Poll Thread Re: SDNW4/4.5/5

[Simon_Jester]

OK, I just want to start a poll on this. As I see it we have three options; you can vote for any two of them or place two votes on one topic if you have strong preferences.

1) We try to keep SDNW4 going, without changing the map significantly.

2) We try to keep SDNW4 going. We change the map to remove inactive players, or push them out onto the periphery, while moving the active players closer together to promote interaction.

3) We agree to start SDNW5. The ruleset will be practically identical, except possibly for minor revisions to the nation creation rules which I can discuss at more length later. The map would be redrawn from scratch.

Many of us may (will?) want to carry over our old SDNW4 nations without changing their essential character; that is acceptable and even encouraged. We could grandfather in SDNW4 nations entirely unchanged into the new setting; the rules will remain fully backwards compatible.

[Akhlut]

OK, I just want to start a poll on this. As I see it we have three options; you can vote for any two of them or place two votes on one topic if you have strong preferences.

1) We try to keep SDNW4 going, without changing the map significantly.

2) We try to keep SDNW4 going. We change the map to remove inactive players, or push them out onto the periphery, while moving the active players closer together to promote interaction.

3) We agree to start SDNW5. The ruleset will be practically identical, except possibly for minor revisions to the nation creation rules which I can discuss at more length later. The map would be redrawn from scratch.

Many of us may (will?) want to carry over our old SDNW4 nations without changing their essential character; that is acceptable and even encouraged. We could grandfather in SDNW4 nations entirely unchanged into the new setting; the rules will remain fully backwards compatible.

I support either 2 or 3; frankly, there might be enough overlap between the two options that they aren't even necessarily distinct.

[Simon_Jester]

#3 would include minor rule revisions and a serious attempt to bring in some fresh blood as players. #2 would not. That's the main practical difference, aside from the name we put on the story threads.

EDIT: By the way, anyone who votes, I'd appreciate it if you also post. It helps me gauge interest and opinions.

[Zor]

1 or 3, but leaning towards one. Either work with what is there or start over again.

Zor

[Ryan Thunder]

I think I'm alright with #2. I'm not really interested in a do-over unless we're going to have terrestrial factions again or perhaps limit the game to one star system with many planets that our factions have partial control over--or anything to the effect that we don't have such staggering resources at our disposal, really.

[Darkevilme]

Okay. Posting. I favour SDNW5 cause I've been constantly bugged by the urge to re-invent the Chamarrans rather than play them as they are.

While we're on the subject my re-invention might work best in something similar to the STGOD 2k8(I think it was setting so I'll pitch it, where a large overarching human empire went bye bye recently and everyone is carving nations out of the ruins or being semi autonomous provinces that are turning full state in the aftermath.

It's just a pitch though I'm not wedded to it and I can work with whatever is given.

Also the idea of a smaller scale game might have some merit. 2k8 had us in control of a half dozen individual starsystems not sectors. Which is somewhere between Ryan's densely settled solar system(Which has issues for those wanting to play alien races after a certain point "why did twelve different alien races all arrive here?") and the SDNW4 setup of huge space nations.

Also with people having less than a hundred planets to their names we can have more reason for trade as you won't be quite as self sufficient as an ultra tech society.

edit:

Just to clarify. I'm good with 2 (the reshuffle) also. It's only 1(Nothing changed) I'm not interested in.

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

I have too much riding on the current state of affairs to just abandon the game as it is now. I can certainly live with a readjustment of the current map to reduce or eliminate the presence of the remaining ADHD lemmings, though.

Oddly, I'm in more or less the same boat as Ryan in that if we are just going to start over from zero with this V2 and entrust the future to a new generation ( ), we should either ditch the space setting entirely and go back to the modern day or try to limit the scope of things.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I don't want to restart and if we are going to restart, I am going to take a break and not join.

I would rather we continue from where we left off.

[KlavoHunter]

I am in favor of 1.

[Simon_Jester]

I'm actually kind of hoping we can get a clear 'least popular' option; then I can do another poll instant-runoff-style.

Wait... SDN polls don't let you put two votes on the same topic, do they? Crud.

[White Haven]

Heheh. Put in trade routes and then sit back and watch how many cloaking cruisers spring up in various national orders of battle.

On a more serious note, however, I'd favor either 2 or 3, with the caveat that 2 would be...narratively awkward. We could all work around it, but that's what it would be, a workaround, and those are always kludgy. Just off the cuff, and I'm only using my own plotlines because they're what I have in my own head, NORTHWEST PASSAGE would have been a far chancier proposition with nations in close proximity on all borders and without many national navies two thousand lightyears away fucking up the MEH. I'm sure the (depressingly few) other active nations have plotlines that would become...strained by a sudden non-IC astrographic disjunction. Perhaps not unworkably, but strained nonetheless.

Also, Astrographic Disjunction would make a great epic-level D&D spell.

[Siege]

I voted #2. If #3 gets picked I will reduce my involvement significantly.

[Simon_Jester]

Heheh. Put in trade routes and then sit back and watch how many cloaking cruisers spring up in various national orders of battle.

On a more serious note, however, I'd favor either 2 or 3, with the caveat that 2 would be...narratively awkward. We could all work around it, but that's what it would be, a workaround, and those are always kludgy. Just off the cuff, and I'm only using my own plotlines because they're what I have in my own head, NORTHWEST PASSAGE would have been a far chancier proposition with nations in close proximity on all borders and without many national navies two thousand lightyears away fucking up the MEH. I'm sure the (depressingly few) other active nations have plotlines that would become...strained by a sudden non-IC astrographic disjunction. Perhaps not unworkably, but strained nonetheless.

Also, Astrographic Disjunction would make a great epic-level D&D spell.

I'm having fun imagining the Elysians' reaction; they already shown their ability to remember pre-retcon maps after the retcon.

I would love to see cloaked cruisers and various types of commerce raiders and so on, because it encourages offensive-mindedness and gives people more flexibility to do interesting things. Hyperspace mechanics wouldn't change, as far as I'm concerned, though, with all that implies for commerce warfare.

We've got a winning combination with SDNW4, and most of its problems hinged from relatively minor mismanagement on the mods' part, of which my own share was significant. Changing the mod policies without changing much else is probably our best plan. Especially we shouldn't change the policy of not placing a heavy ongoing burden of number-crunching on people. That's why my own preferred tweaks are basically limited to nation creation; you don't have to keep track of them once they're running except in the sense that you'd have to keep track of "oh hey, I've just been invaded."

And I think we'd have to accept the strain on plots as part of the price of doing business. In your specific case, the only new neighbor you're at all likely to gain would be a near NPC-nation I haven't the heart to get rid of. And you might well either have secured their tacit consent for the whole operation, or have concluded they're not a major threat to the operation, depending on who they are and how their motives work. I'll talk to you about that later.


EDIT: Oh hey, a thought! Would anyone mind if I displace certain NPC or underplayed nations 'vertically' out of the map plane, so that they don't clutter up the 2D map but still exist in a way that provides roughly the same neighbors they had before?

[White Haven]

They shall be...<dramatic pause> banished to the attic!

I'm curious though, Siege, as to why you'd be so resistant to participating in option 3 as opposed to option 2, given that the main differences between the two consist of slight structural tweaks and some recruiting?

[Simon_Jester]

They shall be...<dramatic pause> banished to the attic!

I was actually thinking of locking them in the basement, but whether galactic north or galactic south is "up" is entirely debateable on this map. I'd always figured the map lay in the plane of the galaxy, but it's quite difficult for me to remember whether, when you view the map, you're looking from galactic north or galactic south.

I have only myself to blame, since the entire spinward/coreward system of directions was something I invented so I'd have a name for directions and could talk about "coreward border" or "spinward expanse."

[Siege]

Because I don't believe #3 will work out. Because I don't think the K-Zone will make the transition with the players necessary to make it work. Because I don't feel like starting from scratch. Because I don't feel like playing the same nation twice. Because I suspect a lot of people don't really understand what I've said about the game's problems. Because a reboot means a lot of time and energy I've invested in recent events will go to waste due to the unadultered laziness of other players, and that pisses me off. Etc.

[Force Lord]

I choose option 2.

[S.L.Acker]

I would like to join in so I chose 3, otherwise I'll start as a new race coming in from elsewhere. In any case I'll wait until after the vote is done to jump in.

[Simon_Jester]

[modhat on]

Kindly PM me with the concepts you have in mind, SLAcker.

[modhat off]

[S.L.Acker]

If we go the 5.0 route we could likely keep a lot of things the same while allowing for a bunch of change if we went with a large scale time shift. The individual characters would be gone, but their legends and the consequences of their actions would remain.

[Simon_Jester]

I wouldn't favor that.

For one, some nations in this setting already have significant life extension or immortality- their characters wouldn't go away unless the jump was huge. Moreover, a major time jump would make changes of characters mandatory; I wouldn't want that. I want to write more featuring the same characters, not a new set I had to invent for the new game.

Indeed, recreating new characters and giving some life to them would probably be more work than making up a new nation in the first place.

For another, the one thing that a time jump wouldn't justify changing is the map- a time jump doesn't explain why country A and country B are suddenly right next door when there used to be five hundred light years between them, or why country C just moved from one side of the map to the other. And yet changing the map is far and away the highest priority, to the point where I'm almost certain to do it whether we formally 'reboot' the game or not.


In general, SLAcker, Do bear in mind that many of the current SDNW4 players have invested large amounts of time and energy into the game, and don't want to write it off.

[S.L.Acker]

Yeah, player involvement is the real issue and I wouldn't want to make the game unfun for any long term member just to allow some new blood that may or may not stick around. Though the map does need some changes and that will take some pretty wacky stuff, when it happens those changes could allow a new race to slide into the fold.

[Simon_Jester]

As such, inserting a new nation or two as part of the map shuffle would not be out of the question- though you'd really have to consider how well your concept would fit in with the existing nations.

My point is that a time jump gives us the worst of both worlds. The one thing we know needs fixing (the map), a time jump can't fix. Meanwhile, the time jump breaks all sorts of things that we don't want broken. So no, I don't think I'll do a large time jump. A few years, maybe, but nothing that results in people's characters dying of old age.

[Tanasinn]

I would be in favor of a reboot. Particularly if it features relatively little rules-reworking.

[Darkevilme]

Seen as a reboot now seems more likely and some people have expressed distaste for a reboot unless it involves some form of reduction in scope I would like to make a proposal:

Would these people be satisfied if the scope of the game and empire sizes was reduced to the extent that if you have say...six starsystems you're probably a large empire. Or even less than that, point is if we have the entire game played in a single solar system only one or two nations can be aliens without it getting ridiculous so we need at least some interstellar travel.

And for everyone else:
1. Would this jive badly with anyone?
and
2. This would involve some tweaking of the nation generation rules sadly.

edit:
I suppose the minimum game with interstellar travel would be no more than a dozen(but as few as three) connected starsystems with people having partial or full control of each by buying individual planets. Under this setup of course ship STL speeds would probably have to be somewhat slower.