Zack
Inactive Member
There is a lot of text, but there is a point to it. The 'stat tables' can be found here: https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=gu ... ats_tables
Problems with the current system:
Weapon Spam
Or, Endlessly adding weapons to make your ship better. This is best illustrated by the Sakura and Plumeria gunships though everyone does it. The Sakura is a clean looking ship, well made, and well balanced in terms of capabilities and usage in game. The Plumeria is essentially the same ship, only it has more guns on it which makes it better because it has the same stats just more guns. Following this logic, as there is no reason to not have more guns and more guns make a ship better because it has more firepower, there is no reason to stop at only a few turrets. Some of the worse ships on the site are entirely covered with weapon turrets!
This is bad because as people look to improve their designs they are stuck with knowing that their ship will do better if they add more weapons. The system we have now rewards this and it leads to designs which start to defy common sense.
Red Paint
Or, Starships that are faster for no reason. The example this time is the Type 30 Space yacht which exceeds the speed standards. So why doesn’t KFY put the Type 30’s engine in the Plumeria? It would make the ship faster and have no downside. Looking at this from a common sense point of view, it doesn’t really make sense to have starships that ever move slower than your fastest engine. This is reflected across everyone’s starships as they generally all move at the same speed (the top tech top speed bracket).
This is bad because it makes all the ships very much alike. With everything traveling at the same speed there is no reason or real possibility to have fast interceptors, slow battleships, or middle of the road cruisers.
Swiss Army Ship
Or, just adding everything to your ship because there is no reason not to. The C3E has weapons, top teir engines, top teir shields, fighters, a repair bay, mechanical arms, a portable island, all kinds of FTL, Interdiction, a morgue, and so on and so forth. Having a lot of gear isn’t necessarily a bad thing but compare this ship to one like the Eikan. They have similar stats and similar levels of DR that they can put out but the C3E is ‘better’ because while they have the same stats it has way more gear.
This is bad because the C3E is supposed to be a high tech but mostly well rounded ship capable of doing anything while the Eikan is more streamlined for combat. Because there is no reason not to take gear, and the rules promote weapon spam and red paint, gear can be the only reason two ships are different and more importantly people who design ‘streamlined’ ships are penalized unfairly because while this should have a benefit it does not under the current rule system.
Stat Creep
Or, arbitrarily choosing the DR of your weapons so that they are better than the alternatives. Of course this applies to speed ratings and every other ‘stat’ as well. For whatever reason people set their ship stats as higher than they really should be like Origin’s gauss rifle which is in the mecha cannon damage category even though it is a power armor sized rifle. Gradually all weapons are being pushed toward the same DR rating. Starships weapons are gradually migrating upwards towards SDR 4-5, Power armor weapons to ADR 4-5 and personal weapons to PDR 4-5.
This is bad because it reduces the variety in the role-play, making everything less special. No one’s ships are really fast, no one’s weapons are really better than any others and vehicles and mecha are all carrying the same strength weapons as people in power armor.
QQ
Or people complaining about having to do math, extra work, or retroactive changes to their submissions to fix things.
This is bad because it is really annoying to hear someone complain about having to add two numbers together or how they can’t be bothered to do intense mathematical operations like subtraction.
Hit Points
Or Structure Points. Ships have a lot of these and people take them to mean a ship’s hit points even when the rules say that a ship can take serious damage when they loose just a few SP.
This is bad because people treat hit points like they are playing DnD, you can take a limitless amount of damage until you run out of HP then you fall over dead. Having a better way to express what a structure point is or should be would reduce the amount of battles where ships are taking damage but aren’t really being hurt.
Solution: Tie stats into the SP system.
A ship has an amount of SP determined by its size, generally 10, 20, 30 ,40, or 50.
Each SP can be assigned to a system, Engine, Shield, Weapon, CDD, Hyperspace, Crew/Misc.
This assignment is based on a ship’s picture. How much of the ship is devoted to engines equipment? How much to weapons? How much space does the crew take up?
Once you’ve decided how much of your ship is devoted to each component, you can look up on a table what your ship’s stats will be (how many shield points you have, the total amount of DR your weapons can have, ect)
Game mechanics, balancing, physics, and all of that complex stuff can be safely hidden behind the table.
Results:
Weapon Spam
If you add weapons to a ship, you need to add space for them. This means the ship will have more SP and a smaller engine to ship size ratio. This in turn means your ship will go slower because it has more mass to move, it also means that simply adding on more turrets won’t necessarily make your ship better. Basically players get real physics with all of the math hidden behind a look up table so they don’t actually have to think.
Red Paint
Looking back at the Type 30 and the Sakura; Now under this system the Type 30 is faster because it has more space devoted to engines and no weapons to slow it down. If you want to apply this retroactively it helps give context to why certain ships are they way they are. The battleship is slow because it is cutting down on engines for heavy duty shields and weapons. The interceptor is fast because it trades weapons and shields for powerful engines to catch pirates and smugglers. The Scout is nimble because it has a balanced amount of shields, weapons, and engines with a slight emphasis on the engines. Suddenly the rules now promote nations creating a wide variety of designs and specialized designs are now much better at their intended role than other ships.
Swiss Army Ship
For the same reason as Red Paint, the Swiss Army Ship problem is solved. In this case ships like the more streamlined Eikan would have a stat bonus over ships weighed down by a lot of gear like the C3E. Carriers also make more sense as streamlined fighters designed for combat getting serviced by a large gear oriented ship is something that the rules would favor.
QQ
No math, you can look everything up on the table. No retroactive work, all old ships can stay the way they are and new ships get balanced using the old ships as a basis for their stats.
Hit Points
Ships following the new format would have a SP chart generated showing which systems take up what spaces. Say you get take 5Sp worth of damage you could then look on this chart and see what 5sp worth of damage would do to your ship. It would be an entirely optional system but I know some people would find it cool to be able to track a ship taking damage in this way, or get an idea of what parts of a ship are more likely to be hit.
Problems with the current system:
Weapon Spam
Or, Endlessly adding weapons to make your ship better. This is best illustrated by the Sakura and Plumeria gunships though everyone does it. The Sakura is a clean looking ship, well made, and well balanced in terms of capabilities and usage in game. The Plumeria is essentially the same ship, only it has more guns on it which makes it better because it has the same stats just more guns. Following this logic, as there is no reason to not have more guns and more guns make a ship better because it has more firepower, there is no reason to stop at only a few turrets. Some of the worse ships on the site are entirely covered with weapon turrets!
This is bad because as people look to improve their designs they are stuck with knowing that their ship will do better if they add more weapons. The system we have now rewards this and it leads to designs which start to defy common sense.
Red Paint
Or, Starships that are faster for no reason. The example this time is the Type 30 Space yacht which exceeds the speed standards. So why doesn’t KFY put the Type 30’s engine in the Plumeria? It would make the ship faster and have no downside. Looking at this from a common sense point of view, it doesn’t really make sense to have starships that ever move slower than your fastest engine. This is reflected across everyone’s starships as they generally all move at the same speed (the top tech top speed bracket).
This is bad because it makes all the ships very much alike. With everything traveling at the same speed there is no reason or real possibility to have fast interceptors, slow battleships, or middle of the road cruisers.
Swiss Army Ship
Or, just adding everything to your ship because there is no reason not to. The C3E has weapons, top teir engines, top teir shields, fighters, a repair bay, mechanical arms, a portable island, all kinds of FTL, Interdiction, a morgue, and so on and so forth. Having a lot of gear isn’t necessarily a bad thing but compare this ship to one like the Eikan. They have similar stats and similar levels of DR that they can put out but the C3E is ‘better’ because while they have the same stats it has way more gear.
This is bad because the C3E is supposed to be a high tech but mostly well rounded ship capable of doing anything while the Eikan is more streamlined for combat. Because there is no reason not to take gear, and the rules promote weapon spam and red paint, gear can be the only reason two ships are different and more importantly people who design ‘streamlined’ ships are penalized unfairly because while this should have a benefit it does not under the current rule system.
Stat Creep
Or, arbitrarily choosing the DR of your weapons so that they are better than the alternatives. Of course this applies to speed ratings and every other ‘stat’ as well. For whatever reason people set their ship stats as higher than they really should be like Origin’s gauss rifle which is in the mecha cannon damage category even though it is a power armor sized rifle. Gradually all weapons are being pushed toward the same DR rating. Starships weapons are gradually migrating upwards towards SDR 4-5, Power armor weapons to ADR 4-5 and personal weapons to PDR 4-5.
This is bad because it reduces the variety in the role-play, making everything less special. No one’s ships are really fast, no one’s weapons are really better than any others and vehicles and mecha are all carrying the same strength weapons as people in power armor.
Or people complaining about having to do math, extra work, or retroactive changes to their submissions to fix things.
This is bad because it is really annoying to hear someone complain about having to add two numbers together or how they can’t be bothered to do intense mathematical operations like subtraction.
Hit Points
Or Structure Points. Ships have a lot of these and people take them to mean a ship’s hit points even when the rules say that a ship can take serious damage when they loose just a few SP.
This is bad because people treat hit points like they are playing DnD, you can take a limitless amount of damage until you run out of HP then you fall over dead. Having a better way to express what a structure point is or should be would reduce the amount of battles where ships are taking damage but aren’t really being hurt.
Solution: Tie stats into the SP system.
A ship has an amount of SP determined by its size, generally 10, 20, 30 ,40, or 50.
Each SP can be assigned to a system, Engine, Shield, Weapon, CDD, Hyperspace, Crew/Misc.
This assignment is based on a ship’s picture. How much of the ship is devoted to engines equipment? How much to weapons? How much space does the crew take up?
Once you’ve decided how much of your ship is devoted to each component, you can look up on a table what your ship’s stats will be (how many shield points you have, the total amount of DR your weapons can have, ect)
Game mechanics, balancing, physics, and all of that complex stuff can be safely hidden behind the table.
Results:
Weapon Spam
If you add weapons to a ship, you need to add space for them. This means the ship will have more SP and a smaller engine to ship size ratio. This in turn means your ship will go slower because it has more mass to move, it also means that simply adding on more turrets won’t necessarily make your ship better. Basically players get real physics with all of the math hidden behind a look up table so they don’t actually have to think.
Red Paint
Looking back at the Type 30 and the Sakura; Now under this system the Type 30 is faster because it has more space devoted to engines and no weapons to slow it down. If you want to apply this retroactively it helps give context to why certain ships are they way they are. The battleship is slow because it is cutting down on engines for heavy duty shields and weapons. The interceptor is fast because it trades weapons and shields for powerful engines to catch pirates and smugglers. The Scout is nimble because it has a balanced amount of shields, weapons, and engines with a slight emphasis on the engines. Suddenly the rules now promote nations creating a wide variety of designs and specialized designs are now much better at their intended role than other ships.
Swiss Army Ship
For the same reason as Red Paint, the Swiss Army Ship problem is solved. In this case ships like the more streamlined Eikan would have a stat bonus over ships weighed down by a lot of gear like the C3E. Carriers also make more sense as streamlined fighters designed for combat getting serviced by a large gear oriented ship is something that the rules would favor.
No math, you can look everything up on the table. No retroactive work, all old ships can stay the way they are and new ships get balanced using the old ships as a basis for their stats.
Hit Points
Ships following the new format would have a SP chart generated showing which systems take up what spaces. Say you get take 5Sp worth of damage you could then look on this chart and see what 5sp worth of damage would do to your ship. It would be an entirely optional system but I know some people would find it cool to be able to track a ship taking damage in this way, or get an idea of what parts of a ship are more likely to be hit.