Ships Discussion - Overabundance of Linked Features

[Darth Metus]

[member="Cira"], @Above

I think adding limitations that will appear IC to make an optional job position easier isn't the way to go.

Instead, why don't we go the Occam's Razor route and revamp the Special Features section as a whole? Get rid of the list format and require a paragraph or whatever. In said paragraph, any approved submission needs a one sentence blurb explaining what it does, it's approved strength and weakness. Hell, quote the sub if need be.

What this does it put it all in one area, so the Factory Judge isn't clicking 50 links.

But seriously. The factory survived Waid's submissions. You'll be fine.

 

[Queen Antalas]

[member="Cira"]

How about you have to put all the important information from said hyperlinks in the main text, giving a basic idea of each system and it's basic strengths and weaknesses. Minor things should only seem unbalanced on the technology approving scale, and should be largely irrelevant upon reaching ship scale.

 

[Cathul Thuku]

[member="Shango"] The thing is, I would prefer a bullet-point list format because it is much more legible than a paragraph format. I was confronted with that issue on several occasions.

Adding a one-sentence blurb for each item would make it very, very cluttered and, in one of those instances where I did just that, it ended up being so cluttered that it was bordering on misleading the FJ handling the case... and I know a writer or two (FJs even) who would not want to read through a dissertation to know exactly what contribution to balance a component would make.

 

[Cyrus Tregessar]

Speaking for myself, if I list a system as 'standard' and conclude a bunch of hyperlinks below it's for fluff, and to indicate the presence of things that should be standard on any warship worth a damn (countermeasure systems, EW antenna's, targeting computers, etc). Similarly, if I list a system as 'advanced' it will be elaborated on in the description (even if it's a single line about an advanced sensor suite).

This is basically what was mentioned earlier, about the difference between narrative 'special features' and actual balancing stuff. The templates as written do not include this distinction, as they have no requirement for elaborating on ship systems at all. This isn't a bad thing, mind, but it could certainly lead to confusion in some cases.

Now if the issue is that some people appear to be burying unbalanced crap in a mountain of hyperlinks, that should be settled on a case-by-case basis, in my opinion, with punitive action, since it's basically deliberately misleading.

 

[ADM. Reshmar]

90 % of the stuff we add has nothing to do with writing a fleet battle. Simply saying "Advanced Sensors", "Stealth Propulsion", "Cloaking Device", "Ablative Armor" or "Redundant Shielding" would alleviate a lot of the hyperlinks. I am as guilty as anyone when it comes to hyperlinking canon systems and I get why we do it but as a former judge, I understand why it is an issue. As for me, I started making subsystems like sensor arrays, targeting systems, and such where I have 3 or 4 systems on one device and sub it to tech than on my ships I just have 4 or 5 links back to those approved systems so no 25 links on one submission but this is on the submitter to do. In the end saying you have 4 different types of stealth systems in a fleet battle won't make your writing better or your ship stronger. For every system, there is a counter even for the pretty exotic toys some make up. In the end a cloaking device is a cloaking device, a hyperdrive is a hyperdrive, and stealth propulsion is stealth propulsion so on and so forth. I am glad to see the factory putting an effort forward to get the input of the community great job guys.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

A lot of proposed solutions hinge on 'advanced' vs 'standard' components. It's impossible to retroactively decide what's advanced and what's standard in terms of approved components. Even production level baselines have varied over the years. Same goes for canon tech - any line between standard and advanced would be totally arbitrary.

I pretty firmly believe there's only two real solutions, and both are necessary. One, train the judges to be able to skim over or go through a big list and know what's a problem. Two, communicate. Ask the submitter to tone down egregious lists; ask them to focus on what's important. This isn't an across-the-board problem. In the end we're talking about maybe five people total, and you know exactly who you have in mind when trying to solve this problem. If you don't want to make another rule set, talk to those people and make your expectations clear. That'll help you set the norms you want to see.

 

[Cyrus Tregessar]

[member="Jorus Merrill"]

Hey man, long lists of different munition types matter.

To someone. Other than me. Probably.

 

[ADM. Reshmar]

[member="Cyrus Tregessar"] All you need is grape shot. . all the grape shot you can loadout