Hellfire and brimstone... Will someone please shoot me for not thinking this through properly before?

Let me clarify my 'Equal forces' suggestion: Yes, it does mean points. But that does NOT repeat NOT mean percentages. Using percentages just seems to verge on the sloppy, in my opinion. The way we work this is that, as I said, people ask the judges (Koshinn: I'm actually part of the referee's team, so you're not alone) how many points they think such-and-such a ship design would cost. Groans Without any 'standard' design, I can't explain what a base value would be. Oh dear...

(Pulls self together) Here's the way we do it. Someone from a team PMs me (that's no longer a problem - I HAVE BROADBAND! Sorry, I'm very excited about it) with a general 'class' of ship, the firepower it has, and what aspect it aims for. To clarify the last bit, when designing a ship, the designer creates it with particular strengths in mind, right? Here is a list of attributes a ship has. If you claim a strength in one area, the cost goes up - with weakness, vice-versa. Clear?

1. Speed
2. Agility
3. Armour/Shields
4. Size

As an example, a battleship with 10 railguns with high armour and speed would cost more than an escort frigate with a few laser cannons and large size.

To answer the question about moving around the map, it takes one round to move a ship two 'links', so a ship in 6 could move to 2 in one round. On the other hand, you can't just skip through if the enemy has assigned defenses to a wormhole/HG - your commanders aren't that suicidal.

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Strategic Plan:

<snip>

Military Production Plan:

<snip>

Tactical Plan:

Given the 'where' of the fight with the two strategic plans, and the 'with what?' of the fight with the Military Production plans, the tactical plan answers 'how?'. Here, each team details essentially what instructions they give to the commanders of the fleet. The reason we do not game this out with real ships is that we assume the actual leaders are working from the home planet, with no way to directly control the ships. You include tactics and tricks you want your commanders to use, formations, how far apart you want your ships to be, how you concentrate fire, and what your primary targets will be. Ships emerge from the photosphere of the star traveling at a speed S, in the direction from which they came (but not exactly lined up with the center of the sun. This is random and uncontrollable, ships will be scattered by approximately the sillouhette of the sun. Lets just say a ship jumps in and will randomly be placed just above the surface of the sun on any point of the sun that couldnt see the star it came from. I can draw a picture if this isnt clear).

Give me a few hours to calculate speed S. .1c is definitely too high, traveling at 1g acceleration, it would take many years. I still need to integrate the equation for acceleration due to the gravity of the sun, but lets just say, you need to accelerate at 1g towards the sun for an hour, and human cannot sustain that much more than a g or 2 for that long. So it would be about 10m/s^2 + whatever the acceleration due to gravity is from the sun for an hour. If you can do the research and decide that humans can take more than 1 gee for extended time periods, you can do a jump faster. I will do these calculations for people, so you dont need to worry about it. All ship movement physics is newtonian, we only have to worry about relativity/quantum for weapons and such. I doubt a ship will be able to get to appreciably high speeds.

(Note: at the judges discretion, information from the Strategic plan will be kept secret until it makes sense for the other team to find out. Especially for research and movement well behind the front. (ie, team A will never have any idea what is going on in B's homeworld, as they have no way to get there). The Judge can make a ruling on espianoge(sp?), but a simple plan like universal ID cards, and the difficulty of communication, would make this impractical.)

Excellent, Neb. Consider that the plan, 'strained' through the previous points.
Rereads the article Not sure we need an actual value for speed. As said above, all we really need are 'high', 'medium' and 'low' - A round is being taken to be long enough to have a decent battle between two opponents.

We might introduce espionage later, but for the moment (keep in mind, this still is just an initial run), but for the moment, details of ship movements, exact specs of ships and so on are kept confidential unless there are also ships from the other team in the system. If you see what I mean. Of course, any feasible cloaking tech could alter this...

Prays that I haven't missed anything.

This post has been edited by Chrome Falcon : 19 October 2005 - 12:52 PM

Speed limit c insys. Delta-vee is how we determine movement times, and how much fuel that fleet is willing to spare.

Delta v with current technology is 3G max sustained, 10G with everybody strapped in with pressure suits. Won't get much more without inertial compensators of some kind.

Chrome Falcon, on Oct 19 2005, 10:47 AM, said:

Hellfire and brimstone... Will someone please shoot me for not thinking this through properly before?

Let me clarify my 'Equal forces' suggestion: Yes, it does mean points. But that does NOT repeat NOT mean percentages. Using percentages just seems to verge on the sloppy, in my opinion. The way we work this is that, as I said, people ask the judges (Koshinn: I'm actually part of the referee's team, so you're not alone) how many points they think such-and-such a ship design would cost. Groans Without any 'standard' design, I can't explain what a base value would be. Oh dear...

Well why use points? If you start off with a max point value then guess what, it's percentage, just with a diff name. And I don't think asking judges what such and such ship would cost in the middle is a good idea. Do you know how much something will cost until you actually build it in real life? Nope. It's called going over/under budget.

Quote

(Pulls self together) Here's the way we do it. Someone from a team PMs me (that's no longer a problem - I HAVE BROADBAND! Sorry, I'm very excited about it) with a general 'class' of ship, the firepower it has, and what aspect it aims for. To clarify the last bit, when designing a ship, the designer creates it with particular strengths in mind, right? Here is a list of attributes a ship has. If you claim a strength in one area, the cost goes up - with weakness, vice-versa. Clear?

1. Speed
2. Agility
3. Armour/Shields
4. Size

Not necessarilly.. it has to do with technology used. If someone were to, for example, find a way to cheaply grow diamond on ships like the Polaris do, would it cost more points to make than a ship with titanium armor? Maybe... but it might actually be cheaper.

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As an example, a battleship with 10 railguns with high armour and speed would cost more than an escort frigate with a few laser cannons and large size.

Again, not necessarilly. Railguns may be cheaper to make than laser cannons. They're certainly more viable with current technology. High armor may be due to something else... it's all relative! You can't just say I want high armor, high speed, small size and a super laser (literally, THE super laser.. like a deathstar), and spend all my points on it. You'd have to back it up technologically which may increase or decrease... or even make impossible... the price.

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To answer the question about moving around the map, it takes one round to move a ship two 'links', so a ship in 6 could move to 2 in one round. On the other hand, you can't just skip through if the enemy has assigned defenses to a wormhole/HG - your commanders aren't that suicidal.

That's what the Americans thought in WW2... then Japanese threw the kamikazes at them which were highly successful. And the Muslim fanatics used suicide bombers later in the century. Don't assume something as a judge please, it limits the inventiveness of the players.

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Excellent, Neb. Consider that the plan, 'strained' through the previous points.
Rereads the article Not sure we need an actual value for speed. As said above, all we really need are 'high', 'medium' and 'low' - A round is being taken to be long enough to have a decent battle between two opponents.

I agree kind of, something more specific than high, medium and low. Round to the nearest hundreth of a C plz.

NebuchadnezzaR, on Oct 19 2005, 06:59 AM, said:

Which do you mean distance limit on jumping? We already have a map set up, a ring of 6 planets...View Post

The 'limit' I was referring to is that you can't point at, say, a star several hundred light years away and go there, thus allowing incredible loops through half the galaxy to come in at a really odd angle. The mere existance of a map with defined jumps indicates that there is something preventing that.

Anyway, I hope you have something good up your sleeve, Qaanol, because (assuming the judges remain realistic) space combat is looking awfully boring.

Edwards

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Well why use points? If you start off with a max point value then guess what, it's percentage, just with a diff name..

Point taken.

Quote

And I don't think asking judges what such and such ship would cost in the middle is a good idea. Do you know how much something will cost until you actually build it in real life? Nope. It's called going over/under budget

Do you have a better suggestion? I'm having nightmares trying to cover all possible angles and problems with this.

Quote

Not necessarilly.. it has to do with technology used. If someone were to, for example, find a way to cheaply grow diamond on ships like the Polaris do, would it cost more points to make than a ship with titanium armor? Maybe... but it might actually be cheaper.

Again, any better suggestions? At the time I wrote that I was trying to get some form of equality.

Maybe I'm being unfair to people here, but at the moment I feel that everyone is being destructive without a great deal of constructivity occurring. Help me, please...

Having had time to think about the points/percentage issue, I've decided to stand by my original view. The advantage to using points as opposed to an arbitrary percentage is simply that we can get fixed values of ships - using percentages is too vague. '15% of my frigates vs 20% of your cruisers' - what does that mean? How do we work out what sort of battle is occurring? The same situation, using points, allows us to say '6 of my frigates vs 3 of your cruisers' (or whatever). Having fixed numbers of ships means that we can have realistic ideas of fleet sizes, as well - sending frigates against battleships is suicidal, but if we're talking about (say) 30 frigates against 1 battleship, the frigates will probably win.
Secondly, I think you misunderstood the idea. Yes, there is a fixed points value to start with, but reinforcements would be hell to organise with percentages. If a side has a certain points income per round which can be spent producing a ship, things become simpler.

As for your technology point, Koshinn, the best idea I have at the moment is for the team submitting the ship design should also be providing any ideas for how to reduce the cost of the ship ie. A theoretically possible method of growing diamond a la polaris.

The speed point: Technology, calculations and theories, please, Teams.

Like I said, I'm open to better ideas, but for the moment, this is the best I've got.

EDIT: Having just received a point from Edwards, I realise that I didn't make the HG/Wormhole system clear. The way I set it up, you don't enter at a random point in the system. Think of the HG system in EVN - you enter an HG and can go to several locations, but you have to exit through an HG. Sorry for not making this clear.

This post has been edited by Chrome Falcon : 20 October 2005 - 11:56 AM

No, reinforcements are factored into the percentages.

Lets just simplify it another notch.

Each team designs their fleet, then decides what proportion of each they are going to build. The judge can do some rough estimates on the price (you totally can't go by size alone: A B2 costs $1Billion, a cesna maybe a few hundred thousand). This should be proportional mostly to the simplicity of the technology (and size does factor, just not solely).

Also, words like 'battleship' and 'frigate' have no meaning, because whenever anyone says them, they are reffering to their favorite game that uses those words, and those games are different for different people.

I withdraw from this 'game.

1. Too many aribitrary values. Judges are deciding too much.
2. Lack of RTS element. Too turn-based for my tastes.
3. Confusing Parameters.

This post has been edited by Skyfox : 20 October 2005 - 01:03 PM

Its neither turn based nor RTS, but farewell. Our team has already a bit of planning done. This is pretty much how strategic planning things work in real life. Millions of ships are too many to handle with anything but general rules and arbitrary values.

I hope we will still have someone to face. Ship design is the most important, can we all just do that?

Neb, do you think I should tell Edwards about my über-top-secret weapon, which I mentioned to you a while back, that guarantees our victory, just to find out what sort of defense against it he can come up with?

:cryptic grin:

Skyfox, on Oct 20 2005, 10:59 AM, said:

I withdraw from this 'game.

1. Too many aribitrary values. Judges are deciding too much.
2. Lack of RTS element. Too turn-based for my tastes.
3. Confusing Parameters.
   View Post

I'm trying not to decide anything, Chrome falcon is.
You're right, it isn't RTS. How would you have RTS on a message board? :blink:

Chrome Falcon, on Oct 20 2005, 09:52 AM, said:

EDIT: Having just received a point from Edwards, I realise that I didn't make the HG/Wormhole system clear. The way I set it up, you don't enter at a random point in the system. Think of the HG system in EVN - you enter an HG and can go to several locations, but you have to exit through an HG. Sorry for not making this clear.View Post

Whee. Back to square one for strategy ideas. Could you please come up with a careful, precise description of how the hypergates work? My previous questions are still in effect.

Qaanol, on Oct 20 2005, 03:55 PM, said:

Neb, do you think I should tell Edwards about my über-top-secret weapon, which I mentioned to you a while back, that guarantees our victory, just to find out what sort of defense against it he can come up with?View Post

Ooooooh. That sounds like fun! (Especially given that, assuming the hypergates stabilize, I have a strategy worked out that should guarantee a win on our side.)

Edwards

Edwards, on Oct 21 2005, 07:47 AM, said:

Whee. Back to square one for strategy ideas. Could you please come up with a careful, precise description of how the hypergates work?
View Post

You have an HG at a specific point in a system. When you enter that HG, you have no options about where you go - you get spat out of an HG in another system. This link is permanent, immutable, and reversable (so if you enter the HG on the other side, you go back to where you started. An HG only links to one other HG, which in turn links back to the first one.

Does that count as a careful precise description?

Please understand, everyone, that I'm trying to make this work in some sort of reasonable way. I'm not omniscient - many of the problems being brought up simply didn't occur to me when I wrote the rules in the first place. Each new problem, more often than not, means that I have to rethink and rewrite the rules.

Can I also say that everyone seems to be taking it too seriously? We don't have a hope of getting everything to work just by talking about it. We need to treat this as what it is, and what I keep saying it is, which is a trial run. I don't expect it to be perfect. If the rules I hammer out seem unfair or wrong, then please forgive me. I'm doing my best here.

Oh, I thought we were using the sun jumping idea, and i think I misled a bunch of people.

Luckily, the strategy hammered out so far doesn't care how you get into the system. You die anyway. Many times.

One last note:

Lets assume every system has between 7 and 15 planets, with planets 2-4 of most systems being NEARLY habitable (ie, you still need bubbles, but not unbearably hostile).

one or two of the largest planets (that being from about the fourth to the eighth) is(are) split into an asteroid belt. And most planets have moons.

So yeah, pretty much 6 systems that are only arbitrarily different from our own. I think everyone assumed this, but nobody actually said it, and its kind of important.

I think that current research points to most planetary systems being radically different than our own, such as having extremely rapidly orbiting gas giants at very close radii to the star. These seem to prevent the formation of smaller rocky planets such as Earth, no?

Note on asteroid fields: they are not confused maelstroms like the Hoth Asteroid Field in Empire Strikes Back. If they were that close, they would begin lumping together into planets.

Question- Are you factoring in resupply ships/ Resource convoys?

It seems ather important to, you know, FEED your soldiers/marines/crew/ships.

-H^3

NebuchadnezzaR, on Oct 21 2005, 01:02 PM, said:

Oh, I thought we were using the sun jumping idea, and i think I misled a bunch of people.
Luckily, the strategy hammered out so far doesn't care how you get into the system. You die anyway. Many times.

I thought we were too... I think it makes the most sense and makes things a little simpler since you can't destroy nor blockade a sun ... or at least no where as easilly as a hg. And a question on HGs.. how would you get them there in the first place? Send them using sublight drives? Mmmm... 200 year time frame seems too short then, considering the closest star is 4 light years, travelling at 0.1C (a VERY fast speed... 30,000 km/s... in contrast, the speed of sound at sea level is 0.34 km/s ... ) would take 40 years. That would mean we'd have to develop HGs in 160 years... which is doubtful.

This post has been edited by Koshinn : 22 October 2005 - 12:00 AM

Chrome Falcon, on Oct 21 2005, 08:29 AM, said:

Does that count as a careful precise description?View Post

Except for all the points about size and such, yes. And as Neb&Qaanol don't seem to care how that part works, how about if I just send a description of what I'm assuming for the hypergates along with the strategy?

NebuchadnezzaR, on Oct 21 2005, 01:02 PM, said:

Luckily, the strategy hammered out so far doesn't care how you get into the system. You die anyway. Many times.View Post

Don't be too sure of that...

rmx256, on Oct 21 2005, 03:17 PM, said:

I think that current research points to most planetary systems being radically different than our own, such as having extremely rapidly orbiting gas giants at very close radii to the star. These seem to prevent the formation of smaller rocky planets such as Earth, no?View Post

That may be the case, but, as evidenced by our own solar system, systems like Neb described do exist. If there isn't any distance limit on hypergates, why set them up in uninhabited systems?
The creation of the gate system does pose some time-scale problems, though.

Edwards

Edwards, on Oct 22 2005, 12:05 AM, said:

The creation of the gate system does pose some time-scale problems, though.
View Post

That's why I tried to use the sun idea, a few posts up. :unsure: