NationStates Jolt Archive

First, I would just like to say that the NS Future Tech Rping theatre is not as great as it should be. I couldn't even list half of the RPs that I have read or participated in that have either stagnated or ended in a huge flame and/or ignore war. Going along those lines, there have been few RPs that I have seen that actually have a good ending, or an ending at all. I could go on, but I digress, there are several reasons for the decay of FT that I have noticed. (and likely several more that I haven't) Obviously, I am probobly as guilty of many of these things as the next RPer. The object here is not to point fingers. (much. lol) So here are some of the negative factors:

1.) The frequency of newbs attempting to dive into complex RPs head first.

-This often leads to an otherwise fast-paced RP being forced to stop and help and/or yell at a confused newbie. A possible solution would be to have an organized system of helping those new to the RPing world figure out how to RP and help them gain some knowledge on the NS FT theatre.


2.) And obvious one: the overwhelming use of super-weapons and uber-tech.

-Have you even taken hours to work on some military strategies for you FT nation's military, such as formations, firing paterns, fighter and bomber tactics, and defences for your planets? Have you don this only to have some other nation alter the STC, open up a big portal into some other dimention, or land a nova torpedo into a star and subsiquently destroy half of your nation in the blink of an eye? This leads to other RPers "developing" more uber-tech or counter-uber-tech and RPs that would normally be fun and entertaining, as well as mentally challenging, devolve into who can get off their mega system crushing god weapons on their enemies first. And because of the fact single actions can now cause so much damage, RPers argue over them...contantly. Not that I can blame them: I wouldn't just roll over as my opponant claims to lay waste to an entire system with one weapon. There is also the case of FTL travel that is not as limited as it should be. A bi-product of these things are the infamous system-wide FTLi systems that everyone seems to have nowadays. (including me) As for a solution, I think Godular's Hero's and Villians RPing program solved this problem to a certain extent. We just need to extend it past character only RPs.


3.) The unrealistic scope of a nation's influence.

- It just seems a bit odd that a nation of 2-3 billion could have thousands and thousands of warships, huge fortresses, and an empire spanning across a galaxy. Considering that the population of earth is about 6 billion, on one planet, it doesn't make any sence that 3 billion people could inhabit a dozen star systems. My nationis about 3 billion and controlls about 11 systems along with a couple close allies and I think even that is too much. We need to downscale the scope of our nations considerably.


4.) Differing styles and philosophies on RPing.

- Let's face it, people RP differently and have different outlooks on how they RP. This can lead to clashes between RPers of different types. I have attempted to make some broad categories of RPers. (feel free to add your own)


A.) Technological Power Gamer (TPG): Technology is the key to winning wars and you want to have the best of the best. The more damage something can cause the better. You want the power to glass your enemies in the palm of your hand. Actuall tactics tend to fall to the side. (though not always) Uber-tech is the way to go. If your opponants can't come up with a way to counter your technology, then too bad for them. This is Future tech and nation's don't have equall technology in RL anyways.

B.) Strategic Power Gamer (SPG): You want to win wars and prove that you are better and smarter than your enemies, but you want to do it fairly. (though the term "fair" is often subjective) Developing tactics and out playing your opponants is your specialty. Your oppinion on uber-tech: all things in moderation, you use it to suppliment your strategies. If your opponants want you to have weaknesses, they can find them on their own; it's not your job. You often become irritated when you are accused of godmodding. All nations are not equall, after all. (I probobly fall into this category)

C.) Fair-Play Gamer (FPG): You think that RPers should give their nations defined strengths and weeknesses so that everyone is on an equall playing field. Many who fall into this category like to plan out battles before they happen and predetirmine losses of forces and even the outcome itself at times. You dislike uber-tech. Even your definition of uber-tech can differ from others. You often limit your own technology and expect others to abide by your standards. No one should be taken advantage of.

(Lol, this seems like a NS issue.)


So this should give us enough material to start a descussion. Let's begin.

I fall in the 2-3 category, and completely agree -- there's too many deathstars. I have NO wmds, and no 20 km warships or battleplates, and have 1, count 'em, 1 planet. I think that FT has gotten out of hand, and we really need to put down some base rules.

I think those categories of FT are a bit shallow, but that's just me.

I try to have Space battles as non-character-based as possible, because when you're amongst hundreds of ships, one person isn't going to count.

I only have 56 ships; Eight fleets, seven ships each. This is a more reasonable number than thousands. I also only have two planets in one system, which is well-defended. I don't have an ubery weapon of doomity doom doom doom like the Death Star, but my Flagship and Gargantuan-class ship cruisers can take on several ships about the same time and still come out with its captain alive.

I, too, think FT needs to develop some type of "code of conduct" concerning, primarily, technology. What is better? Your Star Destroyer or the other guys' Enterprise?

I personally fall under the A or B category. I have developed all of my space craft to be very stealthy, with long range weaponry. It's sort of guerilla war applied to space. The ships slip past your defenses, harrass merchant shipping (and/or warships), and then slip away.

As far as the size of my Empire (which in FT is the Star Empire of Fluffywuffy), I control 3 systems and have almost 5 billion people. Still a stretch, but there is really only one inhabited planet in each system. The others are very lightly populated. Now, I've been contemplating war with a few other nations, and so this number is subject to change. So if you are FT, I'd watch out.

Personally, I don't mind people RPing their population as higher than it actually is, as long as they use their normal population for the purposes of budget and military size. After all, sending in thousands of capital ships is just plain number-wank.

I, too, think FT needs to develop some type of "code of conduct" concerning, primarily, technology. What is better? Your Star Destroyer or the other guys' Enterprise?
Awesome analogy, man. Very good.
*Hands you a cookie*
I like the system I use. I only have 56 major ships, countless fighters, and a handful of mini-ships. It keeps my nation gaurded and my interests elsewhere safe.

I have maybe a hundred or so, possibly more (I don't count) capital ships, several thousand frigates (100 meter ships, so essentially large fighters), and probably hundreds of thousands of fighters. I do claim more than one planet, though only twelve or so. As I've stated before, I inflate my population for RP purposes, just not for my military.

I definitely fall into category B. I hate how every other FT nation's tech base is based off of the following:

-Star Wars
-Star Trek
-Warhammer 40k

Seriously, you'd think people could be more original. -_-;

If you're fighting me, even in FT, all you see different from fighting me MT is that I have ships.

What I hate is people who say that if your ship has railguns that you are inferior, and those who, instead of using tactics, send a 500 ship fleet and will accept nothing less than 100% sucess.

I actually wouldn't mind seeing one of my Large Battleships be pounded into a small lump of metal in the Second Crusade, really!

I'm a B/C type FTer.
I do have to raise on issue on the 'common' complaint on huge(Multi-KM long) ships. The largest(in length) ship on earth(RL) is just under half a kilometer in length. With the lack of gravity in space, it is quite possible to build multi-Km ships.

But still, the 200km uber battleship of doom with the 1000 laser batteries i just not feasable. How do you fuel or even turn that thing?
I'd say i'm a stratigic player, though I do more semi future then all future.

If you're fighting me, even in FT, all you see different from fighting me MT is that I have ships.

What I hate is people who say that if your ship has railguns that you are inferior, and those who, instead of using tactics, send a 500 ship fleet and will accept nothing less than 100% sucess.
What's wrong with railguns? There are few things better than launching large, potentially explosive objects at a target. Railguns are no different from any other FT weapon.

For example, in Halo 2, the MAC cannons on the stations destroyed shielded Covenant vessels, often in one hit.

What's wrong with railguns? There are few things better than launching large, potentially explosive objects at a target. Railguns are no different from any other FT weapon.

For example, in Halo 2, the MAC cannons on the stations destroyed shielded Covenant vessels, often in one hit.
Incorrect: ALWAYS in one hit. In fact, the book says it ripped through them like Aluminum foil. Just a technicality, however...

What's wrong with railguns? There are few things better than launching large, potentially explosive objects at a target. Railguns are no different from any other FT weapon.

For example, in Halo 2, the MAC cannons on the stations destroyed shielded Covenant vessels, often in one hit.

I was in an RP once with an early 2004 player and I returned fire with railguns, and his post was something like "Because they are so primitive, only minor damage is done," and i've saw stuff like that said other times.

Me, I stick railguns on everything...

I personaly use a little trick whenever I enslave a system (I only own two systems, 2 planets, and a few Sol bases (Earth, Luna, Mars, asteroid belt) I use my population for budget, military, and so on but I don't consider the inhabitants of the planet I enslaved to be offical citizens (members of my nation count).
And I actualy have a nice set cap on my ships (5000 ships over the corrvet) and god knows how many fighters (most sit in warehouses doing nothing) and my "ub3r ship " isn't even 20km it's 17.5km and it's rarely used because I take budget concerns into acount and only move it during massive solar system annexation operations or in defense of my primary system I protect.


And yes the Super MACs are capable of removing multipule covie ships in one shot and obliterating any smaller ship (fighter or dropship) in the wake of the shot.

I'd say that I'm somewhere between the "a" and "b" options.

I like the stick reasonable weaknesses where ever I can into my own ships and tech. I mainly try to get the most advanced technology I can (Or consider helpful) , and then think them through.

Example: (Simplified.)

Tech: Spatial Modifier Targeting System

What it does: Bends space so that even laser blasts can now act as guided missiles. (Since even light follows the curvature of space.)

Pros: Extremely accurate weapons fire at incredibly long ranges. All beam weapons are now twice as useful and far more practical under more circumstances.

Cons: Device is extremely complex making repair time and cost, unit cost, and even rate of fire increase, jump up, and lower, respectively. Complexity limits its deployment. Sometimes just firing a regular missile is still the better option anyway.

1) A good idea. Would be very handy.

2) There is nothing wrong with WUMD (Weapons of Uber Massive Destruction) so long as they are used in moderation and serve to further the plot of the RP. However, just pulling one out of your ass because you don't like something is a big no-no.

FTL should be used for travel. Using it to get your super-magic giant mecha from Jupiter to Earth to then unleash a WUMD is a big no-no.

3) RPing with your NS nation's population extremely limits you in FT. What people shoud do is use their NS populations for military strength and economics but can claim populations in the trillions that span thousands of worlds for RP purposes.

4) I'm personally a 90% A and B and 10% C kind of guy.

I, too, think FT needs to develop some type of "code of conduct" concerning, primarily, technology. What is better? Your Star Destroyer or the other guys' Enterprise?

I have an answer. Tech stats should use a defined real-world measuring system that makes it very simple to compare it to other pieces of technology.

Instead of measuring shield strength in SBDs, use Watts and Joules.

Tech: Spatial Modifier Targeting System

What it does: Bends space so that even laser blasts can now act as guided missiles. (Since even light follows the curvature of space.)


Won't work as any correction in space-time must travel at c and since the laser travels at c the corection can never reach it.

Unless its entanglement based, in which case if you have pre-entangled particles where you need them, you can warp space at nigh-instantaneous speeds.

A-B type here, although somewhat more A than B. I made my own custom technology tree to make sure that the nation conforms exactly to what I want it to be, rather than simply picking out a theme and sticking to it.

I like to think that kicks plenty of people off balance.

Won't work as any correction in space-time must travel at c and since the laser travels at c the corection can never reach it.

I simply figured incorrectly that since there were theories that the universe at one point expanded faster than the speed of light, my uber intelligent civilization (Note: sarcasm.) could simply find a way to move space time at slightly FTL speeds as well.

(Actually thinking about it in that way, ST like warp drives run into problems like that as well. How do you correct your warp field in front of you when you're moving FTL anyway?

So in that line of strange II logic, that there are nations that use ST like Warp Drives, I figured my device wouldn't be breaking any rules. (In NS.))

I simply figured incorrectly that since there were theories that the universe at one point expanded faster than the speed of light, my uber intelligent civilization (Note: sarcasm.) could simply find a way to move space time at slightly FTL speeds as well.

(Actually thinking about it in that way, ST like warp drives run into problems like that as well. How do you correct your warp field in front of you when you're moving FTL anyway?

So in that line of strange II logic, that there are nations that use ST like Warp Drives, I figured my device wouldn't be breaking any rules. (In NS.))


In ST like Warp Drives the warped section of space time is a fixed distance infront of you. You can adjust those.

I've been using mostly B and a little A when I cannot figure out an effective tactic.

Sort of like 'A blind man cannot be hurt by a torch', When I develop an 'Uber Counter', it typically has limitations and strengths in such a way that it is Uber against anything using $Uber, but either useless or average against everything else.

For example, when Cassiopeia recently used Black Hole Shields, I retrofitted anti-matter missiles with gravity-trigger Anti-Grav devices, making it a devastating weapon when used against gravitic shields, yet the improvements are of absolutely no consequence when not employed against Non-Gravitics.

Otherwise, I take on a 'Shoot the Core' style to taking on much larger fleets or ships, exploiting intricacies in the technology that can be used to my advantage.

I do three types of FT rp

1: Uber NPC wars. This is when i or others want to fight a Massively powerful NPC nations with thousands ( maybe millions of ships) and we have the same. Tho it dosnt reflect my real number tho right now its whats posted on my fleets i havnt got around to changeing them on my site.

2: Uber war between nations who want to have large wars with each other

3: Limited realist numbers.

For example, when Cassiopeia recently used Black Hole Shields, I retrofitted anti-matter missiles with gravity-trigger Anti-Grav devices, making it a devastating weapon when used against gravitic shields, yet the improvements are of absolutely no consequence when not employed against Non-Gravitics.

That never made sense to me. Anti-gravity inherently pushes against gravity as gravity has no natural opposite force like electric and magnetic fields do. That means that your missiles would have triggered and then slowed down and then been repulsed by the ship's gravity shields.

Green Sun: Thanks. It was the easiest way for me to express it.

Everyone Else:

Since everyone is talking about different weapons technologies, and how railguns are "inferior," I'll throw in my two cents.

Laser Weapons

There are a variety of these around, and I personally feel that these have greater accuracy than, say, railguns. Why? As each beam is light, it travels at the speed of light. It's probably quite a bit quicker than railguns, giving the enemy essentially no time to evade. I believe lasers require tanks of chemicals, so these, contrary to popular belief, require ammo.

Rail Guns

These are electrified rails that have a magnetic field. This field pulls a shell down it at high speeds, enabling it to do much more damage than a traditional gun. In the future there will probably be better metals, so these things won't have any lifetime issues. At the high speeds of space combat, these things probably have less accuracy as it gives the enemy time to manuever. However, they probably can pack a bigger punch.

Missiles

Fitted with a variety of warheads, and launched in a variety of ways, these missiles range from anti-matter tipped weapons to kinetic energy devices. They are proppelled on their own, and can follow targets, so they have a great deal of accuracy. These are my personal favorite weapons, and I often use anti-matter or nuclear warheads. Nukes are less effective in space, but it's better than plastic explosives or similar.

Green Sun: Thanks. It was the easiest way for me to express it.

Everyone Else:

Since everyone is talking about different weapons technologies, and how railguns are "inferior," I'll throw in my two cents.

Laser Weapons

There are a variety of these around, and I personally feel that these have greater accuracy than, say, railguns. Why? As each beam is light, it travels at the speed of light. It's probably quite a bit quicker than railguns, giving the enemy essentially no time to evade. I believe lasers require tanks of chemicals, so these, contrary to popular belief, require ammo.

Rail Guns

These are electrified rails that have a magnetic field. This field pulls a shell down it at high speeds, enabling it to do much more damage than a traditional gun. In the future there will probably be better metals, so these things won't have any lifetime issues. At the high speeds of space combat, these things probably have less accuracy as it gives the enemy time to manuever. However, they probably can pack a bigger punch.

Missiles

Fitted with a variety of warheads, and launched in a variety of ways, these missiles range from anti-matter tipped weapons to kinetic energy devices. They are proppelled on their own, and can follow targets, so they have a great deal of accuracy. These are my personal favorite weapons, and I often use anti-matter or nuclear warheads. Nukes are less effective in space, but it's better than plastic explosives or similar.

We have a winner!

My sense is (coming from a PMT player who last played FT about 10 years ago... OUCH) that for a FT RP to work the way any RP should work, the "combatants" in a war *need* to come together and lay out the groundwork ahead of time for the RP. In a way, it may be even *more* important for FT nations than for MT or PMT nations because of the enormous gaps in what can be considered FT.

And another thing, if you don't want some n00b launching a nova bomb or whatever to blow up your star system, close the RP to only specific players or make it invite only. Or, if you know a player launches that kind of superweapon, specifically forbid it and force him to employ *tactics* and earn a victory.

Just my two pence. *plinks into cup by the door*

I personally think that the FT community needs to agree on one meathod of representing population and stick with it for all aspects of the RP. We should either stick to our exact populations and act as the small space nation-states that we are, or use some sort of formula, such as multiplying our NS population by 100 or 1,000 for FT and RPing accordingly. I think the former option would work better and serve to solve a good deal of the problems, as well as make space battles smaller and easier to manage. (it is far easier to follow an RP of a 50-100 ships at most than it is to keep track of 1000 ships)

Also, I like the idea of defining FT technology.

In ST like Warp Drives the warped section of space time is a fixed distance infront of you. You can adjust those.

I'm not quite sure I understand. Isn't that field still going to be ahead of you? How do you correct it if your corrections can't reach it? (Regargless of whether it's fixed or not, like you said, any correction to space-time has to move at c.)

I'm definitely an amalgam of all three, I like big guns etc, and I'm not just gonna hand out my weaknesses, but I think that everything should have at least one exploitable weakness, and all of my units do, though you'll have to try very hard to find it.

I must agree, this is a very good topic.

I will admit to being a lot of both A and B with many C beliefs.

I love technology and therefor have developed all of my own and believe that technology deffently helps but I also believe in moderation. The largest ship in my fleets is around 5656 m in length and there are only one of these in each of my largest fleets due to the extensive costs of opperation and matainence. I have large amounts of smaller class vessels mostly frigates and destroyers that I use most. In fact the only time i've used a capital ship as of this date was in my alliance RP as a political display of power.

I also believe that even the most powerfull of empires have their weaknesses and people should be willing to see that at some time. I also believe that it is important to work out RPs ahead of time if possible in order to avoid the noobish explinations of very little detail.

As far as whos technology is better. That should be decided on a head of time. In an RP I believe that one ship is the same as another some ships depend on more guns while others have fewer more powerfull weapons. But as before this should all be decided on first.

I enjoy discussing technology and technological therories as much as anyone but in RPing it really is about the story and the fun that takes place telling it. But this is just my opinion and everyone is entitled to theirs. I just hope I can live up to my own words in the RPs i participate in and not fall torwards the extreme parts of A and B just to try to defend my nation and my ego.

EDIT:

When it comes to planets I claim several and am currently working on a map with 3 other nations. Most of these planets are only small colonies or observation outposts with very few people. I understand that with only around 2.5 billion in population I probably shouldnt have as many as I do but as with most things in FT RPing it is very much so how you RP it in my opinion.

I'm not quite sure I understand. Isn't that field still going to be ahead of you? How do you correct it if your corrections can't reach it? (Regargless of whether it's fixed or not, like you said, any correction to space-time has to move at c.)

I have no idea. Mathmatically speaking you could start it but never stop it or change it in anyway.

The RP I used to open with: http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=442289

Now, if you take a look, I have made all "n00bish" mistakes in it. My military size is exactly equal to my population, I am starting out with hundreds of ships, and a few of them are basically miniature planets in size.

I am also starting out as a military that just retreated from losing their homeworld (and half their fleet), has ships damaged by both battle and time, has nothing beyond the military personel and what supplies are on hand, and currently has no planets and no economy to speak of. In addition, technology-wise they are dealing with AIs that are potentially insane (as demonstrated in one post) and their ability to find other ships is limited to communications and people looking out the window and hoping to see the other ships.

So, tell me: Do you think I am using a bad setup?

meh you FT with your railguns and capital ships.

we have to make do with good old explosive charge and a 150m bathtub.

but really, i was put off FT by the lack of consistency, anyone can say.

Well my multi-universe travel matter beam works and sends your entire fleet into another dimension.

WTF!!

well after all it IS the future, anythings possible.

you also have to think of the logistics and cost of running multiple planets. communication would be nearly impossible

Communication is entirely possible. For one thing, all you have to do is use a mitt and bat style system. One end either sends the communications through a wormhole or speeds them up to FTL, the other is the end of the wormhole or catches the communication to slow it down and reinforce its coding. It's a pretty simplistic system, and at least one design I have seen involves running communications through the FTL engine.

Also, last I checked, Texas University is working on a man-portable railgun, so those are as future tech as it would seem. The only problem with railguns is not the technology that makes them possible, as that has been around for years, but the materials.

I personally think that the FT community needs to agree on one meathod of representing population and stick with it for all aspects of the RP. We should either stick to our exact populations and act as the small space nation-states that we are, or use some sort of formula, such as multiplying our NS population by 100 or 1,000 for FT and RPing accordingly. I think the former option would work better and serve to solve a good deal of the problems, as well as make space battles smaller and easier to manage. (it is far easier to follow an RP of a 50-100 ships at most than it is to keep track of 1000 ships)


Quoted because I believe that this needs to be descussed.

I havent read all 3 pages but I want to put in my input. I have always wanted to get into FT, but have always found too much wanking in that tech level. (ANd I know more about MT) Concerning ship design and such, I think we need to really start standardizing things. Like a future armor rating equivelent to RHA. Like FTA rating: Future Tech Armor rating. It would have a KE rating and a HE rating. The HE rating would be a heat rating as I think most FT nations use railguns or other KE weapons and Plasma/Laser tech and that usually has to do with heat.

We could say that it takes 10 joules to to burn though 1mm of FTA. Or somehting like that. I'm not very knowledge able on how FT weapon give their rating or such, but you get the idea I hope.

As for population. I dont see why ti would be so hard to just own 1-3 systems for the largest NS pop. It would be more fun to me to have 1-2 systems or even just planets than to have 12 systems and 100 planets. You could spread yourself out far, but you would be left defenseless. I also think smaller size brings back the personailty lost in big-scale RPs.

Shields. I'm not sure about this. I'm not even sure if we should have them, but NNS seems to liek them. I think it is pretty standard, but I think that Shields should have FTA ratings such as the above, but with a recharge rate. Like 5mm FTA a second (5 FTA/s) or such. It would work like regenerative armor.

As you can tell I'm a very technical person that love numbers. Heck, I'm in NS for the designing. Well I'll stop my rant now, I need to check some other threads.

Ah, forgot communication. My thoughts on communication would be that it would take place using Tacheyons . But these high-energy particles would lose their energy fast and would need relay stations. No instand messages across a galaxy. Maybe it would take a few hours to a day for a normal message to pass though a galaxy and a week for so to travel to another close galaxy.

To send message within a galaxy you would be a low-level Tacheyon system that would get picked up by booster stations and broadcast to their destination from there. To send out signals to another galaxy, you would need a very power tacheon system to transmitt them the long distance.

This would give you instant communications within a system (as in a MT nation), fast communications between systems (as in MT earths), and a reasonable speed between galaxys. It would also bring into play that you could could destroy an enemy's relay stations and take out thier communications, unless they have a large transmiter somewhere.

What I was annoyed with when I tried to get into FT spacetech, was that my ships with no shields, or lasers, just MAC guns and nukes and missiles where defiled as ancient and useless against all "modern" shields. I think that the rule that was made so many years ago, the "An AK-47 kills as well as a superduperphaser SV-24 540ktw does." needs to be applied to spacewarfare more liberally.

Yea, a 1+ MT nuke would at least take out the shields on smaller ships and would kill a lot of the fighters in the area with the shockwave. It might take more to destroy a FT batleship sheilds, but still be possible. So much energy spread out over a large area would have to be aborsbed by the shield and would possibly overload it.

I RP my pop much higher than it already is in FT, just I don't have billion man armies. You need some realistic statistics in FT, such as if your going to build a 3 km warship, you need the resources to do so, so you can't just go out and build 1000 3 km warships. I have about 2 fleets, 1 with 30 ships, the other with about 10, and to maintain this fleet I need a huge mass of resources, manpower, money, technology, that could otherwise be used to build a bigger empire.

Defense is also critical, I personally prefer realistic space stations with realistic FT weapons (huge ballistics, but no lasers) strong cruise missiles, huge cannons, etc.

Mix a little PMT with some MT and blammo, realistic space fleet.

If I ever get into FT my fleets ships would place emphasis of Speed and firepower. Get in there fast and quickly overwhelm the enery with superior firepower. I might make my fleet command ship(s) armored though, as they will act as mobile space stations/command centers.

My only PMT/FT design: a Space Tug: Jerico-Class Space Tug (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=9334712&postcount=1)

Yea, a 1+ MT nuke would at least take out the shields on smaller ships and would kill a lot of the fighters in the area with the shockwave. It might take more to destroy a FT batleship sheilds, but still be possible. So much energy spread out over a large area would have to be aborsbed by the shield and would possibly overload it.

Granted, anti-matter is more powerfull by volume than nukes are. It's just large amounts of anti-matter is very unstable so the huge missiles are better off just beeing nukes.

Now back to population, I think nations should stick with their actuall population and RP as the nation-states that they are, instead of Rping as though they are much larger. Instead of fleets of thousands of ships, I believe that a total naval force for a nation of my size (3 billion) should be 1,000 active ships at most, realistically devided between various sizes. (not 1,000 2+KM long ships) I have seen nations throw that many ships into a single battle. I think the reason that RPers think they could have that many ships is because we have been applying RL costs to ships which would realistically cost far more to build and maintain than an aircraft carrier.

Realistically, that's because the modern aircraft carrier would cost far less under FT than it does now.

Along with advancing technology comes a decrease in actual cost. You normally don't notice this because of inflation. But, as time advances, yes, it is reasonable to expect that as some point the average four-person family could afford a ship capable of interplanetary travel. Ignoring it is ignoring another aspect of reality.

It still stands that a 3km long ship would cost far more than an aircraft carrier even with inflation factored in. It would also be hideously large as a target and would be slow. Granted you either have very large shilds and a thick hull to counter attacks, or give it large engines and fuel tanks to make it faster.

Yea, a 1+ MT nuke would at least take out the shields on smaller ships and would kill a lot of the fighters in the area with the shockwave. It might take more to destroy a FT batleship sheilds, but still be possible. So much energy spread out over a large area would have to be aborsbed by the shield and would possibly overload it.


Oooh shockwaves in space :rolleyes: Impress me some more Mr. Physics Man :rolleyes:

Yes, but how much more? I would say the current FT prices are accurate when compared to the technology level. Increasing the prices just because a destroyer comes in at the same price as an aircraft carrier is not realistic. Why? Because the two are at different technology levels. We cannot factor this in for NS because NS does not have inflation. If it did, we could and have an accurate measurement. But, until it does, we have to rely on the differences in technology level as an explanation.

There will be en energy shockwave. Not a matter one. You will have soo much energy and mircowaves being smashed onto the hull that it would cause massive radiation turbulence. Think of it kinda like a solar wind sail only being pushed much harder on a small hull.

Yup, that stands on all my designs, lots of armor and huge engines to make the thing move, a small corvette costs as much as a Nimitz Class Carrier in RL

Well that's a possibility. Although a 3 Km long battleship would likely require more man-power than a .4 Km modern battleship. That is, unless it is partially controlled by AI. In which case it would be quite a bit more expensive.

More expensive just because of an AI? Not likely. More than likely, only a tiny bit more. Just a simple case of copying the original code for generating an AI and putting it into computers. If anything, it shouldn't be that big of an issue if a nation is really that advanced.

Small ships would have a sort of "Dumb AI" that would just be a supercomputer designed to mimic humand speech and ideas. No real personality.

Larger, Fleet command ships would have a "Smart AI" in my opinion. It would be able to mimic human behavior and would formulate creative battle plans and such. A true AI.

An AK-47 kills as well as a superduperphaser SV-24 540ktw does

Untrue, the 540 Peta(KiloTera)Watt phaser will kill far more effectivaly than an AK-47. What with it putting out 128 megatons a second and all.

EDIT: And oh yah, armour designed to protect against all of the high energy projectiles and energy weapons used on the FT battlefield will grant near invulnerabilty to FT troops vs modern weapons. Though things like tank shells and .50 cal shots to the head will still kill em.

There will be en energy shockwave. Not a matter one. You will have soo much energy and mircowaves being smashed onto the hull that it would cause massive radiation turbulence. Think of it kinda like a solar wind sail only being pushed much harder on a small hull.

Ahh, you abuse the definition of "shockwave" so that the normal radiation emmission from a nuke is called one when in fact a shockwave is a wave of supersonic heavily compressed air.

Oh and by the way a 1-Mt nuke will only be effective against most FT fighters up to 100 meters range. Good luck with that.

More expensive just because of an AI? Not likely. More than likely, only a tiny bit more. Just a simple case of copying the original code for generating an AI and putting it into computers. If anything, it shouldn't be that big of an issue if a nation is really that advanced.

Your forgeting that AI would have to have more powerful computers and such as it would take way more processing power and memory to build a true AI. It is more complex than just downloading programs into a computer. It would also have to learn on itself. The "Smart AI" would start out similar to a human child and would have to learn how to use it's processors to think. It would also be dangerous to just "pop" an inteligent being into existance. It would most likely go crazy trying to comprehend how it came into exstance and such. "Smart AIs" would be vastly different than a regular computer program.

Untrue, the 540 Peta(KiloTera)Watt phaser will kill far more effectivaly than an AK-47. What with it putting out 128 megatons a second and all.



Ahh, you abuse the definition of "shockwave" so that the normal radiation emmission from a nuke is called one when in fact a shockwave is a wave of supersonic heavily compressed air.

Oh and by the way a 1-Mt nuke will only be effective against most FT fighters up to 100 meters range. Good luck with that.

Well yea. I really wasn't specific. After that small area the enrgy would be spread out enough that it wouldn't cause much of any effect. It would be larger though, 200 meters. But not that large effect that they have on earth.

Well yea. I really wasn't specific. After that small area the enrgy would be spread out enough that it wouldn't cause much of any effect. It would be larger though, 200 meters. But not that large effect that they have on earth.

200 meters eh? Care to show how you arrived at that number?

You see I actually figured out the intensity of a 1-MT 1 meter radius explosion at 100 meters range and found that it was far to little to actually destroy an FT fighter, which generally speaking can shrug off kiloton level direct energy blasts.

Your forgeting that AI would have to have more power computers and such as it would take way more processing power and memory to build a true AI. It is more complex than just downloading programs into a computer. It would also have to learn on itself. The "Smart AI" would start out similar to a human child and would have to learn how to use it's processors to think. It would also be dangerous to just "pop" an inteligent being into existance. It would most likely go crazy trying to comprehend how it came into exstance and such. "Smart AIs" would be vastly different than a regular computer program.

Okay, I have a suggestion: Let's refer to "dumb AIs" as "Semi-autonomous Knowbots," or "SKs." Leave the "AI" designation for true AIs. Saves on confusion.

I am not forgetting the increase in processing power necessary. What I am doing is factoring in the fact that, realistically, we should have enough to be able to do real-time models of the movements of electrons by the point FTL travel is even in the beginning stages of experimentation. The current advancement rate of computer technology, combined with certain predictions based on current trends, makes it possible for use to potentially build computers with the processing power to handle AIs within our own lifetimes. Some of the estimates I have seen on random computer sites suggest we can do it now, or at least enough to make an SK. Imagine, at even our current rate of advancement, what we can achieve in a measely 50 years. Now, imagine that in 200 or even 300.

Realistically, I would say the Star Trek computers are actually slow compared to what they should be.

200 meters eh? Care to show how you arrived at that number?

You see I actually figured out the intensity of a 1-MT 1 meter radius explosion at 100 meters range and found that it was far to little to actually destroy an FT fighter, which generally speaking can shrug off kiloton level direct energy blasts.

This is more a side effect of the writers for Star Wars and Star Trek having absolutely no conception of how much a 'terrawatt' actually is, and just throwing in random technobabble numbers in an attempt to make their source material sound cool.

I came up with that number using complex computing power unknown even to myself. It just seems that 100 meters is a bit small. I'm also talking generally. I'm guessing that most FT nukes are above 1 MT and would be more apt to have that 200 meter fighter kill range.

Also. Using FT, can nukes be shaped somewhat? Forcing a little more of the blast in one direction. Nothing close to a shaped TNT charge, but more directed than the spherical realse of a typical nuke.

200 meters eh? Care to show how you arrived at that number?

You see I actually figured out the intensity of a 1-MT 1 meter radius explosion at 100 meters range and found that it was far to little to actually destroy an FT fighter, which generally speaking can shrug off kiloton level direct energy blasts.

Did you remember to factor in the lesser resistance that hydrogen gas gives at its average spread rate in space? That difference alone could increase the range significantly. If you have, then my apology is due.

This is more a side effect of the writers for Star Wars and Star Trek having absolutely no conception of how much a 'terrawatt' actually is, and just throwing in random technobabble numbers in an attempt to make their source material sound cool.

I try not to pull numbe out of the air, but since no nuke has ever been explouded in a complete vacume, I am being forced too. Also, as I said before, I'm not as knowledgeable on FT as many of you are. I'm baseing most of my ideas on MT.

This is more a side effect of the writers for Star Wars and Star Trek having absolutely no conception of how much a 'terrawatt' actually is, and just throwing in random technobabble numbers in an attempt to make their source material sound cool.

No that's the case for Star Trek. Star Wars never actually claims how powerfull it's weapons are, it's all derived from the films by people like Dr. Curtis Saxton who do know how much a terawatt is.

Did you remember to factor in the lesser resistance that hydrogen gas gives at its average spread rate in space? That difference alone could increase the range significantly. If you have, then my apology is due.

What about plasma? It score was hit on ships hull, how much of it would be converted to expanding plasma? I dont know much about this state of matter, but it would seems to effect the explosion.

Did you remember to factor in the lesser resistance that hydrogen gas gives at its average spread rate in space? That difference alone could increase the range significantly. If you have, then my apology is due.


I based it off an explosion in a vacuum, where most FT fighters will be located, and thus used the inverse square law to figure out the energy intensity at 100 meters, 3x10^10 Joules/m^2.

I based it off an explosion in a vacuum, where most FT fighters will be located, and thus used the inverse square law to figure out the energy intensity at 100 meters, 3x10^10 Joules/m^2.

See, this is what I need to learn. I dont know what a single thing there ment. I'm not all that knowledgeable in nuclear reactions, energy, or space physic's in general.

No that's the case for Star Trek. Star Wars never actually claims how powerfull it's weapons are, it's all derived from the films by people like Dr. Curtis Saxton who do know how much a terawatt is.

Even Star Wars is wildly inconsistent. =p

More expensive just because of an AI? Not likely. More than likely, only a tiny bit more. Just a simple case of copying the original code for generating an AI and putting it into computers. If anything, it shouldn't be that big of an issue if a nation is really that advanced.

Maybe the problem is that FT nations (some, not all, which is the problem) are too futuristic. They are put on a completely different scale than other, more moderate, nations. This only leads to wanking and uber-teching. That is why we need to do these two things:

1: Define FT technology so that it is on the same page and level for everyone. Set caps on what a nation can have without restricting their ability to customize their military and technology. Nothing is truly without weaknesses. Even if you are like me and your ships are all state of the art with powerfull weapons, shields, engines, and armor, you have to acknowledge the fact that these units are going to be far more expensive to produce (not even taking into account research and developement) and that you are likely going to be outnumbered by nations with simpler and weaker ships.

2: As I have been suggesting, standardize the scale of FT and/or put a cap on military numbers in proportion to size. Everyone can't be a fascist military state. (although they have their downsides for sure) Especially when controlling small space empires, a realistic military/population ratio needs to be maintained not to mention taking logistics into account. For example, deploying 300 ships somewhere is no easy logistical feet.

Putting caps and rules on 'how to RP FT' kinda takes away from the idea of Freeform RP, does it not?

Putting caps and rules on 'how to RP FT' kinda takes away from the idea of Freeform RP, does it not?

Does the EPA putting restrictions on factory emmisions take away from the idea of a market economy? No.

EDIT: Well yes it does, but that is a different discussion. We need restrictions and rules, but not go over the top with them.

Yes, but what about nations that have been here for years; who've worked their way up to FT and built their nation into something greater than what it started as? Should they be limited by caps. I don't see why there should be caps on what nations have, so long as its legitimate and not something exceedingly wanky, like Temporal Tech, and ub3r ships.

It's not about limitting nations or technology, or putting caps on anything; young newbies who think they can plunge headfirst into FT should be shown a system whereby they can grow and learn.

Frankly I prefered building up to FT from MT, but thats just my view.

Yes, but what about nations that have been here for years; who've worked their way up to FT and built their nation into something greater than what it started as? Should they be limited by caps. I don't see why there should be caps on what nations have, so long as its legitimate and not something exceedingly wanky, like Temporal Tech, and ub3r ships.

It's not about limitting nations or technology, or putting caps on anything; young newbies who think they can plunge headfirst into FT should be shown a system whereby they can grow and learn.

Frankly I prefered building up to FT from MT, but thats just my view.

I said "proportional to their population" did I not? A nation who has been here for years would have the same advantage percentile; everything would just be at a smaller scale, more realistic and reasonable scale. As for technology, I just want it to be defined and all compared on the same scale. Remember, I am a B type. I don't think all nations are equall either. The work one puts into it should directly reflect their nation's power. However, all things in moderation.

Maybe the problem is that FT nations (some, not all, which is the problem) are too futuristic. They are put on a completely different scale than other, more moderate, nations. This only leads to wanking and uber-teching.

Part of it is due entirely to differences in base technologies. Just compare Star Wars, Star Trek, and StarGate. The technology differences between those three alone produce vastly different power levels and roleplay experiences. Add in Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, and a few others and it becomes impossible. Worse is the variant self-created technologies that are becomming popular on here.

That is why we need to do these two things:

1: Define FT technology so that it is on the same page and level for everyone. Set caps on what a nation can have without restricting their ability to customize their military and technology. Nothing is truly without weaknesses. Even if you are like me and your ships are all state of the art with powerfull weapons, shields, engines, and armor, you have to acknowledge the fact that these units are going to be far more expensive to produce (not even taking into account research and developement) and that you are likely going to be outnumbered by nations with simpler and weaker ships.

Which actually severely limits customization. Ships using gravitation waves for shielding are more than likely quite capable of producing shields far more powerful than one using electromagnetic fields. Now, stop and compare the variety of technology bases we have. A simple fact remains: Consolidating those into a simplified system is going to be extremely difficult and, in the end, mostly ignored.

2: As I have been suggesting, standardize the scale of FT and/or put a cap on military numbers in proportion to size. Everyone can't be a fascist military state. (although they have their downsides for sure) Especially when controlling small space empires, a realistic military/population ratio needs to be maintained not to mention taking logistics into account. For example, deploying 300 ships somewhere is no easy logistical feet.

Yes, we do. But, we also have a logistics problem. 300 ships are relatively easy to deploy if you use a carrier ship, which is a solution they can use. Our problem is trying to create a guide that works for a genre that covers everything from simplistic rocket ships to intertemporal armadas. We also have to deal with such issues that result from trying to consolidate such a variety of ships.

For example, how does the Battlestar Galactica compare to the Enterprise in terms of power scale? Or a Slipstream Fighter to a Star Fury? Or the Death Star to a nanovirus?

I think we should create some sort of guidelines, even vague ones.
Otherwise, as was said, we'll have ships and weapons from every possible Sci-Fi piece of fiction ever created (and then a few more). Just define what a railgun/laser/blaster/missle does and how some types of shields and hulls work. Maybe speed and some other stuff like cloaking.

Part of it is due entirely to differences in base technologies. Just compare Star Wars, Star Trek, and StarGate. The technology differences between those three alone produce vastly different power levels and roleplay experiences. Add in Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, and a few others and it becomes impossible. Worse is the variant self-created technologies that are becomming popular on here.


All the more reason to standardize technology. This doesn't mean that you can't customize your technology, but we need to have a standard level in which we work off of.


Which actually severely limits customization. Ships using gravitation waves for shielding are more than likely quite capable of producing shields far more powerful than one using electromagnetic fields. Now, stop and compare the variety of technology bases we have. A simple fact remains: Consolidating those into a simplified system is going to be extremely difficult and, in the end, mostly ignored.


All I am asking for is something common that we can all compare our technology to. I'm not saying that everyone's technology has to be the same or equall in power, but when one nation is using Terran technology from Starcraft and another is using nearly god-like technology, there tends to be some problems. I guess what I am asking for is for there to be a general understanding of what your technology is and how it compares to other's. And we still need to maintain a similar plane of technology. Either that or we devide FT up into normal FT and super-FT. Again, this isn't supposed to hinder customization, I just think we need to define what a railgun does and what a plasma cannon does. After that, the sky is the limit.


Yes, we do. But, we also have a logistics problem. 300 ships are relatively easy to deploy if you use a carrier ship, which is a solution they can use. Our problem is trying to create a guide that works for a genre that covers everything from simplistic rocket ships to intertemporal armadas. We also have to deal with such issues that result from trying to consolidate such a variety of ships.


It would still be rather costly, however.

All the more reason to standardize technology. This doesn't mean that you can't customize your technology, but we need to have a standard level in which we work off of.

Which leaves another problem: Where would a fledging nation in my situation fit in? The ones that start with advanced tech can be tricky.

All I am asking for is something common that we can all compare our technology to. I'm not saying that everyone's technology has to be the same or equall in power, but when one nation is using Terran technology from Starcraft and another is using nearly god-like technology, there tends to be some problems. I guess what I am asking for is for there to be a general understanding of what your technology is and how it compares to other's. And we still need to maintain a similar plane of technology. Either that or we devide FT up into normal FT and super-FT. Again, this isn't supposed to hinder customization, I just think we need to define what a railgun does and what a plasma cannon does. After that, the sky is the limit.

For a railgun, just use real-world equivolents in their destructive power. Last I saw anything, it was talking about a version firing small slugs that could destroy tanks. The plasma cannons merely shoot out plasma and let its superheated nature do the damage for them. I think those we can figure out with ease.

It would still be rather costly, however.

Yes, it would.

Which leaves another problem: Where would a fledging nation in my situation fit in? The ones that start with advanced tech can be tricky.


This is a complicated issue. I think the level of technology any nation has should directly stem from the effort that they put into their RPing and military devolopement. Obviously, a nation that has been around longer would have had more time to put in and will most likely have put in more effort overall. (this is not always the case, however)

Anyways, now that we have defined plasma and rail guns, how about burst cannons and phasers and how they would compare with normal lasers. (the plasma and rail guns were only examples)

Phasers are just lasers on steroids. I'm serious. The only change in the acronym is the "Ph" comes from "phased."

I like where this is going. What we need to do is make some basic weapons, shields, power sources, and armor categories for everything to stem off of. I like what Fluffywuffy said, so I will start there:


Laser Weapons

There are a variety of these around, and I personally feel that these have greater accuracy than, say, railguns. Why? As each beam is light, it travels at the speed of light. It's probably quite a bit quicker than railguns, giving the enemy essentially no time to evade. I believe lasers require tanks of chemicals, so these, contrary to popular belief, require ammo.

Rail Guns

These are electrified rails that have a magnetic field. This field pulls a shell down it at high speeds, enabling it to do much more damage than a traditional gun. In the future there will probably be better metals, so these things won't have any lifetime issues. At the high speeds of space combat, these things probably have less accuracy as it gives the enemy time to manuever. However, they probably can pack a bigger punch.

Missiles

Fitted with a variety of warheads, and launched in a variety of ways, these missiles range from anti-matter tipped weapons to kinetic energy devices. They are proppelled on their own, and can follow targets, so they have a great deal of accuracy. These are my personal favorite weapons, and I often use anti-matter or nuclear warheads. Nukes are less effective in space, but it's better than plastic explosives or similar.


So lasers are very accurate but less powerfull.
Rail-guns are less accurate than lasers but more powerfull.
Missiles are very versatile and usefull weapons but require more storage area than other weapon types.



So for a phaser, we could simply say that it falls into the laser category. It is more powerfull and can be sustained in constant fire longer than a traditional laser battery. Downside being they are more expensive to produce in comparison and require more energy to operate. Like a laser, it uses heat and kinetic force to do its damage. The nature of this weapon allows it to penetrate armor more easily than some other weapons.

A plasma weapon still falls under the laser category, but works a little different. Instead of coherent beams of light, it fires superheated/energized matter. (AKA: plasma) Like a laser, it still uses kinetic force and heat to do it's damage. However, it is slower than a traditional laser, thus causing less kinetic damage. The plus side is that it's effect lasts longer as the superheated plasma burns into a ships hull for period of time after impact. They work great against lightly armored vessels.

To use one of my own inovations: Gauss Powered Harpoon Torpedos. They are a cross between a rail gun and a torpedo launcher. (anti-matter torpedos fired at rail-gun speeds) They are very accurate for non-seeking torpedos and have amazing anti-armor capabilities. The anti-matter munitions pack a major punch. The downside is their cost to manufacture, the energy needed to power the weapon, and, just as other missile weapons, the storage requirements for their ammo.

Actually, I would place plasma weapons in the flamethrower category. Plasma cannons would operate under the same principle, only with a much more powerful and much more intense effect. Also, when used on a planet they are definitely WMD.

As for phaser: Yeah, I would say that's about right. As a side-effect of their increased power, they travel at sub-C speeds (there are plenty of cases in Star Trek of people dodging phaser blasts after the phasers have been started firing). Ironically, that is why Star Trek ships have torpedos.

Now, another innovation I have seen: Antimatter plasma railguns. Take the antimatter form of a gas, superheat it to plasma, and then shoot it out at railgun speeds. In all cases I have seen it, the ships in question don't really have much in the way of weapons, and the power amount required would be extremely expensive.

Antimatter plasma railguns? There really is no point. Antimatter is incredibly powerful. I've heard that one gram is worth 43 kilotons of TNT. Can you say boom?

Antimatter plasma railguns? There really is no point. Antimatter is incredibly powerful. I've heard that one gram is worth 43 kilotons of TNT. Can you say boom?

It gets the anti-matter through the target's armor. An anti-matter explosion on the outside of a ship will still do damage, but if you can penetrate the armor so the explosion happens inside the ship, the thing will crack like a walnut.

When it comes to population issues. I agree that we should limit our populations in FT of that of our stated NS population. It would make it more simplistic. And i agree that we should limit our fleets as well. I believe that many of us in the FT comunity use over welming fleet and population sizes because the other person does. Then it just gets over blown from there and so on and so on. It goes back to a point from a nother thread i was reading. It stated that no one wants to be the little guy or the third world country. And that is true, but we need to learn that sometimes thats just the way it is.

If you ask me, it seems like the only way to do it is just to clone pre-ft combat and just give everything a different name (anitmatter torpedoes are nukes, star cruisers are like normal cruisers, rail guns are like 16-inch battleship guns, etc.)

Also, antimatter is very powerful, but it's also extremely difficult to make.

Just by posting this thread you're halfway toward fixing the problem. On the war sign-up threads just lay out some ground rules like this.

I agree with the population thing. Whats to stop a small nation (Say my nation, for example) from RPing a huge population (like 5 billion people) to match someone elses huge population? And then from the other guy raising his? And back? And forth? You see my point. Sure, then we cant have Star Empires of 20 billion people on an equal amount of planets, but I think that makes sense. The Star Empire should be a region, and each of the planets could belong to a different player.
Then, for rules, all we have to do is say what each weapon does (I think we've done that already) and make sure people know that you cant give your basic fighters rapid firing nuclear missle launchers, or make your battleships 20k long and incredibly manuverable (or refuelable. How many kilometers would just be fuel containers?). Once they know whats the difference between a plasma cannon and a railgun, and how a shield works, most of the problem is solved. I think a big problem is the godmodding that occurs when some n00b doesnt know how expensive it is to make an antimatter torpedo, and gives his 3 day old nation fighters equiped with racks of them.

All the more reason to standardize technology. This doesn't mean that you can't customize your technology, but we need to have a standard level in which we work off of.



All I am asking for is something common that we can all compare our technology to. I'm not saying that everyone's technology has to be the same or equall in power, but when one nation is using Terran technology from Starcraft and another is using nearly god-like technology, there tends to be some problems. I guess what I am asking for is for there to be a general understanding of what your technology is and how it compares to other's. And we still need to maintain a similar plane of technology. Either that or we devide FT up into normal FT and super-FT. Again, this isn't supposed to hinder customization, I just think we need to define what a railgun does and what a plasma cannon does. After that, the sky is the limit.



It would still be rather costly, however.


Well, I took a few tech bases and designed modifications to fight the three major(as I see it) tech bases, Grondes 40k, Huntaers SW(and the swarms of other SW junkies), and the lowest of the majors, ST. For example:

Miehm 8th Fleet against Grondes massive fleets, Space Hulk thread, I hit him hard and fast, running before he could hit back, and then, when he finally hit me, I survived because he was using solid shot weapons against gravitic shielding, gravity crushes nukes, shields win.(Me VS 40k)

In the battle above Numonica in the NS war I took on Coreworlds Rogues, and hammered them, with modified X-Com Super Avenger(known as Genesis in my version) Interceptors, and I was only beaten back when afew corvettes intervened and attacked my fighters directly, and I still won that fight, driving him off and hamering his rogues with an attack from inside an Arbiters cloaking field. (Me VS SW)

My only example of me VS ST was pretty much a draw, I left only three of his ships standing, but it wasn't my anti-ST tech, so I think it was a pretty even fight.

I agree with the population thing. Whats to stop a small nation (Say my nation, for example) from RPing a huge population (like 5 billion people) to match someone elses huge population? And then from the other guy raising his? And back? And forth? You see my point. Sure, then we cant have Star Empires of 20 billion people on an equal amount of planets, but I think that makes sense. The Star Empire should be a region, and each of the planets could belong to a different player.
Then, for rules, all we have to do is say what each weapon does (I think we've done that already) and make sure people know that you cant give your basic fighters rapid firing nuclear missle launchers, or make your battleships 20k long and incredibly manuverable (or refuelable. How many kilometers would just be fuel containers?). Once they know whats the difference between a plasma cannon and a railgun, and how a shield works, most of the problem is solved. I think a big problem is the godmodding that occurs when some n00b doesnt know how expensive it is to make an antimatter torpedo, and gives his 3 day old nation fighters equiped with racks of them.

In FT you can generally make AM by the Carrier-load, and one of my weapons systems uses that as a firing mechanism, in the thousands of rounds(more like hundreds of thousands).

Most people that I don't ignore outright don't exceed about 14 kilometers with their ships, though I have a few Planetoids in development(not Superweapons, very heavy Carrier ships) and they're each about the size of earths moon... Although finding crews is gonna be a bitch.

I agree with the population thing. Whats to stop a small nation (Say my nation, for example) from RPing a huge population (like 5 billion people) to match someone elses huge population? And then from the other guy raising his? And back? And forth? You see my point. Sure, then we cant have Star Empires of 20 billion people on an equal amount of planets, but I think that makes sense. The Star Empire should be a region, and each of the planets could belong to a different player.
Then, for rules, all we have to do is say what each weapon does (I think we've done that already) and make sure people know that you cant give your basic fighters rapid firing nuclear missle launchers, or make your battleships 20k long and incredibly manuverable (or refuelable. How many kilometers would just be fuel containers?). Once they know whats the difference between a plasma cannon and a railgun, and how a shield works, most of the problem is solved. I think a big problem is the godmodding that occurs when some n00b doesnt know how expensive it is to make an antimatter torpedo, and gives his 3 day old nation fighters equiped with racks of them.

Actually, I think small nations should be allowed to start out as equipped as they want. But only if they start out with a weakness equal to the amount of equipment they start out with.

Look at my nation. I'm starting out with four worldships, about a couple dozen destroyers, hundreds of smaller ships, and my entire population being my military. Now, I also had all ships damaged, the crews having no idea where in the universe they are, and the nation as a whole currently having no economy, no territory, low-end technology compared to most FT nations, and exactly one NS month of supplies.

So while I am not as worried about such things as having enough ships to send into battle, I am worried about such little things as where I am going to get enough metal at, how can I build new ships, what am I going to do with a growing population, am I going to be able to make this work, etc. And it only gets worse when you start talking medical care and housing. Food isn't a problem because of the worldships, but even the worldships need fuel, repairs, and maintenance.

Note: The worldships are not superweapons. They are giant food production areas and have plenty of crew quarters. The closest thing I have to a superweapon are the railguns.

So, yes, I start off with a massive military compared to everyone else at my age. But at the same time, most nations my age already have the foundations to my list of problems while I don't. So, I would say it balances out.

Personally, I could care less about how many citizens people RP themselves having AS LONG AS THEY USE THEIR REAL STATS FOR MILITARY. This keeps things from becoming overly wank. If somebody claims to have a pop of a hundred bil or higher and still only has a hundred ships or so, I don't really care. Now, if the same person boosts their number of ships into the thousands, I either ignore them, or apply the Anime Ninja principle (IE, the more Ninjas there are, the easier and faster they die en masse). In the example of the thousand ship newbie, his ships are now roughly as strong as a cardboard box.

Hmm. I just came up with an idea of a ranking system.

We rate from 1 to 25, with 1 being the lowest and 25 being the highest. We simply state the technology level and the ranking for a way to compare. For example, MT25 would be Modern Tech Rating 25. I would say something equal to a thermonuclear missile for destructive power.

Now, for Future Tech, each rating would be given an example for each type of system. Someone merely compares their technology to the examples and gives a rating to it.

For example, that antimatter plasma railgun. That is, I would say, at least a 20. Used on ships it could probably destroy a battleplate.

Personally, I could care less about how many citizens people RP themselves having AS LONG AS THEY USE THEIR REAL STATS FOR MILITARY. This keeps things from becoming overly wank. If somebody claims to have a pop of a hundred bil or higher and still only has a hundred ships or so, I don't really care. Now, if the same person boosts their number of ships into the thousands, I either ignore them, or apply the Anime Ninja principle (IE, the more Ninjas there are, the easier and faster they die en masse). In the example of the thousand ship newbie, his ships are now roughly as strong as a cardboard box.

I think thats exactly what he said...

And I only apply the Ninja Effect to my Biologicals, the rest get treated as normal combatanst, and most of the Bio's I use(Zerglings primarily) are ony half a population point, meaning I can have double the "standard" since they hatch two to the egg, and only count as one half each. TYhe Downside id that they're individually weak, and in a group they're not much better, sure the grafted Bolters and such help, but not enough.

Your argument makes sense about military/population. I still think, however, that a Nation should only control one or two planets. Besides communications difficulties (And the fact that people tend to forget that communications have been cut and get reinforcments anyway), it means that each planet in a region is "unique" as one would expect from living on a different world.

Your argument makes sense about military/population. I still think, however, that a Nation should only control one or two planets. Besides communications difficulties (And the fact that people tend to forget that communications have been cut and get reinforcments anyway), it means that each planet in a region is "unique" as one would expect from living on a different world.

I RP as a lightly populated sector(SC Krprulu).

Your argument makes sense about military/population. I still think, however, that a Nation should only control one or two planets. Besides communications difficulties (And the fact that people tend to forget that communications have been cut and get reinforcments anyway), it means that each planet in a region is "unique" as one would expect from living on a different world.
Communication difficulties are negligible for me, as I use quantum entanglement based comms. Instantaneous communication, so no problems calling friends light-years away. And I only control a few planets, around 15.

Your argument makes sense about military/population. I still think, however, that a Nation should only control one or two planets. Besides communications difficulties (And the fact that people tend to forget that communications have been cut and get reinforcments anyway), it means that each planet in a region is "unique" as one would expect from living on a different world.

Well, I think someone should be able to control more than that. It's just that their forces will be spread thin. I still think my communications structure would do well for FT.

Ah, forgot communication. My thoughts on communication would be that it would take place using Tacheyons . But these high-energy particles would lose their energy fast and would need relay stations. No instand messages across a galaxy. Maybe it would take a few hours to a day for a normal message to pass though a galaxy and a week for so to travel to another close galaxy.

To send message within a galaxy you would be a low-level Tacheyon system that would get picked up by booster stations and broadcast to their destination from there. To send out signals to another galaxy, you would need a very power tacheon system to transmitt them the long distance.

This would give you instant communications within a system (as in a MT nation), fast communications between systems (as in MT earths), and a reasonable speed between galaxys. It would also bring into play that you could could destroy an enemy's relay stations and take out thier communications, unless they have a large transmiter somewhere.

Well, I took a few tech bases and designed modifications to fight the three major(as I see it) tech bases, Grondes 40k, Huntaers SW(and the swarms of other SW junkies), and the lowest of the majors, ST. For example:

Miehm 8th Fleet against Grondes massive fleets, Space Hulk thread, I hit him hard and fast, running before he could hit back, and then, when he finally hit me, I survived because he was using solid shot weapons against gravitic shielding, gravity crushes nukes, shields win.(Me VS 40k)


Hmm, that's not exactly how I remembered that going. :p I remember launching a large scale bomber raid to get in between your gravity wedges with some pricey anti-matter torpedos. (Or maybe that was how you had planned it to go. lol) On a similar not, I am not a good example of a 40k opponant because I have altered it quite a bit. I just like the way imperial and Space Marine ships look. That has thrown many people off.



Hmm. I just came up with an idea of a ranking system.

We rate from 1 to 25, with 1 being the lowest and 25 being the highest. We simply state the technology level and the ranking for a way to compare. For example, MT25 would be Modern Tech Rating 25. I would say something equal to a thermonuclear missile for destructive power.

Now, for Future Tech, each rating would be given an example for each type of system. Someone merely compares their technology to the examples and gives a rating to it.

For example, that antimatter plasma railgun. That is, I would say, at least a 20. Used on ships it could probably destroy a battleplate.


I like that idea. I already employ a similar system for the ships in my storefront. (except it's 1-10) However, instead of one number, use a series of numbers for each possible statistic for a weapon, a ship, or a shield.

Example: Gronde Lance Nova Cannon:
Damage power Rating: 16
Area of effect Rating: 10
Accuracy Rating: 16
Rate of fire Rating: 5
Range Rating: 17
Energy Requirement: 18
Damage type: Energy/heat, Minor Peircing
Price tag: --- USD

Example 2: Gronde Hammer Nova Cannon:
Damage power Rating: 19
Area of effect Rating: 15
Accuracy Rating: 15
Rate of fire Rating: 5
Range Rating: 10
Energy Requirement: 18
Damage type: Energy/heat, Concussive
Price tag: --- USD

Example 3: Anti-matter plasma Rail gun (because we have already been working with it):
Damage power Rating: 21
Area of effect Rating: 13
Accuracy Rating: 17
Rate of fire Rating: 4
Range Rating: 22
Energy Requirement: 20
Damage type: Energy & solid munition, Peircing
Price tag: $BIG$

Example 4: Standard Federation Phaser:
Damage power Rating: 12
Area of effect Rating: 6
Accuracy Rating: 19
Rate of fire Rating: 13
Range Rating: 9
Energy Requirement: 13
Damage type: Energy/force, Peircing
Price tag: --- USD


Explanation Damage power Rating: The power of the weapon.

Explanation of Area of effect Rating: How wide the effect or "blast," if you will, of the weapon.

Explanation of Accuracy Rating: How accurate the weapon is. (in favorable firing conditions, apply modifiers appropriately during RP situations)

Explanation of Rate of fire Rating: How fast the weapon can fire.

Explanation of Range Rating: The range (distance) that the weapon has.

Explanation of Energy Requirement: How much energy does the weapon need to operate.

Explanation of "Damage Type": {What basic trait of the weapon causes the damage}, {What type of effect/damage is caused. IOW: Does is peirce the shields and armor or does it cause lage concussive damage to the hull. Each has situation when it would be desirable}

Explanation of Price tag: How much it costs to make, duh.



What do you think? I can add a system for whole ships and shields if you want.

Thankfully it seems that there are very few Andromeda based nations; save myself.

Every Ft nation has its own super tech weapon. even though some say they dont.....thier loss. And I dont care if they do. In fact I support nations who have them, And every nation should have them. But its when these super tech weapons or ships meet at the same time on the battle field. It makes it very hard to determine a winner if both nations have thier super tech weapons thier at the same time. I would like to see is a limit on those super-tech weapons that meet on the battle field- or at least have them both destroy each other.

Hmm, that's not exactly how I remembered that going. :p I remember launching a large scale bomber raid to get in between your gravity wedges with some pricey anti-matter torpedos. (Or maybe that was how you had planned it to go. lol) On a similar not, I am not a good example of a 40k opponant because I have altered it quite a bit. I just like the way imperial and Space Marine ships look. That has thrown many people off.


The point is that I survived even against your fighter swarm, even uif I did have to flee to deal with something closer to home, which actually sorted itself out and allowed me to return to the thread, pls, I think I only lost a few Destroyers and Light Cruisers to the attack, since you ended up going after my screen and not my heavy SD(p)s and DNs.

The point is that I survived even against your fighter swarm, even uif I did have to flee to deal with something closer to home, which actually sorted itself out and allowed me to return to the thread, pls, I think I only lost a few Destroyers and Light Cruisers to the attack, since you ended up going after my screen and not my heavy SD(p)s and DNs.

The thunderhawks went after the screen so that the strike bombers could make it through. I just re-read that thread and I did cripple a couple of you DNs and SDs. Granted, you still did quite well considering you were the first nation to be served up with that tactic and I did my homework in researching your honorverse technology. Besides, aren't we both in the same alliance anyways? Lol.

In other news, did anyone like my ranking system?

The thunderhawks went after the screen so that the strike bombers could make it through. I just re-read that thread and I did cripple a couple of you DNs and SDs. Granted, you still did quite well considering you were the first nation to be served up with that tactic and I did my homework in researching your honorverse technology. Besides, aren't we both in the same alliance anyways? Lol.

In other news, did anyone like my ranking system?

Oh, ok. I didn't bother rereading it and went from memory.

And just because we're allies doesn't mean we can't have friendly competition... Although my friendly competition does often end in fatalities...

Oh, and the ranking system is ok, but I'd prefer 1-100, not 1-10.

Oh, ok. I didn't bother rereading it and went from memory.

And just because we're allies doesn't mean we can't have friendly competition... Although my friendly competition does often end in fatalities...

Oh, and the ranking system is ok, but I'd prefer 1-100, not 1-10.

I alway encourage competition between AoN members, it makes us stronger.

1-100 could work, but I didn't think it would be needed because each weapon is split into so many sub-categories. Besides, it was 1-25. Let's see here...



Example: Gronde Lance Nova Cannon:
Damage power Rating: 64
Area of effect Rating: 40
Accuracy Rating: 64
Rate of fire Rating: 20
Range Rating: 68
Energy Requirement: 72
Damage type: Energy/heat, Minor Peircing
Price tag: --- USD

Example 2: Gronde Hammer Nova Cannon:
Damage power Rating: 77
Area of effect Rating: 62
Accuracy Rating: 60
Rate of fire Rating: 22
Range Rating: 38
Energy Requirement: 72
Damage type: Energy/heat, Concussive
Price tag: --- USD

Example 3: Anti-matter plasma Rail gun (because we have already been working with it):
Damage power Rating: 87
Area of effect Rating: 50
Accuracy Rating: 67
Rate of fire Rating: 16
Range Rating: 90
Energy Requirement: 80
Damage type: Energy & solid munition, Peircing
Price tag: $BIG$

Example 4: Standard Federation Phaser:
Damage power Rating: 48
Area of effect Rating: 24
Accuracy Rating: 76
Rate of fire Rating: 53
Range Rating: 37
Energy Requirement: 52
Damage type: Energy/force, Peircing
Price tag: --- USD



I don't know...I think the 1-25 system is simpler. It is already complicated, trying to make it 1-100 is just too much.

bump

Of course, you still get the obvious problems of, say, what will my death-beam do against the armor of his space-superiority fighter, and so on, especially when said fighter is built to withstand a hit or two from cap ship weaponry.

We would need to class the armor on our ships as well. It would by no means be a simple system. We would need to profile whatever armor the craft is using, including a numerical class as well as what types of weapons and damage types it is more resistant to. We would also need to work out a ship's overall duribility.

We would need to class the armor on our ships as well. It would by no means be a simple system. We would need to profile whatever armor the craft is using, including a numerical class as well as what types of weapons and damage types it is more resistant to. We would also need to work out a ship's overall duribility.

Which will be very bad for my Bastard Tech, seeing as I have different ships for different enemies and weapon types... And, by necessity, they all havew different types of armor.

Actually, I like the rating system. We simply rate armor and shields based on thickness, type, and what they easily resist.

For armor, for example, there is that of DLE, who used tritanium combined with a crystal matrix that dispursed energy. The result was armor that was resistant to impacts, but only mildly, and yet was extremely effective against energy weapons. As a result, those ships could more than hold their own in most conflicts simply because most nations use energy weapons. A later design involving larger ships added in heat sinks, making them virtually immune to energy weapons. A result was a case of ships that you were forced to use project weapons and missiles on.

I would say it would be stated up as something like this (using the 1-25 scale):

Energy-dispursing crystal matrix-enhanced tritanium
Damage Resistance Rating: 20
Impact Resistance: 12
Energy Resistance: 23
Heat Resistance: 19
EMP Resistance: 22
Piercing: 15
Force: 10
Concussive: 8
Solid Munition: 11

That should cover many items, though it needs refinement.

I like this Idea.

So you would then multiply the rateing by the thinkness?

It would make sense. We can also have a thickness rating, so as to have a universal measure for how thick the armor is.

To get an idea of the problems that might present, I'm looking at the DLE site and notice ships with thickness of armor in the hundreds of meters. Those ships could end up immune to most weapons simply because of their armor.

Could you link me to DLE's site please.

The population that NS gives you really limits you in FT.It just grows too slowly. So, when in a war, I don't think about population, just keep throwing in ships, soldiers, etc.
What I'm trying to say is that for RP purposes like war, population inflation should be allowed.

The population that NS gives you really limits you in FT.It just grows too slowly. So, when in a war, I don't think about population, just keep throwing in ships, soldiers, etc.
What I'm trying to say is that for RP purposes like war, population inflation should be allowed.
I'm not sure i agree or not but in most cases, I would think it would be up to the people involved in the war. If both parties agree then it would be fine, if not a comprmise would have to be worked out between them.

EDIT:

We are just trying to work on a more standardized method here. Which i must say is a wonderfull thing to see. Trying to eliminated the need for the famous Ignore cannons.

DLE's site: http://www.freewebs.com/demonlordenigma/

Some of the tech explanations on there help. Plus, the site includes an interesting variant on sensors that most people wouldn't think of. This is not the original way the tech was described, as DLE switched technology bases as one point (her factbook on NSWiki reveals this).

As for population limits: I'm making the most of it. My nation is based on "Okay, we lost and ran, now what?"

DLE's site: http://www.freewebs.com/demonlordenigma/

Some of the tech explanations on there help. Plus, the site includes an interesting variant on sensors that most people wouldn't think of. This is not the original way the tech was described, as DLE switched technology bases as one point (her factbook on NSWiki reveals this).

As for population limits: I'm making the most of it. My nation is based on "Okay, we lost and ran, now what?"
I remember, I RPed with her under another nation.

I go with my population on NS. I have several planets under my control but most are only lightly populated or are just border outposts. There are NPCs that live on my planets that are not Korgarein which are for plot lines later on.

It would make sense. We can also have a thickness rating, so as to have a universal measure for how thick the armor is.

To get an idea of the problems that might present, I'm looking at the DLE site and notice ships with thickness of armor in the hundreds of meters. Those ships could end up immune to most weapons simply because of their armor.

Nope, even with armor that thick I can(eventually, after a few hours) penetrate it, especially when I'm sending chunks of it into Hyperspace with every missile that hits, and then there's my Battleglobes, I only have three, but damn can they kick ass, think a DS, but less wankish.

Nope, even with armor that thick I can(eventually, after a few hours) penetrate it, especially when I'm sending chunks of it into Hyperspace with every missile that hits, and then there's my Battleglobes, I only have three, but damn can they kick ass, think a DS, but less wankish.

Look at her destroyers. They have, in essence, the power of a DS in a smaller package. Her battlecruisers and dreadnaught are even worse.

Look at her destroyers. They have, in essence, the power of a DS in a smaller package. Her battlecruisers and dreadnaught are even worse.


You've never seen what happens when a Warp missile sends chunks of your ship into Hyperspace around you, have you? And they only have to get within abut 25,000 kilometers to work...

I think the above 4 or 5 posts perfectly illustrate why we need this system.

First, I would just like to say that the NS Future Tech Rping theatre is not as great as it should be. I couldn't even list half of the RPs that I have read or participated in that have either stagnated or ended in a huge flame and/or ignore war. Going along those lines, there have been few RPs that I have seen that actually have a good ending, or an ending at all. I could go on, but I digress, there are several reasons for the decay of FT that I have noticed. (and likely several more that I haven't) Obviously, I am probobly as guilty of many of these things as the next RPer. The object here is not to point fingers. (much. lol) So here are some of the negative factors:

1.) The frequency of newbs attempting to dive into complex RPs head first.

-This often leads to an otherwise fast-paced RP being forced to stop and help and/or yell at a confused newbie. A possible solution would be to have an organized system of helping those new to the RPing world figure out how to RP and help them gain some knowledge on the NS FT theatre.


2.) And obvious one: the overwhelming use of super-weapons and uber-tech.

-Have you even taken hours to work on some military strategies for you FT nation's military, such as formations, firing paterns, fighter and bomber tactics, and defences for your planets? Have you don this only to have some other nation alter the STC, open up a big portal into some other dimention, or land a nova torpedo into a star and subsiquently destroy half of your nation in the blink of an eye? This leads to other RPers "developing" more uber-tech or counter-uber-tech and RPs that would normally be fun and entertaining, as well as mentally challenging, devolve into who can get off their mega system crushing god weapons on their enemies first. And because of the fact single actions can now cause so much damage, RPers argue over them...contantly. Not that I can blame them: I wouldn't just roll over as my opponant claims to lay waste to an entire system with one weapon. There is also the case of FTL travel that is not as limited as it should be. A bi-product of these things are the infamous system-wide FTLi systems that everyone seems to have nowadays. (including me) As for a solution, I think Godular's Hero's and Villians RPing program solved this problem to a certain extent. We just need to extend it past character only RPs.


3.) The unrealistic scope of a nation's influence.

- It just seems a bit odd that a nation of 2-3 billion could have thousands and thousands of warships, huge fortresses, and an empire spanning across a galaxy. Considering that the population of earth is about 6 billion, on one planet, it doesn't make any sence that 3 billion people could inhabit a dozen star systems. My nationis about 3 billion and controlls about 11 systems along with a couple close allies and I think even that is too much. We need to downscale the scope of our nations considerably.


4.) Differing styles and philosophies on RPing.

- Let's face it, people RP differently and have different outlooks on how they RP. This can lead to clashes between RPers of different types. I have attempted to make some broad categories of RPers. (feel free to add your own)


A.) Technological Power Gamer (TPG): Technology is the key to winning wars and you want to have the best of the best. The more damage something can cause the better. You want the power to glass your enemies in the palm of your hand. Actuall tactics tend to fall to the side. (though not always) Uber-tech is the way to go. If your opponants can't come up with a way to counter your technology, then too bad for them. This is Future tech and nation's don't have equall technology in RL anyways.

B.) Strategic Power Gamer (SPG): You want to win wars and prove that you are better and smarter than your enemies, but you want to do it fairly. (though the term "fair" is often subjective) Developing tactics and out playing your opponants is your specialty. Your oppinion on uber-tech: all things in moderation, you use it to suppliment your strategies. If your opponants want you to have weaknesses, they can find them on their own; it's not your job. You often become irritated when you are accused of godmodding. All nations are not equall, after all. (I probobly fall into this category)

C.) Fair-Play Gamer (FPG): You think that RPers should give their nations defined strengths and weeknesses so that everyone is on an equall playing field. Many who fall into this category like to plan out battles before they happen and predetirmine losses of forces and even the outcome itself at times. You dislike uber-tech. Even your definition of uber-tech can differ from others. You often limit your own technology and expect others to abide by your standards. No one should be taken advantage of.

(Lol, this seems like a NS issue.)


So this should give us enough material to start a descussion. Let's begin.
Me, For my FT population, I add up the population of Belle Hades and Nuke Factories, because they are part of the UPPE, and add that to the population of the UPPE, and thus is the total FT population for the Empire. For military, I'll just take the Population of the smallest of the three, Nuke Factories, Divide by 3.

Our technology is based on the "chronoscepter" from the n64 game "Turok: Dinosaur Hunter", which is adapted to fit our needs and desires. Basically, it's my version of Uber Tech. However, when it comes to armor, the only "armor" we have is the heat shields that protect from the extreme heat generated by Deneb, the parent star of the system we currently inhabit, and the weakling Star Trek-like forcefields that surround our cities and PlutoCons. We also have a small city on pluto, but that wasn't RP'ed very much.

the only WUMD we have is the chronobomb, adapted from chronoscepter technology, which can create or destroy a star (depending on where you detonate it).

We used to have Uber-ships, the Tri Ship, but they were destroyed by a now long gone enemy (that Yuri guy from Red Alert 2), and the last one was used by the last 3 million people (including me) to escape to Deneb. We haven't had any since then. They were about the same size as those City Destroyers from "independence day", but they're triangle shaped and a bit thinner. The only things we have are our PlutoCons and Boeing aircraft adapted for FTL travel and atmospheric entries for various uses (from transport to cargo to warfare).

Oh, when it comes to RP style, I gues i'm an A or B, since I'm rather dependent on uber-tech (especially in the Civilization games).

I remember battling against sephiroth when he attacked me thinking I have retreated cause I am a coward, basically I send my fighters at his battlecruisers and already revealed his cloaked raptors with anti stealth tech to be a bit more specific read.

http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=423322&page=3&pp=15

You've never seen what happens when a Warp missile sends chunks of your ship into Hyperspace around you, have you? And they only have to get within abut 25,000 kilometers to work...

Which is where her graviton shields come into play.

The problems of comparing these variant technologies is the simple fact they were never intended to interact, and in some cases operate using technologies that do not mesh. Just using our example, we have to determine how well hyperspace bombs mesh with graviton shields. Both operate under the same principle, which is the warping of space to get effects, but that is where the similarities end. Graviton shields operate entirely in realspace using the same warping principles as stars and black holes while the hyperspace devices require literally moving something to an entirely different existance. Effectively, it's like comparing hydrogen and oxygen.

I'm not saying we cannot do it. I am saying we are going to have problems with some technologies. Our own example illustrates why. But, that is where we come in.

Now, using our own example, how would you rule on how they interact? I would say we need a rating for how they warp space and time, and we simply compare the ratings. This allows for us to also include the fact graviton technology should, using real-world examples, also interact with temporal technology. We can simply compare the temporal ratings of the two.

Which is where her graviton shields come into play.

The problems of comparing these variant technologies is the simple fact they were never intended to interact, and in some cases operate using technologies that do not mesh. Just using our example, we have to determine how well hyperspace bombs mesh with graviton shields. Both operate under the same principle, which is the warping of space to get effects, but that is where the similarities end. Graviton shields operate entirely in realspace using the same warping principles as stars and black holes while the hyperspace devices require literally moving something to an entirely different existance. Effectively, it's like comparing hydrogen and oxygen.

I'm not saying we cannot do it. I am saying we are going to have problems with some technologies. Our own example illustrates why. But, that is where we come in.

Now, using our own example, how would you rule on how they interact? I would say we need a rating for how they warp space and time, and we simply compare the ratings. This allows for us to also include the fact graviton technology should, using real-world examples, also interact with temporal technology. We can simply compare the temporal ratings of the two.

I forgot about the Shields. ok, so, I'm a little outgunned... Even if she is Gone she's still making me look bad, oh well, that's DLE for you...

Note: this is not a thread to talk about who's tech is better.

Once I get some time, I am going to make a separate thread for the rating system.

Give me a couple hours and I'll have one up. I need to revise a few things first.

Can you say "really fucking horrible idea"?

Bad RPers will be bad RPers whether you've got a glorified stats RPG running under the thread or not. What all of you are suggesting is the essential destruction of the free-form RP model that makes NS great.

How things interact, the differences between tech, etc, are and always have been handled by the two players involved. The problems come when someone is arrogant enough to not want to lose, something turning NS into a stats RPG isn't going to solve.

Leave things as they or, at most, make another level above FT (or split FT into numerous levels, say MT(Modern Day)-PMT(Projected Technology over the next fifty to a hundred years)-ST(Space Tech - Thriving interplanetary culture, pre-FTL travel)-EFT(Early Future Tech, small interstellar nations and the like, "new" to the galactic stage)-FT(The thousands, tens of thousands, etc, nations with thriving interstellar cultures and capable of interacting on a galactic scale-FFT(Far-Future Tech, Thriving inter-galactic cultures, inter-dimensional travel, easy temporal technology, etc).

It places no restrictions on nations, for they are as free to chose what they want to be as they were before this change, and it only requires adding two new categories to an existing scale (EFT and FFT, though ST is a very rare tech level, so it would need some encouraged revival).

Even then this could be a suggestion, a guideline, to help protect the spirit of freeform RP.

Which, in and of itself, is a bad idea. The problem with more categories is defining them.

Where does my nation lie in that, for example? It's the military remnants of what was once a thriving interplanetary culture and is now having problems with issues such as waste treatment. Even now, it is capable of interacting on the galactic scale despite being a new nation, simply due to its setup.

The problem with separating into categories like that is you get nations who can say they apply to all categories. Like a StarGate nation that uses mostly modern tech, but must be classified as FFT simply because they discovered a ZPM and can now dial addresses outside the Milky Way, or because they can already potentially travel through time or into alternate realities with ease.

The reason this scale idea is being done is a simple fact people with years of experience have discovered the essential problems and are trying to work their way past them and develop a scale that is simplified and easy to understand. And, get this: It doesn't stop freeform RP. Just because you are firing a Rating 24 Uberweapon doesn't mean you automatically destroy the fighter. The fighter is perfectly capable of dodging out of the way. It doesn't limit freeform, just makes it simpler and prevents arguments over how technologies interact.

Which, in and of itself, is a bad idea. The problem with more categories is defining them.

Where does my nation lie in that, for example? It's the military remnants of what was once a thriving interplanetary culture and is now having problems with issues such as waste treatment. Even now, it is capable of interacting on the galactic scale despite being a new nation, simply due to its setup.

Depends, what kind of weaponry do you use? How fast is your FTL drive?

You see, I'm talking just essential limits. If you're someone with several thousand star systems, you're going to be an FT nation. If you're a nation with a few dozen galaxies, you're going to be an FFT nation. If you're like yourself, you're most likely still an FT nation (barring your FTL drive being insanely fast, fast enough for easy intergalactic travel).

The problem with separating into categories like that is you get nations who can say they apply to all categories. Like a StarGate nation that uses mostly modern tech, but must be classified as FFT simply because they discovered a ZPM and can now dial addresses outside the Milky Way, or because they can already potentially travel through time or into alternate realities with ease.

We've been seperating things into categories for quite some time. This isn't so insanely more complicated. For example, your problem situation is quite easy to resolve: does this nation have a thriving intergalactic civilization? Does it use weaponry one would expect, using simple common sense, such a multi-galaxy spanning culture to use?

If no, then it's either FT or EFT.

The reason this scale idea is being done is a simple fact people with years of experience have discovered the essential problems and are trying to work their way past them and develop a scale that is simplified and easy to understand. And, get this: It doesn't stop freeform RP. Just because you are firing a Rating 24 Uberweapon doesn't mean you automatically destroy the fighter. The fighter is perfectly capable of dodging out of the way. It doesn't limit freeform, just makes it simpler and prevents arguments over how technologies interact.

As someone who has years of experience here, I'm still saying it's a fucking dumb idea. I said the same thing when Indra Prime did his whole Temporal Directive thing with the levels of Temporal technology and I'm saying it again because, guess what, it's a fucking dumb idea.

We've always had fucking stupid RPers, even MT has stupid RPers and that's as rigidly defined as you can get. Making a great free-form environment into a wankish stats RPG isn't going to solve that.

It is, fundementally, a fucking dumb idea. If I were still all too interested in RPing here (I've got one major RP coming up and that's it, I'll be avoiding this particular part of the NS forums except for the occasional perusal and comment), I would refuse to RP with anyone who used such a stupid scaling of technologies and tried to force me to conform. For now, I'm trying to avoid the forcing of a bunch of players to suffer from a fucking stupid system and the problems it will cause with newbies who aren't aware of it.

Depends, what kind of weaponry do you use? How fast is your FTL drive?

One FTL drive is 2xC. The other is up to 15xC, but requires the crew be put into stasis due to how it interacts with time. The guns mostly use bullets, but I do have a few lasers, a few railguns, and several missiles. Effectively, mostly PMT in weaponry.

Due to the FTL drives, intergalactic travel is not that much of a problem. It will still take me thousands or millions of years, but the crew will be sleeping it away.

You see, I'm talking just essential limits. If you're someone with several thousand star systems, you're going to be an FT nation. If you're a nation with a few dozen galaxies, you're going to be an FFT nation. If you're like yourself, you're most likely still an FT nation (barring your FTL drive being insanely fast, fast enough for easy intergalactic travel).

Congrats. You are already complicating the definition of "FT" with your ideas. Why? FT has always been "able to travel faster than light without magic." This is what makes StarGate nations, even if they use modern technology, be FT. The problem is that you are adding requirements on that are perfectly possible without FTL to be of certain FT types, a situation that of itself is a greater complication than our rating system is.

We've been seperating things into categories for quite some time. This isn't so insanely more complicated. For example, your problem situation is quite easy to resolve: does this nation have a thriving intergalactic civilization? Does it use weaponry one would expect, using simple common sense, such a multi-galaxy spanning culture to use?

If no, then it's either FT or EFT.

A thriving intergalactic civilization can be one that simply has thriving colonies in other galaxies. Using common sense, one would simply look at how the FTL is achieved and be able to see what is acceptable. In this case, a thriving intergalactic civilization that is still experimenting on the railgun and uses M16s is perfectly acceptable.

As someone who has years of experience here, I'm still saying it's a fucking dumb idea. I said the same thing when Indra Prime did his whole Temporal Directive thing with the levels of Temporal technology and I'm saying it again because, guess what, it's a fucking dumb idea.

And yet, the only people I hear of who are respectable temporal nations are those who follow Indra Prime's rules.

We've always had fucking stupid RPers, even MT has stupid RPers and that's as rigidly defined as you can get. Making a great free-form environment into a wankish stats RPG isn't going to solve that.

Actually, it will solve an issue: Techwank. That was the reason Indra Prime came up with his rules. In any case, you can't play FT using ships in battle without using ship stats, such as what weapons you are carrying, how big your ship is, etc. All we are doing is adding on a few more numbers that will make life easier for everyone.

If it were a "wankish stats RPG," as you say, it would require far greater effort than we are putting into it. We are simply comming up with numbers to act as guidelines. Nothing less, nothing more.

It is, fundementally, a fucking dumb idea. If I were still all too interested in RPing here (I've got one major RP coming up and that's it, I'll be avoiding this particular part of the NS forums except for the occasional perusal and comment), I would refuse to RP with anyone who used such a stupid scaling of technologies and tried to force me to conform. For now, I'm trying to avoid the forcing of a bunch of players to suffer from a fucking stupid system and the problems it will cause with newbies who aren't aware of it.

Then why don't you either actually prove it will cause problems with actual examples, or just stop saying it will without any proof to back up your claims? I've been patient in dealing with you, but as it is you are simply stating something will not work without a why it won't work or any evidence to back you. Find some evidence, then you'll be worth talking to.

I have an idea, lets use a rating system that actually fucking means something instead of this "Level 24" bullshit.

Like use I don't know, things like kilometers for range and Joules for energy and Watts for power. You know the things that are used for those very things in the real world.

"Oh but what keeps someone from just throwing in a larger number Xessmithia? This is just asking for techwank."

The same thing that stops people from throwing in huge ass numbers in any other rating system.

Now how would this work you ask?

Simple;

Acceleration: m/s^2, km/s^, Gs(1 G = 9.8 m/s^2, 10m/s^2 for ease of use)

Angular Velocity: Degrees/second

Armour: equivalent in unit of thickness (mm, cm, m etc) of armour steel.

Range: Meters, Kilometers, Astronomical Units (150 million km), Light-Minutes (18 million km), Light-hours (1.08 billion km), Light-years (9.46 trillion km)

Reactor Output: Watts, eg the sun puts out 3.6x10^26 Watts of power, an average household lightbulb puts out 100 Watts.

Shields: Dissipation rate is in Watts. Eg a SW Acclamator has a shield dissipation rate of ~2x10^22 Watts.
Shields: Heat sink capacity is in Joules, eg 5x10^23 Joules.

Weapon Yields: Joules or (prefix)ton ratings. Eg, 500 gigajoule blast or a 400 megaton explosion (1 ton = 4.2x10^9 Joules [4.2 gigajoules]).

And DLE's "PLanet Burner" is wank. It packs the power of 1.62 billion Death Star blasts (the mass/energy requried to raise the mass of the planet to the point where Carbon may start fusing, never mind the heavier elements) in at best 2 ten millionths of the volume. It is 100% pure Grade A wank.

Higher than that even. The last time I saw anything resembling a design, it required using the shields to control the beam itself.

We can use these numbers to represent power outputs. Not all of us on here really have the time and effort to figure out the exact power output of our weapons, even more so when those weapons utilize unusual power supplies. Bothering to use the actual power outputs and acceleration rates goes beyond the math I think the typical FT player is willing to attempt, resulting in endless hours of people trying to figure out how much power their weapons actually have when all they know for sure is how much the weapon can blow up.

The idea of a simplified rating system like this is to allow for those people. We can have each rating mean something in power output and speed, but trying to force people to use your suggestion runs across the people being lazy problem and simply results in endless hours of frustration. What's the point of using a system half of the players may not understand, when we can use a simpler system that they can and include a nod towards those that understand the complexity?

A very extremely interesting thread. I stumbled upon it while being bored, so being an PMT-FT nation, I will of course indulge myself and wish to share my wisdom. (look, I made a joke...)

I will have to agree with everyone on the fact that FT rping has gotten out of hand. When I was a full FT nation using Star Wars tech, and a member of the Galactic Senate, I ran into people who rp'd fleets as large as 1,000 vessels strong. And I of course took the natural route in response; they found their asses faced by a 1,000 SDs.

I eventually got sick of having to keep an overall strategy in such large formations and fights (hell, there is no such thing as formations or strategy in that huge a fight!), it turned into nothing more than a slug fest. More ships = victory.

So I exited stage left and forgot all about FT. Over the time from then I tried making an MT army, using a mixture of german WWII get-ups and a few more modern rifles. veteran MT players laughed saying their Abram mbts would slaughter me. I was annoyingly reminded of FT newbies.

In repsonse to my failure at MT military building, if not for lack of large strategy operations, I turned to PMT-FT. I considered what it was that made FT, FT. So I slipped into my hidden self and delved forth with my true colors,a rather serious and hidden anime otaku. (Otaku- japanese for one who is extremely and overly obsessed with Manga or Anime)

I have since created a Mobile Suit army(heres a link if you wish to see and give a comment on it: http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=443689), after the popular anime series : Gundam Wing i.e Mobile Suit Gundam. It is considered to be the 'Star Wars' of japanese manga.

Once I created it I found people saying stuff about what a godmodder a gundam user is, except I dont use gundams; those sup'ed up mobile suits that can take on an entire army and come off with a few scratches.

I use the MSs that can be taken down by a large amount of artillery, a cruise missile, or beam weaponry.

Since then I have only now begun trying to use my army in a rp which involves defending the nation of New Empire, where they have decided on 2030-40 tech. Now I said that Mobile Suits fit that category of technology; heck right now the US is developing its first 'chicken walker' mech.


Space Travel, and ships

The whole thing with space travel...is rather annoying. But the ebst system I found would be I am afraid, the SW system of hyperdrives. It has its own rules defining it and it takes a 'realistic' amount of time to get somewhere; thus meaning I never never need those damn 'worm holes' that you enter and appear where you wanted to go within a few minutes. Thats just gay. k? (look at me, another joke...)

As for space fleets and ships. I am afraid that I had once fielded a three system wide fleet of just over a 1,000 SD-class ships. And just so I could defend myself I built this navy over a time period of three RL months and even rp'd the construction of my major flagship, which was 18km long. (I left them all behind in the Galactic Senate however)

But because I am PMT-FT and I live on a planet away from 'real earth' I need a fleet to go somewhere. So i made a fleet, a few hundred ships, with nothing more over 1000 something meters, which was nothing more than a big box really.



Final Word

All in all i would say I am a bit of all three a-b-c choices.

I never enjoyed using an unber-tech but I would to keep others from using it.

I love outsmarting my enemy tacticly and play chess often.

I also believe in being fair.

And in full ending I believe that the mods of NS should come up with a basic outline on what the premis that all players will abide by it.

One FTL drive is 2xC. The other is up to 15xC, but requires the crew be put into stasis due to how it interacts with time. The guns mostly use bullets, but I do have a few lasers, a few railguns, and several missiles. Effectively, mostly PMT in weaponry.

Due to the FTL drives, intergalactic travel is not that much of a problem. It will still take me thousands or millions of years, but the crew will be sleeping it away.



Congrats. You are already complicating the definition of "FT" with your ideas. Why? FT has always been "able to travel faster than light without magic." This is what makes StarGate nations, even if they use modern technology, be FT. The problem is that you are adding requirements on that are perfectly possible without FTL to be of certain FT types, a situation that of itself is a greater complication than our rating system is.



A thriving intergalactic civilization can be one that simply has thriving colonies in other galaxies. Using common sense, one would simply look at how the FTL is achieved and be able to see what is acceptable. In this case, a thriving intergalactic civilization that is still experimenting on the railgun and uses M16s is perfectly acceptable.

The thing here is that it really is quite common sense, and it comes down to the choice of the author, so it's not like it would make it more difficult for everyone else.

For instance, while I would generally classify you as EFT, you're free to RP on an FT level, should you chose to. We've always had some blurring of the lines between tech levels (ie. very near future technology and machines in use in MT, FT-like weaponry in ST, etc).

It's common sense, with no really well-defined rules, easy enough to figure out on your own and slot yourself where you think you should be.

And yet, the only people I hear of who are respectable temporal nations are those who follow Indra Prime's rules.

Which is because you'll get dog-piled by all the signatories of the Temporal Accord if you try to use anything other than their system for things, which is complete bullshit. It's why I never did anything even remotely related to time travel or the like.

Actually, it will solve an issue: Techwank. That was the reason Indra Prime came up with his rules. In any case, you can't play FT using ships in battle without using ship stats, such as what weapons you are carrying, how big your ship is, etc. All we are doing is adding on a few more numbers that will make life easier for everyone.

It might (note the emphasis on might) solve the issue of techwank, but at what cost?

I swear, you guys have completely missed the point of RPing. RPing is about the writing, the creativity coming from each player. Yeah, most RPers aren't very good at this and don't really care, but a stats RPG won't change this and will actually make the whole experience a lot less enjoyable for these people, not to mention that they will still be horrid writers with not much creativity. They come here for the flights of fantasy involved in imagining the scenes they are so primtivily depicting, which is enough for them.

But what about the geniunely good writers, those who put a lot of thought into their work, those who spend a large amount of time writing and thinking up their posts?

How bullshit would it be if someone like TFU (no offense, I love you man, and you have improved a lot over the years, but you still are a luke-warm writer) could beat someone like, I don't know, Coreworlds just because TFU has been here for so much longer? Coreworlds, while kind of restrictive because of his only Star Wars thing (and he happened to have started the whole SW fad >_>), is an amazing character RPer, someone who manages to fight entire fleet engagements with the spotlight never leaving his main character.

If it were a "wankish stats RPG," as you say, it would require far greater effort than we are putting into it. We are simply comming up with numbers to act as guidelines. Nothing less, nothing more.

You lot sure seem to be putting a fair amount of effort into it, what with the amount of pages you have in this thread.

Then why don't you either actually prove it will cause problems with actual examples, or just stop saying it will without any proof to back up your claims? I've been patient in dealing with you, but as it is you are simply stating something will not work without a why it won't work or any evidence to back you. Find some evidence, then you'll be worth talking to.

Haha, people who ask for proof in threads like these crack me up. It's got to be one of the most tired debating techniques this side of Ganymede.

This a debate on a theoretical concept. The proof will be contructs of theory, using logic and common sense, not pictures and links. Everything I've said is a given (that we have a lot of bad RPers and writers, that we have a lot of very good RPers and writers).

Try actually refuting what I'm saying instead of sitting there, smacking your left fist into your right palm and yelling "PROOF! PROOF! PROOF!".

Oh, and just to show that I'm not a complete ass (though I'm astounded Xess would support anything like this, but I guess it kind of makes sense considering his scientific background), I'll talk about myself for a while.

I'm mostly one of those B-C type players. I love using tactics, a 3D environment like space offers so much promise in regards to strategic maneuvering and tactical combat. It's rather unfortunate that I often find myself RPing with arrogant asswipes, though, as everyone becomes a god-moder when someone starts losing, if you catch my drift. I lose more threads that way...

Anyway, my C component comes from my interpretation of numbers -- I RPed with a population in the low trillions and a main fleet in the thousands of capital ships, but I threw a dash or realism and some limitation into things: most of those ships would, at any one time, but either layed up in dry dock, patrolling internal star lanes, undergoing repairs, etc. The most you would ever see me deploy in a offensive action would be 30-50 capital ships with assorted escorts, and that would only be if I was really mad at you.

Y'know Earth Government, you might be right.
I think the problem is, as was said, is that a godmodder will just put maximum numbers on his weapons. His ships will have armour rating 100, or whatever the max is. His weapons will be 25-25-25-25. And then we're right back where we started.
If people could just say what their ships/guns/troops could do at the beginning of the war, then you can look at their post and say. "Ok, cool, thats good." "Ehh, could you cut down on your power abit?" or "WFT!! FIGHTERS THAT CAN TAKE ON MY BATTLESHIPS!!" and just not do that RP, then most of the probelm is solved right there. If you but numbers on it, will it make a difference?
Unless we restrict the numbers you can put on. Like Nistolonia. Their ships are fast, with powerful weapons, but they have light armour, and their primary shield is more of a cloaking device.

The thing here is that it really is quite common sense, and it comes down to the choice of the author, so it's not like it would make it more difficult for everyone else.

For instance, while I would generally classify you as EFT, you're free to RP on an FT level, should you chose to. We've always had some blurring of the lines between tech levels (ie. very near future technology and machines in use in MT, FT-like weaponry in ST, etc).

It's common sense, with no really well-defined rules, easy enough to figure out on your own and slot yourself where you think you should be.

Uh huh. So, tell me, at what point do you plan on spending all of your time educating newbies? The system we have now is intuitive. The system we are working on is simplistic and easy to work with. The system you are advising is neither and only adds unnecessary complication. It also ignores the fact that Past Tech must be divided heavily to account for the similarity in technology range.

Which is because you'll get dog-piled by all the signatories of the Temporal Accord if you try to use anything other than their system for things, which is complete bullshit. It's why I never did anything even remotely related to time travel or the like.

That has nothing to do with it. If it was, the ESUS would be the most respect alliance on the forums. What makes them respectable is the fact they have limitations, set definitions, easily-understood power levels, and all you need to do is look at a few little numbers to know whether or not to mess with a ship. It saves a lot of time.

It might (note the emphasis on might) solve the issue of techwank, but at what cost?

At the cost you may have to memorize a few items and add a few lines to your stats.

I swear, you guys have completely missed the point of RPing. RPing is about the writing, the creativity coming from each player. Yeah, most RPers aren't very good at this and don't really care, but a stats RPG won't change this and will actually make the whole experience a lot less enjoyable for these people, not to mention that they will still be horrid writers with not much creativity. They come here for the flights of fantasy involved in imagining the scenes they are so primtivily depicting, which is enough for them.

But what about the geniunely good writers, those who put a lot of thought into their work, those who spend a large amount of time writing and thinking up their posts?

How bullshit would it be if someone like TFU (no offense, I love you man, and you have improved a lot over the years, but you still are a luke-warm writer) could beat someone like, I don't know, Coreworlds just because TFU has been here for so much longer? Coreworlds, while kind of restrictive because of his only Star Wars thing (and he happened to have started the whole SW fad >_>), is an amazing character RPer, someone who manages to fight entire fleet engagements with the spotlight never leaving his main character.

And where does our system discourage writing? The part where it gives you a few numbers for reference and to cut down or arguments? Or the part where it does not actually provide a solid set of rules and regulations to follow?

You lot sure seem to be putting a fair amount of effort into it, what with the amount of pages you have in this thread.

Not really. This is just an idea section and people mostly mildly discussing so far.

Haha, people who ask for proof in threads like these crack me up. It's got to be one of the most tired debating techniques this side of Ganymede.

This a debate on a theoretical concept. The proof will be contructs of theory, using logic and common sense, not pictures and links. Everything I've said is a given (that we have a lot of bad RPers and writers, that we have a lot of very good RPers and writers).

Try actually refuting what I'm saying instead of sitting there, smacking your left fist into your right palm and yelling "PROOF! PROOF! PROOF!".

Translation: I don't have any evidence, I know it, so instead I'm going to sidestep the issue by attempting to laugh at it and hoping no one calls me on it.

This is a debate on a concept that is no more theoretical than the words in a book. The discussion exists, the concept itself is perfectly real (regulating FT roleplays is an old concept and has been done many times), and now we are working on actual numbers.

I've been refuting your comments. Instead, you refuse to ackowledge it and decide to try to play down that I have by suggesting all I can do is ask for proof. No matter how much you may think your tactic will work, it won't. All it will do is prove all you are here to do is attempt to prevent this from comming to light while at the same time attempting to dodge actual cases of being called for evidence because you know you don't have any despite the hundreds or thousands of systems that use stats in a limited manner that you could look to for evidence. The evidence is out there, and you not bothering to look for it is a bad sign on your part.

Now, if you cannot back up your arguments, please do me a favor and don't post again. I really do not have time for those who are out to just waste time. I have more important things to do.

though I'm astounded Xess would support anything like this, but I guess it kind of makes sense considering his scientific background

I quite frankly couldn't care less if there were a rating used. I'm just here to see that if one is used and accepted it makes more sense than all that "Level 25" bullshit.

OK, both of you stop flaming.
I think EG point is "Whats to stop the techwankers from putting their weapons to max anyway? They're going to play the same way with funny numbers or not."
And LV point is: "Numbers will help stop the techwanking"
And you're both half right. Numbers will help (No more "Hey, how did your guns get so good? They stunk last post!") but there still be be GMers out there where numbers dont mean a thing.
Maybe make a simpler scale. Just 1-20 or something. A basic particle weapn would be one, a railgun would be 12...

Higher than that even. The last time I saw anything resembling a design, it required using the shields to control the beam itself.

The energy required to contain the beam would be insignifcant compared to the actual energy of the beam.

We can use these numbers to represent power outputs. Not all of us on here really have the time and effort to figure out the exact power output of our weapons,

I have a 30 megaton laser beam. Holy crap I just figured out the power output of my laser beam in under a second, it's 30 fucking megatons. Yeah that was real hard. :rolleyes:

even more so when those weapons utilize unusual power supplies.

I have a 30 megaton phased anti-polaron beam, holy fuck, it's still 30 megatons.

Bothering to use the actual power outputs and acceleration rates goes beyond the math I think the typical FT player is willing to attempt,

Yeah, it's real hard to understand basic math like multiplication and division.

My ship can go 500,000 km/h. It can get up to that fast in 1 second, it accelerates at 500,000 km/h/second, or 139 km/s^2, or 13,900 Gs. That took me under 30 seconds.



resulting in endless hours of people trying to figure out how much power their weapons actually have when all they know for sure is how much the weapon can blow up.

My warhead has a yield of 30 megatons, I just quantified it and I didn't have to do any math. I just knew how much it can blow up.

The idea of a simplified rating system like this is to allow for those people. We can have each rating mean something in power output and speed, but trying to force people to use your suggestion runs across the people being lazy problem and simply results in endless hours of frustration. What's the point of using a system half of the players may not understand, when we can use a simpler system that they can and include a nod towards those that understand the complexity?

Using meaningless numbers makes things harder. The only way to have it would be to have each number represting a range or you really limit the RP. And thus we get to ships with a rating of 5 for acceleration, but one is faster than the other, which one is it, and by how much? You see the problem?

While having one at 100 Gs and the other at 150 Gs it's really fucking obvious which one is faster instead of both of them being a "5".

We shouldn't pander to the idiots who are to lazy to use basic math.

EDIT: Ha ha, I beat you computer!

really the answers simple, make a FT version of the MT earths (but it wouldnt be an earth but you know what i mean), with rules that are fair and dont discurrage writeing. Im currently trying to do such a thing and a way to work round the wanking part is putting advantages and disadvantages to tech levels and stuff.

for exsample the most basic thing could be cost and time, see you could have the most advanced ships with the most advanced weapons and stuff but since its so advanced it cost more to build them and maintain them and it takes say years instead of months to build the ships.

Were as a less advanced person would have low cost ships that build quickly but are easy to destroy and so forth.

You might say "but then most people would be really sub advanced" well no see even tho its quicker and cheaper its higher cost in life.

so:-

Advanced:-
Advantages:- hard ships, low lose of life due to that fact, have to train few people to use ships
Disadvantage:- lose of ships cost more, higher cost in ships, takes longer to build

Not advanced:-
Advantages:- easy to build, maintain, cheap ships.
Disavatages:- easy to destroy ships, quicker lose in life, have to train more people in the use of ships.

Maybe make a simpler scale. Just 1-20 or something. A basic particle weapn would be one, a railgun would be 12...

Unless you know, the rail gun has a yield of 3 megatons while the particle beam is 4 gigatons or something like that. :rolleyes:

OK, both of you stop flaming.
I think EG point is "Whats to stop the techwankers from putting their weapons to max anyway? They're going to play the same way with funny numbers or not."
And LV point is: "Numbers will help stop the techwanking"
And you're both half right. Numbers will help (No more "Hey, how did your guns get so good?") but there still be be GMers out there where numbers dont mean a thing.

The problem with people trying to put their weapons at max doesn't change whether you add numbers or not. Really, he's arguing a nonsensical stance because the problem already exists without the numbers. All we can do is lessen the problem.

And, really, at this point, I would prefer it if he would not waste my time by posting again.

I quite frankly couldn't care less if there were a rating used. I'm just here to see that if one is used and accepted it makes more sense than all that "Level 25" bullshit.

No, it's more complicated than that. I started a thread on the stats system. It should still be on the front page at this time. It's not going to be "I have level 13 lasers and you have 10 so I pwn you" for the ratings. It's going to be a system of comparing that allows people to determine exactly what it would do without arguing with each other, as well as limiting power because the numbers will be even more obvious. Someone with a 25 in all stats is likely to be outright ignored. Adding in the information you provided would help as well.

We can even set it up to where the size of the weapon is considered.

No, it's more complicated than that. I started a thread on the stats system. It should still be on the front page at this time. It's not going to be "I have level 13 lasers and you have 10 so I pwn you" for the ratings. It's going to be a system of comparing that allows people to determine exactly what it would do without arguing with each other

Yeah, and you can do that with real world units. 30 megaton laser > 10 kiloton shield.

, as well as limiting power because the numbers will be even more obvious. Someone with a 25 in all stats is likely to be outright ignored. Adding in the information you provided would help as well.

We can even set it up to where the size of the weapon is considered.

And someone who can blow up planets with a ship with less than 1 cubic km of volume is a godmodder too. You don't need to invent meaningless drivel to catorgarize things.

The energy required to contain the beam would be insignifcant compared to the actual energy of the beam.

Not when the beam and the energy containing the beam are both of the same type. She was using shaped gravity fields to control a beam of gravity.

I have a 30 megaton laser beam. Holy crap I just figured out the power output of my laser beam in under a second, it's 30 fucking megatons. Yeah that was real hard. :rolleyes:

I have a laser that blows up small moons. How much power does it put out?

I have a 30 megaton phased anti-polaron beam, holy fuck, it's still 30 megatons.

Okay. I have one that cuts capital ships in half. How much power does it put out?

Yeah, it's real hard to understand basic math like multiplication and division.

My ship can go 500,000 km/h. It can get up to that fast in 1 second, it accelerates at 500,000 km/h/second, or 139 km/s^2, or 13,900 Gs. That took me under 30 seconds.

Congrats. It took me two minutes with a calculator to do the same amount of math. Not everyone is at the same math skill.

My warhead has a yield of 30 megatons, I just quantified it and I didn't have to do any math. I just knew how much it can blow up.

That's nice. Now, how much does a 29 megaton warhead destroy?

Using meaningless numbers makes things harder. The only way to have it would be to have each number represting a range or you really limit the RP. And thus we get to ships with a rating of 5 for acceleration, but one is faster than the other, which one is it, and by how much? You see the problem?

While having one at 100 Gs and the other at 150 Gs it's really fucking obvious which one is faster instead of both of them being a "5".

We shouldn't pander to the idiots who are to lazy to use basic math.

The first one goes at 5, the second goes at 5.5. No one said we had to limit it to whole numbers.

Yeah, and you can do that with real world units. 30 megaton laser > 10 kiloton shield.

10 kiloton shield with immense maneuverability > 30 megaton laser with poor aiming capacity. Thus, back to my original point.

And someone who can blow up planets with a ship with less than 1 cubic km of volume is a godmodder too. You don't need to invent meaningless drivel to catorgarize things.

Unless I read the explanation wrong, she can't. She can only ignite the atmosphere. Planet's still there afterwards.

Not when the beam and the energy containing the beam are both of the same type. She was using shaped gravity fields to control a beam of gravity.

Still take less energy to control the beam as it is doing less work.



I have a laser that blows up small moons. How much power does it put out?

Depends on the size of the moon. If we go with Luna (which is actually a large moon) it's about 1.8 trillion megatons.



Okay. I have one that cuts capital ships in half. How much power does it put out?

Gigaton range likely.



Congrats. It took me two minutes with a calculator to do the same amount of math. Not everyone is at the same math skill.

Hardly the hours you claimed then is it?



That's nice. Now, how much does a 29 megaton warhead destroy?

1 megaton less than a 30 megaton bomb and 1 more than a 28 megaton bomb. Or you could use Stardestroyer.net's handy "Nuclear Explosion Effects Calculator" enter the yield and there you have it.



The first one goes at 5, the second goes at 5.5. No one said we had to limit it to whole numbers.

Then why not just use real values? 195 Gs rather than 5.975.

10 kiloton shield with immense maneuverability > 30 megaton laser with poor aiming capacity. Thus, back to my original point.

Good luck dodging a laser at anything less than a light second range.


Unless I read the explanation wrong, she can't. She can only ignite the atmosphere. Planet's still there afterwards.

"The Planet Burner Cannon, also sometimes called the Planet Buster, is a weapon that fires a stream of gravitons into a planet, increasing its gravity to the point it "ignites" and turns into a star, allowing the weapon to take out large fleets"

Yep, definately a godmod.

As I've created a sci-fi universe from scratch, converting it for FP should be quite easy, especially since my largest non-flagship vessel is only 800m long.

That said, I would have to agree with this Ubertech crap. The only way I could let it slide is that it's compensated by numbers. For example, a weaker nation has more ships than a stronger army of the same pop with less ships.

And weapons, there's tons of examples, so why not use them? They aren't über weapons, and I have a few examples that could be used as an alternative:

Beam Laser/Laser (Similar to phasers in style you could assume, travels at the speed of light)
Plasma Cannon (Laser cannon fused with plasma, travels under the speed of light)
Nuclear Missile
Fusion Missile
Nuclear Torpedo
Fusion Torpedo
Transdimensional Torpedo
Railgun
Gauss Cannon

So why do some people have to follow Star Trek/Star Wars for an example? I thought of this over the period of five minutes. We should make a wiki-type post like those already done for other RP's, and have them for those playing FP's, so new people can read it before diving head first with their Death Stars.

Xessmithia is your whole reason of being here to piss people off and flame? all i see you doing is "that shit, thats a godmod bla bla bla" you dont add anything useful me personel just from see a few of your posts am sick of you dont know about anyone elce.


Anyway as i stated befor if you want to make a rateing system and then want to deter Godmoding and wanking add an Advantage and disavantage system.

As I've created a sci-fi universe from scratch, converting it for FP should be quite easy, especially since my largest non-flagship vessel is only 800m long.

That said, I would have to agree with this Ubertech crap. The only way I could let it slide is that it's compensated by numbers. For example, a weaker nation has more ships than a stronger army of the same pop with less ships.

And weapons, there's tons of examples, so why not use them? They aren't über weapons, and I have a few examples that could be used as an alternative:

Beam Laser/Laser (Similar to phasers in style you could assume, travels at the speed of light)
Plasma Cannon (Laser cannon fused with plasma, travels under the speed of light)
Nuclear Missile
Fusion Missile
Nuclear Torpedo
Fusion Torpedo
Transdimensional Torpedo
Railgun
Gauss Cannon

So why do some people have to follow Star Trek/Star Wars for an example? I thought of this over the period of five minutes. We should make a wiki-type post like those already done for other RP's, and have them for those playing FP's, so new people can read it before diving head first with their Death Stars.


I like this guy, someone who is orginal.

Still take less energy to control the beam as it is doing less work.

I can't refute it.

Depends on the size of the moon. If we go with Luna (which is actually a large moon) it's about 1.8 trillion megatons.

Congrats. I'm still working on the math on that one. Going to take me awhile too.

Gigaton range likely.



Hardly the hours you claimed then is it?

No, but that's because I know a little something about explosives. The reason it will take hours for some is they have to figure out the mass of what they are capable of blowing up, then have to figure out the energy they are using to blow it up.

1 megaton less than a 30 megaton bomb and 1 more than a 28 megaton bomb. Or you could use Stardestroyer.net's handy "Nuclear Explosion Effects Calculator" enter the yield and there you have it.

Or, you could realize the actual effective destructive value is close enough that it doesn't matter.

Then why not just use real values? 195 Gs rather than 5.975.

Because not everyone uses real values. We can give both real values and examples for comparison. Under that system, most people would easily understand 5.9 better than 195 Gs.

Good luck dodging a laser at anything less than a light second range.

Meh. I don't plan on being that close, myself.

"The Planet Burner Cannon, also sometimes called the Planet Buster, is a weapon that fires a stream of gravitons into a planet, increasing its gravity to the point it "ignites" and turns into a star, allowing the weapon to take out large fleets"

Yep, definately a godmod.

I never claimed it wasn't a godmod.

Xessmithia is your whole reason of being here to piss people off and flame? all i see you doing is "that shit, thats a godmod bla bla bla" you dont add anything useful me personel just from see a few of your posts am sick of you dont know about anyone elce.

That's nice. And like I said earlier I'm here to try and knock some sense into people to use real world units that actually mean things rather than arbitrary made up numbers.

And did you not read the part where I mentioned that DLEs sub 1 km^3 volume ship has the firepower of 1.62 billion Death Star blasts? Clearly you can see the absurdity of that.

Or you could use Stardestroyer.net's handy "Nuclear Explosion Effects Calculator"
Can I have a link to it, please? :)

It sounds like fun, that's all. :D

(i'm a nuke-lover :D )

Look, I'm never goona accept ANY guidelines and I'm sure others won't. I'm no GM'er, just an ordinary guy who finds the RP MORE IMPORTANT THAT THE TECH. You understand? I take freeform and use freeform within limits. So that's all you need to do not "customize a chart, etc." If that happens, I'll porbably withdraw into soley RP'ing MT (instead od dual) and you'l have a good RP'er (if I say so myself).

Can I have a link to it, please? :)

It sounds like fun, that's all. :D

(i'm a nuke-lover :D )


www.stardestroyer.net/Empire go the the "Science" section and pick the Nuclear Effects Calculator

I can't refute it.

The work required to contain a beam is less than the work done on the planet by the beam. Thus the containment takes less energy than the beam itself.



Congrats. I'm still working on the math on that one. Going to take me awhile too.

KE = 1/2mv^2
KE = 1/2(~5e23kg)(~11000/6)^2
KE = 8.4x10^29 Joules = 200 trillion megatons

I had made a mistake in the math earlier. Wrong number of zeroes.




No, but that's because I know a little something about explosives. The reason it will take hours for some is they have to figure out the mass of what they are capable of blowing up, then have to figure out the energy they are using to blow it up.

Most don't need to know that. For the most part using real units is no different than using the 1-25 rating system.



Or, you could realize the actual effective destructive value is close enough that it doesn't matter.

True enough.



Because not everyone uses real values. We can give both real values and examples for comparison. Under that system, most people would easily understand 5.9 better than 195 Gs.

I disagree, having a referance to Gs makes it easier to understand. 195 Gs is 195 times the force of Earth's surface gravity. People will understand that better as they have a point of refferance.



Meh. I don't plan on being that close, myself.

Fair enough.



I never claimed it wasn't a godmod.

Just making sure.

That's nice. And like I said earlier I'm here to try and knock some sense into people to use real world units that actually mean things rather than arbitrary made up numbers.

And did you not read the part where I mentioned that DLEs sub 1 km^3 volume ship has the firepower of 1.62 billion Death Star blasts? Clearly you can see the absurdity of that.


Ok first off, do you see us flying around at speeds FTL across the universe? can you tell me how powerful a Quntom Plasma Laser discharge cannon is? do we even have Plasma weapons the size on our hands? do you know what would happen if a 100 Trilawatt beam would do to a Temporl sheild?

RPing is about haveing fun and makeing a simple system to base things on, im sorry if i dont have the time to sit there grow fat and find out what such things would do to each other.

The reason for the rateing system is for a SIMPLE way for people to RP things and give out damage rating. I dont want to sit there and have to work out what a 40 Gigaton beam would do to me then work out the shields damage take then the discharge then if it got though the shield then how much damage is done to the armor from the force of the beam and if the armor has some unique ability to discharge a bit of engergy when i could go "oh it has a rateing of 10, my sheild have a rateing of 8 it can get though them"

The work required to contain a beam is less than the work done on the planet by the beam. Thus the containment takes less energy than the beam itself.

That's why I can't refute it.

KE = 1/2mv^2
KE = 1/2(~5e23kg)(~11000/6)^2
KE = 8.4x10^29 Joules = 200 trillion megatons

I had made a mistake in the math earlier. Wrong number of zeroes.

Stop showing off. I'm still trying to do the math.

Most don't need to know that. For the most part using real units is no different than using the 1-25 rating system.

Except saying "It does a rating 12 amount of damage" and the players under Rating 12 = Goodbye Texas is easier than giving them a real number and letting them figure it out on their own.

I disagree, having a referance to Gs makes it easier to understand. 195 Gs is 195 times the force of Earth's surface gravity. People will understand that better as they have a point of refferance.

Thus, the comparisons.

Just making sure.

You should see her reject pile. She came up with a 6km superdreadnaught. She rejected it because she determined its gravity well would cause it to implode and go into a supernova the moment someone turned it on. Guess it's a one-time use weapon.

Ok first off, do you see us flying around at speeds FTL across the universe? can you tell me how powerful a Quntom Plasma Laser discharge cannon is? do we even have Plasma weapons the size on our hands? do you know what would happen if a 100 Trilawatt beam would do to a Temporl sheild?

If "trila" was an actual prefix and I had the strength of the shield then yes I could tell you. No, we don't have plasma weapons the size of our hands, but if we did I could tell you their energy output like we can do wit the KE of modern day bullets. If I knew what the effects of a "Quntom Plasma Laser Discharge Cannon" on a stable substance like a planet then yes I could tell you how powerful it is.

RPing is about haveing fun and makeing a simple system to base things on, im sorry if i dont have the time to sit there grow fat and find out what such things would do to each other.

And nothing I'm suggesting would change that. Had you read, I don't give a rats ass if there is a rating system or not. It won't change the way I RP one bit either way.

The reason for the rateing system is for a SIMPLE way for people to RP things and give out damage rating. I dont want to sit there and have to work out what a 40 Gigaton beam would do to me then work out the shields damage take then the discharge then if it got though the shield then how much damage is done to the armor from the force of the beam and if the armor has some unique ability to discharge a bit of engergy when i could go "oh it has a rateing of 10, my sheild have a rateing of 8 it can get though them"

Replace "10" with 30 megatons and "8" with 15 kilotons and you have the same thing.

what does OOC mean

yes im a newb so what you were once too :)

That's why I can't refute it.

I was just telling you why it is so.



Stop showing off. I'm still trying to do the math.

Just trying to help.



Except saying "It does a rating 12 amount of damage" and the players under Rating 12 = Goodbye Texas is easier than giving them a real number and letting them figure it out on their own.

You can do that with real numbers too.

Impact Energy


Result1

1E5 to 1E6 megatons


Land impact destroys a large state (eg- California, France, Japan) and produces enough atmospheric dust loading to affect global climate, freezing crops. Ocean impact creates hemisphere-spanning tsunamis but no global climate change. Global ozone layer is heavily damaged.

1E6 to 1E7 megatons


Both land and ocean impacts produce enough atmospheric dust to affect global climate, freezing crops. Impact ejecta are globally distributed, causing widespread fires. Land impact destroys a large nation (Mexico, India).

1E7 to 1E8 megatons


Probable mass extinction event. Global climate changes last for weeks or months. Direct destruction occurs on continental scale (Australia, United States). Massive global firestorms. The K-T extinction event 65 million years ago fell into the upper end of this category.

1E8 to 1E9 megatons


Large mass extinction event. Most of the Earth's biosystem is destroyed.

>1E9 megatons


Global extinction event. All complex forms of life probably destroyed.

See?



Thus, the comparisons.

Indeed, although that just makes things more complicated in my book.

what does OOC mean

yes im a newb so what you were once too :)

OOC means "Out of Character". It means that this isn't an actual RP and is a general discussion.

k thnx ive been wondering for a while

Ya'know, I quite like how through the entire thread, nobody got the idea of saying 'Hrm. No matter what numbers we make up, they can always be argued. How about we stop numberwanking, be it watts and joules or mere 'levels', and go with what little stats we get from the game itself? Smartness rankings to vaguely define quality. Military size to define vague numerical capacities. IT to define particular technologies (ECMs, scanning, the likes), Arms Manufacturing to define others (Guns), Automobile Manufacturing to define even more different ones (Ships, whatever), and so on. And while we're at it, we could stop compensating and use our actual population (Or even downscale it, in the case of above-baseline human abilities, to balance if we're particularly wanky. *

After all, if we're just making up our own stuff and refuse to use the few statistics the game gives us, we could just start our own (forum (hrttp://www.invisionfree.com) and quit playing NS, right?'

* And yes. I am doing just that.

Xessmithia, we dont care how you RP if we want to use a rating system of 1-100 or 1-10 we will and i dont think anything you say will change that, just give up trying to force your ways on others. theres a name for that.

Just trying to help.

I already gave up on the math. Never was a math person.

You can do that with real numbers too.



See?

Yes. How does it help when comparing hundreds of megatons?

Indeed, although that just makes things more complicated in my book.

Which is why I want to include real numbers as well.

Yes. How does it help when comparing hundreds of megatons?

I'd need a different scale than that one, but you could do it.

Ya'know, I quite like how through the entire thread, nobody got the idea of saying 'Hrm. No matter what numbers we make up, they can always be argued. How about we stop numberwanking, be it watts and joules or mere 'levels', and go with what little stats we get from the game itself? Smartness rankings to vaguely define quality. Military size to define vague numerical capacities. IT to define particular technologies (ECMs, scanning, the likes), Arms Manufacturing to define others (Guns), Automobile Manufacturing to define even more different ones (Ships, whatever), and so on. And while we're at it, we could stop compensating and use our actual population (Or even downscale it, in the case of above-baseline human abilities, to balance if we're particularly wanky. *

After all, if we're just making up our own stuff and refuse to use the few statistics the game gives us, we could just start our own (forum (hrttp://www.invisionfree.com) and quit playing NS, right?'

* And yes. I am doing just that.


Well I keep my NS population for determining military power, which is why that Star Dreadnaught of mine takes up 8% of my naval personnel. It's just that in Space Opera terms things get bigger.

The only way to go is to make it so that FT combat is basically a clone of MT combat, but with different names. Star cruisers are battleships, stealth ships are like submarines, anitmatter megabombs are like nukes, etc. It'd be really simple.

You should see her reject pile. She came up with a 6km superdreadnaught. She rejected it because she determined its gravity well would cause it to implode and go into a supernova the moment someone turned it on. Guess it's a one-time use weapon.
I used to have these (http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/8113/pltntriship4be.jpg) for planet destroyers and I've never had a problem with them. :confused: ;)

That's crazy- 6km is nothing. It would have to be 6 million kilometers, maybe, to collapse under its own gravity. It also makes a difference how dense the material is that you build it with. Also, in the future, Im sure they've come up with some anti-gravity material that prevents things from collapsing.

That's crazy- 6km is nothing. It would have to be 6 million kilometers, maybe, to collapse under its own gravity. It also makes a difference how dense the material is that you build it with. Also, in the future, Im sure they've come up with some anti-gravity material that prevents things from collapsing.
I agree. that's like a small asteroid, really.

Why are we going over the mathematics on how strong a weapon is, and instead just make a system that rates certain weapons certain levels. Here's a few example.

My fighter, the XG-99 has medium lasers. As it's a fighter with medium strength, it will have Level 3 lasers. My XG-32 though with the dual heavy lasers, would be called level 4, as it's heavy. Level 5 would go to the bombers, as they are designed to penetrate heavier ships like Corvettes.

Now each relative size of ships would have a class clasification. So for fighters and corvettes, they would have levels based on an F scale, up to level 10. Like this:

XG-99: Class F Level 3 lasers.
XG-32: Class F Level 4 lasers.
XB-91: Class F Level 5 lasers.
Banshee class Corvette: Class F Level 9 lasers.

I would recommend fighters not breaking level 5 for laser firepower. Now, bigger ships, like frigates, cruisers, heavy cruisers, battlecruisers, and even flagships, would be under its own weapons level list, which I call C. For example:

Bradley class Frigate: Class C Level 1 lasers.
Dominator class Frigate: Class C Level 2 lasers.
Blade class Destroyer: Class C Level 8 lasers. (This jump is because of alien technology)
Thunder class Heavy Cruiser: Class C Level 7 lasers.
Punisher class Heavy Cruiser: Class C Level 9 lasers.
Final Victory class Flagship: Class C Level 10 lasers, Class X laser.

Keep in mind that level 1 under C class would be about twice as powerful as F Level 10. As you can see, the bigger the ship, the respectively larger the weapons strength.

If you saw above with the Final Victory's entry with Class X, that X refers to any specialty weapon that is considered an übertech or über powerful weapon. In the Final Victory's class (which consists in even my universe one ship), the ship has a mounted planet-killer array. Class X is in other words, a superweapon, and if we allow them to be used, should be in extremely limited amounts.

Now how we should all do our ship profiles for people so that there is no confusion on who is better armed, better defended, etc. Here's how I would have mine listed.

Note: (X) refers to special properties regarding the ship that should be explained under the list, for example, the XG-99 has special maneuvering jets that allow it to fly backwards at full speed, giving it unusual or superb handling characteristics.

XG-99: MEDIUM shields, MEDIUM armor, HIGH (X) maneuverability, Class F Level 3 pulse lasers (2), Class F Level 1 beam lasers (4), Class F Level 5 missiles (4 w 12 capacity), Class F Level 4 mines.

XG-32: WEAK shields, WEAK armor, VERY HIGH maneuverability, Class F Level 4 pulse lasers (2), Class F Level 5 missiles (1 w 8 capacity)

XB-91: STRONG shields, VERY STRONG armor, POOR maneuverability, Class F Level 5 pulse lasers (2), Class F Level 3 torpedoes (8 w 24 capacity), Class C Level 1 plasma cannon.

Thunder class Heavy Cruiser: NO shields, VERY STRONG armor, VERY POOR maneuverability, Class C Level 3 pulse laser turrets (30), Class C Level 3 gattling micro-railgun turrets (30), Class C Level 3 fusion torpedoes (4 w 120 capacity), Class C Level 7 plasma cannons (4), Class C Level 10 plasma cannon (1).

So there's my explaination of making RP's easier. For higher tech countries/planets, you can go over level 10 like in my example like level 20 as the absolute highest, but no higher. Then you can have some real interesting battles! And less technobabble. So if someone wants to have a class F level 4 flaming perogie cannon on their fighters, then sure! As long as the stats are fair.

---------
Note: Armor and shield strength are relative to their classes - the XB-91 and the Thunder do NOT have similar strengths, even though they both have strong armor!

Second Note: Plasma cannons and pulse lasers are somewhat similar by discharging plasma with light, but are completely different scale, and that true plasma cannons fire more plasma than light.

^ Bump

...Anyone like this idea?

I have an idea, lets use a rating system that actually fucking means something instead of this "Level 24" bullshit.

Like use I don't know, things like kilometers for range and Joules for energy and Watts for power. You know the things that are used for those very things in the real world.

"Oh but what keeps someone from just throwing in a larger number Xessmithia? This is just asking for techwank."

The same thing that stops people from throwing in huge ass numbers in any other rating system.

Now how would this work you ask?

Simple;

Acceleration: m/s^2, km/s^, Gs(1 G = 9.8 m/s^2, 10m/s^2 for ease of use)

Angular Velocity: Degrees/second

Armour: equivalent in unit of thickness (mm, cm, m etc) of armour steel.

Range: Meters, Kilometers, Astronomical Units (150 million km), Light-Minutes (18 million km), Light-hours (1.08 billion km), Light-years (9.46 trillion km)

Reactor Output: Watts, eg the sun puts out 3.6x10^26 Watts of power, an average household lightbulb puts out 100 Watts.

Shields: Dissipation rate is in Watts. Eg a SW Acclamator has a shield dissipation rate of ~2x10^22 Watts.
Shields: Heat sink capacity is in Joules, eg 5x10^23 Joules.

Weapon Yields: Joules or (prefix)ton ratings. Eg, 500 gigajoule blast or a 400 megaton explosion (1 ton = 4.2x10^9 Joules [4.2 gigajoules]).

And DLE's "PLanet Burner" is wank. It packs the power of 1.62 billion Death Star blasts (the mass/energy requried to raise the mass of the planet to the point where Carbon may start fusing, never mind the heavier elements) in at best 2 ten millionths of the volume. It is 100% pure Grade A wank.


I have indeed considered that. The problem is, few people would really understand it. Even I would have problems. So I took the basic idea of a 1-25 rating system (from someone in this thread, I forgot) and expanded on it. I am not saying that it should be a cornerstone of NS RPing. It is just nice to know what other's weapons and ships can do. Most godmodding we can deal with once everyone is on the same page so that there is no mis-perceptions on what person Q's weapons are supposed to do. That's all I intended it for. All we have to do on top of that is just make it clear that a 25 rating on anything is almost impossible to get. It wont solve everything, but it would help.

http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=444802&page=1&pp=15

Just thought u might be interested gronde (it would be a grate help if you could put insite into this idea of mine).

bump