SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread V

[KlavoHunter]

There are an undisclosed number of Klavostani Djinni stealthships possibly operating in areas that might be termed MEH space.

[Beowulf]

Okay. Can we have a role call as to what stealth ships are active in MEH space? cause i'm losing track and at this rate we're gonna outnumber the actual military vessels we're all looking at.

Tianguo assets:
x1 stealth carrier with stealthed parasite craft

Who am i missing on this list?

A couple more (2-3) stealth corvettes are going to be showing up.

[Shroom Man 777]

A number of Light of Bragules may be submerged near there too.

[Force Lord]

I may send a stealth ship that isn't the Datton.

[Master_Baerne]

Hmm. I should really get some stealth ships - they open up all sorts of narrative possibilities.

[DarthShady]

There are a couple of Shadow Drones drifting around MEH space.

Also: Mayabird, did you get my PM? Diplomacy waits for no man, bird, bug, etc.

[fgalkin]

Best diplomatic exchange ever!

And, well, here you see how to defeat orichalcum wards (although, please note that what Shroom did was not psykery, but rather, something that was an inherent part of her nature as a succubus. It would take more than that for actual ESP powers).

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Steve]

Bleh. I want to get this stupid X-13 thing done so I can focus on other stuff, like the proposed establishment of the existing external empire/protectorates, maybe in the forlorn hope of chipping away at this silly "Precious Princess Party" caricature of New Anglia that everyone loves to tease me about, but just thinking about that and looking at the X-13 characters makes me want to delete the whole damned X-13 storyline as of now.

[PeZook]

Oh, come on, dude! I don't think anybody seriously thinks your society is composed entirely of partying lesbians

[Steve]

Oh, come on, dude! I don't think anybody seriously thinks your society is composed entirely of partying lesbians

No, but I would much rather have the joke caricature of Anglians be stiff-necked arrogant nobs who sip tea and wear monocles, not debauched orgy-indulging lesbians.

Anyway, speaking of the external empire idea, is anyone open to having an Anglian protectorate or external colony in their environs? Shroom's hoping I get permission to be near Klavostan and the Argenti so I can have "the Balklands". (Original name: the "Fucklands").

K-Zone states need not apply. I'm close enough to your crazy bastards as it is.

[PeZook]

Awww, I was going to suggest a protectorate dangerously close to Collector space!

[Shroom Man 777]

I'm so totally for Anglia having more colonies, though just not in the K-Zone, because it's already quite a flavorsome place without Shroomcoats shooting people in the face with space-muskets. Seriously though, BALKLANDS! Near the ARGENTI! The ARGENTIANS can get hit by Space Harriers! They can launch ENDOCETS at Anglian ships! ENDOCETS can be different from Exocets by having endoskeletons! It's worth it just for that pun!

But also, what if: 20-21 NCPs = 1 colony, 22-23 NCPs = 2 colonies, 24-25 NCPs = 3 colonies , 26-27 NCPs = 4 colonies, 28-29 NCPs = 5 colonies.... ? Tying NCPs to colony numbers is pretty straight forward. I know Siege said no to unnecessary numbercrunching, and god knows how I HAET maths, but if Shepples and co. think having colonies is bads, then tying it down to rule revisions with points basis could appease them and make for a workable mechanic tied to the existing points system.

And yeah, despite the NCPs or whatever, these colonies would still be totally insignificant points-wise and would just be flavor pieces.

Hell, ditch the points-per-colony and just make the colonies total flavor pieces without number-brunching, as Siege and Simon said, and it still works fine with me. Just grab the consent of the countries near your colony and viola!

[Darkevilme]

No, but I would much rather have the joke caricature of Anglians be stiff-necked arrogant nobs who sip tea and wear monocles, not debauched orgy-indulging lesbians.

But the lesbo zone joke is funnier.

Anyway, speaking of the external empire idea, is anyone open to having an Anglian protectorate or external colony in their environs?

Feel free. We of course have no objections to more folks to interact with.

[Force Lord]

Anyone thinking of writing up posts set in the CENINTERN conference?

[Simon_Jester]

Oh, come on, dude! I don't think anybody seriously thinks your society is composed entirely of partying lesbians

No, but I would much rather have the joke caricature of Anglians be stiff-necked arrogant nobs who sip tea and wear monocles, not debauched orgy-indulging lesbians.

You could do both.

I mean, the porn caricature of your nation is debauched orgy-indulging lesbians, but there are three hundred billion-plus people in your country and they do manage to reproduce somehow. So that doesn't mean you can't also have stiff-necked arrogant nobs who sip tea and wear monocles. The vast majority of which, in all probability, are not lesbians.

Anyway, speaking of the external empire idea, is anyone open to having an Anglian protectorate or external colony in their environs? Shroom's hoping I get permission to be near Klavostan and the Argenti so I can have "the Balklands". (Original name: the "Fucklands").

K-Zone states need not apply. I'm close enough to your crazy bastards as it is.

I'm not specifically applying, but if you can't find enough places to put the things to make the idea credible, you could drop one to coreward/antispinward of Umeria- somewhere in the general region between us and Tianguo, outside the shoals.

SPACE HONG KONG!

Anyone thinking of writing up posts set in the CENINTERN conference?

Well I wasn't, but why don't we let it simmer a while? There's other stuff going on before we wrap up 3400, so we have plenty of time.

[Shroom Man 777]

Now I am done. That is the lastest ever post I will ever write in orkspeak grammer.

[Siege]

Steve, you could place a colony near Cevaukian space (technically not the K-Zone proper!), and then the cybercartels could drop by every so often to demand money for "protection", leading to tensions!

[Shroom Man 777]

Then the Spinward-Outback Trading Company comes after these pirates!

[Simon_Jester]

I've started drafting a Migwazza post; hopefully some of the old hands remember him. It'll take a bit to catch up to where he is 'now,' but the writing should flow smoothly enough for me to get the post out in a decent timeframe.

[Dark Hellion]

So a real quick thing that may have been discussed while I was busy with school last quarter. I was going over the construction rules for making my 3401 budget and noticed a rather odd bit. The construction times for ground troops seem a bit silly mechanically compared with the construction times for ships. For example, it takes as long to build a $5 point scout titan as it does to fully construct and train the crew of a ship over 60 times its point value.

It makes little sense that troops have to start processing from brand new. Every civilization should have some constant level of new training and equipment manufacture as well as reserves they can pull up and quickly retrain from PDF, national guard, etc. So, the big time concern shouldn't be training but in the ability to effectively mobilize these troops. This is also completely discounting the fact that every faction could use AI controlled war machines which would not need to be trained, simply constructed.

Also, the construction rules for troops are not really clear on how to deal with larger point item ground forces. Anything in the $x/1 catagory (be it super-espers, titans, land battleships) have no real rules at all for construction.

As I said, maybe this was previously discussed and the rules just haven't been updated, otherwise I think we should streamline troop construction as well.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, the rules are calibrated to the assumption that most people use something clearly recognizable as "soldiers" (bioforms that must be trained count).

I think that petty-scale ground troop losses can be made up for out of the routine operations budget, which is not counted as construction budget- basically, you issue a stop-loss order and/or keep some stuff due for the scrap heap around, while the production lines turn out the new stuff. This is equivalent to the space forces' ability to replace limited losses to small craft complements, or to repair damage to ships, without seriously impacting the construction budget.

But if ground casualties are reaching up into the hundreds of points, this is no longer so reasonable. Your routine peacetime training establishment and production lines aren't likely to be able to replace that for free; you'll need an extra surge of men going into boot camp and extra shifts in the factories. Think about the mobilization required to create large ground armies from scratch during the World Wars and you'll see what I mean.

What it comes down to is that routine operations are covered under the abstracted maintenance budget: a certain number of units retire/obsolesce/whatever at the end of each month, and a certain number of new recruits/units/whatever enter the force at the end of each month, and the two numbers balance out to within about 1%. To increase the size of the force, you must scale up existing production of equipment, perform training, and so on. That's what costs money and takes time.

The ground troop production rules are scaled on the assumption that a nation will turn out hundreds or thousands of points of ground troops at once. If that money is being spent on titans or land battleships, then what happens is that the government places an order for, say, 500 two-point land battleships all at once. And sure, you might be able to produce one two-point land battleship in a few weeks (based off the spaceship production rules). But can you turn out five hundred of the things at once? Not likely- what's more plausible is that, based on the limits of existing production capacity, you have to space out the order over a long period of time. The way that the commissioning dates for my light starships are spread out throughout the year: when I build twelve ships that cost 20 points each, I have myself down as getting one ship per month, not twelve ships at the same time.

Another thing to remember is that every point of ground troops is implicitly assumed to 'come with' the spaceborne transport required to use it in an interstellar war. That, too, can be expensive- even if you don't have actually have enough troopships to move your entire army in one big spacemobile operation at the same time, the sheer volume of spacelift in question is pretty significant. Assembling that for an expansion of the ground forces can cost you.

---

Those rambles aside, yeah we might need to look over the ground troop production rules. I'm not sure who wrote them originally, but they've been essentially untouched and largely un-play-tested since game start.

[Dark Hellion]

I would think that if I could produce 500 Destroyer Escorts at $25 in a bit under two months then Land Battleships at $2 shouldn't be that much more difficult to produce. Since we have abstracted the necessity to have production lines it is reasonable to expect you have the manufacturing capability to produce any unit in any reasonable amount.

Mainly, I noticed that if I wanted to produce a new courier and Ambassador pair that the courier would be done 22 months before the ambassador. Hell, I could produce a new battleship in the same time it takes for me to build an Ambassador.

I just feel that if anything the production rules should favor ground forces just because past experiences with STGODs have shown that naval dickwaving is bad for story progression. Currently, $1 of army is more precious that $100 of space ship, which is silly all things considered.

[Force Lord]

Oh, come on, dude! I don't think anybody seriously thinks your society is composed entirely of partying lesbians

No, but I would much rather have the joke caricature of Anglians be stiff-necked arrogant nobs who sip tea and wear monocles, not debauched orgy-indulging lesbians.

Anyway, speaking of the external empire idea, is anyone open to having an Anglian protectorate or external colony in their environs? Shroom's hoping I get permission to be near Klavostan and the Argenti so I can have "the Balklands". (Original name: the "Fucklands").

K-Zone states need not apply. I'm close enough to your crazy bastards as it is.

How about a Anglian colony/protectorate near my space? Gives me a reason to use either the Order of the Black Star or the CENINTERN. Heck, maybe the Sisters of the Silver Moon stumble on a OBS/CENINTERN plot!

[Simon_Jester]

[modhat on]

I would think that if I could produce 500 Destroyer Escorts at $25 in a bit under two months...

That's the thing. You can't. Not on my watch, anyway.

See, suppose you use a swarm of 30 25-pt Destroyer Escorts (DEs) to take on a single 500-pt enemy battleship. You'll lose a ton of DEs, destroy the battleship... and theoretically, you could replace the twenty or so DEs you'd lost in the battle within two months, while the battleship would take years to replace. Do that often enough and you'd win the war by default, just because you can replace heavy naval casualties faster than your enemy can.

Which is, obviously, a huge balance issue. Every time this has been discussed (including conversations between me and Steve before game start, as I recall), the consensus was that if you try this kind of thing, mod-imposed realism constraints will kick in. You know, sort of like the penalties I smacked CN with for his retarded 'upgrade' scheme?

For most nations, high casualty rates cause morale issues. Also decline in crew quality, because too many of the veteran ship crews get killed in action and have to be replaced by newbies on the new construction, with not enough experienced trainers to go around. For nations where 'morale' and 'training' are supposedly not an issue because each warship is an identical robot produced on an assembly line, other factors must and will be brought into play.

Now, this is not to say your nation can't make a practice of swarming large ships with small ones. That's totally legitimate. But you cannot do this to gain a mechanical advantage over someone who prefers to build large ships by exploiting the construction timetables- if you try, the mods will step in to keep the advantage thus gained from becoming decisive.

So if you commission a massive production run of 200 25-point ships, you should not (and, with modhat on, I say 'will not') receive them all at once in two months' time, when a fleet of battleships of equal cost would take years to build. You will receive the ships spaced out over a longer period of time, to reflect that no plausible industrial system would choose to build the 200 ships in parallel.

The individual ships may only take two months to finish; that just means you'll get them spaced out in several waves over the next year or two.

By the same token, if you commission 200 25-point land superbattleships, you will not get them all at once in two years' time; you will get them spaced out at reasonable intervals over the entire period of construction. As a preliminary, I'd say that when you build superelite ground units, you get none at all for the first several months, because you need a minimum time to build the long-lead items and do systems integration on the first ones to roll off the assembly line. Once those first several months have passed, you can start turning out new units at a fairly steady pace, just as a real-life tank or aircraft factory would.

I just feel that if anything the production rules should favor ground forces just because past experiences with STGODs have shown that naval dickwaving is bad for story progression. Currently, $1 of army is more precious that $100 of space ship, which is silly all things considered.

Well, 1$ of army is a damn sight cheaper, but takes longer to replace.

I don't think there's a problem with handwaving rapid replacement of light casualties: lose 5$ of ground troops out of a 10000$ army, and you'll be able to make up the difference just by tacking up a few more recruitment posters and having a few factory workers do overtime. But casualties in a ground engagement the size of a large planetary battle, those should take a while to replace- just as it took time to reequip historical armies in situations where they lost large amounts of manpower or equipment (like Dunkirk, for instance).

[Tanasinn]

Anyone thinking of writing up posts set in the CENINTERN conference?

I might consider doing one from the Union. Not that there's a powerful centralist movement, but fair levels political freedom guarantee that there's a good few oddball parties around, even if they are under watch by the government.

On another note, I wouldn't mind an Anglican colony near the Union, not that we'd be inclined to be too friendly.