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Closed Update DRv3 with new supercapital/Star-Fortress tiers

These suggestions have been dropped by the suggestor or rejected by staff.
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Alex Hart

FM of NDC
🎖️ Game Master
I've proposed this idea before, and I'd like to do it again. I think that DRv3 could use 3 more tiers for ships in the Izanagi's size range, and for star fortresses in that size range, things like OOSY and Zodiac. This seems like a logical step for a bit more granularity that allows us to differentiate between capital ships and space stations and the really big stuff.

This addition would follow the standard template of DRv3 tiers, with its category, the three tiers, and examples for each of the tiers (Or as best we can muster.), with each tier being tougher and being more weapon-ridden than the last, in standard DRv3 fashion.

I would also propose that we limit such large structures and warships to one each per system (One super-capital and one massive station per system that is), taking inspiration from a suggestion recently in @Charmaylarg Dufrain's MBL update thread that T15s be limited to 1 per system, but with the ability to differentiate between Izanagi style mega-ships and normal large capital ships, that limit wouldn't be needed quite as much.
 
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I'm for all of it. I think things in those size classes should be rare, for sure, so separating them out into their own thing and giving them their own restrictions feels right. They're like hero units or something. :D Definitely important to not be able to accrue things of this size as easily as ships much, much smaller than them.

It might be worth thinking about a cap for weapons in the DRv3 system at T15 or something, though. No need for T18's to be running around mucking things up. I could see a ship the size of the Izanagi having a larger weapons compliment for its size, however.

It might be worthwhile to have the limit even more extreme for ships in this size class - something like 1 per 5 systems or 1 per 10 systems. Things like the Eclipse were terrifying partially because of their rarity; finding ways to make sure there's only a handful in the entire setting feels like a win to me.

I'd also be okay with just adding a single class for 'T16' which is 'anything larger than T15' - or making 'T15' into 'anything larger than T14'. Just should be explicit about the size range being indefinite if we went this way. Regardless of approach, I think a restriction on things of this size class is wise - if only to make sure the ships matter in a way that impacts the story.
 
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I agree with some of the ideas, at least in part. I think counting something like the Izanagi as just a Capital ship doesn't really cover them vs even say a Sharie. That said, I think Super Capital should be its own thing and rare enough that there is only one per system regardless of if it's a large space station like an Iori or a Izanagi. Something to remember here is that an Iori can move and a Izanagi can build things.

That said, I'm not in favor of an extension of the DR into super-capital ranges. (16, 17, 18 etc). I think that implies a meaningful difference between them that I don't think should exist. It would also encourage more class building in that range while I think anything in tier 15 should be more bespoke. I think the current cap at 15 is fine for now.

Because of that, I have to vote no to the proposal in the title "Update DRv3 with new supercapital/Star-Fortress tiers".
 
It might be worth thinking about a cap for weapons in the DRv3 system at T15 or something, though. No need for T18's to be running around mucking things up. I could see a ship the size of the Izanagi having a larger weapons compliment for its size, however.
I kind of agree with this suggestion, if only because it would potentially make converting things like the Izanagi to the new higher tiers simpler, but there would need to be some kind of in-universe logic to explain why no one goes higher than 15. Maybe some kind of treaty against planet-crackers.

It might be worthwhile to have the limit even more extreme for ships in this size class - something like 1 per 5 systems or 1 per 10 systems. Things like the Eclipse were terrifying partially because of their rarity; finding ways to make sure there's only a handful in the entire setting feels like a win to me.
This would be hard to do, as Yamatai already has 43, which is about how many systems it has, (though 20 of those are just sitting around not doing much so if @Wes chose to he could hit 'em with the retcon beam)

I agree with some of the ideas, at least in part. I think counting something like the Izanagi as just a Capital ship doesn't really cover them vs even say a Sharie. That said, I think Super Capital should be its own thing and rare enough that there is only one per system regardless of if it's a large space station like an Iori or a Izanagi. Something to remember here is that an Iori can move and a Izanagi can build things.

That said, I'm not in favor of an extension of the DR into super-capital ranges. (16, 17, 18 etc). I think that implies a meaningful difference between them that I don't think should exist. It would also encourage more class building in that range while I think anything in tier 15 should be more bespoke. I think the current cap at 15 is fine for now.

Because of that, I have to vote no to the proposal in the title "Update DRv3 with new supercapital/Star-Fortress tiers".
I can respect your position, but the purpose of this was to provide granularity between "really big space battleships" and "Space dreadnoughts" that allows us to both appropriately restrict things like the giant Izanagi type ships and to say "These are the big sticks, this is why they don't get made very much or used very much".

As it is, it's hard to put a cap on one Tier 15 per system, because a tier 15 can range from a 2.5-5km "large battleship" to a massive 22km long behemoth like the Izanagi. I think that this proposal would allow us to do the things you're wanting to do. I also think that there is a meaningful difference between heavy capital ships and super-capitals fundamentally, such that it's allowed justification for breaking of weapons limit rules in regards to the Izanagi.

I believe it would be better to get a solid handle on how to categorize and regulate them than allow it to be a wild west where anyone can have (practically) as many as they want if they wait a month for each to roll out from the shipyards.
 
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The idea here seems to be to have only one super capital per system, something I agree with. However, adding more tiers just creates a 'Washington naval treaty' problem where all new super-capitals will be in the largest category and almost nothing will change except that their now a few orders of magnitude bigger. That and 3 tiers by DRv3 is a lot. A tier 18 would be able to wipe the floor with fleets of tier 15 ships (Light Damage vs Assuredly Lethal). If anything I think we should shrink the number of tiers, but that has a snowball's chance in hell.
 
I agree that an escalation of the 'there's no reason not to build the biggest thing' issue is something that could happen with three new tiers, which is why I had said that they'd have to be heavily regulated, and to be honest, I don't think we'd ever see tier 18s but merely reasoned that since the rest of the tiers came in threes, so it made sense to have three here.

Most of this stems from my desire to "solve" the Izanagi (I'll admit, it's my white whale), as it's an anomaly within the rules and DRv3; a ship ludicrously more powerful than anything else that's likely to be in its weight class but that is classified the same, something which breaks basically all the weapons rules, and that still getting pumped out by the dozen such that just about every fleet in Yamatai has access to

Obviously, being the no-fun rulesman that I am, I've wanted to find a way to make the square peg fit for as long as it's been around. I think the idea to just make an all-encompassing 'Super-capital' "tier" would work, though it would have to be qualified differently than just "larger and shooter than the last one" and more like "These ships are, for various reasons, tide-of-battle-turners that don't follow standard shipbuilding rules". The one-a-system thing is more an MBL addition that would need to be made to accommodate the new classification of super-capital.
 
Most of this stems from my desire to "solve" the Izanagi (I'll admit, it's my white whale),

Yhea, mine too. I think the best solution is that it's size is actually something sane like 5 or 7 km and it's weaponry more in line with being tier 15. rather then creating whole new tiers for it.
 
I would prefer that too. Unfortunately, there's less than a snowball's chance in hell of that. Separating Izanagi-likes and tier 15s may be the best solution available unless some of the "No, it's fine/You must just hate Yamatai" people change their tune.
 
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Doesn't seem to be a really necessary change to the system, in all honesty. DRv3 has served us well and making it more particulate doesn't really serve the RP from what I can tell. It'd be a change for the sake of change. Ultimately, it's up to Wes, though.
 
If I was going to expand the DR scale it might look something like this:

Tier 16: Small Megastructure - 10km or larger - Izanagi, Mars's moon Phobos
Tier 17: Medium Megastructure - 100km or larger - "That's no moon!"
Tier 18: Large Megastructure or Planet - 1000km+

I'd like to see more megastructures in SARP. Although not so much ones that are just big guns...

If this is just about the Izanagi I think we should talk about that rather than re-rig the rules system.

I basically treat them like they're huge, highly mobile starbases. They're the Star Army's replacement for the Star Fortresses essentially.

I spent some time looking at this classic page tonight: http://merzo.net/indexSD.html - It got me thinking, maybe we should scale the Izanagi down somewhat (half the length?), but I think that's something that should be addressed in another thread.
 
If this is just about the Izanagi I think we should talk about that rather than re-rig the rules system.
It is in part, but rather than just doing something for the Izanagi, I thought it would be good to create a framework for how to handle future things like them since other factions like Nepleslia and the NDC are inevitably going to want to have some equivalent, even if not as many as the Star Army has. This meant things like figuring out things like how these new larger capital ships would be classified, be they in new tiers or in a blanket "Supercapital" category, and how they would be regulated OOC.
 
Addressing any issues with the Izanagi being unbelievably big is probably a better idea than creating a basis for other factions to also create unbelievably big things. If the tiers are there, people will inherently want to make massive ships beyond what their factions can realistically support. I feel like Fred originally capped DRv3 at 15 at least partially for this reason: as to not encourage things getting out of hand.
 
Here's an alternative suggestion: only have one additional tier, which would be "megastructure-class". These Tier 16 objects would be EXTREMELY rare due to their size and logistical requirements. I'd like to say that perhaps there is only 1 T16 thing per every 2-3 star systems a faction controls at most.


Keep the numbers extremely low, and make it clear that T16s aren't supposed to be the direction of combat doctrines. But at the same time, make it clear that some things are just a level above the standard system, and should be treated and armed with the respect that something that massive deserves.


Calling this at T16 instead of T18 also has a few advantages; the weapons powerful enough to somewhat hurt even a T15 would still do a good amount of damage to anything that's significantly larger, especially on a direct hit. The general interpretation of DRv3 would say that such a weapon might not hurt a T17/T18 at all, somehow though...

Also, from a lore standpoint, limiting massive structures to T16 in things such as armaments makes sense - if you have a thing that's bristling with way to many guns, it's not really as helpful to the faction that owns it. Limiting to T15 in armament encourages adding details such as shipyards, resource collection, carrier capacity, and other tools that improve the effectiveness of a Citadel or Megastructure without requiring it to be in combat all the time. If I were to compare this to something from Star Wars, think about The Last Jedi and Snoake's wide star destroyer thing, which can support itself and a few Star Destroyer nearly indefinitely (hell, it can even build new Destroyers as well.)


I think that if we expand the DRv3 tiers, it should be limited and encourage people to make big things that are flexible and supportive, rather than big things that are purely made of firepower.
 
I'd like to see more megastructures in SARP. Although not so much ones that are just big guns...


Same.

As for this thread I agree with a lot of it.

But I don't think we need three extra tiers but maybe just one, ye.

15 is the limit for capitals we already have.

16 is, like what something whisper said and can be for One-offs and special Hero ships and Megastrcutures like my one-off Big Green starbase (which IC is considered so expensive and took so long to build nep will only be building one of), things like ships that fall into the super-capital range like the izinagi, and things that inch into power-creep where it makes sense not only logistically but IC that you would only want one or a limited number of them flying around the kikyo sector.

This way people can still build big and impressive things but have them be one-offs which make more sense. Yamatai doesnt need a new class of super-capitals to rival the izinagi; But a player can make a different, single one-off super-capital as the deathstar flagship of a fleet and it will be 100% more unique than just some new brand of mass produced super-ship.

And naturally this new tier will have limits such as limiting itself to weapon limits for its tier (cause T-16 is arguably doomsday weapon and fleet killer tier) and like others have said not just be a massive new version of the Primus (Just a fucking floating sea of pure guns and more guns and also guns), but should be unique and the tier should be used to support that instead of a reason to cram more and bigger weapons on a bigger platform.
 
This suggestion is still at zero votes after over a week so I'm closing it.
 
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