If Chrome Falcon is the project organizer/leader then I suggest that he creates some rules and posts them before we go any furthur- I can see going off on tangents here.

Ok, a few things. Opening a new wormhole requires a jupiter-sized ball of negative energy (exotic matter). Since we don't have any idea how to get exotic matter in todays world I think that the resource cost for opening up a new wormhole would be increadably enourmus. Therefore a hypergate would be best just to stay open on top of an active wormhole, rather then trying to open a new wormhole every time it was activated. Therefore the connection would be fixed. I'ld imagine that the chances of finding a wormhole that connected to a different stargate would be well... just plain silly.

And i'm not sure I like the idea of side x being able to link their fleet/military system instantly with the stargate of side y's homeworld.

Making a wild guess, I would put the number of medium-sized roids within our solar system at 2 million. Lets say the average size of an astroid would be 2km. Lets say 2/3 of the astroid is minable, and consists roughly the density of steel (7850 kg/m3).

1 ru = 1.2x10^13 kg X

Astroid Belt: 2 million ru's
Planet: 3 million ru's
Moon: .25 million ru's

I think that assigning limiting point values for each technolgy (ie you can only spend up to x on this tech) kinda limits the gameplay. Forgive me if I read your post wrong rmx256.

Oh and team B for me.

Current Teams:

Referees: rmx256, Koshinn
Team A: phyco with power1, NebuchadnezzaR
Team B: Mispeled, Edwards, Mackilroy, Skyfox

Maybe some more people need to join Team A, or one of us can switch.

Koshinn, on Oct 11 2005, 11:59 AM, said:

Yeah, HGs shouldn't be ever destroyed... It would isolate a system for hundreds of years. Also, I don't thing HGs should be connected by a path or set jump line, but rather any HG can connect to any other HG, it just takes longer. That would make for a more fluid war.
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Hmm... can ships fight while in the hypergate system? Or can they 'pass eachother in the night'?

As for never destroying HG system, I would have to disagree. The same exact logic would have meant that the Germans shouldn't have destroyed any bridges during WWII, yet we see that bridgeheads are the most important territories, and that, when the Germans lost them, they immediately demolished them to slow the attackers advance indefinitely. Of course, this works slightly differently of the HG system is set up as such.

What if the systems are set up sort of corresponding to the EV jump system?

Systems have gates that each connect to other systems, and you need to make several short jumps between and within the systems to get any appreciable distance.

Anyway, all we need is a rough consensus, and maybe not even that. I respect Chromes authority to chose whatever he wants. I nominate Edwards to switch teams

I suggest 3 rounds. Each team presents their favorite strategies/sciences, then publishes it for the other team to rebut. Rebutalls must be based primarily on the original strategy, modified as little as possible in response to what the other team presents. After 2 rebuttal phases, the judge decides which team handled the responses better.

That's not really what I meant by points, but I'm willing to let it drop.

Neb- so it's more of a debate than a wargame? I got it.

Ships should probably not be able to fight while transversing a hypergate or a wormhole- the distance between exit points of the gate would probably be too short to allow for much actual manouvering, IIRC.

Yeah, debate format seems to be the only way to get this done on a forum without getting bogged down with die rolling and such, but anyone else can offer ideas. I suggest Cfalcon just picks some rules fairly arbitrarily and tells us to start.

NebuchadnezzaR, on Oct 11 2005, 11:45 AM, said:

I suggest 3 rounds. Each team presents their favorite strategies/sciences, then publishes it for the other team to rebut. Rebutalls must be based primarily on the original strategy, modified as little as possible in response to what the other team presents. After 2 rebuttal phases, the judge decides which team handled the responses better.
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Well the point of judges is to make sure everything is legal... having judges not step in until round2 takes out the point of a judge. That's why the term referee/judge is more accurate.

rmx256 said:

That's not really what I meant by points, but I'm willing to let it drop.

Neb- so it's more of a debate than a wargame? I got it.

No, it's a wargame. Using points would make it an rpg/turn based strategy game.
http://dictionary.re...earch?q=wargame

Quote

To simulate (a military operation or a proposed plan of action) in order to test validity or effectiveness under actual or assumed conditions.

Well, as I said I'm willing to let the points thing drop- noone got exactly what I was meaning anyway.

Rules? We can't arbitrate anything without them

I'd like to join...team A, to even out the amount of players on each team.

This could be interesting. I'll try it out... Team B.

So do we all want to meet on #wargame to strategize?

i think that points would make the game more interisting, allowing each team to have the same odds of winning; if it was whatever we make up, the gave would probably end up confusing with almost no set rules, so a point system would probably be needed. each person should start with 100 points and get about 20 points a round.

maybe we can have each idea we come up with be presented to the judges, who would give it a certain amount of points it requires.

I have no time to get involved in this, as much as I'd like to. Perhaps you can sign me up for strategic commentary?

phyco with power1, on Oct 11 2005, 07:40 PM, said:

i think that points would make the game more interisting, allowing each team to have the same odds of winning; if it was whatever we make up, the gave would probably end up confusing with almost no set rules, so a point system would probably be needed. each person should start with 100 points and get about 20 points a round.

maybe we can have each idea we come up with be presented to the judges, who would give it a certain amount of points it requires.
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That's all good and fine, but you realize the point isn't to win, the point is to learn. Trying your hardest is important but winning isn't the overall goal. Did anyone read my original post?

rmx256, on Oct 11 2005, 01:49 PM, said:

Well, as I said I'm willing to let the points thing drop- noone got exactly what I was meaning anyway.

Rules? We can't arbitrate anything without them
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I think I understood what they were for, but I could be misleading myself.

I always think of wargames as a couple of generals driving an army (tanks, marines, ect.) out into a large field and playing a complicated chess/battleship hybrid.

You could probably do that here, with only one thing missing: the military has inventories of current equipment, where it is, how many, how much it costs, and probably how long it'll take to get to any given location, and a very good list of what they have on hand.

Because teams can select technologies on the horizon of science, we don't have such an inventory. We don't know how much it'll cost, or how long it might take to build or transport, or how fragile it is, or what kind of maintenence it requires.

A points system could be used to prevent one team from equiping their military with a series of superweapons capable of demolishing any defense on the table, or from building an impenetrable defensive grid. Both of those not only remove all fun, but tactics are reduced to an I.W.I.N Button or Divine Shield and Hearthstone. Not fun, not informative.

Mispeled, on Oct 11 2005, 05:35 PM, said:

So do we all want to meet on #wargame to strategize?
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Only if someone posts the logs. Even if it's after the game.

We'll probably want to go over all of this afterwards anyway and make sure the process and results are safely stored somewhere so we don't have to do it again in a year and a half when all this is a faded memory.

Yes, if any gate can link to any other gate, combat would quickly devolve into pure defense. There would be a few holes in security, as trade needs to pass through, but for the most part it would just be "if anything unauthorized pokes its head thorugh that gate, blow it off!"

One-to-one gates, especially if they're several hours travel from each other in each system, would leave much more room for variation in tactics. Long, indirect routes to avoid being spotted until it's too late; advanced listening posts; time to call up defensive fleets, rather than having them in flight at all times; etc.

NebuchadnezzaR, on Oct 11 2005, 11:34 AM, said:

I nominate Edwards to switch teams View Post

About the map: Thanks for the appreciative comments! I built it myself from a list of nearby stars and a nice star-mapping program (and some tweaking to remove most of the confusion)- the map is actually a functioning EVN plugin right now (although there aren't any planets). The image was made by EVO Developer's Map (a great program).
@Chrome Falcon: It's hosted here, if that helps.

Edwards

My point is we arent testing tactics, we are generating strategies. We arent saying 'lets attack alpha centauri, see how that goes'. We are saying 'our team will emphasize small fighter combat. As referenced by this article, we will be using antimatter weaponry. Approximately half of our war machine will be dedicated to producing these carriers and fighters, the other half will be primarily geared towards fixed, long ranged orbital emplacements to defend our planets. We will use planets as bastions of rescources and equipment, therefore gearing generally away from smaller encampments, and neglecting asteroid belts as anything but minor rescourcing areas. We will attack under X condition, targeting Y (not a name of a planet, rather "military/industrial installations" or "research centers" or "supply lines")."

Team B does the same thing, they both mail them to the Ref. The ref posts them here, declares who has made an illegal move, if any, then both sides get a chance to 'react' to the other side's strategy. There is no "I move my battleship to sector I-23-beta and fire my quad lazers for 23D20+5 damage." Just general strategies.

The point is to evolve the strategies. In each strategy, there is a weak point. There will be an opposing strategy that can take advantage of this. The point is, by trial and error, evolve the two strategies into a sort of 'stalemate'. At this point, we can assume that this is what would happen if technology progressed along our assumptions, and a war was fought.

There are no RU, and ships dont have prices. You simply decide how much you invest proportionally into a bunch of areas, and the best, most developed strategy is treated as the winner.

The judge can declare at each round who is winning, but the final judging should be based upon these components:

1. Scientific accuracy: How closely the technologies relate to what we understand about modern science.

2. Reasonable rescource use: How well the two teams set up their priorities in spending rescources, and how unwasteful they are.

3. Flexibility: This has two competing components. It includes both how well they changed their strategies in relation to their opponents, and how little they had to alter their original strategy in order to do so. (IE, it is best for your first strategy to be very flexible, and the later rebuttals are built around the first strategy already being in place. Doing things like 'refitting the existing fighters' is a huge plus. Not having to refit fighters at all is an even bigger plus, if you still can counter their strategy. Do not say "we scrap all of our fighters and build a fleet of long range rail platforms" as this is an obvious waste.

4. Originality: doing something that hasn't been done before always catches the opponent off guard, so either team gets mad props for this.

After each round, the judge could probably game out just a little bit. Like a few battles and the resulting economic impact. The two teams do not have input at this point, and the result should be MOSTLY fair, but better teams have been screwed out of the win before. So remember, the judge's word is LAW. The judge should also assume reasonable commander competence, so if either team leaves out something dumb (like word for word supply chain logistics), just let them have it. no "Oops, team A cant fire because they didnt order enough copper wires to connect their fusion reactors to their tritium laser cannons".

I hope I haven't taken too much initiative in recomending this, this is the best way i see it for it not becoming to terribly bogged down.

NebuchadnezzaR, on Oct 12 2005, 06:36 AM, said:

...
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I was gonna reply to Artanis but you covered it perfectly.

On HG Connectivity: Regardless of how they're connected, you have a defensive war focusing on chokepoints. If you have a huge HG (like using the area around a sun as a HG) you can't possibly choke off the entire gate. In the end, war is about the mission and the survival of your own nation. If you're in a war with me (for example), would you sit defensively the whole time? There would be a lot of pressure on your economy, you'd have limited mobility. Basically, the best defense is a good offense is correct. If I'm sieging all your planets, I may not be making any progress but you can't touch me while I can terrorize and kill some of your people.

So what if one side develops super weapons that owns the other side? Guess what happens next round? They both have them . Is that realistic? YES. Look at the cold war. Both sides had massively powerful weapons and no way of defending themselves except with a MAD (mutually assured destruction) policy. Now will that happen in space? Maybe. Finding out is one reason to do a wargame. Yes it is fun, but I'll say again for the 3rd time, the point isn't to win. This isn't a turn-based strategy game or an RPG, it's a wargame. Wargames are mostly theoretical, they usually isn't any movement of actual resources. "Military excersizes" more accurately describe mock engagements.
Example: http://www.jfcom.mil...03/pa032503.htm
Back in the old days, wargames like chess and its ancestors were used to teach commanders how to maneuver troops on a battlefield. This was because war was largely limited to a single battlefield at a time. That was before WW1. In modern times, wars are fought anywhere and everywhere, with tiny movements bringing about huge changes. Information spreads quickly, troops maneuver with the aid of ground vehicles and aircraft, much faster than at any other time. Wars the size of countries or continents aren't unheard of, and you cannot simulate that with a board game. In modern times, wargames are theory vs theory. RTS games may be considered a type of wargame, but they're more like a modern version of chess, hardly applicable to modern warfare.
Example: http://www.airpower....apj/3sum90.html
You may have to skip around on that link a little, draw attention to the advantages, limitations and pitfalls of wargames. The rest is background.

Some people may find this interesting, the design of a wargame dealing with the future of the US Army, done by the Rand Corporation. http://www.rand.org/.../MR1335.app.pdf

This post has been edited by Koshinn : 12 October 2005 - 10:41 AM

Who is to generate the preexisting circumstances- the teams or the judges? We have to have a starting point somewhere.