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

[Fotiadis_110]

The benefit behind Rare materials being something specific, rather than a product comes down to the fact that if you can produce it with bulk plus energy, then you can easily harness that in game as is, by charging a heap of those two, making the resource worthless!
Rare materials are KEY resources, limiting features that would vary from system to system, place to place, even time to time due to bottlenecks in processing capacity.

Platinum is a highly rare, and highly versatile catalyst with a heap of other useful properties.
There are MANY situations where the only sensible catalyst is Platinum, thus why I referred to it.
Gold is precious because it is turned into wonderful jewellery.
As such it was considered to have value and be something wonderful and precious...
Thus vaults of the stuff are held by a variety of banks around the world.
In modern terms it is almost useless compared to something like aluminium.

Rare materials might be highly concentrated in one system, then a high tech society will rejoice, being able to harness as much resources as possible while there, but they will starve in lesser systems, while a low tech society might struggle to find enough use for it given their industrial capacity, but will be far more comfortable with supplying themselves in lesser systems.
Also a high tech society would burn through stores of such quickly, while a low would utilise them for far longer and far more easily.


Another aspect is that while bulk materials will often be utilised and wasted during the research process, most of the time rare materials will be used, but NOT CONSUMED due to the intrinsic worth and value of the materials, as it will be worth recovering them.
This means that even science will require access to a certain quantiity of your limiting nutrient even while in dead systems where access to a small quantitiy of rares could mean a couple more starships to win or lose a battle forcing players to make choices... not to mention if you have spent all your stocks of spares you cannot just increase research due to the limiting nature of the 'allocated stocks' of rares in the science sector.
Finally: energy can be utilised in different manners, such as construction (boosting ability to process and build), mining (collecting bulk and rares), research, and maintenance (things like growing food, protecting craft, simply repairing starships and so on)
If you over-allocate the improvement of energy and construction infastracture you won't be mining enough to utilise them, if you overdo mining your stores will full quickly but you won't be able to use many of them, if you over-allocate to research you won't be building up enough or mining sufficently to properly harness your developments, and as your population and development grows it will cost you more and more to maintain and repair your fleet, not to mention feeding all the poor children.

[Durabys]

If there is one thing I am not going to allow in game it is rare materials. That is bull shit. A single 1000m asteroid having 10 percent of its volume made up of platinum has more platinum in it as is the total sum of all platinum mined between 1900 and 2050 and still having enough to last for another 50 years. Now you will argue that OK, but there is only that much of those Near Earth Asteroids in the Sol system and the ships gonna need platinum for ... ... AH! armor, tens of thosands of tons of armor. Two problems with that theory: 1st) the astoroid belt has around a million of simmilar sized asteroid and 2nd) Terrans have working FTL that means humanity has access to nearly a Galaxy's worth of real estate.

Sorry but cheap space lift is a GAME CHANGER of such proportions that it is not even funny. If I am going to make this PR I am going to beef up and de-idiot-ball the Loroi and Umiak and, Uh, well, every other race as well to make it more realistic. So you can count that the Terrans, Umiaks and Loroi will have tens of thousadns of capital ships ... EACH ... by the time this RP is finished.

Of course. Multiple single unique resources like e.g. old artifacts, a special crystal found on planet X that increase psionic potential by 100 percent or a diamond that if a laser is put hrough it works like a super laser focuser for the Death Star - for the last one you will have to get a VERY high roll score. That is OK with me.

[Fotiadis_110]

I was more thinking of you entering a star system, visiting the asteroid field and identifying the average composition was 10,000 units of raws and a few hundred rares while having say 7,000 units of energy.

Then splitting say 40 more rares off into research because you wanted to improve your technology, and then devoting the other 260 into ships (120), fleetwide upgrades (100) while spending a few on upgrading the mining facilities so next time you can mine 10% more in the same system because you plan to stay for 2 or 3 years/turns BECAUSE OF these rich resources before finally moving on.

The following year you might discover the rares left in the neighbourhood aren't as rich as you hoped (a 20% drop in total available to you) taking you from the enthusiastic situation of planning to have a 30% surplus to store each turn till you leave the system, down to a 10% surplus...

Also it would force your travellers the choice to make: do you store bulky resources and produce on the move? or focus on this limiting resource so when you get to the next system you can focus on collecting as much bulks as possible?
The 'rares' would be a single generic limiting factor, which could also be a GM tool to help prevent run-away expansion or to help boost the players when sheer bad luck on dice rolls is making the game harder than even YOU intended :p

Let us not forget, not every star system is conveniently set out, some star systems are likely to have very low density asteroid fields, such things could severely reduce mining potential, even though the system itself is very large compared to the size of the mobile fleet, so do you head over to that really big rock at 12oclock that your med tech laser examiner has an apparently low Rares content, or head over to that dispersed cluster of rocks at the 3 oclock that appear to have a higher content but will limit the availability of bulk materials needed to produce star-ships?
And do you really afford to split up the fleet to try to do both (which could be seen as an obvious solution) when you are under the risk of attack from local aliens who would prefer you weren't mining in a star-system so close to their own?
It would only take you a few star systems to get into the practice of understanding exactly how much resources you need to look at and get a good feel for the consumption of your players, and how best to force them to make difficult decisions with limited information.

[Durabys]

*sighs*

You are the ones trying to complicate this.

Everything that I wanted are basic three resources ... and now I think that two is better then three.

I said on the beginning that I am a 'Good' GM/DM, which means that most of time I won't be using dice rolls and will be using my sheet with stats and info instead and most *90%of all rolls in the RP* actions will be either good or neutral in nature.

You would either get a random event with a bad roll that you cannot influence *5% of all rolls in the RP*, have to f*ck up collosally *like pissing off the GM/DM, Ad Hominem Attacks or Trolling* or make a true stupid decission *5% of all rolls in the RP* - in which case I will ask you before each such decission if you really want to go through with it - which will work as a kind of alarm for you that if the GM asks questions about the quality of your action it means you will be screwed over if you do it.

[Arioch]

If I am going to make this PR I am going to beef up and de-idiot-ball the Loroi and Umiak and, Uh, well, every other race as well to make it more realistic.

"de-idiot-ball"?

[Fotiadis_110]

*sighs*

You are the ones trying to complicate this.

Everything that I wanted are basic three resources ... and now I think that two is better then three.

Really?
The fact is that with a two major resource system such as energy and Bulk materials one is needed to boost the other, and then the second can be used to overdrive the first, leading to exponential growth which is difficult to check.
That is the nature of things like bulk mass and energy!

If I HAD to pick I would turn energy into a separate stockpile, or something you have in excess (engines harness more energy than all of the other subsystems combined, so there is always plenty energy available when mostly drifting, so why include it at all?)
This would make Bulk the common resource needed in everything, access to it allows a wide variety of projects with minimal difficulty, while rare resources are a limiting feature preventing runaway growth, using more bulk to obtain rare is a difficult proposition, but you don't particularly need rare to obtain bulk resources, either, but the quanity of rare you have at your disposal limits what you can do, and access to quantities of bulk is essential for a large number of projects like major construction.
You would only need to track your bulk resources if travelling away from mining supplies in the first place...

And the issue of going Rare plus Energy is that you don't need much rare to build things like star-ships really, so you can build a new fleet in the dead of space while away from star-systems... where do you get the metal plates from? Nowhere?

The biggest advantage in my opinion of three is that boosting your ability to invest in acquisition of bulk mass would require energy and mass itself (because freighters don't need jump drives if they can just dock), thus being a fairly cheap resource to harness. Meanwhile energy wouldn't use much bulk mass, but harness tons of energy and rares, making it exceedingly expensive (resource wise) for any desired gain, but the ability to increase your harvest of Bulk materials would allow for improved ability and speed to collect rares, which would take energy to be able to refine, but rares being a variable resource you would have to plan accordingly to collect and store and spend according to what you feel you can afford, rather than being able to just mass produce whatever you want!
_________

As for De-idiot-ball I suspect it may be linked to these two races ignorance about those who escaped, plus humanities 'isolation' being removed as a factor.
But Durabys is the one who understands what he means better than I do.

[Absalom]

Durabys, I honestly don't think that a "Master of Orion Forum RPG" is in any way, shape, or form , a good idea. I strongly suggest that you revamp the entire IDEA as some sort of political sim, THAT might work well with 2 or 3 resource types per player.

And reducing the resource count really won't help. You're just convincing me that your concept of this doesn't match the suggestions from anyone else, calling into question the point of all this (admittedly I'm considering spinning something out of all this, but I'm not a GM (last time I tried, I accidentally killed it off, before that I accidentally invented Doom-Beavers), and I'm not inclined to incorporate many of your ideas or responses: having the players adopt specific positions, for example, strikes me as a poor design choice). Honestly, I would probably go with 5 for any sort of empire rpg, and maybe 1-3 more for politics, depending on how many things I decided to focus on (I might decide to simplify the materials/production side, after all).



Since it's roughly the same subject anyways, I'd like some suggestions from any of you on a project of my own. It'll be a turn-based multiplayer space-empire game (this thread got me thinking about it, though the end-result could certainly be adapted to any setting that allows definable territories). The setting is "generic" (I'm thinking design-a-race via dice rolls, where the dice rolls choose either a table to select a trait from, or the particular trait within a table that you choose), and the game will presumably be computer-based (alternatively, I might come up with some stats sheets). Based on my previous suggestion (and Fotiadis's suggestion following mine), I'm thinking about using:
EU: energy units. Technically restricted to a single system, but storable and thus transportable (important for most ships!).

BU: base units. The stuff that you extract everything else out of.
SU: structural units.
RU: rare units. Rich deposits occur at no more than 1 RU within 20 BU.
FU: fuel units. Realistically fusion fuel.

PU: personnel units. Production/research. Military uses probably won't be counted.

CU: cargo units. Freighters.

Does anyone have suggestions for what should be used to model the Political domain? I'm wanting to incorporate shifting political landscapes (that preferably factor in industry/research/military, AND apply to external forces).

I'm also not real fond of the personnel thing. Any suggestion for how to model staff training (this would also apply for military stuff)?

I'll be using my equipment/factories/whatever stuff (lets start pumping Jupiter!).

I like Iskander's shipyard suggestion too (though I'm inclined to implement it differently), though I'm (somewhat obviously) not convinced on the (PC/IC)/(PP/IP) mechanic. I like the basic idea, but I think the effect should arise out of politics.

I might add financial effects, but that would only be for the sake of modelling financial meltdowns .

Modelling will probably be at the level of star systems. I figure that I'll go with either 3-virtual-month or 6-virtual-month turns, so abstracting things across a star system shouldn't be a problem. This also provides a way to insert Iskander's supply lines.

For ships, I'm thinking start with hulls. Iskander's destroyer/cruiser/dreadnought/superdreadnought mix, + boat swarms (because they include missile swarms!) & corvettes should be fine. Probably have a certain set of traits (e.g. 2 super-heavy spinals, 4 heavy turrets, 4 (100 thrust) engines), use a formula & the tech level you'll be using to estimate the hull traits, then use a combination of dice rolls & resource allocation to find the details. You then get to take already researched engines/weapons/etc., that DO NOT EXCEED the specifications used in the hull design, and create a ship design from that. Then you simplify that design down to a set of stats. Building the ship will require access to infrastructure that produces the required OR higher level materials, and reduce the output of that infrastructure by the amount required to build the ship.

Thoughts and/or suggestions?

[Durabys]

First of all can you, Fotiadis_110, condense your posts just a little bit. I don't need essays on thi topic. Help is appreciated but this is a little too much.

Idiot Ball by TV tropes and idioms - http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdiotBall - it is also called Authorial Fiat by some.

Originally I had three resources that had NOTHING to do with actual physical resources and that very nicely check your building speed and prevent Von Neumaning but NO!

UPDATED: How is that game called Absalom?

[Absalom]

Then you should have suggested them from the get-go, we're Humans, not Loroi! Subtlety on the internet is for fools, dare-devils, and fiction writers; if it touches on something that's actually important, then subtlety has no place in an internet discussion.

[Durabys]

Then you should have suggested them from the get-go, we're Humans, not Loroi! Subtlety on the internet is for fools, dare-devils, and fiction writers; if it touches on something that's actually important, then subtlety has no place in an internet discussion.

More like I don't have time to read Walls of Text. That is why.

[Arioch]

Idiot Ball by TV tropes and idioms - http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdiotBall - it is also called Authorial Fiat by some.

So... what you're saying is that the Outsider races are "idiot balled"?

[ed_montague]

Idiot Ball by TV tropes and idioms - http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdiotBall - it is also called Authorial Fiat by some.

So... what you're saying is that the Outsider races are "idiot balled"?

OHSHIT (pardon the Klingon)

[Absalom]

UPDATED: How is that game called Absalom?

It doesn't need a name right now, because other than allocating Action Points to players (to restrict how much they can do in a turn), I'm not certain for to deal with various things (especially the Politics/Diplomacy duality).

Idiot Ball by TV tropes and idioms - http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdiotBall - it is also called Authorial Fiat by some.

So... what you're saying is that the Outsider races are "idiot balled"?

Yeah, I don't think he caught that counter-point to "post-scarcity" that I mentioned several posts back.

[Durabys]

Idiot Ball by TV tropes and idioms - http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdiotBall - it is also called Authorial Fiat by some.

So... what you're saying is that the Outsider races are "idiot balled"?

More like "simplified", a typical space opera like Mass Effect &co. It would take you years just to write down the story and a decade of non stop drawing to make the comics if you choose to go down the route of, for example, Ian Banks.

It may look like a personal attack - but it is not from my point of view *I have diagnosed low case ADHD , so I have the social skills of a rock *.

If you retort that I am critising you I will reply that you are one of the few who have the talent to pull it off if they really threw a lot of time at it. I will confess I wouldn't be capable to do it.

UPDATED: How is that game called Absalom?

It doesn't need a name right now, because other than allocating Action Points to players (to restrict how much they can do in a turn), I'm not certain for to deal with various things (especially the Politics/Diplomacy duality).

Idiot Ball by TV tropes and idioms - http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdiotBall - it is also called Authorial Fiat by some.

So... what you're saying is that the Outsider races are "idiot balled"?

Yeah, I don't think he caught that counter-point to "post-scarcity" that I mentioned several posts back.

Now I am confused. You are talking about me or Arioch?

[Fotiadis_110]

Scarcity: is the minimisation or lack of something.

Posts are what we do to forums.

If you insist on our making posts almost empty, then there is very little content which makes understanding the point of view of others is difficult at best.

YES i make walls of text, and explain my point of view clearly, it is a part of how i deal with my own ADHD, by covering all parts of my idea and logic, it becomes more obvious to others what I am thinking allowing you a snapshot into my idea properly rather than allowing others to draw their own (often incorrect) conclusions about what I am trying to say.

Then you go and say i'm not allowed to explain myself v_v

And manage to imply the races of outsider have been hit with the idiot stick (that is what idiot-balled implies, although it also means that the races were hit by the stick due to the story reasons), I must say oh that part I disagree, although their ability to stop and investigate the world around them (ok universe then ) is limited due to that other guy intending to kill them all if they so much as sneeze at the wrong time.

And Arioch was trying to ask you what weaknesses you had seen in his character and race designs, because tbh if you stop and read the MASSIVE walls of text in insider you get a very strong and understanding view into how these races think, live and act according to their own experiences, cultures and viewpoints on the universe.
I'm bit sure that writing a written history of their entire world, every person who lived in it, and might perhaps be a great grand parent of someone who was shown in the story for a single picture or closer related would have very little to add to the story, and would certainly slow down the rate of production of the comic.
Don't give the almighty a reason to not show us his loverly pictures. ._.

If someone said your delighted creation was somehow stupid Durabys, without a word of explanation about what part showed such silliness I'd anticipate you'd be a bit offended yourself would you not?

[Durabys]

Ok. Good points Fotiadis_110, but ...

Idiot balled due to plot and time constraints. If Arioch went with true realism he/she would spend the next ten years with fleshing out the story - so instead he/she simplified it, which is good for the speed of updates *now a lot of you think Arioch updates slowly, I on the other hand thinks he/she updates quite fast actually if only a single person works on the story and comic itself*.

For your information - nearly every godamn story writer and movie/tv-serie director out there idiot balls his/her creation because of A) limited understanding of the full nature of the universe he/she created and so cannot fully comperhend how to make the characters use the in-universe resources competently (that is not the case with Arioch) or B) time or money constrains. So when I said Arioch 'Idiot-balled it' , it was neither criticism or a compliment BUT a statement of a general fact.

Do you know how much money graphic artists and CGI wizards want these days - it is getting worse, just the Battle over Antarctica in SG1 Season 7 finale has eaten a budget equivalent to the actors wages for the next two seasons or the budget of Avatar was 90% of graphic artists salaries.

Next thing is time. Time is money too. The longer it takes Arioch to create his/hers story and comic drawings, the less he/she has time for a life and also for his/hers job. Which is a problem. So 'simplifying' things is the way to go.

If anyone will still point out that I insulted Arioch and that I should apologize myself for it then I am informing you that for something I didn't do in the first place I won't apologize myself for, end of line. This is becoming ridiculous people. I am spent and I have enough of this pointless debate. Can we frackin get over with this and continue with fleshing out the RP instead of the stupid guilt-poiting please.

UPDATED: If Arioch wants to continue to discuss with me the way I seemed to talk about him and Outsider, then he can communicate-it with me over PM's.

PS: Personally, I have very good opinions of Arioch.

[Grayhome]

Writing up a quick dissertation on over a dozen alien races who have recorded history dating back several thousand years would be quite a monumental feat. I believe that Durabys was attempting to underline this without meaning to insult Arioch.

[Iskander]

Once again, there have been 4X space-based boardgames.

http://billinghurst.spalding.gen.nz/Web ... paign.html

The issue is that none of us have a copy of anything like that and I don't think you could find complete rules online. And the above looks rather complicated.

[Durabys]

Writing up a quick dissertation on over a dozen alien races who have recorded history dating back several thousand years would be quite a monumental feat.

Exactly. Arioch's summaries are nice. Really nice. As in 'better then most authors would do'. But it still wouldnd't be neough for the comic if Arioch went with realism.

[Absalom]

So... what you're saying is that the Outsider races are "idiot balled"?

Yeah, I don't think he caught that counter-point to "post-scarcity" that I mentioned several posts back.

Now I am confused. You are talking about me or Arioch?

To Arioch, about you.

Incidentally, if your "idiot-balled" assessment is based on a perception of a lack of post-scarcity in the comic, then I disagree with you.

When two post-scarcity civilizations wage war against each other, the term "post-scarcity" no longer applies. Post-scarcity only applies when production meets or exceeds the reasonable demands of the entire group that it applies to. When two post-scarcity civilization go to war against each other their individual production demands are very simply "as much as it takes to kill the other guy". Thus, it either doesn't deserve to be called a war even if it is one (a more deserved description would be "one-sided slaughter"), or the civilizations in question are by definition not post-scarcity for the duration of the war, because during the war there is demand that isn't met.

Additionally, if production is slow enough, then even your production capacity doesn't matter. Instead, only the forces that you already have available matter, because the war will be decided by already existing forces before newly produced/trained units can reach the battlefield (this is a large part of why the US maintains such a large standing military; the same goes for a number of other nations).

In addition to that, if the opposing standing forces can penetrate far enough beyond your borders with sufficient military force, then even the forces that you currently have won't decide the victor, because you will automatically lose in case of war! All that you can do is return the favor, because you can't defend yourself (this is what the US faced from the Soviet Union during the Cold War).

In short, civilizations that are genuinely waging war (instead of just bullying someone else) are INHERENTLY NOT post-scarcity, by virtue of the very fact that they're in the middle of a war.


If you labelled the characters idiot-balled for some other reason, then you should post that reason.

If someone said your delighted creation was somehow stupid Durabys, without a word of explanation about what part showed such silliness I'd anticipate you'd be a bit offended yourself would you not?

Personally, I'd tend to think they were fools (however, I work with the public, where fools are readily available...).

Idiot balled due to plot and time constraints. If Arioch went with true realism he/she would spend the next ten years with fleshing out the story - so instead he/she simplified it,

I read the TvTropes page, so I know full-well that idiot-balled DOES NOT mean what you just said. Idiot-balling is when the author turns one or more characters into (either metaphorical or literal) idiots, basically always for story reasons. Simplifying IS NOT idiot-balling.

For your information - nearly every godamn story writer and movie/tv-serie director out there idiot balls his/her creation because of A) limited understanding of the full nature of the universe he/she created and so cannot fully comperhend how to make the characters use the in-universe resources competently (that is not the case with Arioch) or B) time or money constrains. So when I said Arioch 'Idiot-balled it' , it was neither criticism or a compliment BUT a statement of a general fact.

You have given us no reason to believe that your assessment is correct. Everything that we've seen from the characters is perfectly reasonable (why no human post-scarcity? 1: how do you know that it doesn't exist? 2: post-scarcity is only one of several paths for the future, it is foolish to blindly assume it).

Do you know how much money graphic artists and CGI wizards want these days - it is getting worse, just the Battle over Antarctica in SG1 Season 7 finale has eaten a budget equivalent to the actors wages for the next two seasons or the budget of Avatar was 90% of graphic artists salaries.

Next thing is time. Time is money too. The longer it takes Arioch to create his/hers story and comic drawings, the less he/she has time for a life and also for his/hers job. Which is a problem. So 'simplifying' things is the way to go.

Do you know how much time is involved in all of that? They were paid that much because they had to do a massive amount of work.

If anyone will still point out that I insulted Arioch and that I should apologize myself for it then I am informing you that for something I didn't do in the first place I won't apologize myself for, end of line.

I never thought you were trying to insult him, my assessment is that you're saying something ridiculous.

Once again, there have been 4X space-based boardgames.

http://billinghurst.spalding.gen.nz/Web ... paign.html

The issue is that none of us have a copy of anything like that and I don't think you could find complete rules online. And the above looks rather complicated.

Also, anything based on a formal map like that strikes me as unsuitable for a forum game (unless someone wants to write a server-side plug-in).