The Failure of the Armament Rating, Its Saving Graces, and the (possible) Future of the Starship Fac

[Captain Larraq]

Spoiler

Disclaimer

Spoiler

Before anyone gets out the pitchforks, I'd like to say that I'm not getting on a soapbox like I used to. I had an idea that I wanted to try out with my starship submissions and was instead asked to make a proposal that could be reviewed and debated upon.

So... yeah. Put down the pitchforks.

Also, the bottom half of this was written three times, lost once due to power failure, and finished off with a headache... so... it's not as well-spoken as the first half.

The Armament Rating came about during a time in which the Starship Factory operated under strict standards and a long list of complicated rules that only a few understood. Most ships were requiring days, weeks, or months to get approved, and many writers simply avoided that section of the factory due to not understanding the complicated math that was going into starship creation or due to disliking the strict nature of the judges who reviewed their submissions.

After a long list of complaints Tefka decided that it was time to bring about a reform. Existing judges were ushered out and replaced by new judges that could be trained to be more friendly and existing rules were tossed aside in favor of brief, easy to understand rules. The goal was to make the factory simpler, friendlier, and drama free.

To an extent, there was grace in the decision. But ultimately, the entire endeavor was a failure from the start. The new judges had little knowledge or experience under their belts and barely understood the new system any better than those writing the submissions. Standards for rendering judgement varied wildly and the factory became a source of greater drama than ever before. The error was realized quickly and a select few of the 'old guard' judges were invited back to help fix the problems and train the new judges... but a great deal of damage had been done in the meantime.

More importantly than the judges themselves, were the rules that had been put into place. Simple, straightforward, and elegant in design, the system appeared to be created with the express purpose of ending the constant “arms race” that took place in the factory. At the surface, and as the official explanation, the Armament Rating was designed as the keystone of creating a simpler, friendlier starship factory. The goal was to make the factory more easily understandable and more accessible to new writers that were just joining the board.

And yet, it failed in that regard. The loose guidelines seemed to stem from the overall idea that a writer can come up with an interesting idea, propose it to the factory, receive checks and balances to make the submission fair and friendly, and then be told a total number of development thread posts required to get the submission approved for use on the board. And yet, when a new writer did show up, with no previous knowledge of the former rules or guidelines, and attempted to create his unique ship for personal use... He was practically driven from the board for it. After three months of work and a total of over 281 posts of development, the writer could not get his unique 1x ship approved and has not been seen on the board for a month and a half.

Granted, the ship was fairly nasty, but was it really any worse than some of the currently mass-produced ships on the board?

Personally, I don't think so. But I'm also a big fan of differentiating between a one-off ship designed for use by an individual captain and a multi-run vessel designed for use in fleeting engagements with multiple writers... But I digress.

Under the current rule-set, the previous starship creation template was reduced to a foot-note under the Armament Rating section of the current template, found via a link titled “Standardized Loadouts.”

It has, for the duration of the new Starship Factory, been used merely as a loose guide that may or may not be followed. And yet, those that submit starships through the factory seem to cling to the old template. They cling to a system that is no longer supported by official rules or guidelines and, by doing so, have created conflict and drama as judges enforce their own personal viewpoints on the outmoded template and how strictly they feel new submissions should or should not adhere to an optional guideline.

What it has created is a system of 'normal' and 'elite' submissions. Where some ships are forced to adhere to a more 'standard' power scale, ships like the 2x Seroth-class, 2x Cira-class, Semi-Unique Prowler-class, Limited Madine-class, Minor-Production Noble-class, Mass-Produced Maladi-class, Mass-Produced Watts-class, Minor-Production Dark Blade-class, and Mass-Produced Wyyrlok-class are not. The defining feature of the 'elite starships' are solely based upon the number of posts put into the development of said starship, not in the overall balance, fairness, or limited nature of the ships in question.

Most of the ships that fall into the 'elite starship' category blatantly and violently overshoot the previous starship template's limits on number of guns, while others instead focus on advanced weaponry and armors that can often be described as 'questionably' quantified in comparison to the standard weaponry boasted by the vast majority of ships in the factory and on the board.

While there is potential here for these ships to exist in harmony on the board, the sad fact of the matter is that they do not. They create an environment where the current accepted standard of a “gentleman's agreement to 10,000 meters of starships fighting 10,000 meters of starships” (as an example) becomes unfair and unfeasible. After all, why agree to a set limit in ships (based on size) when your opponent can bring multiple ships that (on paper) have three times the defenses and five times the firepower of the best (non elite) ships you have access to?



The changes to the factory, the changes to the starship template, and the creation of the armament rating were, as far as I understand them, designed to resolve these issues. And yet, they instead appear to have made the matter worse as writers become more and more competitive in their design and development of more and more broken ships, based on a guideline that was butchered and stapled to a new system as a footnote.



And yet, the opportunity for resolution exists within the current system. It, in part, requires individuals to choose to utilize the new system. And in another part, it requires a small bit of reform. The core of this saving grace is in the concept that an Armament Rating of 20 is the best there is and the best there will ever be. The subtle glory here is that if you have a Cruiser with an Armament Rating of 20, and someone from a hostile faction creates a new ship with an Armament Rating of 20, you do not need to escalate and create a new ship. Your existing submission is already competitive with the new design. More over, should you choose to embrace the Armament Rating, then your ships and writing is free from the terror and drama created by most of the 'elite starship' submissions. Regardless of if an opposing writer's ship has 80 guns of 800 guns, an Armament Rating of 20 is the best there is. If both ships are roughly the same size, then both ships are doing roughly the same damage, with the favor going to the ship with the Armament Rating of 20, as opposed to the ship with 800 guns.

This is a start.

For the creation of a fair and balanced writing environment, in regard to imaginary internet spaceships, more than just weaponry needs to be taken into consideration. Just like the old guide pushed writers to maximize the potency of their weaponry and the current system system pushes writers to maximize the number of guns on each ship, utilizing the Armament Rating as it currently stands will simply push writers to make every single ship have Armament Rating 20.


And now... we get to my proposition.

Reform.


On Star Wars: Chaos, we quantify the Armament Rating and Speed Rating of starships into a sliding scale from 1 to 20. What I would like to propose is that we extend that scale of 1 to 20 to other aspects of each starship submission as well. We can, already, identify which ship is faster or more agile at a glance. And, with the possible exception of ships utilizing unique or complex weaponry, we can identify which ship has the greater damage potential (and by how severely) at a glance. What I would like to see is a system in place which extends this “at a glance” potential to the overall durability and capabilities of each starship.

Specifically, I am proposing that a 1-20 scale be added to the existing template for Hull Integrity, Armor Rating, Shield Rating, and Utility Rating.



It allows writers to be vague, but still create unique, competitive, and balanced submissions.

It quantifies what an Armament Rating is, by providing a defensive point of reference. Instead of a ship with an Armament Rating of 20 always beating out a ship with an Armament Rating of 19, it produces an environment where the entirety of a starship is taken into consideration (not just the weaponry) when structuring a roleplay.


It does not matter if you have Advanced Shields, Heavy Shields, or Redundant Shields. A Shield Rating of 18 is a Shield Rating of 18. Tactically speaking, and from a roleplay perspective, the quantifiable value is identical. It is merely the means of 'how you achieved that rating' which makes a writer's ship unique and interesting. As opposed to writers scrambling to find the most obscure piece of canon technology to justify creating a starship that is better than their competition's starship.

The same can be said for armors and hulls made out of advanced or restricted materials or using complex design techniques. Those special flares are there for creativity and uniqueness, not for a tactical edge. Hull Integrity Rating or Armor Rating of 18 is the same on every ship, regardless of what techniques are used to achieve it.





Power and Space

Every Starship has Limited Power and Limited Space based upon the overall size of the ship and the reactor being used to power said ship. In a general sense, this produces two aread of competition in a balanced starship design. Armament Rating, Shield Rating, and Speed/Maneuverability Ratings each compete with one another for power. A high rating in one area should produce a dip in the other two areas. Even a highly developed starship should suffer in at least one area should it wish to improve the other two. Similarly, Hull Integrity, Armor Rating, and Hanger Capacity compete with one another for space. As stated above, a submission should suffer in one or two of the other areas should it wish to improve one of the three aspects of a ship which compete for space.

Granted, the odd exception can be made. Sacrificing Hanger Capacity or Hull Integrity in exchange for a larger reactor to power advanced weaponry and shields would also be a viable option instead of severely restricting the speed of a submission. Similarly, a ship with a high Hull Integrity and Armor Rating could instead sacrifice speed and maneuverability instead of hanger capacity.

This also has a great potential to simplify and streamline the judgement process of starships by creating a simple and repeatable process of checks and balances that stand up in the face of even the most extreme and unconventional of submissions.



The odd duck; Utility Rating.

Not previously quantified, the utility value of a ship is a complicated, vague, and hard to measure. Advanced sensors, long range sensors, magnetic or gravity detecting sensors, CIC networks, cloaking technology, the ability to disable opposing ships, hyperspace interdiction, and a host of other odd and complex capabilities of a starship would fall into this category. This wasn't initially part of my planned proposal, but I realized that the above list of ship specializations was not covered in the original idea... and... decided to throw it in to see how it fits.

As I see it, the Utility of a ship stands apart from all other features of a ship and serves as the greatest check and balance of all. Just as important as it is that a ship with high armor, hull, shields, and armament ratings be slow... it is important that said ship also have a particularly low utility rating. An heavy brawler should not have advanced sensors, interdiction, or cloaking technology without first lowering some of the other ratings to a more balanced level.



The main appeal of the armament rating is that it simplifies things and makes them relative. If I have an 16/20 frigate and I'm going against a 20/20 frigate, I need to be clever, agile, and make good use of targeting vulnerable areas and supporting myself with starfighters and bombers if I want to win. It doesn't automatically mean the 20/20 ship is going to win, it just structures the roleplay and tells both writers how their ships compare to one another. But simply creating an amendment to the existing armament rating system will not help if writers still do not understand how these values relate to one another. While most writers are now accustomed to simply counting guns and comparing the final number to that of another ship, the armament rating system is less about hard values and more about overall classification.



To help create a point of reference, this is how I view most ships as fitting within the Armament Rating.

Spoiler

Armament Rating 1-5: Appropriate for 100% Civilian transports, shuttles, 'legal' freighters, medical ships, exc.

Armament Rating 5-10: Appropriate for the above ships that plan to operate in slightly more dangerous areas of space. All military ships should be armament 10 or higher. A lower armament rating should translate as allowing higher overall technological advancement to compensate for the ship's relative weakness, in relation to dev thread requirements.

Armament Rating 10-14: This is the low end of competent military hardware. A military transport shuttle would have this armament, while an "assault shuttle" would have a higher rating. Sensor frigates, troop transports, and other light, escort focused ships would put themselves in this category. A "sensor frigate" with an armament rating higher than 16 would need a fair bit of development.

Armament Rating 14-16: This is where you'd see "carriers" and similar ships. You'd also see a few scout corvettes/frigates with stealth systems spread between the 14 and 18 armament rating, with an 18/20 Stealth Corvette being a nasty little bugger that's designed to find and kill larger ships via ambush. The armament rating in this category is high enough to be appropriate for any ship seeking to use its guns offensively, as opposed to self defense. The ships in this category should be high tech variants of "balanced ships" that sacrificed overall weapon strength for enhanced technological utility or improved hanger space.

Armament Rating 16-18: This is your "Balanced" ships. Every ship with an armament rating between 16 and 20 is of "ship of the line" quality. With 16's being your "fifth rate ships" and 17-18 being your fourth and third rate ships. (to borrow from the age of sail.) Any ship with an armament rating of 16 can justify "wanting" to go toe to toe with other ships. This should also be the most common category for ship submissions, and the easiest to get approved.

Armament Rating 18-20: These ships are the top dogs. In the age of sail, these are the First, Second, and Third rate ships (by catagory). Assault grade ships should always have a minimum armament rating of 18. However, having a 20/20 armament rating should not (by itself) require a significant dev thread. A ship with little to no technological advancement should be able to be designed as a 20/20 ship with a simple 20 posts at minor production, so long as it is relatively slow, simple, and designed around the idea of being a fat little brawler. An 18-20 armament rating is also appropriate for fast ships with a low defensive rating. Say... 18 armament and 16 defense with all guns capable of pointing forwards, or 20 offense and 16 defense with all guns 'locked' forward. Either should be simple enough without a significant dev thread. A ship with a great deal of technological advancement should really have to struggle to break the 18/20 mark. Advanced sensors, advanced tracking systems, hanger capacity, production rating, advanced armor or hull design, restricted materials... for balance sake, these ships should more or less cap out at 18/20 unless they support the design with significant development, a low production rating, and/or design flaws/weaknesses. Similarly, "balanced ships" should be encouraged to top off at the 18/20 range with 19/20 or higher prompting the judges to have the ship brought down in armament rating or re-balanced as an assault ship.

However, compounding the problem is the common misunderstanding (or so I am hearing from writers) that an Armament Rating can 'only' provide a submission with a basic armament of Turbolasers and nothing else. I've tried to explain to a few people that you can still include details about weapon selection in your design. You could say "a 16/20 armament rating with a balanced mix of heavy turbolasers, mass drivers, and ion cannons. The defensive armament is a balanced mix of flak cannons and point defense lasers spread evenly over the hull. The ship is supported by a heavy complement of Assault Concussion Warhead Launchers to give itself improved knockdown power at close range."

"A 18/20 armament of Heavy, Long Range Turbolasers supported by a balanced mix of heavy concussion missile launchers and proton torpedo tubes, with quad laser emplacements spread evenly over the ship." Your actual "damage output" with those sniping weapons will be closer to a 14/20 ship... even at point blank, your effective armament rating would be closer to 16 than the actual 18... Long Range and Heavy, Long Range guns are a support weapon... It's kinda like the difference between a mortar and a cannon. It's big and it's got longer range, but it's less accurate and tends to do less damage overall.

Also... weapon angles are important. There is a big difference in a 20/20 ship's potential damage output if its got a balanced spread of weapons, weapons arranged into broadsides, all guns facing forward, or turrets capable of doing all of the above (but having a slow tracking speed or requiring time to 'swing around' as it switches from "all forward" to "broadsides" to "even spread").

For example... an 18/20 ship with all guns forward could likely match a 20/20 broadside ship on effective damage output, or outperform a 20/20 ship with an even spread .




So now lets say that in each ship size category, with the exception of speed and utility, ships are started off in the Support, Balanced, and Assault category as they are currently. Support Ships could start out with ratings of 14 across the board, with the exception of speed and utility. Balanced ships could start off at 16 and Assault ships could start off at 18.


Here's a possible example of what this could look like for Frigates...

Standard Ships

Spoiler

Standard Military Support Ship
Hull Integrity: 14
Armor Rating: 14
Shield Rating: 14
Armament Rating: 14
Utility Rating: 16
Speed/Maneuverability: 8

Standard Military Balanced Ship
Hull Integrity: 16
Armor Rating: 16
Shield Rating: 16
Armament Rating: 16
Utility Rating: 14
Speed/Maneuverability: 10

Standard Military Assault Ship
Hull Integrity: 18
Armor Rating: 18
Shield Rating: 18
Armament Rating: 18
Utility Rating: 12
Speed/Maneuverability: 12

But now lets say you want to take your standard values and customize them. Lets say that you want to take a balanced ship and make it more capable of holding its own against an Assault Ship. How do you go about raising those numbers?

We do it the same way we've been doing it. We simply never had a quantifiable number rating for it.

Every advanced type of shield or rare armor increases the corresponding rating by one.

Advanced Shields, Heavy Shields, and Redundant Shields all translate to a +1 value on the ship's Shield Rating. And something like "Advanced, Double Redundant Shields" would increase the ships Shield Rating by three. Which is an improvement upon the current standard, which would view such shields as producing a shield three times as strong as any other comparable ship.

Similarly, Advanced Armor, Thicker Plating, Extra Plating, and Restricted Metals would each provide a one point increase on the Armor Rating of a ship. With... the possible exception of Beskar and Phrik... which could provide +2... Though that'd be up to the Judges.

As for the Hull Integrity, a Compartmentalized Hull, Honeycombed Hull, or Extra Bulkheads could each provide a one point increase.

And when you reach a total increase of more than, say, +8 total? You need to hit the design with a major nerf. Get rid of the hanger, cut the speed, include a design flaw, exc. And somewhere along the lines, speed, production value, exc also gets taken into account and people are told how many posts of development they need, or how much nerfing the ship needs...

Because the goal here is to create system that promotes balance and fairness without compromising creativity, not... to give someone the means through which to make a ship that has maximum values in all areas.

The only odd factor here is the Utility Rating. At face value, you could state that a Utility Rating of 10 is 'all normal subsystems' and that each 'advanced sensor' or 'tractor beam' or 'interdiction system' installed on the ship is installed at a cost of +1 on the Utility Rating.... Which... I can't decide if that feels odd or appropriate to me. But I will say that I like the idea of using the Utility Rating to quantify stealth systems. A basic Sensor Dampener would be a +1, any form of active camouflage would be a +1 (or +2), and each additional system (such as thrust-trace dampeners, galvanized hull, and gravitic modulators) cost +1 to the Utility Rating. Meaning that a ship with 'true stealth' ends up needing to balance its other subsystems to stay under a Utility Rating of 20, and the ship also has to be relatively weak overall to compensate for the high utility rating.


But... the Utility Rating is weird. Even to me. So let's give a final example of how my proposed system would work.

Lets start with that balanced frigate from before.

Standard Military Balanced Frigate
Hull Integrity: 16
Armor Rating: 16
Shield Rating: 16
Armament Rating: 16
Utility Rating: 14
Speed/Maneuverability: 10


Now lets say I want my frigate to be able to go toe to toe with assault frigates or some cruisers... For starters, it needs to be more durable. So lets put on an extra layer of Phrik Plating for +2 to the Armor Rating and add in a Compartmentalized Hull and Re-enforced Bulkheads for +2 to Hull Integrity. Next, we wont increase the shield rating... but instead we'll separate the deflector shields into separate Ray and Particle shields. This has the practical effect of turning the ship's shield rating from 16 total to "14 Ray / 14 Particle" which means that neither shield system is as strong as a normal deflector shield would have been... but that they have an 'effective' shield rating of 18 when being hit by a combination of energy and kinetic weapons. Similarly, instead of increasing the armament rating to 18, lets instead separate the ship's weapons into port and starboard broadsides of Heavy Turbolasers and Proton Torpedoes, with no weapons pointing forwards.

Now lets look at what we have so far.

Advanced Military Balanced Frigate
Hull Integrity: 18
Armor Rating: 18
Shield Rating: 14 Ray / 14 Particle
Armament Rating: 16 Port / 16 Starboard
Utility Rating: 14
Speed/Maneuverability: 10

The basic Utility Rating of 14 still remains on the ship, though I've yet to quantify what that is. For the sake of argument, lets say I was going to put advanced sensors, advanced tracking computers, and two unique subsystems that have been put through the factory (like my overdrive engines and maneuvering thrusters).

Now, the Judge isn't going to like this sub. While in a 1v1 fight it can only bring an armament rating of 16 to bare on its target... in larger battles the ship will have the potential to do a great deal of damage at close range. Is this a bigger threat than a ship with an armament rating of 18 that can point all weapons forward? Maybe, maybe not. Either way, the judge should see this sub in the following way...

Standard Military Balanced Frigate
Hull Integrity: 16 +2
Armor Rating: 16 +2
Shield Rating: 16 +1
Armament Rating: 16 +2
Utility Rating: 14
Speed/Maneuverability: 10

That's a total of +7 (or maybe +8) added to the default template without slowing down the ship or weakening any area of the design. The judge should at this point request a reduction in hanger capacity or speed rating, or request that one or two of the subsystems be removed and a reduction be made to the Utility Rating. On top of the development thread requirements for the Phrik Armor.





Now... it's not a perfect system. And there is a great deal of tweaking and streamlining that can be made to it.

But I think that there is potential here.

 

[Ellie Mors]

The ship mentioned was archived for inactivity, not quite denied.

 

[Captain Larraq]

The ship mentioned was archived for inactivity, not quite denied.

Not quite approved either.



Edit: I apologize.

But I think you're missing the point.

 

[Alric Kuhn]

I have read, and then re-read this just to make sure I didn't miss anything. The ideas presented will be taken into consideration and I will make sure they are thoroughly discussed.

Thank you for writing this all up and making the suggestion.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

I was writing an essay of my own to add to this but the main man got here first.

Anyway, Imma post my Idea because worst case scenario it gets scrolled through and called complete crap, and that's okay

Allow me to summarize (roughly)
He wants the Factory to have more 1-20 guidelines with base stats for Support (Carrier), Assault, and Balanced, Increases in one area require decreases in another, and a Substantial Dev thread can mitigate one or two of these equal decreases, but not completely counter them. Basically a Point-Buy system with cookies for extended dev threads.

Only useful contribution based on Smarter Persons wisdom and experience below.
Utility systems. Used to, under the previous guideline Mass produced Star Destroyers could have 2 Special systems. Bring this style guideline back.
Unique+3, Limited+2, Minor+1, Mass=1
Bigger ships (Star Destroyer[1,501] and up) Get base 2
Flagships get 6 (Base 3+3 for unique)

This is a suggestion, and I will not get my feelings hurt if you don’t like it. I really want someone smarter than me to pick it apart and come up with its failings/shortcomings and strengths and maybe come up with something nice.

The simplest problem I see with all the math mentioned above is its complicated and time consuming and you guys just want to fight ships. And you guys want to fight ships that are all special and awesome and everyone is in an arms race.

Finally we could also say to heck with stats and just really accurately describe a ships abilities/strengths/weakness and let the RP do the rest.

 

[Vereaux]

Just to offer my two cents: [member="Captain Larraq"] has a point. I joined initially in January 2014, came back in July of the same year, and got back here about a month ago. During both times, when I looked at the Starship Factor to figure out what kind of ship I wanted, I thought the entire thing was a mess: number of weapons were disproportional to ship size, speed category was a linear chart, and when it came to accessory systems, there weren't any guidelines. The entire place was redone, however, and a lot of things were fixed. Yet I still feel like it's lacking, because there are still the issues of being balanced. Now, I will admit that the more this is being looked at and tweaked, the more it is looking similar to a tabletop. And I'm perfectly fine with that. If we want the system improved, we're going to need to use our imagination, and use something as a reference to tell ourselves "Okay, that's broken, it needs fixed." And people will butt heads about it, but that's what compromising is for =)

I very much liked the read, and hope to see more in the future.

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

[member="Captain Larraq"]
I love your ideas. I've been wanting something like this for a while.

However, there is one change I think needs to be made - the scale should be for all ships. The speed/manouevre scale is 1-20 for all ships at once, with 1 being a TIE interceptor, and 20 being a space station.

The ratings you mention here should likewise be for all ships.

After all, how does an 18/20 armament frigate compare to a 16/20 defence cruiser? How do we compare them?

But have an 11/20 frigate facing a 13/20 cruiser on the same scale and we know where we stand. This is especially important considering ship types close in size where the smaller ship is actually more powerful than the larger one in armament - assault frigate vs carrier cruiser for instance.

So have one scale for everything. Remember that we have 8-9 ship classes, so that allows a good spread of things.

So that's my critique and suggest of an otherwise very fine suggestion.

 

[Raziel]

Does this come with an executive summary?

 

[Tefka]

I like your proposition.

1. I think you're wrong about your summaries of how and if we failed with the Factory, mainly because it's incredibly difficult to pinpoint any one thing. You say experience, I say growing pains. The Factory "old guard" was relieved because of the resistance they gave when facing change; despite all the losses, of which there has been a plethora, I believe the Factory has progressed rather than regress. Complaints and issues are at an all-time low, and that's how it has continued.

2. Concerning your proposition, which for those who don't wish to read it - it's basically a D&D Character Sheet for Starships - I do like it and that's where we were heading last time. But as you recall, the main form of resistance we faced was the "cookie cutter" argument.

That all ships are the same, and only the numbers will change. Which brings us to the biggest point to be made.

3. Is there anything really wrong with Starships as it currently is? I don't really see Ice's situation as a template issue, more of a communication & Judge issue.

You bring up a lot of good points about the barrier of entry to the Factory, but that's always been there, and it always will be. There is a learning curve, yes. But the last major overhaul was designed to minimize that barrier - now you're asking us to do it again. I'm okay with that, but you need to understand how much work goes into it - and when I pull the trigger to motivate that much work, we need to have a damned good reason for doing it. You saw how long it took us to roll out the Marketplace for the Factory - Starship templates are on a whole other level of work.

So my biggest question is, is there an instance in a ROLE-PLAY where the new Factory's method of creation of Starships has seemingly failed us?

Linking to that would be a stronger argument for us to take up arms for systematic change, I think.

 

[Jsc]

During year one on this website, I once described and posted an Interdiction, Station Artillery, ECM, and Planetary Shielding Defense System used in the Republic Core Worlds that made making landfall during Invasions impossible.

• Barrier to RP: Making landfall during an Invasion was impossible. People still made landfall on post 1.

During Omni's Invasion Event of the galaxy, I once described an ECMS counter-system that could nullify Omni's ability to control his drone fleets without wires attached.

• Barrier to RP: Omni gonna do, what Omni gonna do. Omni used a bigger signal jammer, than my signal jammer.

I once built a tiny holdout blaster pistol in the Factory and was asked polity not to abuse it.

• Barrier to RP: None. But Jay Scott Clark knows how to take even the smallest firearm available in the genre and abuse it for powergaming. Mughahaha. *cackling*

In closing. And just my opinion. The Factory is a great form of education about space, science, and theoretically how starships work in our genre. However it is by it's very existence, a Barrier to RP. It is DnD theory-crafting at it's worst.

Just give the Fleet community anything it wants so the rest of us can go back to ignoring the numbers altogether.

___

Brought to you by: How Writing is not an MMO
Inspired by: "Rulings, not Rules" - DnD 5th Edition's Dungeon Masters Guide
Also Inspired by: The Optimization Treatise: The Everything Goes Gospel - By JaniseJones 2005

 

[Arumi Zy]

I don't really like the idea of if you have x then y must suffer in some meaningful way etc. In RL no one builds a carrier and says well we have armor so we need to reduce the speed, tis only fair. At the same time i think there is a workable solution in your write up with some minor tweaks here and there.

Not to mention the factory and stuff is optional and i havn't seen to many space battles where two PC players are trading blows taking hits and blowing their own stuff up because they feel it took enough damage. But that doesn't change the fact a good system in play isn't important for those who want to do that kind of stuff.

The only real workable solution in my opinion to your idea is to create some kind of volume system where your ship has this much room to work with and each thing takes so much room to fill up. I.E if you make a cruiser with a total space of 1km2 and you add in a power generator that takes up .25km square you only have .75km square left to work with. This would allow for there to be weakness but at the same time not force arbitrary penalties onto them because you believe if you have X then Y must suffer.

 

[Gir Quee]

Coming from more of a table-top gaming background, I really do appreciate Captain Larraq's idea, especially as it seems to me that we've left things like defenses, armor, and speed as nebulous concepts. I generally agree with Valiens Nantaris's concerns and Draco Vereen's suggestions about it though. I think this is something that maybe requires a little bit more refinement before being brought up for serious consideration as a replacement for the current factory baselines for starship rules. I would be willing to help work this out with a group, thus taking the onus of its development off of the staff's shoulders.

2. Concerning your proposition, which for those who don't wish to read it - it's basically a D&D Character Sheet for Starships - I do like it and that's where we were heading last time. But as you recall, the main form of resistance we faced was the "cookie cutter" argument.

The "cookie cutter" argument is the reason that I haven't used armament ratings in any of my submissions. But I think we could alleviate this ambiguity concern that with this new system if we were to use something like a hardpoint system (not unlike the Star Wars D20 system or Full Thrust). For example, one hardpoint could be taken up by 10 turbolasers, engines that improve speed by 1, a redundant shield generator, etc. People could say that this would make it more complicated, but we have basic loadouts (much like the current assault, support, balanced loadouts) for each class of vessels, which could then be modified from there on out. It might not be too hard to make a basic utility application to do the same thing (like "Fleet designer" for Full Thrust or "Cadet" for Crimson Skies).

3. Is there anything really wrong with Starships as it currently is?

As much as I think the current rules are somewhat imperfect, they have worked fairly well for us. But I do think that Larraq's idea of the "elite starships" has the potential to be a problem in the future, even if it hasn't occurred yet. For example, according to my math (which could be wrong), the mass-produced Maladi-class mentioned earlier has 480 capital guns, 25 heavy warhead launchers, and 20 defensive guns. In other words, it's a smaller cruiser-sized ship (460 meters) with as much firepower as an Assault Light Star Destroyer. If its armament is played straight, it breaks the nature of the "gentlemen's agreement" that Larraq mentioned. If one side almost exclusively uses these "elite starships" as their mass-produced ships, and another side, does not, the potential for balance issues between factions grows.

Now, there was definitely an insame amount of work put into it. And someone might say to make your own ship backed a lot of development posts. And I'd be okay with that, but there's no set standards for making these increasingly common "elite" starships. To me, it seems like they vary widely based on who's judging it. It'd be nice to have some guidelines for how much development posts impact the power of a ship.

I think that those guidelines who help mitigate the "elite starship" problem within the current rule set. Alternatively, an solution might be to have an armament cap for these "elite" ships, regardless of how many development posts are put into them.

 

[Camellia Swift]

Now honestly I don't think the rating system has hurt roleplays, but I do agree it was rather meaningless.

In the majority of roleplays people don't need to use their ships for much more than shooting down NPCs or traveling. The only time a ship's armament comes into question is when it comes to PvP, which is all of fleeting between factions. And that's where the armament rating would fail if used. Its too vague, there's too many intricacies to warfare and people play to win when it comes to fights, even when they're trying to have fun they want to have the chance to win, which the rating don't support. If someone has an 8/20 rating and goes up against a 12/20 then every time you're just going to hear the person with the 12/20 say they win. If the 8/20 tries to do well and use tactics by saying they use long range guns for example, or specify using Ion Cannons to mess with electronics and shields, then the 12/20 will call them out saying how they can just make up whatever armaments their ship has, since in theory if they don't list it, they can just say they have anything, and won't be held to be consistent. This would be a huge pain to deal with in fleeting and PvP since people will just try to win by numbers when no one actually knows what they're working with to develop actual fleet tactics and good balanced ship design. That's why I personally was a fan of Guide 2.0 since it had a reasonable number level, and I think it was better to be stricter.

Why else would you submit a ship to be a part of the star wars universe on a star wars roleplay forum if you aren't willing to make it fit with star wars designs? The wookieepedias are there to be looked at and give ideas and the judges are supposed to be very willing to teach as well and not just laugh or instantly deny people to turn them away.

To make a point, though I know not even some of the fleeters keep track of all this in roleplay, but the weapons all act differently. Ion Cannons aren't the same as Turbolasers and if they aren't listed people won't know they're there. Ion Cannons tear through shields faster, but do no physical damage. They're good for leading a salvo or to shut down a ship's systems over time to capture it unharmed. Mass Drivers are great for ripping through metals, but generally bounce off shields like pee shooters, but if its hitting my hull I would like to know if its an ion cannon or mass driver to know how it affects me. Turbolasers being a fine middle ground are what you'd call bland. You also want to know if they're long ranged or if there's a lot of coverage over the ship. Are their guns grouped together so I can try to maneuver to a specific angle to hit them from and avoid damage if I can? Can I shoot them before they shoot me? Concussion Missiles fly faster than Proton Torpedos but do less damage. If I'm in a starfighter or corvette can I move fast enough to avoid them or buy time to shoot them down? WIll the damage be worrisome or not if it does hit me? Flak Cannons have the longest range to defend me, but they work better on fighters than missiles, and have very small firing angles, if an enemy stays of them or gets too close they won't be hit. Point Defense Cannons are very accurate, and shoot down missile fire great, but their range is so small will they be overwhelmed by a mass attack? Quad Lasers are perfect for handling fighter swarms but they don't track missiles as well.

Everything ha a trade off or use in tactics when it comes to weapons and if they aren't specified then people can abuse a rating by just saying they have some of everything. That or it will just turn into everyone forgoes tactics and just goes off the number and say people can't use tactics and say they have the specific weapon layout since their ship is a lower rating, they can't make up the weapons they need to outsmart the other writer so they just have to lose because someone has an 18 or 20/20. Which is why the current system states if people don't want to list things out they can use a rating instead, but get only plain weapons, turbolasers and laser cannons with no longe range/etc.

Now that is was mentioned though, I do agree with Larraq about the Hull and Shield ratings. This is something that would be better simplified, and I can say why I would support that when I complained about the intricacies of armaments. When it comes to shields and Hull the best we can say is that it's reinforced, made of different metal, that the shields are advanced, or that there is a redundant generator. That doesn't give much of a clue to people in roleplays how effective they are and what they would be up against. Like how reinforced is the hull, although in my opinion when it comes to different metals the defensive aspects depend on their descriptions. Since metals like Beskar or those with heat-absorbing properties are bascially really high ratings really fast. There are RU and HU on the wookieepedia for some ships, but it's an incredibly complicated and difficult system to introduce and without an efficient damage system in place for it either it doesn't necessarily work out well. Now the staff could go all out and create its own point system, determine a layout for ships to have Hull Health and Shield Strength and determine a fair gun system that per hardpoint/type of gun would deal x damage, which would make an incredibly fair combat system for rpers to use.

However, that's just too much to ask, that's serious amounts of work to figure all that out. Plus then it would still be hard on people making submissions to keep track of those things too, even if it did give them the fairest outcome in roleplays. Simplifying things too much though by making everything a rating also makes it too unbalanced and chaotic to determine who actually has what, which is why I'm very against it for weapons/armaments since it takes away from PvP's tactics, which is what people are usually submitting ships for when it comes to armaments (fighting to win). You'll never not see an arms race because of how invasions and skirmishes and PvP work, and you're not just seeing this for ships, but everyone seems to complain about ships because the entire system for them was thrown out and without the previous standard there's been a lot of deviations.

As for utility? I don't think a rating would help at all there either. Not enough to them to merit having their own rating. Comms, Life Support, Escape Pods, Sensors? Pretty basic stuff to understand. Making it long range or advanced? Better range on talking to people around the galaxy and detecting enemy ships farther out, harder to jam. Making them a rating when they're already fairly simple would just make it confusing to people trying to figure out what a 8/20 would get them on those features. Plus most ships try to get one or more special features in there, so they wouldn't always appear alongside the normal ones and could be quantified separately.

So in short? Armament Ratings are generally bad for warship design, Utility Ratings are moot, at least in my opinion. However, I agree with the aspects of a Hull and Shield Rating (Per Class unlike Speed), since those are hard to quantify factors.

 

[Hans Vaiden]

How Writing is not an MMO

Key statement for this thread.

 

[Jsc]

Key statement for this thread.

Nah man. The site is whatever the people want it to be. Well... And whatever Tef is willing to put up with in good faith. Lol. I mean. If enough people want something and can put up a fair argument for it? Meh. It can probably happen. Whether that be currency, super weapon rules, non-canon forums, sentient force dragons, flying ponies, netherworld realms of unanimous doom, and all kinds of other stuff.

I have no doubt, that at some point or another, this website will become an MMO run by Perfect World Entertainment Inc. Sh'maybe. Lol. One day.

The point is we're all having fun. *wink*

*ponders another poll for implementing Gundams*​

 

[Laira Darkhold]

I think the issue is the escalation that the "elite" ships bring. Big enough Dev Threads allow you to ignore gun math when doing you're load out. I have read and understand the reason for the change to 2.0 Guidelines, it just seems that everyone is at 1.5 Guidelines as it were. Writers without a plethora of time and patience can't come up with comparable craft to these elite ships. The Immortal-class packs 95% of the guns I have seen on a flagship (Granted the hangar space on that Flagship was enormous) at half the length.

I think the biggest issue is that Gun Math from the previous standard are still being applied some places.
http://starwarsrp.net/topic/54118-skywalker-class-star-destroyer/

I say do your cool customized load out and STILL give it an armament rating. Make that be how its done. That way if you put enough work into you can have the special weapons, long range capabilities, and heavier weapons, but another Equal Armament ship might be stronger than another in specific fields. It pulls away from your cookie cutter argument and allows ships to specialize or remain balanced depending on the writers wants.

I don't really like the idea of if you have x then y must suffer in some meaningful way etc. In RL no one builds a carrier and says well we have armor so we need to reduce the speed, tis only fair. At the same time i think there is a workable solution in your write up with some minor tweaks here and there.

My suggestion substantial Dev Threads can reduce (or mitigate depending on the length of the dev thread) the penalty. You want a ship that can do it all, do a lot of dev, but being really heavily armed, always means having smaller hangar space, Star Wars and Real Life and is exactly why the Arleigh Burke Destroyer has more guns than the Nimitz-class Aircraft Carrier.

 

[Captain Larraq]

So my biggest question is, is there an instance in a ROLE-PLAY where the new Factory's method of creation of Starships has seemingly failed us?

Linking to that would be a stronger argument for us to take up arms for systematic change, I think.

Honestly Tef, I couldn't tell you one way or the other. I only recently started getting active on the board again.

I know that wherever these 'elite ships' get fielded or have the potential to be fielded, I end up hearing angst about it.

I know that Vilaz tried to go toe to toe with the Primeval Fleet in a Mando/Prime skirmish and ended up not knowing how to deal with three frigates/cruisers hitting his commandship with the firepower of 15 such ships... I had to coach him through it and give him tips for dealing with it... but angst all the same.

I hear a lot of angst about the factory. It's died down a bit lately, but it's still there. I don't know if this will fix the angst, but I think it has the potential to help balance things out more than they currently are.

Fleeting and naval skirmishes are a niche market. Not many people go after that sort of roleplaying and you only see a thread pop up once every few weeks or so. And most peter out as one side or the other gets flustered with the situation they find themselves in.

 

[Captain Larraq]

[member="Captain Larraq"]
I love your ideas. I've been wanting something like this for a while.

However, there is one change I think needs to be made - the scale should be for all ships. The speed/manouevre scale is 1-20 for all ships at once, with 1 being a TIE interceptor, and 20 being a space station.

The ratings you mention here should likewise be for all ships.

After all, how does an 18/20 armament frigate compare to a 16/20 defence cruiser? How do we compare them?

But have an 11/20 frigate facing a 13/20 cruiser on the same scale and we know where we stand. This is especially important considering ship types close in size where the smaller ship is actually more powerful than the larger one in armament - assault frigate vs carrier cruiser for instance.

So have one scale for everything. Remember that we have 8-9 ship classes, so that allows a good spread of things.

So that's my critique and suggest of an otherwise very fine suggestion.

I still can't decide if I like the idea or not. My main reservation in it is that the potential still exists within the system for a judge to allow the creation of "elite ships" with vastly more firepower than would be appropriate for a ship of its size. An Assault Ship of one size category should be weaker than a ship of a larger size category. If you show people a scale that slides all the way up to 20, they'll constantly be tempted to push their armament as high as possible, just as you see so many ships pushing their speed as far towards 1 as they can get away with.

I like having a hard cap based on the size of a ship. A person controlling a carrier or an artillery platform already knows that a frigate with an Armament Rating of 16+ is going to kick his ship's butt if he lets it get close. That's just the nature of support ships. I just don't know if putting everything on the same 1-20 weapon scale will be any different than the current situation (in the long run anyway).

 

[Camellia Swift]

[member="Draco Vereen"]

A good idea to actually balance, but the problem is then determining how many guns is worth 1 rating.

I agree with you that since the change the elite ships are less in line and its because they don't have to be compared to 2.0, and 3.0 has no comparison. If ratings were tied to guns so you could do one or the other and be even abouts then maybe it would work better, and if you don't specify anything then people just assume you went all standard, but then if people do list things out, they can only list out as many as they are allowed to within a rating. (rating of 8 worth 10 guns or whatever not really thought out but that sounds like what you mean right?).

 

[Captain Larraq]

[member="Draco Vereen"]

A good idea to actually balance, but the problem is then determining how many guns is worth 1 rating.

I agree with you that since the change the elite ships are less in line and its because they don't have to be compared to 2.0, and 3.0 has no comparison. If ratings were tied to guns so you could do one or the other and be even abouts then maybe it would work better, and if you don't specify anything then people just assume you went all standard, but then if people do list things out, they can only list out as many as they are allowed to within a rating. (rating of 8 worth 10 guns or whatever not really thought out but that sounds like what you mean right?).

Does it really matter that my ship targets your engine with 8 turbolasers or 6 mass drivers and 4 ion cannons? Shouldn't it just matter that my ship is targeting your engines?