Proposed Setting Revisions for 2011

[Fred]

I'm of an opposite opinion. I'm sick of seeing fine-maneuvering being done by CFS/CDD rather than what should do it: thrusters. I've seen it as a GM and I'd rather not see it again (through no fault of Doshii - he's just playing with what he has; I just wish things were better balanced and consistent so that this would be a non-issue).

CDD should not ever be backup for impulse-based thrust. The complexity of CDD in comparison to, say, fusion thrusters also make the concept somewhat ridiculous from where I stand.

Besides, gravimetric drives rendering space more 'slippery' might actually help with that. Even if you have your main engines damaged, upping the power of the GravDrive could allow some emergency mobility out of RCS maneuvering jets.

These 'hill spheres' does this mean we will be required to draw up maps for every system, or every system we tend to go to now? Because if we do... it could be a very labor intensive process considering the number of stars we've visited in the SARPverse.

It'd be cool, but I'd rather not. Heck, even Wes' link to that formula thing scares me - can't really seem to have it turn up with anything coherent with the values I've access to on wikipedia.

Frankly, I was intent on just looking up the stats we've listed in some places in the wiki for planets, make a comparison with one of the planet's in our solar system, and go from there.

I suppose, if this takes of, that ease of use could come into account - either seeing Hill sphere values be listed for each planet detailed, or some sort of classification system be implemented ("Yamatai has a Class 3 Hill Sphere, which means...").

Kind of.

We have a Fold-esque system already though. The 'FoMASC' Drive. ^^;

Well, nothing stops MASC from becoming the GravDrive yamataian equivalent, with FoMASC going the Fold Yamataian equivalent. If Exhack is agreeable to it. Or combine them and call it technological advancement. Or something else he'd find more tastefully appropriate for his creation.

 

[Doshii Jun]

I don't mind thrusters or CDD maneuvering. It's all the same to me; I'll work with what I get and write it so it's fun for me and others.

To make Uso feel better about his bashing of my X-Wing affinity — the Chiaki, which I want to use for my plotship, flies like a starfighter anyway, so no loss for players there, and most of the plot is ground-based. Another win for players.

 

[MissingNo]

Personally, I thought Five's post smacked of parody. Or was a parody of a smack, it could really go either way. It was funny, and I'll leave it at that.

Anyway...starfighter maneuvering like X-wings and the like shouldn't work because you have a massive engine in the back and fighters banking like aircraft when the wings (or anything on the craft) don't have air or anything at all to redirect their motion. Like in the original Asteroids game, once you hit your thrusters you're going to keep going in the same direction until you cancel or overcome that momentum with equal thrust...which means your little maneuvering thrusters are only going to matter in turning your vehicle, not getting it to move in a different direction. Only your main engines can do that.

SARP ships may have a bit easier time with that, though, if you use your main engines in space and then use gravity manipulation to lower the apparent mass of your ship/vehicle so that the little thrusters are able to do their work easier and even possibly cancel/overcome that main engine boost. If you use your main engines with the grav-manip, though, you're kinda outta luck there and back to the original problem.

 

[Doshii Jun]

Unless I'm told otherwise, I write it off. It was easy with CDD; I'll just assume there's variable thrust capability on the main engines of ships that let the vessels "bank" or some such thing, if a new system similar to Fred's is adopted. Otherwise, flying ships in space is like your car sliding on ice with the brakes locked up.

My point isn't relevant to the discussion; I mostly was making my point to Uso after he called out Yukari's moves. I'll step out unless called back in.

 

[Cy83r K0rp53]

I stand with MissingNo in shaking my head at the general level of space travel understanding. Being from the school of fiction that is used to taking days or weeks just to make a lunar transfer orbit, I find your complaint of 7.5 hours to cross a solar system... quaint to say the least (I'd put months at the liberal end of the estimate for short interstellar trips with the speeds you describe).

With a gravity drive, I always imagined the ships pitching and yawing rather than performing that atrocious bank. Even if they were adding a roll it, would be most likely swinging the top to the outside of the turn in order to maximize firing angles against a maneuvering target. But that pales in comparison to keeping your lateral lines of fire (the primary plane on which your biggest turrets rotate) horizontal to the plane of the turn, meaning we're back to a stiff yaw or rolling pitch for the cinematically designed warship with 'horizontal' gundecks.

Now this graviton beam thing, how long is it till somebody decides to make a gravity field emitter and we're back to square one in regards to FTL countermeasures? Granted you need a local stellar mass for the field to have any effect, but still... I can also see stellar nurseries (that is, man-made ones) becoming strategic focal points. And what about Binary and Trinary systems what with their multiple stellar gravity fields? They're much more common than single-star systems.

 

[Fred]

I figure disruptions for binaries and trinaries would happen much closer to them, where their gravity eddies have not yet balanced/evened off.

As for artificial gravity fields as countermeasures, those already exist. We call them 'shields'.

 

[MissingNo]

https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=hi ... e_shield&s
https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=ne ... chnology&s
https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=ir ... :shields&s
https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=nepleslia:cps&s
https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=ab ... e_shield&s

Shields as countermeasures exist, but the artificial gravity fields don't seem to be there (unless dampers count). The normal range of shields (distortion shields, lightning shields, dampers, etc.) would be able to repel a gravity beam, right? Besides, the need for a countermeasure would only matter once the normal shields failed, though. That would be when the ship wants to get away, and the prime time for an enemy to want to try to get a hold on the retreating vessel, keep it from achieving FTL travel, and finish the job.

 

[Cy83r K0rp53]

No... I meant using a broadcast gravity field like you suggest using a graviton beam. It'd be roughly the same thing as our current Anti FTL fields, I'd think.

Or wait... I think you covered that as a station/massive ship-only type of system.

 

[Nashoba]

That is basically the principle behind the Udano Veltin (Gravity Spike) used by the Hidden Sun Clan.

With the caveat that the ship that chooses to engage this, can not use its FTL drive until it shuts this system down.

 

[Wes]

Alright, here's my final setting updates: These will take effect at 12:01 am on January 1st, 2011.

Setting Updates (in character)

* Research finds ships, weapons, and ordnance moving at FTL speeds are unable to hit anything, and are thus ineffective.
* Studies also found it was nearly impossible to hit a moving starship more than 900,000 km (3 light-seconds) away with ship guns.
* By YE 33, all major factions had developed 100% effective countermeasures to Anti-FTL (interdiction), rendering anti-FTL devices effectively useless.
* STL Engine Doublers and Triplers were found to be a sales gimmick, not a real engine feature.

OOC Effects:

- No FTL combat allowed
- FTL weapons other than torpedoes should be removed from the setting or converted to non-FTL versions. Torpedoes will have to defold before they can hit, so you get a chance to shoot them down.
- Interdiction is no more! (except for natural effects of planetary and solar gravity wells)
- STL doublers and triplers don't work and should be edited out.

 

[Nashoba]

SANDRA News Flash

Jan 01, 33, The NMX Blockade of the KMS, has been broken by SAoY removing the Anti-FTL fields surrounding it.

Just my way of saying I do not like the removing Anti-FTL, but hey, after 1 Jan, the full might of the 1XF will be unleashed, Victory will soon follow.

 

[Wes]

It works both ways (the NMX will be attacking the KMS systems, too).

Besides, the anti-FTL fields have already been removed from the map in accordance with years of requests to eliminate them from the setting.

 

[Zack]

Alright, here's my final setting updates: These will take effect at 12:01 am on January 1st, 2011.

Setting Updates (in character)

* Research finds ships, weapons, and ordnance moving at FTL speeds are unable to hit anything, and are thus ineffective.
* Studies also found it was nearly impossible to hit a moving starship more than 900,000 km (3 light-seconds) away with ship guns.
* By YE 33, all major factions had developed 100% effective countermeasures to Anti-FTL (interdiction), rendering anti-FTL devices effectively useless.
* STL Engine Doublers and Triplers were found to be a sales gimmick, not a real engine feature.

OOC Effects:

- No FTL combat allowed
- FTL weapons other than torpedoes should be removed from the setting or converted to non-FTL versions. Torpedoes will have to defold before they can hit, so you get a chance to shoot them down.
- Interdiction is no more! (except for natural effects of planetary and solar gravity wells)
- STL doublers and triplers don't work and should be edited out.

With no interdiction ships can just infinitely FTL away from incoming attacks making combat in space completely ineffective.

and

Research somehow finding that FTL weapons that were able to hit thing before are now just magically inaccurate?

So now combat in space just won't work what so ever and something that has been well established in the setting suddenly stops working with no IC explanation? This breaks things way more than they are now and provides no explanation as to why things are this way, providing now way to help RP.

Or to put it another way, How does this promote RP at all? After all if you're going to remove interdiction you need to put in something else to prevent FTL use.

 

[Cy83r K0rp53]

Uso's right, this retcon is kinda ridiculous, but then I've been against it for the most part anyways.

 

[Wes]

With no interdiction ships can just infinitely FTL away from incoming attacks making combat in space completely ineffective.

That doesn't account for change times. Space combat is going to be near some planetary (FTL-hindering) body the vast majority of the time anyway.

if you're going to remove interdiction you need to put in something else to prevent FTL use.

No we don't. Also, there's still the graviton beam hold method.

Or to put it another way, How does this promote RP at all?

It keeps plot ships and other ships from being rendered immobile and unable to escape in open space, forcing the space battles of the SARP to mostly occur around known landmarks such as planets.

 

[Zack]

This does not include anything about charge times so charge times will have no effect on combat sense they will likely occur in seconds and not even be worth mentioning.

Also with 100% effective anti-interdiction, graviton beams are entirely ineffective.

So again, this makes space combat entirely unworkable as ships are effectively invulnerable. You can't just say that some other rules fix the problems with what you have suggested when those rules don't exist in those changes.

 

[Soresu]

Oh give it a rest Uso. We've been putting charge times in some of the FTL systems to compensate so you're crying over spilled milk at this point. You can still have your space battles, you just have to work at them now.

 

[Zack]

Maybe you don't understand that there are no guidelines for charge times?

This means charge times are effectively arbitrary, some ships will have near instant charges (or more likely some handwavey backup capacitors) for instant jumps. There aren't even suggestions for charge time in this version of the changes so you can't say that they will have any weight in ship to ship combat.

 

[Soresu]

Just because you live your RP life via guidelines and rules doesn't mean that we absolutely need them with this right at this moment. If we're adding charge times you do realize they go through the NTSE forums first to be checked over, right? Because in the ships being made I do not see 'handwavey backup capacitors' in their write ups. So how will they do this exactly without being called out?

You're still complaining over a non-issue at this point and should stop. Be more constructive or possibly creative with these developments.

 

[Zack]

Expecting everyone to have the exact same expectations as you is not a solution to this problem.

You need to be considering what these rules will encourage players to do and how the site as a whole will react to them. Only thinking about yourself is what leads to bad rules, problems, and the inevitable disasters that come from that.

So how about we stop complaining about having to follow the rules and focus on making rules that work well.