Tech Wars 101: The Issue and Discussion

[Legix]

@Syaoran its been a hard rule since I first got here, they where just starting to transition over from the crazy weapon systems of the old days.

@Arieg you keep spouting a number without any citation, and this has gone on long enough here. So until you make a topic that explains why there's a 3 second 'limit' to guns and why you think missiles will actually work at excessive range, rather than simply saying "It'll work" I'm not going to reply to you about it anymore.

@Wes asked us to give any solution suggestions we have, so let's get back to that. Mine was in post 129 with a requote and clarification in post 140

There's been a few people asking for where the rule exists. Could you find it and supply it if you plan to keep arguing over it?

 

[Fred]

Hillspheres (interdiction):
currently is supposed to apply by planet in majority. The assumption is that whatever our FTL tech can accomplish, it can tolerate the gravity shadows of a star, but adding planets to that throws a wrench in our FTL technology, making it so that we have to defold 'at the shoals' to navigate towards a planet by sublight. The whole goal was to avoid having ships use their FTL drives at will to zip out when things went south for them - going in a body's hillsphere (or a significant gravity shadow) means that you committed.

Interdiction as we knew it is mostly off the board besides that, though tractor beams (graviton projectors) can actually cause the same spikes of gravity shadows that may prevent a ship from engaging in FTL. The idea is that in the seconds that you see a fleeing ship warm-up its FTL drive to jump away, you might be able to take down its barrier and snag it with graviton beam to prevent that departure.

Direct-fire weapon - 3 Light Seconds effective range:
I think this is more an expectation setter. It's indeed pretty damn unlikely you can hit a moving target (i.e.: a spaceship) 3 light seconds away even with a directed energy weapon (whom most go at light speed).

So far as my point of view is concerned, in the case of a mass driver style weapon or a long range missile, it's likely dubiously useful in ship "knife-fights" and that's what the 3 light second mostly addresses. But a GM can still pretty much interpret the weapon's filler text to decide to apply it in a plot as a long range artillery weapon that'd hit a target. I mean, nothing stops me from grabbing an asteroid with my graviton beams and shove it in the direction of a planet... so this feels like a non-issue to me.

About this thread:
Getting to be a bit of a trainwreck? I'm not sure I want to get into it; it'd be like painting a target on my back.

 

[Arieg]

Direct-fire weapon - 3 Light Seconds effective range:
I think this is more an expectation setter. It's indeed pretty damn unlikely you can hit a moving target (i.e.: a spaceship) 3 light seconds away even with a directed energy weapon (whom most go at light speed).

I remember the NTSE mods where pretty hardcore about it.

 

[Reynolds]

Creating a PC/NPC with inflated 'stats' and experience just to justify pumping out advanced tech at will is also basically what I was talking about with the whole echo chamber complaint.

 

[ArsenicJohn]

This seems to stay on track more when talking about solutions instead of problems. Let's try to get back to that.

 

[Legix]

This seems to stay on track more when talking about solutions instead of problems. Let's try to get back to that.

Solutions get proposed and dragged off-topic by people taking it all as personal complaints. We've outlined multiple solutions, but the ability to discuss them isn't something that's happening while people try to find excuses and belittle the fact that we've established this is a problem that needs fixing.

So, as far as I gather it, most of the solutions at a bare minimum seem to involve a shift of primarily two things.

• More NTSE required to sign off something.
• New rulings or standards to ensure this mentality of surpassing and "maximizing" designs and technology is further discouraged or even impossible.

These seem to be the two most commonly suggested ideas to fix this, as #1 would help ensure technical slip-ups while #2 could potentially address the mentality of allowing things "just to allow them" while also combating the "tech leap" mentality. It would encourage people to stop making entirely new articles of tech and encourage people to work with what we have and simply improving article qualities rather than changing statistics to be bigger and higher.

The following are the more noted solutions, falling in at less amounts of suggestions.

• Making new sheets to further define the rules and standards of more than just weaponry, such as further looks into speeds.
• Encouraging NTSE to start denying things based on analyzing the OOC metagaming and the IC balance disruption factors, rather than simply letting things pass via compliance to the currect "check sheet".
• Devising theme charts, to prevent certain groups from being surpassed in elements but also ensuring that they themselves can't continue to push this and disrupt balancing.
• Listing a faction's resources and coming to conclusions on whether or not they should be entitled to certain things.

I think the biggest reason these four are less popular/stated are due to the fact that it does partially lock some forms of creativity. However, these are also good points to analyze and understand we are still gaining a lot from such further breakdowns of a faction and ensuring the unique stability of tech and various other forms of submissions for factions. This also would allow us to work on ensuring "uniqueness", as a side note, between some groups that may share similar designs or philosophies.

The most radical solutions, in my opinion and based on the responses and amounts of people to suggest them are these.

• Closing the NTSE down for X amount of time, to put a priority focus on increasing article qualities for things we already have.
• Going back and completely tearing up previous entries of this, to fix them and the issues behind them.
• NTSE needs complete restructuring and efforts to improve the process of how submissions are handled overall.

The reason these are the most radical is no doubt partially visible, as these are more ways to "solve now, deal later". They can be sorted as trying to be a quick counteraction to the issue of this mentality and the tech race, rather than a goal to long-term resolution. There's a lot negatives to these, primarily in that they would discourage or prevent new submissions of any variety. However, they stand to be the most extreme way that could also provide a "clean break", which would allow us to start restructuring and intermingling the other solutions alongside them.

These are the solutions so far highlighted, I believe, but it is possible I've forgotten or missed one. Again, there's unanimous thoughts on the last three that they are extreme... but they're not entirely farfetched nor impossible with the right mindset (I firmly believe) from the site if we were to want to try and resolve these issues. It's a matter of how much we'd want to work to improve the mentality away from "best designs", "best armed", or any "best" period and focus the entirety of the site on the story and balance of the setting. As I said in the OP, I personally think going back and tearing up other articles won't get us anywhere. It'll inspire drama and conflict that isn't necessary, as these old articles are still in tolerable and manageable numbers. We can rebalance the setting and them over time as SARP did from prior tech wars. The difference being considerable amounts of time, where we could do so probably over a few months versus years.

I'm honestly expecting another attempt to derail the thread, but this is what you asked for @ArsenicJohn - These are the solutions that keep getting proposed (probably missing one or two). If it derails again, then I expect we'll need Wes to step in.

 

[raz]

Wazu is a hard worker. He can certainly stand on his own.

tbh, at least you have an IC scientist designing things. Most tech does not.

Not saying it's wrong to have it one way or the other. Still, you shouldn't be getting flak for having a genius' name at the root of your IC developments, even if it's only one guy.

Anyway, gonna stop the off-topic tangent there.

 

[Fred]

Submissions have a section asking for FM approval.

But sometimes, it's GMs creating something in their own plots.

In my plot, I fleshed out the Dark Mishhuvurthyar - the Mishhu progenitor species. I didn't exactly ask for permission so much as go on a roll fleshing out something I wanted my players to interact with. I had Imperial rebels show off hardware that has never passed through the NTSE. The double-teleporters were legacy stuff from Wes' plot, but I introduced the Akuma teleporting mecha. I also had the bad guys wield a new kind of aether saber-rifle - referred as the "Meni-Custom" - that was able to survive and block the aether blades of other saber-rifles.

Honestly, in my time in SARP, I've found functioning as a GM to often be more workable if I did things and apologized for them later than asked for permission on everything new I brought in. The NTSE feels like pretty treacherous waters.

The Meni-Custom is likely the more compelling example, as it's the weapon that the players salvaged from the corpses of the boss characters once they defeated them, and it showed up from time to time in the future at their longswords +1. That alone seemed fine, at it was more a rule-of-cool weapon that allowed fancy Jedi lightsaber stuff.

But then, what happens when that weapon gets reverse-engineered with its concepts implemented in newer weaponry? It's then that it becomes more than plot-related loot.

So, I'm wondering, how much of this can be made to actually count during a submission's process? There's FM approval, but can there be somekind of player approval method that could go in the way of expressing: "We've been having this in our plot and it's pretty neat" as well? That way, you can test drive something in a plot and if it works out pretty well, then it can be shared with the rest of the setting (and if not, then the thing is quarantined and doesn't get to be considered 'official', I guess?).

 

[FrostJaeger]

tbh, at least you have an IC scientist designing things. Most tech does not.

Not saying it's wrong to have it one way or the other. Still, you shouldn't be getting flak for having a genius' name at the root of your IC developments, even if it's only one guy.

Anyway, gonna stop the off-topic tangent there.

The problem with this argument is that's it absolutely ludicrous to believe that one man - no matter how smart/gifted/Gary Stu-esque/etc. he may or may not be - can outperform an entire company's worth of scientists, engineers, and so forth. The former simply cannot compete with the latter in terms of assets, personnel, or - most inportantly of all - time.

No offense intended to @Zack, of course, but only Gary Stu himself could claim to know everything and be able to design everything without spending 150 or more hours a week involved in such tasks - and I'm fairly certain that Haram J. Wazu doesn't spend that much time working on these marvelous creations of his...

 

[Rizzo]

Maybe he knows people and gets help on projects.

Edit: I mean, he literally has nothing to do while Eucharis is at sea

 

[FrostJaeger]

Maybe he knows people and gets help on projects

A valid point, yes - but then who precisely is he consulting?

To the best of my (admittedly limited) knowledge, Wazu doesn't consult that much with others - because (and feel free to provide examples, @Zack, as I honestly haven't followed Wazu's activities onboard the Eucharis as much as I should have) then where's the RP to indicate it?

 

[Legix]

Submissions have a section asking for FM approval.

But sometimes, it's GMs creating something in their own plots.

In my plot, I fleshed out the Dark Mishhuvurthyar - the Mishhu progenitor species. I didn't exactly ask for permission so much as go on a roll fleshing out something I wanted my players to interact with. I had Imperial rebels show off hardware that has never passed through the NTSE. The double-teleporters were legacy stuff from Wes' plot, but I introduced the Akuma teleporting mecha. I also had the bad guys wield a new kind of aether saber-rifle - referred as the "Meni-Custom" - that was able to survive and block the aether blades of other saber-rifles.

Honestly, in my time in SARP, I've found functioning as a GM to often be more workable if I did things and apologized for them later than asked for permission on everything new I brought in. The NTSE feels like pretty treacherous waters.

The Meni-Custom is likely the more compelling example, as it's the weapon that the players salvaged from the corpses of the boss characters once they defeated them, and it showed up from time to time in the future at their longswords +1. That alone seemed fine, at it was more a rule-of-cool weapon that allowed fancy Jedi lightsaber stuff.

But then, what happens when that weapon gets reverse-engineered with its concepts implemented in newer weaponry? It's then that it becomes more than plot-related loot.

So, I'm wondering, how much of this can be made to actually count during a submission's process? There's FM approval, but can there be somekind of player approval method that could go in the way of expressing: "We've been having this in our plot and it's pretty neat" as well? That way, you can test drive something in a plot and if it works out pretty well, then it can be shared with the rest of the setting (and if not, then the thing is quarantined and doesn't get to be considered 'official', I guess?).

My only issue with this is that... how do we weigh such a situation? Hear me out.

So, assuming players can make it look nice and work in their plot, something could potentially be useful to the site as a whole. However, say it gets added and then this concept gets stolen and twisted further by someone who CAN'T use it as well as these players and the GM.

I believe this is the sort of situation that happened with a technology cited many times here: Interdiction. In paper, it's a staple of almost every sci-fi setting... yet it got banned because some people liked it and found it cool... and then it spread and twisted.

So when we weigh things, can we really trust that it works simply because of one plot making it workable/controlled? I don't think so, based on evidence in SARP history. It's due to our fundamental leniency and "as long as you pass the rules, sure" that has led to previous incidents of things going bad. This is also the reason that Open RP exists. People can ALWAYS keep RPing in Open RP and this never becomes an issue of a technology getting twisted once introduced into the setting. It also serves to, of course, be a testing ground. But allowing players of a plot where the GM may be able to control it into the overall setting where other GMs might run wild and defile the concepts?

That's the issue with the idea. It becomes a potential loophole if we simply trust GM's and their players on submissions outright. Of course, trusting a GM isn't an issue if their plot remains Open RP and not setting-altering... but you get my point.

 

[Rizzo]

@FrostJaeger We could also ask how aether works but no one really knows that either. It's my experience in this type of writing that we have to just take what we can get. In my case I cannot justify these things my company has, therefore I log big expenses to provide justification for the hire of fantastic captains... that and fear of ending up in the trunk of a car
Candon is a spy, after all.

 

[Zack]

@Rizzo since the last kuvexian raid left Wazu with nothing to do he did just stay in his cabin and work on stuff.

 

[raz]

Honestly, in my time in SARP, I've found functioning as a GM to often be more workable if I did things and apologized for them later than asked for permission on everything new I brought in. The NTSE feels like pretty treacherous waters.

This is honestly the cause of most OOC problems on SARP. Don't encourage it. Don't do it. Refer to Reynolds' post about why it's bad practice to bring your special snowflake magic items that you didn't consult with anyone on into the wider setting.

As Wes said, it's a shared setting and that is partly protected by players' rights to comment on setting elements before their introduction into canon. Asking for forgiveness rather than advice is arrogant, presumptive, and bad storytelling that sullies the setting quality. Sure, it's easier to briefly insult setting creators and canon-keepers (FMs) after you've messed up than it is for them to deal with a GM's endless moaning about "muh don't touch my plot! I can do what I want I'm the GM!" but that doesn't make it right whatsoever.

 

[Syaoran]

Nothing is wrong with Wazu making tech. Alex' complaint is about how things made by people other than Zack are being credited to Wazu. The point I mentioned was about how saying "We have Wazu developing tech" would not account for remotely the resources and man hours needed to advance tech in so many fields. No one is ragging on him for having an acutal character as a developer, it's about him using that as an excuse to go too far.

Now that that is cleared up, can we get back on track, we can talk about all the things Zack does in another thread.

 

[Navian]

It's fine for a GM to make tech that's only for use in their plot. The 'ask for forgiveness, not permission' thing... you don't have to ask for forgiveness unless you're trying to introduce tech to the setting without going through the NTSE; there's nothing to forgive. Introducing tech to your plot isn't the same thing. The only way it could hurt anyone else is if your players misunderstood and started assuming the tech was available outside the plot, in which case you can head off that problem by reminding them of it.

The reason why this causes drama is because a few people try to use what they've been permitted to have in canon as evidence for what else the setting should permit, even outside their plot. I haven't seen Fred ever do this.

Regarding the Wazu tech, I think an underlying problem here is a basic misunderstanding of how inventing technology works. You don't come up with a design and that's the end of it, the viability of a design depends on its tech base and the available components. A design that works for one faction won't work for others that have a different tech base. This makes it very difficult to remotely develop tech for another entity that has different parts and resources, or even differently-trained maintenance technicians.

Imagine you create two battlesuits. Both have the same combat statistics, but one requires sapphiroid-diamondoid materials and the other requires a supermetal. One is fastened together by top-down engineering and the other is grown using nanomachines. You sell them both to the same faction. The result? One will probably be useless, costing more to build a single copy of than the other would cost to make five thousand, and even less practical to repair or maintain for use in the field. Meanwhile, the other may perform exactly to specification, and this is despite them being the same product made by the same person.

It doesn't matter what a genius someone is, they shouldn't be able to create designs that allow them to substitute thousands of components or even the basic materials without modifications that could take just as long to design as the original product. Ultimately, it's just not going to be practical to come up with one design for every world and faction to use without importing everything, from components to materials to operators and technicians, from the faction the device was originally designed for.

This is also why it's not practical to design something that's different from anything else a faction has ever made before--it means you've just designed a product that's essentially assembled out of 'IOUs' for parts that no one has developed yet. This should be a problem with much of USO's magical new tech, but it's been glossed over. 'Wazu did it' doesn't explain it, because even if he can make miracles, there's a difference between doing something that seems borderline impossible and doing something that's three degrees of separation from possible.

 

[ArsenicJohn]

So, as far as I gather it, most of the solutions at a bare minimum seem to involve a shift of primarily two things.

• More NTSE required to sign off something.
• New rulings or standards to ensure this mentality of surpassing and "maximizing" designs and technology is further discouraged or even impossible.

The following are the more noted solutions, falling in at less amounts of suggestions.

• Making new sheets to further define the rules and standards of more than just weaponry, such as further looks into speeds.
• Encouraging NTSE to start denying things based on analyzing the OOC metagaming and the IC balance disruption factors, rather than simply letting things pass via compliance to the currect "check sheet".
• Devising theme charts, to prevent certain groups from being surpassed in elements but also ensuring that they themselves can't continue to push this and disrupt balancing.
• Listing a faction's resources and coming to conclusions on whether or not they should be entitled to certain things.

The most radical solutions, in my opinion and based on the responses and amounts of people to suggest them are these.

• Closing the NTSE down for X amount of time, to put a priority focus on increasing article qualities for things we already have.
• Going back and completely tearing up previous entries of this, to fix them and the issues behind them.
• NTSE needs complete restructuring and efforts to improve the process of how submissions are handled overall.

Well, the first solution involves recruiting new people to NTSE. I think Navian would be a good candidate for that mainly because she seems to be fairly neutral and unbiased as well as knowledgeable. Can't think of anyone else off the top of my head.

The second requires someone to come up with "new rulings or standards to ensure this mentality of surpassing and "maximizing" designs and technology is further discouraged or even impossible" and we vote on them. Or we use the thread here to come to a consensus about what these standards should be. The next three solutions seem reasonable to include in addition to or as part of the two most popular solutions.

The listing of faction resources is something we already do as far as I know except not for the purpose of "coming to conclusions on whether or not they should be entitled to certain things". I believe that is actually what that is intended for but it doesn't seem to be strictly enforced or monitored. We could make that part of the checklist. "Does it make sense for this faction to have this tech?"

The last three are drastic and I really don't think we're there yet. As much as I don't think we have a problem, it's not going to help to keep dismissing those who think otherwise. Hopefully, we can all come to an agreement that will please everyone in the long run. Or almost everyone.

 

[Primitive Polygon]

Alright. I'm sorta half back. First off, let me say that I have seen Zack stop people from jumping the gun out of character, before. Wazu might have moments of 'inexplicable movie mad scientist genius', but I don't think it is genuinely rooted in power plays. He's written a tech article or two that's benefited me a lot more than him, completely unrelated to Wazu. It's almost more systemic of the fact the fleet size rules on the wiki are all based on really meta concepts like numbers of players, which kinda makes for really inorganic growth patterns in RP. Was this capitalized upon?... I've yet to see anybody not do that during my entire time here.

Secondly, slightly related to that, the 188604/Uso Faction's manufacturing capabilities did get a kick start with the involvement of at least three outside factional players, so it wasn't entirely meta, but it took a truly awkward turn when two of them left for various reasons (one of which I'm certain is no longer on SARP at all). The third is me. The spacers are giving tech back-up and manufacturing support on a pretty massive scale. Dumont made it cannon, but I'm concreting it with actual bases and items, simply because it makes tactical sense from my point of view.

Do I particularly like the mass militarization of 188604 plots? Not hugely, hence why I've been barely involved in actual non-NPC character stuff lately. But it is clearly what most of the players want, even if it results in huge buckets of tech submissions. Which is, let's face it, basically just because they can, plot wise. It's a faction of independent characters, literally.

Forcing characters to make failed prototypes, design flaws, and actual technological progression would be more fluffy and true to plot. But how to enforce that without making it unbelievably tedious?... I have no idea, since as things stand, the people holding the 'keys' can change stupidly fast, in practice. Keeping a track on what kind of development history is related to something like, say, the Stratops computers, can get buried extremely quickly.

 

[Syaoran]

I don't think anyone is saying they have to play out all the different trials and errors and such. The problem is when you have a tech 'standard' that is being used, even things made within the last year or 2 are two that level. And then without any warning or indication at all, someone makes something that's vastly better than it with a "Well that tech came out 5 years ago, so my character/company made something better." They're treating something as 'out dated' and just making the assumption that they or someone else made something that improves the technology significantly. While yes technology does progress, the problem comes down to who decides that. As it currently is, it's being done in a haphazard manner. I've seen people call things that are 4~6 years old Ancient by SARP standards when most military tech is actually that old on the site. Then at the same time I've seen things from YE2X just as good as modern things.

Technology needs to progress, but the rate of progression needs to be controlled, otherwise we're setting ourselves up for a shouting match when someone makes new ship Y, and then someone makes New ship Z a month later that's better, and the two factions are at odds already. We've literally had player(s) admit to attempting to try to be the 'best'. If there are no brakes, then things will get out of hand.