'Constructive criticism aims to show that an intent or purpose of something is better served by an alternative approach.' My criticism was constructive, it was just rejected. If providing constructive criticism 'derails the thread', it's not wanted--while you explicitly asked for it. I suppose Frost must have meant something else.
I did not mean something else - the reason I said your criticism was unconstructive and off-topic is because although it provides an "alternative approach," that approach to the best of my knowledge has never been fully elaborated upon or discussed, nor has it been added to the wiki. It also - in my own personal opinion, and please, correct me on this if I am indeed wrong - would require an
extraodinarily complex set of "unnatural and cumbersome" rules.
I did post one paragraph that served to expand on the current plan rather than providing an alternative, but it did seem to do a better job of illustrating the flaw in this plan--there are so many factors to account for that this 'solution' only works until someone puts a minimal effort into circumventing it again. Even if they do so unintentionally, or without noticing.
Rules are not set in stone,
@Navian, and can always be updated to address loopholes within them; furthermore, isn't noticing overpowered setting submissions - be they on purpose or unintentional - one of the primary reasons we have NTSE moderators in the first place?
It's not going to hurt that much when it happens, it'll just make this a minor waste of everyone's time and delay finding a more permanent solution. I guess we can do that and see what happens.
Not to be rude, but then why have you "delayed finding a more permanent solution" by outlining the basic structure of your proposal in a
Setting Discussion thread?
Uh, guys? I'm under the impression that the problems older and more experienced players like myself, Doshii and Wes see is going unnoticed for some reason. We got rid of the previous limitations due to these same problems, which this article is simply a modified version of. It is, like its predecessor, fundamentally flawed.
You guys may feel that this is a simple and easy series of calculations, but that's missing the point I am trying to make. The problem is that this would still inevitably make the player go through additional hurdles when trying to construct a ship. The player has to look at the upper limit allotted to them, and essentially choose what they will and will not have on board their ship with absolute precision. The player has to crunch the numbers for not only the same-tier weapons, but for anything above and below, and the lower they go, the more numerous and a hassle they will be to count. Not only that, but the NTSE Mod has to do this as well.
I don't want to do more work on top of the work I already have to do. Being an NTSE Mod has NEVER been a fun or rewarding job; even Soresu, the VERY FIRST will say that flat out.
How is performing elementary-level math an "additional hurdle?" Correct me if I'm wrong, but everyone here
has graduated from middle school (or its equivalent), right?
Regarding "choos[ing] what they will and will not have on board their ship with absolute precision," well,
@CadetNewb, no one (nor the article itself) is saying that you
have to absolutely have 8 same-
tier weapons to be considered "effective." Want to be a bit less precise and end up with, say, 7.5 out of 8? Rock on - because nowhere does it state or imply that having fewer weapons automatically makes your mecha/vehicle/ship/whatever less effective.
More importantly, and since I wasn't clear enough, I'll explain why this article makes things unnatural and cumbersome. Imagine you got a three kilometer long ship, and besides having the typical complement of guns, you want to take some inspiration from The Finalizer and mount missiles. Hell, why not some anti-ship torpedoes? The torpedoes are going to be maybe the size of two eighteen-wheelers/semi-trailer trucks end to end. Massive. Huge. Way, way thicker and longer than telephone poles - city killers? Nope. Just one might crack a moon, and one against the hull will light up your class of ship like the Death Star. And you get eight auto-loaded tubes!
But that's only if you strip out every single other cannon, missile launcher and point defense system.
What's that? But you still got so much physical space left over, even with armor that's several meters thick! You could totally fit cannons on - there's even a massive energy surplus since a single tube uses as much power as a few 'massagers'! Well, back to the drawing board - single use tubes are way better. You get 64 of them! Except the ship is empty, empty, empty. There's like, almost nothing going on in this THREE KILOMETER long battleship, and the VLS tubes take up so little space since they're made to be space efficient to begin with. And you still got that problem about not being allowed any additional energy cannons. Even though you could definitely power plenty! Like, a whole Battleship's worth of cannons!
Gee, it's like some sort of godlike entity is deliberately stopping you from having a ship that makes sense.
That "empty, empty, empty...
THREE KILOMETER long battleship" you mention,
@CadetNewb? It's a supercarrier (because I'm willing to bet you could pack swarms upon swarms of starfighters into those "empty, empty, empty" areas of the ship) or it's a battleship with a gigantic marine complement (in lieu of the aforementioned starfighters) or it's a battleship with absolutely
hilarious numbers of missiles in reserve (remember, there's no limits on the number of missiles you can carry) or it's a...
Regardless, the point I'm trying to make is -
be creative!. Have some extra space left over? Use it to carry more supplies, more dropships, more fighters - or, hell, use it to
drop ships instead!
Just stick to KISS and have things simple guys.
As I stated in an
earlier post...
That, I kid you not, is the exact purpose of this submission - to present a (relatively) simple solution to submissions that are potentially overpowered that also addresses missile-based weapon systems.
* * *
Just stick to KISS and have things simple guys. Hell, the more I think about this, the more frustrated I am getting. The thing is, I could write you all something drastically superior, and you may not think it
@FrostJaeger , but I could even go back and work off of your previous concept of making rules directly on missiles. And it'd still be drastically better than this.
I didn't want to be rude earlier, but apparently I have to; this is a pile of junk.
Then please do so, instead of ignoring what other moderators said (emphasis mine).
Okay everyone, I added a poll to the thread so we should be good to go on deciding something within 48 hours! I hope this clears up whether or not this submission should be added to the wiki and, thus, implemented in submissions and articles.
It will be important to note that I hope we can keep discussion of it civil and that there really shouldn't be any of the same problems that this submission faced in the past present in it now as it's not open for debate, it's as simple as a poll choice.
* * *
After being linked to the thread and noticing what's up for voting I have two major questions.
- Has this been a real problem recently?
Given that there have been
at least four different threads regarding the topic, I'd say that yes, this has in fact been a real problem recently.
- Does this positively affect roleplay for someone?
If either answer is no, that's my opinion too. I'm very leery of more rules for the sake of having more rules.
It "positively affect{s} roleplay" for the
entire setting by ensuring there exists a metric for NTSE moderators to point to and say "this is overpowered" without having to fear, as
@Fred said
here, "scathing rebuke from the outlier."
Because I expanded beyond the typical gunboat with a few torps bolted on.
No,
@Arieg, this occurred because you attempted to submit a ship that was blatantly overpowered compared to
every other ship in the setting.
Fred, Gallant does know better, but the thing is, the execution of this leaves a lot to be desired.
Like you said yourself, the article feels messy and not friendly to the reader. It's dense, and heavy while being noisy. You're right that it does need a huge editing job to be presentable, but that is something separate from effective. That is solely to be presentable. As I've said earlier, we can make a much better, simpler change to the DR system that curbs missiles.
However, we should not settle for less.
Like I said before:
FrostJaeger said:
Then please do so, instead of ignoring what other moderators said (emphasis mine).
Okay everyone, I added a poll to the thread so we should be good to go on deciding something within 48 hours! I hope this clears up whether or not this submission should be added to the wiki and, thus, implemented in submissions and articles.
It will be important to note that I hope we can keep discussion of it civil and that there really shouldn't be any of the same problems that this submission faced in the past present in it now as it's not open for debate, it's as simple as a poll choice.
* * *
I agree that rules like this are unnatural and cumbersome.
That's not the reason I'm against it, though, I'm against it because it won't do what it's meant to do... it's like we're putting on armour that's not only hot and heavy, but that also still leaves us vulnerable and exposed. We could fix this with more submissions, but that would result in even more cumbersome rules to address all the other factors--rate of fire, accuracy, non-damage effects, how difficult weapons are to counter, etc.. My proposal to deal with that now was, I'm assuming rejected (or at least ignored) like all the other alternatives.
Also like I stated before:
FrostJaeger said:
I did not mean something else - the reason I said your criticism was unconstructive and off-topic is because although it provides an "alternative approach," that approach has to the best of my knowledge never been fully elaborated upon or discussed, nor has it been added to the wiki. It also - in my own personal opinion, and please, correct me on this if I am indeed wrong - would require an extraodinarily complex set of "unnatural and cumbersome" rules.
* * *
This addendum only concerns itself with the number of weapons and their nominal DR values, so it prohibits designers from building a ship that has weapons it can't use effectively for reasons other than their DR values--this limits many designs, and also has confusing implications if we make exceptions for point defense while still allowing such weapons to be used offensively at point blank range--while still permitting ships that are overpowered for reasons other than the number of weapons they have and what tier those weapons are.
Regardless of how much we want to deal with these added rules, they still don't perform their basic function... unless we assume that all weapons of a given tier are essentially equal and only their quantity matters. I noticed people were doing that in threads before this, and addressed that first there and here, but it seems we still haven't gotten past that.
This has not been addressed because the sheer amount of rules required for such a task would be utterly
insane. You can't have it both ways,
@Navian; either we have lots and lots of rules that address every single detail of every single aspect of every single subsystem a starship/mecha/whatever has, or we have "simple" rules (such as what I've submitted) that attempt to be as broad as possible - unless you'd like to prove me wrong by
"finding a more permanent solution" and posting a basic outline of your proposal in a Setting Discussion thread.
Let's just say you're right about DRv3 is as cumbersome and horrible as you say. Why are you suggesting we make it even more so? That's just absurd. This proposed 'tool' is not quality.
This post is most certainly not "quality" and has been reported for being rude and offensive.
DRv3 is more or less effective for helping us gauge how much damage a given weapon does when it hits a given target, with or without a barrier field, and makes barrier fields more comprehensible to use in the RP as well. This isn't the same.
Anyway, so long as we're talking about the implications of the addendum rather than the merits of it, Raz, one of those is that if this addendum is added to the guidelines, it'll give people something to point to and argue about submissions hit the NTSE. Because these guidelines are all about telling people what they can and can't do when designing starships, it's only natural for those reading it to come to the conclusion that they know what they can and can't do based on this information. But because it's so full of holes, this will only create confusion---people will think they can do things they're not allowed to do, and think they're not allowed to do things that we really ought to permit. This is the opposite of the goal of creating guidelines.
Please, do enlighten us,
@Navian, since you seem to be so well-versed in the
Armament Limitations - precisely what "holes" are you referring to? I'd
highly appreciate it if you provided me with some constructive criticism by pointing them out so that I can address them.
That last one is one of those Raz lines where I have to wonder if he's talking about himself, again.
Yes, calling something 'a piece of junk' is colourful language that we should probably avoid. What it means to say something is 'a piece of junk' is that it either no longer can serve its purpose (like a car with an engine that won't start), serves its purpose ineffectively (like a broken-down old vehicle) or can't serve its purpose (like a car with no engine, or a paperweight in a paperless office). It's vague.
This article is more like the broken-down vehicle, it serves its purpose poorly, and using it might be worse than going without it. We can either fix it or replace it. Unlike the car, though, it's easier to predict what will happen if we give it a ride, because we can already see the moving pieces and where they're going to go.
Then how would you propose fixing the
article itself? What would you recommend doing to the
current submission - not another one that hasn't even been submitted to the NTSE yet, but the one
mentioned in the original post of this thread - in order to improve it?
Lastly, is there a reason that virtually
everyone who posted after
@Ametheliana -
@Navian,
@CadetNewb,
@Gallant,
@raz, and
@ArsenicJohn - suffered a momentarily lapse in comprehending the English language when reading the aforementioned
moderator's post?
You know, the one that
specifically stated (emphasis mine):
Okay everyone, I added a poll to the thread so we should be good to go on deciding something within 48 hours! I hope this clears up whether or not this submission should be added to the wiki and, thus, implemented in submissions and articles.
It will be important to note that I hope we can keep discussion of it civil and that there really shouldn't be any of the same problems that this submission faced in the past present in it now as it's not open for debate, it's as simple as a poll choice.
For those of you who apparently can't comprehend such lengthily sentences, I'll put it really,
really simply:
This topic is NOT open for debate.
Be civil, or be gone.
P.S.
@Wes please do not lock this thread prematurely before the 48 hours expires - as I feel that quite a bit of what happened here was caused deliberately in an attempt to provoke one of us into doing just that.
