A suggestion (starship judges, etc.)

[Ashin Varanin]

This comes to us from one of our Staffers, and while I believe it'd be a lot of work, and open us up to some potential abuses, I do feel it's worth looking at. Your thoughts? [member="Ayden Cater"] [member="Popo"]


Why don't we remove the hard cap on unique starships and just say that for building a unique ship beyond 2km, each post equals 10 extra meters?

That would mean, 100 posts in development of a starship can allow for a rather generic 3km starship. A 500 post development thread for a starship yields 7km. A godly 1000 posts yields a 12km ship.

Like I said though, 100 posts would just yield a rather generic loadout for a 3km ship. Turbolasers and ion cannons and a couple shield generators. Possibly no more than the equivalent of two Star Destroyers.

Anything beyond that would require extra posts for development.


Also, a lot of things could be solved just by having a ratio of dev posts to stats. Minor production modifier? An extra post for each 10 meters. Major production modifier? An extra five posts each 10 meters.

Therefore, a minor production 3km ship would need a 200 post dev thread. A 3km major production ship would require 600 posts. Or so on.

You can add this to weapons as well. Use a ratio of Firepower per Meter and Fighters per Meter for each role. To make something that's over that ratio, posts are required for X amount of whatever over the ratio.

 

[Popo]

I say stick with a standard that isn't based on posts, but with threads. A handful of Dev threads gets you a 3km. Anything over 3km requires event tech. If we start going off of posts then you start seeing a massive reduction of quality in favor of massive quantity.

 

[Raziel]

"You can add this to weapons as well. Use a ratio of Firepower per Meter and Fighters per Meter for each role. To make something that's over that ratio, posts are required for X amount of whatever over the ratio."

This makes it seem like it would be a lot more worthwhile tooling up a 2km ship than going for a 3km ship.

The ratios aren't constant through the classifications currently either

 

[Popo]

Besides, then it becomes a massive arms race more so than usual. People racing to get thousands of posts to make gargantuan ships with thousands upon thousands of guns. Or they make huge, huge threads of hundreds of posts or 1,000+ posts to make a basic 2-3km starship kitted out with superlasers and sun crushers and all sorts of massive superweapons that shouldn't get through the factory, but because they have a 500-700-1000+ Dev thread, they could argue the time and effort to get one.

It's honestly just far better to set a baseline standard in my opinion.

 

[Raziel]

I preferred the notion of individual Captains earning a unique capital ship. Seems that would make it more about individual roleplaying, than an arms race.

 

[Ayden Cater]

I'll give this a full breakdown when I get home from work.

Short answer from me is 'No.'

 

[Ayden Cater]

[member="Ashin Varanin"]

So finally getting around to this. I said the other day that my short answer was 'no'. I'm going to go in to why here.

TL;DR - This does nothing to encourage quality, or narrative posts and instead rewards bare minimal effort for large gains.

Full Rant: We have seen time and time again that people do not treat canon with full respect, instead opting to hold up canon only as long as it supports their argument. In this context, we see it most clearly as 'The Empire built ships larger than 2km. Why can't we?' At least 95% of the Empire's military was filled with ships 2,000 meters or smaller. They had the ability to make bigger ships, but they arbitrarily stayed within a certain range.

The next problem we run into is manufacturing. To cut it simple, there is exactly zero material on SWRP that says how many capital ships a major factor can make, or how quickly. We do not check to see if a faction has a number of mining planets to scrounge up metals or if they have the monetary backing to make such ships. The One Sith hand waved a fleet over Coruscant in their takeover and they were a brand new faction. There is no cost in a faction making a Star Destroyer, thus there is no limit. And if there is no limit to the number of 2,000 meter ships because 'reasons', then we have no hard ground to stand on denying people the right to make larger ships. Which leads me to the next point in order to set up the grand argument.

If we lack the means to enforce an IC cost, there is no method of enforcing an OOC cost. We do not count words as a measure of a quality, nor do we even strictly look at content any more. We've been told that unless something is horrible broken, we should just stamp it. It doesn't take much effort to drop a handful of paragraphs in a post. It's even possible for a single person to repeat that feat a hundred times in less than two days.

So we have no IC or OOC means of enforcing cost on such construction? Where does that leave us? As Tef so succinctly put it, the problem is escalation. Faction A cranks out a hundred post thread, so Faction B comes out with a hundred fifty post thread. 'But wait; I thought posting was what we wanted?' Yes, but at what cost? If you completely remove such restrictions on how big of a ship a faction can make, how do you control it? If they've put in the work to make the ship, we can't say no anymore. And there's no IC cost to tell them no.

It's the exact same problem we're already starting to see with superweapons. One person starts a project people think of as a superweapon, so now this other faction has to make it. So now factions are starting to race to make their own superweapons to dick over other factions. But that's a rant for a different thread. Back to unlimited ship size.

Why remove it? The only argument that can be made for why the restriction should be removed involves a group of people having a few hyper-active people to spam posts into getting bigger and bigger ships while the other side can't complete. Is the current restriction reasonably from a purely IC stance? No, but then again we've already established that hard work can be rewarded. It has long been stated that people can -ask- for bigger ships, but it is not a given. There's no reason to change that. If a group wants to crank out posts to make a big ship, the RPJs and FJs can talk about whether it's deserving or not, but to just tear off the limit is just inviting trouble.

 

[Tefka]

At least 95% of the Empire's military was filled with ships 2,000 meters or smaller.

Our characters represent like, 1% of the galaxy. If anyone in this Galaxy deserves big guns, it's us.

As Tef so succinctly put it, the problem is escalation.

Agreed. This is a problem. But it's also an inevitability. The solution isn't to prevent it, it's to try and control it. Which leads me to my next point.

the RPJs and FJs can talk about whether it's deserving or not

This isn't true. Most RPJ's aren't interested in the Factory, and we've got maybe one or two Admins who are. This leaves, in the absence of events and their rewards, the Factory Admin as the sole proprietor of gifts and presents from the Factory. Hardly seems fair, especially when the his management doesn't bother to check in on what he's doing. And I believe the current sitting Factory Admin agrees.

But what about the next one, or the one after?

Systems breed continuity. We see this with the templates. Sure there are changes, but the changes Chaos has seen grow smaller by the day. Another of my quotes is "we should always be tweaking".

I'm not saying Daella's answer is the right answer.

But this situation where the guy who wrote the Starship Guide (who owns the largest ship in the Galaxy) and the Factory Admin (who gave it to him) are the only two who approve larger than normal ships could use some tweaking.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

But this situation where the guy who wrote the Starship Guide (who owns the largest ship in the Galaxy) and the Factory Admin (who gave it to him) are the only two who approve larger than normal ships could use some tweaking.

I agree with this. Discussions in progress.

 

[Ayden Cater]

[member="Tefka"]

Actually, I just stamp them. I don't get to actually get to approve them. Popo does as well.

Also, if you do a little digging, you'd find I actually supported a controlled extension of ship size a while back.