Zack's Missile Fix

[Syaoran]

A good rules set is a slim rules set.

There are certainly a lot of situations that we'd want to cover. Things like a torpedo-bomber that would carry one giant missile externally or a person walking around with an anti-power armor missile launcher like the SLAM.

There is also the issue of fighter craft, shuttles, and power armors being carried by a larger ship. If we are saying how many missiles you can carry then it makes sense that we should make a comprehensive rule governing how much extra 'stuff' a ship can carry.

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This makes trying to fix the 'How much X can fit on Y' problem a much bigger issue. Until we have a really solid set of rules for that, I would rather limit the missile fix down to just this. It would mean that the only rules added are basically ones that we already have. No extra stuff for anyone to memorize.

You do know that a Jeep can carry like 4 people in power armor. And you're not saying anything about how a jeep or APC or Tank or any land vehicle needs to have some kind of balance done for it.

Also this size limiting would actually make missiles useless at this level. Because the current mini missiles we use would have like PDR damage. And you'd need missiles as large as motorcycles to do damage to a PA pretty much. Have you thought about that?

 

[Doshii Jun]

Doshii, currently there are no rules for missiles. As such including missiles means the NTSE staff have to entirely wing-it with no guidelines to follow as to what is and isn't acceptable.

I'm well aware of that. I winged it more than once, remember? That doesn't make your idea good.

No we have not left macross style attacks behind.

Prove it. Show us the posts.

No this could not be fixed by finding missiles that have no listed speeds as we still have no way of saying what is an acceptable speed. We have established than .9c is too much but nothing more than that.

V3 does not talk about missile speed, but I don't think it really has to. Consider the spirit of V3; it focuses on the narrative, not the mathematical. You don't need a maximum speed at the ranges of combat under which people frequently are in. The GM is going to figure it out, and they darn well ought to have an idea.

But if you do want a maximum, why not focus on setting that speed limit instead of the other parts of your rulemaking? That'd surely be slim, and that's best, like you said.

Nor does it make sense that a battleship is just as expensive as a carrier, but the carrier can have all the same amount of weapons and protection which makes a straight-combat ship a negative when for the same cost you could have that + fighters. Not that we're dealing with this now of course, but in the future it would be nice to have some rules to help make the distinction between battleship type ships and carriers.

If you want to talk about that, talk about that. You opened that door in your earlier post, so I walked through it. You don't want to talk about it? Then don't. Keep it focused on missiles.

A craft should be able to punch above its weight. That's a simple concept. V3 supports it.

It'd also be nice to have a limit on the ammunition missile/torpedo systems can have, since unless your ship makes them out of aether it's a big old gray area.

For simplicity's sake, why not a table that says how many of which tier missile (up to massive tier 15s) a craft of each tier size can fit inside and/or accommodate on outer racks?

Raz nails it in one. If we're so determined to make the limit, let's just set the limit and move on. We need not even talk about changing projectile size; let's talk about a projectile's power and tie it to that.

 

[Zack]

I mean, the main answer here is "We want to have rules, because it provides some consistency across the setting" and a secondary answer is "We have rules, because we want things to be fair. Things can't be fair if there isn't an agreement on what is acceptable."

The idea is to have as narrow ruling as possible, so that a more comprehensive ruling can be made later regarding other parts of the setting. We're not trying to fix everything at once, we're trying to fix one thing at a time and do it as good as possible. That has been stated a few times and I don't think you quite understand that because you oddly keep bringing it up. All your questions have already been answered in earlier posts.


The NTSE staff need to know what is and isn't acceptable. This neatly solves a lot of the problems with how missiles are treated right now without introducing anything that's really new.

 

[Syaoran]

No offense but you have only answered Fred's question. The rest of your post have been you restating yourself, diverting off one point to another that you're trying to support yourself with, double talk, or attempts at saying that "We need to have a set of rules, and I have a set ready so take these" but less straight forward.

 

[Doshii Jun]

The idea is to have as narrow ruling as possible, so that a more comprehensive ruling can be made later regarding other parts of the setting. We're not trying to fix everything at once, we're trying to fix one thing at a time and do it as good as possible.

Your idea involves retconning projectiles to change sizes, or at least trying to add sizes to them that might or might not be there. That's a ton of wikiwork that isn't necessary when there are other ways to give the NTSE what they need — rules to follow.

You also wandered off into talking about ship construction and counting weapons, as well as projectile speeds and capacity limits. You have a lot of wants that you think you're fixing in one go, but you're just piling on a huge load of work that isn't needed. We can make changes elsewhere without retconning or wikiwork.

And you've yet to provide evidence that backs up some of your concerns. You don't even have anecdotal evidence, let alone links. That's not acceptable. If you've got an argument, back it up.

Your idea isn't good. That's my point. It's unnecessary and messy, not to mention counterintuitive to what we've already established. I've pointed out reasons why.

Raz had a great idea already, if we really need to go that way. Read his post and see what you think of that, instead of pushing a convoluted proposition about changing the sizes of projectiles.

 

[Zack]

You also wandered off into talking about ship construction and counting weapons, as well as projectile speeds and capacity limits.

I don't think you read my suggestion, or if you did I don't think you understood it.

 

[Doshii Jun]

I don't think you read my suggestion, or if you did I don't think you understood it.

You've pulled that on me before. Not this time.

I got your suggestion. And I got that you didn't take into account things that I said, or things that other people said.

You haven't provided evidence. You haven't provided even solid arguments. What you've provided is a desire that you'd like to see fulfilled, without context (linked or otherwise).

Get to work and prove to us that you're on top of what you're talking about.

 

[Zack]

I'm wondering what you think I pulled on you? I certainly have had to remind you what the rules of SARP are, repeatedly. I also took into account what you said and it is all stuff I already considered before making this suggestion. Most of your arguments are nonsensical and those that aren't were already addressed.


Why would we not use Raz's suggestion? two fold: his suggestion doesn't resolve the issue of missile size / HP / Speed. His suggestion covers how much stuff something can hold which is intentionally out of scope of this suggestion.

Does this involve retconing? Not at all since all of this can happen during the DvR3 updates and a lot of the fighters carrying SDR5 weapons is already 'about to be retcon'd' This very neatly answers the question of what do we retcon those weapons to?

You ask me to keep it focused on missiles, and like I've stated repeatedly this is a very narrow missile-only ruling.

You ask why not focus on setting a speed limit? I mean, I've answered previously that I wanted a narrow ruling, and mentioned that 'speed limit' isn't the only problem we're resolving with this. .45c is a fantastic speed since it gives ships a few options regarding maneuvering AND we don't have to remake anything. In most situations .45c is already fast enough as ships will still only get 'one turn' of shooting at them unless they are moving directly away from the missiles.

Why add sizes to missiles? I think we've touched on that a few times: because we could use some standardization, because no one really knows what size a missile should be that does X damage, because it makes for a very streamlined and easy to use ruling. Because it also answers the question of how much HP a missile should have.

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What size should missiles/torpedoes be?
What speeds are acceptable for missiles/Torpedoes?
What is an acceptable amount of defense for Torpedoes/missiles to have?
How do we deal with sub-munitions?
How many missiles/torpedoes can something carry? (Not ACTUALLY answered here, but the size limitations will make it a bit easier on NTSE staff for obvious reasons.)


And while we could certainly go with Raz's idea for how much 'stuff' something can carry. That's out of scope of what I'm suggesting here.

 

[Doshii Jun]

Well, you're responding now! And you're not even calling me names. Kind of you.

Why would we not use Raz's suggestion? two fold: his suggestion doesn't resolve the issue of missile size / HP / Speed. His suggestion covers how much stuff something can hold which is intentionally out of scope of this suggestion.

1. His idea invalidates the need for missile size. You could just peg missile capacity to craft size and power of weapon, then move on with your day. Badda bing. You're right that it doesn't talk about speed, but I didn't say that it did.

In most situations .45c is already fast enough as ships will still only get 'one turn' of shooting at them unless they are moving directly away from the missiles.

Assuming they can shoot the projectile down at all, OK. But we've talked before about setting a limit, and it's usually resulted in getting nowhere. We've had trouble just getting ship speeds down to regular. In the past, that's required Fred to help too. He puts in the work.

Why add sizes to missiles? I think we've touched on that a few times: because we could use some standardization, because no one really knows what size a missile should be that does X damage, because it makes for a very streamlined and easy to use ruling. Because it also answers the question of how much HP a missile should have.

1. We left HP behind. We don't have that anymore. So your desire for a missile HP is invalid. It's defense should be matched between what the designer puts down and what the GM needs. That's reasonable and follows letter AND spirit of v3. Consider as well one of Fred's more definitive posts on the matter.

2. No one knows what size a missile should be that does X damage because we have factions of various tech levels using various warheads of various delivery. Standardizing that isn't required by v3 and, by the spirit of it, isn't quite encouraged. Standardizing the various projectiles in the site is wikiwork and that's not something that we have to do, nor should we have to do. Let missiles be tailored by the submitters to do what they need to do.

For instance, the Marlin does one thing and is a certain size. But the Flatfish isn't sized, and the regular Curbstomper torps are.

They all work just fine without needing any modification in size. I'd like to know the Flatfish's size, but it's also an older submission. I can guess it's 3 meters or smaller, and that's enough. The "how many can it carry" gets answered by the size of the launcher, and now also gets answered by how much damage the munitions are meant to do.

3. Submunitions already are handled by v3. They're factored into how much damage the weapon is meant to do, but their effect is meant to be cinematic at the GM's choosing.

Last, but not least, 4. I realize that the setting mods now aren't always groovy with it, but sometimes there are no rules to follow. And you have to think big, consider your options and make a ruling for the site. That's what you sign up for. That's how it works. Their rulings become how things will go from then on, and that's part of the game. If we keep track of them on the wiki, even better. I see no reason why they shouldn't continue doing so, if it's even called for.

To wrap up:

What size should missiles/torpedoes be?

Whatever size the designer wants to get the job done and the NTSE thinks is acceptable. If the NTSE needs help, they can, should and do ask.

What speeds are acceptable for missiles/Torpedoes?

Not really necessary to know, but if we're going to do it, let's focus on that. I'm game to help; we have enough projectile types to spread the wealth around.

What is an acceptable amount of defense for Torpedoes/missiles to have?

GM fiat. That is the point of v3.

How do we deal with sub-munitions?

Exactly how v3 suggests we do when weapons fall in the same tier — one can be more deadly than the other.

How many missiles/torpedoes can something carry? (Not ACTUALLY answered here, but the size limitations will make it a bit easier on NTSE staff for obvious reasons.)

If we tied this to power, it'd be an easier answer. We have DR on everything; we don't have sizes on everything, even if we should. Not to mention that it won't solve your issue when we have weapons in the under-10-feet range that can wreck a capship's day. That's why rating things by DR is far more useful.

 

[raz]

And while we could certainly go with Raz's idea for how much 'stuff' something can carry. That's out of scope of what I'm suggesting here.

Not really. From the first post and throughout the thread you're talking about defining the size of missiles, which inherently becomes an issue of how many can fit on any given piece of tech.

What I'm suggesting is something like a table of missile tiers that defines their size, speed, range, and what each tier can be mounted on. Since that's literally the sort of definition you asked for in the first post.

tbh I don't really care, though. Missiles currently just have a DR (and sometimes listed speed) and, as far as I've observed in RP where they're used, are just a different way to describe something that damages your ship or power armor. They seem fine to me as-is and I don't really think we need to say a missile that does tier 15 damage has to be 250 meters long; SARP's tech is advanced enough that something that big would be pretty archaic to the point of obsolescence.

 

[Fred]

Alright. I kind of cemented my point-of-view on this. I really don't like it.

This leads to factoring ammunition stores on ships. Which leads to determining the amount of space vehicles have. Which leads to what Raz mentioned - a constructive suggestion... but one which leads to frankly horrible outcomes. This is the kind of thing I myself don't want to see standardized.

To me, this feels like an outgrowth of the "8x same-tier weapon guidelines". @CadetNewb wanted something to go on and I reluctantly caved in to something that seemed to have some commonality. Then I start to help approve submissions, shooting by the hip again, and Zack swings by with arguments on balance, rules, fairness and so forth. Hard things to actually counter. But like I demonstrated with the Nepleslian Sword and Hray classes, I always meant for the process to be more flexible.

And now Zack is going in a direction where missile sizes are being defined more, which will lead to carrying capacity... and this is looking like a goddamn disaster from my end. It's like, take the very spirit of what I was reaching for, put it to the anvil, and pound it until at actually its back to being somesort to point-based ship building system (which is very "been there, done that"). I wanted to encourage more latitude, not more shackles.

@Wes : I heavily discourage this, and would instead weight in removing the 8-same-tier-weapons guideline from DRv3. All things don't need to be equal. If that guideline doesn't exist, missile stores on fighters becomes unimportant since the awkwardness of counting them in the 'weapon budget' will no longer be an issue.

 

[FrostJaeger]

@Fred, @Wes Would y'all mind taking a look at something similar I made? It's a lot less...convoluted (in my humble opinion), and I strongly believe it's not something that would require the removal of the weapon cap - which (again, in my humble opinion) is necessary to prevent 324-SDR light cruiser metagaming shenanigans.

 

[Zack]

@raz the problem with saying how many missiles a ship can hold now without a comprehensive 'How much stuff can you hold' rule is that if you do this then now you have to take missiles otherwise you're just leaving stuff on the table.

A table would have a bunch of arbitrary values for size and damage, so why not just use the table we have already in the DrV3? This neatly solves a lot of problems regarding what missiles look like in sarp.

Not having a 'How much X can Y fit' rule also lets us still have torpedo bombers and other 'carry one big bomb' type vehicles. While best case scenario we would have rules for this too we can't be expected to fix everything all at once. Not stating how much stuff something can hold now means we can do a good job at that rule later. If we go with a table saying how many missiles something can hold then we'd have to retcon that later.


Consider the people who make ships in the NTSE. We've already had missiles rejected for being too powerful but no one can state what an acceptable missile design would look like.

Thematically this just happens to match up with the real world pretty well. Anti ship missiles are big, anti-fighter missiles are about the same size as missiles on modern day fighter planes. Man portable missiles end up being useful against everything short of the light mechanism scale.

 

[CadetNewb]

Sorry for the headache Fred. Based off the feedback in this thread and my own thoughts, this is, overall, a pretty bad idea. However, it has brought to light that the weapon guildelines I suggested either need a rework or removal. We all know the DR system isn't perfect, and never will be, but at least we can keep improving it. That's basically what I've gleamed from this thread. Other than nixing this 'fix' that is.

 

[Zack]

https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=wip:indigo_class_escort

Another user is going to run the gauntlet of trying to get missiles approved on a ship!

The proposed missile fix would give pretty straight forward guidelines as to how strong the missiles this ship carries would be under DrV3. You'd see a fairly heavy reduction in the damage output of the missiles, and the end result is that this missile spam would still be very dangerous for mecha-scale and really small ships, but less so for larger starships.

Considering that all of these missiles range between ~2-4 meters I would think that makes sense. After all missiles around that size are largely used for anti-tank and anti-plane duty already. Some of the small anti-ship missiles also are just a bit bigger than 4 meters.

Compare this to the heavyweight IRL anti-ship missiles that clock in around 10 meters.

The missile fix would also allow Arieg to put as many missiles as he wants on the craft, but ultimately leave that up to the NTSE to decide what is and isn't acceptable. This is mitigated somewhat by getting rid of tiny-anti-ship missiles and I think is ultimately a better solution than mandating how many missiles you can have on a ship at this time.

 

[raz]

Since Wes posted he liked Zack's general idea for the fix, I'd like to hear how he'd implement it. Better yet, since Wes is a busy guy, let's see how Zack would implement it himself beyond being an ideas man. Make a wiki article or something, dude!

No reason not to give something new a try—that's how we ended up with DRv3 and such reasoning was used to justify its implementation. Zack's at least as capable as the team behind that project.

 

[Syaoran]

https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=wip:indigo_class_escort

Another user is going to run the gauntlet of trying to get missiles approved on a ship!

The proposed missile fix would give pretty straight forward guidelines as to how strong the missiles this ship carries would be under DrV3. You'd see a fairly heavy reduction in the damage output of the missiles, and the end result is that this missile spam would still be very dangerous for mecha-scale and really small ships, but less so for larger starships.

Considering that all of these missiles range between ~2-4 meters I would think that makes sense. After all missiles around that size are largely used for anti-tank and anti-plane duty already. Some of the small anti-ship missiles also are just a bit bigger than 4 meters.

Compare this to the heavyweight IRL anti-ship missiles that clock in around 10 meters.

The missile fix would also allow Arieg to put as many missiles as he wants on the craft, but ultimately leave that up to the NTSE to decide what is and isn't acceptable. This is mitigated somewhat by getting rid of tiny-anti-ship missiles and I think is ultimately a better solution than mandating how many missiles you can have on a ship at this time.

Nearly all of what you said is just plain inaccurate or misleading. Firstly DRv3 Already has rules for how strong the weapons a ship can carry can be.

'Missile spam' is not an issue that actually exist in the RP and it doesn't get past the NTSE. If you have a lot of missiles you can use, they're weak, if you have strong missiles you don't have many firing platforms. It's also worth mentioning that the NTSE can put restrictions on the fire rate of a weapon if they choose to.

Missile size with SARP tech is entirely irreverent towards damage, as I've said before. Any correlation is just because we feel like it really. Even today the majority of a missile is fuel, not the warhead. I'm no scientist and I don't spend my days looking into weapon tech, but even a basic search yielded me that 1 gram of antimatter would make a like a 40 kiloton explosion. 1 gram, that's it. You could technically make a hand grenade filled with antimatter and do significant damage to a starship if the shields are down. The only reason you can't is because that kind of thing isn't wanted in the setting. So stop trying to say that it must be X strength because of it's size.

And I wont even get started with how silly it is to use IRL tech as the standard for how compact -FANTASY- tech should be.

 

[Syaoran]

Since Wes posted he liked Zack's general idea for the fix, I'd like to hear how he'd implement it. Better yet, since Wes is a busy guy, let's see how Zack would implement it himself beyond being an ideas man. Make a wiki article or something, dude!

No reason not to give something new a try—that's how we ended up with DRv3 and such reasoning was used to justify its implementation. Zack's at least as capable as the team behind that project.

DRv3 spent a lot more time in the making, and when it was being made the general thought was that DRv2 needed to be replaced. And most of all it wasn't one person deciding that their way was best and then making the whole site work with that. A foundation was made and then it was adjusted to what everyone participating on it came to a compromise as. Yeah some people didn't get a say, but that was because they ignored it while it was in development or weren't here when it was, not because they were ignored.

 

[raz]

DRv3 spent a lot more time in the making

Give Zack the same opportunity to present something, then. Y'all are just trying to shut him down outright.

Much like DRv3, Wes has expressed that Zack's idea is something he wants.

Be helpful instead of obstructive.

The rest of your inaccurate retelling of history doesn't need to be addressed.

 

[Syaoran]

Give Zack the same opportunity to present something, then. Y'all are just trying to shut him down outright.

Much like DRv3, Wes has expressed his opinion that Zack's idea is something he wants.

Be helpful instead of obstructive.

The rest of your inaccurate retelling of history doesn't need to be addressed.

Sure inaccurate, you can literally go through the forum for it and see that it is accurate. And Zack is getting the same chance DRv3 had. DRv3 was shot down once before because the general opinion was that it wasn't needed. General opinion is for this that what Zack is proposing isn't needed, so people are trying to stop it from going through, just like DRv3 was treated.

It's also worth pointing out that many people, Zack being one of them were -strongly- opposed to DRv3 and did or claimed they would do drastic things against it. Like intentionally ignoring it. It wasn't until it was made absolutely mandatory for new works to have DRv3 stats that people stopped that talk. And even -then- Zack still made at least 1 thing I'm aware of at that point that he intentionally gave v2 stats to use in opposition to the v3 stats.

So if anything we're treating this better than Zack treated V3. We've given plenty of reasons why we think this wont work, and asked questions for clarification on points, that were never answered. Yet, you expect us to just go "Yeah he can ignore everything we say, and make this new system, we'll give it a test run."