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I've read the majority of this thread, and I apologize for having little in terms of responses here lately, though I would like to say a couple things:
I've for a while now, strongly believed in separate threaded Objectives. Kind of like Flashpoints for each objective in an Invasion. Though that's a different topic in my opinion.
I don't think stats are entirely needed for fleeting. Sure they can help as references, but I don't believe in them. If PvP dueling has any indication, people are USUALLY capable of taking reasonable hits and stuff. Once that "PvP" dueling involves NPC's however? It appears that their is a natural decline in peoples hit taking ratios. This then applies to Fleeting. So what are we to do when people aren't playing fair on a regular basis? You have some one to mitigate the situation. I believe a Game Master or perhaps a few for fleeting is needed to increase the level of destruction, the speed of destruction, and eliminate unfairness in regards to the destruction. This way, anyone, literally ANYONE can control a fleet, go up against the best, write something sort of vague-ish and the Game Masters decides based on their writing and on their opponents writing whether or not its a hit. No stats needed.
I believe that had more to do with the fact that writers tend to overlook such matters. Star Wars is a Space Opera, not a true SciFi so such consistency would not have been a priority when developing what was effectively an aide to a plot device.
That being said I don't believe that ion cannons are as weak as many people think they are. There are many installments--not just strategy games--in which they've had at least a larger effect than being able to quickly take down shields. Their weakness is that they have a shorter range but their ability to disable a ship is real; given enough power. Of course such disability is only temporary.
Personally, all my research on Ion Weapons more or less lines up with what's already been said. That they have a greater overall effect on shield than turbolasers and are more likely to cause crippling (though temporary) damage than a Turbolaser... At the expense of being a non-lethal weapon.
My issue with this is not in the ion cannon itself or in the effects it 'should' have in our roleplays, but in the sheer commonness of the weapon. In every source material I researched, capital ships were most often equipped with Ion Cannons OR Missile/Torpedo weapons in support of Turbolasers or Mass Drivers.
In Naval Combat, as best as I can peg it in the star wars universe, Turbolasers and Mass Drivers were the "16 inch guns" of naval warfare and were used to slug it out with opposing ships at "standard engagement ranges." Missiles and Proton Torpedoes were used at close ranges to knock out targets that were too thickly armored for standard weapons to destroy.... Or Ion Cannons were used in a nearly identical manner. At close range as a support/finishing weapon.
The nerfing and ignoring of ion weapons in SW: Chaos's fleeting is primarily to blame on the overabundance of the weapons. The number of ships that include the weapons as primary armaments is rather insane. There are ships on Chaos that should be able to knock out any other ship in a single shot from "extended engagement ranges" (aka: Heavy, Long Range weapons). In ground combat where people bring as many droids, soldiers, tanks, exc as they need and a writer can insta-kill as many as he wants without greatly inconveniencing the other writer... such weapons and tactics are fine. But when the standard procedure is to limit yourself to a set number of ships and "play chess" with the other writer? Such mechanics and ship designs become... severely unfair.
Up until recently, a frigate has been a frigate. Any one frigate is about the same as any other frigate. If your opponent brings a frigate, you know roughly what you're dealing with just from the title of the ship. A balanced ship is standard. An Assault ship does (maybe) half-again the DPS and has half-again the armor. A Fast Attack ship hits similarly to an assault ship, moves quickly, but typically has 'balanced' defensive strength or lighter. A support ships has the weakest DPS and defenses, but typically brings some form of fighter/bomber or electronic superiority to the battlefield.
Outside of these specializations, every frigate had roughly the same potential. It was simply a matter of glancing over the sub to see what flavor of weapons and design created the unique strengths and weaknesses of the ship.
But now... there are at least two Mass Produced ships that I know of that throw this formula out the window.
Valiens Nantaris said:
People don’t take hits/damage properly.
Size of fleets being too small means people don’t want to lose even 1 ship.
The trick here is to resist the urge to "Shoot the big one." It boils down to a psychological effect (and a tactical edge). A fair number of writers (particularly those new to fleeting) will attempt to put all their eggs in one basket. They'll bring the biggest ships available to them or they will bring one massive ship and a small number of escorts. Their entire plan will revolve around that single ship.
And yet, most 'opponents' I see are more than happy to walk into the thread and engage the biggest, most threatening ship on the field. Lets, and I feel bad for doing this, but look at the current skirmish between the Mandalorians and Primeval as an example. Verz decided to squeeze a balanced command ship into a roughly 4000m fleet. And Anja decided to shoot at it with everything she has (at range anyway). And yet, (ignoring fleet movements, tracking speeds, weapon limitations, exc) Anja could most likely have destroyed the entire escort of cruisers and frigates by focusing fire on one escort at a time in the time it will take her to chew through the shields of a Command Ship with the firepower of a handful of frigates using long range weaponry (which have the same stopping power as the same number of heavy turbolasers).
Through roleplaying out the redistribution of power and other such tactics, the player with the giant ship has all the tools at his disposal to keep his giant tank of a ship puttering along throughout the entire thread. Bit by bit, the ship could slowly become a hulking wreck, but the time it will take to do so could easily doom the other fleet as Verz uses the escorts and fighters/bombers to lash out at the other fleet. Alternatively, the writer that, psychologically, thinks that the command ship is the most important part of his fleet will often gladly let the enemy pick off a few of the tiny escort ships... and only later realize that he's screwed as the opposing ships surround and hammer the flagship at close range... at which point the writer in question is more likely to admit defeat.
Granted, in the above situation there are a number of other variables... but I figured it was an appropriate example of how to ease your opponent into feeling comfortable taking casualties.
I think that small fleets promoted better roleplay as a whole, and is more welcoming to novice writers that want to support the two 'primary' combatants of the thread.
Valiens Nantaris said:
People don’t take hits/damage properly.
People aren’t sure how much damage a ship can give or take.
Vast variety of weapons and tech can be confusing.
Even I will admit that this can be confusing. The current rules of the Factory are designed to be vague on the issue so that individual writers are free to decide what is appropriate. Unfortunately, the writers of starship submissions have more or less ignored the current rules in favor of the old rules and it took a great deal of time for the judges to figure out how to appropriately compensate for this. Unfortunately... there is a great deal of damage that has been done to 'fleeting' in the process.
As the old guide went out the window, so too did the rules and regulations it enforced. Every 500 meter frigate was roughly as powerful as any other 500 meter frigate. Hull, Armor, Shields, and Weapons varied between designs... but the overall power of each ship remained roughly the same. Even the dreaded "Dark Blade" is roughly the same as any other Light Star Destroyer. Yes, the submitter used a 200 post dev thread and the full sacrifice of a hanger to justify a massive increase in armament... But what did that really give the ship? The design includes a large number of HLR Turbolasers and a Hypervelocity cannon. The weapon modifier for Long Range Turbolasers is 2x for damage and 3x for range. Making HLR Turbolasers 4x damage and 6x range. That's the same damage output of a Heavy, Heavy Turbolaser, but at over twice the point cost. Even if the Hypervelocity cannon has a higher overall penetration and damage potential, the overall damage output of the Dark Blade is only 75% that of a 'standard' Assault Light Star Destroyer using nothing but basic Turbolasers. All of the design and development benefited the ship by giving its damage output a moderately higher 'armor piercing' value and by doubling the effective range of its guns... And yet... it's further limited by the slow tracking speed of those same guns and their ineffectiveness at targeting close-in targets or fast moving targets or small targets... On the whole... a scary ship, but not massively superior to any other Light Star Destroyer. It simply has its own set of strengths and weaknesses.
But the current status of the Factory is a bit more confusing. And I'm going to have to point fingers at titan industries to explain the problem that I and others saw coming several months ago. For starters, let us look at what is currently the most powerful non-flagship starship in the game. The Wyyrlok-class Star Destroyer. With a tiny 39 posts of development, this ship was instantly approved without edits.
The ship outguns the Dark Blade by 210 points of gun math, which is impressive and amusing considering the difference in development thread length, mass production status, and lack of weaknesses... but let's get down to the real issue. The standard number of guns on Light Star Destroyer (Assault Grade), using the old guide, is 480 guns. The Dark Blade, after shaving off the 'range modifiers' has a "weight of fire" of only 360 guns. The Wyyrlok-class, however, has a weight of fire of 750 guns. So... that's twice the firepower of the "big bad ship", and 1.5x the firepower of a 'standard' Assault Light Star Destroyer. And... it gets even more amusing. Where the Dark Blade emptied its entire hanger to make room for a reactor large enough to power all of its guns, the Wyyrlok instead equips the hanger capacity of the carrier and fields 9 wings of starfighters instead of the 'maximum' 6 that a 'maximum length' destroyer would be able to field. And... the submission goes on to claim that the entire front half of the ship is empty of essential components or hangers and is instead made up of re-inforced bulkhead after bulkhead.
SO! 2x to 3x shields, all but immune to hull damage from the front, has the hanger capacity of a carrier, and 1.5 times the firepower of a normal Assault Light Star Destroyer. And it's mass produced.
This is currently the most powerful non-flagship in SW: Chaos. But it is not the most powerful per-size. That honor belongs to the Maladi-class Strike Frigate.
With just as much development thread commitment as the Dark Blade, this ship sports Advanced, Double Redundant Shield Generators (3x standard), two squadrons of starfighters, and a withering armament. Where the old standard for capital weapons on a frigate sat at 45 guns, the total gun math of this ship clocks in at 480 'points' of guns and a weight of fire of 240 guns. That's 3x standard shields, 5.3x standard guns, and 2.4x standard point defense for an Assault Frigate. And once again, it's mass produced.
So... Fancy ships with lots of numbers... what's the problem? Well, it's two fold.
The first half of the problem comes from the questions asked in this thread.
Valiens Nantaris said:
People don’t take hits/damage properly.
People aren’t sure how much damage a ship can give or take.
Vast variety of weapons and tech can be confusing.
Fleeting is complicated.
Like sabre duelling, fleeting is a niche interest.
Tactics, ranges, placements all very uncertain from canon standpoint, each writer has their own view.
The accepted standard, regardless of if you are familiar with fleeting or not, is to have both sides agree to a set maximum size fleet. For the sake of argument, lets say that 10,000m per side is the standard. Once upon a time, the worst problem that could arise during such a thread was IF the writers agreed that "Flagships do not count against the maximum fleet size" and the opposing writer chose to bring a far larger number of flagships than the opposing writer/faction had access to. But now, where is the value in agreeing to a 10,000m fleet if the opposing writer has access to multiple ships that can give and take twice, three times, or five times the damage that your own ships are capable of?
Personally, I'm not bothered by these stats. I understand the limitations of the weapons and the ships they are placed upon well enough to counter these threats and reduce the 'effective' damage of the opposing ships to the point that they are at the disadvantage. But the average writer is not going to be capable of doing the same. Most writers will look at the number of guns on their opponents ships... and sit there as their ships are blasted apart beneath their feet.
Should one frigate do five times the damage of any other frigate? I don't know. But there is one such frigate that's capable of doing so, and it creates a whole host of problems beyond itself.
It's finally time to open Pandora's Box.
That's right... Larraq's gonna talk about the Armament Rating.
Currently, there is only one official rule that regulates starships. And that rule is the Armament Rating. Now, there is a limit on starfighter squadrons per each classification of starship, but the numbers are skewed and rarely followed appropriately by the judges (in relation to the template anyway). For example, a Dedicated Carrier is allowed to reach a length of 5000 meters total and the maximum number of starfighter squadrons available to said 5000 meter long carrier is 10. And yet, the majority of 800 to 1500 meter long carriers sport 8 or 9 squadrons. So we're going to look beyond the hanger capacity today and focus on the Armament Rating itself.
"Armament: (You may provide your armament in list format and/or provide your vessel an Armament Rating on a scale of 0-20, where 0 is no weapons, 1 is very light weapons, 5 is light weapons/light defense, 10 is medium weapons/medium defense, and 20 is heaviest weapons/heaviest defense. Armament Ratings are scaled in relation to the type of ship, meaning a Starfighter will not equate to a Destroyer. Armament Ratings provide only basic weaponry and cannot be written as anything other than it, unless the ship also has special weapons."
The key feature of the Armament Rating is a subtle one. It is the notion that there is an absolute maximum. "20 is heaviest weapons/heaviest defense". There is no such thing as a 21/20, and every ship to ever receive the armament rating of a 20 out of 20 will always be equal to every other 20/20 armament rated ship on SW Chaos. Yes, you can say that your ship has a mix of Heavy and Quad Turbolasers or that it also has a mix of Assault Concussion Missiles and Proton Torpedo Tubes, but at the end of the day... your ship has the same overall damage output as any other ship of a similar armament rating.
You can make a fat, slow, 20 offense and 20 defense frigate and someone else can make a fast, agile 20 offense and 18 defense frigate. The two ships do roughly the same damage. The slow one could have its weapons organized into broadsides and the fast ship could have its weapons arrayed on the front of the ship. You could even say that the broadside frigate has 18 offense on each side... And you end up with a simple, fair fight that's easy to understand. Yes, each ship has its own set of skills and weaponry... but when they hit each other at close range, they are doing roughly the same amount of damage to each other.
It's simple, it's easy, and it doesn't interfere or restrict roleplaying. Nor does it force anyone to take X damage and roll twice on the critical hit chart.
Now... here's the complicated part.
There is no existing correlation between the old guide and the Armament Rating. The only solid fact that can be pointed to is that the 20/20 armament rating is the maximum. All other ships (I don't think a ship had ever been made with a 20/20 armament rating) of a set category are inferior to a ship with a 20/20 armament rating. Even the Maladi is inferior to a frigate with a 20/20 armament rating. Which also means that a 20/20 armament rated frigate is superior to a Maladi-class Strike Frigate... which... unfortunately means that, if we try to correlate the two systems, that every frigate with a 20/20 armament rating has 3x the shields, 5.3x the capital weapons, and 2.5x the point defense of an "average" frigate. And what's more amusing, is that these submissions require nothing special to obtain these values. Each and every time a ship is submitted specifically for the purpose of making "the best ship" that out-guns any other ship.... it inadvertently increases the firepower of the ships it would have to compete against.
At least... that's how the rules read at the moment.
Personally, I think it is simply in everyone's best interest to pretend that these 2x and 3x and 5x capital ships do not exist. They unbalance fleeting as a whole and run the risk of breaking the factory once the rest of the board figures out the correlation between Armament Rating and every other ship submission. (To be fair here, I'm a fan of the Armament Rating. It, in theory, prevents drama and competitive one-upsmanship submissions.)
As far as I am concerned, these ships are the same as any other. A frigate does the damage of a frigate, no matter how many guns you try to squeeze onto it. A cruiser has more shields and armor than a frigate. And a frigate will never be capable of doing more damage than a Light Star Destroyer can. The special weapons and features added to them are there as a catalyst to promote better roleplaying, not as a measuring stick through which to claim superiority.
soo.... in short...
Valiens Nantaris said:
People don’t take hits/damage properly.
People aren’t sure how much damage a ship can give or take.
Vast variety of weapons and tech can be confusing.
I pretty much agree with what you've said. However, what would be done about making ships specialized? I brought the Mothma-class ship to the board, with the purpose of being able to deactivate starfighters within its ionic field range. That's not something that gets covered in the armaments rating.
And then why do we even sub ships at this point? I don't understand how a 20/20 ship compares to a ship with long-range HVCs. What is the range on a 20/20 ship? And why don't we just go to some baseline ship that the whole board can have at? It seems like Chaos would just be making the same ship over and over, but with a different image.
[member="Captain Larraq"], you're impressively coherent considering how long you've been up.
I've been somewhat hesitant to embrace the armament rating system myself. While it certainly ensures an element of fair play, and definitely makes ship designing more accessible for those who aren't fond of number-crunching, I feel that ships with the armament rating just come off as being more bland to me, and I feel that its ambiguity drives me away from that system.
I think an alternative solution might just be to follow the baseline Starship 2.0 rules (since that's what most people continue to use) but stick with clear armament limits, even with development threads. What development threads can then do is allow inclusion of more advanced technology per submission or restricted materials. This would allow people to make some pretty advanced and more fleshed out submissions, but would not allow any game-breaking offensive power to come into play, which could prove the case with the Maladi or Wylock.
The armament rating is a good idea…if we were starting the factory and all subs from scratch.
However, since it is so difficult to cross over one from the other, and understanding what it actually means.
If the Maladi and Wrylok is so broken I would report them and explain your reasons.
For me, the biggest one of all is the Immortal. Even though I make fun of it and have wrecked several of them, its armaments are pretty absurd.
100 long range heavy turbos and 100 long range heavy ion cannons plus a proton cannon!
That’s 2000 capital guns plus a special weapon. And yes, they have some dev threads, but that is a lot more than expected!
I would literally have no idea how armament ratings work, nor would I know what sort of guns would be present - or how many guns would translate to what rating. When I make ships, which rarely see use even though they appear to be rather well-equipped, I like to add quirky things to make them stand out, and to me the armament rating just doesn't do that for me. That isn't to say I don't like the armament rating, it just isn't something I, myself, would find myself using.
When 3.0 first came out most of the subs had them, I think. It fell out of us probably mostly because people don't understand how to apply it, and raw numbers of guns make more sense.
I'd post more but I'm on my phone and fuck that noise.
The problem with fleeting, fundamentally, is that we're trying to RP something which should have strict rules and procedures but does not.
Ultimately everything comes down to the fact that we're trying to RP something which should be a wargame or a novel. Neither of those are especially interactive on a forum!
Armament Rating... There are no hard values, But I'll explain my viewpoint on them.
Armament Rating 1-5: Appropriate for 100% Civilian transports, shuttles, 'legal' freighters, medical ships, exc.
Armament Rating 5-10: Appropriate for the above ships that plan to operate in slightly more dangerous areas of space. All military ships should be armament 10 or higher. A lower armament rating should translate as allowing higher overall technological advancement to compensate for the ship's relative weakness, in relation to dev thread requirements.
Armament Rating 10-14: This is the low end of competent military hardware. A military transport shuttle would have this armament, while an "assault shuttle" would have a higher rating. Sensor frigates, troop transports, and other light, escort focused ships would put themselves in this category. A "sensor frigate" with an armament rating higher than 16 would need a fair bit of development.
Armament Rating 14-16: This is where you'd see "carriers" and similar ships. You'd also see a few scout corvettes/frigates with stealth systems spread between the 14 and 18 armament rating, with an 18/20 Stealth Corvette being a nasty little bugger that's designed to find and kill larger ships via ambush. The armament rating in this category is high enough to be appropriate for any ship seeking to use its guns offensively, as opposed to self defense. The ships in this category should be high tech variants of "balanced ships" that sacrificed overall weapon strength for enhanced technological utility or improved hanger space.
Armament Rating 16-18: This is your "Balanced" ships. Every ship with an armament rating between 16 and 20 is of "ship of the line" quality. With 16's being your "fifth rate ships" and 17-18 being your fourth and third rate ships. (to borrow from the age of sail.) Any ship with an armament rating of 16 can justify "wanting" to go toe to toe with other ships. This should also be the most common category for ship submissions, and the easiest to get approved.
Armament Rating 18-20: These ships are the top dogs. In the age of sail, these are the First, Second, and Third rate ships (by catagory). Assault grade ships should always have a minimum armament rating of 18. However, having a 20/20 armament rating should not (by itself) require a significant dev thread. A ship with little to no technological advancement should be able to be designed as a 20/20 ship with a simple 20 posts at minor production, so long as it is relatively slow, simple, and designed around the idea of being a fat little brawler. An 18-20 armament rating is also appropriate for fast ships with a low defensive rating. Say... 18 armament and 16 defense with all guns capable of pointing forwards, or 20 offense and 16 defense with all guns 'locked' forward. Either should be simple enough without a significant dev thread. A ship with a great deal of technological advancement should really have to struggle to break the 18/20 mark. Advanced sensors, advanced tracking systems, hanger capacity, production rating, advanced armor or hull design, restricted materials... for balance sake, these ships should more or less cap out at 18/20 unless they support the design with significant development, a low production rating, and/or design flaws/weaknesses. Similarly, "balanced ships" should be encouraged to top off at the 18/20 range with 19/20 or higher prompting the judges to have the ship brought down in armament rating or re-balanced as an assault ship.
You can still include details about weapon selection in your design. You could say "a 16/20 armament rating with a balanced mix of heavy turbolasers, mass drivers, and ion cannons. The defensive armament is a balanced mix of flak cannons and point defense lasers spread evenly over the hull. The ship is supported by a heavy complement of Assault Concussion Warhead Launchers to give itself improved knockdown power at close range."
"A 18/20 armament of Heavy, Long Range Turbolasers supported by a balanced mix of heavy concussion missile launchers and proton torpedo tubes, with quad laser emplacements spread evenly over the ship." Your actual "damage output" with those sniping weapons will be closer to a 14/20 ship... even at point blank, your effective armament rating would be closer to 16 than the actual 18... Long Range and Heavy, Long Range guns are a support weapon... It's kinda like the difference between a mortar and a cannon. It's big and it's got longer range, but it's less accurate and tends to do less damage overall.
The main appeal of the armament rating is that it simplifies things and makes them relative. If I have an 16/20 frigate and I'm going against a 20/20 frigate, I need to be clever, agile, and make good use of targeting vulnerable areas and supporting myself with starfighters and bombers if I want to win. It doesn't automatically mean the 20/20 ship is going to win, it just structures the roleplay and tells both writers how their ships compare to one another.
Also... weapon angles are important. There is a big difference in a 20/20 ship's potential damage output if its got a balanced spread of weapons, weapons arranged into broadsides, all guns facing forward, or turrets capable of doing all of the above (but having a slow tracking speed or requiring time to 'swing around' as it switches from "all forward" to "broadsides" to "even spread").
For example... an 18/20 ship with all guns forward could likely match a 20/20 broadside ship on effective damage output, or outperform a 20/20 ship with an even spread .
On the whole... it cuts the BS and makes the overall design of the ship the focus. Not the number of guns.
Granted... special weapons can throw off the Armament rating. Look at the Haran'uliik. A small, fast frigate with light-ish defense and heavy-ish offense. The ship would likely be 18/20 armament and 16/20 defense. (which could be simplified as 18/16.) But how do you really quantify that Vulcan Cannon? It's a weapon designed to wipe out an entire squadron of starfighters in a single go (if it can catch them on the approach) and can shred dropships and corvettes with ease... As much as I like the armament rating the the way that it seeks to balance out fleeting as a whole... unique weapons can throw a kink on that. That is... if they (the unique weapons) are not balanced at creation. Vulcan cannons are balanced because of their ineffectiveness against larger capital ships (without first switching to solid shot, which makes them useless against starfighters) and their massively poor tracking speed.
HLR Hypervelocity Cannons can punch strait through a capital ship, while normal Hypervelocity cannons do about the same damage as a HLR Turbolaser.... But the tracking speed on them is so slow that they are all but useless against ships smaller than a Star Destroyer.
And then there is the proton cannon... Originally deemed too powerful for use on starships, that changed when I dumped a 100 post dev thread on a unique ship that included just one of these shiny weapons... that can bypass shields, pierce armor plating, and explode within the hull of the target ship.
>_>
I'm still surprised they let me have that one. It's designed to allow the Corvette to cripple star destroyers by shooting out power conduits and engines and such, but it's fairly nasty against cruisers and frigates. I mean... look at the Maladi frigate. No really... read it. Read the part about the reactor.
I almost don't want to let Naast'ika shoot at one of those frigates, since I can't see him -not- blowing that particular ship up in a single hit. Granted... that's pretty much the ONLY ship he'd be capable of doing that to... And... yeah.
Valiens Nantaris said:
[member="Gir Quee"]
[member="Captain Larraq"]
For me, the biggest one of all is the Immortal. Even though I make fun of it and have wrecked several of them, its armaments are pretty absurd.
100 long range heavy turbos and 100 long range heavy ion cannons plus a proton cannon!
That’s 2000 capital guns plus a special weapon. And yes, they have some dev threads, but that is a lot more than expected!
I complain about things too much and too often to be taken seriously anymore. If I reported it, I'd just be told to sit down and be quiet unless someone is actively abusing it in a roleplay. No one is going to pull a sub for edits because "It breaks the factory and produces an unfair writing environment during fleeting engagements."
As far as the Immoral goes... it has 2000 guns, but only 40% of that is damage. So it's weight of fire is only 800 or the 900 available to most Assault Command Ships. Not to mention the horrible tracking speed of the weapons and the limited fire arc. I'm more annoyed that it too has the hanger capacity of a dedicated carrier.
But that proton beam cannon needs to come off.
To be fair, there were a large number of people that were unhappy with Ayden making the first HLR Hypervelocity Cannon. Admins and Judges were pulled aside as people realized that the weapon was a borderline superweapon. In the end, Ayden was (as far as I'm aware) told that it would not be pulled from his existing ships so long as it was not abused... and given a stern warning about it. The stern warning basically boiled down to "Never, ever, ever point this at a planet."
And then copies began showing up.
In large engagements with 10,000 meters per side or more, with multiple star destroyers... bringing one or two ships with these fancy weapons generally won't raise concerns over unfairness. Lining the entire ship up to get a shot against a Star Destroyer? Good luck with that. You'll probably only land one or two shots in an entire thread. Which makes it acceptable in large engagements and frowned upon in small engagements.
The Proton Beam Weapon is not borderline... it -is- a superweapon.
I understand the desire to make something fancy and new, but at some point, judges and admins need to step up and say "That's enough."
Actually... It's kind of the other way around. Ships with Armament Ratings have the advantage due to the way in which the existing rules are written. Even an 18/20 ship can argue that it is capable of going toe to toe with any ship that does not include an armament rating. Correcting the issue is less about starting from scratch and more about showing writers what they are actually dealing with. It's a snowball effect really... As soon as someone starts cranking out 16, 18, and 20/20 ships and using them appropriately against ships that would otherwise terrify those who have to deal with them, you'll start seeing a mass exodus of ship submissions being modified to accommodate the Armament Rating system.
If I had the time, I'd modify my entire line of capital ships to the armament system and go show people the light... and then laugh as OS or Primeval writers try and report me for not being "blown away" by the firepower of their superships. =p
Armament Rating 1-5: Appropriate for 100% Civilian transports, shuttles, 'legal' freighters, medical ships, exc. Armament Rating 5-10: Appropriate for the above ships that plan to operate in slightly more dangerous areas of space. All military ships should be armament 10 or higher. A lower armament rating should translate as allowing higher overall technological advancement to compensate for the ship's relative weakness, in relation to dev thread requirements. Armament Rating 10-14: This is the low end of competent military hardware. A military transport shuttle would have this armament, while an "assault shuttle" would have a higher rating. Sensor frigates, troop transports, and other light, escort focused ships would put themselves in this category. A "sensor frigate" with an armament rating higher than 16 would need a fair bit of development. Armament Rating 14-16: This is where you'd see "carriers" and similar ships. You'd also see a few scout corvettes/frigates with stealth systems spread between the 14 and 18 armament rating, with an 18/20 Stealth Corvette being a nasty little bugger that's designed to find and kill larger ships via ambush. The armament rating in this category is high enough to be appropriate for any ship seeking to use its guns offensively, as opposed to self defense. The ships in this category should be high tech variants of "balanced ships" that sacrificed overall weapon strength for enhanced technological utility or improved hanger space. Armament Rating 16-18: This is your "Balanced" ships. Every ship with an armament rating between 16 and 20 is of "ship of the line" quality. With 16's being your "fifth rate ships" and 17-18 being your fourth and third rate ships. (to borrow from the age of sail.) Any ship with an armament rating of 16 can justify "wanting" to go toe to toe with other ships. This should also be the most common category for ship submissions, and the easiest to get approved. Armament Rating 18-20: These ships are the top dogs. In the age of sail, these are the First, Second, and Third rate ships (by catagory). Assault grade ships should always have a minimum armament rating of 18. However, having a 20/20 armament rating should not (by itself) require a significant dev thread. A ship with little to no technological advancement should be able to be designed as a 20/20 ship with a simple 20 posts at minor production, so long as it is relatively slow, simple, and designed around the idea of being a fat little brawler. An 18-20 armament rating is also appropriate for fast ships with a low defensive rating. Say... 18 armament and 16 defense with all guns capable of pointing forwards, or 20 offense and 16 defense with all guns 'locked' forward. Either should be simple enough without a significant dev thread. A ship with a great deal of technological advancement should really have to struggle to break the 18/20 mark. Advanced sensors, advanced tracking systems, hanger capacity, production rating, advanced armor or hull design, restricted materials... for balance sake, these ships should more or less cap out at 18/20 unless they support the design with significant development, a low production rating, and/or design flaws/weaknesses. Similarly, "balanced ships" should be encouraged to top off at the 18/20 range with 19/20 or higher prompting the judges to have the ship brought down in armament rating or re-balanced as an assault ship.
