Really Big Guns

[Ashin Varanin]

I've been pondering a thing or two. Lotta folks been consolidating barrel counts lately, and I have no problem with that. Matter of fact, I've drunk at the fountain of barrel consolidation my own self, a time or two. That said, I feel there's a natural threshold point or two for things that might be important, especially because we've seen a lot of guns getting bigger and bigger. This sucker comes to mind.

What I'm proposing is mostly policy already, I'd just like to see it enacted with a little more rigour. I'm thinking I'm not wild about the perceived gray areas that let people try stuff like this. I propose that we make it inescapably clear that any otherwise straightforward barrel consolidation weapon system, as with hypervelocityparticle whatnots, requires a separate tech sub, maybe if it's over a certain threshold. That threshold might be 160 guns/40 batteries, the worth of a heavy long range quad turbolaser battery. Or maybe no threshold's necessary and all these systems need tech subs anyway. Making more work for myself? Yeah, but we're at a point where it's necessary. People try to one-up or counter or rip off each other, and they're not bothering to submit the actual weapons.

In keeping with this, I'd also propose we scrap the old rule about proton beams. It's way obsolete at this point.

 

[Ayden Cater]

[member="Rasho the Hutt"]

Another thing I think we could do (as either a separate act or a substitute for the above) would be that any single gun that breaches a certain thresh-hold (say 50) requires some manner of serious flaw or drawback in the design. For comparison, a single heavy, long-range quad turbolaser is worth 40 guns, so I feel that 50 is a fairly reasonable threshold. Maybe 60 if we want to be a bit more generous. But make it so that ships with great power have great weaknesses.

 

[Darth Kentarch]

Go figure your example is that from Ashe herself.

hypervelocityparticle whatnots

I think you are looking for kinetic energy weapons or Mega particle cannons. Yeah you can thank Armored Core and Mobile Suit Gundam for those. Anywho.
Perhaps we should simplify this to any weapon tech, that exceeds the power of turbo-laser battery requires 1 or 2 QUALITY development threads?

 

[Popo]

Personally, I think a cumulative total battery would be easier to reinforce with maybe the actual gun worth limit as a back up to prevent folks from breaking up batteries to bypass the rule. As for the actual tech subs, I think the dev threads should be up to the FJs there.

As for the actual number limits, a battery count of 160 with a backup policy of a gun count of 50 would be a good starting point for tech subs. We can lower or raise it in the course of this debate or as the rule is in place.

 

[Asemir]

I was under the impression anything non-canon technically needed a Tech Submission? Wouldn't that include most of these cases?

 

[Popo]

[member="Asemir Lor'kora"]
Yes and no. For more complex things we'll require a Dev thread. For plain gun consolidation we haven't. Now that people are making these massive guns with no real weaknesses but are worth all these guns, we should probably start regulating them.

 

[Asemir]

Well, when they bundle guns together, like that hyper velocity particle whatever cannon, would that constitute a new technology that would require an additional Tech Submission? Or is it just considered an additional weapons bay?

I am for the requirement of more Dev Threads, by the way. In fact, I believe Dev Threads should be mandatory for capital ships of a certain size, which may address this issue.

PS I hate posting on my phone.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Well, when they bundle guns together, like that hyper velocity particle whatever cannon, would that constitute a new technology that would require an additional Tech Submission?

This is what I want. And while I like our current dev thread policy - command ships only - I would love to see these big nasty guns get dev threadded.

 

[Ayden Cater]

[member="Asemir Lor'kora"]

It's the difference between a heavy octuple turbolaser and this hyperparticle cannon thing. The former has plenty of basis in canon to be given a free pass. The latter is something so much stronger than any single gun on a capital ship that it's crazy and would absolutely need a dev thread to even have a change at making it work.

The crux of the problem is not the ships themselves but the people who are taking their gun pools and consolidating them into a handful of guns. To illustrate the point and make some other examples, let's look at some ships.

This is your average capital ship. It has a wide assortment of guns and plenty of them, yet the individual guns are fairly "weak"; nearly half the guns on it are of standard value, with another quarter of them being one bare step up. The strongest guns on the ship (arguable its main battery) are only worth twenty normal guns. It also compares roughly with an Imperial I Star Destroyer.

This is the kind of problem ship that we're beginning to encounter. Compared to the above, the strongest individual gun on this ship is worth a full eighty capital guns. And that's basically all this thing is armed with. It has ten guns; none of them have a firepower rank of less than sixty guns. On top of the problem of the guns, more problems arise when you look at the description of the ship itself and other areas. It's compartmentalized, so it's going to be incredibly durable. A quote from the sub itself reveals "- the bulk of the ship can survive and remain 40 to 60 percent combat effective after capital weapons have punched clear through the hull and out the other side,". As well, the guns themselves can apparently be protected by recessed covers. It can basically fire in any direction it wants.

This is the kind of ship that we're talking about when we talk about excessive gun consolidating without weaknesses or design flaws. Compare the above with this. Like the former, this ship has a few very powerful guns. However, that's about where the similarities end. Beyond having a suite of other, more normal guns as the majority, this ship has a noted weakness for attacks from the sides. The firing of its big cannons takes forward shield offline for a brief window, which is also the face of the ship that will generally see combat. As well it has a documented fire rate, so it is not a weapon that can be spammed in a fight. It also carries with it the risk for total power failure should it be fired without its safety measures, which themselves are vulnerable to fire and risk damaging the ship themselves.

So there needs to be a point, a line that we can point to, so that when people cross it we can say "look, if you want this fine, but you have to give us X, Y, or Z". My personal threshhold is about 50. As I pointed out before, a single heavy long-range quad turbolaser is about as big of a gun as most ships would really ever need and that's only worth 40 guns. So if someone wants a particular gun with a value of more than 50 or 60, then I feel like severe, noted weaknesses should be included in the description at minimum.

 

[Asemir]

Just a thought:

It seems like a big problem is the lack of true construction rules that account for mass and volume of weapons or equipment, armor/shielding, and speed. As one increases, the availability of the others decrease. So, if you increase payload, you'd sacrifice an equal amount of armor or engine size because the maximum allowed mass of the ship cannot be changed. Doing so would clearly define what is balanced and what is acceptable given the amount of resources available.

But that requires a ton of development to build from scratch.

It's also probably far off topic.

But that is the way to really make things objectively balanced.

Then again, it seems like we're moving in that direction, what with the number of allowed guns (volume of weaponry) and the conversion ratios.

On topic, without doing additional development work towards a codified set of construction rules, it would seem the best way would be to place a hard limit on the number of weapons that can be consolidated, and either auto-deny anything that exceeds that cap, or auto-request a Tech Submission and/or Dev Thread.

(PS, we wouldn't have to design the construction template from scratch. Battletech: Strategic Operations, for example, has amazingly detailed and thorough construction rules that could be applied to our situation here.)

 

[Darth Kentarch]

It might be good to have a separate area for factory submissions of satellites, space stations, and other large scale weapon platforms. From here we can do what [member="Asemir Lor'kora"] says, and set guidelines down for construction and development standards.

 

[Ayden Cater]

[member="Ashin Varanin"]

I figure this needs a revisit in light of this monstrosity.

We need a line for gun consolidation.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Ayden Cater"] - On balance, I think that'll fit best in the Ship Guide rather than in the Factory Rules, so between you and [member="Domino"], draft me some drafts. Between my original concern and Mark's hyperstupidity guns, it looks like we need a concise way to cover two bases: tech submissions for special big guns, and not cramming ships full of big guns (no assault command ships with nineish heavy long range hypervelocity guns or whatever). I'm fine with specialized escorts, things like the Hood-class I made a while back, the cruiser that's just one big gun, but when it starts getting into the range of 'I consolidate NINE THOUSAND GUNS into THREE BARRELS', there's a level of shipkilling expectation that I'm not comfortable with.

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

Did it really only take them "several hours" to build a ship?

 

[Asemir]

Didn't you know? Those new 3D printers let you build entire fleets in a matter of days! Single ships take only a few hours, at worst.

[member="Sarge Potteiger"]

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

Where are these printers and how can I use them to build mechs

 

[Asemir]

I don't know but perhaps I should send one to PGI so they can release more Mechs faster!

Also, fighting and killing two Timberwolves while piloting a Stormcrow = <3. UAC20 = win

/thread derailed

[member="Sarge Potteiger"]

 

[Popo]

#threadbackontrack

So, to follow [member="Ayden Cater"]'s wish for a line of consolidation, why not use this? Use a baseline of 60 gun points for a battery and maybe 15-20 gun points for an individual gun? At that point, you can have any gun consolidation of an individual gun up to 15-20 points without a dev thread and/or a consolidation of up to 60 points for an entire battery.

 

[Ayden Cater]

First Draft - Bare Bones Edition

A ship cannot field a single gun with a combined value greater than 50 without extensive weaknesses and/or a substantial development thread for the weapon.

No more than a third of a ship's gun count can be consolidated above the aforementioned threshold.

[member="Ashin Varanin"]

 

[Popo]

[member="Ayden Cater"] [member="Ashin Varanin"]
I'd say let folks consolidate their guns all the way if they'd like. It's a huge risk for a huge gain and it leaves the ship with a glaring flaw no matter what. As for the gun count, 50 works well for me. Any consolidation over a gun count of 50 requires a tech submission. If a dev thread is required at that time, then so be it. It encourages more dedicated effort to the weapon system over just doing a "BAM! Bigguns!" concept.

EDIT: Sorry, should have made that viewpoint clearer in my initial comment. My bad. Was distracted at the time and didn't think it through all the way.