SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread V

[Simon_Jester]

If you look at the stats the combat value of the ship is actually only 12000.

4000 is the fighter force of the Xenos. And I docked myself 4000 for the other advantages which do not immediately feature into combat value, like Slipstream drive , the AI etc.

Fighter force contributes significantly to the ship's combat potential, especially when the fighters in question tip the scales at twenty points per. A four thousand point carrier would be a very powerful fighting force in its own right, after all.

Would you mind scaling the (ship+fighter complement)'s total point value down by something like 30-40%? That would bring the total cost down to somewhere within shouting distance of a Monolith, and make it a good deal more practical to amass a fleet large enough for Andromache to be unable to take it on directly without greatly excessive risk.

Again, I like the rest, the layout, the national description, the ongoing plot that the Supership From Another Universe is part of. That's all just fine. It's that 'punches at 16000 points' figure that's bothering me.

[Siege]

It's the same for me. Like I said, I don't mind superships per se, but in this case the point discrepancy is just too outrageous and I don't much like the precedent it sets either. I do not for a second doubt Thanas' ability to write interesting stories about his Andromache, but the next CN that comes along... not so much.

Now, drugs that make people into ESPers? That's something we need to discuss, Thanas. Maybe if they're drugs that only enhance inherent ESPer abilities to some degree....

Introducing melange isn't something I have an issue with. In fact I did it myself already (Kasanarium), and the Sovs have been artificially producing psions since game start... And besides, if the stuff is going to be as expensive and controlled as the Spice I'm guessing it'll be a valuable curiosity, but not something that can tip the intergalactic balance of power.

(Although the repressed munchkin in me wonders what happens when the God-Emperor gets his hands on this stuff .)

Anyhow, it should be fun to see how a society whose aristocracy "views women rulers with distrust" deals with President Sinclair... And also:

SIDNEY: "Sänger? Sänger... Why does that name sound so familiar?"

[Thanas]

Now, drugs that make people into ESPers? That's something we need to discuss, Thanas. Maybe if they're drugs that only enhance inherent ESPer abilities to some degree....

I tried to be sneaky about it but failed. All the sassanid royals are to some degree psykers - the "royal voice" nasrin used for example was able to instantly compell the Sughdians to kneel and force the nobles to back off.

[Siege]

Akhlut, your posts with The Dude are cracking me up every time . I can't stop imagining Jeff Bridges reading those lines, and it's a wonderful thing!

[Beowulf]

I agree with Simon. A 12000 pt warship + 4000 pt fighter complement is frankly ridiculous, especially with the capability to be anywhere in your empire nearly instantaneously. That is a ginormous advantage, as it makes it impossible to do strategic feints to bring it out of the path of your real attack. Admittedly, you can't do such against a excessively superior force, but such a force wouldn't really need to do such a feint anyways. Additionally, the 800 pt avatar is far, far out of range. Such a value implies that she could take down an average nation's battleship by herself, or alternatively, wipe out millions upon millions of troops.

[Thanas]

I agree with Simon. A 12000 pt warship + 4000 pt fighter complement is frankly ridiculous, especially with the capability to be anywhere in your empire nearly instantaneously.

The fighters are currently useless as the pilots died, see prologue thread. Retraining new pilots is being done but not finished. I do not think a 33% increas in capabilities over the next years is unwarranted, especially as it comes out of my starting budget.

That is a ginormous advantage, as it makes it impossible to do strategic feints to bring it out of the path of your real attack. Admittedly, you can't do such against a excessively superior force, but such a force wouldn't really need to do such a feint anyways.

I'd argue that the advantage of travel is negated by the inability to do repairs.

Additionally, the 800 pt avatar is far, far out of range. Such a value implies that she could take down an average nation's battleship by herself, or alternatively, wipe out millions upon millions of troops.

She is an infiltrator. She will not wipe out anything, nor engage a battleship in hand-to-hand combat. I think the price is fair given the capabilities in the prologue thread.

[Shroom Man 777]

The ESP-drugs could be composed of nanomachines too.

Besides, if ESP is linked to brain activity, then certainly stimulants and psycho-actives would have an effect on ESP activities. A psyker whose brain is fucked up by crystal meth could start shooting mind-bullets on full auto, while an empath on shrooms might end up not just 'feeling' the emotions of others, but actually tasting emotions or smelling them or hearing them.

The Sassanid ESP drugs can have copious amount of vespene gas in them.

THANAS, can Bragulan exports of vespene be a vital commodity in Sassanid Spices?

[Steve]

Okay, the X-13 storyline is done, thank God. I can move on to better stuff like Shroom Fighter instead of lesxploitation stories....

Well, until it comes time to show what Lady Tabitha does with that encrypted comm data anyway....

[Thanas]

THANAS, can Bragulan exports of vespene be a vital commodity in Sassanid Spices?

Sure. The Sassanids are probably experimenting with every drug in existence to add to their mental powers already.

[Shroom Man 777]

Oh man. The Collectors ate the MEHites. And Akhlut... oh god. Whale assholes. I'm laughing. I'm fucking laughing.

Now, to finish the night, on to LES HARD.

[fgalkin]

So, wait it's a ship the size of my entire hyper-capable fleet that can go anywhere undetected instantaneously via slipstream drive and annihilate its opposition with its massive points. Unlike the Monoliths, which trade in strategic speed for power and make force concentrations possible, this ship is pure, unadulterated, game-breaking wank, and I object to it in the strongest possible terms.

That, and the Systems Commonwealth is nowhere near as advanced as you think it is. I could see an actual ISD being 20k points, maybe. The Andromeda Ascendant? I'd say it's 4-5k points at the most.

Edit: And an 800 pt avatar? So, she cannot ever set foot on a planet because no ship can carry her massive girth?

Holy shit, folks, we found someone who is fatter than the Leader. It takes a fucking superbattleship to carry fakeRommie!

But seriously, WTF? 800 is just too much. You have actual Godslayers and Grand Master psions at $1, and Imperial Titans at $50. An $800 humanoid is just ludicrous.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Steve]

Honestly, Thanas, even I kinda missed on the 800 point thing for Andy's android form, and I think that's ludicrously overdone. There's no realistic way a single infiltrator could be worth that much. Hell, even 1 point is pushing it.

You should just spend that 800 points on something else.

[Thanas]

Okay.

[Darkevilme]

Anyhow, it should be fun to see how a society whose aristocracy "views women rulers with distrust" deals with President Sinclair.

You know I'd ask how they'd react to the Hierarchy if they had such views, but it's conceivable from the way they're written up that they don't actually know about the Hierarchy except in the sense of "Oh that's a place somewhere to anti spinward yes?"

Also on the ship. I'm not sure what possible storytelling role a 20k ship could pull off, especially one not thematically designed to face down entire fleets, that say a 2k ship couldn't.

[Simon_Jester]

I agree with Simon. A 12000 pt warship + 4000 pt fighter complement is frankly ridiculous, especially with the capability to be anywhere in your empire nearly instantaneously. That is a ginormous advantage, as it makes it impossible to do strategic feints to bring it out of the path of your real attack. Admittedly, you can't do such against a excessively superior force, but such a force wouldn't really need to do such a feint anyways. Additionally, the 800 pt avatar is far, far out of range. Such a value implies that she could take down an average nation's battleship by herself, or alternatively, wipe out millions upon millions of troops.

Also, according to the ground combat rules she runs into a problem: As an 800 pt ground combat unit, she needs a 1600 pt troopship to carry her... and a ship that big can't land on planets. Therefore, under the existing rules it isn't possible to move her around from planet to planet, except (possibly) by disassembling her and laboriously rebuilding her on the surface, much as Ryan's considering doing with his giant land battleships.

Not good for an infiltrator. So yeah, I think it's best to just make her a character, not a piece of the order of battle.

And I still agree with the comments opposed to this supership. Inability to repair only matters if you'll agree that the ship can and will be damaged in combat with fleets of significantly inferior point value... and I don't feel that that's a fair tradeoff.

Because no one can just mass their entire national navy and throw it at one point in your empire to overwhelm this thing; they have to hit multiple targets or your conventional fleet will eat them alive. Problem is, if I disperse into fleets of ~5000 points, you could (quite reasonably) have your Superbattleship From Another Universe eat one of those fleets alive while taking little or no damage yourself, just as a 300-point battleship could fairly casually overwhelm a 100-point cruiser.

[fgalkin]

Don't forget the instantaneous undetectable Slipstream drive. I would bet that the "never leaves Sassanid Territory" restriction will disappear the moment there is war. I mean, it shouldn't be able to leave the system, as it lacks the navigational charts to the Sassanid Empire, as well. Since it did, however, it means that there is nothing really preventing it from doing so, except for a lack of information, which is easily correctable by getting a starmap and plotting a course.

So, it's a 20k ship that can suddenly appear over your capitals and depopulate them in under 3 minutes.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Thanas]

Don't forget the undetectable Slipstream drive. I would bet that the "never leaves Sassanid Territory" restriction will disappear the moment there is war. I mean, it shouldn't be able to leave the system, as it lacks the navigational charts to the Sassanid Empire, as well. Since it did, however, it means that there is nothing really preventing it from doing so, except for a lack of information, which is easily correctable by getting a starmap and plotting a course.

No. This restriction will never disappear and will be enforced by the mods. As to how it left the system - towed first time by the sassanid navy, then spent one year sending out slipscouts while colonizing Xenos prime. However, slipscouting the Sassanid empire was possible because of the assistance of the Sassanid Navy. Sending it into unknown territory is just idiotic.

[fgalkin]

Don't forget the undetectable Slipstream drive. I would bet that the "never leaves Sassanid Territory" restriction will disappear the moment there is war. I mean, it shouldn't be able to leave the system, as it lacks the navigational charts to the Sassanid Empire, as well. Since it did, however, it means that there is nothing really preventing it from doing so, except for a lack of information, which is easily correctable by getting a starmap and plotting a course.

No. This restriction will never disappear and will be enforced by the mods. As to how it left the system - towed first time by the sassanid navy, then spent one year sending out slipscouts while colonizing Xenos prime. However, slipscouting the Sassanid empire was possible because of the assistance of the Sassanid Navy. Sending it into unknown territory is just idiotic.

What is a slipscout and what does it look like? And how does it work, of course.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Simon_Jester]

Don't forget the undetectable Slipstream drive. I would bet that the "never leaves Sassanid Territory" restriction will disappear the moment there is war. I mean, it shouldn't be able to leave the system, as it lacks the navigational charts to the Sassanid Empire, as well. Since it did, however, it means that there is nothing really preventing it from doing so, except for a lack of information, which is easily correctable by getting a starmap and plotting a course.

You're taking it too far, Fima, though that is a valid concern on some level. Within Sassanid territory, they've spent the time to do the cartography it takes to use the drive. Outside it, the mods can simply bounce the ship, pointing to Thanas's own statements as justifications.

But even as a system-defense platform, something that powerful raises problems because it is a teleporting system defense platform. Again, this makes it effectively impossible to stage raids or broad-front offensives in Sassanid space, because any fleet of less than about 6000 points faces a very real danger of being overwhelmed by Andromeda when she teleports out of nowhere and blows them away. Only highly concentrated laagers of ships can plausibly hope to repel something that powerful and fast.

Again, that's an important limitation on the Monoliths: their poor strategic mobility. I would argue that for a ship of such exceptional combat ability, adding 20% value to the ship on account of its teleport drive is a gross understatement of the value of the drive.

If you're going to try to balance that out by 'ship cannot be repaired,' then you'll need to be very aboveboard about the fact that the ship's combat potential declines rapidly as it tries to butcher its way through opposing fleets. Ordnance will be expended, routine consumption of spares will become a problem, and so on. This might even cause a decay in the ship's combat power out of proportion to the value of the ships it destroys: the equivalent of using a half million dollar missile to blow up a five dollar tent, as it were.

[Shroom Man 777]

I just finished Les Hard. Good stuff. Those poor Chineseses guys got screwed by the Ebon Blade and Princess Sara, haha. Let's get dangerous!

It was a badass showing for the cast of all lesbian characters. All the guys in the story were either useless, ambushed and killed, or foiled and also killed. Girl love prevailed in the end!

Hm, so now you can focus on colonializing imperialistic Anglia?

Also on the ship. I'm not sure what possible storytelling role a 20k ship could pull off, especially one not thematically designed to face down entire fleets, that say a 2k ship couldn't.

I'm going to have to agree with this, Thanases.

The Sassanids in your descriptions are pretty damn awesome, I love the future-feudal thing they've got going and the court politics. But I just find the 20k ship too much. Having it just 10k at the most, or 5k plus or minus (plus fighters, etcetera), would serve the same purpose without having such a ridiculously over-pointed ship that might give precedence for future players like Chaotic Neutral to abuse in their making of munchkinisms. You can wriet great stories, and the writeup for the Sassanids is already great stuff, but for CN-types who just jerk off to their points and wikis while making "witty" comments in the OOC without actually writing jack poop in the IC thread, not so. Having such a dramatic escalation of such super-ships makes the potential for abuse at the hands of munchkinizing CNs so much more likely, unfortunately. Anyway, Andromeda will still be quite kick ass if it is on par with a Monolith.

I wonder if the Andromeda will be like the Thai Navy's aircraft carrier. It only sails once a month!

Hey, what about the German spaceship?

[Beowulf]

Because no one can just mass their entire national navy and throw it at one point in your empire to overwhelm this thing; they have to hit multiple targets or your conventional fleet will eat them alive. Problem is, if I disperse into fleets of ~5000 points, you could (quite reasonably) have your Superbattleship From Another Universe eat one of those fleets alive while taking little or no damage yourself, just as a 300-point battleship could fairly casually overwhelm a 100-point cruiser.

It's worse than that Simon: it can't just eat one of those fleets alive, but can eat all of those fleets alive. There's nothing to stop it from killing one fleet, going to refuel and rearm, then killing the next, and repeating until every fleet is dead. You'd need to have a sufficiently large fleet to be able to reasonably challenge the ship alone to stop it.

[Thanas]

What is a slipscout and what does it look like? And how does it work, of course.

Take fighter. Have fighter try to plot course for something via slipstream. Pray that fighter does not get lost on the way/damaged. When arrived, note route and try to fly back.

Of course, none of that is posisble in other empires -

a) Slipstream leaves gravitonic anomalies, so you would know what had happened
b) The Xenos have no starcharts of other empires
c) The fighters are too valuable and atm irreplacable
d) lack of pilots. Currently I think there are about six or so, with another six or so graduating.
e) I am pretty sure having unallowed fighters appear in other empires is an act of war.
f) The Xenos have no interest at all in other empires. They do not want to visit them with the ship, they do not want to let other empires know about the ship etc. Having slipfighters appear all over the universe is a great way to call attention to yourself. The xenos would prefer if nobody ever found out about them. Heck, their whole society is built on isolating themselves, even from their own citizens.



Also, I'd be quite okay with the mods enforcing rules to make sure the combat would be fair. I am already sure it would need serious rearming and refueling (good luck making missiles with the industrial base) after a fight. The reason this ship is so powerful is story-related, not to wage war on anybody else. Which should have been clear by now. As the reasons for the points - the Perseids already have a 13.000 point planet. They will start ship construction as well. The Andromache needs to have enough power to appear a legitimate contender in a powerstruggle.


Anyway, all of this is a bit funny. This is a ship of a faction that has neither the capability nor interest in expanding, that is not interested in galactic affairs beside observing, a ship that is already incapable of repairing serious damage and people act as if it will suddenly appear over your worlds and rain death and destruction.

[Shroom Man 777]

Well, whatever. I think Sanger and Andromeda make a cute couple.

[Simon_Jester]

Thanas, part of the problem is that with a ship of such magnitude, the only really significant restraints on what it's capable of are the ones you impose on yourself as the writer responsible for it.

Based on past experiences in these games (which I was not involved in, but others I like, trust, and respect were)... I'm sure you can understand why a large fraction of the playerbase isn't fond of the idea that their security depends so heavily on your own self-restraint, reluctance to go on the rampage, and willingness to compromise with other players. People are still a bit shell-shocked from SDNW3 on that score.

EDIT: Well shucks, Thanas, an 840-point fleet isn't pathetic! It's not a nation-scale force, but it's a respectable squadron to send for flag-showing operations.

[pats Sassanid dreadnought reassuringly]

[Thanas]

Well, Thanas, part of the problem is that with a ship of such magnitude, the only really significant restraints on what it's capable of are the ones you impose on yourself as the writer responsible for it.

Well, feel free to take a look at my recent storypost for what those restraints are.

And of course, Steve can very well decide to mod me if he feels I am going all "UR BASES BELONG TO ME AND YOU CANNOT TOUCH MY SUPERDUPER SPACESHIP".

Based on past experiences in these games (which I was not involved in, but others I like, trust, and respect were)... I'm sure you can understand why a large fraction of the playerbase isn't fond of the idea that their security depends so heavily on your own self-restraint, reluctance to go on the rampage, and willingness to compromise with other players.

Given how I made it physically impossible for the ship to get out of Sassanid space I don't really see what the issue is here. It is not as if I can suddenly have a magic wand appear and lift the restrictions.

And as I have already limited my ground troops to 1.8million men, my fleet to a maximum of 72 heavy units then I don't really see what everybody is so afraid of. I am the weakest nation in the game from NCPs and I am pretty sure the mods would not allow me to have any strength beyond that.

There is no way I am going to attack anybody as a 21 NCP nation and the mods have my explicit permisison to have Terra show up and destroy my entire faction if I do.