SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread V

[PeZook]

Short version: nobody will mind an agressive player, as long as he spends more time actually playing the game than wanking to how awesome his nation is.

[doom3607]

Frying pans? The hell is going on here?

And on that note, hi. Just registered for this site, mainly because I thought SDN Worlds looked interesting. If at all possible, I shall conquer you all.

heys.

Free advice, look up user Chaotic neutral and the reactions he received through attempting to play the game. He's practically the embodiment of how not to play an STGOD and a nicely concentrated package of things to avoid.

I'll do that, thanks.

[Force Lord]

The bank of the Feelipeens is now ash. What next for Shroomarcos?

[Shroom Man 777]

I will try to comprise responses, but between this, writing Brag-Chamarran exercises, and entertaining STAS BUSH in meatspace, I will be a bit busies for the weeks! Da, comrades!

[Simon_Jester]

Events in the Feelipeens usually move slowly, and this is OK. Priority should go to material set during Q4 of 3400 (like the cat-bear exercises), or in my case Q3 of 3400 (I swear I have the rest of Zebes plotted, I just need to *write* it while snatching time from homework and workwork...)

By setting your 'Centralism goes apeshit' storyline in Q1 3401, FL, you have bought yourself and others a lot of extra time to deal with it before 'pressure of events' becomes critical. Which is cool; it could be kind of awkward if you'd set it in Q4 3400 with everything else.

[doom3607]

*winces* Looked Chaotic Neutral up. Why in hell would anyone consider it a good idea to put a request for help with both genocide and Nazi-style medical experiments into a standard greeting?

On a similar, and related, topic: Is he dead yet? If he isn't, I'd like to offer my moral, and, if my race gets in the game in time, possibly military support for the effort to make him so. I don't like playing games with people who do stuff that idiotic. This doesn't begin to cover it...

[Darkevilme]

He's not exactly dead yet. But he's gone from 'spamming the ooc thread, unleashing stupid in the diplomacy thread and barely using the story thread' to 'run off with tail between his legs once he realized his nation was a deer in the headlights of an oncoming semi due to his awe inspiring diplomatic eloquence'. Effectively the MEH is an NPC nation that people are narrating as needed due to it being now involved in storylines by aforementioned awe inspiring diplomatic eloquence (Read: about half the nations of the known galaxy are in the process of mobilizing against the MEH).

CN hasn't officially abandoned his nation but I'd rate the chances of him coming back to narrate it as effectively nil.

[doom3607]

Aww! Would be fun to see his reaction to being obliterated by an insanely overwhelmingly powerful fleet. Always fun to smash the idiots.

[PeZook]

You know,CN could still try to get out of it, or try and maneuver himself into an alliance, or do any number of things.

Even a massive invasion by superior powers presents opportunities for storytelling, as shown in Pendleton.

[Mayabird]

But then, we are talking about someone whose idea of 'storytelling' is to wank off about how he'll uber-upgrade his entire fleet in six months. All of the actual MEH characters are ones that other players created. All of the details about their culture and society that aren't useless minutiae about the vehicles his marines drive or something have been something other players made up. Also CN is a dipshit sociopath out of the game so it's questionable if he's even capable of working with other people as a collaborative writing project would require.

By the way, doom, if you want some ideas or help with details with your nation, OOB, whatever, just ask.

[doom3607]

Meh. I already had some ideas for my people. I'll run them by you guys, though, if you don't mind. And in case you do, I'll leave it so you don't have to see them.
Spoiler

The Locrians, to start, are a race of insects. They have a number of hive minds, none by ESP. They instead work by the Locrian's radio sense. They have that because their homeworld is the seventh moon of a rather large gas giant, which releases huge amounts of radio emissions, thus making it feasible to see by them. They also see by the light of their G2V primary star, so they have normal vision. At first, the hive minds had to be small, due to a short range on the radio sense, but since they got the ability to use cybernetic implants, they were able to make planetary hive minds thanks to improved radios in the head.

They're divided up into a number of castes (think ant types not Indian castes). They first is the workers, divied up into three sub-groups- Workers, Carriers, and Fine Manipulators. Workers are large and strong, easily capable of cutting down a tree or lifting a steel I-beam into place. Carriers, well, carry. Think a living flatbed truck. Fine Manipulators have lots of very small, but weak, apendages. They're for doing intricate work, like wiring.

The next group is soldiers, with two types and three sub-castes. The types are ranged and melee, and there are three sub-castes, each of which has members of both types. The castes, unsurprisingly, are Light, Medium, and Heavy. Lights are small, and have wings. They have been cybernetically altered to be capable of flying higher and for longer durations. Mediums are heavier, better armed and armored, and do not have wings. They do, however, have the implanted equivalent of a jetpack. Heavies are the equivalent of tanks, and cannot fly at all.

The last two castes are possibly the most important. The first is the Breeders, who essentially exist solely to create more Locrians. The others are the Thinkers, who are essentially large brains. They're where most of the brain function of the hive mind occurs.

All castes have been cybernetically enhanced to help with what they do. Melee troops have been enhanced with better blades, ranged troops use cannons and gatling guns rather than thrown spines or acid, workers have integrated hydraulics or more intricate apendages in the case of Fine Manipulators, including laser cutters capable on nanometer-scale cutting, and all of them have built-in radios.

Hive minds are, essentially, planets and large ships, and are known by the name of the planet or the ship. So the homeworld's mind is Locri, for instance.

So- what do people think?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

By the Emperor! Apparently, one insect race isn't enough. Now I have to squash two flat!

*kidding*

[doom3607]

Ah, but you has yet to see what exactly my fleet will be made of, user of puny 1200-size vessels.

[Darkevilme]

Ah, but you has yet to see what exactly my fleet will be made of, user of puny 1200-size vessels.

Just as a heads up on that. Dunno if it's been mentioned to you yet but you need moderator permission to have ships over a thousand points, this was to prevent 'its over nine thousand!' syndrome. Although it's one of the rules that isn't written down anywhere to my knowledge.

Also as an addendum the much abbreviated list of rules for how to play an STGOD:
1. Don't be a dick.
2. Be entertaining.
3. Play in good faith.

that pretty much covers it i think, anything else is mechanics.

[Simon_Jester]

Oh cool, a second hive mind! The Karlacks were feeling so lonely.

However, I don't recommend trying to build really big ships as a defense measure; fixating on individual ship size is unhealthy and has practical disadvantages in combat on the strategic level. Fin's fleet isn't the gold standard for the rest of the game, it's the "comically pumped up and musclebound" standard, with very few actual ships for his point value. That has drawbacks.

The galactic norm, insofar as it exists, seems to be a handful of big menacing "flagship/brainship/mothership" platforms, a few dozen 'battleships' worth a few hundred points each, then large numbers of destroyers and cruisers spread through the below-100 range. I'm actually on the low end of that in per-ship firepower; my fleets are numerous and tiny enough that in a fight with, say, the Karlacks, we'd be swarming their higher-quality units with higher-quantity units.

Which I for one find quite amusing.

[PeZook]

Well, a lot depends on geography (galactography? ) of your local space. For example, Collectors are well hidden inside shoals, but their strategic goals require force projection. Hence,Monoliths, which can serve as resillient bases far away from our territorry.

[doom3607]

My race was actually going to be more the defensive sort, so a few really huge ships would actually make a bit of sense, since mobility is not needed. Of course, upon entering the game, it'll come to their attention that they need small ships for patrol, so then we start building little ships for anti-piracy and the like.

So in other words, given that my empire is supposed to consist of exactly four extremely well developed sectors, wouldn't it make sense to have just a few giant ships for a fleet? When I say 'giant' I mean 2,500 size, hopefully... the idea being that's the smallest ship that can get a full and independant hive mind going. Lesser ships get dumber and dumber...

Granted, a ship that huge would be hideously slow. But they're supposed to be defensive in nature, so that's alright. Would the mods have a problem with that?

I'm also thinking they'd be built on around the same timescale as terraforming, so if I lose one, I don't get to replace it. Would this be good enough for a balancing measure?

Ah, but you has yet to see what exactly my fleet will be made of, user of puny 1200-size vessels.

Just as a heads up on that. Dunno if it's been mentioned to you yet but you need moderator permission to have ships over a thousand points, this was to prevent 'its over nine thousand!' syndrome. Although it's one of the rules that isn't written down anywhere to my knowledge.

Also as an addendum the much abbreviated list of rules for how to play an STGOD:
1. Don't be a dick.
2. Be entertaining.
3. Play in good faith.

that pretty much covers it i think, anything else is mechanics.

Yeah, the mod thing hadn't been mentioned. Thanks. And those three rules are pretty much official Rules of the Internet, so I try to follow them as best as I can.

[Darkevilme]

Could try having small attack ships that are like killer dogs or something, it's not like you can't train something fairly dim with basic navigational and combat skills especially if you're wiring them six ways to sunday with cybernetics anyway. FTL communications exist so you could have them check in if they encounter situations they can't handle, bandwidth probably wouldn't be enough to have them interfaced into a greater hive mind but it'd be enough for:

Attack ship: "Thing here! what do?"
Mothership: "That is an Umerian science vessel, it is harmless and not to be destroyed."

Or whatever.

It'd work if you don't plan on having your small ships going much beyond your borders without a mothership to lead them.

[Simon_Jester]

So in other words, given that my empire is supposed to consist of exactly four extremely well developed sectors, wouldn't it make sense to have just a few giant ships for a fleet? When I say 'giant' I mean 2,500 size, hopefully... the idea being that's the smallest ship that can get a full and independant hive mind going. Lesser ships get dumber and dumber...

Granted, a ship that huge would be hideously slow. But they're supposed to be defensive in nature, so that's alright. Would the mods have a problem with that?

I would. For one, giant ships of high point value don't have to be slow, so that limitation is sort of arbitrary.

For another, if you've got these independent hive minds going... why not just have a fleet of smaller ships that stay together as part of a "swarm?" I mean, that's presumably how you guys do it on the planets: one unit is stupid, many units together are smart.

Individual units that break off from the swarm on independent missions might get progressively stupider as they move out of communication range of the rest of the fleet, but still be capable of covering short interstellar distances comfortably, since they'd be using FTL comms to talk to each other.

How does that sound, flavorwise?

Or we can use Darkevilme's idea of motherships; the motherships themselves don't have to be that powerful in a straight-up fight, but they're connected to a large number of somewhat less intelligent ships that serve as a coordinated fleet.

Yeah, the mod thing hadn't been mentioned. Thanks. And those three rules are pretty much official Rules of the Internet, so I try to follow them as best as I can.

Cool.

Basically, this game contains too many superships already, and too many people who try to gain a tactical advantage by building half as many ships that are twice as big. The previous SDNW game had serious problems with a naval arms race developing, and I don't think anyone really wants to repeat the experience- plus given the speed at which the game progresses, very large and expensive ships may never see completion...

[doom3607]

Hmm... you're right. A lot of tiny attack-dog ships, with a sort of mothership, carrier of course, to be the controlling intelligence... Hmm. Let's see, to get full hive intelligence, let's say size 800 for the motherships, 400 of which is for fighters. And unholy swarms of little attack dogs to rip up enemy fleets.

Now, I definitely wanted to have, on the ground, a combination of unspeakable swarms of more-or-less generic troops and then a few giant-ass ubertanks that are basically supposed to be Bolos on steroids. I'm thinking maybe $100 per ubertank? Naturally, I'd start off with very few... Would that be a good setup?

[Akhlut]

But then, we are talking about someone whose idea of 'storytelling' is to wank off about how he'll uber-upgrade his entire fleet in six months. All of the actual MEH characters are ones that other players created. All of the details about their culture and society that aren't useless minutiae about the vehicles his marines drive or something have been something other players made up. Also CN is a dipshit sociopath out of the game so it's questionable if he's even capable of working with other people as a collaborative writing project would require.

Hey, you forgot his scintillating characters such as Liutenenant and Chief Engineer!

Seriously, though, it seemed CN is/was fixated on SDNW4 being a "game," and thus something that he could have somehow won. So, he needed the biggest and best ships, the hardest infantry, and all that sort of bullshit because he thought it was a confrontational game to be won, not, essentially, collaborative fiction.

[Akhlut]

Hmm... you're right. A lot of tiny attack-dog ships, with a sort of mothership, carrier of course, to be the controlling intelligence... Hmm. Let's see, to get full hive intelligence, let's say size 800 for the motherships, 400 of which is for fighters. And unholy swarms of little attack dogs to rip up enemy fleets.

Now, I definitely wanted to have, on the ground, a combination of unspeakable swarms of more-or-less generic troops and then a few giant-ass ubertanks that are basically supposed to be Bolos on steroids. I'm thinking maybe $100 per ubertank? Naturally, I'd start off with very few... Would that be a good setup?

I don't think a $100 tank would work, as troops require a transport that is twice as large as it, and a $200 transport is incapable of landing on a planet.

[Simon_Jester]

Hmm... you're right. A lot of tiny attack-dog ships, with a sort of mothership, carrier of course, to be the controlling intelligence... Hmm. Let's see, to get full hive intelligence, let's say size 800 for the motherships, 400 of which is for fighters. And unholy swarms of little attack dogs to rip up enemy fleets.

Now, I definitely wanted to have, on the ground, a combination of unspeakable swarms of more-or-less generic troops and then a few giant-ass ubertanks that are basically supposed to be Bolos on steroids. I'm thinking maybe $100 per ubertank? Naturally, I'd start off with very few... Would that be a good setup?

Hmm. Could you see your way to 50$ or so? There are practical problems with 100-point ground units; among other things, under the rules, you'd need a 100 point troopship to transport them*, and anything bigger than 100 points can't land on planets.

50$ is still ridiculously powerful compared to armies of normal soldiers, so you don't really lose anything by scaling your ubertanks down to that level.

*At least, if such a ship were a warship; you get 'free' hyper-capable transport for your ground forces, and those aren't counted in your order of battle, while combat-capable ships with a significant ground troop detachment are...

[Simon_Jester]

But then, we are talking about someone whose idea of 'storytelling' is to wank off about how he'll uber-upgrade his entire fleet in six months. All of the actual MEH characters are ones that other players created. All of the details about their culture and society that aren't useless minutiae about the vehicles his marines drive or something have been something other players made up. Also CN is a dipshit sociopath out of the game so it's questionable if he's even capable of working with other people as a collaborative writing project would require.

Seriously, though, it seemed CN is/was fixated on SDNW4 being a "game," and thus something that he could have somehow won. So, he needed the biggest and best ships, the hardest infantry, and all that sort of bullshit because he thought it was a confrontational game to be won, not, essentially, collaborative fiction.

Even then, though, the playstyle is idiotic, because it revolves around the idea that he can get higher performance for his military by concentrating more and more of it into fewer and fewer assets. Reality doesn't work that way, and I don't see why the SDNW setting should either.

[Darkevilme]

Now, I definitely wanted to have, on the ground, a combination of unspeakable swarms of more-or-less generic troops and then a few giant-ass ubertanks that are basically supposed to be Bolos on steroids. I'm thinking maybe $100 per ubertank? Naturally, I'd start off with very few... Would that be a good setup?

I'd say $5 per unit is a more reasonable level for uber tanks and is about as high as anyone has gone with super unit pricing thus far (imperium titans, insterstellar union of worlds automated dynamic assault units are both at that pricepoint). It can take on a quarter million regular infantry with advanced equipment at that pointage which is very probably sufficient, only reason to have it higher would be to have it pose a serious threat to cruisers in orbit.