SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread VI

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Yeah, since normally I also label normal sectors as H-4, letter-dash-number and so on. Craps, now with the parentheseses, SDNW4 is starting to look more and more like maths class. As if the points system wasn't already enough! SHITS!

But da, Formless, I am leiking your stuff. I loved that MIB cartoon as a kid. And the Godzilla one too.


BTW, regarding the MEHstomp. If the human coalition is taking time to invade Wolf 359, I don't imagine planetary landings and the conquest of entire worlds would take just an afternoon. Ground war would take days, at the very least. A week, or more, more likely.

We are realistically speaking looking at a month long campaign at least, if the enemy decides to really make a fight of it.

[Simon_Jester]

BTW, regarding the MEHstomp. If the human coalition is taking time to invade Wolf 359, I don't imagine planetary landings and the conquest of entire worlds would take just an afternoon. Ground war would take days, at the very least. A week, or more, more likely.

We are realistically speaking looking at a month long campaign at least, if the enemy decides to really make a fight of it.

Sure, since the coalition may not be deploying enough manpower to quickly overwhelm local resistance in the system- that would require something like 15000 points in theory,* although the ork attack probably made a significant dent in that total by whittling down the ground forces in system available to fight back.

However, what the available ground forces can do in a hurry, even at a smaller commitment, is neutralize the planets' ability to create any real trouble for space forces in the same system. At which point the bulk of the space force can move on to another system (such as Sol), leaving a relative handful of ships behind for orbital fire support.

That would be a great mission for Centralist frigvettes (which are really a bit light to take on anything the MEH has), or for certain other ships like the Umerians' strike cruisers (cue Fin snickering). Also some carriers with substantial STL fighter elements- space fighters work pretty well for ground support in their own right, logically-ish.

So the fleet can still move elsewhere and decide the campaign, even though the ground troops are still pacifying the system behind them.

Plus there's the possibility that the MEH ground defenders will, y'know, surrender, since their position is pretty hopeless and there's some kind of horrible wasting disease breaking out among their people.
_____________

*To get 3:1 odds against the ground defenses of an entire Core sector. Note that this is a complicated issue; I'm going to draft a revised set of planetary defense rules since the issue has come up many times before, but it'll be a while.

The Centrality brought 12000 points. I know I sent a mere 440, there are various other people committing on the scale of hundreds, but unless there's another big army in theater the ground contingent is probably pretty close to 15000 total.

Let that be a lesson to anyone planning invasions: if you want to win fast, you really do need a surprisingly big ground army.

[Mayabird]

Maybe humans who get too close to the front lines will surrender, but remember that 95% of their population is happy slave robots with no self-preservation instinct. They can simply send all of their robots out to fight and get slaughtered as cannon fodder to try to buy themselves more time or whatever.

In fact, I'm writing a little something on that right now.

[Simon_Jester]

They can, but then they'll have no robot slaves left. I suspect that MEHnoids would, on average, consider losing all their robots against Centralist Straktroopers and battledroids (roger roger) to be a fate worse than death.

So they're still going to hit a limiting point if they try to make a battle of attrition of it.

[Formless]

Yeah, since normally I also label normal sectors as H-4, letter-dash-number and so on. Craps, now with the parentheseses, SDNW4 is starting to look more and more like maths class. As if the points system wasn't already enough! SHITS!

You could also use commas like a proper geometry mathematician dude.

But now I have both commas AND parentheses! Verily, I am the KING of the SDNW4 GEOMETRY. I even split hairs on the area of my territory so I could fit a roughly equilateral triangle into a four by five grid without breaking the sector rules! The trick was using SCIENTIFIC GRAEPH PAPER so you can divide each sector into 25 sub-sectors (a five by five grid for each sector). For nine sectors, you get 225 subsectors: I have a little under 226. Oh well, can't split too many hairs or I'll look even fuzzier, and I'm already The Formless One.

But da, Formless, I am leiking your stuff. I loved that MIB cartoon as a kid. And the Godzilla one too.

Glad to hear it. Though I never actually saw the Godzilla cartoon. This is classic movie Godzilla. In space.

Speaking of which, FYI the Gigantoids $100 on up (that is, the Loch monsters and Kaiju) can go into hyperspace natively for a variety of reasons (unlike the heim-limited Kraken), while the space whales are intelligent enough they can use a booster to do the same. The money spent on them has to go into something since the ones I've bought aren't the only ones in existence; merely the ones tamed and trained to work for the Steganocracy. I'll have a more detailed description of my armada/herd in a little while, but in the meantime I do have some story and/or history posts to write.

[Simon_Jester]

I, obviously, have no problem with hyperspace-capable space monsters.

[modhat firmly OFF]

The krakens tamed by the Lost are a 'shallow-space' version of the species, which lacks hyperdrive for much the same reasons that cave-fish lack eyeballs: it's not very useful in their native environment. Space monsters which make excessive use of hyperdrive in shoals risk injury to their hyperligaments, metaglands, or other sensitive body parts. Heim-effect drives are safer, and so the shoal-native space monsters tend to evolve to use Heim drive while putting most of the rest of their biology into hibernation and shutdown during interstellar trips.

They don't do interstellar travel very often, mind.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I think the Karlacks can already be qualified as "hyperspace capable space monsters".

[Master_Baerne]

I think of them more as tragically misunderstood creatures who've been done wrong by the galactic literary-industrial complex.

[Force Lord]

This is really more of a message to Beo, Shinn, and Kartr:

With the Shinrans staying at Wolf 359 to guard the system and take care of crippled ships (for now), and the Klavostanis heading to Alpha Centauri to reinforce the Coalition contingents there, that leaves the Hiigarans, the Haruhiists, and the Tianguonese to strike at Sol, alongside the Centralist contingent, assuming whoever negotiates with the Chamarrans reaches an agreement with them that allows a Coalition force to invade MEH Sol Sector, so long as the Coalition refrains from occupying the MEH Sol Sector after the MEH's surrender. I want to know if you three are willing to go attack MEH Sol, if the deal with the Chamarrans go through. I may make some arrangements to ease up difficulties, such as having Beo's ships hold up the rear and thus provide a local reserve.

EDIT: Darkevilme, I'll send you a PM soon.

[Dark Hellion]

Just a quick note, I do plan on attacking Sol system during some of these other MEHstomp events. I have just been really busy with my research and haven't been much in the mood for posting but if anyone needs to know my general plans you can PM me and I'll try to answer them.

[Ryan Thunder]

This is really more of a message to Beo, Shinn, and Kartr:

With the Shinrans staying at Wolf 359 to guard the system and take care of crippled ships (for now), and the Klavostanis heading to Alpha Centauri to reinforce the Coalition contingents there, that leaves the Hiigarans, the Haruhiists, and the Tianguonese to strike at Sol, alongside the Centralist contingent

And the ISU.

[KlavoHunter]

Just a quick note, I do plan on attacking Sol system during some of these other MEHstomp events. I have just been really busy with my research and haven't been much in the mood for posting but if anyone needs to know my general plans you can PM me and I'll try to answer them.

Look, Beowulf! Evil Machines at MEH Sol!

[Beowulf]

Just a quick note, I do plan on attacking Sol system during some of these other MEHstomp events. I have just been really busy with my research and haven't been much in the mood for posting but if anyone needs to know my general plans you can PM me and I'll try to answer them.

Look, Beowulf! Evil Machines at MEH Sol!

Ok, sold.

[Shroom Man 777]

[TimothyC]

Eight hours in a car with Simon helped me get moving on this.

[Kartr_Kana]

Ok sorry I've been silent for so long. Actually had a job last week working the fair, Wed-Sat 3pm-9pm standing in a parking lot directing traffic. Six hours a day in the hot sun on my feet, left me feeling disinclined to write anything. Just got caught up on the commentary thread and am working my way through the story thread. Will try to get something written before the weeks end. Also the Hiigarans are in this all the way to Sol, though don't expect much help groundside because we didn't send many troops. Which is something that will come up in some internal posts.

[Simon_Jester]

Hurray for Spaceman Spiff!

[Shroom Man 777]

Nice, PeZook. Excellent counterpoint. War's not nice business.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

You know, I'm getting rather annoyed.

Too much stuff is going under the table in the AIM chat thread. And too little is happening here in the OOC thread.

If you have bitching to do, MAKE IT FUCKING PUBLIC HERE.

[Simon_Jester]

...Um, what on Earth are you talking about?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

...Um, what on Earth are you talking about?

You know what I'm talking about. This is in fact the only SDN game that has had an almost dead commentary thread because everyone decided to do any of their running comments on the AIM. Never mind the "dudes" who spend more time on the AIM instead of writing anything.

[Agent Sorchus]

I agree a little with the sentiment of Fin. It would be nice if the Commentary thread was used more often. Now of course It isn't necessarily a bad thing that the chat exists, but I think that the fact that there is essentially two classes of players might create a little tension. (ie Fin might be over reacting, but that is only because he can't know what goes on in the Chat.)

As for Fin and a couple others, the Eoghans want to keep this as low on the civilian casualties as possible. I have little problem with how it is going, but as far as I can see the introduction of the Byzantines is throwing a wrench into the works a little. If we can keep the orbital bombardment to a minimum I believe that we do have more then enough ground troops to take and hold. (Hey you can't say I didn't bring enough, I brought more than a half billion.)

[White Haven]

Alright, in the interests of full disclosure then, 'I have to admit I was eye-rolling at psi-titans with warp lances. What, was 40k not enough wank to begin with?'

Does that make you happier, Fin?

[Ryan Thunder]

If you have bitching to do, MAKE IT FUCKING PUBLIC HERE.

Aiighty then. You're an idiot on a Zorian quest to have the biggest and the best of everything at all costs without actually going to the effort of considering what the best would be be. Your titans are retarded, and I seriously doubt you actually thought through the implications of their points costs before you decided on their capabilities. Kind of like your Astartes, which are individually worth about five companies of tier one regulars. I'd like to see an Astartes fight five damned rifle companies to a convincing standstill, but to date I've seen literally nothing but points costs to tell me that they can in fact do so, even though you've written a lot about them. Or like how a Warhound titan is supposed to kill an entire fucking army of regulars, who'd have their own divisional artillery and superheavy hunter squads and what not.

I bet you only wrote about the Psi-titan because you felt you had to one up my ADAU post. Except you failed to actually do anything interesting with it because there's nothing exciting about a fucking gary stu machine that kills 90 points of stealth ship when it can't possibly be more than 50 points itself with a single attack. Because that'd be, y'know, impossible to transport in one piece.

Anyway, quit being such a blowhard and start figuring out what a Warhound that can actually believably kill an entire goddamned army should look like, for starters. Then talk about that. Or something.

[KlavoHunter]

What even is on Xena that would require the deployment of a PsiTitan anyways? Sounds like something you'd reserve for Earth to spearhead the assault on Sasha's Palace, y'know, the only possible psyker-type threat in the entire MEH.