Voting discussion

[Steve]

Or alternatively once you add up the points you've put for your class that gives you the class's per-unit cost in industrial points, reflecting that the ship is larger.

I'll try to think up the whole system, bbiab.

[Hotfoot]

So people want something like this?

Light Cruiser:
Speed Rating: 4
Guns: 2
Torpedoes: 4
Protection: 2
Range: 4

Is that's what is wanted?

Not even that complex. I'd be happy with the following:

Light Cruiser:
Role: Scout, Air Defense, Escort Killer
Weaknesses: Low Armor
Strengths: Speed

Even if that's not accurate to what light cruisers did, that would be a very straightforward and self contained reference card so people know what they're getting. I have no idea what purpose torpedoes have over guns or why I 'd want to have one or the other for the ship. If we MUST have a construction system, or some way to modify naval ships, let's do it like the proposed infantry system (at least the one I remember) where you can add brigades to modify a division. Want fast cruisers? Throw on the "fast ship" modification or something like that.

[Cynical Cat]

So people want something like this?

Light Cruiser:
Speed Rating: 4
Guns: 2
Torpedoes: 4
Protection: 2
Range: 4

Is that's what is wanted?

Fuck that. I'm managing an imperial nation state, not playing a fleet simulator. "Light cruiser" is as far as I should need to go. Additional detail should be optional, allowing people who like that shit to do it and others not to bother with it.

[Steve]

I see that Cat, but since I just spent some time writing this up, I'm gonna post it anyway.

Okay, let's try this.

Six stat categories for naval vessels to determine performance, not counting subs and carriers - well, not entirely counting carriers, anyway.


Speed Rating:
0: Less than 10 knots probably. Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream...
1: Less than 20 knots. Submersibles and auxiliaries basically, or any pre-dreadnought battleships you still have lingering around.
2: 20-24 knots. This would be the speed of pretty much all dreadnought-type battleships.
3: 24-28 knots. Earlier battlecruisers for this speed.
4: 28-32 knots. Some heavy cruisers, battlecruisers, and fast battleships primarily. Maybe also some older, slower light cruisers and 1900-1910 destroyers.
5: 32+ knots. Newest battlecruisers, large cruisers, really big fast battleships. Plus cruisers and destroyers.


Guns:
0: Don't you know that guns take up weight and space better used for fishing equipment?
1: 5" or lower main armament. Destroyers, submarines, auxiliaries and some armed merchantmen. Light stuff.
2: 6"-7" main armament. Light cruiser-grade armaments.
3: 8"-11" main armament. Heavy cruiser-grade, including the "near-battleship" quality 10" and 11" calibers like seen on the German Panzerschiff-type vessels built in the Interbellum period. Also, the older 35 and 40 calibers-long main guns of a pre-dreadnought, even if 12", would count as a 3 because of their reduced penetration capability due to shorter barrels.
4: 12"-15" main armament. Older battleship grade guns. Ships up to the mid-10s would be using these. Note that some believe the British 15"/42 Mark 1 was the best battleship caliber naval gun that Britain ever designed, so a 4-rated ship is not necessarily a "slouch" in the firepower department.
5: 16"+ armament. This is the latest stuff: Nagato was the first ship, in 1917, to be laid with 16" guns in mind, and the range and penetration power of guns take a good jump here... as well as their shell weights, surpassing a ton per round. 18" guns will go even further, with 3,000 pound plus weight shells. The best battleship guns in the world basically, with some variety (16"/50 with "superheavy" shells permits similar penetration to standard 18" shells due to ballistics characteristics at a faster firing rate due to the lighter round, but 18" shells still have better raw power behind them).


Torpedoes:
Okay, I'll be honest, this entire category is rather, well, it doesn't rate a 1-5. You have torpedoes or you don't. A load of about 20 torpedoes is standard and will be a miniscule amount of tonnage on anything save, maybe, a destroyer or sub (or motor torpedo boat).

I'd make torpedoes unimportant at all to the cost of a ship due to this, with the exception maybe of carriers since it can represent the load they have for their aircraft. Instead, use the rating to determine if you carry them at all and how prominent they are for the ship's anti-ship armament.

0: Carries no torpedoes. Newer battleships basically.
1: Older battleships.
2: Older battleships, Battlecruisers.
3: Large Cruisers, arguably, as well as heavy cruisers. Light Carriers.
4: Light Cruisers.
5: Destroyers and Submarines. Fleet Carriers.



Protection:
0: Unarmored in any way. Small wooden vessels like fishing boats and trawlers. Arguably submersibles as well.
1: Light splinter protection, destroyers and auxiliaries.
2: Splinter protection, armored against light caliber guns. Light Cruiser protection, arguably light carrier as well.
3: Better Splinter protection, well-armored against light caliber guns, could potentially resist a few hits from heavier cruiser quality. Early battlecruisers.
4: 1905-1920-era battleship protection. First generations of dreadnought-type battleships and newer battlecruisers.
5: 1920+ era. 14" belts or better (though not much better, past 14" the effectiveness of the protection starts going down in relation to the weight), 6"+ decks. Early anti-torpedo defenses like bulges or bulkhead systems.


Anti-Air:
I'd almost say this is like torpedoes, but not quite. On smaller vessels even good anti-air guns are a decent chunk of weight; on battleships you can have 50, 60 of them, even more depending on ship size.
0: Unprotected against aircraft.
1: Machine guns that can raise high enough to shoot at aircraft.
2: Bigger Machine guns, 20mm anti-air, more of 'em.
3: 1" anti-air combined with 20mm.
4: 40mm and 20mm or 1" anti-air, lots of 'em.
5: Same as above, but the ship's secondary battery consists of dual-purpose guns and mounts that let you shoot 4 or 5" gun shells at aircraft. This would be newest Battleship level or, perhaps, specialized cruisers like the US Atlanta-class of World War II.


Range:
(Note: nm = Nautical Miles)
0: Coastal boat. Don't bring it up to flank speed unless you feel like rowing home.
1: Still a coastal boat. Torpedo Boat and Coastal Subs. Range of less than 2,000nm at normal cruise speed.
2: Limited oceanic range. Older destroyers and submarines primarily. Range over 2,000nm at cruise.
3: Moderate oceanic range. Destroyers, submarines, older cruisers primarily. Range of 4,000 to 5,000nm.
4: Extended oceanic range. Most capital ships, larger and newer cruisers, "fleet submarines". Range of 6,000nm or more.
5: Trans-oceanic range. Fast ships, newer capital ships and even cruisers, designed due to need for covering great ranges from homeland to colonies. Range of 10,000nm+.

And I see what you're saying Hotfoot, I suppose you could define vessels like that, but it tells you very little of their actual capability. You also have to consider that capital ships especially have gotten bigger and more potent, so that while both a 30,000-ton and 50,000-ton ship can be described as doing the same thing, the latter has the edge in pretty much all categories.

[Hotfoot]

I see that Cat, but since I just spent some time writing this up, I'm gonna post it anyway.

Okay, let's try this.

Six stat categories for naval vessels to determine performance, not counting subs and carriers - well, not entirely counting carriers, anyway.

Dear god no. The idea was bad to start, and that makes it worse. Look, think Civilization, not Space Empires.

And I see what you're saying Hotfoot, I suppose you could define vessels like that, but it tells you very little of their actual capability. You also have to consider that capital ships especially have gotten bigger and more potent, so that while both a 30,000-ton and 50,000-ton ship can be described as doing the same thing, the latter has the edge in pretty much all categories.

I don't give a shit about real world capabilities. I want to know what in-game effects my ships have when I have to make a rough comparison against other in-game ships. For the LAST TIME, this is not going to be a battleship porn simulator for most of us. Every ship class can have basic understood capabilities (armor, speed, firepower), with little extras here and there for utility. That's really all we need to know. The tonnages are meaningless to most of us and add more complexity than this game requires.

Look, I'll make a quick system:

Escorts
Cruisers
Battleships
Submarines

Assume that Escorts are the fastest, have light armor and weapons, are often meant for screening out enemy fighters, bombers, subs, and other light ships. Most common in convoys, may not even be needed for this system

Cruisers have lower speed than escorts, but better armor and weapons.

Battleships have the best armor and weapons, but the worst overall speed.

Submarines have very little surface attack options, no Air Defense value, but can be used covertly to pick off enemy ships in a fight or to disrupt trade lanes.

Throw on modifiers like this:

Scout Vessel (+speed, -armor or weapons)
Anti-Air (+AA function)
Anti-Sub (+Sonar, -Attack vs. surface shps, +attack vs. submerged vessels)
Anti-Capital (+weapons, -speed or armor)
Reinforced Bulkheads (+armor, -speed or weapons)

Look! It's useful! Limit the number of possible upgrades per ship type, and increase the cost for each one by some relative value, say 20% ship cost, and there you go.

[Steve]

You know what, if the people who don't know navy stuff want heavily-abstracted stuff they can feel free to it, but I actually have a fleet drawn up and prepared for use and I'd like to use it.

But I still think even your supremely-abstracted system should reflect tonnage in some way. A 30,000 ton dreadnought laid in 1912 is not the equal of a 50,000 ton ship laid in 1925.

[Hotfoot]

You know what, if the people who don't know navy stuff want heavily-abstracted stuff they can feel free to it, but I actually have a fleet drawn up and prepared for use and I'd like to use it.

Well that's kind of the point. You can describe your fleet in whatever detail you want, but all that's needed for the game is the basic stuff. It's like with every aspect of this massively scaled game, people will enjoy doing different aspects more than others, so making any one aspect super detailed is pointless because we'll be here forever as everyone makes their baby more detailed and realistic and whatnot. I mean, I could go on for hours about cryptology and espionage and make all sorts of points systems for that. After all, we are in the age of mathematical ciphers and all that.

The rules for an STGOD, by design, must be simple and effective. Too much detail kills it.

[Steve]

Naval stuff aside, what do you all say to CT at 5 granting boosts in two of three areas: Pop, Econ, and NavFocus, of the player's choice?

Similarly, HT at 5 would grant boosts to Pop, Econ, and Army Focus.

We could even state that the boosts amount to a point total one point below the actual points you spent to get to those levels. A 5 gives four points to spend between Pop, Econ, and Navy/Army, a 4 gives 3 points, etc. This means you're not basically getting those points for free. It just means you won't end up potentially with a sparsely populated, underdefended, or economically backward state due to need for points elsewhere.

[Cynical Cat]

Naval stuff aside, what do you all say to CT at 5 granting boosts in two of three areas: Pop, Econ, and NavFocus, of the player's choice?

Similarly, HT at 5 would grant boosts to Pop, Econ, and Army Focus.

We could even state that the boosts amount to a point total one point below the actual points you spent to get to those levels. A 5 gives four points to spend between Pop, Econ, and Navy/Army, a 4 gives 3 points, etc. This means you're not basically getting those points for free. It just means you won't end up potentially with a sparsely populated, underdefended, or economically backward state due to need for points elsewhere.

No. Still too powerful. Your colonial territories shouldn't give you more bonuses than your home territory. I support rewarding players for taking colonies, even though I took none, but they're valuable simply as counting towards the requirements for high econ scores and the like. To pile on large, additional bonuses is completely broken.

[Steve]

Under that proposal they'd give the same benefit as Home Territory, not more.

[Cynical Cat]

And having a huge home territory is already beneficial in that you can afford to lose territory if attacked. Giving additional bonuses tilts the balance even more in favor of the USes and the Russias and away from the Germanies and Great Britains.

[Hotfoot]

I still say paying points for land that's already been divvied up is more than a little silly. We shouldn't be measuring miles, we should be measuring relative worth. It's easy as shit to take several miles of farmland and such, but cities, industrial centers, things that are of value, that's where the fighting reaches a bit of a critical mass.

It's not like we're fighting a trench war these days, after all.

[frigidmagi]

I kinda like Hotfoot's suggestion. Just a note the vote isn't over yet.

[Steve]

So who's going to work at deciding the relative values of various areas?

[Charon]

like Hotfoot's idea, but it seems like it would complicate things a lot more.

As for bonuses thanks to Home or Colony territory, smaller bonuses. No more than three points at Rank 5, which I think should be set in stone. In addition these probably shouldn't give any sort of military focus. Big nations or nations with colonies didn't have large militaries because they were big or had colonies, they were big or had colonies because they had a large military.

In addition, Magi we've done some big changes to what was originally being voted on.

[Hotfoot]

like Hotfoot's idea, but it seems like it would complicate things a lot more.

As for bonuses thanks to Home or Colony territory, smaller bonuses. No more than three points at Rank 5, which I think should be set in stone. In addition these probably shouldn't give any sort of military focus. Big nations or nations with colonies didn't have large militaries because they were big or had colonies, they were big or had colonies because they had a large military.

In addition, Magi we've done some big changes to what was originally being voted on.

How would it complicate things? Redefining something to have a purpose instead of being a meaningless statistic can only help clarity and simplify things. I'll post an alternative modification soon though further explaining my ideas.

[Steve]

I'm not opposed to the principle of considering territory value more than raw area, but it does introduce wide complexity.

I mean, if we value population centers highly, Germany, Britain, even the Vasa are more conceivably 5s than 3s or 4s or even, in Britain's case, a 2. Klavostan is also arguably a 5 instead of the 4 it currently merits.

As for colonies, how do you work with, say, the sparse population and hostile climate of most of Australia versus the continent's actual mineral wealth, or things like value of ports (Darwin of Australia's North Territory, for instance).

We'd need to quantify all this. Or make Frig judge what our scores should be based on our claims and accept his judgements.

[frigidmagi]

To be honest I'm doubtful. We can't bluntly judge industry value of an area via historically. Going by that both myself, Charon, Screwball and several others can't have an industry above 2 being ultra generous. And alot of a lands value is gonna be subjective. Yes Alaska has oil and mineral wealth but it's a pain in the ass to get to and transport out, so how does that impact the value of the land? Not to mention I do not want to have spend hours arguing over said value of land with players, and yes you will argue with me, just admit it.

So I'm gonna stick to land area as what we should go with. It's objective, it's not hard to misunderstand and it's easy to apply.

[Hotfoot]

Or we just put points in and justify it as alt-history or alt-reality and go from there. In fact, in the proposal I'm going to post in a short while, I have Homeland moved from a value you put points into to a value that takes into account how developed and populated the nation is. In this case, making the area smaller to increase defense brings with it the downside that it's much easier to hurt more of the nation because everything is right there, so once the AA defenses are nullified, the zeppelins move in and carpet bomb for absolutely devastating effect.

As for Colonies, the point value will represent the relative worth of your combined colonial assets (as a general value). Their location and strategic use is not to be defined by these points, because obviously some areas are more important than others for various reasons. Again, this will be covered in my post.

All the rules need to do is provide a decent baseline to start with, after that, it comes down to individual play and preferences between players. If two players want to go into exquisite detail in a naval battle, by all means, it adds flavor to the game. On the same note, if people want to spend time detailing little notes about their trade routes, they can, but the core mechanics should be simple and just provide guidelines to help judge relative values for the purpose of quick evaluation, or, should push come to shove, mod intervention. The rules are a tool to aid the flow of the game, not to impede it.

For example, should Britain be exceptionally built up, it should be a tough fight, but when it's over, the results are devastating.

[Hadrianvs]

The tonnages are meaningless to most of us and add more complexity than this game requires.

They are? I thought "bigger ship" was automatically inferred by the general population to mean "badder, tougher, slower". And we do need some easy way to determine how much does building a ship cost, and saying x points per y unit of mass seems like a pretty straightforward rule. In a naval battle any player can look at their ships and note that the lighter ships won't be able to take a pounding from the heavier ones, but they will be able to run away.

[Hotfoot]

The tonnages are meaningless to most of us and add more complexity than this game requires.

They are? I thought "bigger ship" was automatically inferred by the general population to mean "badder, tougher, slower". And we do need some easy way to determine how much does building a ship cost, and saying x points per y unit of mass seems like a pretty straightforward rule. In a naval battle any player can look at their ships and note that the lighter ships won't be able to take a pounding from the heavier ones, but they will be able to run away.

At this point, I'm no longer interested in arguing the semantics. What matters is what level of detail needed for getting across the basics of combat. I'm relatively sure that most characters don't care if their ships are 30,000 tons or 45,000 tons or 39,000 tons or what other variations might exist. What matters is the end result: what the ships can do.

That's the primary issue here, building simulation games, you start with reality and build mechanics around it to give an authentic experience, or as close as you can get. This is NOT a simulation. This is a co-operative, competitive, collaborative storytelling game with a very basic (and I'll stress this again, BASIC) set of rules to help guide overall play. The rules need to be simple enough that players who do not know the source material well can still participate and be effective. They need to be robust enough to handle most conflicts well and reduce the need for mod oversight. This means when you create rules, each rule should serve a purpose, solve a problem, and be as straightforward as possible. Does that mean we lose complexity and granularity and some stuff that some people may love? Well, yes and no. On the one hand, it's not required, we don't need it. Steve can have his navy meticulously detailed down to the nanometer size of his gun barrels, but at the end of the day, mechanically, if I build a capital ship worth the same number of points, well, then those two ships are equivalent, even if I don't put in the same detail.

To that end, I don't want to put endless detail into my navies, and I know several other players are in the same boat. So how do we resolve this? If we make navies super-complex, we will lose players. If we make it simple, but allow players to embellish as they see fit, will that really matter?

Case in point, I brought up Intelligence again. I could go on for HOURS, make up a detailed set of rules for intelligence, counter intelligence, encryption, decryption, covert missions, and so on. Hell, Intelligence wins wars. The hell with bombs, battleships, and all that, the massive intelligence fakeout made D-Day possible in the first place. Obviously, I love intelligence and I've studied it rather well. I could come up with minimum requirements for bombes and enigma machines and all that. Hell, we could introduce one time pads, since those were easily doable in 1930.

But seriously, how many people here would really want that level of detail? Why bother when I can come up with a single point system that covers all we really need and has a similar effect, or, even more simply, let players negotiate intercepted transmissions during play between themselves?

In this game, think like Clans from Battletech: We need to bid low with the rules, get the most basic ones that do the job and leave it at that.

This has gone of as a bit of a rant, but I hope I'm driving the point home. The rules need to be effect based, not detail based. Detailed based rules are best done by computer systems, not people. Don't give me numbers and tell me they imply something, give me the end results and what they do. That's what matters at the end of the day.

[Steve]

So, Frig, going to ratify the voting outcome? I'd count it myself but you're the mod here and I enjoy not having to worry about it.

[frigidmagi]

Well I'm chewing on that, by the way proposal 5 was voted down, because Hotfoot has given us a much easier and simplier system.

[Steve]

As I said above, as long as I can use the fleet I've planned I'll be generally fine, though rather upset if someone expects an older ship to compete with something that commissions at or near game start.

Though Hotfoot and I have gone in circles on the issue of fleet age. Ships, being $*(@ing expensive, are kept in service for years, and realistically as much as half of a nation's fleet in 1930, even without the WNT, may still consist of ships laid from 1910-1916 (Generally armed with 13"-15" guns, roughly 30,000-35,000 tons Standard displacement). (With the WNT, well, remember that the battleships hit at Pearl Harbor were all WWI-era vessels, some refitted). Hotfoot thinks people would be against needing to have a third to half of their fleet at 15 years or older; I think it highly unrealistic to have your entire fleet be young unless you're not a major naval power and you just bought a pair of new shiny battleships from someone else.

We should still arrange prices so that a full run of 4-5 ships should cost a decent chunk of industrial points, enough that only Industries 4 and 5 can afford such an expenditure without having to cancel or delay other projects. Remember that enough steel goes into a large battleship that it could equal months, even years, of tank production.

[Hotfoot]

As I said above, as long as I can use the fleet I've planned I'll be generally fine, though rather upset if someone expects an older ship to compete with something that commissions at or near game start.

Though Hotfoot and I have gone in circles on the issue of fleet age. Ships, being $*(@ing expensive, are kept in service for years, and realistically as much as half of a nation's fleet in 1930, even without the WNT, may still consist of ships laid from 1910-1916 (Generally armed with 13"-15" guns, roughly 30,000-35,000 tons Standard displacement). (With the WNT, well, remember that the battleships hit at Pearl Harbor were all WWI-era vessels, some refitted). Hotfoot thinks people would be against needing to have a third to half of their fleet at 15 years or older; I think it highly unrealistic to have your entire fleet be young unless you're not a major naval power and you just bought a pair of new shiny battleships from someone else.

We should still arrange prices so that a full run of 4-5 ships should cost a decent chunk of industrial points, enough that only Industries 4 and 5 can afford such an expenditure without having to cancel or delay other projects. Remember that enough steel goes into a large battleship that it could equal months, even years, of tank production.

Let's review:

1. No other aspect of the game's military suffers from this arbitrary limitation
2. Any player with an ounce of sense will refuse to build these 1912 era ships ever again, meaning we'll only ever see them in the first handful of navel battles, where they will be sacrificed early to simply get rid of them.
3. It's an additional mechanic which has the sole purpose of maintaining realism, as opposed to, say, balancing the game, adding an interesting dynamic that makes the game more fun, etc.

Now, if something were to add realism and didn't require an extra mechanic or stepping over other rules in order to do, or added something to the game that most people would enjoy, that would be one thing. However I think most people are not terribly interested in having half their navy gimped from the word go when they're spending just as many points there as everywhere else, if not more. All the mechanic encourages is spending as few points as possible on one's navy at game start (especially if one is not a major colonial power), and then just building up like crazy at game start, supported by an abnormally large air force and army. This is because whatever you spend on your navy at game start by your proposal is only really worth maybe 60-75% what you would spend as the game moves on. Heck, players would even be more encouraged to pump their industry as high as they can so they can more easily jump in.