The Limits of Techology

[Fred]

The main reason I'd like to see this is because if I'm going to head a plotship (and that seems a possibility), I'd like to have a better understanding of space battles, but most of the technical terms are lost to be. I understand ideas behind concepts, but some things just completely elude me and I find that both intimidating and frustrating.

And I like space skirmishes too ~_~

 

[Luke]

It could be a possibility for ship captains to jnow basic stat structures, but Kotori has a point that if our character knows something he should not then it influence the way we RP in a bad way.

 

[Andrew]

Katori,

I think this system you are proposing is against the freeform style of role-play, I think it degrades the creative abilities of the GM's to decide on the levels of damage they have ships take when in battle. Anyway if you're having troubles understanding what kind of hits your ships should be taking from different weapons, I would suggest reading the technologies behind the weapons. If you want to create a system for YOU to use, you're welcome to it. But I for one am against the idea and INSULTED, that you think the GM's around here don't have the ability to determine damages and such creatively to their own plotlines by use of the technological explanations.

Anyway I hope that some kind of number system is not forced on this community. It would be detrimental.

Also to add, if the ideas behind how damage is taken on a starship illude you, maybe you need more time and experience before leading one.

The current system has worked for MANY years. If it is not broken, lets not fix it.

 

[Wes]

Being an optional system, no GM who didn't want to use it would be forced to. I for one, really like the idea and I don't think you should get all up in arms about it, Andrew.

 

[Lin]

I still don't quite understand why the system is really necessary at all. I haven't yet read in-depth about the weapons and shields and whatnot, but the skimming I gave over them made them out rather clearly in between the technobabble.

Personally, I would prefer to see it remain open and numberless. We should be concerned more with drama than number-crunching and twinkery. If it goes in, I'll certainly not be looking forward to the inevitable arguments when a GM decides to work against the stats!

 

[Doshii Jun]

I get the ideas behind the "open and numberless" crowd.

And I can understand Rune's objections (though I don't think Kotori was aiming for the jugular).

But I'd be willing to stand up and shout, "Consistency wins!" Numbers are boring and undramatic, supposedly. But at least you always know how shit's going to turn out. You're not waiting for the GM to decide how you're damaged because you already know.

Less drama IC, yes, but also less OOC. I'd take the former over the later.

The only problem with this system though is the enemies. As in, most are Wes- or GM-generated. So I can understand why they'd want to retain damage control.

Then again ... if Wes is at least tacitly behind it ... hmmmmm. The mind wonders and wanders.

 

[sada sakue]

If I was a GM, I would use such stats as guidelines.

If you summarized most of the weapons descriptions, you'd have a lot of "When fired, it will break the universe apart". Similarly, most shields summaries would be "It could withstand a supernovae". (Overly exaggerated, but you get my point)

If I had a few stats to differentiate how many universes would a weapon destroy each shot, it'd make my life easier when I'll need to decide how much shots a Sakura-class gunship could take before his shields would turn off.

Of course, you'd still have to check if the gun's technology would be able to pierce the shield's one, but some stats won't hurt, as long as they aren't used in a wargame way (with 3 pages long damages resolution charts).

That would make stats-loving people happy, while freeform roleplayers could use those values to roughly know which gun makes a louder bang.

 

[Rei]

Except neither of you are main plot GMs, and your statements on the matter underline that blatently. Drew's statements were more than well founded, as well as other sentiments leveled at it, despite efforts to undermine the position that the majority of active GMs, and players with more time here than myself have.

That 'neither of you are GMs' thing is not intended as an insult, just to be clear. Just pointing out exactly why I believe there's a divergence there. I <3 my players ^^

At any rate, it's a poor idea and stand by that assertion with the others.

 

[Doshii Jun]

Except neither of you are main plot GMs, and your statements on the matter underline that blatently. Drew's statements were more than well founded, as well as other sentiments leveled at it, despite efforts to undermine the position that the majority of active GMs, and players with more time here than myself have.

That 'neither of you are GMs' thing is not intended as an insult, just to be clear. ... I <3 my players ^^

We're not GMs, correct. We're players. You may love us, but you should also listen to us and consider our ideas with more than a "the GM knows best." We're not stupid, neh?

As for veteran status, well ... it is what it is. It should not, however, be the ruling factor. We can all be smarter, and more mature, than that.

 

[sada sakue]

No offense taken, Rei

*sighs* I had written a lengthy answer with what I considered the pros and cons of the minor mods I thought were good, and I somehow managed to close notepad before copying the text in the clipboard. Oh well, it's 3 AM here, off to bed .

Anyway, I'd like to point to the fact that I'm not saying that the current damage descriptions needs a total redesign. I just think that it may benefit from a slightly more precise scale system, as "light damage", "heavy damage" and such are highly suggestive.

Maybe, GMs knows full well what an aether cannon shot would do, I don't. Which is bad, since my character is a starship engineer, and knows pretty much the amount of pain it's ship would theorically be able to dispense. That's where the scales would help, though I can live without them, and bother my GM with questions .

 

[DocTomoe]

Hmm, Since there are individuals whom are unaware of the damage scale that can be inflicted by a weapon, and the ability of a starship to take a hit. How about a veteran player, or a GM, could write up a post addressing the exact effects of a weapon upon a target, and possible resistances etc etc. So those who would like/need to know about such things, can look at it at a glance, instead of browsing through pages upon pages of technology applications.

A fine example of such is the fact that my character is a scientist, and I as a player am unsure of the effects of a one milisecond exposure to an aether beam. Would it make an explosion? melt? make something lose one milimeter of material from the impacted area? We would need to know such things to allow our characters to act like properly trained SA soliders. IC a character would know EXACTLY what a weapon would do to a target, and not have any if's and's or butt's about what may or may not happen. Sure there could be some unusual happenings here and there. That kinda thing happens with real life weapons. But it would be helpful to be able to write the useage the tech in the same manner that your well trained character would be able to use it.

 

[Lin]

Now... Perhaps I'm simply being unperceptive, but it sounds more like what people want is a clarification on exactly what each of these weapons does, sans the techno-speak. A simple 'This is a beam of superheated plasma!' or 'This negatively charges the target so as to make with electrocutions!' would go a long way, I imagine.

 

[Cora]

Now... Perhaps I'm simply being unperceptive, but it sounds more like what people want is a clarification on exactly what each of these weapons does, sans the techno-speak. A simple 'This is a beam of superheated plasma!' or 'This negatively charges the target so as to make with electrocutions!' would go a long way, I imagine.

They want more along the lines of:

"When fired, this cannon can tear open a rip in the fabric of space/time and erase <target> from existance.

Or:

"When fired, this cannon can, and will, utterly obliterate a planet with one shot."

Or:

"When activated, this plasma/beam/aether blade will ignite everything that is not the weapon bearing arm/armor/person." (I always found that odd about those beam rifle/sabers, they can ignite everything around them except their users.)

We're not GMs, correct. We're players. You may love us, but you should also listen to us and consider our ideas with more than a "the GM knows best." We're not stupid, neh?

As for veteran status, well ... it is what it is. It should not, however, be the ruling factor. We can all be smarter, and more mature, than that.

Doshii also brings up a pair of very valid points. All players are equal, regardless of status, don't throw a hissy-fit if some newbie throws out an idea they think will help other new players in the long run.

 

[Wes]

(It's because the Mindy is fireproof. Firing the aether rifle when not armored would severely burn the firer, too).

 

[Cannonball]

I'm not even going to pretend I know all the scientific formula behind every piece of technology we have here. I do, however, get the gist of what everything tries to do. When looking over the weapons - and all the dangerous complete annihilation ones - I quickly decided that the best way to fight would be to either fire first or get the hell out of dodge.

So in my humble opinion we don't need statistics for the super, uber, mega weapons because it would be completely pointless. A bit of a guideline on what exactly a captial class mass driver would do on the other hand might be appreciated by quite a few people here (if only for quick reference as others have said)

I also support the idea of putting all the vital technology/weapons/junk on one page so everyone knows what they're looking for and can find it.

 

[Yangfan]

Frederick, you can always just ask Wes if you need to know something specific, like "how much damage weapon A will likely inflict on target B". I'm assuming that Wes has ways to gauging these things consistently.

Building a chart would be a lot of work, since you pretty much have to compare every weapon against every armor, or just gloss over some very important features of the weapons. If we have a chart, then there'd be a lot of revisions, additions, and OOC bickering over the chart every time a new weapon/armor is introduced, when most combinations would never even show up in the RP. If we assign every weapon a number, say, 1 to 10, then every weapon submitted for review after that will have a 10 rating. We'd risk turning this into Pokémon, or... Dragon Ball... *shudders*

I guess what I'm saying is, I'm concerned that it will take attention away from the roleplaying.

 

[Doshii Jun]

I guess what I'm saying is, I'm concerned that it will take attention away from the roleplaying.

In principle, I agree. But it should also be noted that it could actually put more attention on the roleplaying because you wouldn't have players grumbling about the limits of weapon damage. It'd be very clear -- granted, it'd take some work, but it'd get done. "Gun A can do X damage, while Shield B absorbs Y damage, where X>Y. Gun A wins." Too simplistic, but it's the basic idea.

That said, no one's brought up any precise cases when such a system would've helped, or when they thought a weapon/shield should've inflicted/absorbed more damage. The theory of "fix only what's broken" might very well apply here.

The point about Dragon Ball is a scare tactic. Very real, very effective, but still a scare tactic. *grin* Two Internets to Yangfan.

 

[Yangfan]

Two intanets!

It certainly wouldn't be the first time I'm accused of being a fear-monger.

In all seriousness though, I don't really have enough experience with space battles to comment on this intelligently. The only one I've been in was against the Sentinels, and I guess technically I'm one of those people that Thad was talking about, who never took hits. In my defense though, all of my ships were scouts that ran for cover behind the battleships as soon as the enemy was spotted.

 

[Tom]

I'm pretty cool with all the tech because the GMs are very careful to not abuse it. I mean, one starship from Yamatai could technically destroy all of Nepleslia or any other planet for that matter, but GMs take extra care not to shove technical superiority down other's throats.

But there's still the frightening possibility that we're going to eventually end up crossing that line and start a war where players fight players. It's here where the extreme level of tech is going to make a lot of people very, very angry. Anyone in the know will be able to utilize tech for a total victory that no amount of RPing could overcome.

And that's where we'll have an RP-threatening rift. RP purists vs tech purists. Players who feel that their writing skills should be the judge of what can and cannot happen verses players who feel that technology runs the show.

Things are seemingly stable right now due to profoundly good GMs maintaining strong understandings between each other.

Still, I'd rather we took every possible step to ensure an understandable, level playing field. All it takes is one mistake for a GM to send a massive battle fleet down somewhere and just plain blow up an entire world.

Edit: Perhaps shadows of this are starting with the lorath/YSA relations? Not that a blockade is outside the realms of RPing, but perhaps a couple players got a little angry over that?

 

[Zack]

What ya'll are forgetting is that tech is a part of role-play, especially this one. Superior technology and starship designs tend to be ostracized from the rest of game play when they should be more at the forefront of the game. Developing new technology, planning new ships, learning new tactics, all of which should be integrated fully into the role play experience. This isn't that hard although a lot of key things are being overlooked.

Starships don't really have shakedown trials anymore.
New technology isn't really felt in role-play.

Mainly tech and role-play shouldn't be seen as two different aspects of the game, rather tech is simply a type of role-play. I had a Nep plot idea based around that, but certain things need to be finished first.



Also, there is nothing wrong with player vs player roleplay. Quite the opposite, it can be one of the best experiances in all of roleplay as long as both sides follow the rules.