War Rule Reformation - Not just one. The ENTIRE Way War works

[Ali Hadrix]

[member="Sereniama"]

This may have been addressed already, as I grew impatient reading and scrolled passed the last third of the posts, but a lot of your focus seems to be on production and number of assets (ships, etc).

This has been effectively neutralized as an issue by the rewriting of conflict regulations.

Now that conflicts between factions are guided by story- and OOC conduct-related factors only, the number of ships is more or less a non-issue. Factions can write as many ships as they need to flesh out the story, and the removal of numbers as a factor allows for realism in narrative to take precedence over all else. If a faction is building a million ships a day, its writers look ridiculous and are not actually providing themselves with any advantages.

[member="Valiens Nantaris"]

That being said...I would like to see the invasion system utilize existing hyperlanes on the galactic map to guide how targets are selected. Factions could even be allowed to develop new hyperlanes, similar to the development of flagships or other grand efforts. There could even be a rebellion system adapted to the concept.

This would not require discarding the hex-range selection system either. Most of the galactic map lacks notable hyperlanes designated. We could easily apply two simple concepts:

1) Any planet within 1 hex of a hyperlane can be invaded from any other planet within 1 hex of that same hyperlane. (Permitted that hyperlane is not blocked by an enemy faction.)

2) Any planet outside 1 hex of a hyperlane can be invaded from any other planet within 2 hexes of the target planet. (The current standard across the board)

I feel this would give faction wars a more tactical approach, adding a flair of realism to the system that is neither complex, nor difficult to master. We could see a more interesting proliferation of faction territories develop as well.

A similar version of this concept could be applied to Dominions.

 

[Nyx]

*wants to voice opinion*
*sees other have already summed it up and would look like a parrot*
*shakes fist at the well-reasoned and thought out responses for stealing thunder*

 

[Jsc]

[member="Sereniama"]

I once lined up the perfect blow against one of my opponents. I had exposed their weakness, gained incredible leverage and position, circumvented their counter attack, and went straight for the kill with exceptional accuracy. I had everything. My writing was great, my punctuation pristine, my skill with the sword was enchanting, and my vocabulary marched with marvelously melodious melodrama. I had this in the bag. Nothing could stop me.

Alas. They lol-dodged and swung for a decapitation.

>.<''

Now. Yeah. You could blame that on the website. You could blame Staff for not enforcing the hit immediately. You could blame Tef for not creating enough rules, tutorials, or guides about how to take a hit. Hell, you could even get annoyed and scream all you want in the feedback or RP discussion forum. (Happens all the time.) Or, you can blame your bad experiences on just one thing. You. Sure. You can blame the other writer for twinking. And you can blame yourself for getting upset about it. But that's about it. Because that guy on the other side of the internet who lol-dodged with his Mary Sue and said, "Nope. Not gonna hit me. Nah nah nah." He was just as offended that I attempted to hurt his little Fufu as I was that he didn't take any damage from mine.

It's just people baby. It's just people.

So here's some real advice. Don't hate the system. Don't blame the rules or Staff or Tefka. Don't blame God or his 10 Commandments. Just take responsibility for your own entertainment experience. Pick better writing partners.

It's just people baby. It's just a people game.

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

[member="Ali Hadrix"]
With the cloud breaking system in place this could be used with far too lethal effect I fear.

 

[Dallen Thayne]

[member="Ali Hadrix"] [member="Valiens Nantaris"]

Hyperlanes are beautiful<3

*waves poster for production still though*

 

[Ugohr Poof]

As far as supply lines are concerned, I felt that only Coruscant (or, for that matter, another faction capital) actually needed a dedicated thread for the establishment of a supply base: Resupplying Dulvoyinn

ICly you could justify the hex rules for logistics reasons in addition to any other reasons you would have in absence of logistics.

I know there are tons of things that are ICly important but that players tend to neglect or to minimize when they play, however.

 

[Tydeus of Tion]

1. G.A. has Omega Protectorate ships in addition to ones we have created. We also have far more fleeters and fighter pilot PCs than the One Sith. It got to the point that after Dulvoyinn OS specifically requested that we do not have a space objective/fleeting for Coruscant because that would be more equitable. Even with that in place, I still received disgruntlement from the G.A. side because some of our fleeters felt that they were being excluded.

Thus, while I understand why it might have made more tactical sense to role-play having to break through the orbital defenses/fleet, that sort of role-play is not fun for everyone to write. And if we're not here to have fun then we're doing it wrong.

2. NPCing and Fleeting can be entertaining and quality storyline, but more often than not it winds up being a numbers crunching game. If you have to whip out a calculator and an excel spreadsheet just to make a post, people are going to get frustrated. It gets to the point where people have even had to make maps when fleeting, npcing just to get everyone on the same page. Without extreme coordination it often boils down to whose tech is 'bigger.' And not everyone will agree on that point. *waves vaguely in direction of mid-late OS/GR invasions* hence the rules changes. This isn't to say that it can't be done right, just that it has a tendency to be try to be wildly tangible in an unsuitable format.

At that point, as Mara said, it's better to just go play a tabletop game.

@Serniama, if you have any other concerns you wish to discuss regarding the Galactic Alliance's long-term stratagems, deployment logistics, tactical rationale at Coruscant, RoE, etc. just send me a PM.

 

[Yoru Shakou]

There is talk that in ages past there was a place called MSN Groups, a home to a series of Roleplaying Groups. Younger Generations say that such a place never existed, whilst the elders know that it had at one time been the Mesopotamia of Roleplaying Forums.

History aside...

I come into Roleplaying by way of MSN Groups; having been a member on the Star Wars Conflicts Group for years.

Star Wars Conflicts had a system that you're suggesting; and for its time it worked. However, with that said, Star Wars Conflicts was also a very niche group; there weren't even 50+ writers. I'm sure that there were only about 30-40 of us with multiple characters / accounts because of the system that was put in place to ensure that things like Fleeting were fair.

The problem arose though in that Conflicts became a sheer game of numbers. It was literally how many RU (Hull Rating) and SBD (Shield Rating) your ships had against how many weapons the enemy ship had and how much those weapons damaged. Then you also had to calculate into account the MGLT (Speed Rating) of each of the vessels. It went from being about fun and Roleplaying to being about number crunching.

The site even had another thing that you're suggesting. Build Time.

In order for a faction on Star Wars conflicts to build a vessel, it had a Build Time. When 4 IRL Days went by; a Faction produced an Assassin Corvette. When 32 IRL Days went by; a Faction produced an Imperial Class II Star Destroyer.

The site even had a Meter limit on vessels which was gauged by the world's you held. If you had an Ecumenopolis (like Coruscant) congrats you could build a fleet up to 15km. If you controlled a world like Dantooine (Basic) congrats you could build a fleet up to 3km.

I have experienced what you're suggesting, and it would do more harm to implement it on Chaos than it would do to clear anything up. It would, as has been said before, turn the site into a large war game; and I feel that many would leave if it came to that.

I like Chaos because it doesn't worry about such things. It doesn't force such a system on everyone. If you want to play the Map Game; you play the Map Game. If you don't, you don't. By doing what you're suggesting, I feel it would become a 'Everyone has to play the map game or leave' scenario.

As it stands, Chaos has a good system; and every now and again when a loophole is found or a problem is brought up, that system gets taken down and fixed so the site can continue to run smoothly. Implementing a numbers game to the site would only cause additional problems and OOC fights than what we currently have in place.

 

[Ali Hadrix]

[member="Ali Hadrix"]
With the cloud breaking system in place this could be used with far too lethal effect I fear.

True; though the cloud-breaking system could be restricted to only whole hexes and hyperlanes. Say the victors achieve a cloud-breaking invasion: they win the entire hex. As long as the defender's two closest planets are still connected by a hex of neutral planets or unoccupied hyperlanes, they remain a part of the faction. If the two closest planets are separated as a result of the cloud break by more than a hex, then they lose.
That seems balanced, from my view. Though if there are further holes, I'd be interested to have them identified. I'll debate a handful of modifications, but I don't want to fight for an idea that's leaking like a sieve.

 

[Isamu Baelor]

Sounds like it would be making it complicated, just for the sake of making it complicated.

I don't think it would make the map game any more fun.

 

[Songbird]

 

[Raziel]

I've heard a lot of calls of "Invasions should be decided by the armies, not a few player characters."

But then show me the NPC battles that: wrote out an enticing, coherent story; and found a clear victor.

Generally people are unsure how much time occurs in a post and how many men/vehicles should be getting lost. Imagine playing warhammer without a battle system? How many medium soldiers in a platoon in cover from a wood die from an artillery strike for four 100mm cannons? How many light repulsors tanks get wasted by a steading run from a gunship with two composite beam lasers? 100 medium battle droids versus 20 mandalorians at 500m in one post?

Fleet battles (particularly smaller ones) seem a good bit easier to manage. The only exception is hard to handle how much damage groups of fighters and bombers should be doing.

Things aren't handle consistently in a one on one fight between player characters, but generally people can follow the action easily and you have the benefit of a direct personal conflict between two well developed characters.

As someone said earlier in the thread, if you can find people who want to do an invasion or a skirmish a new and different way, that's always exciting and interesting to see how it plays out.

We tend the focus on the actions of our main characters whilst the battle plays out in the background. Like most books.

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

[member="Raziel"]

Imagine playing warhammer without a battle system?

<_< It's called Age of Sigmar.

 

[Cyrus Tregessar]

[member="Raziel"]
<_< It's called Age of Sigmar.

Fukken savage. Almost as bad as what GW did to WHFB.

[member="Sereniama"]

To reiterate what others have already said, there are many of us who have gone over (several times) how to 'fix' or 'improve' invasions and well, nothings really worked. Yeah, you could throw a numbers system in there, and then [member="Valiens Nantaris"], [member="Raziel"], [member="Dallen Thayne"], myself and a handful of others would have a ball of a time and everyone else would stand off and feel excluded.

That's obviously not a very good solution.

The truth is the details behind this stuff get so complicated and arcane that it's not even remotely enjoyable. Want to know about the process to supply a cruiser for a month long underway? I assure you, nothing about it is even remotely interesting, it's just mountains of paperwork and standardized forms (and that's just for the gas and food). I write piles of fluff for the Sith Navy (I do believe I am that one Sith fleeter mentioned earlier) because I get really bored at work and it barely scratches the surface of how ridiculous logistics and the like are in real life, much less spread out across a galaxy with tens or hundreds of thousands of ships in play.

What's the point of the above? Simply that any system we put in place is only ever going to be a very basic approximation. It will never approach realism, and it will necessarily be watered down and simplified and even then only appeal to a tiny number of people. Given all that, I tend to lean towards the idea that the way things work right now are fine, more or less.

I would use Thracior as an example of how to do fleeting right (mostly). We had agreed-upon numbers, with some sensible maneuvers and background fluff. It got a bit derailed because I'm a slowposter and the timeline and such, and never concluded, but I don't think you will find any serious points of contention between myself or my opponents.

Yeah, it's frustrating when the faction that was once a loose collection of Anti-Sith groups can suddenly pull a battlefleet out of it's ass, but it's hardly unusual in Star Wars and you know what? I can deal with it, and without fail I can chat over to my opponent and work it out.

Stealth ships are a bit irritating, but I can hardly fault the GA for being scared of my Sith Line of Battle and exploiting a legitimate strategic weakness.

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

Fukken savage. Almost as bad as what GW did to WHFB.

Never forget....

 

[Vazela]

Your post is redundant because there isn't that many Star Destroyers in Chaos. The only thing that needs to be changed is for the invasion rules to go back to the way they were before the recent update to them.

 

[Kei Amadis]

[member="Raziel"]

Yeah on losses, I was chatting to someone today.

You've RL Losses, Movie Losses, or Story Losses.

RL basically would have large armies there weeks, and you've got maybe 10 posts to work with to simulate those weeks.
Movie Losses are better, but again depends how long you have to play them out, you don't have a films worth of time!
Story losses equate to what you need for each post to work in the time you have.

I usually go for the third, I try to throw in RL elements where and when I can so things come across as playable, but time realism in larger ground actions, as for losses, often has to take a knock on the head to keep things interesting and moving forward.

 

[Raziel]

[member="Kei Amadis"]

It takes two people, who are pretty familiar with each other, having lots of discussion OOC to write out a big ground battle.

It's when people demand exact counts of every aspect of a ground force (down to the man) and tracking of such that people get turned off. Myself included, not touching that with a bargepole ever again.

Oddly I'm fine with fleet battles, when they're kept to a handful of destroyers and supporting vessels.

This is Star Wars, I love writing space opera.

 

[ADM. Reshmar]

everyone knows how I feel so nothing to add.

 

[Ugohr Poof]

Some depth is good but this proposal is going overboard. I myself only keep track of command-level troop counts, but no more, much like [member="Darth Megnentis"] does.

I might have given back to the Alliance some crucial ability to fight NPC-to-NPC on the ground (IIRC [member="Aela Talith"] was the other one that actually did so before I came in) even though ICly command of the Army of Malastare is only provisionally awarded to my character until the invasion of Coruscant ends.