Warship Race Redux

[UnLimiTeD]

I needed one more turn to get where I wanted but... nooooo...  stupid war and stuff getting in the way of me making my toys.

Wait, what war? The Taurians? That didn't really deal much damage, did it?

This version of Nihongi is... about dead center on all the meters of 'House Kurita', at least in his effect on policy, economics, warmaking, etc.  If hes crazy as a monkey on acid in his private time... well, your welcome to creative control on that. :)

Well, canonically, he didn't care for the state at all, indirectly resulting in the rise of the von Rohrs.
So, long term, the question is: Will the von Rohrs this time prove to be more competent, or will the line of the family that didn't get killed by dastardly Rasalhagian terrorists take over?

As long as its consistent, I don't care how we name weapons.  If you'd like to change all the existing designs, just let me know how the new format will parse?

I wouldn't want something to be changed just for me if everyone else has no problem with it.
Though, question:
Assuming this approach, could we adopt this for your spreadsheet?  Edit: Not the general approach, just the "match for multiple possible wordings" part. Though I think your approach, which I think is generally more professional, would allow for NAC/20 as a writing style.
I mostly would prefer having the slash in NAC and NL names, and maybe write out Missile names (could just check for a part of the name) whenever there is actually space on the ship.
Now, should I decide to scale up an Ikio cruiser to an assault Battleship and install 2 kinds of Lasers, 2 types of missiles, NAC/20s and 40s, all 3 sizes of NGauss, and a mixed flak battery of Gauss Rifles, LRMs, Lasers, with AMS, Small Lasers, and MGs as backup, then shortening them all as much as possible makes sense - and the individual weapon probably won't batter as much. ^^

[Tyler Jorgensson]

So funnily enough.... my turn will be ready in the next day or so. All I’ve got left for it is fluff.

[UnLimiTeD]

... ignore this empty post.
I wanted to do an edit, and subsequently have added everything to the above post.
... though actually ... what are peoples thoughts on tech progression now?

[marcussmythe]

Ive got thoughts on a lot of things.  Tech progression, dropships, maintenance at the top of my list.

Ive also got some more things I want to see play out - missiles, bearings only, off-ship AAA/PDS, fixed defenses and if anything breaks the dominance of long range fires (I suspect this last one will mostly come down to engagement size)

My current thought is we play this as far as we can, with the rules we have, and learn from it for next time.

[kindalas]

Quick question.

Mothballing costs 10% maintenance?

And at 0% the ships degrade and require future expenses?

[marcussmythe]

Correct.

Although, TBH - if you cant even afford to mothball, Id just scrap.

[UnLimiTeD]

I do kind of agree that it's a bit late now to do subtle changes.

But I seem to have never collective written down my thoughts, so now is as good a time as any

• While progression was  a bit slow last iteration, this time it's too fast. Going from the bare necessities to FC armour and Batteries in 5 turns subsumes any "reaction to your opponents designs and approaches in the tech race, and thus leads to fewer designs than we would otherwise see. I can live with it, but I just know that if we end this after 15 turns because we've stalled out I will regret it.
  I think the biggest thing, though convenient, is really the plan-ability. I don't research in the hopes of getting something, I can buy a technology, and I'll have it, right now, guaranteed.
• The 1/100 damage conversion, while a necessity for fighters attacking warships, is a bit much for everything else. Why would I ever place a non-PD standard-scale weapon on a ship unless I had little spare weight and not reached the fire-control limit yet? Dropships cease to be a factor, and there is little option to harass/attrition an attacking warship force without warships of your own - besides plastering everything with stations. Which leads to the next point:
• In a way, heavily abstracted, we emulate the warship race of the late 19th and early 20th century. Yet the rules don't really allow us the equivalent of a torpedo boat or coastal defence battleship.
• It is said that the best counter to an aerospace fighter is another fighter. As a former Game Designer, that is itching me something fierce. I know I keep them around for that.
  Only the best counter against a fighter attack may well be barracudas. Sure, you get only 2 shots per launcher if you want to stick to the same weight, but if only half of them are shot down (missing is kind of a challenge), that's all the fighters gone.
  I feel the "issue", if you could call it that, is that we have fighters aplenty, while in the setting, they were rather uncommon, specifically modern fighters. The primitive versions, armed with the likes of a medium laser and 2 mgs, weren't really a threat to a warship, and I feel that a future iteration on the warship race, maybe we should limit early fighters technologically, and allow them higher efficiency later on. Once we have mid-sized ships sporting 200+ armour on every facing, sub-caps, and screen launchers, fighters will really have no place in a battle anymore outside of high-speed engagements.
• Yard costs, as originally implemented by Alsadius, were expensive, but approachable enough given a sufficiently long game (about twice as long as it actually lasted). By increasing the maintenance from 10% to 50%, but nearly tripling the budget, yards are suddenly very cheap, and only really expensive if you lose them. I noticed this a turn too late, but I would assume that eventually, everyone will plaster their biggest yards with defensive installations, and yet attacking yards may still be a primary tactic; But we seem to be at around a maximum yard size increase every second turn. If someone really set out to do it, a 2mt warship at turn 10 would be a valid approach. Sure, why not, but I think it's a tad easy unless their neighbours actively try to prevent him from getting there. I think in a new iteration I'd set size as 200kt each, so there'd be more upgrades required to get to the big ships.
• The current maintenance situation leads to some weird artefacts that might need to be addressed next iteration, though I'd like to see that play out more to see where we get:
  
  • Buying a ship from another power usually costs as much as maintaining it, so losing it in battle and buying a new one is generally an economical choice. In extreme cases of low prices, a periphery nation may be able to buy a ship they can't actually afford to maintain the next turn. Which is weirdly real-world appropriate, but still feels a bit fishy.
    Example: The PoRs actions last turn. They'd be in roughly the same position now, but without the damage they inflicted, if they didn't launch that suicide attack.
  • The combination of predictable research and high maintenance means that research pays off very quickly, instead of being more of a long-term strategy. As I've calculated earlier, if one player buys a tech every turn and puts the rest into ships, and the other develops 3 techs a turn for 2 turns and puts the (smaller) rest into ships, the first player only has a significant force advantage in the first, maybe second turn, and after the full 6 turns, the second player will actually have more ships - not factoring in the cost of upgrading for the first player.
  • As I've actually done in early fights, leaving the enemy to retreat with their ships barely intact has about the same economic results for them as killing their ships.
    As a small example: Force 1 and Force 2 each have 6 ships worth 10b each, for a total cost of 60b per side. They fight. Force 1 loses two ships, but the rest get out unscathed. Force 2 loses no new ships, but 4 ships sustain various amounts of damage averaging to 25% of their value in repair costs each (10b total). Assuming the ships are modern, and both sides want to keep them, and upgrade their force to 7 pristine ships next turn, but sides will have to spend the same amount of money, even though Force 1 technically lost more, and potentially sustained a little more damage (which really depends on the ships in question and the type of damage inflicted). This admittedly changes if one side is just willing to scrap their cripples because they wanted to build new ones anyways; Force 2 would come out slightly ahead there. So using fighters to finish off crippled opponents may benefit the opposition.
• And, obviously, the maintenance quotas for equipment: I know it could complicate matters, but I believe we should adjust the maintenance of things like collars and repair facilities. We work with online spreadsheets including extensive calculations that could very well take that work off the players hands - it would just list the maintenance of the ship per turn, requiring only the design and potential techs affecting it.
  
  • I think it might be promising in a future iteration to take a middleground between 1 and 2 when it comes to budget and maintenance, heavily leaning towards 2, and introduce an "emergency spending" mechanic: If one side severely gets their behind handed to them, the "lose half your fleet and a couple worlds while barely putting up a fight" type of event, they'd just get extra funding for a turn; If a nation is under obvious threat, they tend to spend more on their military.
• Actually, a potential last point regarding multiple iterations of the race: We do run into the problem of a lot of roleplaying games: Doing something you know is wrong, but the character didn't. I certainly didn't plaster my yard systems with satellites after I saw the Capellans do it and thought to myself "why didn't I think of that?", even though I was sure it was the right thing to do - the DC admiralty would probably wait and gauge their effectiveness - but I'll sure do it now. I think unless the players are completely cycled out, bad designs will not be repeated in the next iteration besides maybe as an alibi-one off run of a few that the player can afford. I know I didn't plan a large number of my upcoming battlecruiser design because I doubt a lot of them would be a wise choice, and while the FWLs warship-sized fighter gets enormous style points, building 20 of them would be deliberately gimping oneself.
  We are in the position to have hindsight before we act, and only now get to the point where we outstrip the last game. Luckily there were a few changes, mostly to fighters and a slashing of extra rules, but we'd need to think of possible changes for the next time.

And with that all said, I'll shut up about it, because I have nothing more to add, and concentrate on the game at hand. :)

off-ship AAA/PDS

What exactly do you mean by "off-ship"?

Focusing on long range is only natural, though it may be thwarted by layered ECM and Screen launchers. Mid-ranged guns usually offer ranges where they are just as accuracy, but bring a better firepower/weight ratio.
The conundrum is, obviously, that to close the range, you need to be faster, and if you're faster, you have less guns for a given durability. So now you're close in, but you barely have extra firepower. That is indeed a choice I'm kind of fond of, unless we eventually find an optimum.  :beer:

Damn, my wrist hurts.

[marcussmythe]

Im watching yard sizes climb, but nothing like maximum speed possible.  The closest thing to a 'yard rush' was the CC.  Besides, much past size 4 or 5, yards are mostly a vanity project - the payoff time is quite long.

And they paid for that yard rush by NOT investing heavily in tech, and being a bit behind because of it.  Which kept them from doing several things I wanted to do with them.

Tech progression this time may have been a reaction to my play of last time, where I found (due to RNG) that any money I spent on research was literally wasted money, cause dice. 

Yeah, we need some breathing room for droppers, next time.

WRT Maintenance - Im considering, if I do this again, simply making maintenance a factor of displacement, with a 250kt ship costing 1/4 the maintenance of a 1MT ship.  This leaves the big boys cost efficient for firepower to BUILD, but leaves them at the same place, maintenance wise, as their displacement in smaller hulls.  Current maintenance setup makes it very hard to justify anything much under 500MT, due to the large flat cost of the KF core.  Similarly, current maintenance makes collars, ESPC Collars with LFBs, almost cost prohibitive.  If you only paid the inflated cost ONCE, rather than paying it in full every two turns, we might be more eager to slap collars on things (though if your burn rate on ships is high, you still dont want them).

Ultimately, though, I think we run it as it is, for however long it lasts, and then take any lessons learned onboard when the players and or GMs collectively decide to call it.

Speaking of - looking down the road, to avoid burnout, we should probably start thinking now of who we could on-board as GMs.  Idea would be (ideally) to rotate a new GM every so often, to replace one of the sitting ones.  Just a thought.  Im not burned, Smegish isnt burned, but people get tired of things in time, and the energy and brain investment in this thing is... way more than I realized.  So best to prepare for the future.

[UnLimiTeD]

I'd certainly be willing to spend some time writing something.
I'm not sure if I'm any good at it, though. I think I might just be overthinking things occasionally.
That said, we could just add a few techs, around where they are soon reachable - or maybe just in a 4th tree - to allow people the choice to research improvements.
Like, say, drastically improving armour(capital multiplier) of non-capital ships, or sustainment for smaller ships as you've suggested.
I mean, playing devil's advocate here, what is the point of going on if we know that everyone who can will be building 500kt+ ships with a few fighters, no collars, no dropships, and a mostly mid- to long ranged armament? ;)
Though I have wondered if it might not have been better to do a 2 turn test run, and then restart with those lessons learned. Guess I'm not that jaded yet.  ;D

Regarding collars: I've said enough on that particular hive of wasps 8) , but I would assume a ship with collars and a battery is meant as a force multiplier to a rapid reaction force or at least the high element of the high-low mix, and would thus usually have increased survivability. So in an environment where their cost is mostly upfront, the added flexibility should be worth it. Assuming it actually offers flexibility, which it currently doesn't.
I believe that often very small changes can have large results because of knock-on effects and herd behaviour.

Actually.... should we deliberately try to explore all the avenues of what specifically works, even if we think it doesn't?

Edit: Actually, now, rereading it, we're essentially saying that we'll fix obvious risks next time as if we've already mostly given up on the matter. I dunno, feels wrong to think that way.

[Tyler Jorgensson]

I will definitely respond on this cause I do have a few comments.... but later cause i gotta clarify my thoughts a bit... and write them lol

[Lagrange]

I believe there is still quite a bit of room for new designs and new techs influencing new designs to shake things up, so we are far from a stale point.  Some examples,

1) Large dropships carrying a factor of 20 more stuff, potentially make a collar much more valuable. 
2) ASF designs capable of eating a Barracuda are possible.
3) Bearings-only launches are quite interesting strategically.
4) Active probes can really shake up the need for & value of fighters in warship combat.

On the other hand, if your goal is creating a set of rules which will cause designs to track the progression observed in canon... that seems delicate.

(I'd also personally rather avoid more houserules, as it is good to keep designs legal for both other uses and approachability by new players.)

[marcussmythe]

Were using generic fighters.  And even a super-armored custom ASF is probably headed home after eating a 200 standard damage ‘cuda impact.

And frankly, you dont need tech to drive design changes.  Doctrine differences based on different national situations will do it.

I do expect that bearings only will shake things up, especially if it his before AMS systems.

[kindalas]

I do expect that bearings only will shake things up, especially if it his before AMS systems.

I think that bearings only will take a while to get too. That tech column has too many "filler" slots to buy before getting it.

[UnLimiTeD]

I think that bearings only will take a while to get too. That tech column has too many "filler" slots to buy before getting it.

I thought we would just stay with the current tech tree now? ???
Which would be without sustainment or the like.

I will definitely respond on this cause I do have a few comments.... but later cause i gotta clarify my thoughts a bit... and write them lol

It only took me a few weeks to get to that point.  ;D So.... hurry up.  ;)

Edit: I'm really not as negative as all that. Just felt I should sum up my thoughts at some point.

[marcussmythe]

I think that bearings only will take a while to get too. That tech column has too many "filler" slots to buy before getting it.

Yes, there is a lot that mostly goes to 'make ground forces and aerofighters better' in that column.  And then it gives you bearings only missiles, cheap yards, teleoperated missiles, Mobile HPGs...

[kindalas]

Yes, there is a lot that mostly goes to 'make ground forces and aerofighters better' in that column.  And then it gives you bearings only missiles, cheap yards, teleoperated missiles, Mobile HPGs...

I appreciate the motivation to buy those things. Cheap yards and HPGs are very game changy.

[kindalas]

Also last chance for Sontra sales.

Going to assemble my turn finances tomorrow morning.

[marcussmythe]

I appreciate the motivation to buy those things. Cheap yards and HPGs are very game changy.

Dont forget that actual HPGs are over on the right hand side.  They are even more game changers than their mobile cousins.

Hmm.  Raises a question.  Should HPGs cost maintenance?  Should Castles Brian?  My gut says ‘no’, HPGs would seem to pay for themselves by handling commercial traffic, and honestly, for what you pay and what you get, I dont see Castles Brian as worth the maintenance - but I could be convinced otherwise.

[UnLimiTeD]

I've been assuming I had to pay for castles so far. But realistically speaking, shouldn't the army pay for that?

I'd totally buy some of those snots ...  where exactly is the n? Seems to change every second post - but that would be politically impossible.

[kindalas]

I've been assuming I had to pay for castles so far. But realistically speaking, shouldn't the army pay for that?

I'd totally buy some of those snots ...  where exactly is the n? Seems to change every second post - but that would be politically impossible.

Snotra is how it is supposed to be spelled. But I'm bad at my Norse names when going from the top of my head.

$4,818 million space bucks is the list price and scrapping them is worth 1204.5 for me.

I have 8 for sale, what kind of offer are you interested in making for them.

[UnLimiTeD]

Well, that's the thing - I don't yet know if I can make an offer.
The political leadership would probably disagree with buying from the competition, so until I worked out my turn and untangled the internal politics, I can make no clear statement.
I actually had predicted happenings correctly, more or less, and worked out most of my turn before the conclusion of the last one, but I haven't had terribly much time to fine-tune it, being busy with other spreadsheets.
I would assume I'd offer maintenance cost + x, with x being relatively small, + a guarantee to not use them offensively against the seller. But then, they use hardware my military doesn't have, which also poses its set of problems.  xp
It's not overly likely, I would assume.    ... Hey, Tyler, quick, there's more ships to buy! ^-^

[Tyler Jorgensson]

It's not overly likely, I would assume.    ... Hey, Tyler, quick, there's more ships to buy! ^-^

I actually went against the Snotra: it doesn't fit my fleet very well IMO.

As far as Castle's Brian and HPG maintenance: I'd agree with your assessment Marcus and say no.

It only took me a few weeks to get to that point.  ;D So.... hurry up.  ;)

Edit: I'm really not as negative as all that. Just felt I should sum up my thoughts at some point.

:D I've got D+D on Fridays so it gives me some time to read and write when its not my turn: speaking of which


My turns up :D Whats taking you so long  >:D :P

[Daryk]

I'm sorry... All I can think of when reading "Snotra" is "Frank"...  ^-^

[Jester Motley]

Wait, what war? The Taurians? That didn't really deal much damage, did it?

You think the Hedgehogs are gonna take that bloody nose and not do something about it?  Or the vultur...houses that joined in?  I mean, maybe there's no war, but...  lets just say the FS is betting heavily one way.

Assuming this approach, could we adopt this for your spreadsheet?  Edit: Not the general approach, just the "match for multiple possible wordings" part. Though I think your approach, which I think is generally more professional, would allow for NAC/20 as a writing style.
I mostly would prefer having the slash in NAC and NL names, and maybe write out Missile names (could just check for a part of the name) whenever there is actually space on the ship.
Now, should I decide to scale up an Ikio cruiser to an assault Battleship and install 2 kinds of Lasers, 2 types of missiles, NAC/20s and 40s, all 3 sizes of NGauss, and a mixed flak battery of Gauss Rifles, LRMs, Lasers, with AMS, Small Lasers, and MGs as backup, then shortening them all as much as possible makes sense - and the individual weapon probably won't batter as much. ^^

By consistent I mean we choose a, or even a few, styles, and stick to -only- those.  The more styles the harder it is, but since its work that will hopefully be done once, and only once, I'm game to do it happily.  But changing styles, or having free-form anything goes, is not programmatically or effort-level worthwhile.  -consistent- is the byword.

But HNgauss, HNG, Hvy NG, Hvy Gauss, HNavGaus, and something else every day is gonna be impossible to deal with.

As to what you're doing, using 'right/left's is going to cause problems if someone changed up their spacing or changed the whitespace (two spaces between 10x  NG), no?  I'm using REGEXEXTRACT so that I can pull just the number if I find a match.  The () tells the extract what to pull out.  "(\d+) NAC20"  would pull 10 or 100 if it were "10 NAC20" or "100 NAC20"...  Simple regex, and I was able to easily generate each code bit using some scripts I wrote on my linux box to fill import in.  (I don't type everything, if I can help it!  :)


If I wanted to try to match \'s and x's but ALSO non x'd numerics and non-slashes, we're looking at the following and -maybe- that works right?  Maybe not?  Id' have to test it out.  (\d+)[x\w]\w+NAC[\\\w]30" -should- pull and return the numeric 1, 10, 100, 151255 from 1 NAC30, 10xNAC30, 100x         NAC\30, 151255x NAC\30s.  But, TIAMTOWTDT...  (There is always more than one way to do things).  But that doesn't include fun stuff like mixed case or all case matching, like "BC/bc/Bc/Barr/Bar/bar/barr/Barracuda/BARRACUDA/barracuda" which ends up harry to compact, and long/non-compact regexs are notoriously bad.  Then again, regex is notoriously bad too.

But as I said, consistent.  I don't care what method we use, and I'm willing to write what we want.  I just need it to be consistent.  And I don't care if you want to replace the code with your method?  I don't have "ego" here, just did it the way I'd have done it professionally or in any other language I write in.  If it works, go for it.  BUT...  You maintain what you write.  :)

[Tyler Jorgensson]

1) You're not wrong on this: but considering the amount of technologies and the budget it won't proceed that quickly. Our strengthening and advancement budgets are on a nice pace, but our miniaturization is a bit behind. We are still guaranteed fifteen to twenty more turns before tech runs out, and that if we buy one tech per column per turn.

2) Yes to the armor scale.... I just don't have any idea on how to change it. The previous iteration fighters we're too powerful, this one not enough.

3) Torpedo Boats and Coastal Defense Battleships are not supported by the rules: we would have to homebrew a monitor style vessel if we really wanted something like that. However Torpedo Boats would eventually be a reliable thing with Sub-Capital Missile Launchers loaded up on larger Drop Ships.

4) Regarding fighters: yes right now they are under powered (refer to #2). I feel like more modern designs still are viable in canon and could be viable if our rules are tweaked a bit.

5) I'm not sure about the size change, but I do think that the yards increase is fine as it is. The maintenance could use some work as well ass the repairs. For example by scrapping the remaining Capellan ships I had I saved nearly twenty billion in repair and maintenance costs. This also leads to the insanely low price they sold them a, but at half cost for each ship and a long transition period I feel that it was done appropriately. Not to jinx it but the ships sold by the Terrans are outrageously low.

6) Partly questioned above: i sorta agree. Although it takes a while to arrive such great distances, most people tend to keep their bought ships for a while (myself generally included!) If I had kept those ships I have no money for new ships because my maintenance budget would be thru the roof and I'd end up scrapping them anyways. If I hadn't bought them my economy would be in better shape hopefully. I used them like mercenaries, rather than the more realistic choice of using them to augment my force (in which case i would have bought maybe a quarter of that)

7) Research is tricky: some tech you want ASAP, and others you can wait until it becomes cheaper. Yes you are right but that's more of a maintenance issue than a research issue.

8) AGREED! Three ships, one Yang Wei and two Binzhou's, took about nine billion in damages (it cost me ten), with their costs being fifteen billion. Add to that the maintenance costs, paying for them while they are being repaired, at seven point five billion, means its more expensive to damage and not kill!

9) Got nothing on this one. Not a math guy so all that computation would drive me nuts to put in: I'm all for it if one of yo guys wants to take a crack at it.

10) I like this suggest of emergence budget for a turn... something with a definite cooldown of a couple turns.

11) All RP games suffer those effects: the ideas of IC knowledge and OOC knowledge. This turn I posted really quickly so the DC and LC could take advantage of that and plan their turns around that: common decency says DONT. My first turn I built flawed designs and RP'ed why they were approved. I do try and cycle and tweak designs based on the previous turns knowledge and experience. Their is a bit of a disadvantage because we can't modify them quickly enough and entire fleet compositions might change in a turn while you're building a counter to the previous fleet. That being said that's also real life. The trick is to try and beat that curve by behind ahead of it and becoming the meta.

Anyways my two cents.

[VensersRevenge]

My turns up. Once again, I have plenty of yard space if people need it, although it seems like their are too many ships being sold to make that likely.

[Tyler Jorgensson]

My turns up. Once again, I have plenty of yard space if people need it, although it seems like their are too many ships being sold to make that likely.

Love to but don't have the money. I reached far last turn. Now if I was another Major Power definetly.

Regarding the J. Marik: 12,000 tons of cargo? Seems a BIT light to be honest.

[VensersRevenge]

Yeah, but most of my other ships have lots of extra cargo space, and I have a lot of jumpships. I'm willing to gamble that it will be supported.
And this is the last turn that Michaels will be in charge of the Navy, so the insanity is only starting.

[truetanker]

VensersRevenge?

Composition of these ships please:

Periphery Border:
FWLS Atreus - Periphery border
FWLS Loyalty - Periphery border
FWLS Tamarind - Periphery border
FWLS Sardis - Periphery Border

Are they all Marik-class? Cause, you know, the Frumentarii* would know...

Frumentarii* aka Cesear's Intelligence.

( Since I can't seem to track down those ship classes... )

Thanks,
TT

[VensersRevenge]

All Marik's. If they're named after planets, they're Marik's. I'll re-edit my turn to make the classes clearer