The War In Heaven: The Epic Role Play , the ideas thread.

[Iskander]

I'd personally go with an even simpler model.

MIlitary output/military output effectivity.

The first being your total military economic output and the second being how much of your actual infrastructure is geared toward military output.
a MOE of .2 would mean that only twenty percent of your industrial base is putting forward military ouput. Can simulate fairly simple the war gear up that's been pretty common in all our larger wars. Where in the end a lot of industry gets retooled to actual military output. Probably an aspect we'd excell at compared to other species.

That sounds even better. I'd look at it in terms of military output/total output, though. Presumably you'd model the growth of your total output - putting too much into strictly military production would retard growth. Uh, what do you mean by "output," though? Manufacturing output? Would military output just be whatever you were putting towards units and military facilities, or would it include military research?

[ed_montague]

I read it. Sort of.

Thing is, I'm sort of confused as to what will actually happen during the game. Could you give us a quick run-down of the proposed mechanics for the RP you're planning?

[Durabys]

Really guys, with space and asteroid mining, fusion tech that just needs to collect the most ubiqutous element in the universe to work and robotic automated manufactoring you quickly kill scarcity. Current form capatalism is un-appliable to this level of technology the Terran already possessed before Orgus contact. The Orgus are traders ... in luxury goods, xenoartifact trade, spy-mercenary jobs, information brokering, space-travel adjudants/assistants to other races (these guys are really not much like the Orgus from OTL) and industrial/economic advising. Also I hate all banks and the banking/fiat currency systems - so sue me now. Sorry. I need some form of incentive for the population to even work. I came to realise that I will have to make this more realistic then probably even Arioch is doing the comic version.

There is three true resource in the universe that cannot be harvested in the old fashioned way. It is the concentration of natural resources you are exploting, knowledge you possess and experience you gained (you could have knowledge about Plasma Focus beams but you must learn how to use it first). So a knowledge-driven and experience-valueing society with Resource-Based post scarcity society. Hmmm.

Ah, I remember now.

NO VON NEUMANING! Understood lads and lass.

Hmm. This will be easier then I thought. It will simplyfiy things.

I will use RU's = Resource Units - which will include matter, energy which is used to create IU's = Industrial Units - which will include the amount of industry you have - material and "immaterial".
And finally PU's = Production Units - which is what IU's generate. This last one will be most important because the cost of everything, plus RU generating hardware (minus IU generating hardware like factories and R&D) is stated in PU's.

It will work in a circle as you see.

[Hālian]

I propose that the US hold out longer than any other country, and still be technically independent of the Alliance :3

[bunnyboy]

I propose that the US hold out longer than any other country, and still be technically independent of the Alliance :3

No, because in 20 years China will buy the whole USA and collapse 10 years later. The last independent state of today countries would be North Korea or that is what we think, because in secretly they are already umiak slaves.

[Durabys]

WUT!?

[Iskander]

I should probably get to sleep, but - eh. I bet the component states of the Alliance would have a lot of autonomy. But the Alliance would do things - defense standardization. And they'd run procurement projects and have various organs. They'd collect contributions from member-states - I guess they'd get taxpayer money passed on to them. I mentioned running procurement projects - well, that'd tie in with standardization. They'd formulate requirements, probably with inputs from the various national militaries, which would probably still be fairly autonomous, and evaluate the proposals and award production contracts. Of course, as far as organizations like this go, they'd be pretty effective - there'd be no screw-ups like what ultimately happened with the Fiat G.91. (The aircraft had disappointing performance, the production runs were fairly small, half the countries that originally participated decided to go their own way, et cetera.)

Oh, and they'd provide a unified military command. Maybe the extent to which things are unified/standardized would increase over time. I could see a situation where the Alliance has a unified command but the various units are still more or less national, although they'd have unified procedures and training and they'd all speak English. Of course, probably one or two nations would crew/support most of the units - i.e. most of the warships might be either US or Chinese, and maybe Indian.

The Alliance would have its own system of security clearances/classified information. There would be secret projects - very secret ones - the Alliance itself would run. For instance, this could include research into telepathy. The Alliance could have some agency, whose very existence was a closely-guarded secret, that was responsible for performing research into it and maybe eventually in charge of whatever capability they got out of their research. For instance, if they managed to come up with Terran Farseers, they'd belong to this agency.

I think we can rule out a tech tree - that would be too much of a pain to arrange, and not really necessary. I imagine this RP would mostly be pretty abstract - fairly high-level management, to improve the economy and an abstract measure of overall technological/scientific development, especially that with military applications.

Each turn, I guess the economy would grow and you'd have a new figure for your total industrial capacity or whatever. You'd commit various portions of it for various purposes - build more factories, build more "mines," build units/improvements, etc. You could have a generalized measure of scientific/technical advancement and then you might have specific advances - i.e. at Tech Level 55 (no correspondence to GURPS tech levels) you can build Level 1 pulse cannons. Or maybe it isn't so hard and fast - maybe the specific advances are based on a dice roll (i.e. you get it this turn or you don't, with various odds) and your overall tech level modifies it. So, at Tech Level 50 you might attempt to start development of pulse cannons, but it'll be hard as hell and the dice rolls won't favor you.

There was an old 4X game I played - Reach for the Stars, or the 2000 SSG remake. That had a fairly simple, but still nice, ship design system. There were four hull types - destroyers (DD), cruisers (CA), dreadnoughts (DN) and superdreadnoughts (SD). Of course, within each size category there were specific designs, and they got more capable (you could fit more and better) as you researched better hull designs. So, you might be able to accommodate so many points worth of weapons, so many points of propulsion, so many points of armor and screens, etc. Propulsion performance would include acceleration capability and reaction mass reserve. Oh - navigation capability was an important aspect of ship design in RFTS. What this meant was that you could jump a longer distance between star systems, too.

Uh - would you pay for research and units with the same currency, or would there be something separate? i.e. you build labs and they produce so many research points per turn.

[bunnyboy]

WUT!?

Isn't that clear?
An Umiak ship had crashed down on times of cold war on to North Korea and its crew have took control there. But because their condition they have no power, technology or knowledge to concuer earth by either militaristic or economical ways. That's why they are so secretive and try to make us believe that everything is normal there. Last North Korean rocket and ufo over Soul are just examples of their failure attempts to send message to their home.

[Durabys]

I should probably get to sleep, but - eh. I bet the component states of the Alliance would have a lot of autonomy. But the Alliance would do things - defense standardization. And they'd run procurement projects and have various organs. They'd collect contributions from member-states - I guess they'd get taxpayer money passed on to them. I mentioned running procurement projects - well, that'd tie in with standardization. They'd formulate requirements, probably with inputs from the various national militaries, which would probably still be fairly autonomous, and evaluate the proposals and award production contracts. Of course, as far as organizations like this go, they'd be pretty effective - there'd be no screw-ups like what ultimately happened with the Fiat G.91. (The aircraft had disappointing performance, the production runs were fairly small, half the countries that originally participated decided to go their own way, et cetera.)

Oh, and they'd provide a unified military command. Maybe the extent to which things are unified/standardized would increase over time. I could see a situation where the Alliance has a unified command but the various units are still more or less national, although they'd have unified procedures and training and they'd all speak English. Of course, probably one or two nations would crew/support most of the units - i.e. most of the warships might be either US or Chinese, and maybe Indian.

The Alliance would have its own system of security clearances/classified information. There would be secret projects - very secret ones - the Alliance itself would run. For instance, this could include research into telepathy. The Alliance could have some agency, whose very existence was a closely-guarded secret, that was responsible for performing research into it and maybe eventually in charge of whatever capability they got out of their research. For instance, if they managed to come up with Terran Farseers, they'd belong to this agency.

I think we can rule out a tech tree - that would be too much of a pain to arrange, and not really necessary. I imagine this RP would mostly be pretty abstract - fairly high-level management, to improve the economy and an abstract measure of overall technological/scientific development, especially that with military applications.

Each turn, I guess the economy would grow and you'd have a new figure for your total industrial capacity or whatever. You'd commit various portions of it for various purposes - build more factories, build more "mines," build units/improvements, etc. You could have a generalized measure of scientific/technical advancement and then you might have specific advances - i.e. at Tech Level 55 (no correspondence to GURPS tech levels) you can build Level 1 pulse cannons. Or maybe it isn't so hard and fast - maybe the specific advances are based on a dice roll (i.e. you get it this turn or you don't, with various odds) and your overall tech level modifies it. So, at Tech Level 50 you might attempt to start development of pulse cannons, but it'll be hard as hell and the dice rolls won't favor you.

There was an old 4X game I played - Reach for the Stars, or the 2000 SSG remake. That had a fairly simple, but still nice, ship design system. There were four hull types - destroyers (DD), cruisers (CA), dreadnoughts (DN) and superdreadnoughts (SD). Of course, within each size category there were specific designs, and they got more capable (you could fit more and better) as you researched better hull designs. So, you might be able to accommodate so many points worth of weapons, so many points of propulsion, so many points of armor and screens, etc. Propulsion performance would include acceleration capability and reaction mass reserve. Oh - navigation capability was an important aspect of ship design in RFTS. What this meant was that you could jump a longer distance between star systems, too.

Uh - would you pay for research and units with the same currency, or would there be something separate? i.e. you build labs and they produce so many research points per turn.

That ^_^ is the spirit of this thread! Thank you Iskander.

[Michael]

I propose that the US hold out longer than any other country, and still be technically independent of the Alliance :3

No, because in 20 years China will buy the whole USA and collapse 10 years later. The last independent state of today countries would be North Korea or that is what we think, because in secretly they are already umiak slaves.

don't be silly, england will be the last super state standing!!
unfortunately i can't think of any thing to add to Iskander's post, when i come up with something i'll post it though!

[Iskander]

So, more on the economy - I liked the thing about the three types of economic capacity. I'd call them something else, though. The Alliance is probably going to have a market economy - the way to do it would be to somehow abstractly represent the growth of the private sector and then based on that, size the growth of the military-industrial sector. There is a way you could make that work with the proposed RU/IU system, though - you'd have some fraction of the total IC in the economy at your disposal. Let's call RUs Primary Capacity (i.e. primary-sector stuff - mining, mostly) and then ICs Industrial Capacity.

There'd be a certain number of PCs and ICs in your economy. I guess in peacetime you'd only have so many at your disposal - the rest would be in the private sector. And maybe the private sector would be more interested in using the ICs to make consumer goods - lots of consumer goods - than build more factories suitable for building military equipment, let's say. But maybe things get more and more crisis-y, and for the duration of the emergency you work out some arrangement for more direct control of the economy by the government - the companies agree to build what you direct, the unions make special wartime agreements, etc. So you get to directly control more of the IC in your economy and you can direct it as you please - i.e. use IC to make more IC and PC, use some to build units, etc. There'd have to be a downside to doing too much of that, though.

Primary capacity would definitely be localized. Depending on your tech level, there'd be only so much primary production you get out of a given system - i.e. you might be able to get 155 PC total out of Sol at TL62. And you might be producing, because you haven't fully expanded your mining and so on there, 130 PC. Improved technology would mean more PC out of a system and cheaper PC.

Organic (i.e. normal economic growth) would be modeled by new IC and PC being added each turn, presumably because someone in the private sector saw fit to build factories or mines or whatever.

Incidentally, is there anything we could use as a basis for the rules? There must be a paper-and-pencil wargame that models this kind of thing that could be used...

[Absalom]

Durabys, the 'War in Heaven' setting breaks that in one specific way: it isn't about individuals, it's about empires. When two post-scarcity empires fight each other, the doctrine of post-scarcity doesn't apply, because the only thing that DOES reliably apply is 'Production Of What Is Useful'. If you have a setting where one empire can be expected to deeply penetrate another without opposing forces having an impact then even that isn't what matters.



As for the mechanics, I propose the following:

1 energy unit: the EU. Yes, yes, but let's pretend the the real-world counterpart finally imploded (or renamed itself the Mediterranean Union, or whatever else).

6 (or 7, or...) Matter units:
RU (raw materials, such as iron ore)
SU (structural materials, such as Iron, Titanium, Concrete, various advanced materials such as Active Materials, etc.)
CU (Computronium, which is cheap in SU, but expensive in other things)
AU (Adamantites, things which improve structural traits: 1 SU + 1 AU = 3+ SU)
PU (Processites, things which are required for creating CU)
FU (Fussion materials)
This is to reflect a basic fact: not everything is immediately replaceable with other things.

Beyond that, divide things that can be produced into a couple different categories. Certain things are only realistically producible with certain manufacturing techniques, so something to reflect that should be in the system. For example:
Smelters: Produces SU from RU & EU
Then you could have some variations:
Tier 1 Advanced SU Factories: Produces SU (Reactive Materials?) from SU, CU, AU & EU
With the amount of SU produced indicating why you would want it.

For the basal equipment these would probably be the minimum starting position:
Smelters: for SU
Mining: for RU
H20 Crackers/Ram Scoops/Jupiter Pump Station: FU
Trace Purifiers: for AU & PU
Nano Etchers: for CU
Fusion Reactors: EU

You incorporate a 'tech tree' by having different types of equipment provide specific production improvements:
for example, this SU production equipment:
Magneto-Acoustic Plasma Sorters: Each provides +1 AU & +1 PU (total) for AU and/or PU production equipment (storable bonus)

Note that equipment is manufacturing equipment: the more Smelters you have, the more SU you produce. Also, equipment doesn't automatically upgrade to some new version. Bonuses apply only in the terms in which they are stated. Upgrades must be 'bought' with energy & materials.

For research, I'd say a dual system:
Resources allocated to research (in conjunction with a set of dice) dictate production improvements (most should probably relate to total production, instead of percentages).
Resources allocated to Secret Projects (very Manhattan Project/Alpha Centauri) increase the chances of developing some new technology.

Successful Secret Projects should probably provide bonuses for other Secret Projects. For example:
Secret Project : Magneto-Acoustic Plasma Sorters: +15 to Plasma Focus/Wave Loom

Ships/defense platforms/drone swarms (a.k.a. what I understand Battlefleet Gothic 'mines' to roughly be) would work like materials: only certain things (basically, correctly sized assembly plants) would be able to build them, and production would require other materials (some SU, etc., some components). They would obviously require occasional supplies (mostly energy).

Components would work roughly like ships/defense platforms/drone swarms: they can only be produced by specific equipment (e.g. Massive Electro-Deposition Arrays), and would require materials to be built. Once something is constructed from them, they 'disappear'.

A 'Politics' element might be good to model too (e.g. particularly inspiring projects might improve the resources you can use, military losses & failures could BOTH reduce the resources you can use, etc).

If Politics is modeled, then 'Acts Of God' (e.g. refugee ships, planetary disasters, 'massive' political shifts, etc.) might be a good thing to add too (fortunately, once a model is developed, this could be built by the DM entirely around some weighted dice rolls, so any or none of those example could be used for ALL potential dice rolls).

[Durabys]

I really like your contributions guys. One problem. I want to keep the number of resources low. The maximum is 3 different resources..

[Fotiadis_110]

If you need three limiting factors for your empire...
Make them Bulk materials, Energy sources, and Rare resources.

Bulk materials could be either such things as common earth metals (iron, copper, magnesium, calcium and similar), or if you want to base your industry and starships on being built from rock itself (which could be a good alternative!) and so forth.

Energy sources, may be derived from radioactives, fusion, or even more exotic materials... the mix of these various sources could be measured by a seperate figure if it matters, otherwise you could just cluster them all together and combine them into one setup.

As for Rare resources, things like platinum and such are difficult to find in open space, and there are no gold ore concentrating geological features known in space.
Such materials are rare, valuable and can be used as limiting features to some things such as utilising certain energy source types, or determining just how much you can invest into either shipbuilding or boosting your use of your energy uses.
In general: A works like a bulk material, limiting total output even if technology means that you have vast excesses of E and R.
E is a probable exponentially growing production curve, you need energy to utilise more energy, but it costs as you use it, and if you are between star systems finding new supplies to allow continued growth of total energy supply can be difficult, as is possessing enough material to make the journey without risking exhausting your supplies.
And then Rare resources... in the modern world obtaining these resources can represent the difference between being able to build what you desire, or being forced to use more difficult and slower means to obtain what you want, or worse being forced to preform excessive recurring maintenance or replacement of key components.
To simplify the difference that the supply of a single resource can have on your actual supply base and it's effects upon your economy, you could make them count as a separate resource, with limited capacity to store, obtain or utilise making it a major limiting factor on a highly developed and large scale force... either invest it into technology and build a small highly effective fleet, or do the reverse, with many lesser ships.
Odds are you'll be more useful with few better ships but it all depends how much you have to sacrifice to get it.

Also: Van Nummaning should be allowed... just add implications of the breakdown of information during replication...
Yay the robots consumed the Umiak... and now they are seeking a new biological food source... YOU!

[Absalom]

I do personally think there should be a Raw materials type too (as the root source of both Bulk & Rare resources), but I agree with the basic premise (though for Rare materials I would MOSTLY point to rare-earths instead of Gold).

As for Von Neumans, I agree that they should exist, but I'd suggest 'as equipment'. If you want (e.g.) self-reproducing ships, then just take the needed pieces of equipment (smelters, miners, automated shipyards, etc.), slap them onto a starship frame, and you have a Von Neuman (to put it another way, deal with them as clanking-replicators that might coincidentally use nanotechnology).

Does anyone have any ideas how ship-design could be implemented? I think it's obvious that you would want to simplify a design based on components down to a set of stats (for the sake of sanity), but does anyone have any ideas how?

[bunnyboy]

Isn't rare materials only part of raw/bulk materials? I mean, you can't just make more rare materials by concentrating on them.

I suggest
BU = Bulk units, which are raw and cheap materials and resources.
EU = Energy units
RU = Refined units, which are priced and manufactured resources, rare minerals or technology gizmoes. It will cost both BU & EU to produce.

[junk]

Isn't rare materials only part of raw/bulk materials? I mean, you can't just make more rare materials by concentrating on them.

I suggest
BU = Bulk units, which are raw and cheap materials and resources.
EU = Energy units
RU = Refined units, which are priced and manufactured resources, rare minerals or technology gizmoes. It will cost both BU & EU to produce.

I'd personally use these resources

Raw units - minerals, metals, fuels nada nada nada
Personell units (soldiers, scientists, workers etc etc)
Industrialised units - ready made warships, manufacturing plants etc etc.

[Absalom]

Isn't rare materials only part of raw/bulk materials? I mean, you can't just make more rare materials by concentrating on them.

Yeah, with my proposal I was figuring that all of the Structural Materials producers would produce 20 or more structural material units per raw material unit, while Adamantite/Processite producers would produce maybe 2-3 units per raw material unit. That one bonus would have been a fairly big one.

Personell units (soldiers, scientists, workers etc etc)

I don't think this is intended directly as a MoO RPG . Also, I certainly wouldn't want to have to handle those mechanics, ideally personnel modelling could be handled with dice rolls.

Industrialised units - ready made warships, manufacturing plants etc etc.

Is this supposed to be like MoO's 'money' (where you can sometimes buy things 'immediately'), or is it supposed to be those things already built? Because if the later, then either:
1) You run into "factories are not warships",
2) It's actually considered multiple resources, or
3) You shouldn't actually consider it a resource.


At any rate, this 3-resource really does look like the biggest limiting factor (a.k.a. no-one seems to agree what those three resources should be). Out of the last three proposals, I'd have to lean towards Fotiadis's suggestion. Most of your personnel would be in areas that I assume wouldn't be directly modeled (e.g. research), and could therefor be themselves approximated instead of being directly modeled.

[Durabys]

I am reading your ideas guys/gals. Just post and discuss.

[Iskander]

I think I have a nicely simple way to do it, based on what I posted previously.

Terminology:

Primary/Industrial Capacity (PC/IC)
Primary/Industrial Points (PP/IP)

Primary and Industrial Capacity would be built in various locations and represent infrastructure - mines, factories and so on. They would represent output of raw materials and factories, respectively. PC would output PP, which IC would use to output IP. IP would then be used to produce things - more IC and PC, units, etc. Without enough PP, the factories wouldn't be able to make things, of course.

In order to simplify things, both IC and PP would be empire-wide. You could use PP and IC produced anywhere to help make stuff anywhere else - this would simulate transporting raw materials between systems or, say, having manufacturing subcontractors. However, if something happened and, say, a given system was cut off and isolated - convoy raiders? - it would no longer be able to contribute its output because the shipments would keep getting destroyed - loss of supply lines. You wouldn't get the ICs or PPs it contributed, then.

For constructing units, specific facilities - shipyards, probably - would be required. The unit would be built at the shipyard built it would receive IC from various places. So, you might have factories (IC) in Alpha Centauri, Tau Ceti and Sol. They'd all produce so much IP each turn. Some of the IPs from all three areas could be pooled and sent to a shipyard in Sol that was working on a new battlecruiser, say. The shipyard thing could be pretty abstract - it could just be a measure of ship-building capacity in a given system, and there would be other, similar mechanisms in the rules.

You would only be able to use some of the ICs and PPs for military production, at least initially; not all of it would be part of the command economy. Each turn, there would be organic growth - private-sector stuff. A lot of IC and PC would be built on its own in various systems just by itself. As a rough representation of defense budget, you'd be able to devote up to a certain portion of IC as you pleased - either to build more IC and PC as you directed or else to build units and so on.

Like I said earlier, technology could be represented by general technological levels, perhaps in several categories. Those would probably grow on their own. Then there would be specific advances - I think I need to detail ship design first.

(By the way, does it necessarily have to be the Outsider setting? We could have something Outsider-like that worked somewhat differently but was spiritually similar.)

In RFTS, ship designs had several aspects. First, there was the hull/spaceframe. Then there was propulsion, ECM, shielding, navigation, and weapons.

(Here's a link: http://www.ssg.com.au/rfts.htm )

It's pretty self-explanatory. The hull determined how much you could pack in and armor and drove most of the cost. Propulsion determined how the thing moved in combat - combat in RFTS was pretty simple, but they modeled being at different ranges, and different weapons had varying ranges. With better propulsion than your opponent, you could outrun him and dictate the range at which the engagement was fought - i.e. you could keep your enemies at a distance, where your weapons had an advantage and his weapons could not reach effectively. ECM and shielding affected defenses. And navigation determined the range of interstellar jumps.

Many of the technologies, then, would be these ship design items. They'd be advances. You could research them when your relevant tech levels in various fields were sufficiently advanced - there'd be a bit of leeway. You might research them a bit earlier but it would be harder.

Next, I think you'd roll the dice to determine how well the advances turned out - your design teams might do more or less well. They might screw up designing your destroyer hull, let's say. But you could always invest a bit more to get a good design. The GM could give us some leeway. It might be trouble, but we could simulate some aspects of defense procurement.

There could be private-sector design teams - from companies, let's say. For now, let's assume that you know about the general tech levels - maybe your armed forces have a systems command and a procurement organization and they did some studies - and you issue a requirement for a new weapon, which corresponds to a specific advance. You get to pick from several different research teams, which affect your dice rolls and how the actual weapon's stats will probably turn out, and then you roll based on that. I suppose that if a specific research team is busy it can't work on anything else while it's busy. It might be pretty free-flow - i.e. you decide you need a new ship design, draw up some stats, and based on some formulas and rules see how hard that is to develop, and then pick a team and roll based on that. But I think the broad categories, esp. in weapons, would be fixed - you'd have free-forming and leeway on specific designs.

i.e. "Hmm, we need a new weapon for our ships - let's base it on X-ray laser technology - let's make it do so much damage, consume so much power, and be so big, ideally - let's look at these proposals from these research teams - okay, we pick Derpcorp - let's roll - " and then several turns later, based on the rolls, "Oh, we got our X-ray laser cannon. Now let's put it on stuff."

But that might be too much trouble. And you'd need to fund it somehow.