Warning: long.
I'm not overly worried. I know I got hit with the big stick last turn, but as long as Mr GM takes turns beating us like a red-headed step child, I'm good.
EDIT: I did notice my budget basically didn't change from last turn, despite taking a few worlds off Ze Germanz, I assume I had to pay indemnity for the civilian casualties?
Don't worry, you'll all get beaten here and there. As for the budget, that was a victim of last turn's chaos. I set budgets before determining battle outcomes, and never went back to fix them. They'll be properly refreshed for next turn.
I really see multiple designs as the future of the FWL, as well.
Just maybe not line battle designs. But, say, a fast ship, or some cheap armour boxes to generate ECM to hide behind, might come up in the future. I could also see myself adopting an interval approach where I update one design every second serious opportunity and another one on the other.
Well, and I do have that 1.5m ton yard.
You are right, streamlining one's force drastically eases the pressure on finances. I just wonder if, long term, that will still be such a big concern: If our navies grow, the prototype cost for a refit will be a far lower share of the modernization effort. How many ships do I even have?
From what info I've gathered so far, the FWL ships mostly aren't even outdated, technologically - not much happened on that front in the first turns.
The battlefield just had other plans as to what was considered necessary. And with the march of technology, those ships may actually become viable again. Maingunnery produced a thoughtful design that could still be used to patrol borders, show the flag, or transport groundtroops, even if I don't see a future for the Heracles as a ship of the line around 2500.
Btw, does the FWL have actual fighter or Small Craft designs, or do I use whatever is considered standard?
I suppose until now fighters were basically additional missiles, so their stats didn't matter whatsoever.
I have a feeling what I originally wrote and what I added now didn't quite match and my post is all over the place.
I think everyone will have at least a few designs in practice. As you say, differential yard sizes will be one big driver - you can't spend your budget or defend your nation with 2x size 6 ships per turn, but you can't easily afford to build other lines up to similar sizes either.
I agree. I think 1 generalist for all battle duties, and then specialists only as unavoidably necessary - as given KF Core costs, ANY specialist is a Battleship that didnt happen, cost-wise. Though even so.. Im wondering if given that fact one isnt well served to just put a LITTLE cargo, a LITTLE troops, and SOME fighter onto every NACboat, and make every ship a NAC-heavy generalist. (though if Buri shocks me, I may reassess the role of NAC vs Energy Weapons)
NACs are strong, but I don't want them to be the universal choice. No changes to announce yet, but much like how I intend to rescue NGauss with range rule changes, I may do similar to NACs. For example, if they all had their ranges cut by a third, that might help balance them against energy weapons a bit better? IDK.
Given the paucity of engagements, most ships go 20 years or more without firing a shot in anger. I think the barrels will be okay. :)
Yes, there is some circular dominance - but its at the 1 thrust advantage level, I think, if it exists at all. The real advantage of higher speed is the ability to choose or decline engagement - the firepower and resilience lost in the service of this can and must be substantial.
A 2/3 should have long range armament - it MUST - or it gets murdered by anything faster.
A 3/5 NAC boat closes a 2/3 and may have an advantage - I honestly think the 2/3 NPPC fights about even with 3/5 NAC, due to range and accuracy. But its a close call. 3/5 NAC has to worry about 4/6 NPPC.
A 4/6 NAC boat gives up too much hull and armament to beat a 2/3 NPPC even if it can teleport into point blank range... it has about 33% more firepower at point blank, but the PPC boat gets 50% more resilience. That said, the 4/6 NAC will fight about even with a 3/5 NPPC, as I see it. A 4/6 NPPC will stomp all over a 3/5 or slower NAC.
Past 4/6, you start leaving the realm of ‘Line of Battle’ and we are dealing with solo or small squadron operators, where individual concerns will control.
Of course, NACs show to advantage in high speed closing engagement, which is outside this analysis.
This analysis also ignores fighters and missiles, because based on observed performance, ship mounted launchers are poor weapons even if PDS is absent - which it is not - and amounts of AAA/PDS sufficient to trivialize fighters and missiles can easily be mounted, assuming Vega has precidential value.
This analysis made sense early, but remember that we have fractional thrust now. How much is a 0.2 thrust advantage worth to you? Nobody has played with it yet, but it might be interesting if anyone ever starts building to counter another fleet. A small thrust advantage like that will naturally not give you the same sort of maneuver dominance that a 1-thrust advantage would, but it's something.
Any word from Kiviar Mr GM sir?
He said I should have it by the end of the week. That's sooner than I'll plausibly finish, so it's sufficient. I also need to write up the RWR myself, and do a bit of prep work before I want to continue. I don't expect to have more than half a turn finished by this weekend. That said, I've been vastly more productive when I have had time to write, so I don't expect I'll run into the same writer's block that plagued turn 6.
I anticipate Kiviar may have done his turn via PM, as I believe he has in the past. I will note that Im enjoying the level of activity on this thread.
RE fleet force appreciations - Ive not done them for the periphery realms and the TH for a couple of reasons. The TH because its force level holds steady at ‘Sumo Wrestler vs Unarmed Kindergartners’, and the Periphery powers because they are in a similar position vis a vis the Houses - and cant really reach each other to have their own fun little wars.
Ahistorical, but it might be fun to fast-grow the P realms for a while, and at the same time calve off some of the outlying TH planets into the houses if they continue their course of internal unrest. Could also be a handy mechanic to keep the Great Houses on something like a level playing field if we need some divine intervention to keep the plot interesting. Heavy handed Deus ex Machina? Perhaps - but have you seen what the official writers get away with? :)
This activity level is fun, yeah. As for splitting the TH up, I'll see what happens. They'll get random internal events for a while yet, and if one goes badly for them it's possible.
- There are some things that are fleet items rather than ship items, like the LNCSS. Sticking one on every warship is a waste.
- Making your entire fleet be high speed is armor/weapon inefficient, but having nothing with a high speed means that you can't catch fast opponents. This hasn't really come into play yet, but it might.
- On a human cost basis: Frontlining support personnel seems harsh. Maybe reasonable, but certainly a plausible reason to have more designs.
I'm not concerned about high losses, insufficient budgets, poor strategic decisions, or lock-in to bad fleet doctrines. In a real sense, I chose many of those with the TC and figuring out how to cope, starting with a crippling and crippled fleet of 6 Kutai, is my game.
I am somewhat concerned about whether or not the designs we make matter to the outcome. The battle of Kannon/Vega looks like it was determined by a die roll without regard to the fleet compositions. This seems antithetical to the premise if so. However, it's only one battle and maybe I'm mistaken.
W.r.t. the army having a navy, the TCN will lobby with the Protector to shift the army's transport budget to the TCN. The TCN can transport and simultaneously land a regiment at a lower cost than the army's Dropship/Jumpship approach (2.5B instead of 2.8B). When landing in two waves is acceptable, this can further drop to 1.25B instead of 2.8B. Just tell us how many regiments of army transport are required and give us the budget. ( :) I'll add this to my turn.)
1) Good point.
2) It amuses me how many of these discussions trigger "Ooh, I should write a battle where that happens!" moments.
Re Vega, the LC lost the dice and won the battle in material terms. Fleet composition mattered, I'd say.
Re army/navy cost calculations, can you elaborate for me? I'm not sure I follow the math.
I've updated the design links post to all current designs.
For Alsadius: I included the attempts at generic designs at the bottom as I was losing track of them in the thread.
You're awesome, thank you. I'll be dealing with generics in the next few days, and adding them to the spreadsheet. (I actually have a GM Aids tab at the end of the master sheet, after the periphery nations. Not complete yet, but I'll add things as I find them useful.)
I've updated by previous 'turn'-post with a bit of fluff and reasoning for the planned changes.
This will likely be as far as I can go on that before mid next week.
Further, I'd like to suggest a balancing measure:
Repair Facilities should be halved in cost on space stations.
They are immensely expensive on their own, making up easily half the cost of a ship for the larger ones, and thus are affected heavily by the space station cost multiplier.
I can take a Heracles and upsize it's repair bay to a million tons, and, lo and behold, it gets more expensive if I remove the jump drive.
I feel this would inevitably lead to 'jumping stations' to change cost, and I think that's just odd.
Alternatively, we could make use of the fact that space stations are allowed to mount multiple facilities, and drastically cut their cost for mounting multiples.
This is worth thinking about. I may make "station versions" that cost less than the ship-based versions, and since we have no repair stations yet, this should be easy to retcon.
What would you be building repair facilities into stations for? I've been handling that off-screen thus far. Would you want that to be put more front and centre?
W.r.t. the Heracles II, note that it take 12 hours to dock into the repair bay and 6-12 hours to undock. During those times the Heracles II cannot use thrust without incurring structural damage.
Wait, is that repair bay being used as a drop collar? That's...not an expected use of the rules. I was thinking it was just being made even more jack-of-all-trades than before. That may require some rule changes, or even the long-dreaded change to the ship cost formula. What's the effective cost of the repair bay?
To quote my wife who was watching me doing some ship and turn design at one point:
Her: “Honey, what game ya playin?”
Me: *chipper voice* “Spreadsheets!”
Her: “Ahh. Your FAVOURITE game.”
You too, huh?
Some observations:
I.) A classic battletech regiment (12 Units to a Company, 3 Companies to a Battalion, 3 Battalions to a Regiment) is 108 Units, if Im remembering right?
II.) 9 Small Dropships (notionally, Union class) carries 12 units (and I note your Small Carrier Dropships carry 12 fighters). This suggests that 9 droppers = 108 Units = 1 Regiment.
III.) If 1 Dropship carries supplies for 3 dropships worth of units, then a unit's 'supply train' is about equal to 1/3 its carried mass (for Battlemech and Vehicle units). This suggests that each mech wants 50 tons of cargo, each 100 ton vehicle 33 Tons, and each small vehicle ~16 tons.
I'm working on a Walkurie Refit into a hybrid carrier/transport/gunship, (think Star Wars Ventator) and want to make sure I've enough biscuits to go around. Having supply tonnage at about 1/3 the tonnage dedicated to carriage helps me keep things in line in my head - still not sure about provisioning infantry - how long can you deploy a soldier on a ton of supplies?
I/II) Correct. I realized that later on, but didn't go back and edit, because I'd already figured I wasn't going to implement the rules.
III) I don't actually know how this works, tbh. I have a vague sense of IRL supply requirements, and I've given rules of thumb for ship cargo back in the early parts of the game, but I'm not confident of the internal consistency of these rules. That said, it seems about right for a BT game? Probably lower than IRL, but in line with how the force structure works in the setting, and it allows operations to happen. IDK.
