SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread VII

[Darkevilme]

Hmm. I'm not sure who to feel sorry for, The solarians cause both their allies went and slagged a densely populated human world on the same day, or the Byzantines and Haruhiists cause the Solarians have Olympic write their diplomatic missives and he has tendency to be somewhat abrasive.

[Simon_Jester]

Byzantines, D. You're lobbing nuclear missiles at them, after all...

[White Haven]

Pfft. Fusion...

[Simon_Jester]

[hangs up modhat on a peg well away from own head]

[fires hundred-megaton nuclear shaped charge past White Haven]

Don't laugh at fusion. This is your last warning.

...

EDIT:

Jokes aside, good stuff Siege.

[Simon_Jester]

[modhat back on]

I just posted a proposed revision to the rules for planetary defense in the General Facts thread, here. I feel that the revision clarifies certain points and expands on the difference between the 'space battle' and 'ground war' components of a planetary assault, without imposing any new difficulties on planetary conquerors other than the ones we already know and accept are in effect.

I invite people to comment on it; if it is not well received and supported by other interested mods, it becomes a moot point of course.

[modhat off]

[Shroom Man 777]

Doesn't look like it has any holes inside it. It does increase the burden of the attacker, though. But not by that large a degree. I'll leave it for the more numbers-versed people to go through.

[RogueIce]

Hmm. I'm not sure who to feel sorry for, The solarians cause both their allies went and slagged a densely populated human world on the same day, or the Byzantines and Haruhiists cause the Solarians have Olympic write their diplomatic missives and he has tendency to be somewhat abrasive.

Wait, did I miss something? When did the Haruhiists get their slagging on?

[Darkevilme]

Hmm. I'm not sure who to feel sorry for, The solarians cause both their allies went and slagged a densely populated human world on the same day, or the Byzantines and Haruhiists cause the Solarians have Olympic write their diplomatic missives and he has tendency to be somewhat abrasive.

Wait, did I miss something? When did the Haruhiists get their slagging on?

The Haruhiists are apparently assisting the Byzantines. To what extent is unclear till Shinn posts but they were in orbit of Earth-4 with the Byzzies and until otherwise i'm assuming they're not gonna STOP the byzantines which seems as good as aiding and abetting.

[Agent Sorchus]

[modhat back on]

I just posted a proposed revision to the rules for planetary defense in the General Facts thread, here. I feel that the revision clarifies certain points and expands on the difference between the 'space battle' and 'ground war' components of a planetary assault, without imposing any new difficulties on planetary conquerors other than the ones we already know and accept are in effect.

I invite people to comment on it; if it is not well received and supported by other interested mods, it becomes a moot point of course.

[modhat off]

I straight up dislike that it doubles the defensive value for all sectors. I know that people dislike the idea of "losing" territory and would rather be strong, but this way creates a defensive force equal to their offensive force. It is already really hard for anyone to even think of going out and fighting a war, and this just makes it more so impossible.

IF you clarify that a sector has half it's value of defense split 50 50 space and ground there would be no problem. As it is the doubling of defenses is too much.

[White Haven]

...Wow, really? You're complaining that a home sector with a GDP upgrade, just to posit the worst invasion nightmare, would have 3400 pts per system, divided up into 1700 space, 1700 ground. In what parallel dimension are you contesting a system in a home sector with anything less than multiple numbered fleet strength?

And let's examine the other end of that spectrum. A system in an unupgraded colony sector has 200 pts of defenses, 100 space, 100 ground. What are you trying to take that star system with, a goddamned troop of Brag Scouts? I have enough gardeners to take that. Defenses are beyond pathetic and ineffectual against anything approaching a reasonable invasion deployment, unless you're trying to do something ridiculous like siege every world in multiple sectors at the same time. And frankly, if you're trying to do something so inane, you either should need to deploy vast forces to do it, or you should be kicked repeatedly in the head.

In summary, a single battlecruiser could stomp all over every last space defense a colony system could possibly mount.. A half-dozen proper capital ships could do the same to a system in a home sector. These defensive rules are speedbumps at best, useful only for making an invader commit a minimum of effort to an invasion rather than just walking in with a frigate and capturing a star system, and you're complaining that they're too powerful. Hell, I'm one of the nations that's at the greatest disadvantage from them, as my ground armies are relatively weak, and they mean I'd have to face more ground defenses than the old rules. And you know what? I like it. I chose to have a weak ground contingent, and now that actually has some meaning.

[Simon_Jester]

In summary, a single battlecruiser could stomp all over every last space defense a colony system could possibly mount.. A half-dozen proper capital ships could do the same to a system in a home sector.

Well, it depends on your definition of "battlecruiser." A 100-point Prussian League battlecruiser would be about evenly matched for a colony system's space defenses- 50/50 chance of a kill either way, really. A 175-point 'battlecruiser' (like my pre-3400 ones) could reliably overpower a colony system's orbital defenses, but would likely take serious damage and might be destroyed if it wandered into range of the ground-based defenses on the planet itself, since the ground units permanently attached to the planet have surface-to-space firepower. Though it's not such a likely outcome, I know.

A 300-point ship (something that, say, Bragulans might call a battlecruiser) would of course stomp face in such a situation.

Note the point about ground-to-space firepower. That is, I think, an important point for us to bear in mind; while not everyone has some Bolo-analogue in terms of superheavy ground units of point value high enough to duke it out with orbiting starships, any large force of regular ground troops should have aerospace defenses capable of posing a credible threat to ships that dip too close, making casual orbital nukings more challenging for the attacker.

These defensive rules are speedbumps at best, useful only for making an invader commit a minimum of effort to an invasion rather than just walking in with a frigate and capturing a star system, and you're complaining that they're too powerful. Hell, I'm one of the nations that's at the greatest disadvantage from them, as my ground armies are relatively weak, and they mean I'd have to face more ground defenses than the old rules...

Actually, the situation vis a vis ground defenses hasn't changed. If you check the old rules, and compare to the new ones, you still need the same ground deployment to rapidly overpower a planetary ground defense (3X/10 points, where X is the sector GDP).


The real changes to the rules are:

One: you now formally need to send a space force into a system to clear out the orbital defenses before you can seriously contemplate landing troops. The defense force is quite nominal compared to the scale of a national navy- while it adds up to a lot over an entire star nation, it's hideously vulnerable to being defeated in detail.

Two: I have somewhat clarified the rules on the use of ground troops for planetary invasion and occupation, or at least laid out guidelines for such a situation. Among other things, I address the question of what happens if you don't bring three times the strength of the defender in your attempt to conquer a planet: a protracted ground campaign fought over the planet, which one might mentally model as something like the fighting over Guadalcanal if one chose to do so.



On a side note, one of the reasons I chose to propose this revision is that it gives us a basis in the rules for saying "the defenses hold out until reinforcements arrive." This is important, since most people (Umeria appears to me to be an exception) aren't in the habit of routinely stationing mobile, hyperspace-capable naval squadrons in all their star systems.*

I'd think it would be in the overall interests of the players to officially state that every system has at least some ability to deal with a raiding Light or Medium warship, or a flight of gunboats launched from a hyper-capable carrier, without whistling up reinforcements from the nearest naval base (which would take hours, possibly many hours, to arrive)

*Go to my Wiki page, look up 'system control groups.' I keep about 300 points of warships in every system I control, although this obviously eats into my offensive naval potential unless I start using those squadrons as reserves for the offensive fleet- which is not unprecedented, of course.

[Agent Sorchus]

...Wow, really? You're complaining that a home sector with a GDP upgrade, just to posit the worst invasion nightmare, would have 3400 pts per system, divided up into 1700 space, 1700 ground. In what parallel dimension are you contesting a system in a home sector with anything less than multiple numbered fleet strength?

You can't use a GDP boost on a home sector anyway. This isn't about the small numbers, it's about the aggregate. SUDDENLY we all have a third more military, and coalitions are necessary for anything. Like I said I don't care about the rest of the idea, but in this case it is more of some of us having now inferior OoB's. For Instance my Core Fleet unit is a Battleship squadron, and come in around 2,400. Yeah they'll defeat a homesector defense, but not if there are any reinforcements. And lets face it everyone has a home-sector fleet in addition to their central territorial defenses.

And with everyone quite capable of saying that they'll use there "offensive" fleet as a defensive unit now we do have to blow through a third more, and the approximate equivalent of two nations worth of offensive units. Yeah. Anything less than a coalition of three has no real chance of actually winning, and even then you are going to need a lot more for it to even be called easy.

And you can say that you have to battle it piecemeal, that hardly matters. Just because you take them on one by one still means you have to defeat the aggragate, and as it is no one has tried anyway so why make it more difficult? Say Forcelord and I want to go out in a blaze of glory, this makes it far harder to actually have a good story doing so. (Not saying we will or anything, but that it is an option and I like options.)

Two: I have somewhat clarified the rules on the use of ground troops for planetary invasion and occupation, or at least laid out guidelines for such a situation. Among other things, I address the question of what happens if you don't bring three times the strength of the defender in your attempt to conquer a planet: a protracted ground campaign fought over the planet, which one might mentally model as something like the fighting over Guadalcanal if one chose to do so.

Simon, why? Why can't we write the story the way we want too? Why must it be battle fought over a long period, and not say a successful intimidation that forces a capitulation of the enemy outside of a few hold outs? Also since when was the 3 to 1 anything but a bare suggestion? Though I have no problems if the majority of non curb-stomp battles take time on the ground I do not see why it has to be in teh rulez.

I seriously don't understand why we want this to be a rules level change.

On a side note, one of the reasons I chose to propose this revision is that it gives us a basis in the rules for saying "the defenses hold out until reinforcements arrive." This is important, since most people (Umeria appears to me to be an exception) aren't in the habit of routinely stationing mobile, hyperspace-capable naval squadrons in all their star systems.*
...
*Go to my Wiki page, look up 'system control groups.' I keep about 300 points of warships in every system I control, although this obviously eats into my offensive naval potential unless I start using those squadrons as reserves for the offensive fleet- which is not unprecedented, of course.

What if other people do not want to play the game the same way you do? I don't want to try and hold outer territory necessarily. Trading territory to expose the opposition's supply route to extended hit and run tactics should be no less valid.

Besides I thought we'd already dealt with the idea that raiders are going to be able to do anything significant when we talked about listening posts and ftl warning sensors. ie even a sector level deployment of hyper capable assets should be enough to protect against a certain amount of raiding. (Not to mention ASAT abilities of ground troops.)

[White Haven]

Do you even grok the concept of defeat in detail? Seriously? Against a fleet capable of mounting a realistic attack on a defended system in the face of possible mobile fleet opposition, the local system defenses aren't even remotely relevant. It's as if everyone were given thousands of points of fleet assets, but under the strict rule that they couldn't ever combine them into fleets and had to throw them at the enemy in ones and twos and half-dozens. That wouldn't give them any effective increase in military whatsoever, because a proper fleet would annihilate them for minimal or no losses. It's giving people tens of thousands of points that are not useful in any sort of meaningful combat except against an enemy stupid enough to send tiny forces to worlds without a mobile fleet presence in the hopes of gaming the system somehow. The only way that these 'free points' you're bitching so spectacularly about would be significant in anything but an exceedingly minor raiding action (Take that! I throw a heavy cruiser at you--oh god, curse your sudden but inevitable planetary defenses!) would be if they were hyper-capable and could congregate in one system per sector to meet an expected attack en masse.

As Simon explicitly forbade that, I recommend you remove the crowbar from your ass, actually think about this in terms of actually USING those 'free points' rather than just how they look on a spreadsheet, and come back when you've started being rational.

[Simon_Jester]

You can't use a GDP boost on a home sector anyway. This isn't about the small numbers, it's about the aggregate. SUDDENLY we all have a third more military, and coalitions are necessary for anything. Like I said I don't care about the rest of the idea, but in this case it is more of some of us having now inferior OoB's. For Instance my Core Fleet unit is a Battleship squadron, and come in around 2,400. Yeah they'll defeat a homesector defense, but not if there are any reinforcements. And lets face it everyone has a home-sector fleet in addition to their central territorial defenses.

Remember that the system defenses can be defeated in detail.

This is an important concept, so to make sure it's clear I will explain.

A nation has (GDP/2) points of space defenses, roughly. However, these defenses are divided up so widely that it's trivial to mass an overwhelming force to crush the defense of any one system. A 500-point mobile fleet would easily overpower the 100 point defense of each of five colony sectors, because something like the Lanchester square law applies- you always have overwhelming superiority at the point of contact, so you can just bust up little 100 point defenses over and over. You can do the same thing with an army, in principle- drop 500 points of ground troops on a colony world to utterly squash the ground defense, then pick them up and move them to the next world while leaving a relative pittance of occupation troops behind.

The practical result is that no system defense can stand up to a reasonable invasion fleet (say, 5000 points), not as more than a speedbump. And given the way nations in the game are laid out, 5000 points is really pretty minimal for a credible invasion fleet even without defenses- because most nations have fleets in the 30000-point range and up, and so can easily stuff 5000 points of warships per sector in anyway.

Given that any invasion will have to reckon with enemy mobile fleet assets pouring into the invaded system, battles fought between major fleets over a defended system will be so huge in scale that the system defenses become largely irrelevant. We've seen this during the MEH war, and while the total numbers will be smaller in a more normal war*, the net effect is broadly unchanged.

*(since the defense is less concentrated but the attacking fleets are equivalently a lot smaller than the 50-100 thousand point behemoths invading the MEH)

And with everyone quite capable of saying that they'll use there "offensive" fleet as a defensive unit now we do have to blow through a third more, and the approximate equivalent of two nations worth of offensive units. Yeah. Anything less than a coalition of three has no real chance of actually winning, and even then you are going to need a lot more for it to even be called easy.

Sorchus, you're barking at shadows.

In a war between two equal-sized neighboring powers, the war will tend to drag out with relatively little shift in the 'front' of controlled systems: observe White Haven and "Red vs. Blue." Which is the same damn thing that happens under the existing rules- no change there.

In the event of a decisive large scale battle (one where one side loses a lot more points than the other), then the situation changes... and the system defenses become little more than a tripwire. If you have 5000 points more fleet than I do, you can pile enough ships into one part of the frontier to utterly annihilate local defenses and force me to give battle on unfavorable terms.

And you can say that you have to battle it piecemeal, that hardly matters. Just because you take them on one by one still means you have to defeat the aggragate, and as it is no one has tried anyway so why make it more difficult? Say Forcelord and I want to go out in a blaze of glory, this makes it far harder to actually have a good story doing so. (Not saying we will or anything, but that it is an option and I like options.)

The difficulty exists only in your mind. Overcoming a succession of isolated 100-point or 300-point or even 500-point garrisons is vastly easier than going head to head with a single fleet of 5000 or 10000 points. Even a moment's strategic thinking should make this clear.

Any force you could send to conquer a star system that would actually get stopped by the system defenses, or even significantly slowed down by the defenses, would be swatted like a fly if it ran into the actual fleets the defender can bring up to counter your attack within a 12-24 hour timeframe. It wouldn't be a credible invasion fleet unless it was strong enough to overpower the defenses in the first place.

Two: I have somewhat clarified the rules on the use of ground troops for planetary invasion and occupation, or at least laid out guidelines for such a situation. Among other things, I address the question of what happens if you don't bring three times the strength of the defender in your attempt to conquer a planet: a protracted ground campaign fought over the planet, which one might mentally model as something like the fighting over Guadalcanal if one chose to do so.

Simon, why? Why can't we write the story the way we want too? Why must it be battle fought over a long period, and not say a successful intimidation that forces a capitulation of the enemy outside of a few hold outs?

Because you can't successfully intimidate the enemy if you didn't bring anything to intimidate them with.

Obviously, if the enemy elects not to fight back, you can win easily by sending a squad of infantry to hoist your flag over their capital building, problem solved. No one would stop you from writing a story where that happened- I can't for the life of me imagine why you would think for a minute that anyone would; what kind of freak of nature do you think I am?

But in the event, however unlikely, that ground-based defenders actually want to make a fight of it, and that you don't want them to make a fight of it... well, they can make a fight of it. Unless you bring locally overwhelming force and just drown them in troops to the point where they can't organize an effective long term defense because invasion troops are landing on the heads of everyone on the planet... which requires something like a 3:1 ratio under the old rules.

Also since when was the 3 to 1 anything but a bare suggestion? Though I have no problems if the majority of non curb-stomp battles take time on the ground I do not see why it has to be in teh rulez.

I seriously don't understand why we want this to be a rules level change.

I suggested it. That doesn't mean I think it's necessary.

I'm proposing it as a clarification of a rather muddy point in the rules, because I've been asked repeatedly to answer questions about MEH system defenses and the like. This gives us a standardized guideline. Since (and I can't believe anyone would not remember this) the point system has some flex in it, this does not "prohibit you from writing stories," since who would want to write idiotically wanked stories about their troops overpowering all resistance effortlessly?

I want to hear what a lot of people think about this proposal. That includes you, though I'd more or less predicted in advance that you'd oppose this, because you've consistently opposed pretty much everything I've declared or proposed that has any impact on the rules, for about as far as I can remember.

Often I find myself unable to fathom your reasons for doing so. This is turning out not to be an exception to that pattern.

What if other people do not want to play the game the same way you do? I don't want to try and hold outer territory necessarily. Trading territory to expose the opposition's supply route to extended hit and run tactics should be no less valid.

Go for it. You still want some minimal ability to deter small scale attacks, because it's stupid to have situations where a major inhabited world can be held hostage by a lone 75-point Battlestar Annapolis threatening to drop nukes on things.

But if an actual fleet shows up, your system defenses aren't going to stop it anyway, so hell yes trading territory to overstretch the enemy's supply routes is a valid strategy... if you're dealing with an enemy big and concentrated enough that it makes sense to go for their 'supply route.' Which makes lots of sense when fighting a large fleet, but not so much sense when fighting a force of twenty or thirty raiding cruisers.

Besides I thought we'd already dealt with the idea that raiders are going to be able to do anything significant when we talked about listening posts and ftl warning sensors. ie even a sector level deployment of hyper capable assets should be enough to protect against a certain amount of raiding. (Not to mention ASAT abilities of ground troops.)

Space defenses can be modeled as ground-based ASAT weapons fired from planetary bases, if you like.

Early warning systems are good, but they work best when you're seeing one big blip on the radar that you can mass everything you have to intercept it. Having a large, diffuse threat that can feint and strike at multiple targets, and which cannot be met by a single concentration, is much more complicated. And given FTL travel times between systems, it would require a pretty impressive network to be sure of always being able to drop an interception force in front of any enemy raider before they could get to one of your systems... at least, unless you're actually leaving permanent mobile garrison fleets in every system, which you are of course free to do.

So basically... sector level deployments are good, but in practice what are they going to do if confronted with a raiding force that splits up into dozens of separate strike groups? Or carriers that can crap out hyperspace-capable gunships from midway between two systems, threaten to attack either, and still create a thorny problem for people trying to intercept them because they're free to run around in hyperspace while their strike groups carry out the mission, a la Steve's ADN aerospace bombers from TGG?

Besides which, you're the one with all the stealth warships that presumably have at least some ability to slip by early warning networks. Surely you can see the reason why people would want fixed fortifications in their systems to deter raiders from sneaking past the border sensors, or at least prevent a raider who does so from casually obliterating the economic infrastructure of a whole star system.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Haven't we like argued the system defence bit to the fucking death already at the beginning of the game some 1 year ago?

In any case, can we have some flexibility in how the points per planet are allocated? Ground vs Space?

[Simon_Jester]

I don't have clear memories of the previous round of arguments over system defenses. I know I never argued them to death.


I don't have any complaints about the idea of flexibility in the ratio.

Although I doubt you'd want to flex too far either way. If you did, you'd risk situations where Battlestar Annapolis can singlehandedly blow up your space based infrastructure (no space defense, or a minimal one). Or where a relative handful of ground troops could conquer your planet easily after the space defenses were pushed aside (no ground defense. Which would be humiliation of the first order, especially for someone like the Byzantines.

Still, as far as I'm concerned that can be a player call more or less, within reason, unless someone can see an obvious problem with making it a player call.

I'll note that as a proposed revision.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I don't have clear memories of the previous round of arguments over system defenses. I know I never argued them to death.

No, we decided that "let points do the work, quit arguing". And Steve took the hammer and hammered the ground.

[Shroom Man 777]

Bart Blade started to cry.

[RogueIce]

And you can say that you have to battle it piecemeal, that hardly matters. Just because you take them on one by one still means you have to defeat the aggragate, and as it is no one has tried anyway so why make it more difficult? Say Forcelord and I want to go out in a blaze of glory, this makes it far harder to actually have a good story doing so. (Not saying we will or anything, but that it is an option and I like options.)

The points have always been, by and large, a fallback measure. If you and Force Lord are willing to agree, you could have a 10 point ship destroy a 1000 point ship, providing it is well written and both parties agree to it.

Now, obviously, that is an absurd example, but frankly if someone is willing to sacrifice a thousand point ship to a little pipsqueak like that...nobody's going to stop them, honestly.

The points largely matter in cases where the two players don't agree, as a means to more objectively solve disputes. That's why, in the 3-to-1 ratio part, it says the mods can adjust that, in either direction to suit the story, conditions on the ground, etc (at least in the original version, but I don't think Simon would object to adding that back in).

And of course in other cases, such as where a former player goes AWOL but we beat the shit out of his nation, or someone makes up some NPC Core World that they decide to invade with only a couple hundred troops and everyone calls bullshit, etc.

But for the most part, if it's player vs player and both sides agree...points and all that are (mostly) a guideline (for instance, hyperspace travel times and such should be respected, to maintain consistency within the universe) to help you along/resolve disputes.

[Shroom Man 777]

The Trail of Tubbs.

[Siege]

For the record, now that I've looked at the proposed rules revision with a sober eye, it looks all right with me. I do agree with Fin that nations ought to be allowed to modify the orbital/ground defense point spread to their liking, as long as this is done reasonably.

[Ryan Thunder]

I actually assumed it worked that way anyhow until Simon specified otherwise.

[Force Lord]

Ah, that Bart Blade.

[Simon_Jester]

Oh no... Brag Spores!

Come on, mang, there have to be limits to the brutality!


EDIT: Interesting, DH. I do appreciate your effort to come up with a set of actions for your fleet that don't clash too badly with the aims of the other players.

[Shroom Man 777]

I'm gonna go with the spores being a MEHnoid bioweapon resulting in their initial initiative against the Orks.