issue or paying for the full next step up. As it stands it seems like to do that either my weapons would be increased only enough that my enemies armor is marginally less effective or my guns tear through his armor like paper and my enemy's guns do the same to me and we end at a draw anyway. It's fair, but very boring.

I guess that would take more rules though.

[Teleros]

I noticed a question about sectors.

My intention is each sector has one, and only one, natural planet with Earth or Near Earth features that permit pretty much any lifeform to dwell on it. In addition, each sector has four further planets that are fit for terraforming, a long, arduous process that lasts centuries.

In Home and Core Sectors all planets have been terraformed. In Midrange Sectors the other four planets are in the later stages of it; in Colony Sectors, they're in the first stages.

That was probably me, which this helped answer, but not fully. For example:

1. Player A has a Core Sector with 5 inhabited systems (ie 1 planet per system).
2. Player B invades the above Core Sector.
3. How does he travel between systems / planets etc? He'd have to specify the particular planet / system to attack, the defender would have to check to see what he has available at the target (or can rush to the target - how quickly?), and so on.
4. Now let's say Player B captures a particular system / planet. Player A's economy & population is now reduced by whatever % of that Core Sector was represented by that system (which he'll have had to sort out when creating his nation I guess).

Using star systems instead of sectors would be easier in this regard, albeit more of a pain with regards travel times between star systems, because you can't just say "X sectors per unit time" when you have star systems scattered all over the place.

[Ryan Thunder]

True enough, I'd like to have some system where one could go with better weapons or better mobility and only pay points for that, I only want them sort of elite but I want to use them in a way that negates their weakness for a net gain over just throwing more troops at the issue or paying for the full next step up. As it stands it seems like to do that either my weapons would be increased only enough that my enemies armor is marginally less effective or my guns tear through his armor like paper and my enemy's guns do the same to me and we end at a draw anyway. It's fair, but very boring.

I guess that would take more rules though.

My (entirely hypothetical) fifty thousand Imperial Guardsmen here are $5. My (entirely hypothetical) Space Marines, on the other hand, are so badass that they're $1 each. But none of that matters unless we can't come to a gentleman's agreement on the results of a battle. This isn't a simulator, its a roleplaying game.

[Steve]

I removed the troop system as listed because it seemed people were believing they represented mandated classifications for troops and it was being griped about (particularly by those who believed I was being, I quote, "humanocentric", also because the base costs really didn't reflect, IMHO, the capable sizes of a land army for states of our size, even if one takes the rule of thumb that system defense forces are the same size, or larger, of the army you put together.

People wanted to be supremely flexible with what their militaries looked like anyway; someone spends $1 for 250,000 barely-trained ravagers with baseline equipment or for 15,000 elite forces with cutting-edge super equipment or even for 1,000 gene-engineered cyborg supersoldiers who are one man armies in of themselves. I'm a bit concerned with this since there are issues of inverse square law at times (those 1,000 super-soldiers might be "equal" in cost to the 15,000 elites, but quantity is a quality of its own, especially in terms of actual firepower output) and I'm afraid some of you may go overboard with the super soldier stuff and forget our rough setting equivalency.

Anyway, back on point; I'm open to putting examples of base costs for troops back in, I just don't know if everyone can be pleased by them. In terms of ships the base cost really reflects the fact that to get a certain amount of "combat value" you have to have a hull of a rough size and mass - to get that $100 worth of combat performance your Hull has to be so big, such that it is a "Medium" type Hull. Even advanced army equipment would be of a cost to not really appear on the scale we're looking at.

I figured I'll ask - do people want to halve the base costs? Give an option for increasing fleet sizes? So far even investing something like $51,000 - and making hulls in some cases above base cost - gives a 600 ship national fleet. And I had someone inquire on the grounds that an average of 10 ships per system (at the time I used a 400 ship example fleet) would be relatively thin in defense depending on permitted FTL speeds.

[loomer]

Maybe we should throw up a second thread with a poll for what kind of scale people are wanting to see. Personally I want to see hundreds of thousands of Airaii fighters plunge against formations of capital ships a dozen miles long, but I have a taste for big.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I should think that any empire with 10 sectors, 4 star systems each should be able to marshal 1000 ships. 1000/40 = 25 ships per star system should be more than enough. That is however, discounting the local coast guard.

[Siege]

Concerning warp gates: I think it'd be a good idea to change them from orbital structures to planetary ones more akin to Stargates. After all, if their primary narrative purpose is to let heads of state move quickly from planet A to B then all they really need is to drive a motorcade through the thing, and it also means there would no longer be two ways to move around quickly in a starship which, if you ask me, is pretty silly. Moreover, Stargates could be a liability because if you don't watch them, someone might stream a couple hundred troops through them and you'll have a Foothold Situation on your hands. Just strikes me as much more interesting story-wise than another random structure sitting in orbit somewhere.

[Teleros]

Maybe we should throw up a second thread with a poll for what kind of scale people are wanting to see. Personally I want to see hundreds of thousands of Airaii fighters plunge against formations of capital ships a dozen miles long, but I have a taste for big.

Given the setting I'm happy with fleet numbers being on average in the mid to high hundreds of capital ships. Larger scale battles will require a larger scale of game, which will affect the costs of all those core sectors and such. I mean, if people want to go all Lensman and build up trillion-strong capital ship fleets and use planets like bowling balls then that's fine IMHO, but I rather think we'll need a lot of rewriting of the rules .

Concerning warp gates: I think it'd be a good idea to change them from orbital structures to planetary ones more akin to Stargates.

I'd rather keep them in space: it makes the economic benefits work better, and moving quickly via starship can be useful anyway (go go sneak attacks or emergency reinforcements).

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Pfft. If they become too useful, they also become a liability. I'd be strapping plenty of high energy explosives on mine to be certain.

[Siege]

I'd rather keep them in space: it makes the economic benefits work better, and moving quickly via starship can be useful anyway (go go sneak attacks or emergency reinforcements).

Why do "economic benefits" work better with the gate in space as opposed to on a planet? And you can move quickly via starship anyway, by using those hyperlane things--it just strikes me as dumb to have two entirely separate ways to get a ship quickly from A to B.

[Teleros]

Mostly I'm thinking of the bottleneck nature of stargates on the ground vs in space. The latter for starters probably have to be larger, and you can use the whole of the front to travel through, rather than only a fraction of that (think about how much wasted space there is around the SG-1 team when they walk through a stargate). I mean, I suppose you could develop cylindrical trains / lorries or whatever to maximise internal volume (let's assume the gates are circular for now), but I'd like to meet the train that can go as fast as a starship through one. And finally, the system is "gate per sector" not "gate per planet" - although you could add more wormholes to your nation, having it in space makes it much easier to get goods from the gate to a planet in the same sector other than the one the gate is nearest to. As opposed to driving out to the nearest starport traffic jam, burning all that fuel & reaction mass to get up into space (okay okay just power if you use a space elevator, don't quibble), and so on.

Bear in mind under the current rules a single gate provides a £500 GDP bonus - the same as about 5 billion people compared to most sectors.

[Steve]

It gets the bonus because of the space based idea initially had. I'd probably take it out if we went for planet-based gates.

[Norade]

I know we're in early stages here, but is there a wiki or something where proto-rules can go?

[Steve]

Not yet

[Sea Skimmer]

As an idea of what should be possible for planet scale shipbuilding, a Ford class carrier costs around 77,000 dollars per full load ton. If a planet as wealthy as earth (60 trillion GDP) spent 5% of its GDP on the military, and allocated that money at the same defense budget slice the US currently does (about 3.3% of military spending, very low at the moment) to military shipbuilding it’d be about 99 billion. That’d buy about 1.285 million tons of carrier assuming no more economy of scale then Newport News has right now.

But if you had a planet with supporting industrialized moons and three times the total GDP at 180 trillion, and you spent 10% of the military budget on shipbuilding that’d be 900 billion buying you around 11.6 million tons of carrier. Of course some ships would cost more then carriers, and others like UNREPs would cost much less.

But the additional factor is, a warship has a service life, then can be anything from 20-50 years depending on the type of ship. Assuming an average 30 year service life for each ton built, 11.6 million tons of warship per year turns into a sustained fleet of 348 million tons.

So basically, if people have a number of well industrialized systems, then a war fleet of several billion displacement tons is well within reason. If system GDPs are even higher then triple modern levels then tens of billions of tons may come into reason. Particularly since many ships may be very large auxiliaries, counterbalancing very expensive battleships. Of course ships would be designed very different in space, but the concepts are close enough that real life shipbuilding can be a guide in a sci-tech setting.