SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread V

[RogueIce]

In my mind it is a unsatisfactory rationale, and In Character the Eoghans would see it as a land grab (partially since they don't value Precedence in their system of law and justice, and because the other issues aren't included in the declaration/reasons for war [as it stands]). And yeah I know that multiple people are wanting to get the MeH gone, but this leaves out so many of those that want to participate (which is the reason I wanted this stated.)

To be fair, not everyone involved is being involved cause of the Pendleton precedent.

I know, but of the group that RogueIce is raising that is the primary rationale, and from what I can gather from the story thread Rogues people are trying to keep it as an insular little war. Yeah, you have more reason than Rogue to want a potential belligerent out of the way, but from what I remember of the story threads that Rogue has made he is actually trying to keep most other nations out of this.

My goal, OOC, is not to exclude people. But as far as why it's being kept under relative wraps, I few of my IC reasons:

1) We don't want total open invitations that would bring along nations like Shepistan who lack self control (this was alluded to in my post).

2) A biggie: the MEH is off in a little corner, so it would take time to prepare a sufficient force to attack them. Even more time considering their lack of broad diplomatic relations and thus are need to recon them to see what it is they fly. So issuing a big broad "Let's all kill Pendleton!" message is a Bad Idea for us, because then they know we're coming. And unlike Pendleton, they are not presumed to be some backwater shithole planet where it doesn't matter how much warning they have as it won't make a difference (granted it did, but who would've thought Pendleton would get a Collector Monolith to show up, if even briefly?).

So a couple reasons for us to keep it under wraps for now. However, one thing I did intend to do when I got some semblence of people together (which nobody but Steve and Beo have really responded to in-game, though a couple others have talked to me over IM) is to solicit ideas on who else to invite in to the gathering coalition.

As far as when we declare it to the galaxy, it's an open question. And as to whether or not any nations choose to recognize it as the "Pendleton Precedent" or not is of course entirely up to you.

I will note that one OOC reason for limiting things, for me, was in fact to invoke a similar response to yours. I figured this would generate some tension IC from those who were 'left out' as it were, and this is a good thing (for me) OOC. Tension keeps things interesting on the foreign affairs front, after all. And since I sincerely doubt we'll be able to totally wipe out the MEH in one grand attack, it does give others a chance to hop in if they'd like during some point of the operation.

[Agent Sorchus]

However, one thing I did intend to do when I got some semblence of people together (which nobody but Steve and Beo have really responded to in-game, though a couple others have talked to me over IM) is to solicit ideas on who else to invite in to the gathering coalition.

This by itself makes me happy. Don't take me too seriously, it is just something that might make a good story or make a story that many people have worked on bad if done wrong.

[Dark Hellion]

I actually have been making a justification for attacking the MEH for the past while now. I have sown all the seeds in story posts already but am working some details through with Shroom and Siege for it. Suffice to say, if it goes off I should be giving the galaxy at large a reason to join together and wipe out the MEH.

[Thanas]

The Sassanids do not like interfering in other sovereign nations, so you should count them out. They'll help the Bragulans with some logistics supply due to the relations between the nations but will not take part in any fighting, merely observing.

(It is not like the grand total of the Sassanid offensive strength of one dreadnought and four light cruisers would make a difference either way in any case).

[fgalkin]

[modhat]

STOP. Right now. This kind of calculation being thrown around is NOT accepted practice in this setting. It defeats the entire purpose of the point system to try and argue this way. If you want to argue "a 20000-point ship is too big," you can. But if you want to argue that "the Systems Commonwealth isn't that powerful," I will fucking laugh at you even though you are trying to use (implicit) figures in my own posts as justification for your argument.

Remember the space triremes, friend. Remember the space triremes.

You would have a point if he was making an original ship. He is not, he is porting one from an existing setting. If I, for example, decided to port the USS Voyager and give it 50k points because navigational deflectors are immune to lasers and have Janeway conquer the galaxy, people would object, and not just about the fact that it's a 50k point ship, but that the technology in the canon is nowhere near as powerful as I would portray it. It's not a modhat issue, it's me telling Thanas that he miscalculated while porting the Andromache based on the overall tech level (and say what you want about space triremes, they are an outlier and there is a certain level of consistency in the way people portray their technology).

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Ryan Thunder]

I'm going to commission a 100 000 point ship now just for shits and giggles. It will never leave the yards.

[Formless]

You would have a point if he was making an original ship. He is not, he is porting one from an existing setting. If I, for example, decided to port the USS Voyager and give it 50k points because navigational deflectors are immune to lasers and have Janeway conquer the galaxy, people would object, and not just about the fact that it's a 50k point ship, but that the technology in the canon is nowhere near as powerful as I would portray it. It's not a modhat issue, it's me telling Thanas that he miscalculated while porting the Andromache based on the overall tech level (and say what you want about space triremes, they are an outlier and there is a certain level of consistency in the way people portray their technology).

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Please bear in mind that, as someone who is not directly involved in this game beyond being a behind the scenes helper for Sorchus, I have no dogs in this or any SDNW4 argument when I say the following:

All you are proving is that it is unwieldy, and possibly inadvisable, to try and directly translate an existing franchise into this game's rules. Unwieldy because it is necessary to nerf or (for lack of a better term) wank out certain franchises' tech to keep the player balanced with the rest of the group while enjoying a good story: inadvisable because (besides the balance issue) on a board like this that was founded on VS debating that's just asking for a needless VS argument when its superfluous to the game (in other words, what you are doing right now). Now, Thanas has already made his choice regarding the latter (for better or worse), so at this time its probably best to keep in mind the already mentioned needs for game balance and player enjoyment. If you want an "SDNW4 powers VS Andromeda powers" thread, you can always start it in SF. We'll all enjoy the fireworks, I'm sure.

Besides, if someone tried to slip a "no lasers" ship into the game for any reason, I trust the Mods would crack down on that in a heartbeat regardless of its canonicity or authenticity to the source material.

[/my 2 cents]

[Simon_Jester]

A minor correction which is quite important here. It is not a 20k force. It is currently a 12 k force, which, after several years of pilot retraining, might hit 16k as the upper ceiling. The other 4k were points I penalized myself with for having such a ship. So if you want to have it in "how much damage does it do" terms, it is 16k. The pricetag of 20k is another way to prevent the xenos of building another one, seeing as how they are living on a 2k sector.

Preventing the Xenos from building another one should be the job of the player- surely, they are equally unable to build the 20-point fighter craft even though their sector GDP is more than up to the task of building a 20-point warship?

What I'm getting at, first and foremost, is that it would really not affect your strategy, your plot, or anything else to do something along the lines I've suggested. And it would show some willingness to compromise with something that bugs the hell out of practically everyone else in the game.

If the fighter retraining program just proceeds more quickly than you originally stated- screw six per year, six in the first year, and then the first six accelerate training for the next dozen and so on, like a normal training program- you can have the fighter wing be 'mobilized' for action more quickly. Then, pitch the fighters as 40-point or 50-point parasite craft, ruleswise: in game, they stay with their mothership because of limited endurance, but out of game, they are nominally independently mobile. Then you can still give the Xenos at 16000-point striking force, while scaling down Andromeda's actual firepower to something less out of line with the rest of the galaxy.

I see no good reason why you couldn't do something like this, as a show of good faith. And no, "The fighters weren't that effective in the TV show!" isn't a good enough reason. You are perfectly capable of using imagination and artistic license to make minor adaptations to your source material. I've had to; you can too.

You would have a point if he was making an original ship. He is not, he is porting one from an existing setting. If I, for example, decided to port the USS Voyager and give it 50k points because navigational deflectors are immune to lasers and have Janeway conquer the galaxy, people would object, and not just about the fact that it's a 50k point ship, but that the technology in the canon is nowhere near as powerful as I would portray it. It's not a modhat issue, it's me telling Thanas that he miscalculated while porting the Andromache based on the overall tech level (and say what you want about space triremes, they are an outlier and there is a certain level of consistency in the way people portray their technology).

Please bear in mind that, as someone who is not directly involved in this game beyond being a behind the scenes helper for Sorchus, I have no dogs in this or any SDNW4 argument when I say the following:

All you are proving is that it is unwieldy, and possibly inadvisable, to try and directly translate an existing franchise into this game's rules. Unwieldy because it is necessary to nerf or (for lack of a better term) wank out certain franchises' tech to keep the player balanced with the rest of the group while enjoying a good story: inadvisable because (besides the balance issue) on a board like this that was founded on VS debating that's just asking for a needless VS argument when its superfluous to the game (in other words, what you are doing right now). Now, Thanas has already made his choice regarding the latter (for better or worse), so at this time its probably best to keep in mind the already mentioned needs for game balance and player enjoyment. If you want an "SDNW4 powers VS Andromeda powers" thread, you can always start it in SF. We'll all enjoy the fireworks, I'm sure.

Agreed.

The entire purpose of the point system is to get rid of versus arguments. Numerical-based versus arguments of the form "Star destroyers win because they generate more electricity!" are simply not accepted in this game as part of the rules. For the good and simple reason that most of the playerbase would (rightly, in my opinion) quit rather than allow themselves to be forced into some kind of lockstep pan-universal classification of ship capabilities.

Which is where Fima's line of reasoning would take us, which is why I am trying to get him to quit this before he sets off a chain reaction of boring annoying stupid SDN-style versus debates. Debates which all boil down to "waaah this ship doesn't have enough megajoules and isn't a big enough spherical mass of iron to be worth this many points!"

No sane person wants the game to degenerate into that.

[Shroom Man 777]

Now I just want the Galactic Empire to invade SDNW4, and then an interdimensional USS Voyager comes in and has the story arc concluding with Janeway leading the charge and having her phaser batteries and transurethral torpedoes vaporize Death Star after Suncrusher after Galaxy Gun after Eclipse after Sovereign after Crystal Star after Centerpoint Station after Hutt Star after Executors after Acclamators after Mandators after Venators after Emperors after Vaders after Senators after Procurators after whatevers.


BTW, those carrier rules for fighters are frickin weird.

I'm just gonna go out and say that my Friend of Bragules in carrier configuration with 100pts for carrier space will have 100pts worth of fighter squadrons that are not x2 or anything, but just also 100pts themselves, flat. No multiplications or divisions or subtractions or additions or numerations or transpositions or duplications or replications or denominations.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Now I just want the Galactic Empire to invade SDNW4, and then an interdimensional USS Voyager comes in and has the story arc concluding with Janeway leading the charge and having her phaser batteries and transurethral torpedoes vaporize Death Star after Suncrusher after Galaxy Gun after Eclipse after Sovereign after Crystal Star after Centerpoint Station after Hutt Star after Executors after Acclamators after Mandators after Venators after Emperors after Vaders after Senators after Procurators after whatevers.


BTW, those carrier rules for fighters are frickin weird.

I'm just gonna go out and say that my Friend of Bragules in carrier configuration with 100pts for carrier space will have 100pts worth of fighter squadrons that are not x2 or anything, but just also 100pts themselves, flat. No multiplications or divisions or subtractions or additions or numerations or transpositions or duplications or replications or denominations.

Hush!

That ship gives me an excuse to build Abaddon the Despoiler's Planet Killer!

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

BTW, those carrier rules for fighters are frickin weird.

I'm just gonna go out and say that my Friend of Bragules in carrier configuration with 100pts for carrier space will have 100pts worth of fighter squadrons that are not x2 or anything, but just also 100pts themselves, flat. No multiplications or divisions or subtractions or additions or numerations or transpositions or duplications or replications or denominations.

It's not that the rules are weird, it's just that they're stated rather obtusely. You can only devote up to half of your hull value to carrier space, fighters and gunships only count for double their stated cost when attacking, and you don't have to pay for fighters and gunships separately if you're starting the game with carriers. I don't get what's so complicated about that.

[Simon_Jester]

I'm just gonna go out and say that my Friend of Bragules in carrier configuration with 100pts for carrier space will have 100pts worth of fighter squadrons that are not x2 or anything, but just also 100pts themselves, flat. No multiplications or divisions or subtractions or additions or numerations or transpositions or duplications or replications or denominations.

To be quite honest, that is probably how we should have done it all along... [sighs]

I understand the desire to do that; the annoying thing is that to implement that everyone would have to go back and double the point value or the number of all their craft, without anything else really changing. Like, my 20-pt cutter tenders carry twenty 0.5-pt cutters; would they suddenly mutate into 1-pt cutters, or would I have to stick on twice as many and therefore screw up all my old orders of battle?

It's easy for you, Shroomy, because you never really did anything with your carriers until now. I did...

[Shroom Man 777]

But for examples:

Old style: 100 pt carrier has 50 points of carrier space, which has 25 fighters who are worth x2 and thus worth the 50pts of the carrier space they occupy.

My style: 100 pt carrier has 50 points carrier space, which has 50 fighters thus worth the 50 pts carrier space they occupy.

I think these means it would take 2 brag-fighters from my carrier to take on 1 fighter from the "old style" carrier. Which is perfectly sensible. Brags! Launch Zig! For great motherland justice!

[Simon_Jester]

Problem is one of consistency. If this is rules change, everyone would have to do it, which means a lot of people changing a lot of numbers.

However, we can ignore it for all practical purposes, as long as no one makes too big a deal about it, so whatever.

[Shroom Man 777]

The rules can stay the same. It can just be that my fighters are worth half the normal cost, by being the Bragulan version of MiGs compared to Space F-22s or whatever. So this means that Brags can cram twice the number of fighters in their carriers for the same points value, though their fighters are half as effective as other people's fighters. It balances out!

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

If rules for fighters should change, so should the rules for carriage of troops.

[Shroom Man 777]

What are the rules for the troops?

[RogueIce]

Old style: 100 pt carrier has 50 points of carrier space, which has 25 fighters who are worth x2 and thus worth the 50pts of the carrier space they occupy.

No, the number of fighters doesn't matter. What matters is the point value of those fighters. So if it has "50 points of carrier space" that is the number multiplied by two which gives the combat value of 100.

If those 50 points of fighters equate to 50, 25, 100 or 5000 fighters in numerical terms doesn't really matter. The point value stays the same. The only thing that the number of fighters matter is largely fluff: the more 'craft' each dollar buys, the less quality each individual craft will have.

As Shinn said, it really isn't that complicated, despite how often people make it out to be. Though I'll grant that, having helped out with the rules, I may see them as more clearly written than they are because I know the purpose of it already.

[Master_Baerne]

(Hey, any Latin speakers who can turn the "Mankind" part to "Sentientkind", reflecting the aliens? The Empire is multi-racial now, and our legal code would recognize that in terminology).

You might try 'cogitae,' which I'm fairly certain means 'thinkers.' Otherwise, 'sentiens' means 'one who feels' and is the root of sentient.

I keep telling people Latin comes up in everyday life, and nobody believes me...

[Shroom Man 777]

Rogue:

So a ship that has 100 points, and 50 points is carrier... so it has 150 points?

Or that 50 points of carrier is 25 points of fighters which is multiplied by two into 50 points of carrier?

[RogueIce]

Rogue:

So a ship that has 100 points, and 50 points is carrier... so it has 150 points?

No. A 100 point ship with a 50 carrier capacity is a full carrier. The ship itself cannot fight at 100 points (if you had carrier capacity, in the form of fighters or troops, the ship will lose innate combat power). The 50 points of capacity is what the ship fights with, and that is given the x2 boost so that, in the end, your 100 point carrier still punches at 100 points. It just does it with fighters/gunboats rather than pew pew lasers, railguns, missiles etc.

When you add capacity, you take away ship combat power, at the same x2 rate. This way it evens out. Think of it this way: when you add fighters or whatever to a ship, the ship itself loses combat power; however, it gains it back in the form of the fighters. Essentially, you're putting the ship's offensive power into the sapcecraft it carries, rather than firepower the ship itself employs.

To take an example of my Star Cruisers:

Unit Cost: $180
Spacecraft Complement: $25 total
Ship Power: $130

Now, with the spacecraft, I will lose $50 of combat ability (25x2). However as spacecraft have the x2 modifier to their combat power, the $50 I "lost" is actually maintained in the form of the spacecraft complement. So, overall, the ship still fights at the full $180 price tag.

Pure carriers (such as the $100 ship with $50 capacity) are a slightly special case, because instead of the expected $0 ship power, they get 10% of their worth in defensive weapons. However, that's mostly for stuff like point defense against missiles and fighters, sort of like how US carriers have limited SAMs, CIWS, RAM and that sort of thing; useful for defending itself but not terribly effective against enemy warships.

[Siege]

But Shroom has a point: that is a pretty convoluted way of doing things when you could also just say that if carrier X is worth Y points, then its combat value is obviously represented by Y, and that number can be anything the player wants: ten thousand micro-drones, a dozen top-of-the-line fighters, a battlecarrier with a bunch of guns and a squadron of droid interceptors, whatever.

The current system may not be the most difficult to figure out, but this is still vastly simpler.

[Simon_Jester]

Honestly, yes, but I for one am not looking forward to trying to revise all my figures if we change the rules. I'd probably wind up doubling the combat value of my cutters, and doubling the number of drone fighters on my fleet carriers. But I'd have to go back and change a bunch of stuff in my wiki.

[fgalkin]

Yeah, I would also have to change things around....again. Bah.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[RogueIce]

But Shroom has a point: that is a pretty convoluted way of doing things when you could also just say that if carrier X is worth Y points, then its combat value is obviously represented by Y, and that number can be anything the player wants: ten thousand micro-drones, a dozen top-of-the-line fighters, a battlecarrier with a bunch of guns and a squadron of droid interceptors, whatever.

The current system may not be the most difficult to figure out, but this is still vastly simpler.

A point, which is one reason why I declined using the non-FTL "fighters" and went with straight up FTL capable gunboats as my fighters. These, which can use hyperspace to strike targets several systems distant, do present a capability that the pew pew lasers/railguns/drone fighters/etc lack and are worth seperate classification.

I suppose one alteration that might work without scrapping the system is that instead of fighters being non-FTL, they instead of Heim drives, rather than the faster (but generic) 'FTL drives' of their gunboat counterparts. Essentially, a smaller, shorter ranged and "slower" (in terms of going from one system to another) version of GBs.

This gives them an obvious edge over whatever generic equipment goes on non-carrier/hybrid ships. The regular weapons still have to travel the distance, which means that over light-minutes or whatever the opposing ships have plenty of time to dodge or shoot down incoming missiles. Heim-equipped Fighters and Faster!FTL-equipped GunBoats can just do microjumps to get up in the enemy's face near instantly, which lets the carrier/hybrid engage enemies at a longer distance the non-carrier/hybrid can't match.

Sort of like the advantage of real carriers, sending the air wings to do the attacking and sitting back where enemy surface ships can't hit them.