[OOC] The Last Laugh

[Legion02]

<Snipped quote by Romero>
I may not be the GM, but I can certainly say that your idea definitely sounds pretty good to me, and funny thing, someone else was planning a similar faction but unfortunallty couldn't join due to IRL reasons.

Edit: Your an Ascendancy too @Legion02? Best buds :P

@Sigma

Less of a theological Ascendancy :p More of a "lets combine technology and psionics (which we don't really understand as well as we wish)" and use all that to make ourselves better!

[Sigma]

@ClocktowerEchos Also gave your sheet a look over, interesting stuff so far.

I was also wondering, would it be possible if some of the Haradoni(Don't know if they're aliens or humans) managed escape, namely members of an Ashtari Sect within the old Union? Just wondering.

[Helios]

NS in the oven.

[ClocktowerEchos]

@ClocktowerEchos Also gave your sheet a look over, interesting stuff so far.

I was also wondering, would it be possible if some of the Haradoni(Don't know if they're aliens or humans) managed escape, namely members of an Ashtari Sect within the old Union? Just wondering.

@Sigma

Thanks for the compliment!

You might have gotten a handful of stragglers somewhere in the galaxy who managed to escape and spread the news of how their race damned itself to a wretch, horrid existence. But any large groups did not make it out. Between the absolute pummeling they got in the Great War which took out most of their ships to the fact that the Lucifern's first action was to fully assimilate the Haradoni, no large numbered group survived. You could make a solid argument that the Lucifern's first major action was to actually commit mass genocide on the individuals of the host species who didn't submit.

[Sigma]

@ClocktowerEchos Ahh, then most likely any Ashtari followers within the Union would've been quickly assimilated as well. That's no problem though, just wanted to make sure :)

[Willy Vereb]

I know I might be opening a potential can of worms but how should we settle on ship sizes?
We have actual treaties limiting them so I believe there are some sorts of standards the entire galaxy agrees on to classify them. I am partially ask this since one of the White Corps' military shtick is to skirt around these rules and field ships that might appear to be in a certain class but in effect they are more powerful.

Since without an opening argument this would take an eternity here's my potential list on starship sizes, using the largest dimension (usually length) to measure:

Hyperdreads:>5000m
Dreadnoughts:2000-5000m
Battleships:1000-2000m
Battlecruisers:700-2000m
Cruisers:450-1000m
Destroyers:200-500m
Frigates:100-300m
Corvettes:30-150m
Heavy Strike Craft:15-40m
Starfighters:<24m

This is merely a suggestion of mine and mostly used for standardish shape ships. For example if you have spherical or flying saucer shaped vessels this number might get lower to compensate. It depends on you, of course. Furthermore as you can see I included a fair bit of size variance so people have decent freedom to pick what they feel the best. Overlaps are also a thing since reasonably thinking the heaviest destroyer and the lightest cruiser shouldn't be that far apart (and might even be switched as far as relative powers concerned). Battlecruisers have almost the same size limits as battleships because historically BCs are basically BBs with lighter loads and different roles. The difference between a BC and BB is more in terms of tonnage and armor/weaponry than anything else. Lastly I split "strike craft" category in two to account for gunships/bombers that are less maneuverable and the true starfighters. This way it's even less likely one would have "starfighter corvettes" which the GM was apparently fearing.
That being said this is just a list of values I put together in like 10 minutes.
Feel free to criticize it.

EDIT: I am also not claiming that the treaty only limits the size of vessels. If anything that's just the start. As the GM implied with the description of capital ships there's a fair amount of minmaxing going on with Detente era warships so likely the power generation/consumption is another key element they limit. But I leave that to you, the size chart above is only there for aesthetic purposes. So we don't get things like 500m long hyperdreads while the other side has kilometer long corvettes.

EDIT2: Spellchecker trolled me (see the last bold) so I went to fix that.

[Legion02]

@Willy Vereb It's a can of worms and I'm not entirely against it but maybe we could use volume or tonnage instead of size? My ships are rarely of the long cigar shapes so that wouldn't really be fair.

Alternatively, if nobody specifies the sizes then we can just adhere to the hierarchy and people whose ships are "treaty breaking" would have to specify so. (Or, when skirting, say what they skirt.) That way we can leave the technicallities behind while maintaining a semblance of powerlevels. As I assume most ships would also have a specified weakness.

[Willy Vereb]

@Willy Vereb It's a can of worms and I'm not entirely against it but maybe we could use volume or tonnage instead of size? My ships are rarely of the long cigar shapes so that wouldn't really be fair.

Alternatively, if nobody specifies the sizes then we can just adhere to the hierarchy and people whose ships are "treaty breaking" would have to specify so. (Or, when skirting, say what they skirt.) That way we can leave the technicallities behind while maintaining a semblance of powerlevels. As I assume most ships would also have a specified weakness.

@Legion02

I explicitly stated that non-longitudal ship designs or similar shapes can work with smaller dimensions. I would rather not specify volume because that's on the "too thinky" side. I can go into *WAY* more detail but I feel anything but a simplistic list would be counter-intuitive.
I CAN give you a diameter list for saucer and spheroid/cube ships which follows this scheme if you want, though. Would that suffice?

Spherical/Cuboid Ship Chart:
- Hyperdread: >2000m
- Dreadnought: 800-2000m
- Battleship/Battlecruiser: 400-1000m
- Cruiser: <500m
Others should follow a roughly similar scheme of decrease. In case of strike craft you just have to be conscious of making your fighters noticeably smaller than the average.

Saucer/Plateoid Ship Chart:
- Hyperdread: >2500m
- Dreadnought: 1000-2500m
- Battleship/Battlecruiser: 400-1000m
- Cruiser: <500m
Again, you can figure out the rest according to this. As for strike craft you don't even neccessarily need to reduce their dimensions. You still use the base plane form for both, in case of flying saucers the "wings" are just circular.

Hope this could help.

EDIT: If you plan to use Star Trek Federation style saucer-longitudal mix kind of warships then those could be either follow the saucer or the longitudal ship size limits. Either works, really. At times there are as much as two orders of magnitude difference between ships in the same class here in terms of volume and that's fine. Good enough for what is a space opera here.

[Sierra]

That's opening a can of worms that I've never once seen end well in all my years in RP. I'd make a sweeping generalization like "nothing except hyperdreads can be significantly larger than 6000 meters" and leave it at that.

EDIT: To better clarify my thoughts: design doctrines are going to be wildly different across military forces. On one hand, you're liable to create hurt feelings if someone ends up getting caught on the wrong side of arbitrary thresholds. On another, by creating upper bounds, you're inevitably going to have minmaxers going right up to the line to maximize their power.

[DX3214]

Well according to the original post the Ashtar had a cruiser the size of a small moon that already says How big can be space ships here

EDIT CAPITAL SHIP not cruiser sorry

[Ozerath]

Alrighty I'm back, real life will never keep me from my space boats for too long.

Give me a bit to catch up, will address things in turn. Also see about appointing a co-GM.

[Willy Vereb]

Well according to the original post the Ashtar had a cruiser the size of a small moon that already says How big can be space ships here

EDIT CAPITAL SHIP not cruiser sorry

@DX3214

Ashtar are also way stronger than us and their "cruisers" likely be worthy of hyperdreads. Ashtar capital ships would be way beyond our current scope. Partially which is why all the fighting is going on.

[Sierra]

I'll push a nomination in the direction of Willy Vereb. He's done this space NRP thing once or twice before. ;) Probably the worthiest candidate here, and did a fair amount of the heavy lifting these past couple days of your absence. I could probably take up that mantle too but I have a policy against self-nomination, usually being a self serving conflict of interest and all.

[Willy Vereb]

That's opening a can of worms that I've never once seen end well in all my years in RP. I'd make a sweeping generalization like "nothing except hyperdreads can be significantly larger than 6000 meters" and leave it at that.

EDIT: To better clarify my thoughts: design doctrines are going to be wildly different across military forces. On one hand, you're liable to create hurt feelings if someone ends up getting caught on the wrong side of arbitrary thresholds. On another, by creating upper bounds, you're inevitably going to have minmaxers going right up to the line to maximize their power.

@Sierra

Since size is mostly just an aeshtetic factor here I don't think it is going to be an issue for powergaming. Also I think this is exclusive to warships. If somebody wants gigantic colony or merchant vessels those wouldn't count.

As for being co-GM I don't think I have the best track record in it. Assistant or adviser, zes. Brainstorming partner, sure. But my games tended to not hold out well even though I craft them meticulously. Sigma might be more apt id it is about contribution to this thread. Though it depends on how free he is.

[Sigma]

If made Co-GM, yeah, I got plenty of free time to manage things if need be.

[Willy Vereb]

Btw, what about the discord server?
Would Oz make it or perhaps we can let somebody else?

[ClocktowerEchos]

If I may, I am going to put forth against a discord server. It takes traffic away from the RP thread as people won't see a need to go on it as much once there is a Discord. In addition, it would be super hard for people who don't constantly check it to keep up. Sure you might go through 1 page and a half of threads but its a lot easier to read 20 some posts in order than a confused mess of some 100 messages on a discord server.

Also nominating Sigma for coGM

[DX3214]

With dealing with discord i am fine with that especially since i don't need to constantly refresh the page and also why @Willy Vereb don't you make it, it appears you know how to make one
And dealing with the GM i am neutral on that mater

[Legion02]

I agree with Clocktower on the discord thing. I also vote for Sigma for Co-GM.

[Willy Vereb]

Oz mentioned to distributing discord link to those who made sheets so I figure that's what is going to happen.
@ClocktowerEchosI also understand your concern and worded similar in the first page. The way I see it this can be worked out in some form through the following:

1.) Oz only handles out invites to those who already made a sheet. Not twiddling your tumbs here.
2.) We can mandate that important stuff have to be posted in the OOC so it won't lost
3.) Try enforcing a posting regimen so inactivity be averted.

How does it sound?