Rules Update Discussion

[Problem Sleuth]

Convo with Sidmen, should sum a lot of it up. Small argument at the very end, but pay no heed. I also approximated some stuff with TW Center smilies.

Sidmen says:
Because I finally showed people the numbers behind the scenes, they freaked out

Bert the Mighty! says:
Numbers behind the scenes?...

Sidmen says:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=146430

Bert the Mighty! says:
Oh, right, that.

Sidmen says:
Its not like I'll follow it very well anyway

Bert the Mighty! says:
Beam weapons are WAY too efficient.

Bert the Mighty! says:
Really long range AND the best hull damage-to-integrity loss.

Sidmen says:
at long range they'll suck tho

Sidmen says:
shields totally nerf them

Bert the Mighty! says:
At long range they'll hit and do damage.

Sidmen says:
At long range shields will be at their strongest, which beams suck against. It won't be till they reach pulse range that beams will be any use, after the shields are taken down by pulses and ion cannons

Bert the Mighty! says:
Shields should be applied to -all- weapons, some moreso than others.

Sidmen says:
these aren't that kind of shield

Bert the Mighty! says:
What kind, then?

Sidmen says:
These shields are energy shields, not kinetic or gravametric(spelled that wrong). They have no effect on projectiles because they don't operate on that level.

Bert the Mighty! says:
And tell me... Why wouldn't they be effective on projectiles?

Sidmen says:
How would they? They have no method of stopping them

Bert the Mighty! says:
How do they stop beam and pulse weapons, then?

Sidmen says:
they absorb the energy

Bert the Mighty! says:
How?

Bert the Mighty! says:
How do you 'absorb' the energy?

Sidmen says:
Magic

Sidmen says:
obviously

Bert the Mighty! says:
Right. I was thinking...

Bert the Mighty! says:
Wait. Lost my train of thought.

Sidmen says:
Asking 'how' about a science fiction game and expecting a scientific answer isn't exactly the best way of doing things. Because there obviously isn't a scientific answer.

Sidmen says:
Otherwise we'd be in space colonizing planets now.

Bert the Mighty! says:
Right.

Bert the Mighty! says:
How about this...

Bert the Mighty! says:
You don't have shields, other than some protection against EMP pulses.

Bert the Mighty! says:
Beam/Pulse does light hull damage, but over immense ranges and can shoot down missiles.

Bert the Mighty! says:
Meaning it penetrates..

Bert the Mighty! says:
But it's very limited/easily controlled damage.

Bert the Mighty! says:
The only way for it to penetrate would be a dot from a fully-sharpened pencil.

Bert the Mighty! says:
Yet with this you can severely compromise the hull strength.

Bert the Mighty! says:
Not destroy it, but cut holes in it and scratch some parts nearly to bits.

Bert the Mighty! says:
That way, when you get close enough for projectiles...

Sidmen says:
and if my beam happens to be 2 feet in diameter?

Bert the Mighty! says:
The massive rail guns that spew telephone pole-sized projectiles at 15 km/second...

Bert the Mighty! says:
Not possible.

Bert the Mighty! says:
Well..

Bert the Mighty! says:
That, or you give the ship a nice tan.

Bert the Mighty! says:
Anyway...

Bert the Mighty! says:
The massive rail guns that spew telephone pole-sized projectiles at 15 km/second...

Bert the Mighty! says:
Which will create forces equivalent to small nuclear weapons or very large conventional weapons..

Bert the Mighty! says:
Can smash through.

Bert the Mighty! says:
If that fails...

Bert the Mighty! says:
You get close, and you thermonuke the **** out of them with missiles. If that fails...

Bert the Mighty! says:
Get even closer, and either take control of the ships, or bring out the big-gun torpedoes.

Bert the Mighty! says:
Progression of weaponry.

Sidmen says:
So, in other words, scrap what everyone accepts and flip the entire balance around?

Bert the Mighty! says:
The balance won't be changed...

Bert the Mighty! says:
Beams/Pulses will be good at really long ranges.

Bert the Mighty! says:
Projectiles will be good at closer ranges (in terms of what's the most effective weapon).

Bert the Mighty! says:
Missiles even closer.

Bert the Mighty! says:
Torpedoes closest.

Sidmen says:
The goal was to make rulesets combining star trek, star wars, and warhammer.

Sidmen says:
with side notes of Babylon 5 and Andromeda

Bert the Mighty! says:
Yes.

Bert the Mighty! says:
But the effectiveness remains exactly the same...

Bert the Mighty! says:
It's probably better, as instead of destroying ships with beams/pulses...

Bert the Mighty! says:
You can play Mongol Horse Archer and continually hit them with lots and lots of beams/pulses if they're composed of weaker ships.

Sidmen says:
Except that star trek has beam weapons cause significant damage to hulls, blasting holes several meters wide into them.

Bert the Mighty! says:
...Which would make them OP.

Bert the Mighty! says:
Much better this way, as it becomes more worthwhile to close in.

Sidmen says:
and all of them have energy shields that are trumped by kinetic weapons

Bert the Mighty! says:
Energy shields that make no sense at all.

Bert the Mighty! says:
Instead of weakening Beam Weapons with energy shields...

Bert the Mighty! says:
We could say that beam will do 10x damage throughout the entire battle, and that the shields take away 9x...

Bert the Mighty! says:
You make it simpler.

Bert the Mighty! says:
And reduce the damage to 1x.

Bert the Mighty! says:
Which, in turn, adds much more strategy, as you go from shooting at them until they die to picking targets.

Bert the Mighty! says:
And perhaps certain sections.

Bert the Mighty! says:
Maybe frying a pilot's mind through the cockpit window?

Sidmen says:
beams really only are effective at disabling weapon hard points.

Bert the Mighty! says:
And severely weakening hulls. It all depends on enemy deployment.

Bert the Mighty! says:
If you can sneak a few to the 'flanks' of the enemy, see the effects of highly concentrated heat+engines.

Bert the Mighty! says:
Plus weakened engine casings, messed up propolsion, and exploding fuel cases.

Bert the Mighty! says:
The enemy can, in turn, plan for those...

Bert the Mighty! says:
And it become what battles SHOULD be in a fun game - something of cat and mouse, of wits and planning for the worst.

Bert the Mighty! says:
Yet perhaps recieving something unexpected, or having the enemy play into your hands.

Sidmen says:
Go ahead and propose it. If you get majority support I'll change stuff to how people want it. Just make sure you include everything about it, like the size of the damage done, and the way everything reacts.

Bert the Mighty! says:
It isn't really exact; beams/pulses don't do X damage.

Sidmen says:
I'll make a comparison of my generic ruleset, and see what people want. If they want more science than fiction I really don't care. Personally, I had tons of fun in my war with scottish, and he did too.

Bert the Mighty! says:
They weaken hulls, which will cause X, Y, and Z, depending on what you do.

Sidmen says:
which causes confusion to the battle mod, personally I wouldn't mod any battles with that kind of setup. Too confusing to me.

Sidmen says:
2,000 ships all aiming at different targets, doing different degrees of damage or effect.

Bert the Mighty! says:
They don't do different degrees of damage.

Bert the Mighty! says:
Targeting ships I don't mean individuals.

Sidmen says:
yes they do.

Bert the Mighty! says:
I mean you say "target this part of all ships", or "attack only cruisers!".

Sidmen says:
a hit on an engine causes X effect, a hit on the hull causes Y effect, a hit on the Bridge causes Z

Sidmen says:
much more confusing than "Target X ships and unload with the pulse batteries"

Bert the Mighty! says:
I never meant it that way.

Bert the Mighty! says:
I meant "50 ships' engines explode, 100 have weakened hulls, and the rest of those guys lucked out."

Sidmen says:
You like making missiles worthless to me don't you?

Bert the Mighty! says:
No.

Bert the Mighty! says:
Because they destroy entire ships in single hits.

Sidmen says:
My fleets are designed to pummel the enemy with missiles from beyond the range of enemy beams

Bert the Mighty! says:
Torpedoes are even more destructive.

Bert the Mighty! says:
Yes, which is illogical, because the beams and pulses will destroy 'em.

Sidmen says:
Making them close-range would make them worthless to me

Bert the Mighty! says:
Yes. To YOU. For the sake of BALANCE.

Bert the Mighty! says:
I don't HAVE a fleet, so don't ***** about how I'm doing this for my own good.

Sidmen says:
Did I ever say that?

Bert the Mighty! says:
Hell, I'm probably going to leave without doing anything.

Bert the Mighty! says:
I'm saying it pre-emptively.

Sidmen says:
Don't bother, I'm leaving. Have fun

Bert the Mighty! says:
Ugh.

Sidmen says:
I'll close my thread, and ask publius to remove me from the mod list.

Bert the Mighty! says:
Why are you leaving?

Sidmen says:
its too frustrating to keep it up

Bert the Mighty! says:
Just let us get the rules up. Jeez.

[Sidmen]

I'll add something while I'm still kinda interested.

Sidmen says:
Its not like I'll follow it very well anyway

Meant that the rules aren't static, a grazing shot or longer range will cause less damage than the indicated amount"

Sidmen says:
You like making missiles worthless to me don't you?

That was supposed to be a kind of joke about how he keeps wanting to make missiles short-ranged, while my entire race is built around long-range missiles. Missiles at short range don't make any sense to me.

I'll go lay down now and cool off. When I come back I'll see if I still like this game enough to stick with it.

[Kiljan Arslan]

SO are we keeping those rules? because if we are could we decreace hull stringth loss for every weapon employed by half?

Missles at short range dosn't make sence.

[Problem Sleuth]

Medium-range; they're easily shot down at long-range. However... If they have no point-defense beams/pulses, it becomes long-range.

[Kiljan Arslan]

I say keep it long range, anyways Point defence can't get rid of all of them so no worries.

[Problem Sleuth]

...That's not only unrealistic it's imbalancing... You're firing 50+ Mt nuclear warheads - pretty easy to hit with pulses/beams. Unless you -want- an uber-long-range weapon that can destroy the largest ship in one hit, that is. Which would, realistically, be dealt with easily by a combination of regular/point defense beam and pulse along with chaff, as they won't have to be focused on destroying ships now that they're weaker. More effective to stop guided death.

[Kiljan Arslan]

They can't destroy the ships in one hit Bert! Thats just it!

[Problem Sleuth]

Lol. Do you know the force of 50 Mt of TNT? 4.6 km fireball, far greater area of massive destruction, third-degree burns at 100 km, massive crater... Need I go on? Unless your ship has 300 M of protection (still not enough) at the blast zone, not a chance. That's the largest thermonuclear warhead - 3125 times as strong as Hiroshima at half-yield. It can be up to 100 Mt, but that would cause a nuclear winter.

[Lord Rahl]

Are there rules currently regarding trade?

[Kiljan Arslan]

Bert lets say that were using armor that hasn't been discovered yet that negates such destructiveness, and nearly all the radiation, lets also say that the shields can hold back such destructivenss, lets also say that its just a game!

[Problem Sleuth]

So, either missiles become crappy and everything becomes unrealistic, or we have medium-range ones when there's Point-def, that are very useful, balanced, and realistic.

[Kiljan Arslan]

"Unrealalistic to whom?

[Problem Sleuth]

To anyone who knows the speeds involved... And unrealistic qualifies as 15m (45 feet) of armor stopping something 3125 times as strong as an explosion that made a 300-foot-deep (100m) crater into dirt, asphalt, and bedrock.

[Kiljan Arslan]

Yes but to anyone else?

[Problem Sleuth]

Anyone who reads the numbers I'm posting...

[Kiljan Arslan]

And who would btw?

[Problem Sleuth]

Now you're progressing from defending an idea to being difficult and stupid. Who? Anyone who reads the thread.

[Kiljan Arslan]

Bert do that again and I will be reporting you to the mods, this is your last warning.

[Kiljan Arslan]

Unfortonatley not.

[Problem Sleuth]

That was damn obvious flame baiting. ********. You do that, and I can just show them the context. At least defend your point, instead of trapping me into threats to win.

Edit: And that's the first warning you've given me. I can see what you're doing...