Discussion Let's talk about fleeting objectives

[Ren-Hua Mant]

Fleeting has long been a cornerstone of the Chaos community, yet it has always remained somewhat of a niche. Though the fleeting community has always been rather small, its presence has been a near constant in macro PvP roleplay. Because of the community's smaller size, it's understandable that it would often seem to take a back seat to more traditional styles of roleplay. Despite that, why does it feel like fleeting is and has been taken for granted?

After a quick tally of invasions that have taken place since last year, I'd say that about 56% had only generic fleeting objectives (beat the enemy fleet), 19% had decent fleeting objectives (and I feel I am being generous at that, e.g: objectives with "special" conditions like CQC or some loosely defined objective outside of destroying your opponent's fleet), and 25% had no fleeting objectives at all (which is fine if there is no fleeting interest from either side, but this wasn't always the case). Though ground objectives almost always have more writers, they also have some variation in them, and in almost every case they have some direction. That is not the case with fleeting. Fleeters can be pretty crafty in creating their own direction, though I would surmise it is almost always secondary to and arises from the generic "space superiority" objective.

There is also the fundamental conflict between respecting that people shouldn't be forced to roleplay something they aren't interested in and the common courtesy of fielding opposition for your opponents. A disproportionate distribution of fleeters make things difficult enough, but fleeting is often one of the first things on the chopping block, even further limiting the narrative opportunities for fleeters. People have been good about hosting the occasional fleeting tourneys, but more often than not they are either non-canon or fizzle out prematurely.

I don't want fleeting to feel like a chore - for the faction staff launching invasions or for the fleeters participating in them. To that end, I wanted to initiate a conversation about this aspect of roleplay to see what can be done to bolster interest in fleeting, spice things up spaceside, and make fleeting matter again.

 

[Gunnar Madine]

Here's a couple ideas from the ol' noggin. Off the top as it were:

1. Establish some sort of disadvantage from the get go. What I've seen in the past is that fleet encounters typically go like this. Fleeter 1 shows up in system. Fleeter 2 shows up in system (Or is already there). Banter ensues over comms. Then it's mostly a slugfest where both fleeters periodically blow up a ship or two or ten and whomever comes up with the best "AHA!" moment in terms of sTrAtEgY 'wins'. Sometimes it looks really good, people playing off the tension of losing a flagship or major losses etc. It gives them something to overcome.

Possible solution: Start off with a disadvantage whether it be systems that aren't working, previous combat damage that has yet to be fully repaired. Create opportunities for your characters to overcome unexpected deficiencies or throw them into arenas you don't normally have to. Maybe a higher ranking officer dies or is incapacitated and leaves your character in charge of their vessel or command group. There's so much narrative freedom there that you can use, especially if you're working with someone on the opposition.

2. Coordinate. Coordinate. Coordinate. What often happens is Fleeters and "Grounders" we'll call them, end up in very separate arenas. With exception of some boarders, fleeters go pew pew with ships and numbers, grounders blow stuff up and get in fist fights on the ground.

Possible solution: Interact with people on the ground as a fleeter. Grounders ask for fire support and have fleeters note it in their posts that some of their vessels are providing support via turbolaser or what have you. It doesn't have to be the fleeter carving out a whole "Controlled" squadron of TIE's to strafe the ground, simply note something like "A squadron of TIE's cut towards the surface to support the ground element" and then in the grounder's arena "TIE's screamed overhead, much needed fire support lambasting the ground ahead" or whatever it is. Another note - if you've got clear skies, when ships blow up in orbit have your grounders make note of a brilliant flash in the sky, or have debris falling from above, etc - LOTS of room here for fun scene building stuff!

By no means are these the only things you can do, or even things that you'd want to do necessarily but I hope these help get people thinking about things that you can do to spice up fleeting over the generic "Show up, Insult each other, start firing ze missiles!"

Ren-Hua Mant

 

[Caltin Vanagor]

Here's a couple ideas from the ol' noggin. Off the top as it were:


2. Coordinate. Coordinate. Coordinate. What often happens is Fleeters and "Grounders" we'll call them, end up in very separate arenas. With exception of some boarders, fleeters go pew pew with ships and numbers, grounders blow stuff up and get in fist fights on the ground.

Possible solution: Interact with people on the ground as a fleeter. Grounders ask for fire support and have fleeters note it in their posts that some of their vessels are providing support via turbolaser or what have you. It doesn't have to be the fleeter carving out a whole "Controlled" squadron of TIE's to strafe the ground, simply note something like "A squadron of TIE's cut towards the surface to support the ground element" and then in the grounder's arena "TIE's screamed overhead, much needed fire support lambasting the ground ahead" or whatever it is. Another note - if you've got clear skies, when ships blow up in orbit have your grounders make note of a brilliant flash in the sky, or have debris falling from above, etc - LOTS of room here for fun scene building stuff!

By no means are these the only things you can do, or even things that you'd want to do necessarily but I hope these help get people thinking about things that you can do to spice up fleeting over the generic "Show up, Insult each other, start firing ze missiles!"

Ren-Hua Mant

This.

Take a page from the generic actions of "modern-day" warfare, air warfare, sea warfare all sets up the ground campaign. Even if you have ground-pounders chomping at the bit while fleets work to secure the sector/area.

 

[Arctus Silmar]

Fleeting has long been a cornerstone of the Chaos community, yet it has always remained somewhat of a niche. Though the fleeting community has always been rather small, its presence has been a near constant in macro PvP roleplay. Because of the community's smaller size, it's understandable that it would often seem to take a back seat to more traditional styles of roleplay. Despite that, why does it feel like fleeting is and has been taken for granted?

After a quick tally of invasions that have taken place since last year, I'd say that about 56% had only generic fleeting objectives (beat the enemy fleet), 19% had decent fleeting objectives (and I feel I am being generous at that, e.g: objectives with "special" conditions like CQC or some loosely defined objective outside of destroying your opponent's fleet), and 25% had no fleeting objectives at all (which is fine if there is no fleeting interest from either side, but this wasn't always the case). Though ground objectives almost always have more writers, they also have some variation in them, and in almost every case they have some direction. That is not the case with fleeting. Fleeters can be pretty crafty in creating their own direction, though I would surmise it is almost always secondary to and arises from the generic "space superiority" objective.

There is also the fundamental conflict between respecting that people shouldn't be forced to roleplay something they aren't interested in and the common courtesy of fielding opposition for your opponents. A disproportionate distribution of fleeters make things difficult enough, but fleeting is often one of the first things on the chopping block, even further limiting the narrative opportunities for fleeters. People have been good about hosting the occasional fleeting tourneys, but more often than not they are either non-canon or fizzle out prematurely.

I don't want fleeting to feel like a chore - for the faction staff launching invasions or for the fleeters participating in them. To that end, I wanted to initiate a conversation about this aspect of roleplay to see what can be done to bolster interest in fleeting, spice things up spaceside, and make fleeting matter again.

As someone with no experience fleeting but a lot of interest in strategy and the art of war in general, I guess I will at least lay out what turns me away from fleeting on a personal level and extrapolate it out to a wider synopsis.

To be blunt: Fleeting is very different to a personal duel and even different to ground tactical combat and warfare. If you are one Jedi/Sith/Commando/Mandalorian/Etc tragically on foot alongside a column of armor and your armor begins to get blown to pieces by heavy enemy resistance, you yourself don't immediately begin to die alongside it. In fact, I've noticed a consistent theme of individuals on Chaos (this is not a reprimand, only an observation) of allowing their "NPC" forces to get decimated to set up personal heroics or a one on one duel.

So, after reading that I am sure you can probably see my first point coming. When fleeting you essentially have to expand your 'character' out to, at least, the ship they are commanding. But this is inherently harder for people to have a scope for in their minds, it's easy to imagine how a character might move in a personal conflict, but possibly more difficult to imagine a massive 4 dimensional space engagement where any sustained damage can mean eventual death or loss of the ship. Unlike a personal duel where someone is free to take cuts, blows, falls, broken bones, loss of limb, etc. When part of your ship is blown away you're left to the mercy of a giant, merciless vacuum, where pulling off a 'retreat and regroup' action is.... almost impossible once a full ship has engaged or been targeted or very tricky to have just one character somehow get off a ship expediently and not risk interception.

Hope all of that made sense. TLDR: It's possibly more difficult for folks to envision fleeting and/or how to properly convey negligible ship damage as opposed to a personal duel.

Second point, again being blunt, I would say fleeting is even more negatively effected than personal conflict by the inability to declare any victories or advancement, hits or damage, without an opponent's express consent. Fleeting is strategy and tactics and war, and war is not fair and always has someone objectively come off worse for wear. Someone gets outplayed, out-maneuvered, out-matched, and in a setting where that is entirely avoidable due to the rules of the site? It simply doesn't seem to mesh well. Imagine, for example, playing a strategy game where you never know if you're winning until it ends. The stats and movements you make don't really matter and the enemy can just deny damage. It's pretty antithetical to tactical warfare, as the whole goal is to contribute toward a victory you don't know if you'll ever even have.

Sorry if this was a bit rambly, but I hope you enjoyed reading it nonetheless.

 

[Tathra Khaeus]

I think its pretty simple, make fleeting less of a war post/component game of essentially writing a essay on why your attack worked. Can you imagine if every Star Trek battle was just watching from a distance as the two ships fired at one and other for 30 minutes?

Oh and, put more emphasis on Fighters. They seemed to be able to take down the Destroyers or whatever in the films but it seems like in fleeting, there is more and more emphasis on a divide between fleeters and dog fighting, when both should be more equal to one and other?

I don't know. I've only done fleeting twice and I hated it both times.

 

[Kiff Brayde]

In response to Gunnar Madine

First of all.

1. Establish some sort of disadvantage from the get go. What I've seen in the past is that fleet encounters typically go like this. Fleeter 1 shows up in system. Fleeter 2 shows up in system (Or is already there). Banter ensues over comms. Then it's mostly a slugfest where both fleeters periodically blow up a ship or two or ten and whomever comes up with the best "AHA!" moment in terms of sTrAtEgY 'wins'. Sometimes it looks really good, people playing off the tension of losing a flagship or major losses etc. It gives them something to overcome.

I'm in this and I don't like it.

But other than that, it looks like solutions presented are more just. . . ways to spice up your own narrative? I'm not against that at all, but I think that's missing the mark perhaps of what Ren-Hua Mant is trying to get at.

Ultimately if you want to make fleeting roleplay enticing for people, there are two things you can really do:

• Make it more Accesible: If there is someone hanging around your faction wanting to fleet, help ease them into it and show them the ropes. Fleeting on Chaos can be daunting and/or confusing, so this is really helpful for newer people.
• Don't be Toxic: This kinda basic, people are turned off to anything if a community is toxic. Don't be.

In response to Arctus Silmar

I'd say the opposite (If I reading what you're saying correctly) is the best form of PvP/Fleeting you can get on Chaos: a full on focus on story. How the board operates does not cater, reward, or incentivize strategy. In fact there are multiple invasions (where fleeting happens the most often) where a faction will IC lose control of a planet or objective but still win the invasion at the end. To that extent, the apotheosis of your fleeting will lie in your story, not tactics.

And in response to Tathra Khaeus

Git gud hehehe

 

[Caltin Vanagor]

As someone who made his "rp name" in D20 style games as a fleeter, I will say that the dynamic doesn't work in this format. It's nice to have and I enjoy writing my fleet character and always will. That being said it is difficult because it is easy to be ignored/skipped over/forgotten/blown off/however it can be called. This is no one's fault it is merely the way the game runs. Unless you are going up against NPC, there is no mod intervention, or dice to roll on whether or not your moves work (as it is up to your opponent or not whether they do).

 

[Ellie Mors]

I'd say the opposite (If I reading what you're saying correctly) is the best form of PvP/Fleeting you can get on Chaos: a full on focus on story. How the board operates does not cater, reward, or incentivize strategy.

While what I have to say has nothing to do with how writing impacts invasion results, the above is incorrect. It incentivizes strategy plenty, just not the kind of "muh strategy" that people typically go about doing, and it does so indirectly.

If you want to make "fleeting" more interesting to a wider audience, then stop treating it like a boardgame. Naval stuff can be just as intimate and personal as a duel between a Jedi and Sith, it's all about how you write your posts and how you place your perspective. Writing out a detached narrator perspective with no emotional ties as static and sterile as possible, like a good chunk of people who do their NPC/fleeting/etc posts, ends up leaving us where we typically are now - a long bullet point list of actions at the bottom of what amounts to a more detailed regurgitation of the same thing with fluff in between.

Cyrus Tregessar does a great job of humanizing his naval posting, by giving names and faces to the people in his posts. I try to do the same when I actually do have the willpower to get involved in fleeting, but as it is the red-headed stepchild of invasion theaters for me (I prefer duels and group brawls) I avoid it most of the time, but I think that sort of direction is an avenue towards a similar feel that "ground" posting has. I understand why people fall onto the crutch of treating naval engagements like a board game, it is very time consuming to figure out in your head where everyone is and what you're going to do - going the "extra" mile and writing an actual character or a crew in all of that to frame your actions in story material that is actually readable feels like a lot of work.

I'll be completely honest, I don't like fleeting as much as other avenues of RP because of two things:

1. There's few people who do it anyways, whether it's on my side or the opposition, so it feels like I'm writing with myself most of the time
2. It takes much more effort to write a post while I'm controlling a fleet/ship/whatever than it does to just write a single person in a duel.

The way to make 1 & 2 less of an issue is to intertwine the storyline that plays out in the naval scene with the ground, be it through constant communication or perhaps a connected set of objectives that rely on headway from both sides to actually make progress. To put it really bluntly, people need to stop expecting people to just do their own thing in an invasion and put some work into making objectives that are engaging from all angles, not just for 1 or 2 groups of people and just hope everyone else figures out what to do.

 

[Fatty]

I am not a fleeter.

Question though, has anyone ever done a fleeting event where the exclusive focus was 100% on fighter groups? SDs and other ships just being background noise while one group of fighters nicks one of your NPC buddies (analogous to taking a hit in a PvP duel) and you just trade blows this way until a natural conclusion is found?

 

[Ellie Mors]

Fatty
yes, there's also been invasions/threads where the two have shared the same stage.

 

[Acaadi]

Less ships.

"I want 40,000 meters of ships" is the starting point of any "objective" discussion.

Less trying to manage 30+ different capital ships, micromanage their status and abstract them from any meaningful story.

Focus on 2-3 capital ships each. Give them crew members and character and actually have some story focus.

If there are more capital ships in an engagement make them background noise and scenery.

 

[Zark San Tekka]

Reasons Why Fleeting is Niche:

Bar of Entry - Even though you and I may disagree with the premise, most writers find fleeting too intimidating. You can try to explain that there's no standard for the kind of effort and detail you're expected to put in, but a lot of writers will look at fleet manifests and summaries of action and just nope right out. Others have made similar comments about fleeters playing it like a tactics/strategy game. I think its probably a bit of both.

Not Enough Lightsabers - Alright maybe lightsabers aren't your thing per say, but most fleeting PCs wield extraordinarily powerful warships at the expense of being just guys or girls in a uniform. That is to say, if they get boarded and the enemy reaches the bridge they've probably lost. This can lead to frustration between fleeters and non-fleeters where the non-fleeter feels too encumbered by NPC distractions/automated defenses while the fleeter feels like their opponent is racing through all their very fancy pieces of armor to confront them in their character's most vulnerable state. Of course chill partners can make it work but this is why you tend to only see fleeters in fleet objectives or an emphasis on boarding action over capitals vs. capitals.

Off Theme - Certain factions attract certain characters. Fleeters are typically drawn to republic/imperial groups or some kind of galactic government analogue. Many of the invasions we've seen lately have been very Jedi vs. Sith focused. Lack of fleeters has always been an achilles heel for those kinds of groups in particular. There are always notable exceptions, but how quickly we forget that generic fleeting objectives or fleeting by duel came into vogue because establishing a large fleet engagement zone was on a grand scale like throwing that engagement zone away to go mostly unused by 90% of both factions.

Your Space Science is Wrong - Sometimes the problems are more fundamental. Tathra is correct, canon has shown us time and time again that war posters consistently underestimate starfighters as a significant threat but we still get a lot of arguments about 'fighter screens' and 'point defense batteries' and throwing swarms of anti-starfighter corvettes around like a Billy Mays infomercial. The result is pilots feel isolated from the fleeting community and believe that if they can't find a dogfight duel they have nothing to contribute. Its a shame because good starfighters vs. good capitals is a very interesting asymmetric dynamic between rebels and empire which I find far more compelling than the n+1 star destroyer meta all fleeting currently devolves into (unless you're fighting Jon or Larraq). I'm harping on the starfighters, but there are other examples too like the average IC time to kill for a capital ship.

Ideas to Help Fix It:

Creative Limitations - Nobody likes meterage limits. That said creative teams need to start thinking outside the box more with their space battle rulesets. Try a 2-5 km limit for all fleeters (good idea Acaadi). Try one fleeter one ship. Do a starfighter objective with capital ship PCs playing the 'support' role for once! (good idea Fatty) Come up with more interesting objectives than 'we must swing our big space dicks into orbit and HOLD THE LINE'.

Cross-Faction High Command: Someone more useful than me should consider an OOC interest group or discord which can function as a think tank and training corps for interested new fleeters. The easiest way to generate interest for space stuff is to get a bunch of cross section nerds in one room talking about space stuff.

Accept the Things We Cannot Change - Dueling a writer you think is being OP or ignoring your brilliant strategies can be very frustrating. Enforcing things like hits or ratings is not the way to go. I cannot think of a 'fair' way to do it that doesn't add tremendous strain on the RPJ team and Tefka hates that shit. Even if they were willing to take on such a task, as bad as you think immortal fleeters are I promise you arguments over whether a writer's ship should be destroyed because the arbitrator doesn't recognize true factory genius would be infinitely worse. In this respect fleeting is no different from dueling. Do your best, treat people how you wish to be treated, and if you have a bad experience trust the community will eventually course correct.

 

[Jsc]

Fleeting is a great idea in my head and looks great on-screen too. Alas, when I actually sit down to write it with a partner, the whole thing easily gets bigger than I can handle.

• Factory and Codex Subs
• Technobabble/Space Physics/Alien Technologies/The Force/Travel Time/Distance and Effective Range/Boarding Maneuvers/Planetary Bombardment and Occupation
• Star Wars Filmography/Tropes/Movie Canon vs Book Canon vs Disney Canon
• Writing Style Novel Archetypes vs Gaming vs Head Canon Strategy vs Real World War History Buffs
• Ships, Sizes, Resources, Crew counts, and even more numbers on Wookieepedia too
• PCs vs NPCs/Ranks, Command, Promotions, and Screwing up

It's a lot to take in.

Now. I'm of the opinion that anybody can do it. Even a dope like me. It's just. They, (and their partner,) have to be willing to shovel up an incredible amount of work and effort into their posts, planning, and partnerships; for an incredibly, incredibly, incredibly small amount of the big juicy PvP pie.

End thought.

If you don't want writing Fleet to feel like a chore? Then make it easy for me understand. It's as simple as that.

 

[Gir Quee]

There's a whole lot to unpack here, and many people have brought valid points that I won't bother repeating.

So I'll only say a few things.

1) . Some things proposed here so far (crew & ship limits) will appeal to some and not appeal to others. I do not think that there's no universal antidote to some of the problems discussed. I will say that I think it's much easier for people newer to fleeting to start out with a smaller number of ships, and even then, smaller ships.

2) Fleeting can be as diverse as any sort of character versus character duel in terms of set-up. Just to give out some examples in variety, I'm going to point out that scenarios in the 2021 fleeting tournament are pretty different than each other.

 

[Ren-Hua Mant]

Many people bring up great and valid takes on why some people don't fleet and how to make things a bit more mechanically viable for a broader audience, but I want to circle back to an overlooked point that Ellie Mors brought up perhaps a bit more concisely than I did.

To put it really bluntly, people need to stop expecting people to just do their own thing in an invasion and put some work into making objectives that are engaging from all angles, not just for 1 or 2 groups of people and just hope everyone else figures out what to do.

What can be done to change the norm in invasion culture where factions say "here's a space objective header, have at it"? How can fleeters or other interested writers help determine a narrative direction that is consequential to the overarching stories that invasions are a part of? There are plenty of suggestions to address the mechanical aspect - how can we address the processes which impact the creative aspect of it?

 

[Jsc]

Ren-Hua Mant - To answer your question.

Fleeting, like dueling, is just an opinion. So it doesn't deserve a place in invasions simply by existing. Just like dueling. What i mean is. It's not special. It doesn't get a participation trophy for showing up and many of us don't find it all that appealing in the first place. But then again? I thought the same thing about our style of dueling back in 2008 myself. That was, until somebody explained it to me in one simple sentence and convinced me that not only could I do it? I could do it simply, easily, effectively, and in about fifteen minutes a day. So, I shrugged, sighed, rolled my eyes a bit, and stepped up and did it. I learned to duel. And it's been a wildly flamboyant acid trip of lightsaber battles ever since.

To be brief. Make it easy. To be consequential. That's for the Invasion Judges, the Invasion Planners, and you and your partner to decide. Not us.

 

[Natasi Fortan]

This isn't complicated. Just summon a space kraken.

 

[Rolf Amsel]

This isn't complicated. Just summon a space kraken.

I present to you, the winning strategy:

 

[Ellie Mors]

Ren-Hua Mant
As much as it pains me to say it: the average writer has zero say in invasion objectives.

It isn't that factions aren't willing to hear their members, it's that factions present their opposition with their intended objectives at the last possible second in order to keep them from being able to plan ahead - the consequence of this is that members of that faction are generally left in the dark to prevent invasion info from being leaked out.

I don't really care if this gets rejected by "we don't do that" factions, the fact of the matter is that any invasion where I was a faction's admin or owner in had this as an issue on either side of the aisle. That's stretching back as far as when I was first joining the site. The only invasion where I can remember actually forming the objectives with the opposing faction was during an invasion between TSE and SJC last year, where the invasion was discussed and planned about a month in advance in a collaborative effort.

Not saying it hasn't happened since or before then, that's just my experience.

If you want factions to open up RP to people they don't already take into consideration then you need to change the culture of faction teams trying to withhold what is essentially useless information from the opposition in a petty attempt to gain an advantage that might last all of 10 minutes.

edit:

also I don't think factions try very hard to say "can we make this objective better" during whatever talks they have with their opposition, so even when the opportunity to course-correct presents itself it usually isn't taken. or if it is it's usually an attempt to make the objective more advantageous for that group rather than just trying to make it more fun.

 

[Caarlyle Rausgeber]

Here's some sleep deprived $0.02. It's the fact Majors don't want to roll and have fleeting be entwined with the ground combat. I reckon, if more fleeting engagements had a sort of ground to space dynamic, it'd be more interesting. The best example on hand, would be the Kaeshana battle. Where the destruction of a low orbit Star Destroyer kinda rocked everything up. And it was neat, because it impacted the ground pounder set piece.

I think if more major factors were open to causing damage and havoc, it'd be cool to have fleets in low orbit and really influencing things. Like corvette packs barrelling through and raining hell on some walker spearhead, or alternatively, ground based artillery taking down a frigate or something.. But as Chaos sits now, it seems the invasion meta is to be cowardly and hide behind NPC civilians like it's nothing. And the ree about 'muh civilians, muh civilians! Muh war crimes!' when pretty much every faction on the board has committed such atrocities. But I'm sort of rambling off base. But for real guys. Quit with the civilian stuff. It blows, and it sucks, just write that they're all gone. Or something. I dunno.

It also doesn't help that pretty much every guy around (Yours truly included) writes their stuff and their staff to be the best around. And I get it. Everyone wants that cheeky lil IC edge. But, I think if there was, I dunno, less antagonism. I mean, it's not even antagonism. It's just, fleeting happens in invasions. And you typically want to be the guy who wins. And this isn't only between measuring codex subs, but it also comes to fleeters not wanting to feel their stuff is cheaply lost. Like, when you've got boarders, who are all like Master Jedi, and pull their uber powergamey moves. Or like, having your big nice vessel just staggered by like, bombers and stuff. IDK

Look, that's just uh, just some perspective from a guy whose been around.

Addenium: I also realise I'm totally gonna raise my powerlevel here. But I always figure fleeting like one of those Empire at War battles. Where like, I would sort of approach a space battle like that. Where you are gonna cover your heavier vessels with the anti-fighter meta. And you are gonna try to use as much artillery and long range stuff as possible. And you are gonna aim for strategic hardpoints on a ship. But thats just me. How I think of things as.