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Approved Submission Military Buildup Limitations Update

FrostJaeger

Chief Parakeet
Banned Member
For Reviewers:
  • Contains Unapproved Sub-Articles? No.
  • Contains Links to Unapproved Articles? No.
  • Contains New Art? No.
  • Previously Submitted? Yes; rejected by Wes for being too controversial.
  • Changelog: Link
  • Checklist Requested? Yes.

Same as before, except that the corporate limitations are now based directly upon what Wes said here.
 
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I guess if Rizzo is ok with it, and he’s mostly the one being hurt by it, then whatever. I expect no one is going to downsize their fleets over this either?
 
That's irrelevant to this discussion, @Zack. If they are, good for them; if they aren't, it simply means they won't be able to acquire/construct/etc. any more ships until they get rid of the excess ones.
 
Really guys, we don't have the right attitude about this. This is the ultimate excuse to blow things up for a good reason. Or maybe I'm just stoked to figure out just how many ships I get to blow up in my next RP. I don't know but I'm thinking we should make this a serious crossover plot. I mean, there are so many ways I can think of how to spend these ships. We could literally justify a debris field around the planets.

Anyway, my point is that I'm encouraging everyone to practice a self-destructive Behavior with their faction and or Corporation! :cool:
By the ways, @Wes, this new Smiley with the shades is nowhere near as cool as the last one!
 
@Zack if your faction has got so much RP, as you imply by saying the other factions have little to no RP, then you have the ability to gain several systems. If you -choose- not to take control of those systems that's on you. If you have a problem with having multiple systems being int eh way of yoru faciton vision, then what you need to do is stop whinning, and discuss with @Wes alternatives that might allow you to bump up your numbers a little without having to sprawl out in a bunch of systems. You always complain about how something will hurt you, but you never actually try to come up with a way to fix it, you just try to shut things down the moment it irks you a little. Act like an adult and start using your head.

Edit: @FrostJaeger you should probably make a table for corporations, reading that text block I'm sure will down the road confuse at least one person when they skim it to try and find what their limits are.
 
If you -choose- not to take control of those systems that's on you.
I haven't read this thread because Wes okayed it almost immediately, but this seems like a pretty bad stance to have.

Why do we still have to play the OOC metagame when all of the threats to SARP's peace and prosperity are gone? Factions are just little sub-settings, not actual e-nations that compete against one another. To put it in MMORPG terms: just because the Alliance and Horde can PvP doesn't mean PvP can or ever will change anything.
 
I'm in general agreement with the tone and intent of the article being updated.

But I want to mention something I've been nursing. Maybe even borderline off-topic, but I'm not sure of where I else I could say it where there would be a receptive audience.

SARP ships are so very powerful. I mean, I get that the numbers are influenced by anime like Macross and Legend of the Galactic Heroes... and man, we've got a freaking ton of warships. I acknowledge it's a style, but it loses in opportunistic perspective.

I mean, we've got ships that can crack open planets, set gaseous nebulae aflame (however inaccurate that could perhaps be) and turn suns into supernovae. The warship is the apex predator of our setting, the thing that's generally in the top of any multi-tiered engagement. And yet, Our thousands-strong fleet pretty much trivializes those. Often, plotships work alone, and that makes us players the wierd one that take stupid amounts of risk when militaries want to hang together, do things as units and so on, and so forth. For the major part, we're no Starfleet sending out our Enterprise city-ships to boldly go.

And the oft favored ride, the lone speedy gunship, is frail in the face of any dangers it encounters because in this setting, warships hang out together.

Which segueways into my other feeling: the numbers trivialize how meaningful that powerful platform of hardware is. I get the feeling that somewhere along the line, just a single warship coming in system ought to generate a reaction like: "OMG, look, it's a Yamataian Plumeria-class! It's not just a patrolling Yui destroyer, it's a Plumeria-class. The Yammies mean 'effing business this time!" Whereas if you meet a battleship, it's awe-inspiring due to their rarity and how they're a clear symbol of a flag being carried to a system.

Which is where I expect someone with a longer memory, like Zack, to go: "Fred, dude, you're the one - a decade ago - that suggested we go down from hundreds-of-thousands to thousands. Now you're asking to go smaller? Why should we listen to you when you couldn't get it right the first time?"

Ah, well, impact to narrative, really. In a setting where you have fleets that are millions strong, you already employ vernacular dealing with thousands of ships... so, if the numbers go down to the already used vernacular, there's little to no negative impact to the written roleplay. Also, Yamatai's actually been constantly at war for over a decade; one would think that their stores of materials could petter out and only leave them with what they can furnish at one time and what they can build at one time; perhaps justifying going lean and decommissioning older ships in favor of bringing forth new ones (which has actually already been done a couple of times now).

Also, there's no choice. There's nothing in the allotment we have that defines a faction war doctrine regarding unit preference. Do you build small and fast, or do you prefer to focus on fewer but hardier units?

So, thought experiment. Less say that a resource-plentiful starsystem can enable a faction to produce and maintain a total of Eight of their best capital vessels.

Since I'm lazy and unimaginative, I think I can actual draw from the way DRv3 deals with units and how tier-equivalent weapons can be broken down into weaker weapons. The best uit would start with the (tier 15) flagship and then downward. So, for 1 flagship, you could have...

1 Flagship
2 Battleships
4 Heavy Cruisers
8 Light Cruisers
16 Destroyers
32 Frigates
* and support crafts below, you get the idea

(32 x 8 = 256; which is close to our current 250 number - seems like a good departure point)

I think Frostjaeger's article already tried to account for that, but in this case you could actually account for everything and the numbers are less arbitrary, but on a level of give and take. There are a few extra layers that could be tacked on to that.

- Perhaps assets in-system are uniquely suited to do certain tasks. Perhaps the warmaster worlds in Core Yamatai are important to any war effort because they have amazing capital shipyard facilities; it could be extraodinary for a system to be able to churn out 4 heavy cruisers a year (fictitious value)
- Even if civilian vehicles don't quite count in military buildup numbers, perhaps they do happen to have an impact on logistics. The workers in an industrial system like Rufusland could be inconvenienced at the presence of a Star Army battlegroup passing by since they'd be resource hogs.
- Perhaps not all systems are well established enough to support 8 warships. Perhaps they've been depleted through catastrophic events. One system could be Level 8 while another could just be Level 3. Worldbuilding and establishing those systems could be more important.

So, you could have a situation where you're at a frontier system of a faction. New promising colony, just recently established, fledging infrastructure... so, it's Level 1. A frontier world isn't where you put your most expensive vessels... so, the unit's commander-in-chief could be in a Light Cruiser. Then you've got 2 destroyers and 8 frigates.

So, maybe the garrison in that system is an Anri Repair Vessel and 2 squadrons of 1 Plumeria and 4 Chiakis. The Repair Vessel in this instance would be extra handy because the new colony would be low on resources to help deal with the warships and their civilian traffic. Then if you get an influx of refugees, or a squadron of warships coming in without their own supply ship; the logistics in that system are boned and... I kind of believe that's the sort of considerations that can help build progressive stories even localy around a few systems, rather than a whole Empire (like Zack seems to be interested in, for instance).

Frostjaeger's article is awesome. A few tweaks, otherwise maintains status quo. If that's your only interest, that's great. But it's always a struggle with developping factions to help them define what they can do and they chafe at abstract limitations; and we've seen resource hungry factions go for landgrabs (make a system, put some sciency stats, and done) rather than investment and careful development of what they have. And, the value of single ships is lost in the 'horde' with only whim to rely to given how you want to populate your numbers.

If the above doesn't strike you as nonsense, I think it could be more.
 
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I haven't read this thread because Wes okayed it almost immediately, but this seems like a pretty bad stance to have.

Why do we still have to play the OOC metagame when all of the threats to SARP's peace and prosperity are gone? Factions are just little sub-settings, not actual e-nations that compete against one another. To put it in MMORPG terms: just because the Alliance and Horde can PvP doesn't mean PvP can or ever will change anything.
The system control has nothing to do with PvP it's more of logistics and keeping expansion more controlled from what I'm seeing. Is the way systems are limited by players the best, no, but limiting how many ships a faction can have based on how many systems they have solid infrastructure in makes total sense. You need resources to build stuff. Doing it that way keeps us from having to come up with a way to determine how many resources are in each given system.

But rather than saying "Why?" Can you give us something better? Cauyse the answer to "Why?" is because it was felt that we need -something- there.
 
I'm in general agreement with the tone and intent of the article being updated.

But I want to mention something I've been nursing. Maybe even borderline off-topic, but I'm not sure of where I else I could say it where there would be a receptive audience.

SARP ships are so very powerful. I mean, I get that the numbers are influenced by anime like Macross and Legend of the Galactic Heroes... and man, we've got a freaking ton of warships. I acknowledge it's a style, but it loses in opportunistic perspective.

I mean, we've got ships that can crack open planets, set gaseous nebulae aflame (however inaccurate that could perhaps be) and turn suns into supernovae. The warship is the apex predator of our setting, the thing that's generally in the top of any multi-tiered engagement. And yet, Our thousands-strong fleet pretty much trivializes those. Often, plotships work alone, and that makes us players the wierd one that take stupid amounts of risk when militaries want to hang together, do things as units and so on, and so forth. For the major part, we're no Starfleet sending out our Enterprise city-ships to boldly go.

And the oft favored ride, the lone speedy gunship, is frail in the face of any dangers it encounters because in this setting, warships hang out together.

Which segueways into my other feeling: the numbers trivialize how meaningful that powerful platform of hardware is. I get the feeling that somewhere along the line, just a single warship coming in system ought to generate a reaction like: "OMG, look, it's a Yamataian Plumeria-class! It's not just a patrolling Yui destroyer, it's a Plumeria-class. The Yammies mean 'effing business this time!" Whereas if you meet a battleship, it's awe-inspiring due to their rarity and how they're a clear symbol of a flag being carried to a system.

Which is where I expect someone with a longer memory, like Zack, to go: "Fred, dude, you're the one - a decade ago - that suggested we go down from hundreds-of-thousands to thousands. Now you're asking to go smaller? Why should we listen to you when you couldn't get it right the first time?"

Ah, well, impact to narrative, really. In a setting where you have fleets that are millions strong, you already employ vernacular dealing with thousands of ships... so, if the numbers go down to the already used vernacular, there's little to no negative impact to the written roleplay. Also, Yamatai's actually been constantly at war for over a decade; one would think that their stores of materials could petter out and only leave them with what they can furnish at one time and what they can build at one time; perhaps justifying going lean and decommissioning older ships in favor of bringing forth new ones (which has actually already been done a couple of times now).

Also, there's no choice. There's nothing in the allotment we have that defines a faction war doctrine regarding unit preference. Do you build small and fast, or do you prefer to focus on fewer but hardier units?

So, thought experiment. Less say that a resource-plentiful starsystem can enable a faction to produce and maintain a total of Eight of their best capital vessels.

Since I'm lazy and unimaginative, I think I can actual draw from the way DRv3 deals with units and how tier-equivalent weapons can be broken down into weaker weapons. The best uit would start with the (tier 15) flagship and then downward. So, for 1 flagship, you could have...

1 Flagship
2 Battleships
4 Heavy Cruisers
8 Light Cruisers
16 Destroyers
32 Frigates
* and support crafts below, you get the idea

(32 x 8 = 256; which is close to our current 250 number - seems like a good departure point)

I think Frostjaeger's article already tried to account for that, but in this case you could actually account for everything and the numbers are less arbitrary, but on a level of give and take. There are a few extra layers that could be tacked on to that.

- Perhaps assets in-system are uniquely suited to do certain tasks. Perhaps the warmaster worlds in Core Yamatai are important to any war effort because they have amazing capital shipyard facilities; it could be extraodinary for a system to be able to churn out 4 heavy cruisers a year (fictitious value)
- Even if civilian vehicles don't quite count in military buildup numbers, perhaps they do happen to have an impact on logistics. The workers in an industrial system like Rufusland could be inconvenienced at the presence of a Star Army battlegroup passing by since they'd be resource hogs.
- Perhaps not all systems are well established enough to support 8 warships. Perhaps they've been depleted through catastrophic events. One system could be Level 8 while another could just be Level 3. Worldbuilding and establishing those systems could be more important.

So, you could have a situation where you're at a frontier system of a faction. New promising colony, just recently established, fledging infrastructure... so, it's Level 1. A frontier world isn't where you put your most expensive vessels... so, the unit's commander-in-chief could be in a Light Cruiser. Then you've got 2 destroyers and 8 frigates.

So, maybe the garrison in that system is an Anri Repair Vessel and 2 squadrons of 1 Plumeria and 4 Chiakis. The Repair Vessel in this instance would be extra handy because the new colony would be low on resources to help deal with the warships and their civilian traffic. Then if you get an influx of refugees, or a squadron of warships coming in without their own supply ship; the logistics in that system are boned and... I kind of believe that's the sort of considerations that can help build progressive stories even localy around a few systems, rather than a whole Empire (like Zack seems to be interested in, for instance).

Frostjaeger's article is awesome. A few tweaks, otherwise maintains status quo. If that's your only interest, that's great. But it's always a struggle with developping factions to help them define what they can do and they chafe at abstract limitations; and we've seen resource hungry factions go for landgrabs (make a system, put some sciency stats, and done) rather than investment and careful development of what they have. And, the value of single ships is lost in the 'horde' with only whim to rely to given how you want to populate your numbers.

If the above doesn't strike you as nonsense, I think it could be more.

I really like this method of determining how many ships you can build. It seems to click for me, but I’m not quite sure how it’ll bring back emphasis to how much of a killing machine a ship is.

Though I digress, since that is not the point of the submission.

My point was that I like Fred’s suggestion for how many ships per system can be maintained, and I like the emphasis on maintenance since obviously it takes more time resources and personnel to keep a capital ship running than a gunship.

I also like that it establishes a limit to how many you can build, to prevent us from returning to several thousand ship fleets via in universe explanations rather than OOC rules.
 
USER WAS WARNED FOR THIS POST
“I told you so”

This is the most frustrating thing about SARP. The solution is simple, yet the people making the rules just have no idea how to do it well. As a result problems don’t get solved and another arbitrary change is put in place to fix a problem.

Will Fred’s suggestion solve the problem? Of course not. It’s going to fail for the same reason making this exact same change failed last time: the numbers are arbitrary and Fred didn’t think about the knock on effects of the rule. Yamatai and Nepland still have a ton of planets and there is really no difference between having 100 ships and having 1000 ships: it’s all still a number too high for people to really make meaningful use of.

This is the same kind of stuff that’s basically killed RP in Yamatai, making the only really active ship the one that goes to Ayenee for dragons.

—-

The better solution is simple: figure out what we want RP on SARP to looks like. Use examples of literally whatever to paint a picture then build the rules around that theme. If you don’t, you’ll fail again and again.

Also, toss all of this out. Your rules should be simple and everything from the beam weapon suggestions to the MBL changes just make things worse.

Finally: once you figure out what size/scale you want SARP to be at: switch the entire MBL over to tier equivilency. Make each faction have 100 Tier 10 equivalent military ships per system. Then define military ship as any ship with a weapon or primarily meant for combat (No unarmed shield ships!). We could replace the entire terribly written MBL with one or two paragraphs of tight writing.
 
@Zack Rude, negative posts like this are why people's opinions of you here have a lot of room for improvement. There's just a bunch of tearing other people down, without any real substance. You post "the solution is simple" and then don't deliver a solution. Instead you call me incompetent, you call Fred incompetent. You called my writing terrible.

Tier equivalent systems is something that would be best calculated in a computer simulation, it's a pain in the ass to calculate manually. The same way DPS is. It works in MMOs but SARP isn't an MMO or a simulation, it's text-based RP where GMs are encouraged and empowered to go with what feels cool rather than running numbers through a spreadsheet.

Also: If you're going to insult my faction and my plot ship's activity levels, maybe you should go find somewhere else to play Wazu. I have more than enough players to post for already in the Eucharis. I feel like I'm doing pretty good activity-wise for being in the middle of buying a house, preparing to have a baby, and packing up my apartment.
 
rather than running numbers through a spreadsheet

To some extent: You can do this, but not the way you would with DPS calculations or the god-forsaken levels I've seen some MMO players take this to. No amount of spreadsheets can compensate for the realism that DRv3 accounts for. 1+1 in DRv3 is not equal to 2, 1+1 is equal to whatever counts and a lot of nuance goes into material physics and dodging and glancing blows and oh god what the aboslute HELL THIS IS SO MANY NUMBERS. It's like that trick where mixing one cup of water and one cup of rubbing alcohol yields a mix that is slightly less than 2 cups of solution. This is why we have entire careers dedicated to doing calculations like this. No way in hell can a bunch of nerds roleplaying around on a forum be accountable for calculating this stuff.

I like MMOs. I like optimizing in MMOs. I play Warframe. I've calculated a build for a gun that lets me deal an average of 60k damage a hit. Just to let you know how much friggen' math I'm talking about. But that stuff is not for a common man. DRv3 is great. It has just enough ambiguity for you to insert piles of real-world physics, but just game enough to where it can be abstracted for common RP and common sense. All it needs are patches.

I can't exactly expect the common SARPgoer to calculate the optimal method to strip the armor of an enemy ship, all while maximizing their time-to-kill through accuracy-damage-bullet count balancing. I can however trust their intuition.

edit: lol I keep editing my post because I keep wanting to say more
 
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@Zack you need to realize, and accept that nothing 'new' is going to compare to Yamatai and Nepleslia. This setting is years old, there is this thing called history, that has been built up over those years. Yamatai and Nepleslia's power is partly because of that. They are focal points of the setting as well. Even if sometimes their RP wanes, in the end they are the two main pivotal factions, they also have by far the most material on the site, which means players can get the best image of them (even if some of the info is out of date.) Long story short, it's a loop, they're the places that give the best general image, so more players join, which means more content, which means their image goes up. And honestly, there is nothing wrong with that. The center pieces of the setting should be where most attention goes, that's what a center piece is.
 
During my workday, something occured to me regarding that 'level of resources' idea I cooked up late yesterday in regards to corporations.

Say I'm the Yamatai FM, and I have the Star Army chart a few new systems. I plant my flag, lo and behold, the Empire's frontier has expanded!

But, hey, I'm in a war effort with the Kuvexians. My resources are stretched thin. I would settle these worlds and guard them... but I kind of like my warships being where they are.

So, the dilemma goes somewhere government-level, and it's decided that we're going to give the opportunities for our corporations to jumpstart out colonization effort. My government gets spared the effort of starting off the colonies, and in exchange I give these corporations territory to settle down and a 'slice of the pie', so to speak.

So, say, Origins Industries won the bidding for one world. Cool. Great! They get to start it out and improve on its infrastructure. Awhile later, once the system is Level 2-3ish, it becomes more interesting; most of the hard work was done for my government so, I go and start building my own assets: A military base, a supply depot, some drydock facilities dedicated to the patrolling frigates which will likely be the most common visitor of a frontier system, etc...

Years later, that system might become Level 5. Origin Industries will have 3/5 of it, and KFY would have the other 2/5 of it... and perhaps more if KFY continues to invest in expanding within that star system.

...

And, in fact, the Empire's 'official' presence could already count as corporations. I mean, Yamatai is KFY. Nepleslia is NAM. So on and so forth. That take would give a tangible amount of possible resources for market production with those corporations. It could also give corporations some way to get ahead on the other if their product is more value, and where it's more valued. Perhaps Geshrinari Yards start off favored in a system, but as it gathers a generally rich population, perhaps the more stylish Origin products would find a niche and there could be a possible niche for them there to beat out of Geshrinari Yards.

So, influence could wax and wane too, depending on how much people want to keep track of it. The time after a new submission or when purchase orders are made would likely be the relevant windows of opportunities.
 
Wes said:
Tier equivalent systems is something that would be best calculated in a computer simulation, it's a pain in the ass to calculate manually.

This is the exact kind of double-speak that is the problem. The DRv3 system is already based on Tier Equivalency. Shouldn’t this complaint have been brought up then? It is something we’re already using for the NTSE so why not use it again here instead of rolling out a new system? Is it really any different to have to count up each type of ship you have and put those numbers into a spreadsheet? You’re going to have to count up your totals either way unless you throw out the MBL entirely.

The side effects of this is that you can throw out nearly all the extra MBL rules about fighters, ships vs capital ships, etc and replace it with two guidelines. What makes a military ship, and how many Tier equivalent levels you can have per system.

The guidelines should be ‘if it has weapons it is a military ship’ and 700 tier 10 equivalent levels per star system to match what we have now.


To add to that, if you want to reduce ship levels, you can’t just make an arbitrary change again like last time and expect to get anywhere. You’d need to figure out what everyone wants from the setting and then make the rules to match that. Without that first step you’ve got no way to gauge how effective your change was, and no real way to tweak that change later to get the desired results. Worse yet if you try and roll all of these different changes into one discussion you’re never going to be able to roll out gradual changes then see how they affect the site. To tie this into earlier we can ask how the new faction ban is going? Has it improved things? Is there any process wrapped around that to determine if things have changed because of the ban? This is the real substance here: evaluation of previous efforts and learning from them.
 
Fred, while I can find this presented scenario (your last post) interesting if a GM employs this as a narrative, it'd make my brain hurt if you we to turn this specific instance into numbers that we had to follow as hard-coded rules. Of course, the cumulative effects of the rule changes in quick succession might be part of it. I'm having trouble keeping up with all of this. If I've come to misunderstand/failed to see something, please clarify.

Also, Corporations that are out and about without oversight have the potential to become factions on their own because they already control the means of production and the security. How will the government keep the corporation from seizing full power of the world if they know they already lack the means to hold that system from the get-go? While great from a narrative/story-building perspective, I am not sold on codifying it as a practice unless there's a check/balance or some other motivation in play.
 
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Wow. So all of this math is really annoying. Can't we just assume that weapons are intelligently designed to achieve their desired purpose and have fun with explosions and stuff? I mean, when does PvP even happen anymore?
 
If I've come to misunderstand/failed to see something, please clarify.
Picture me spontaneously using a whiteboard to sketch out an idea with a squeaky black marker. That's the level of forethought that's gone into this; spur of the moment based on impressions I've had throughout the years.

Fortunately for us, Frostjaeger already set in something new. It just triggered me brainstorming. I'm fortunate that Frostjaeger seems open to it. I'm sharing some of my views and proposing raw ideas... so, as the saying goes "pardon my dust". It's okay to look at this cross-eyed.

How will the government keep the corporation from seizing full power of the world if they know they already lack the means to hold that system from the get-go?
It seems to me to KFY itself is already an example of a successful corporation that has already done so.

To me, the highlight was that it gave corporations something tangible to go for. If that idea sucks, then we can just assume all systems are worth 8 levels (8 flagships) and subdivise assets based on that. OR, if that idea really doesn't have any merit too... then we have Frostjaeger's approved submission and we can move on with our lives.

I just thought we could mix in a lot of possible benefits together, inter-relate them, and maybe something good could come out of it.
 
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