The Battle of Artume

Personally, I'm glad this thread is still civil at this point.

To be frank, even if the FTL laser and torpedoes were approved, it is as Soresu has stated. Approval does not mean something should become untouchable like the word of god, and should be revisited from time to time, especially if a problem arises, which has now happened. Things may stay the same or change, I frankly do not know.

As for other factions using FTL weapons, I looked into Yamatai's torpedoes and they are vastly inferior to those that you have created for the Mishhu. In a PvE environment, this will easily get overlooked; players and perhaps even GM's will just assume that they are the same in terms of performance when they are not. In a PvP environment, one player merely needs to point this discrepancy out, and therefore be granted a vast advantage.

The turret you pointed out, the one mounted on the Shari Class Battleship? It too is vastly inferior to what was seen here in the battle, which brings up much doubt and questions. While your FTL Laser traveled at 18,500c, this turret only has it's energy beam travel at 500c. Though both appear to be affected by interdiction fields, the laser on the C3 is still superior. The Anti-FTL affecting the laser is much like a paintball traveling at half the speed of light suddenly decelerating to the normal speed of 300 feet per second when within a certain range of the target. One person still has time to dodge while the other does not.

Though I do not enjoy pointing this out, even Wes himself wishes to eliminate Anti-FTL and FTL weapons. In my personal opinion, and opinion only, these FTL rules are scarcely used by the majority of SARP's players; they make combat more difficult and complex than they need to be as well, perhaps discouraging people from engaging in PvP. As I see it, PvP should be more prevalent than it is now, but is not due to the complexity and ensuing confusion.

Again, this is merely my belief; we need to keep things simple, easy to understand and accessible to the vast majority. If it is not, this complexity and bureaucracy will make things harder for the players here, and discourage new players from easily settling into the setting. And I believe that we can all agree that we desperately need new players, not scare them away with a game with a thousand rules.

The matter seems pretty clear cut to me.

There's no reason why a similar class NMX vessel should not be equal to a same-class Nepleslian vessel. The Mishhu have consistently shown that while their design aesthetic are rather lacking in our tastes that they do have hardware and software fully on par with anything Yamatai and Nepleslia can field.

Also, back when the interdiction field technology race was going on, the Mishhu showed hands down they were better at it.

Uso made detailed tech articles, but looking at the situation, the way it was intended is clearly an exploit in considerations to how this site is meant to thematically handle starship combat. There really isn't much in the way of explanation and excuses I've seen from Uso in this thread which excuses that being found.

This sort of incident needs to be noticed, not backed by offended dignity, and then attended to so that the problem issue can be corrected so to provide proper believable portrayal of each side.

Besides, not everyone has Uso's proficiency at handling the full scope of space hardware - it's certainly a talent Uso has. However, when it ultimately resolves in being expressed between the lines as "I will win because I am better at this and that I've detailed my stuff so much that I left you next to no way to compete" it becomes a problem.

SARP is a roleplay site first, for the enjoyment of all involved. By this point, I cannot believe Uso can look at this issue and see the whole shabang as 'fair play'. Therefore, this issue should be closed, the PvP conflict in itself voided in current events and we should be grateful that such a venture unearthed a flaw that can be addressed so to offer a better experience next time around.

As I see it... Interdiction Mechanics are bungled.

Granted, mentally figuring ranges, strengths, and zones of overlap and cancellation is difficult in a tactically competitive environment (perhaps if ship models are synchronized and a Doga battlemap can be constructed or something...). Of course, you still have to do this with weapons and ship speeds/velocities in the first place, so FTLCM is just an additional layer extremely basic of calculations that need to be made.

This post is almost completely a personal issue as I think DR is also bungled since each weapon has a listed output 'per turn' rather than per shot which I find more natural, and armor seems to add hit points instead of damage/hit resistance, another counterintuitive element I find irking. I'd rather see a proper listing of rate of fire/rate of damage, cooldown, and operational limits for weapons, but again, that's more detail most players don't want to deal with.

But anyways, if a more conventional FTL laser has a velocity of 'over 500c' then something that puts out 15,000c of laser is over the top and should probably be reevaluated.