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Hotfoot wrote:WRT Imperial ships, I would think that having access to Imperial Shipyards would give access to Imperial Ships of up to the given point level. Of course, I would support costing the Imperial Shipyards in such a way that in order to start the game with even the smallest one, you have to not only use all of your global points, but take negatives to your globals. Nobody should be able to start the game with the largest Imperial Shipyards.

I kind of figured that; it's why I didn't bother asking about actually having an Imperial shipyard.

Ahem, for the purposes of spending points on ships and defences, would people agree that the current system is good, with the following specialties?

Hotfoot wrote:+FTL (Faster Movement, Interdiction Resistance)
+Interdiction

+Active Defense (ECM/Point Defense, can jam long-range comms)
+Attack (ECCM, Improved Fighter Shields/ECM/whatever, Improved Missiles, etc.)

+Stealth (Decrease Hyperspace Signal, Easier to hide in realspace)
+Sensors/C3 (-Enemy Stealth in realspace, +resistance to ECM jamming)

And with static defences giving a 10:1 ratio of effectiveness to cost, with standard maintenance (20% of cost), with a colony's max being its economic output? And to help counter static defences, have a Seige specialization that provides 5 times the point expenditure against static defences, but nothing against ships?

Does this sound good to everyone?

My thought on static defenses is that they have no offensive power, and thus are largely shield generators and the like. Battering them down is what takes so much time. My thought was that the end result should be that a system with max defenses could withstand a 1000 point fleet for long enough that reinforcements from a fair distance (Say, from any point in that empire's space) could make it in time to aid in the defense of the system.

I would think static defenses would be like the shield generators plus a few big guns, like the planetary turbolasers and ion cannons in star wars. Not enough to kill all the attacking ships, since they would move out of the way, but enough to open up lanes of space so that you could get in and out with a fast ship and a lot of guts.

Well, any attacking fleet has the high ground so they could simply stay out of range of ground based (or possibly orbital) defences, unable to attack, but not taking damage either. But if they did want to engage in an assault they could to close range with the installations and begin a slugging match, taking losses in exchange for doing damage to the defenders. It would be a brutal fight without either overwhelming force or the proper seige equipment, similar to historical seiges.

Plus, unless you want to split static defences into passive (shields) and active (missile bases, ground turrets, kill sats, etc) there will be a headache in the making when people point out, "But how come I can't build ABM bases? We have the in real life."

You know that was the thing I was never good at.. Last time around I put all my points into either Offense or Defense... I didn't do anything with ECM/Sensors/Stealth etc...

Im never sure what to do with these things . Brute force jhas always been my best tactic.

The way its looking now, we've made a slight divergence from last time in that Active Defence seems to represent "virtual hitpoints" in that they let you absorb more punishment without actually taking damage, while Attack lets you deal out more damage per turn (probably 2 points for every 1 point invested), helping you to overcome Active Defence. If one side has enough Active Defence, their enemies aren't going to hit dick, while if one side has enough Attack they're going to cause an incredible amount of damage. The trade-off is that the Active defence ship is more fragile and deals less damage, and the Attack ship is more fragile.

Perhaps this is complicating things too much, but it lets us mechanically differentiate between the battle brick and the glass cannon.

Actually, that makes a lot of sense. But I wonder... If you have a Heavy Defence ship[, would it matter if you said "My Defence comes from super shields" vs "My Defence ship comes from Super Armour."

I mean, a heavily shielded ship might be fragil once the shields go down, but one would imagine a heavily armoured ship would be far more resilant. Would such things be taken into account?

Sort of, although the Active Defence will involve a lot of jamming for some, so that the enemy fire isn't even close to their ships, although modelling it with shields or armour could work too. Technically with all of them the effectiveness should all decrease at the same rate as you accrue damage, so you could lose your heavy shields on one firing arc but still have others, get a jamming antenna knocked out, or have a hole punched in your armour that extra fire can be poured into. It's not until you go kaboom that the effectiveness would drop to zero.

Also, did yo usee my post on ships in the other thread? Im curious if my mix of "Few Military ships" and "Lots of large weaponized Tradeships" is a viable tactic.

Lot's of weaponized tradeships will probably work, although as a barbarian nation I have actual warships already, so keep that in mind. That said, looking over my current OOB, most of ships are destroyers meant for raiding.

Was there already some decision on FTL communication?
How fast, possibility of instantaneous communication, lags,...?

Dahak wrote:Was there already some decision on FTL communication?
How fast, possibility of instantaneous communication, lags,...?

Make it lag. So time between posts is the delay between transmission and arrival. This lets our diplomats make packaged 'notes' and such more easlly handled. Maybe two moderately distant planets only need 2-3ish days for it to arrive.

Dahak wrote:Was there already some decision on FTL communication?
How fast, possibility of instantaneous communication, lags,...?

I'd say absolutely no to instant communications.

Ok I have some tech questions...

What would it take to make a ship "Invisible" to scanners? The reason I ask is, because of Dramatic license, I want to be able to have one of those times when the enemy has closed in, a small group of my forces are surrounded, the bad guys cackle! "Nothing can save you now!!! HA HA HA!"

And then, BAM A huge battleship, accompanied by dramatic music smashes through warp and appears above everyone, saving the day!

"CURSES!" shout the badguys as they are forced to retreat!

So... Could you actually make as hip that wouldn’t' show up on scanners from far away, thus being able to make a Dramatically Awesome arrival to save the day?

That's what stealth systems do... kinda. At closer ranges, you'll still get detected, and sensors will increase said range. Also, for a battleship, it'd get really expensive to get high end stealth systems.

Yeah I was afraid opf that... Really, I don't want it to be "invisable" i just don't want someone to know its coming until its about 30 or 40seconds away from arriving

Crossroads Inc. wrote:Yeah I was afraid opf that... Really, I don't want it to be "invisable" i just don't want someone to know its coming until its about 30 or 40seconds away from arriving

Just pay up then--have a few, not a ton. Honestly, if it was cheap to make cloaking battleships, then none of us would have visible ones. ;D You can't have it a special way for yourself, to be thankful that the price will scare off anyone else. You'll get a unique ship and while expensive, it'll force people to treat your forces with extra care than others. That's not so bad is it?

I cna live with that :3

Which reminds me, have we hammered out an accepted method of building warships yet?

Relating to communications, I'm partial to the idea of courier ships. These would be unarmed no-pointers, like oilers and munitions carriers, that any nation has by default. Perhaps courier ships for external comms and relay stations for internal. To get a signal through hyperspace (or whatever) you'd need a massive comms array. This would be the fastest way to communicate. However, as these arrays are truly massive, it's rather impractical for a fleet to carry them. If the CiC wants a report form his fleet on the field, he'll have to wait for the Admiral to despatch a courier and for said courier to arrive at the nearest comms relay station.

I would say that a comms array should carry a signal at least twice as fast as a ship would take to get there. Maybe more, 3x or even 5x, or not, at least 2x is good.


On the subject of ship stats. Since it was decided that the type of weapons you carry to the field is irrelevant gamewise, I propose that the type of defences is also irrelevant. In other words, no specifically buying PD, or shields, or armour.

Adrian Laguna wrote:On the subject of ship stats. Since it was decided that the type of weapons you carry to the field is irrelevant gamewise, I propose that the type of defences is also irrelevant. In other words, no specifically buying PD, or shields, or armour.

Um, that's a completely backwards way to look at it. Improved Offense is counter to Active Defense. There is no passive defense (shields, armor) other than just increasing the normal point cost. Bigger guns and thicker armor are inherently part of a bigger ship.

The thing that DOESN'T matter is if that defense is shields or armor, if the attacks are beam weapons, railguns, missiles, or fighter swarms. Because that's all about writing style and what people enjoy cranking out page after page of combat text about. Removing the active defense boost just makes the game overly balanced to aggression and removes several valid tactical and strategic options that don't need to be removed.

To make a crude analogy, the way we have it set up now, our ships are kind of constructed like Magic cards. Under normal conditions your ability to take and dish out damage are the same, your power and toughness are the same essentially. By adding active defence you are essentially adding extra toughness, while by adding extra attack you are increasing the power. The way I see them interacting:

Active Defence: Subtracts from the damage you take
Active Attack: Counts double towards your attacks, used to either kill things quickly or overwhelm active defence
Sensors: Used to burn through EW or find weak points in shields/armour (however the opposing force has described their active defence). Reduces active defence, but doesn't really help once all the active defence has been burned through

Uh... So you've both just restated what Adrian said then.

Beowulf wrote:Uh... So you've both just restated what Adrian said then.

No, because PD is under Active Defenses.

Also, Academia, +Sensors is more anti-stealth than anti-active defense. Think of it this way, Active defense has an ancillary benefit of jamming long range communications, which is resisted by improved Sensors/Comms.

Hotfoot wrote:

Beowulf wrote:Uh... So you've both just restated what Adrian said then.

No, because PD is under Active Defenses.

Then we are in a agreement. I'd originally included something to that effect in my post but decided to withhold it 'till later.

Any comments regarding my ideas on long-range communications?