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Kai Queen!

Adventuring Party!

Punitive Expedition!

You Are!

All of them!

How dare you make me pick?

[Ross Vernal]

By the way, feel free to interpret "League" forces as the Browncoats from the Firefly 'verse. I 100% admit they are the inspiration.

Victory conditions are what you think: control 90% of the galaxy between you and your alliance, including home systems. The game will end one turn AFTER that happens, so last-minute double crosses are encouraged.

[Ross Vernal]

Very rough guesstimate numbers (yes, I know these ships are relatively light):

Small Craft
Fighter: 15-40k tons
Frigate: 40-69k tons
Destroyer: 70-99k tons
Light Cruiser: 100-199k tons
Heavy Cruiser: 200-399k tons
Battlecruiser: 400-799k tons
Battleship: 800-999k tons

Capital Ships
Superbattleships: 1-1.49m tons
Light Dreadnaught: 1.5-3.49m tons
Dreadnaught: 3.5m tons-4.9m tons
Carrier: 4.0-7.0m tons
Heavy Dreadnaught: 5-8.49m tons
Superdreadnaught: 8.5-10m tons

One unit is 5 tons. Smallest fighter is Weapon, Engine, Life Support. Synthetics don't need Life Support, so they can have more freedom.

[10ebbor10]

Not yet. Shortly after the Merope smash the Kai home system, though.

I mean, when are you going to launch the game? Or is it merely mechanics.

[Ross Vernal]

I want to get most mechanics done before running the test game. Spring? Not sure. This requires more prep than "make it up as I go along".

I'm not exactly in a hurry for a Lensman Arms Race where the Merope have black hole cannons, the Kai have giant organic thought-shredder plague-carriers, Synthetics warping in custom-built planet-fortresses, and Terran missiles rip space-time, y'know?


...or maybe I do, but having internal consistency with the "physics" would be good. Consistent bullshit is acceptable; arbitrary nonsense is not.

[Rolepgeek]

Those actually seem pretty goddamn heavy. Although I'm thinking in displacement terms. But yeah, those seem really, really heavy. Maybe I just play Aurora too much, but I feel like a fighter should be at least under a 1000 tons.

[Ross Vernal]

Fighters have a few roles.

They have to be tactically relevant: while no-one expects a fighter to trump a destroyer, a squad should be even. At the same time, they have to be able to enter atmo.

They have to be hyper-capable - communication delay is bad over a distance. Courier boats are fighter-class.

There are subtypes: cutter, pinnace, shuttle, and jet. Cutters are barely hyper capable and aren't nearly as armored (or environmentally sealed). Pinnaces lack hyper but carry crew. Shuttles are exactly that. Jets are near-space fighters, mostly used for occupation of planets.
These tiny ships are 0 to 14.9k tons.

[Ross Vernal]

Another note: Miniaturization is your friend. Mounting battleship-type weapons in a fighter package can seriously hurt, especially if you have a few hundred targeting one ship at once. Or heavy energy weapons and stealth: all it takes is one point-blank laser beam applied before ramming the entry wound at c-fractional speeds to seriously ruin some Captain's day.

Granted, it'd be hard to do, but the Zerg Rush is a time honored technique.

[Ross Vernal]

Since I'm stealing mechanics from GalCiv2 and Erfworld, I have a few things to wonder.

Should space construction include crew? Or should planets have to pop Crew units and a Leader unit? Or just a Leader?

Should I allow multiple simultaneous construction, or should that need infrastructure upgrades? Like, say, a station can produce X tons per S-Month with a maximum capacity of ($NUM) volume? Building space isn't so much the problem as effectively using the space...

How involved should combat be? Round by round? Tactics PM before upcoming battles? Send forces and hope?

[10ebbor10]

Well, realistically planet population isn't likely to leave a dent in the planet's population. Perhaps a modifier depending on the planet where the population came from. ((Ie, don't expect the newly started colony to have the expert personnel for the high tech cruiser))

Should I allow multiple simultaneous construction, or should that need infrastructure upgrades? Like, say, a station can produce X tons per S-Month with a maximum capacity of ($NUM) volume? Building space isn't so much the problem as effectively using the space...

I see no reason while multiple simultaneous construction shouldn't be allowed. Maybe you could put a limit on it however, or otherwise using the massive super dreadnought shipyard to build fighters gets silly. Easiest would be to have stations have a max capacity and an amount of slipways, with efficiency being reduced if you go over it.

How involved should combat be? Round by round? Tactics PM before upcoming battles? Send forces and hope?

Round by round could take to long. PM tactics makes more sense, especially as in space it's unlikely you get to review tactics before the battle ends.

[Ross Vernal]

Training was definitely what I meant. Maybe the ship construction will have crew automatically, but if a planet also builds crew, it gets a bonus. I'll think about it.

Hm... maybe spaceyards should have modules. Additional production, specialty slips, etc.

And yeah, given that ships are faster than communication, round by round would be hard to justify.

[Rolepgeek]

Fighters have a few roles.

They have to be tactically relevant: while no-one expects a fighter to trump a destroyer, a squad should be even. At the same time, they have to be able to enter atmo.

They have to be hyper-capable - communication delay is bad over a distance. Courier boats are fighter-class.

There are subtypes: cutter, pinnace, shuttle, and jet. Cutters are barely hyper capable and aren't nearly as armored (or environmentally sealed). Pinnaces lack hyper but carry crew. Shuttles are exactly that. Jets are near-space fighters, mostly used for occupation of planets.
These tiny ships are 0 to 14.9k tons.

Wait why do they have to be hyper-capable? Isn't that what carriers are for?
And I don't expect a squad to be even with a destroyer. I expect the fighters to be there to run interference and counter other fighters, and hunt down enemy bombers, a squad of which I would expect to be even with a destroyer. Maybe. Destroyers were built to fight fighters, so....

And I don't see how ships are faster than communication, or how you wouldn't get to review tactics(it's not necessarily a constant slugfest, guys...there are lulls and standoffs for long periods of time...). Just use ansibles.

EDIT: Also, 15000 tons is the weight of a large freight-ship.

[Ross Vernal]

Two main reasons? Speed and scouting. Fighters have great acceleration and more important, they're cheap. Losing a fighter hurts less than sending a destroyer.

Also, like I suggested: Fighter is a category. You can easily make bomber types.

Carriers also hold supplies and capital weapons. Mostly supplies, sensors, etc, but a few weapons just to prevent the "sitting duck" effect.

Tactical choice before combat honestly would make it easier on me and faster. I don't expect engagements to last more than a 24 hour period, given speed.

Kai have near-instant comms. Others, at first, lack FTL comms. They can get them later, but not initially.

[Ross Vernal]

Additionally: you're not limited to stock designs. The premise is that players are new leaders: Alliance Prime Minister, Hive Queen, Central Consciousness, etc.

Next question I'm pondering is sizes. Even if I cut ship volume in half and unit size to match, there's still the parts themselves.

Like, should a gen3 Kai Laser Cluster have one set size value regardless of ship size? Or should it be smaller scale for smaller ships? I'd imagine that in bigger ships, you'd want more redundancy for damage control, but if I scale size it makes more sense to scale power...

Tech musing:
Synthetics have the perk of having FAST ships. No life means no life support, including mechanisms to reduce the effects of acceleration on passengers. Their tech tree is a grab bag, and they don't specialize in any one weapon.

Edit:


Planets would be ranked 1 through 20. Systems would be 1 through 5.

Standard design would rely on player input: call it "ship doctrine". If you don't like default options, file changes and wait X amount of turns. Or do the custom build if you prefer one at a time, faster.

Miniaturization. Hm...

.75, .66, .5, .33, .25, .1, .05, .01, .001, .0001. It's gonna be EXPENSIVE, and take a lot of time to develop.

[Rolepgeek]

That seems fairly fast to miniaturize, and really, really small, too.

Personally, I'd probably have gone with something like 1, .9, .83, .75, .7, .66, .6, .5, .44, .4, .33, .25, .2, .17, .13, .1, .08, .05, .03, .01, .008, etc.

Slow, yes, but...

[Ross Vernal]

Righto, got full time salary work. I just gave two weeks to the part time job today.

So, basically,  due to 50+ hour weeks, I'm declaring MEGAPAUSE until May, either 4th or 11th, depending on whether I go to Yosemite.  I don't sleep much these days.

Sorry, folks. I'd love to promise and deliver updates, but I'm just not quite used to my schedule yet.