Ground Warfare - Costing

[sabrina]

[member="Valiens Nantaris"] fancy doing a dominion using this if my faction is interested.

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

[member="sabrina"]
When the map changes, I might take you up on that offer!

 

[sabrina]

[member="Valiens Nantaris"] do you want me to send you a pm, and link my fa to it so we can see what we come up with.
[member="Thanith Gumara"] He most likely be in charge of our fighters

 

[sabrina]

[member="Valiens Nantaris"] as soon as you decide the planet, and make sure it not one some else will speed dom. I will try and come up with a plot line of why we are there, and why we will stand and fight for awhile.

 

[Ali Hadrix]

[member="Valiens Nantaris"]
For the same reason I do not magically handwave hundreds of dark side tendrils with my Sith Lord, people should not be expected to handwave hundreds of units of NPCs with every turn. If someone does this, then it is up to the faction admins on both sides to arrive at a decision to make sure it doesn't continue and/or if further steps need to be taken to ensure fairness continues. Making a point system detracts from writing quality and subverts the method of writing into an HP/AMMO sort of deal. As much as this has already gripped fleeting, and remains why the only parts in it I take part in are passive positions where I don't need to worry about crunching %s and other stuff in relation to hull and shields and define actual numbers that have no actual context in the writing beyond arbitrary standards, it shouldn't move on to every facet of NPC writing.

You can't exactly shove every kind of NPC into each of these, and these don't accurately portray each of them either. One person may believe something is better than another, and when someone argues that they're both elites it becomes impossible for any troop to better the other because they will bicker back and forth that they have been specifically trained for the instances wherein they might combat other special forces. You can't stop godmodding with numbers, and you can't curb bad writing with statistics. I come from a world of stats and dice rolls (literally programmed entire RP games that ran off of it so that even writing was curtailed to player stats) and I can tell you that this isn't the best solution. It may appear, for now, to be better, but once you've gone several months doing this it becomes an even larger hassle and in hindsight it was better how it was originally. The best solution I can give you is that responsibility is a better policing method than any, educate people on what is responsible and encourage factions to take a stance of common sense on writing.

To be perfectly honest, my ideal system is no system.

The easiest way to do this?

Have FA's get together beforehand and talk about what forces will come into play.
"Hey, I wanted to bring this awesome powerful infantry unit I just got approved."
"Cool sounds great, but since I just read over the submission, I think those guys should be the only infantry you bring."
"That's fine, thanks."

What happened with the recent Ord Mirit invasion is an arbitrary point system was used, and when the Republic brought four of Draco Vereen's awesome, 40 x 80 meter ACS-503 Mythosaur Fortress Walkers, the Sith went, "Woah, those things are massive and didn't really fit well into our point system! Think you could give one up in the sake of fairnesz?"
And I went, "You know you're right, that point system wasn't really designed for every possible tech on Chaos, we'll substitute one of our Mythosaurs for a couple small tanks and some infantry."

I swear to goodness it didn't take more than 10 minutes.

All force composition starts with two factors in mind:

1) What's the terrain/environment situation like?

And 2) What might my enemy bring (refer back to #1)

We should be dealing with #1 WELL before any invasion starts (not just releasing a half-arsed description when the invasion goes live), so that writers can form better forces that are more practical in size and composition.

This numbers game is old hat, and it's played out as far as I'm concerned. Kuhn's right about the numbers game, it's a pain in the are that leads to poor, shallow writing that's little better than the kill tracker on Battlefield 4.

So again, MY solution?

Just talk it over with the other side before hand. Wham, bam, thank you ma'am.

 

[Ali Hadrix]

Also had to say: Each numbers system we add or try erodes away at the "collaborative" part of RP. Every time. Remove that system and writers have to talk to one another again, which only improves communication and helps us in the long run.