The Strategic Layer

[Cyrus Tregessar]

No no, it's been a good discussion and exchange of ideas. My main issue is, I don't think it's even remotely feasible to try and change things site-wide, and as a result I'd like to focus on making an event for those of us who are interested having things be a bit more military, and potentially altering the way individual invasions are conducted, if not changing the whole way planning and warfare are done.

 

[Camellia Swift]

[member="Cyrus Tregessar"]

I'm confused then? Because the very last part sounds like what I thought and the first part sounds like the testing bed idea to lead to it?

 

[Cyrus Tregessar]

Hmm. Maybe it's just that I wasn't looking that far ahead.

Basically I feel that trying to develop a resource and production system on the board as things stand now would be... hard to get by. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, it's very much a boardgame/simulationist concept and the vast majority of RPers probably have no interest in that.

That still gives a great deal of room in how individual invasions are conducted, however. Even if one does not intend to go full on 4x there's plenty of room to add strategic thought to invasions/dominions/warfare without adding in too many hard numbers. That's the idea I'm playing with. Having it in a seperate cluster allows us to test out ideas without disrupting anything that's going on in the board overall. Hell in that case maybe it is the place and time to test out larger-scale stuff.

 

[Ali Hadrix]

[member="Ali Hadrix"]

Ok, what would you suggest then?

What I suggested before: An event-focused system that covers a series of key aspects of inter-faction combat-related RP;

--Economy (Income, Production Costs, Time constraints on reinforcements produced)

--Travel (between Systems, Planets, etc)

--Spatial Maneuvering (We need a solid X, Y, Z grid system laid out. I've seen them before, they're pretty easy)

--Spatial Damage system

--Ground Maneuvering (with 2D reference Hex overlay maps)

--Ground Damage system

1) Systems will be implemented at the start of any conflict-based RP and continue until RP is complete.

2) RP's will be divided by region with forces limited into modestly-sized Battlegroups.

3) A limited pool of reinforcements will be made available to draw from at varying rates of reception.

4) Something else.

5) Something else.

Something else.) Something else.

Whoops. Just got tired.

 

[Ali Hadrix]

[member="Cyrus Tregessar"]

I'm confused then? Because the very last part sounds like what I thought and the first part sounds like the testing bed idea to lead to it?

Originally, that's what I was pushing for the testing for: A system that could be applied to combat-based inter-faction RP for dominions, invasions and skirmishes. This would be to make battles more accountable, more clear, concise, and enjoyable.

 

[Gir Quee]

I don't recall ever mentioning anything about too many people participating in invasions, though I would agree that sometimes it seems like we have a ridiculous amount of forces present for a minor battle. I'm actually most in agreement with [member="Cyrus Tregessar"]'s concept right now, because of this:

I must caution against complexity, and keep the focus on conduct that affects faction-to-faction relations (dominions, invasions, skirmishes) first and foremost.

I don't think that most faction members aren't going to be interested in number crunching , but I'd wager that they'd all want to know how it roughly works. If it's too complex, I doubt that it'll last for faction. And even then, I don't think this will work on a complete "Galaxy" or "board" level.

Not only because of the complexity involved with just running the basics, but also because of inter-faction issues.

For example, what would happen if the Republic opted to "buy" a bunch of ships from the Mandalorians. Would that come out of the Republic shipyards points or the Mandalorians? What about allied fleets and the like? What if a major corporation defects?

Movements of ships and large forces are also probably going to cause other problems, especially with meta-gaming. For example, what if the Mandalorians suddenly realize that the One Sith have left a huge gap in their defenses to go fight a major campaign with the Republic?

I bet that even if the mandalorians did a lot of RP work to show that they were reconing the area (and didn't even know at first by meta means), that there would be hard feelings on the One Sith side when suddenly a strong force of Mandalorians swept over these areas with little to no resistance from One Sith forces.


Where I can see this system like this being used is in mini-campaigns between two factions.

For example, a couple related dominions, invasions, or skirmishes. Probably no more than four to five events, and not encompassing any other worlds except those around it (such as a local sector). These "events" could then than act as a single turn for production purposes. We could even spin it as "marshalling" reinforcements from other areas of a faction (new ships from Rendili have now arrived, or the latest batch of infantry from the Carida Academy, etc).

[member="Ali Hadrix"] | [member="Camellia Swift"]

 

[Camellia Swift]

[member="Gir Quee"] [member="Ali Hadrix"] [member="Cyrus Tregessar"]

I guess I wouldn't care for it as much then because I'm interested in it becoming daily and that's why I really worked hard in that other thread to make a simplified system only a few people would have to track, those in charge of a faction at most if at all (it could be easily automated), where 90% of the rpers only have to rp and only a long term war effort suffers consequences. my problem with just restricting it to individual invasions/doms/skirmishes/events is that they're too short lived. Dom especially are laid out in 100 posts and against NPCs so you don't actually get much out of it. Invasions means nothing if the losses don't carry over to the next so it has to be more than for individual instances. And as for events, it'd certainly work, but then its so contained and its effects are determined after finishing a long fought event which has to dig for people to get into it. I'd rather use an event to show off the system and then ask the factions to give it a try on a large scale for every battle/day if the test/event was successful.

As for interfaction and meta issues.

If the Republic's buying ships its the Republics credit being spent even if its Mando designs. I am wholly invested to eventually finding a concept to allow Companies to use those credits they make. Imagine a Banking Clan whose sole existence was to build itself up to make money through loans and interest rates.

Like Ali brought up as an interesting concept, travel time and restrictions. Between that and the fact most invasions are announced ooc so that factions have warning, which has led to metagaming already where a faction makes resources specifically to win like say on a water world, so I don't think that concern is a problem.

 

[Ali Hadrix]

[member="Camellia Swift"]: We can still apply the replacement basics to factions in between threads. I'm thinking a registration board would work.

Both sides note their losses at the end of a thread and the time it will take until they are replaced, as well as what they are being replaced with.

If anyone sees those things being used before the time requirements are up, then they get bugged about it.

 

[Camellia Swift]

[member="Ali Hadrix"]

That's basically what I want, but I sort of want an income system to be tracked with it so that companies can sometime be involved somehow. But yeah what you said is really the gist of what I hope for someday and I'm sorry I detracted from the event focus here. If there's a way that after a few events with whatever we come up with here we can get people using stuff site-wide I'd be very excited.

I'm still wondering about the battlegroup bit though. It certainly can work in an event and on site overall but its probably problematic getting them put together and having people both be committed and taking a turn approach to things rather than throwing everyone in every thread/invasion/dom at once. Although during the event we definitely saw the factions making groups to go after doms, one for each of the 3 doms they were allowed to do at a time. So maybe we can convince them someday for events and wars by reminding them how well those worked then?

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

I will say this, and only this:
There will never be a system which covers the board or is used in Invasions.

If such a thing is ever used it would be in a campaign setting by volunteers.