Discussion and Signup

It seems like the Override forum has a decent ammount of traffic these days, and my schedule isn't quite full to overflowing... must be time for a webstory.

If you've got no idea what I'm talking about this should give you some idea.

This story will be set in the Escape Velocity: Override universe from the point the actual scenario starts. Wirters/players will control the different factions of galaxy in a co-operative storywriting/ roleplay environment. Command a renegade armada bent on plunging civilization into anarchy, guide scientists and explorers to the next great discovery, diplomacy, warfare, trade and intrigue are all part of the game.

The rules are relatively simple:

Common sense to be applied to all posts, all the time.

Each government will construct a set number of ships per Real Time Day. The makeup of this construction can be changed/redirected with moderator approval. Initial construction rates are 5% of the starting fleet per RTD.

All research and projects must be moderator approved, and will be developed per Real Time Days.

Each major government will have three (3) Research/Project slots. Pirate and Independant players will have only one (1).

During a battle players must wait for their opponents to post a reply before continuing the battle.

Training of all personel between governments is considered to be equivilant. If you want to have your elite squadrons, keep in mind that your enemy has the same right.

During normal posting Fleet movements are restricted by fuel capacity and political boundries.

During battle posts travel time between systems must be accounted for when considering reinforcements. Basicly this means that unless you sent ships before the battle started they probably won't be able to be included in the battle.

Players are strongly encouraged to post their fleet positions at the bottom of every post. This helps avoid confusion, and it's really mostly a copy and paste thing, so it shouldn't be to hard.

Moderators can be overruled by the players if they all agree. Moderators that are players are not allowed to make decisions that directly affect their government.

These are the factions that already have players who have expressed intrest.

Zidagar: Vice Admiral Ipvicus
Igadzra: Captain Carnotaur
Azdgari: Esponer
Miranu: Thunder (Sorry 'bout the mixup there, I promise I don't hate you : ) )
Zachit: RMA
North Tip Renegades: Asriel
South Tip Renegades: <Open>

Voinian Empire: U.E. Admiral
Emalgha: Grunadulater
United Earth: Consul Bob
Human Renegades: Wing-of-no-Wing

*Independant Worlds, South Tip Strandless: **Visitor (Feviry), <Open>

Mercenary Captains: Ryuu, <Open>

*Not a collective government, the individual worlds are all open.
**Still in the decision making process.

Initial Naval Forces

Igadzra
200 Igazras
600 Igadzra Aradas
300 Freight Laziras (200 tons cargo, no weapons)

Zidagar
480 Zidaras
1000 Zidagar Fighters
600 Freight Aradas (100 tons cargo, no weapons)

Azdgari
150 Azdgari Warships
450 Azdgari Aradas
1200 Azdaras
600 Freight Aradas (100 tons cargo, no weapons)

Miranu
600 Couriers
400 Medium Freighters
250 Heavy Freighters
720 Crescent Fighters

Zachit
200 Zachit Aradas
600 Zachit Fighters

North Tip Renegades
15 Crecent Warhips
35 Laziras
125 Renegade Aradas
800 Crescent Fighters

Voinians
150 Cruisers
550 Frigates
800 Interceptors
900 Heavy Fighters
240 Supply Ships

Voinian Subjugation Forces (Internal Only, does not factor in construction)
40 Cruisers
100 Frigates
180 Heavy Fighters

Emalgha
280 Warships
520 Fighters

United Earth
180 Carriers
650 Destroyers
1000 U.E. Fighters
700 Freight Couriers
100 Scoutships

Human Renegades
50 Turncoats
90 Helians
500 Kriats

Remember, to figure initial construction, take those numbers and multiply by .05

Alll of these rules and figures are open to discussion, the story should start next tuesday. I'll be gone until sunday, but it's possible that I'll be able to check up on the discussion before that though.

Oh, I also havn't thought of a title. Feel free to debate that among yourselves. I'll pick one eventually.

This post has been edited by Vice Admiral Ipvicus : 09 February 2005 - 06:16 PM

I was wondering when you were going to get this up. It looks like you've really thought this set of rules through.

Legitimate questions:

Are the fighters (Kraits, Azdaras etc.) that are listed including the ones in the carriers (Turncoats, Azdagari Warships etc.) or not?

Would movement be based on fuel (ship A has 4 jumps) or ship movement speed (warships 3 days, fighters 1) when shifting fleets and attacking?

Personal Opinion:

I think that to start the fleets are very good but it might become difficult to manage if someone doesn't post daily (everyone will miss days sometimes) and builds 65 destroyers a day. I think it might be easier to manage (not to mention more realistic) to assume a 5% or less production.

Sign me up:

Okay, now that all that's out of the way I'd like to request a spot as South Tip Strandless if it's permitted. Excellent job with the start up and actually managing to get Espy! Woohoo!

NT Renegade leader, at your service.

Being that I have a crapload of counterpoint homework to do right now, I'll post something more detailed tonight.

I'd like to put in a bid for the Hinwar, please. Those are the guys who were enslaved by the Voinians, but the UE free, correct? Could possibly do some interesting stuff with these guys as covert... These guys are big, right? As in, dangerous in close combat? It's been ages since I played Override, so I can't quite rember the species description.

Since we're starting out from the very beginning of the EVO scenario, the Hinwar won't be valid.

It is likely I will join in myself but first I would like to put forth a few notations:

Pirates and indepenant worlds having only 1 research/project slots is usually fair but you have to take into account that Iothe makes a living from ship-designing and the human renegades have the genious of Iothe Ian.

The Hinwar do have 1 or 2 përs ships in game (captured voinian frigates obviously) that are rarely seen, Fluffy could go in as a hinwar liberator but you would be more like a merc than anything else.

The south tip strandless 'independants' form a loosely knit militia government, and while each one is independant they rely on eachother for support during extensive pirate raids.

In my oppinion the mods should unofficially represent the strand council.

Allot of people must be pm-ing you because there are more people involved in the webstory-to-be than there are people that have replied in this topic. It can get rather confusing.

IF I I end up joining I think it would be preferable for me to have conrtol of the independant system of Feviry, y'know the place with the fuzzes and the Fuzz Liberation Front? Just Asking.

~tHe vIsitor~

Okay, the good news is that the hotel I'm in has free wireless, the bad news for you guys is that I'm still debating for most of the next few days, and won't be available very much.

As to some of your points, I'll address them in no particular order.

Visitor, if you want to play Feviry more power to you, if you want to play a merc, that's cool too. I hope you have some fun ideas for playing them. Since I like to have a dialogue with all of the players involved in the story, please get in touch with me to discuss whatever issues have.

As to Renegade/Indie research, true some of these guys have smart people and good facilities, but they still lack the rescources that the larger governments have. So basicly there's no way they'd be able to sustain the same rate of R&D.

Also, I didn't mean the Strandless to be a group government, I meant them as independants as well.

Paranoid: Those naval numbers have all the ships you see there, plus any that are carried on board ships that have bays.

I'm not sure how I can explain travel better than I already have. Outside of battles you can move ships around basicly however you want. Posts are generally considered to take about a week of story time each, so that gives you lee way to send ships pretty much as far as their fuel allows. During a battle the actual "time" ships take to travel is taken into account with regards to that part of the story only. Battle posts don't tend to take up weeks of time, more like minutes most of the time. It dosn't make sense to have ships coming in from half way across the galaxy when the battle only started, from their perspective, in the last hour or so.

As to 5% ship construction, I actually considered having it this way before the story started. I don't have any particular attachment to 10% over 5%, so if the rest of the players think that's the best way to go, we can definatly change it.

Fluffy: Playing the Hinwar presents a bit of a problem in that they don't really know that they have anything when the scenario begins. They certainly don't control their homeworld, and there isn't really much of a place to hide out in Voinian territory. That said, maybe we can work something out, get in touch and we'll talk about it.

By the way, if you want to communicate with me other than PM or posting in this topic here's how:

email Ipvicus@yahoo.com
AIM "Ipvicus"

Paranoid, on Feb 3 2005, 08:49 PM, said:

Personal Opinion:

I think that to start the fleets are very good but it might become difficult to manage if someone doesn't post daily (everyone will miss days sometimes) and builds 65 destroyers a day. I think it might be easier to manage (not to mention more realistic) to assume a 5% or less production.

Well, i have two opinions here...

My Biased Side: 10% is fine, it allows me(Voinians) to keep up better with the UE in terms of numbers, which i will desperatly need when fighting a two-front war(those 1,000 UE Fighters are going to rip my warships apart by the dozen).

My Unbiased Side: 5% would be much more managable for everyone else. I usually keep track of my shipcount(and wherabouts) down to the last fighter via a simpletext file so 10% isnt a problem for me, but i know not everyone does this or has the time/dedication to do so. Thus, a smaller increase per RTD would probably be better for the story, and kinder to it's players.
Plus, if i wanted to keep track of halves and thirds to know when i'll be getting an extra ship, i could do that and generally maintain the same relative pace as my opponents.

Prediction: The post that replies to this one will be confused as to what i was trying to say. Why? Just because no one seems to be able to gleam any bit of sense out of what i'm saying. And vice vera... :blink:

Ipvicus:

I guessed that you meant the Strandless to be Indy governments. I was just trying anyway. Looks like I'll have to dig out an old EVO map and find a particular system to control. Maybe you should rephrase the first post and write "*Independent and Strandless worlds: <Open>" in order to clarify possible misunderstandings.

Fleets:

Ipvy paraphrase said:

Ship and fleet movement is unrestricted as long as all players post their fleets before a battle starts. No reinforcements are allowed in a battle under normal circumstances.

Correct?

FluffyWithTeeth:

Maybe you should ask U.E. Admiral. The Voinian player is the one that will be most affected by the Hinwar and if he agrees I'm fairly sure the moderators would be willing to agree.

U.E. Admiral:

Fractions are the biggest problem with the 5% idea. I just thought that it might be more realistic to scale back so that a government can't replace their entire fleet in ten weeks. That and the smaller increase per RTD can be better for the players and the story. However, the fractions might be enough of a problem to necessitate a %10.

Meh, up to Ipvy and whoever else he puts in charge.

I'm back, and I'll be playing the Miranu as said in the first post. The Miranu & Zachit have some specific limited goals in mind, nothing going far. You'll find out more once we start. I'm not planning on posting a detailed background of how I'll be playing the Miranu, you can find out as we go.

As for ship rates, 5% is good. Takes just under 3 weeks to replace a starting fleet then, no quick rebuilds. It should not be hard for people to keep track of the easy fractions resulting. For everyone but the North Tip Renagades, the worst it can be is 0.5.

Okay, I actually want to be different systems depending on whether a South Tip Renegade player shows up or not.

A Groned resistance force looks like it would be more fun to role-play solo if no Renegades show up and Tibidat looks like it would be more interesting with a Renegade player. Here's a map to see what I'm talking about.

This post has been edited by Paranoid : 04 February 2005 - 02:13 PM

I'd like to put in a bid for the human Renegades.

I believe that 10% will be good enough. You may be able to double your force in a fairly short period of time, but since everyone is going to be killing each other fairly quickly anyway, that shouldn't matter very much.

I'll take a spot as the first mercenary captain, second if vIsitor goes mercenary.

I do have a problem, though: I'm in a different time zone than you guys.

Any suggestions for that?

It seems to me that most of the support is for a 5% production value, this sounds fine to me... that's what we'll do.

All of you guys that are signing up for governments, please please get in touch with me through email, PM, or AIM. All of you are pretty much de facto players already, but some confirmation of your intent to play would be great.

Communication between players is crucial, and I feel really strongly that my getting to know you and come to mutual understanding about our goals in the story now is crucial to the success of the story down the line. I'm sure this sounds a bit corny, but I want us to be friends here. When I said "cooperative environment" that's what I meant, and I'm hoping to start that from the begining.

Ryuu: Time zone thing shouldn't be too much of a problem. Espy and RMA are both in England, others are U.S. eastern, I'm central... but we'll all still be pretty much on the same page in the story. Post once a day, or every other day and you'll be fine.

Paranoid: I think you've got the gist of the fleet movements. I would strongly encourage everyone to post all fleet positions at the bottom of every post, even if there aren't any changes. This will keep people from getting mixed up.

I'm happy with the way that this is progressing, keep up the questions and suggestions if you're not sure of anything.

A question, Ipvicus.

In usual situations, we're not over-concerned with the exact time it would take a fleet to reach a location. When it comes to battles, we assume that no reinforcements will be arriving because the battle will realistically last only 20-60 minutes at the most, compared to 1-3 days for reinforcements to arrive.

However, this presents an interesting problem. Consider systems A, B and C, where there are hyperlinks AB and BC. If system A is locked in a state of battle, reinforcements from system B cannot arrive during the battle. However, by usual convention, will ships from system C be able to arrive in system B before the battle has finished, because those fleet movements aren't directly concerned in the battle?

Perhaps an ability to call a player into strict-time could be useful in such situations. What's your take on it?

(Sorry for anyone who feels that my question is going to over-complicate how the game works, but I need to know if I'm playing raiders - Azdgari.)

Hi everyone... glad to see that we're getting together a story just like the good old days.

After discussing things with Esponer (SilverDragon) and RMA over AIM, we've proposed that I'll play Miranu, and RMA will play Zachit. Hopefully this will be okay with everyone.

And I was hoping to play Zachit, but I will stay out. I will be back next webstory which should be around May

It seems that a few of the players I had previously established havn't checked in, it's no big deal, but by tuesday I'd like some final confirmation that everyone intends to play.

New guys, I'd still really love it if you'd email or PM me. I got Ryuu's message, and I'll try to reply to it soon, but Wing and a few others I'd like to hear from.

Paranoid, FluffyWithTeeth, is it possible that you two could fill the South Tip Strandless and ST Renegade slots? If either of you are interested please let me know. I'd like to fill those areas and have a good story going on there.

Just so everyone knows, this story is starting tomorrow. If you'd like you can start posting background info and the like.

Players will still be allowed to join once the story begins if there is a place for 'em.

Here's a little something I worked up about my Zidagar a while back.

Quote

A Short History of the Zidagar People

Very little is known about the time before the Great Conflict began, so the formation of the Zidagar as a people remains mostly shrouded in mystery. What is known is that from the time of their earliest recorded history the Zidagar have been a people of great faith in the Divine. The Ancient Zidagar were a people of many diverse creeds and faiths, not always coexisting amicably, but for the most part tolerating each other. One of the oldest, perhaps the first of these religions is the worship of the one deity "Zid." From the begining of their written history Children of Zid were the predominant faith of the Zidagar. It's strength was centered primarily on Zidagar itself, and then among the Core World. Naturally this provided the Children with a firm majority of the Zidagar population. Of the assorted other Zidagar faiths more knowledge has been lost to the ages, or deliberately destroyed during the purge than is known today. It is known that these creeds were most common at the western edge of Zidagar space. Some were heavily influenced by first contact and later interaction with the Miranu, some arose on specific worlds in reaction to local stimuli, regardless, none of them survived the purges.

As to the government of the Zidagar nation, like any other nation it has gone through many evolutions and changes over the years. On Zidagar itself a feudal system slowly gave way to a more Republican government that afforded it's people basic civil rights and self government. The influence of the Children of Zid was enough to keep a very strict social environment, which translated in a pretty stifling, but mostly stable government. Perhaps because of these restrictions, the Colonies were the places that tended to establish more liberal regimes. The elements of society that sought political and social freedom were drawn farther and farther into the frontiers of what is now Zidagar space. Eventually the time came that there were enough worlds populated by the Zidagar people that they realized a need to form some kind of united government to direct their efforts as a whole. While at first the Frontier Worlds were wary of the restrictive policies of the Core, and the Core Worlds equally wary of the destabilizing influence of the liberal Frontier, eventually they managed to for the Conclave, and with it the nation of the Zidagar Union. For centuries after it's formation the United Conclave was the primary governing body of the Zidagar. Delegations were elected from each member system, and they came together in order to deliberate issues and make policy that affected the entire Union.

Roughly five generations ago, as the Strand Wars were intensifying and escalating and a great social upheaval began among the Zidagar. Elements among the more pacifistic cultures began to feel that the constant warfare and death must be ended and an understanding reached between the Strands. Conclave representatives from the frontier worlds of Filider, Pozdag-3, and Neeg formed a coalition that moved to establish diplomatic relations with the Igadzra and Azdgari. While the idea was immediately rejected by the most powerful and conservative of the Conclave parties, support grew rapidly over the next few years among the moderates of the Outer Worlds. Sensing the approach of their decline, and being horrified by the prospect of peace with groups that they considered total spiritual anathema, a fundamentalist group of leaders within the Children of Zid decided to take action.

Calling themselves the Holy Council they organized a hardline party within the Conclave and began to take total control of the government. With their high level connections in Intelligence and Military circles, and through brilliant usage of inflammatory media the Council was able to solidify almost total support of the mainstream Children of Zid. Their power base secure, the Holy Council orchestrated a the dissolution of the Conclave. Outraged, the worlds of Twyus, Neeg, Pozdag-3, and Filider attempted to form an independent government, civil war broke out. As passionate as they were, the Outer Worlds were no match for the Core in terms of armed strength and industrial capacity. Within a few short months they were subdued, and the Council set about it's true purpose: Inquisition.

Instituting complete martial law, they began to round up political activists and rival religious leaders for "purification." Within a few short years millions of Zidagar disappeared, the Inquisition took no risks, and suffered no dissent. No efforts were made towards re-education, and every threat that they could recognize was eliminated. A New Order had risen, and at it's heart was the Holy Council of Zid. The entirety of Zidagar society was centered around the Children of Zid, the Zidagar were the Children of Zid.

Out of the new order social organization was instituted. At it's base were the common people of all walks of life, farmers, workers, craftsman, teachers, doctors, soldiers and civil servants. Above these, and forming the leadership of the Zidagar people in all of these areas were the Clergy. They became responsible for providing the direction of the advancement of every aspect of Zidgar society, and through their ultimate loyalty to the Holy Council ensured the continued control of that body over all Zidagar. Coming from the commoners, but remaining within themselves were two castes meant to protect Zidagar society and enforce the will of the Holy Council. The Paladins became the leadership elite of the military. Training their entire lives in the various Arts of War, the Paladins form the officer corps of the Zidagar military, pilot all starfighters in the Navy, and are the most elite combat troops. The other caste, universally feared by all but the Holy Council and the Paladins are the Inquisitors. Their sole responsibility is eliminating any threat from within the Zidagar themselves to the power of the Holy Council. In addition to acting as secret police, there are rumors of clandestine military units responsible for quelling organized protest or rebellion before it can spread.