Corporation Buildup Limits / Shipyard Usage

[Ethereal]

I was wondering what limitations there are on independent organisations building up fleets as it seems this is a big issue of late with a lot of different answers flying around.

Is it a case of "if you have the money, you can buy unlimited" like some people suggest, is there a limit based on what territory you may control or governments you are assisted by? Obviously there's a hard cap of your employees - you can only busy as many ships as you can fill with people.

Secondarily, obviously shipyards corporations control can be used to make ships they themselves have designed. How does one procure plans for other ships? If the ships are on the open market, can they be reverse-engineered after a few years?

 

[FrostJaeger]

Alrighty-o.

That, @Syaoran, is why this submission thread was created in the first place: so that there can be a constructive "setting wide discussion" regarding the limitations and so that "one person's input" does not "judge how we do our site" - and if 1,023 warships and (I'm sorry, @Ametheliana) 400 warships aren't considered an "active military presence," then what is?

I'm quite aware I wrote the update for the Military Buildup Limitations, and I'm aware that it "clearly allows for unlimited non military ships." Although these new rules would limit a corporation's commercial starships, 200 (or more) is more than enough in my opinion - and were this submission to be approved, I would of course ask Wes for permission to edit out the conflicting sentences of the Military Buildup Limitations.

I'm not "having trouble with this," @Syaoran, and I'd like for you to apologize for making such a rude remark - and let's be honest: the ability for a corporation to add a thousand warships to a faction's military at any point in time, have them participate in a few battles, and declare them as "-not- involved with national defense" is a pretty major loophole in the current Military Buildup Limitations.

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@Primitive Polygon, the reason I went time being the sole factor limiting growth is because I couldn't think of any other system immune to being abused - originally, I wanted it to be based upon the number of systems a corporation's "parent" faction controls, but as I thought more about it I realized that this would just lead to everyone flocking to the larger factions. Regarding your second point, however - I will add more "commercial" ship classes to the Building Times section when I get home I've updated the Building Times section.

In all honesty, I'm rather reluctant to add anything about them "not being professional military forces," as that in my humble opinion is something that depends on how they're portrayed by GMs; additionally, although I understand the reasoning behind having "a number of sanctioned facilities on other factions planets" be used instead of time, it just seems too...complex, as we'd have to determine things like what is and isn't considered a facility, how entities like private miliary corporations (which benefit from larger fleets but don't require as many support facilities) would be taken into consideration, and so on.

With that being said, however, mind if I DM you some of my "pre-time" ideas over Discord?

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@Arieg, stop making posts that are non-constructive, off-topic, and/or personal attacks. The next time it occurs, I will ask the staff to remove them and revoke your ability to post in this thread.

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@Acewing13, there are consequences for breaking the rules - and temporarily blocking IC transactions because of an excess of ships is hardly what'd I'd call "limiting any and all RP." Not when it can be solved in ten minutes by making edits to a wiki article and making a news post saying the extra ships have been scrapped.

 

[Syaoran]

@FrostJaeger yeah you actually are having trouble with this. Because firstly, the FS Corp thing you linked. I looked, they don't have a thousand ships on standby. So not sure how that got there. Then as for Akemi's fleets, it's 400 things yes, but that's 400 mecha, which you properly linked to the page yourself. So again not that big of a deal. But even disregarding that, the last part of what you put in your response to me is just plain wrong. Corporations would not be able to send a thousand ships whenever they want to the nation and them be able to say "They're not military ships." Because as I said and you obviously didn't read, the military build up page considers anything used in a nations defense as under those restrictions. So if a nation seizes ships from a corp to use in national defense, that counts for their total. It specifically says "Corporation ships -not- used in national defense do not count." Not "all cooperation ships do not count". So no, I wont apologize for my remarks about you not seeming to get it, because you don't.

Companies need defense to protect their own trade routes and their facilities. So yes they have private militaries, that's called being sensible. But unless that company is going out fighting other companies, it's almost reduced to just fluff. Yes they can use their ships in national defense, where it matters, but the moment they do then it counts for military build up. I'd appreciate it if you actually -read- my post instead of looking for little snippets you can try to attack, cause I explained this above.

The very foundation on what you built these rules on is something that just plain and simply is already covered in another set of rules, what should be done is those rules be clarified, not a new extra restriction that stops something that isn't happening, and adds more rules and regulations people have to be aware of and the NTSE has to make sure they're following.

 

[Kim]

Back in the dark ages of 2005, the YSE IC laws gave us some limitation rules for setting pieces. One of which was limiting major corporations to have no more than 5 fleets with no more than 500 ships each but you have to voted in by the senate to be recognized as a Major corporation. Of course, it’s 13 years later and 2500 corporation ships seems like a lot but is it really?
https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=faction:yamatai:senate:military_centralization_act_of_ye_28

 

[Rizzo]

I'm sorry if the 1000 drones have offended you, @FrostJaeger. I thought I had explained on Discord about those ships.
They aren't operational, they're incomplete. FSCorp spent most of the year just building C5 drones to prevent people from being laid off and if you remember FSCorp is now bankrupt.
OOCly those C5 drones are a GM tool for the Mishhuvurthyar invasion. There is no plan for any of them to survive.

For these reasons I do not believe the 1000 drone fleet of FSCorp is a good example of why the site needs these limitations.

 

[Ethereal]

I mean if there's a concensus that corporate buildup doesn't matter, I'm confused about the uproar I faced about my company that warranted a self-nerf to prove I wasn't building a fleet for power. If there's a concensus this sort of limitation isn't needed I might restore my fleet and stations or smth to allow more RP with Spacers and things. I'm fine with my company as is but I don't want to be behind my fellow companies, which seems to be the case currently, with many thousands of private military ships being made by various people.

 

[Rizzo]

@Ethereal the problem with IIS was that it exceeded the limits for entire nations. It's fleet was so impossibly gigantic it was outrageous. If someone wanted them to leave IIS could just say no because of how heavily armed they were. It was far beyond what should be expected from a defense fleet.
Now with no fleet it actually works the way you said you wanted it to be. No military might, no problem leaving when dismissed, your new vision of IIS truly serves the people inviting them since they put themselves in the protection of other entities.
Now a shipping fleet would be profitable and make a lot of sense but warships are money pits, it would make sense for IIS to have a couple of them fly escort for the cargo ships but there is a certain point where you're just paying crews salary and maintenance fees on ships that do nothing for you.

TL; DR: it's about balance, keep what you need and sell what you don't.

 

[Syaoran]

I'm not sure where the 'uproar' is. But there is always the caveat of "within reason" The problem is what's reasonable for a company changes from company to company, and 'time' is not the most important factor. You don't want them stronger than the nation that host them of course, (cause even the nation that host them wouldn't allow that)but considering transport of products, defense of trade routes and installations, the more wide spread the company is, the more they need, and keeping track of what is a proper number in some sort of 'system' is a logistical nightmare.

 

[Immortal Cyan]

This is a non-issue, and it just looks like Frost is looking for more rules to throw at people so he can hold up the NTSE even more.

It's a mystery to me as to why he is concerned about this. He has a dead faction to resuscitate. Shouldn't he be RPing and/or updating Elysian articles?

 

[Ethereal]

You make very good points about IIS. Very good points. I guess I could actually have IIS maintain a large amount of freighters and a couple of stations but hold off on the military stuff almost entirely. They are very big, serving about a half dozen nations to some extent but yes as I've said before I don't particularly care about my company's military power, hence my actions in the past. I can just have them use an unspecified amount of hired security or better yet hire another company for security for that extra juicy RP. Or just not change them at all, depends lol I just don't want to miss out or fall behind ><

 

[raz]

But there is always the caveat of "within reason."

I'm fully capable of this. So are most others. Some aren't, however, and that's who it seems like Frost wants to have rules here for.

Because I, myself, am extremely reasonable with my company, I do not have a problem with the introduction of rules that won't impact me or the majority of other people. It might be nice to have those rules there for the few people who go HAM on corporate fleets simply because it'll be a codified rule somewhere rather than a situation where someone needs to explain why you can't have a ton of straight-up warships in your merchant fleet.

Personally, the rule can be as simple as: "Look at the Tamahagane Corporate Fleet. Nine civilian cruisers, three starbases, and some fighters to go with those. Tamahagane is one of the biggest conglomerates in the sector built up over several OOC years. Be like Tamahagane Corp."

 

[Syaoran]

@raz some aren't capable of the 'within reason' that is totally true, but that's why the NTSE are hand selected and not just people who want it, so it's assured these are people capable of being reasonable, at least at the time of being selected.

However "Look at Tamahagane" is not the best example, because as I said, the 'lay out' of the company would cause for need for more ships. Origin for instance would need more ships than Tamahagane, because of the size of the origin network, but that's why Origin has OriSec in the first place. It's not like I don't believe that there is room for people to abuse things. But simply I don't think there is any set of rules that is accurate but also reasonable enough in execution at a level that is comparable to the actual danger of this. Until there are actual company vs company wars, the worst thing that could happen that is not already covered by other rules or common sense is the company is just unattackable because retaliation would be huge...but who would go out of their way to actually attack a company here <.<

 

[Wes]

That's a good point: Most corporations don't need large space fleets, because they can just ship their products for cheaper by using via Trinary Star Shipping, et cetera.

 

[raz]

@raz some aren't capable of the 'within reason' that is totally true, but that's why the NTSE are hand selected and not just people who want it, so it's assured these are people capable of being reasonable, at least at the time of being selected.

The NTSE are all volunteers who went up to Wes and said they'd help. Can't think of any reviewer who did not ask for their banner. While they're not "just people who want it" they're "people who wanted it, asked, and got it."

That's why I think objective, codified rules are nice. Because, as has been said for years, each reviewer isn't infallible. Like, we have ongoing submissions right now that ratchet up the power creep while the reviewer fails to bat an eyelash.

In summary, there's nothing wrong with a few rules to make everything easier. The people who are being "not reasonable" are probably personality types who respect blanket rulings that impact everyone rather than just them.

 

[Syaoran]

I agree that no reviewer is infallible, but the foundation of these rules are all wrong. They do not limit just militarized ships, and if they do, they do not actually say so anywhere. The chart list mostly military ships but there are non military things included. And simply put 'time' is a -horrible- measure for how much a company should be allowed to have. They could be only a year old, but they could've gotten direct backing from the government to help stimulate the economy so had power to produce a stupid number of ships in that 1 year. There are other similar situations as well. The only real logical but not complicated limitation in terms of rules that can be put on on how many warships or ships period a company could have is saying companies can never surpass x% of ships in the territory of the nation they're operating in. Because logically speaking nations wouldn't allow a company to have too many ships combat capable in view of possible uprising.

It's not that I'm against an objective standard in concept, it's that I simply do not think there is much of one that can be executed cleanly, efficiently and logically that will not hamper possible RP scenarios in the future.

 

[Rizzo]

Okay, so I have given this much thought and have come to the conclusion that building an invisible, OOC wall that mystically prevents corporations, and factions, from building fleets of a million ships is really not a good idea.
OOC limits can create inexplicable events ICly and those are annoying.

The fact is that creating ships isn't the hard part, the hard part is maintaining them. Crews need wages, damages need repairs, and ammunition isn't cheap. Fuel, coolant, atmospheric gasses, wear and tear items, and political consideration can also greatly influence just how much that ship really costs over the course of a year.

So really, these limits shouldn't be about how much a corporation has the ability to build. Rather, it should focus on how much a corporation can afford to keep in their own service.

 

[Gallant]

So you are suggesting that fleets have an atrophy time? That is to say, if a faction doesn't maintain things like player count/activity/some other factor, their fleets have a decay period?

That sounds like a lot of number crunching. Maybe we should get someone to make a calculator that does it automatically. I've often wondered how all this fleet calculation works anyway.

 

[FrostJaeger]

I am withdrawing this submission.

~~Post was edited to remove content that violated Star Army Community Guidelines~~ --Admin Wes

 

[Rizzo]

So you are suggesting that fleets have an atrophy time? That is to say, if a faction doesn't maintain things like player count/activity/some other factor, their fleets have a decay period?

That sounds like a lot of number crunching. Maybe we should get someone to make a calculator that does it automatically. I've often wondered how all this fleet calculation works anyway.

I'm not sure how necessary it would be to calculate things to the penny, I've tried to do that but it takes too much time and really accomplishes nothing. I personally like the idea of the story determining the IC condition of the faction/company/entity in question.
For example, if a company is not doing well financially IC the number or condition of active ships should decline and it should be the the manager doing it of their own will in an effort to maintain the realism of our setting.

Ultimately I am coming to the impression that Fleet size, strength, and condition should be determined by the events of the story rather than more OOC rules. But perhaps a guideline is in order? Perhaps something that help to correct scale in someone's perspective could help a writer realize that every single ship represents a considerable investment from the owner.

EDIT: I personally try to keep a sense of individuality with every vessel by naming the ship and Captain.

 

[Gallant]

Still if we could have some sort of simple calculator on like some sort of excel sheet for the rules we do have that would be cool.

Maybe we can make this another thread and see if anyone has mad spreadsheet skills.

 

[META_mahn]

We could definitely assign some form of “half life” to each fleet if left unmaintained. It should be a reasonable model.

@Wes Unless if Trinity Star does it for *really* cheap, there have been instances of people in history owning every step of the production line, from raw resources to assembly to shipping to the shelves themselves. In fact it’s what one of the biggest corporations in the USA’s history did. Why? Because everyone else was too heckin’ expensive and tried to milk out their profits. It may be a big down payment for ship and crew, but in the long run maintaining ship and crew yourself is cheaper and you decide when it’s delivered, not the shipping company.

ITS A VIABLE BUSINESS TACTIC proven by a man that junior year high schoolers learn about and suffer over every year to own your own fleets. And you don’t have to worry about the “fast” transport time of ten minutes for the Yamatai Defense fleet to get to you. In space, speeds are relative to each other and a transport time of ten minutes for a defense fleet is horrifically slow if everyone else moves at roughly the same speeds.

Edit in afterthought: The man’s name is Andrew Carnegie. His business tactic was named vertical integration, the art of cutting costs at every corner. He ended up becoming one of the richest men in the world.