StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Hrm...if we go low-tech, I'll have to scrap the Outsiders... *strokes chin* Could dust off the Genos, though, that'd work...I can do either way, really.

I just want a tech level where fighters and carriers are the true force in the stars.

FS2.

Agent Fisher wrote:I just want a tech level where fighters and carriers are the true force in the stars.

Fighters? CARRIERS? Back in /my/ day, we fought with corvettes. And we didn't even have those! Using old fashioned missiles. Some of them were even manned. None of your fancy schmancy 'unlimited delta v'

Nephtys wrote:

Agent Fisher wrote:I just want a tech level where fighters and carriers are the true force in the stars.

Fighters? CARRIERS? Back in /my/ day, we fought with corvettes. And we didn't even have those! Using old fashioned missiles. Some of them were even manned. None of your fancy schmancy 'unlimited delta v'

Silence you. Basicly, I want something like WWII. Where fighter and bombers can really fuck something over.

Say if you have a carrier worth one capital point. Its Air Group can take out nearly anything less than a capital ship. And it would take a huge amount of escort ships devoted nearly entirely to anti-fighter duty to pose a true threat to the carrier's Air Group aside from fighters.

I'd seperate escorts into a different specialization from battlewagons. Escorts depend alot more on speed, and size to minimize their vulnerability, while still having enough armor to be protected from fighters.

As I see it, you need fairly hefty weapons to really damage a capship. The reduced rate of fire and slower tracking rate make these types of weapons less effective at killing lighter combatants.

You'd have 4 types of specializations: fighter/escort/capital/bombardment.

Hmm fighter/escort/C&C/Bombardment

C&C being Cruiser & Capital

As far as setting. I'd actually prefer tech to be just different rather then higher or lower. The beuty of the point system is that we can have differing levels of tech between players but still be able to make it work in play balance. For example, if two eight point ships were squaring off and one had higher tech we could simply assume that the other one had some features that balanced it out, like better crew or more efficient use of existing tech, ect ect. Obviously there couldn't be a huge deviation but I think we've got room for some diversity.

Incidentally, I'd really like HL2 style teleporters. Big, clumsy, in very little use and somewhat innacurate. Just something you could use to transport the odd person somewhere else.

I'd like it for multiple fleets to be able to pass through a system and not see each other/hide from each other. Systems are pretty big, it would be neat if we could add an element of something similar to submarine warfare.

As for 'fighters being the ultimate force in the universe,' take your hands out of your pants, and look at how long it took an entire carrier GROUP to sink the lone, isolated Mushashi at Leyte Gulf. Roughly an hour of constant airstrikes, to kill ONE large capitol ship...and never mind how silly that is applied to near-tech space warfare.

A couple things are required for fighters to be overly effective. One is a supremacy of offence over defence. Not just offence being better than defence, but supremely better than defence. Second is very cheap and efficient space drives. Your average fighter is going to need somewhere near 4 times the total delta V compared to a cap ship missile.

A lot of things in STGODs don't always work from a realism perspective, the ruleset as it stands does give fighters quite a lot of power, it does require that you sink a lot of points into them though, and diversify, bombers are worth nothing against other fighters. You could get away quite happily with space superriority fighters and just let your capitals do all the work. Alternatively you could also use capitals that specialise in anti-fighter weapons, but they're not quite as effective on their own - still a viable tactic though.

I'd consider popping in again, if we're starting again. (If you want me, lol)

Lower tech, eh? Now how can I cram a cruiser-sized railgun into a destroyer? Well, without creating a Homeworld style cannon frigate... hmm. Science will find a way, i'm sure.

Is that a railgun as one would normally find on a cruiser, or a railgun as large as a cruiser?



I don't have a problem with including fighters, but to make the entire techbase ruthlessly fighter-centric as our resident Carriwanker seems to want...heell no.

Cruiser-sized, not Cruiser-grade. World of difference.

Edit: And fighters? Crap. We may require (dare I say it?) smaller guns.

Duct-tape. Lostech duct-tape.

That'd mount the gun on it, not in it. Though, the idea does have some merit.

I guess we could just work on smaller cruiser-sized railguns. Maybe medium cruiser-sized.

I'd just feel silly weilding a navy composed of command modules and engines duct-taped to truly massive guns. Kinda. If we can just work on the in-ness of it...*ponders*

Well, barring space-compression and n-dimensional structual engineering, that's the only way you'll end up with that kind of out-gunned chassis, yes?

I can really see a problem with my Fighters, I really should invest in less insanely huge weaponry.
Or larger ships. As I recall, my last cruisers were dwarfed by passing destroyers.

Not from the Sixth. They didn't have any destroyers.

The ruleset should never reward only one kind of strategy or discriminate against all others. That's asinine, stupid, and self-serving. For punishment, Fisher is sentenced to death by Bunga Bunga.

I'm generally not liking where this is going. The extra complexity is nice, but it's a fine line we walk, too much complexity will ruin things. The focus is, after all, on roleplaying and long term stradegy, rather than who can ame the best ships. This isn't Space Empires 4, and really, the majority of the game is spent on everything besides fighting.
I'm all for add a few numbers here and there so as to streamline things like shipbuilding and the like, but from the looks of things, you guys are more interested in playing Battlefleet Gothic, rather than a RPG.

Well, I do like the idea of specializations, lets ship flavor have some meaningful effect on the game. Much beyond that, I agree, gets to nitpicky.

Look, the ships are already as specialized as they need to be. If you want an increased amount of specialization, you qualify it in your oob, and when a fight comes, it is a mere consideration. Just because all your frigates are "specialized" to be a little better against capitals really isn't going to mean a whole hell of a lot in virtually all circumstances anyway.

Really, it's unnecessary.

Ah, but we inevitably get folks trying to say their specializations are uber better, or their power tech lets them blow up capitals without detection, or that they have a planetbuster missile for every planet owned by every other power. Quantifying specialization is not some slippery slope as you are trying to paint it as.

I'd leave it at a unified point total, with specializations. Hell, if you don't want to do a unified set, then go with something akin to the old one, but I WOULD like to work in specializations somehow.

I still say the unified point pool, the fighters/capitals/stationaries setup, and the specializations are good. Kill the boarding rules though; I dun like 'em. And really, if we're going for any sort of vaguely realistic setting, it's impossible.