SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread VII

[Shroom Man 777]

Welcome... to the war zone of the O-ZONE!

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

Now, let's play a little game. How many allusions, references, and shout-outs to different media franchises have Shroom and I managed to pack into our latest story post?

[Simon_Jester]

Bland? Bland!

His Excellency the ambassador has no appreciation for shininess. Hmph.

[KhorneFlakes]

You know, I just realized something. Short of conquering a sector, how do I get new sectors? I've read the ruleset a few times and I don't understand how to get news ones after setting up your nation and whatnot.

[Shroom Man 777]

That's actually a good question, man. You militarily conquer the unoccupied sector (how many defenses to blank sectors have?) or write something wherein the local/sectorial government is annexed (through military, or social, or political, or economic methods)? It's not covered that detailedlly in the rules, aside from standard combat shoot-warships land-troops-and-kill-folks thing. I guess this is where narrative comes in.

[Siege]

The timescale of the game does not allow you to establish meaningfully profitable settlements in sectors you have not paid for in advance (through either colonization or conquest).

Apart from economics, have your polity claim a new sector in-game and see what happens.

Aside from that and on a personal note, if I were you I'd be worrying about other things than expansion. Like, maybe establishment would be a good start.

[Shroom Man 777]

You can still conquer them militarily, like what folks just did to the MEH's sectors. But to integrate them into the conquering nation's own GDP system? Uh, yeah, how does that work?

[Siege]

I would maintain that you don't. For example in case of the MEH these systems/sectors would be so damaged that they'd probably consume more resources than you'd get out of them for the conceivable future. This would generally be the case with conquered worlds: you'd face resistances, damage from orbital bombardment, military remnants, a decapitated planetary leadership, maybe breakaway polities on other continents and who knows what else that would cancel out any GDP increase you might have gotten out of the deal.

Now I'm sure it's possible to come up with a clever way to integrate a system/sector into your own by, say, brainwashing its leadership or just plain old well-written diplomacy. This might not necessarily result in massive damage/unrest. But, I'd say, the minute you do this and start siphoning away resources to your greater star empire, then you'd see mass unrest, economic instability, bank runs, panic, riots in the streets, revolutionary movements, space lizard invasions and other assorted difficulties that mean that, once more, the potential GDP increase is balanced out by the expenditure of maintaining order in the first place.

The game was set up with GDP expansion as a very long-term thing that we just don't do for a good reason: that way Munchkin gold rushes lie, and for Simon's sake as much as the rest of us I would suggest we just don't bother with conquest-related points expansions.

[Simon_Jester]

If the expansion is so small as to be largely irrelevant, I'm not sure I'd complain, assuming someone did a magnificent-bastard job of writing it. Some lame-brained fool who tries to write himself three sectors' worth of expansion because he regards his SDNW4 nation's GDP as a substitute for penis size, on the other hand, will find mountains of disasters landing on his head in short order.

Now, PvP wars are one case where I *might* consider awarding sectors to the winner without totally neutralizing the economic 'reward' for doing so. It would depend on how the war goes down, and on mutual consent- if A fights B and annexes one of B's colony provinces, maybe A gets a payoff, maybe not. It depends, and I'm not going to commit to being for or against that.

But in a case like that, the effort that goes into writing the war OOC, and the ships that get blown up IC, will mean that if the player gets rewarded for fighting, they've more than paid their dues to get it.

[Dark Hellion]

I would also like to point out that GDP isn't a direct representation of money; it can't be given the variety of economic systems present in the galaxy. It is much more an abstract representation of industrial capacity entailing resource gathering, logistics, manufacturing ability, and myriad other factors. As such simply capturing a system or sector shouldn't be expected to really increase GDP for a very long time as the necessary infrastructure is completed.

Capturing another PC's sector would be much more about denying them resources instead of increasing ones own.

[Simon_Jester]

You're basically right, DH, but...

It would depend on what kind of industrial assets are present in the sector, how much care is taken to avoid accidentally wrecking them, and whether the defender engages in 'scorched earth' tactics to deny those assets to an opponent.

The Karlacks might plausibly gain incremental GDP from conquering a sector simply because "resources" to them means planets full of biomass for them to chow down on. It wouldn't be all that big a boost, but I can easily see giving it to them, depending on circumstances- obviously, Byzantine exterminatus operations would be effective at denying the Karlacks any use from a life bearing world they subdue.

Whereas if my own nation conquered a chunk of Shepistan, the Technocracy probably wouldn't gain much to speak of economically, not for quite some time, because the inevitable nukings would more than wreck any industrial or economic advantage.

[KhorneFlakes]

Thanks for that. Wasn't planning on expanding to much anyway - the sectors that in the backstory the Republicans did not render uninhabitable are under their control, but they don't have the numbers to maintain a permanent settlement on any of them, so all they have there are mining facilities and whatnot. Most of them are actually sitting around in asteroid bases trying to avoid being noticed by the Neo-Taiidan Empire and therefore not being squished, although some of them have the firepower to threaten the modern Taiidan Empire.

It's kind of the same situation the Taiidan Imperialists were in Homeworld Cataclysm. Some of them can't do reasonable damage, and some can. They're also relying on vastly outdated hardware compared to the Imperials, which is a point my soon-to come story update will address.

However, my time for uploading stuff is limited as of now - My mother, as I stated before, is being stupid again, but most annoying of all, she figured out some way to "disable" the modem: As in when I go back to turn it on again, it doesn't work. It's fucking creepy and is really annoying, because it shows that she's starting to think that she can control my entire life again, as she did when I was 12 or so. That would be the other reason I hate my mother - not only is she a christian fundamentalist, she's also a control freak at times. It's not the end, but it's bloody annoying, and I don't need it. Especially during MY holiday.

[RogueIce]

Concerning the latest story posts, this:

“These are our landing forces. The armies of the Holy Empire appear in green, the Imperium in blue, and the Interstellar Union in red. You will notice that the IUW makes a beeline for the Palace, where its force of ADAUs is unexpectedly defeated.” Indeed, the red dots zoomed off, converged on the known location of the palace, and then winked out of existence.

Did not happen. AFAICT it is only a minor part (the IUW isn't mentioned elsewhere, is it? Well, aside from the merchant expulsion which did indeed happen), but for the sake of accuracy (and not confusing the events surround Downfall any more than we already have) I'm going to point this out.

[Shroom Man 777]

Beauchamps Jabuzov!

Concerning the latest story posts, this:

“These are our landing forces. The armies of the Holy Empire appear in green, the Imperium in blue, and the Interstellar Union in red. You will notice that the IUW makes a beeline for the Palace, where its force of ADAUs is unexpectedly defeated.” Indeed, the red dots zoomed off, converged on the known location of the palace, and then winked out of existence.

Did not happen. AFAIC it is only a minor part, but for the sake of accuracy (and not confusing the events surround Downfall any more than we already have) I'm going to point this out.

I thought Ryan wanted to have a force on Earth.

[Ryan Thunder]

I thought Ryan wanted to have a force on Earth.

I did. I was out of position to do so, and even if I had been in position to do so, it was my understanding that the Byzantines' minefield would have prevented me from becoming involved.

[Shroom Man 777]

Okay. I thought they were hitching with the Haruhiists or something.

So, no Miratians at Earth?

[Ryan Thunder]

Okay. I thought they were hitching with the Haruhiists or something.

So, no Miratians at Earth?

Yes.

[Simon_Jester]

This may be the result of honest confusion, depending on how long ago that post was written. Shinn sincerely believed there were ADAUs present (with the Haruhiists) until a week ago or so; that line may simply be a holdover from then that wasn't changed.

Let's just retcon it out and move on, no recriminations, OK?

[Ryan Thunder]

This may be the result of honest confusion, depending on how long ago that post was written. Shinn sincerely believed there were ADAUs present (with the Haruhiists) until a week ago or so; that line may simply be a holdover from then that wasn't changed.

Let's just retcon it out and move on, no recriminations, OK?

Naw, I'm not mad about it or anything. Just sayin' is all.

[Shroom Man 777]

Sidney Hank, you are the best.

[Ryan Thunder]

I left that deliberately open-ended for Fin and/or Shinn. Ball's in your court as to how effective the decoy-herding is.

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

You'll get your reply in due time. I'm just feeling real burnt out right now.

[Ryan Thunder]

There's no rush.

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

Before I can formulate an appropriate reply, though, I need clarification on a few issues. For starters, exactly WHERE in "Deep Space" is this all taking place? This is important.

[Ryan Thunder]

Before I can formulate an appropriate reply, though, I need clarification on a few issues. For starters, exactly WHERE in "Deep Space" is this all taking place? This is important.

Sorry about that. I edited the post with some more information.

The gist of it is that the Wobbly fleet would speed ahead of the other sub-fleets (since they're taking circuitous routes) and drop decoys in the hopes that the sub-fleets will attempt to avoid them to evade detection. They'll try to herd a sub-fleet into a more predictable flight path where they can intercept them properly.