Starship Submission Guidelines by Faction and Role

This thread is meant to discuss one of the alternatives I proposed to the previous starship submission guidelines submission we voted on. I propose a set of guidelines for submitting new starships to the NTSE, based on their faction and role. Unlike the previous submission, these guidelines are intended to be descriptive, not prescriptive, and focus more on a ship's qualities than on any system of numbers.

For example, guidelines for Star Army ships are likely to explain what features are most important to the Star Army. I don't presume to know what qualities are appropriate to all Star Army vessels, though among these I'd list 'ultra-high tech', 'aether weaponry', and 'comfortable crew quarters', in contrast to Freespacer vessels, which rely on concepts such as 'failover', 'inertial control/solar sail-based propulsion', and 'nukes and radiation'.

Most people probably will already know factions have these inclinations before they design ships for them, but a detailed list makes it easier to maintain consensus and avoid confusion, particularly if an FM might otherwise have been reluctant to pin down what makes their faction's starships unique. More importantly, these guidelines will help NTSE staff assist designers without as much attention from FMs, and work together more closely with FMs to govern submissions.

I've explained basic faction guidelines, I'll move on to roles now, starting by giving descriptions of two largely universal examples that I hope won't be controversial. Starship roles are similar to, but not quite the same as starship classes. A fleet is made of starships in various roles working together.

Merchant fleets are mostly made up of freight liner vessels that travel the same route over and over with pre-arranged freight. These tend to be very large. Sometimes they're armed, or travel in convoys to stay safe from commerce raiding or piracy, but they often have moderate defenses just for navigational purposes. They tend to have the smallest crews they can to save money, which means they still tend to have large enough crews to work multiple shifts, to reduce liability. Heavy freighters tend to work in the freight liner role, the Origin Industries Caravan may be a good example of both.

Merchant fleets also include tramp freighters. These are smaller vessels that tend to pick up freight outside the main lines that no one else wants, lots that are too small for big ships to bother with or don't want to wait. They have more freedom to travel to interesting places, tend to have even smaller crews--sometimes as low as one to three, especially when independently operated--and are frequently less well-maintained. Despite their name, they often carry speculative cargo instead of freight. All these factors made them excellent plotships, especially for Independent plots. The light freighter class of ships often fills the tramp freighter role. The USO Broadsword is an example of this type of ship.

After ship roles have been defined, ships can be connected to them, just as they're already connected to ship classes. Ship classes tend to be defined in terms of a ship's physical characteristics while roles describe its purpose, this is why they often overlap. A ship can be used for many roles--there are even dedicated 'multi-purpose vessels' that are meant for a wide range of them. But, in general, a ship can be assumed to function best in its intended role, especially if that role is specialized. This is tempered by how much emphasis a faction puts on technology suited for ships in a given role, and by how 'advanced' a faction is in general.

All we need to know is, for example, that the Star Army of Yamatai has a significant technological advantage in the setting that allows its designs to sacrifice some efficiency, that it favours 'lightning bruiser' designs, and that its most famous equipment at the starship scale ranges from gunships to cruisers to battleships, and this will tell us both that Star Army ships meeting the above description will be highly effective, and that slow, weak, or brutally efficient Yamataian vessels should receive extra scrutiny from the NTSE staff, and probably be revised to improve them. For other factions, 'slow, weak, and brutally efficient' may well be exactly what they need, and it's anything else that should receive extra scrutiny.

More information can help with this further; missing from the above example, notably, is any description of what weapons the faction customarily uses, or how. Star Army starships rely on missiles only as secondary weapons, so a Star Army ship that uses missiles as its primary should either be underwhelming to the point where we'd question if it should be approved at all, or else highly specialized into a niche role. If we don't want missiles to predominate the setting, it's likely we should reserve their use as primary weapons to factions that have a technological disadvantage, so that any but the most specialized ships from them can be assumed to have underwhelming performance.

Don't forget DR isn't everything! A ship packing 10,000 tier 15 missiles, even one that can launch them all simultaneously, still loses the battle if its target dodges them, shoots down the few that lock on, and/or the ship firing them malfunctions or misses outright. If a ship that 'shouldn't' be powerful fights a ship that 'should', taking the situation and tech difference into account, GMs can still have the best ship win, no matter what the numbers say. There's always a good way to use GM fiat in such cases, and more cohesive descriptions and greater consensus stemming from these guidelines may make it easier to assert.

Not all factions will have or even consider having ships in all roles. They might also have ships in the same role with divergent implementations. For example, one faction may require that all battleships be submersible, while others won't bother to make them capable of entering atmosphere. One race might consider a ship 200 meters long to be a battleship, while another won't accept anything less than a kilometer, or base it on the number of guns it has (using their own definition of 'guns'). So, each faction defines the roles in its fleet independently, and might change these at any time. Think of them as semi-official designations, or a wish list in the case of roles which have no ships to serve in them yet.

This concludes the overview of how starship design guidelines can be created for each faction and role. Since these guidelines are only relevant to designers and the NTSE, and FMs and the setting manager are the only other parties involved, I would recommend organizing them into their own pages, in each faction's namespace, starting with a general description of the faction's starship technology and the purpose of its fleet--as well as can be described--followed by a list of the fleet's roles (with example ships, if available), and finally descriptions of the roles themselves.

FMs can customize these pages to encourage designers to work on ships for the most desirable roles, and staff can ask for edits if there's something they're wary of. This should work to preempt totally unexpected or unacceptable designs, because FMs won't have asked for them, and should make it much easier for staff to exercise their judgement, as they will be able to see immediately what about a design is or isn't consistent with a faction's design philosophy, or given requirements. It will also provide an overarching resource for anyone who doesn't know what a ship 'should' be, although the ship's pages themselves should answer that in their opening paragraphs, and perhaps these pages will help designers convey that more efficiently.

As I'm not an FM, I can't write a true example page, but here's a substitute based on the subfaction I created:

The Shravana Hive fleet of the Freespacers endures in a star system hazardous to space travel, operating out of an underground hangar within their home planetoid. Though they have plentiful living room, the small colony has limited resources, and their fleet would be better described as a militia than a standing military. In particular, they are unable to manufacture FTL drives.

Due to their environment, their ships are extremely well-hardened against EM radiation and spring back rapidly when their systems are disabled, though their sedentary lifestyles and pacifistic nature encourage them to sacrifice long endurance and heavy armour. Their ship structures are crystalline or made of light metal, and their hulls are formed from slag or ceramics. The overall form of their ships tend to be very basic and utilitarian, but their surface features are often highly decorative.

Shravana Hive ships are generally competent in electronic warfare, mining, and salvage operations. In battle, they usually rely on long range guns and defensive tactics, rather than on maneuvers, though their ships are more agile and less durable than this strategy would suggest. Though they are capable of ambush and subterfuge, only rogue elements of the faction are likely to rely on them except in desperate situations, so systems to support such tactics are modular additions to existing designs, not standard features of any.

The Shravana Hive fleet has the following roles for starships:

Flagship

The Shravana Hive flagship, while functional for fleet command, primarily serves a diplomatic role. It is prestigious, the most imposing vessel in the fleet, and completely unarmed. It needs to coordinate fleet actions and be available anywhere the command crew or its diplomats are in demand, so it ideally has greater endurance and speed than other vessels.

Examples: The SHS Nirvana

(Note: Ignoring for a moment that it's a refurbished Yui-class scout, the Nirvana also deviates from its stated role in that it's a more effective support and logistics vessel than its role requires. It's up to the NTSE staff to decide if such deviations make a ship better or worse for the setting, and up to the managers to decide if their guidelines should be adjusted to better include or exclude such deviations.)

Workhorse
The Shravana Hive's workhorse vessels are slow and heavy by their standards, although the sector at large would classify them as light corvettes. They are jacks-of-all-trades and may possess heavy firepower, though they tend to have few tactical options, aside from the potential to be used as Q-ships. Workhorses are most often used to carry cargo or collect salvage, though when there's a call to arms, they are the last line of defense. Because the Shravana Hive has so few starships, it is essential to be able to outfit these ships for any mission within a few days time, thus the basic design is likely to be little more than a skeleton.

(The Nomad-class corvette suits this role superbly, though, to be fair, the Hive probably would not even consider using Q-ships if the design hadn't been made for them, first. This is still working as intended, though--I expect FMs to edit these articles in response to new designs!)

Fighter
For the Shravana Hive, the 'fighter' role does not describe smallcraft--as they cannot maintain carriers--but rather a small sort of gunship. They possess immense firepower and a variety of tactical options for use at short and/or long range, and they are--at least by Hive standards--brutally effective at gunnery. Though they have room for one body aboard, they do not carry crew into battle unless defending their home star system.
They have short endurance for starships, able to travel between stars in the one system and not beyond, but can still engage in interstellar expeditions so long as a support vessel is available.

Shravana Hive fighters are not especially fast by sector standards, but they are among the most maneuverable vessels available. Due to the limits of their technology, this comes at a cost: When making evasive maneuvers, fast attacks, or dogfighting with other vessels, pilot skill is of the utmost importance to maintain control. Little else about them remains relevant unless their systems start failing, or they accidentally fling themselves out of engagement range. As this tends to make battle results wildly difficult to predict, the Shravana Hive only sends fighters into close combat as a last resort.

All Shravana Hive fighters are obsolete by sector standards, which is reflected in their fragility and poor reliability. Some upgrades would be desirable. Their agility and firepower remain more than adequate.

(The Shravana Hive fighter is the Phantasm Mk I. The Mk II isn't necessarily what they want, but the flaws in the current design have been clearly identified, and it's suggested that some sacrifices could be made if anyone were to design a new 'fighter' for them. Ultimately, it's up to the setting manager to decide what language should be permitted in these articles, but presumably, the same guidelines against bombastic language apply here as much as anywhere.

The importance of their pilots means they're probably not going to be willing to adopt a more conventional gunship design. These ships are also the mainstay of their military, which explains the relatively rigid and extensive description of the role. I've failed to mention that their pilots would rebel if one was offered, but if it came up, I might add more information on this aspect to the article.)

Traveller Shuttle
(This is already a role, not a class of ship, so this article serves as an especially detailed example of what I'm describing. Nothing I could write here would be likely to improve on it. I could make it shorter and trim out the specifics, but the article serves a dual purpose of describing a role and a series of ship designs already. If you're lucky enough to have one of these in your faction, I'd recommend linking to it, rather than reiterating.)

(The Shravana Hive's vessels without FTL capabilities--which makes them spaceships, not starships--are not considered relevant to the article, or even particularly relevant to the RP in general. If your faction has a demand for exceptional craft of this type--hulking monitor vessels, for instance--I would list them here at the bottom, though. Mind you, saving the flagship for last is fine, too--these articles belong to factions, the only limit on what the FMs can do with them is what the site staff allows. I'm only providing recommendations.)

And that's the example. I'm particularly concerned about how to keep this practical for everyone to use, and prevent fights from breaking out over conflicts of interest. I don't think we need any central articles, and so I've only proposed faction articles, but it might be better to establish a separate baseline, at least for some things. There's no article telling us about space combat technology and tactics generalized across all factions, for example; maybe there should be, or maybe not. Something such an article could tell us is what the role of mecha or smallcraft in space combat is meant to be in this setting, which could be very relevant to many ship designs, and something some FMs may be leery of passing judgement on.

This is not a setting submission so much as a proposal for many of them, but if the proposal is accepted by even one FM it should provide immediate benefits not just to them, but to everyone, once their guidelines article is approved. Though these guidelines are most relevant to ship designers, and creating new starships takes time, the act of creating the guidelines will give the FM and everyone else a clearer idea of the faction's starships and its goals for them, both in the long and short term.

I don't expect it will be possible to apply these guidelines effectively to starships that have already been designed but have not yet been approved, but I don't foresee any difficulty with retroactively describing ships that are already a part of the setting, as I did in the example above. There are no strict rules to follow. FMs of factions that have not been established yet will need to put effort into figuring out their own theme and flavour before creating an article will be useful for them, but there's no pressure to do so, at least not from me. Such work would be for their own good in the long run--if players don't understand a faction thematically, how can they grow attached to it? And what motivation does anyone else have to interact with them?

That's all for now. I'll be ready for questions and comments, and hear out any suggestions.

As am FM only some of this looks appealing. The main problem I see with this is that it encourages submitters to create what is already there. When a faction mostly wants things that they don't already have. Lateral improvement is also the best way to keep rapid tech acceleration under control, which would mean making things your faction doesn't already have or use. This might keep submissions in check more but it, in turn, restricts factions ability to diversify its assets.

As a tech submitter, I see almost exactly the same problem. Literally, not one piece of tech I have submitted to this setting was something that the faction already had something to cover its job. Why would I want to make something for a faction if that thing is something that already has plenty of articles as an example of it in the faction?

The general problems I see with this though are that people are gonna wanna try and get their faction labeled as advanced and that this doesn't really do much to help ward off accusations of bias and unfairness, because most of what people submit won't have guidelines because people want to submit what the faction doesn't have.

This would best serve its purpose in dealing with other ship systems aside from weapons. The best implementation I can see would be to create an 'industry standard' reference page, listing out what is considered 'average' for starship tech performance in each system type, like the average range of sensors. Then also either on the same page or a separate page listing the focus areas for different classes of ship. So a designer just has to look in one or two areas to see that the Science vessel class that they're trying to make a ship for tend to be lightly armored, reasonably fast, with powerful sensors, and they have something to compare to see how they compare to the average.

Doing it that way would also massively help the NTSE because they can just look to see if something is above or below the averages and if a ship has a bunch of massively above average things it probably needs to be redone.

Also yes it doesn't account for faction technology levels, because there is cross faction trade going on, and so a faction could make a ship as strong as an ally's if they are receiving help to do it. Tha would fall under the FM's knowledge and experience to decide if the faction is capable of that, and if their decision still seems off then the SM can get involved.

Pinning down what is appropriate for a faction just makes people want to make their faction as advanced as they can on initial appearance. And unless there's going to be some ceiling on weapons in some way it's best not to touch them, because of "use your best judgment NTSE" is what we were already using as a method and are back to with the removal of the weapon count.

Although the Shravana Hive example doesn't include one,

...each faction defines the roles in its fleet independently, and might change these at any time. Think of them as semi-official designations, or a wish list in the case of roles which have no ships to serve in them yet.

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it's already intended for FMs to describe what they want, not just what they have.

An example for the Hive early on might have been:

Hot Mining Ship
The Hive has a demand for a ship that can endure the high temperatures and powerful solar winds near their red dwarf flare star, to mine and prospect on the system's innermost planet. Such a ship must have at least enough endurance for weeks-long missions, the ability to land and lift off the planet safely, and the equipment to survey the planet, and collect and smelt ore. All systems must be hardened beyond the standards already met by other Shravana Hive ships in order to survive the approach to 0.05 AUs distance and escape, though the ship will make use of the planet's two-week long nights to avoid direct starlight while landed.

(In my pretend role as FM, I'd say the Hive would need help from other factions to have any hope of designing this, though the NTSE staff might be more generous. The inner world of the system turning out to be very resource-poor would have resulted in scrapping the design, anyway.)

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Moving on to the parts of your post that weren't based on the assumption that the proposal doesn't include and intend something it already includes and intends, it's interesting that you object that this might be problematic because it will give FMs a greater desire to have their factions described as having an 'exceptionally high' level of power and technology.

This argument doesn't hold water. For one, it's better to have them fight to have their factions described the way they like at a central location than to do it in every ship submission, and to also fight with the ship submissions of others because they feel insecure. Aside from confining the chaos, it'll also speed up settling the matter, replacing the usual resolution where the argument only stops when everyone has gone into retreat and no one is trying to burst anyone's bubble any longer. In particular, the days-long conflict over the Vekimen tech level could have been compressed into a few much more productive hours if they had a page like this before designing a bunch of oddly disparate ships to Doshii's confusion.

Another is that any FM who wants their faction to be more powerful will only stop trying if they think they've achieved their goal. That means if they're not fighting already, it's because they're under the illusion that they've already won, or have at least come close enough. Since articles like these would improve clarity, they're also likely to shatter illusions, but this isn't a bad thing to do. The alternative is to wait and watch those illusions be shattered in an RP thread, when others discuss their faction, or when technology that competes with and exceeds their own is given a favourable review in the NTSE.

These articles would get it out in the open early, and avoid problems later. Clarity brings conflict quickly and cleanly, obscurity brings it slowly and painfully. Relatively speaking.

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Your suggestion to have 'industry standard' would help us understand what 'good sensors' mean to an extent, but such guidelines serve better as a way to give GMs a baseline than to compare how effective ships are in general. 'Sensor range', for example, means a lot of things. Not all sensors work at the same ranges, not all ships have the same sensors, a small ship with 'good' sensors has shorter range than a big ship with 'bad' sensors, and so on. So any more than the most basic guidelines for the absolute capabilities of starship equipment will run back into the painful, complex, point buy morass I'm trying to avoid, and simplifying it would eliminate a lot of interesting possibilities (and frequently violate common sense.)

It's much simpler to compare ships in relative terms. A ship role might say the ship needs 'good' sensors or it might explicitly say that it needs to be able to examine the molecular structure of a housefly's wings at 20 kilometers, if for some reason the faction is very keen on that. The latter is likely to give the NTSE staff multiple simultaneous headaches, though. I'd wish such an FM good luck convincing the staff how important working this out is to their RP.

Part of my goal is to ensure that even when the numbers are wrong, we still get the results we want--the ship that 'should' be better, from a storytelling perspective, will still be better. Let's not forget how important the ship's crew are to the equation either--even a ship with better sensors won't get as good results as one with a better sensors operator, unless the difference is very large, or they can use AIs as a crutch in some way. The same applies to most ship systems other than armour, which might explain why factions with an emphasis on individual prowess tend to rely more on agility.

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Also yes it doesn't account for faction technology levels, because there is cross faction trade going on, and so a faction could make a ship as strong as an ally's if they are receiving help to do it. Tha would fall under the FM's knowledge and experience to decide if the faction is capable of that, and if their decision still seems off then the SM can get involved.

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I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. One faction describes the ship they want. If they get it, they can share it with others--nothing says you have to use your own designs to serve whatever your purposes are. Usually this means buying from others or receiving aid, but a pirate faction is likely to have their entire fleet made up of stolen designs, which has the benefit of letting them rely on tech far beyond their own but the disadvantage of them having to bend ships to inappropriate purposes. We could assume this balanced out and treat them accordingly--if such a pirate faction existed. There's nothing wrong with this concept.

In more typical cases, where most ships used by a faction are built by them, their starship guidelines page doesn't need to explicitly mention any exceptions from the rule due to using technology from other factions, but it can. For instance, if one faction that has no atmosphere-capable starships creates a role for an aerospace fighter, it makes more sense for them to mention that such ships will use technology provided by another faction (and perhaps even specifically mention which one) so that anyone looking at it will understand that such designs are expected to use borrowed tech, rather than be ugly prototypes that are probably going to catch on fire.

The details of the fusion of two different factions' tech, such as what specific systems they use to achieve the desired effect and how well they work together, belong on the ship's page.

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Pinning down what is appropriate for a faction just makes people want to make their faction as advanced as they can on initial appearance.

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It's worth saying again: This is a good thing! Better to get it out of the way than to have us fight over it everywhere like a land full of rebels and guerrillas. I'd be pleasantly surprised if more than one or two people didn't try to leverage out a 'stronger' position than is appropriate. It's not as though we have to let everyone get their way. I'd like to remind everyone that the best faction for SARP is one that fits into its milieu, not one that overwhelms others.

And unless there's going to be some ceiling on weapons in some way it's best not to touch them, because of "use your best judgment NTSE" is what we were already using as a method and are back to with the removal of the weapon count.

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I don't understand what you're saying here, again, but if you're worried that this proposal does nothing to help the underlying problem, I'll say again: The underlying problem is not and has never been the number of weapons ships have, it's what people expect those ships to be able to do with them. It's not right to assume that because a ship has lots of powerful weapons that it's a fearsome warship, it could just be a grand, expensive embarrassment, or an obsolete hunk of junk.

These guidelines help with that by telling us what a faction can be expected to build and how effective their ships are expected to be, so that if one looks too good to be true, we can come up with explanations for how and why it is. Even if the NTSE staff fail, the guidelines can still help GMs do this. Instead of feeling like they're going against canon, they can point to the guidelines and say "This faction doesn't have super-effective warships. I'm using my discretion to explain why this isn't one, no matter how many numbers you throw at me."

You really missed the point of pretty much everything I said.

Firstly I did not make assumptions that your system did not allow for FMs to be there to dictate and change and update their faction's standards. The problem I listed was in relation to the fact that if you, under these guidelines, make something that is "The factions good point" you have an easier approval. However this idea of what the faction is good at is based on precedents, in other words, stuff that's already there. It offers little more than "Do your best sorting it out" for things that fall outside of that precedent, which is what FMs the SM and submitters usually want. As a general thing we want to increase diversity in the RP, that means lateral development, so making new types of ships, not making a model to just replace what's already there.

The mention of FMs trying to get their faction listed as high-tech was brought up, because up until now, while factions have themes, performance was never really affected by those themes, just how they achieved it was. At least some people will shy away from trying to make a 'low tech' faction if they knew that would actually lock the performance of their faction's ships to below average for a reasonable time. I'm not saying they will fight over it for every ship, I'm saying in general.

Now as for the industry standard page, it would be more detailed than simply saying "Good sensor range is X" It would list the types of sensors and give examples of the average. There is no 'point buy' in this idea what so ever either. It is simply a REFERENCE sheet so that people can quickly identify if something is below, around, or above the average. What the NTSE does with that knowledge is up to them.

Now for the cross faction stuff, you're exactly illustrating my point. A faction can easily get access to another faction's tech to study it and learn from it, or even work hand in hand with a faction to make something. So trying to pin down whether a faction is good or bad at a certain tech has little meaning because even if it's for making a ship, they can simply outsource the designing of something they're bad at to an ally. It'd still be produced by the faction, but maybe the Aether generators were designed by Yamatai.

As for the last part, that's not the actual problem, the problem in relation to weapons is how to stop ships from being made that have so many guns that if they just "Fire everything" they can just blow through other ships. Granted it's more complicated, but that's the one sentence version. Everyone knows that not every ship with a bunch of guns is strong, but the problem has been, how do you stop the person who made a ship with a bunch of guns that -is- strong, after you let a weak one through? Do you just say "I'm the mod and I say your ship isn't allowed"? That's a failing of the process if that ever needs to be done.

Also, this issue is an issue relating to PvP or Faction combat, not to a GM having an enemy ship in their plot. GMs have always had the privilege to decide how things in their plot perform.

All and all though, you are making these guidelines on the impression that people will generally make the proper choices for what's best for the setting, and the few that don't can simply be told to stop and that'll be the end of it. But that's not how human nature works at all. That's exactly why we have people throwing out complaints about NTSE bias and such. Because just being told "It's not allowed" without any hard evidence simply doesn't fly with people when they care about benefitting themselves. If people did right and people doing wrong listened when told to stop, we wouldn't even need any rules we could just RP with no problems at all.

All and all though, you are making these guidelines on the impression that people will generally make the proper choices for what's best for the setting, and the few that don't can simply be told to stop and that'll be the end of it.

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This is not how this submission works. It works by creating guidelines that give ship designers a starting point, clarify what FMs intend and expect for the sake of everyone else (especially the NTSE staff), and reorienting how we think about balance between ships and factions in general.

It does not tell anyone to stop, and it presumes that FMs will try to do what seems best for their faction, even when it's destructive to the setting. The goal is to get this out into the open so that we can resolve it, as I said--I'm clearly not pretending the problem doesn't exist.

You really missed the point of pretty much everything I said.

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You missed key points of the basic submission, which gave you a flawed assessment of it. And yet you're still arguing with me as if you didn't do anything wrong, and couldn't possibly be. Your latest post shows you didn't understand the criticism I gave you regarding the post before it, either. You did this same thing repeatedly in the last thread, too, and I'm not going to keep wasting energy on it.

It's still impossible for us to communicate if I'm fighting you over your reading comprehension and the clarity of your writing while you still assume that you're fighting me over the actual content of my posts. Please come back if you somehow manage to confirm you've come up with a solution to this.

I can still address a few of these concerns for the benefit of everyone else.

At least some people will shy away from trying to make a 'low tech' faction if they knew that would actually lock the performance of their faction's ships to below average for a reasonable time.

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This is fine. Low-tech factions logically have lower overall performance. If someone wants high performance, they should strive toward having high-tech, even if they need to borrow it.

After all, the faction creation guidelines discourage the creation of new factions better than 'standard' tech, and interacting with established factions to receive aid and support makes for more interesting RP than a faction of 'self-made men' does.

It's still marginally possible for factions with below-standard tech to compete with advanced ones in one instance: Where the low-tech faction is using extremely dedicated technology and/or a lot of resources, and the advanced faction is using all-purpose technology and not putting a great deal of effort in.

A low-tech missile-armed warship still has a good chance to beat a high-tech freight liner or system patrol vessel, it will just have great trouble with dedicated warships--especially others that are also designed for long-range 'alpha strikes', and especially those specifically equipped to defeat their tactics.

Now for the cross faction stuff, you're exactly illustrating my point. A faction can easily get access to another faction's tech to study it and learn from it, or even work hand in hand with a faction to make something. So trying to pin down whether a faction is good or bad at a certain tech has little meaning because even if it's for making a ship, they can simply outsource the designing of something they're bad at to an ally. It'd still be produced by the faction, but maybe the Aether generators were designed by Yamatai.

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This argument reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how creative writing settings should be managed. We want every faction to have its own unique flavour and style. Regardless of whether it's realistic (it's not), it's wrong to let factions easily absorb the tech of other factions, and pinning down a faction's unique attributes should not have 'little meaning'. If it does, we have to fix that, pronto.

I haven't seen this problem, though. The Freespacers' use of Nepleslian tech is realistically moderate, although (as with all R&D in this setting) it's impressive how much they managed to do within only a decade. Yamatai seems to do a good job of restricting the proliferation of aether weaponry and their other unique tech, as well.

...the problem in relation to weapons is how to stop ships from being made that have so many guns that if they just "Fire everything" they can just blow through other ships.

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For the umpteenth time, having a lot of guns doesn't necessarily let you blow through other ships, even if you can fire everything. Guns don't hit automatically, and they don't always work as intended, either. It's no use arguing with Syaoran, but this wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't such a common assumption, so I'm hoping this gets through to others who might otherwise have believed this was a real problem.

Technology is at best aesthetic.

@Navian I am not missing anything in your statements, but when you start going on about reading comprehension and acting like you know what I am trying to do rather than simply engaging with the actual content of the submission, I ignore those parts because they are petty. I will continue to state my points about the actual content because that is what matters and I'm not out to make people look like fools, I'm out here to evaluate things and give my opinions on how I think it will effect the setting. So yes, please stop wasting your energy trying to point out that I am not 'comprehending' your point and spend it engaging on what I'm actually saying.

Now for your submission, I did not miss the basic point of it at all. However what you're saying amounts to in practice simply saying "This faction makes these kinds of things, if it's not that look it over more carefully" and "These types of ships are generally like this." I'm saying that doesn't actually have much use in stopping the problems we're having and would be better suited using that kind of thinking in creating an easy reference sheet to make it easier for the NTSE to identify how a ships individual systems compare to the average. That way if a mod thinks a ship is overpowered they can list everything on the ship that is above the average, and they're no arguing it because there's a list of what's the average. Or if someone makes a new system someone can say "Hey wait that is literally 10 times the average, isn't that a little too much of an increase?"

Now your last two parts. As relating to factions. You are now mixing your opinions of how things should be done with what is 'right'. There have been several times in SARP where a faction quickly absorbs tech thanks to a new company from another faction moving in and introducing things into the market. You can't say that it's wrong simply because you don't like it, and proposing to 'fix' that is saying you will hangeSARP to the way that you like it because that's what'll make your idea work.

As for the weapons, I don't know how you can possibly misunderstand my post. I did not say that having weapons automatically makes you powerful. I said a ship that -uses- weapons to -be- powerful. As in someone who successfully designed a ship that can effectively use a mass of weapons to break the balance. I even specifically mentioned the problem being that if you let the ones with a lot of weapons that aren't powerful through, it becomes hard to stop the guy that ends up succeeding in making something overpowered that uses a lot of weapons. Now if you're getting into weapon accuracy and reliability, that is just pretty much inconsequential, because those same variables apply to other ships, so the difference in effectiveness is still mostly the same between the ships.

Syaoran, I'm not giving you another point-by-point rebuttal using quotes from our previous posts to prove you wrong. Just stop this.

I'll give you one:

As in someone who successfully designed a ship that can effectively use a mass of weapons to break the balance.

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I addressed this in my first reply!

These guidelines [tell us] what a faction can be expected to build and how effective their ships are expected to be, so that if one looks too good to be true, we can come up with explanations for how and why it is. Even if the NTSE staff fail, the guidelines can still help GMs do this. Instead of feeling like they're going against canon, they can point to the guidelines and say "This faction doesn't have super-effective warships. I'm using my discretion to explain why this isn't one, no matter how many numbers you throw at me."

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And I addressed that as well, the problem is PvP or Faction combat, where there are likely 2 GMs. In other words, you can't just use GM ruling to fix it. And assuming there is a 3rd neutral party GM, that is making the rulings, even they have trouble because effectiveness is based on RP and how you deploy it. You can't just say "60% of these missiles will always hit." You have to rule their effectiveness on what is happening in the RP session. In other words, exactly what we're doing now, that has people concerned because it leaves too much of a potential exploitation. Your concern over weapon limits is literally what we used for DRv2, minus the 1 limit we had, plus a small caveat of "If it belongs to this faction it should probably be something like this" which simply doesn't work because of cross faction trade. So literally the part of your proposal that involves weapons amounts to "Just do what we're already doing and hope it works." That's why I said if you weren't actually going to place any ceilings on it, it's best to just leave weapons alone, because your suggestion amounts to the very thing that has been done, and not been fully effective that we've been trying to replace since DRv3 was in the works.

Can we please get someone else who isn't just throwing chaff and/or being confused in here?

I can't see this being really useful, but maybe I don't fully grasp it.

Factions have wide ranges of starships. How does this idea address it?

Starship roles are arbitrary by faction in this. Is that right? We leave it to each faction to define what they call a destroyer?

Why wouldn't we want FMs to be more involved in starship design and review?

Nanvian, you are so obsessed with the notion that I am wrong, that you're not actually reading and thinking about what I'm saying at all. You don't have to agree with me, but if you can't even grasp when I'm addressing your point after literally saying stuff like "About the part on weapons", either English isn't your first language, which isn't an issue, but you need to just admit when you don't understand what someone is saying. Or the other option is simply that you're not actually reading what I'm saying and just skimming it and then filling in the blanks with preconceived notions about what I'm trying to do.

Seems like more unnecessary wiki work for FMs. Don't see why FMs should need to write down their guidance when they'll have to look at factional submissions even if sheets like this existed.

It's a cool idea for FMs who want to give a rundown of their forces, though.

Well when I did force organization, abwherans commander and I specifically did it together and compared to insure our ideas would not be the same.

Thank you!

@Doshii Jun, I'm not sure what you mean by how this addresses factions having wide ranges of starships. There's no upper or lower limit to how many ship roles a faction can define. If we had a page for 1950s America, it'd be fair to have nothing on it but an interest in moon rockets, a role which would have been eventually filled by the Apollo program.

At the other extreme, some sort of bug-like hierarchy faction might have subheadings by caste and dozens of specialized ships. I'm not a naval warfare buff, but I'd expect anywhere from 7-12 roles to be typical for most warship fleets. It's flexible, either way.

More than one ship can certainly fit into one role. Uncommonly, one ship may be accepted into two roles with different configurations, like a ship that's used for both mining and scouting, if they're similar enough to share the same article page (which is how I'm defining 'one ship'). This could visibly leave the door open for more specialized designs if desired, even though both roles were nominally already filled. Finally, there's the literal 'range of ships', where an article describes both the role and the ship at the same time, like with the Traveller Shuttle in the example.

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Yes, starship roles are arbitrary by faction. They either describe what a faction has or what it wants--its expectations of service from starships, essentially--depending on whether they have ships that fit the roles already or not.

It goes a bit beyond each faction getting to describe what they call a destroyer, since not only might factions disagree on what a 'destroyer' is (I'm thinking of how in the 20th century destroyers just kept getting bigger and bigger, so they ended up being incomparable by designation) some might have no destroyers, while others might have several different types of destroyers listed as roles (e.g., missile destroyer, anti-stealth destroyer, transforming mecha destroyer...)

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I wouldn't say relying on guidelines submitted by FMs makes them less involved, they would write and maintain the guidelines. Reducing the amount of work FMs have to put into each new ship submission isn't the goal of these guidelines, it's just a convenient byproduct. They can still micromanage whoever's designing ships for them as much as desired, but it becomes less necessary. The guidelines codify the FM's vision and give the designers a starting place, and one potential benefit from this is that people who would have never designed a starship might be inspired by the suggestions provided.

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Syaoran, I have the exact same perspective on you. In fact, I was wondering if English wasn't your first language, as well. Now I'm almost wondering if Raz is posting with your account--he has a notable habit of brazenly accusing people of doing what he's doing while he's doing it. But that would be silly.

Especially since his post immediately following was relatively constructive.

@raz: FMs already review submissions for their factions, but they don't currently offer concrete guidelines describing what submissions they want or how to develop them, it's all informal. This takes a significant amount of back-and-forth already, so this helps them to mitigate drawn-out or redundant ways of accomplishing the same thing.

The direct benefits for FMs are secondary to those to the NTSE, though. When FMs put their guidelines out in the open, we can be aware of potential problems before they reach the submissions stage and avoid hurt feelings and drawn-out arguments stemming from ship submissions at random.

It's less effort to edit a brief description than to overhaul a ship design once it reaches the NTSE. It's also less effort to shout down a bad submission when it clearly contradicts established guidelines, than when everyone is stuck in their own imaginations.

We do need the FMs to have a sense of community and a desire to build up SARP as a whole. If they're only out for themselves, none of us get to have nice things.

Navian said:

@raz: FMs already review submissions for their factions, but they don't currently offer concrete guidelines describing what submissions they want or how to develop them, it's all informal. This takes a significant amount of back-and-forth already, so this helps them to mitigate drawn-out or redundant ways of accomplishing the same thing.

The direct benefits for FMs are secondary to those to the NTSE, though. When FMs put their guidelines out in the open, we can be aware of potential problems before they reach the submissions stage and avoid hurt feelings and drawn-out arguments stemming from ship submissions at random.

It's less effort to edit a brief description than to overhaul a ship design once it reaches the NTSE. It's also less effort to shout down a bad submission when it clearly contradicts established guidelines, than when everyone is stuck in their own imaginations.

We do need the FMs to have a sense of community and a desire to build up SARP as a whole. If they're only out for themselves, none of us get to have nice things.

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I think your idea comes from good intentions, but that you're misunderstanding the submissions process. People shouldn't be creating things for factions without the FM's knowledge, generally. The Yamatai faction has nipped certain ship ideas in the bud for years, for example, and basically only uses KFY for this reason. Ships shouldn't reach the NTSE without the FM wanting them in the first place.

The biggest problems we've had lately are FMs and people who have worked closely with FMs trying to force something that needs revision to be approved. It almost seems like faction overviews like you're proposing could increase the instances of such conduct because then those offenders can just point at their tech overview page and inanely scream that "it fits my faction!"

As for the community part, I think FMs are generally out to help SARP as a whole. We've got the FM/GM board where people talk with each other and give feedback on ideas. There have recently been a handful of notable exceptions to the trend that FMs are friendly and listen to each other's feedback, but I think the majority of us—both FMs and players—are here to make SARP a better setting rather than build up some weird personal faction motivated solely by OOC ego and ambition.

Navian said:

Syaoran, I have the exact same perspective on you. In fact, I was wondering if English wasn't your first language, as well. Now I'm almost wondering if Raz is posting with your account--he has a notable habit of brazenly accusing people of doing what he's doing while he's doing it. But that would be silly.
Especially since his post immediately following was relatively constructive.

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Wow, don't make stuff up about me and throw shade like this. Not only because it's rude to me, but it also needlessly escalates your tension with Syaoran. It's like a two-for-one of mean. Geez Louise.

Since Navian obviously is just assuming everything I say is wrong since my breakdown of how to turn this into something workable isn't considered constructive. Can someone explain to them how all of this adds a bunch of work and details that amount to defining what already exist, which is counter-intuitive to our issue? Not only do factions generally want new designs for things they -don't- already have, but if it's something that already exists we already have a precedent for what's acceptable, we can simply reference that when trying to make something that'll essentially replace it. What would be needed if anything is a way to judge things that there isn't a precedent for in the faction.

This doesn't do anything to actually solve any problems the site has, but rather tries to push everything into its own defined 'styles' and then use that style to judge whether or not future submissions are proper. Which FMs already do. So essentially FMs have to go and write out a page explaining all the faction's tech interest, all so they can what? In the end still, show up and talk to the player and go over the submission and make sure it's faction appropriate. There is literally zero benefit on a faction level for this.

As stated in my first post this would be much better off working with the idea of making a reference sheet for comparison purposes so that people can quickly see if what they're making is above or below average.

If we were at the start of SARP, I can see more use. From what I see here, you're offering a framework for a problem I wasn't aware FMs have.

I didn't judge starship submissions as an FM of Yamatai. I knew what I would have done, had that duty been given to me. And the guide you provide ... I wouldn't have bothered.

If I needed something, I'd go to a designer I know and ask for it. That's the most efficient thing. If someone wanted to make something for my faction, I'd make them ask me. If they went through another company, either they can include me, the company owner can include me, or they can do neither and roll the dice.

Point is, I maintain control without showing my cards until I want to. I don't want them to have someplace to start. I want to be on the ground floor. Where they need to start, is me.

Nor do I want them to start with design ideas or even motifs. Let alone roles. I want them to come to me and pitch. If they are working through a company to which I'm not directly tied, then I as an FM need to exert the level of oversight needed to make sure they know I must be pleased or I will torpedo you. Not always is that required, but you get the idea.

You say the FMs need to have a sense of community. I agree. But the problem that involves is personal, not submission-based. People don't like each other, how they operate and how they talk. You are not solving that with this. You can't rule hate away.

@raz, I'm aware that 'people shouldn't be creating things without the FM's knowledge', but if someone comes up with an idea for a ship first and then talks to the FM about it, they've already done that. If the FM comes up with the basic idea, we don't have that problem. It's a problem even if they don't complete the submission before anyone realizes the implications of it.

And consider for a moment that our biggest trouble tends to come from submissions everyone seems to think are fine until someone finally realizes the implications (or thinks they do). FMs aren't omniscient, or even exceptionally keen-eyed as a rule, nor are NTSE mods or anyone else for that matter. I think some guidelines to bring more clarity and foresight to the process will help a lot.

It's possible that these guidelines would be abused by the same people who'd abuse anything else written down anywhere, yes. I'd hope that FMs would try to police this, and if they won't, that the NTSE will use their authority to not only block the submission, but also bring the guidelines that are being abused into review to remove 'the offending text'. Failing that, all we can do is get rid of those FMs.

I think FMs are generally out to help SARP as a whole. We've got the FM/GM board where people talk with each other and give feedback on ideas. There have recently been a handful of notable exceptions to the trend that FMs are friendly and listen to each other's feedback, but I think the majority of us—both FMs and players—are here to make SARP a better setting rather than build up some weird personal faction motivated solely by OOC ego and ambition.

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I hope you're right.

Wow

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It's true, though. We're bantering, right? This is banter? It's often hard to tell whether you're trolling, teasing, or just saying words.

From Syaoran:

Can someone explain to them how all of this adds a bunch of work and details that amount to defining what already exist, which is counter-intuitive to our issue?

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This still isn't what I'm proposing, and what I'm proposing is not counter-intuitive to our issue, so please don't waste your time.

@Doshii Jun, I think Yamatai's process works more efficiently than any other. There's more people who work on them, the faction has more exposure and precedent so its goals are both more well-known and well-established. Those involved also just have more practice, other FMs have often had only zero or one ships submitted for or by them before. Most of SARP is just starting out, still. Old factions have new FMs, and new factions are in the works. These seem to make up the bulk of starship submissions, and certainly the most contentious ones.

I think the problem exists, but you might be able to teach others your methods for dealing with it... I'm still not sure everyone wants to cooperate, some will say one thing and do another but these guidelines only help there if we can use them to straighten things out.

I'm not trying to rule hate away; it's not about hate in the first place. It's about deception, and I'm not trying to 'rule' that away, either. I'm proposing FMs state their goals plainly in articles like these, so that it's harder for anyone to spread a web of lies and misdirection (or just bad assumptions) surrounding factions, ships, themes, and everything else that gets written down.

Right, um... I should probably take a turn asking a question. @Doshii Jun, have you considered how this might have helped you understand Edto's intent behind the Vekimen ship submissions, and before that, for him to codify his vision for them in a way we could all understand clearly and provide feedback on?