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Post by Evil Spock on Aug 24, 2007 20:03:50 GMT -5
This poll is to help the ref decide another topic worthy of debate.
It is the age old question of Line Ships.
Should our games be made up of ships we pick? We will always pick the best on the list even if they were one of a kind ships etc.
Is the inclusion (forced) of line ships, stock CA, stock Cl etc a realistic aspect to the game players like or is that boring vanilla sh.it.
Either is a valid arguement as many have pointed out. So contribute your vote to help decide what our future stuff will be like.
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Post by Lord Hellus, Council Chairman on Aug 24, 2007 22:57:56 GMT -5
Forced. Reason: These ships were the core of the race and the race lived or died with these ships
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Post by Supreme Leader Vanguard on Aug 25, 2007 7:45:44 GMT -5
Could you futher explain Line Ships and non Line ships.
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Post by Evil Spock on Aug 25, 2007 12:31:25 GMT -5
Line is stock base ships like Fed CA, CL, DD, FF. No one picks these if given the choice cause they are not as good as the loaded out varients. When we have folks pick their fleets, people choose like 3x FFL's which is really "unrealistic" excuse the term.
So when we do the teams game should we have people picking all the creme of the crop or should there be some forced mechanism to make sure fleets have the standard less desirable ships in the game.
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Post by Head Fur Shalafi on Aug 25, 2007 13:45:05 GMT -5
When we're doing a "historical" type campaign .. yes they should be manditory... if it's a "non historical" type campaign.. meh... let people fly what they want.
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Post by DeathFrog on Aug 25, 2007 14:58:11 GMT -5
I Believe, it should be up to the person putting on the campaign.
1-Person puts in all his personal time to set up and run, but not play 2-Person resolves conflicts, calls the shots during problems, and takes all the flak for problems so 3-Person sets up 'what he wants to run' and posts the conditions and rulz for everyone to see prior to sign-up, and people can either join in, or not join in. period.
Now, I would bet that nearly no matter what was set up virtually all here would sign up to try it. At the end of the campaign all good and bad would have been already posted, and the next person who undertakes the task of running a campaign would review them, and then "post HIS campaign with HIS rulz(Her if be case), and then people can sign up, or not.
I am not trying to knock what we do here, nor change it. I just believe that if someone is going to put that much effort into a campaign, they ultimately have the right to make it the way they feel. Most likely it would be along the lines of what "the people" want.
Modifcation: To tie this into this thread, the rulz posted by the person running the campaign, prior to sign-up, would state the conditons for shipbuilds etc.....
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Post by Evil Spock on Aug 26, 2007 10:32:14 GMT -5
Ya exactly Dfly, most refs I think, would want to run what the players want to play in.
That is why I do these polls to find out what our player base likes and dislikes.
Always the ref has the final call, but 90% of the time I bet that is in line with what players are wanting.
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Post by Maximus Plasma on Aug 26, 2007 20:37:15 GMT -5
I would agree with D'Fly. And i would urge whoever runs the campaign. To allow some leeway to the Team leaders to allocate non line ships to their various commanders.
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Post by Count Blademaster on Aug 27, 2007 16:30:21 GMT -5
I have another proposal. The other day I was thinking (really, I'm not kidding) about our line/specialty ships balance problem, and I thought how we could solve it without restricting player freedom and keeping it as "realistic" as possible. And it occurred to me why not make it as realistic as can be? What balances line and specialty ships on the real world? I think there are two factors, that can be argued about and implemented independently: 1st: Assembly costs. Line ships use standard parts and equipment which is bought in larger numbers and it's cheaper to manufacture after you have an assembly line set up. This is difficult to implement in our game. One (simple) suggestion could be giving all line ships 20% discount, another (complicated) suggestion could be giving incremental discounts to line ships built in a row (something like this is used in some games). 2nd: Upkeep. I think this could be implemented effortlessly in our game and be quite realistic. What limits the number of dreadnought-sized ships in the real world is mostly the upkeep costs. With the oil going up diesel ships are more expensive every day, and a nuclear reactor requires an expensive and higly specialized technical crew to maintain. This notion can be included in our game. For example, having no upkeep for line ships, and having a 10% of total BPV upkeep cost on other ships. Just my 2 cents. Let the flaming begin
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Post by Lord Hellus, Council Chairman on Aug 27, 2007 16:58:25 GMT -5
Good ideas, more paperwork, let's hear more info on it. By the way Blade, I tried to use your installer to download 4.0 and it keeps coming up B5, what am I doing wrong?
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Post by Evil Spock on Aug 27, 2007 17:26:37 GMT -5
It is the ghosts of B5 George,.. try an exorcism.
Morte, ya I never suggested having only line ships, I think every player should have fun ships, just not 100% fun ships. Flags, the key vessel in a fleet, etc should be fun/non line ships.
My feelings since the get go and how I dealt with line ships in the past was to force line ships into the start lineup. I still feel this way. Builds are not huge, in most games a nation may complete 4-6 ships typical in a campaign run. If you start with 12 and of those 6-9 are line ships then what players build does not matter that much. All will still see line ships in the game, as we should.
It does not even have to be line ships,.. any ship which is less desireable is fun to force in the game (fun by a refs view).
So you can talk about shifting point values or adding upkeep paperwork cost, but in the end a simple solution is to just have a start fleet that incorperates line/realistic/undesireable ships. No added hassle, no added paperwork, or caculations etc.
What a player builds after that is up to him, no restrictions, no complications.
I do feel that Admirals should fly fun stuff but on a limited basis.
The Ref should at the start set fleets and allow each player to have X amount of EP to play with (33% or one ship of 3). No doubt the X value will go to all crazy, high end,rare ships, that is fine it only a % of the nation/player total.
The added work is on a ref but if he was to TS one night with the experienced crew he could come up with ideals and fair values within an hour or two for an entire campaign run.
The heck with more paperwork ! I play for battles not to be some da.mn accountant !
Ex. Teams game, Front line commander start fleet
145 EP your choice CA CL
135 your choice CA FF
125 your choice CL FF
Unused money Banked.
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Post by Count Blademaster on Aug 27, 2007 17:52:45 GMT -5
Start fleets could be imposed build restrictions too. Just as if you built them instantly.
I believe we should not only take into consideration what past games have been like (which is valuable data too, of course), but also what our ideal game will be like.
My ideal game would be like the B5 campaign, lasting more, with bigger maps and more resources (read more building). Of course this would imply a faster-paced campaign (more battles in the same turn time), but I think most of us would agree that's what we are looking for if we dont want to keep loosing interest.
Under this ideal, build would be more important in the long run. And the only way to balance it, is to add build restrictions, or cost incentives. Which is what I proposed.
I really want to build stuff. And I think fixed starting fleets are ok, but then you should give as much building freedom as you can, or at least as much as is realistically sound. And the only way I see to do that, and balance line/specialty ships, is what I proposed. Yes it adds paperwork. It adds one column to the ships orders, which sum would be automatically added to the expenses with a simple excel formula. Quite advanced nonlinear mathematics involved.
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Post by DeathFrog on Aug 27, 2007 19:45:47 GMT -5
OK. Let me "SPLAIN" some stuff. ON Dynaverse, you start with a CL class. Usually it is a line ship, with rare exceptions. Those ships cost roughly 1,000 points. A standard CA costs roughly 2,600, where the CC costs some 4,000. A CC+ or bigger CC style can cost up to 8,000. To get bigger ships, like the BCH(heavy battle cruiser, such as a C7, Fed BCG, etc,) they cost some 15,000-20,000. The fancier the ship, the more the cost. The Dreadnaughts start at 35000 for the standard DN, and go up to 55000 for the bigger ones. BBs cost 90,000 to 120,000 on average.
Of course you could get a standard FF for 400-750, or the FFL+ for 2300. By the time you get the FFL+ it costs nearly the same as a CA.
I could get the exact costs if you like but hopefully you get the idea.
To incoorporate this into our game, we simply have to modify the BPV of the ships within the shiplist. We would simply cut down the shiplist of a race from 700 ships to say the 35 or 50 most likely used(more if we need to, depending on races used). Make the FF worth the standard 68 bpv or whatever it is, and the CL or CA could stay roughly the same. If you take the D5 as an example, it is like 110 bpv and the D5L currently stands at 132 bpv. The new way would keep the D5 at 110ish, and make the D5L say 175. The 175 specialty ships move up to say 250-300 range, and the DN and bigger become say 500 and up.
It would be a matter of trying to increase the costs of the NON-LINE ships to the point where if you really want one, you can get one, but you WILL pay for it.
I know, some will say that would restrict nearly all non-line ships due to costs. It would be a matter of finding a relative balance is all.
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Post by Evil Spock on Aug 27, 2007 19:55:06 GMT -5
And is up to interpretation as to what each ship is really worth. It means redoing a fundamental part of the game.
Do your really suggest that as a solution for many hundreds of ships, and that that is easier than just forcing in a % of line ships at start.
Come on, surely your are pulling my leg ?
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Post by DeathFrog on Aug 27, 2007 20:13:37 GMT -5
I am not, and stop calling me surely. Actually I was trying to find an even more complex way of doing things, because I can.
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