STGOD And Rules: Discussion.

Raxmei · Post by **Raxmei** » 2004-09-18 07:30pm

Writing up a full tech tree complete with separate fields and multiple playable levels and balanced point costs is way more than I'd want to do, in any case. I just took a look at what even the basics would entail and yuck.

Post by **Alyrium Denryle** » 2004-09-18 07:31pm

I would be more than willing to write that part up. I dont have a whole lot better to do....

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2004-09-18 08:25pm

SirNitram wrote:Okay. So, since the creation of the Gaming Forum, we've had a series of STGOD's. Some were good. Some were bad. They were all quite different from the STGODs of ASVS. As some of you know, the ASVS ones were far less structured, and less 'balanced'. They were alot of fun, but if people here don't want that, that's fine.

STGOD's here have tried to be fairly rigid in starting forces and technology, but there's been alot of arguments. Can you have direct conversion of matter to energy.. And then use it as an undetectable bomb? Does a million missile throw weight mean you can auto-kill entire fleets? Can my planetary defenses hold off fleets? Can I play by the rules of magic I stole from, or must I stick to the STGOD's power level? Perhaps there needs to be a little more rigidity, or at least well-defined limits, as opposed to the current, vague, level.

What I'm trying to do is come up with rules that capture the innate zaniness and creativity of the STGOD, allowing people more options, and still hammer out balance issues. This won't be perfect as I lay them out. I bet there will be trouble even if we think we hammer out all the problems. But hey, can't hurt to try and talk about it, right?

Basically, I have been looking at the unholy fusion of Master Of Orion-esque nation creation with GURPS. The opening ideas have been built around the idea of a starting nation having 100 points to spend, and a 'restart' being 75.

Planets. Big one here. In my mind, planets should come in three flavors: Claimed(Maybe a military outpost with sensors), Colony(Just settled, produce maybe some raw materials), Capital(Large enough for it's own heavy industry). I'm thinking 2-3 points for a 'Claimed' planet, 5 for a Colony, 10 for a Capital. And you get one free Capital world. For instance, your nation might have ten Capital-class worlds, allowing for a vast navy, but you'd be quite low-tech.

Tech Level. One we've not seen in the SDNet STGODs, but I think it should be possible to start at a higher tech level.. For a hefty price. I'm thinking of using GURPS tech levels here(Default of 9, early starflight, up to 14, Dysonian engineering). Since that's five, I think 20 points per 'level' is decent. You can start out with a Ringworld.. But you take a massive hit because you can't have any more planets.

Military. I'm thinking this should be based off of your planet count, IE, each planet gives you X amount of ships and troops possible. Possibly a bonus or penalty to change the amount up or down?(Bonus: Militant, doubling the military supported by a given amount of planets, against a negative, Pacifist, which cuts the support in half?)

Industry. Again, based off of planets, I think.

Feedback, please!

The STGOD's ship combat works just fine. We could use proability calculators and Battlefleet gothic rules to do ship combat if we really wanted; but according to that my entire fleet could be destroyed by a single corvette which got enough lucky roles.

The tech level really shouldn't move to far in any one direction. There's a very simple reason: It adds unnecessary stress for our poor moderators. Balance is very important! This is a game about stradegy!
If you honestly wanted technology to vary to any noticeable degree you'd need to have *very* strict rules on governing it, and most importantly it cannot be traded.

It's more work than it's worth; right now things work fine.

Raxmei · Post by **Raxmei** » 2004-09-18 10:18pm

Some scattered thoughts

You have starting points. You can spend them on civilizing planets. What else? Special tech? Racial advantages?
You gain civilization later on by conquest or by building - expending industry points to develop colonies.

Civilization gives you industry.
What can you spend industry on besides military? How much does a colony ship cost? How much does building colonies up cost? A less risky alternative to conquest, but should be much slower (to the point of unbalancing) to encourage violence.

Industry can be spent on building up colonies or buying military. Anything else? Military can be spent on spacefleet or army. People have asked what is acceptable to build, this is the opportunity to give a definitive answer.

Though it is comforting to know exactly what each unit is capable of, it is too much bookkeeping to expect of the players.
abstract the military like has been experimented with in this STGOD. Note the people saying their ships are worth X capital ships. You get the idea. Something feels wrong about this somehow, but I can't get my finger on it. In lieu of a better system it'll have to do.
Tactical idiosyncrasy. Some fleets stress strengths and weaknesses. How to handle/balance? This has been done informally mostly, saying we're strong doing this and weak doing this. I suppose it works.

Army - neglected so far. Let people spend points military points on it. Major issue: Defensive shields, surface to space weaponry. Should X points of ground forces be able to defeat X points of space fleet? You get complaints if shippy guys up in space effortlessly vaporise all your army men. There are conceivable defenses. Also complaints if army guys are invincible. Maybe X army guys can defend against x*Y spacey ships as default to represent that stuff. Then you can add (or even subtract?) points to represent dedicated antispace stuff. Handily doubles as a representation of surface guns. Straha, I am specifically interested in your insight on the matter. You are the one that work on ground forces would most heavily affect.

If ground forces are expected to be an issue, think about transports.

People will want special fiddly techy gadgets no matter what. Accommodation. Points spendiness. May it be better to settle on one tech level and just buy special gadgets? Point cost balance? Troubling point. Variable tech level is an interesting idea, if headachey. How does it affect military? IMO, tech should not affect the effectiveness of military points. Have the tech gadgetry open up more tactical stunts, see above tactics issue. Tech above standard level must be costly to avoid munchkinism, tech below level, if allowed, should not give much benefit to avoid minmaxing.

Technological advancement is IMO beyond the scope of the game. Should it be included?

I'm worried about killing things from focusing too much on engine. Is this too much?

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2004-09-18 10:43pm

I guess I agree with the idea of one tech level and buyable doodahs. It would flatten things out alot. Thus, I present some ideas for tech, racials, and a basic idea of how to lay out industrial points.

Special Tech:

FTL Missiles, 10 points. For an additional 10 points, multi-system range(IE, they're strategic weapons).

Disabling Weapons, 5 points. Render a ship useless for a brief time instead of blasting it apart. Useful for salvage, but the troops onboard might not be pleased.

Point-to-point FTL. 20 points. Instant FTL transit. Fold Drive and similar. Can't be traced, can be interdicted.. But only at exit or entry point.

Space based habitats. 10 points. Any system can be habitable with a little work.. Habitats grow at the same rate as a colony with the same benefits.(Floater/Hajr or Culture habitats, not little dinky stations)

Bulk Matter Transmittor. 15 points. Can teleport objects up to corvette size to any other point in weapons range, including into your own cargo bay.(Presumes personnel transmittors exist. If not, those would be.. What, 5 points?)

Ansibles. 10 points. Uninterceptable, instanteneous.

Active Stealth. 10 points. Your ships can, essentially, cloak. +5 if your cloak is active when moving to FTL combat.

Racials.

Militant, 20 points. Double military.

Pacifist, -15 points. Half military.

More to come, obviously..

Military.. It's a hard call. There's more flexibility in 'A Capital planet produces 5000 industry points' than 'A Capital planet can support a Dreadnought and it's escorts and organic troops'. One could devote four thousand points to a ground force.. Said ground force would be nearly immune to orbital strikes, and would kick a fair amount of ass!

Colonies would be another use of industrial points.... Say, an Outpost needs one thousand to become operation, a Colony needs ten thousand.. And to become a Capital, at least fifty thousand amassed over time(In theory, this could make those who bulk up on industry early on able to expand quickly.. So maybe not..).

Bugsby · Post by **Bugsby** » 2004-09-19 03:13am

VERY cool tech system.

frigidmagi · Post by **frigidmagi** » 2004-09-19 03:56am

I'm with Nitram here. I think Thridfain's idea is good, but if certain folks are allowed Superpowers, then the rest of the game is screwed. By certain folks I mean the hard core super experienced players.

Rogue 9 · Post by **Rogue 9** » 2004-09-19 04:01am

Hell, you don't have to be experienced to run down everybody else if you're a superpower.

frigidmagi · Post by **frigidmagi** » 2004-09-19 04:07am

Makes it worst if they are then right?

Rogue 9 · Post by **Rogue 9** » 2004-09-19 04:13am

Heh. Make me a superpower. As I don't run people down just for the hell of it and don't like it when other people do, it could help alleviate these massive gangbangs that happen every time someone slips.

Spyder · Post by **Spyder** » 2004-09-19 06:39am

As a general rule of thumb, the more complex the rules and procedures of the STGOD become the less likely players are to adhere or in most cases bother reading them. And while we're at it, let's see a show of hands of anyone that's actually tried to reconcile their firepower stats with an opponants shield/armour/countermeasure stats, factoring in damage types, dissapation, heat loss, explosive efficiency, any and all appropriate forces acting when a weapon meets the intended defense?

Hotfoot · Post by **Hotfoot** » 2004-09-19 09:43am

The problem with assigning points to various advantages is that it becomes necessary to playtest them to insure balance. Additionally, after a certain point, the rules will become so complex that no group of mods can adequately keep everything straight without computer assistance, and once that happens, we may as well play a History of the Galaxy style Space Empires 4 game with a mixture of agreed-upon mods (not that this would be a bad thing, as I have in fact been considering setting up precisely that sort of thing after this STGOD).

I think what may work out best is to modify the current STGOD system with some clear definitions of certain things. For example:

Figure out how long combat should last. We don't need hard numbers for this, just a general idea. For example, figure out the following:

How long would it take for the following one on one battles to last:
Escort vs. Escort
Cruiser vs. Cruiser
Capital vs. Capital
Escort vs Cruiser (one with both firing and one with just the escort firing)
Etc. These would be using "stock" deployment figures. If someone went under stock and someone went over, the times would be altered somewhat.

Fleet sizes would depend on how many planets you held (each planet should have X industrial capacity. Homeworlds should have only moderate resource production but major industrial cap, colonies should have minor industrial cap and major resource production, while claimed territories should have very minor in both regards. Thus, the larger your holdings, the more ships you would have (otherwise, planet-rich powers become sitting ducks for militaristic powers that have just one planet and the rest of their points spent on fleets and special abilities). Additionally, the more ships they would be able to produce through the course of the game.

Smaller powers, however, would potentially have the advantage of higher-tech systems and special abilities.

Alternatively, a similar system could be put in place with a super/national /regional power system, or something equally scalable. There should be some sort of system in place to prevent people like, say, Laz from being able to initiate major galactic events by being on par with everyone else, and the more variation there is in power, the less like a mexican standoff the game becomes, with everyone biding their time to strike until they are sure to win.

Straha · Post by **Straha** » 2004-09-19 10:14am

frigidmagi wrote:I'm with Nitram here. I think Thridfain's idea is good, but if certain folks are allowed Superpowers, then the rest of the game is screwed. By certain folks I mean the hard core super experienced players.

How so? If you make it so the super-powers are powerful, but not powerful enough to take on more than, say, two nations at once you're in an interesting situation. The super-powers will always be there ready to attack, and the regular powers will have series of power-plays going on inbetween them, but the super-powers wont be able to grab more than one or two nations, and the regular powers will stand a chance of beating the super-powers.

I might also note that having parity in fleet numbers is really really really stupid for a developed game, which is one of the reasons why I like where this STGOD is going, because after the war parity shall be long dead, and there will be a good healthy diversity of powers abounding left and right.

Post by **Alyrium Denryle** » 2004-09-19 10:15am

Spyder wrote:As a general rule of thumb, the more complex the rules and procedures of the STGOD become the less likely players are to adhere or in most cases bother reading them. And while we're at it, let's see a show of hands of anyone that's actually tried to reconcile their firepower stats with an opponants shield/armour/countermeasure stats, factoring in damage types, dissapation, heat loss, explosive efficiency, any and all appropriate forces acting when a weapon meets the intended defense?

*raises hand*

why do you think I quantify all my shit?

Thirdfain · Post by **Thirdfain** » 2004-09-19 01:01pm

The way I see it, space combat is breif, violent, and bloody. With the ammounts of firepower we are tossing about, shields collapse and men die in a matter of minutes.

In a full fleet engagement, wall-versus wall, I see losses mounting at missile range in a matter of minutes and at gun range in a matter of seconds (after all, missiles have range but have weaker firepower than gun batteries.) Thsi is assuming both players are using a focus-fire doctrine, general bombardments of an enemy fleet will weaken multiple enemy vessels, but not start fast killing.

So, here's how I see it:

Escort vs. Escort: Missile Range, it depends. A fully specialized missile escort could kill an non-missile escort at range in a matter of minutes. Escorts are weakly armed vessels which tend towards specialization. In any case, 2 gun escorts sitting in gun range firing into each other would be decided in about a minute (assuming neither is maneuvering.)

Same deal for cruisers, with the ships dying at gun range around 1 minute.

Capitals start dying in a 1-1 situation at 6-7 minutes. They do, after all, have very heavy shielding and are literally 10 times the size of cruisers.

An escort would take 4-5 minutes to kill a cruiser at gun range singlehandedly. Recall the massive dsiparity in gun strength and shield strength here. The cruiser would kill the escort in a matter of under a minute.

Hotfoot · Post by **Hotfoot** » 2004-09-19 01:30pm

Thirdfain wrote:The way I see it, space combat is breif, violent, and bloody. With the ammounts of firepower we are tossing about, shields collapse and men die in a matter of minutes.

This is where I have to disagree. Battles, especially large scale ones, should take hours, not minutes. How quickly can you get a 5km long ship to turn around and change headings? Manuevers alone should take a considerable amount of time. Think of battles from Homeworld 1. They were epic in scope (and yes, somewhat fast, but it's a real-time game, having hour-long manuevers wouldn't sell). What you're suggesting is more like the battles from stock Homeworld 2. No time for manuevers or reinforcements, just whoever gets the first good shot wins and the other guy is dead.

Thirdfain · Post by **Thirdfain** » 2004-09-19 01:43pm

This is where I have to disagree. Battles, especially large scale ones, should take hours, not minutes. How quickly can you get a 5km long ship to turn around and change headings? Manuevers alone should take a considerable amount of time. Think of battles from Homeworld 1. They were epic in scope (and yes, somewhat fast, but it's a real-time game, having hour-long manuevers wouldn't sell). What you're suggesting is more like the battles from stock Homeworld 2. No time for manuevers or reinforcements, just whoever gets the first good shot wins and the other guy is dead.

On the contrary. I'm describing battle time in terms of straight-up ship-to-ship gun duels at short range. Of course losses at those ranges will mount rapidly. It's getting to that range that maneuver comes into play.

Rogue 9 · Post by **Rogue 9** » 2004-09-19 01:54pm

Or simply not getting into range and declaring all my capitals dead in seconds anyway. *Glares at Stormbringer.*

Dahak · Post by **Dahak** » 2004-09-19 02:27pm

I wouldn't like this whole rule thing.
It would invite to just tweak and twiggle with points to max out your power and then some...

The system we have now, while still having sometimes a heighted level of posts and discussions, works. Never change a running system

We could use some better guidelines for distances and speeds, but for the rest, the community governs itself pretty good...

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2004-09-19 02:40pm

Personally, I think the only thing that's really hurt these STGODs has been the whining and complaining over every damn thing. And that's not going to change because that happens because those people are just pussies.

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2004-09-19 02:41pm

And since when has Nitram been modding this anyway?

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2004-09-19 03:46pm

Stormbringer wrote:And since when has Nitram been modding this anyway?

I haven't; I've simply seen alot of arguments and put forth an idea.

Spyder · Post by **Spyder** » 2004-09-19 03:49pm

Alyrium Denryle wrote:
Spyder wrote:As a general rule of thumb, the more complex the rules and procedures of the STGOD become the less likely players are to adhere or in most cases bother reading them. And while we're at it, let's see a show of hands of anyone that's actually tried to reconcile their firepower stats with an opponants shield/armour/countermeasure stats, factoring in damage types, dissapation, heat loss, explosive efficiency, any and all appropriate forces acting when a weapon meets the intended defense?
*raises hand*

why do you think I quantify all my shit?

Really? You break out the calculater and manage to factor in heat loss? And do a little bit of vector arithmatic to work out how the oncoming firepower is distributed over a section of hull or shielding?

Post by **Alyrium Denryle** » 2004-09-19 06:13pm

Spyder wrote:
Alyrium Denryle wrote:
Spyder wrote:As a general rule of thumb, the more complex the rules and procedures of the STGOD become the less likely players are to adhere or in most cases bother reading them. And while we're at it, let's see a show of hands of anyone that's actually tried to reconcile their firepower stats with an opponants shield/armour/countermeasure stats, factoring in damage types, dissapation, heat loss, explosive efficiency, any and all appropriate forces acting when a weapon meets the intended defense?
*raises hand*

why do you think I quantify all my shit?
Really? You break out the calculater and manage to factor in heat loss? And do a little bit of vector arithmatic to work out how the oncoming firepower is distributed over a section of hull or shielding?

Maybe not that bad, but if you check my OOB the power outputs of my weapons is listed, as is the exact number of every gun, refire rates, relative targeting accuracy against various targets...

Pablo Sanchez · Post by **Pablo Sanchez** » 2004-09-19 07:44pm

Stormbringer wrote:Personally, I think the only thing that's really hurt these STGODs has been the whining and complaining over every damn thing. And that's not going to change because that happens because those people are just pussies.

Ouch. I too, think the current plan for STGODs is fine. I prefer the free-form system, though I think the concept of gradations of power status might add to the game.

StarDestroyer.Net BBS

STGOD And Rules: Discussion.

Rules or no?

Re: STGOD And Rules: Discussion.