"Real Transport" rules draft

[Cannonshop]

Or we could calculate out what the FP of the canon marine complement is.

I mean I know I have beaten this dead horse before but every warship lists its marine compliment.

Which has tonnage and bv assigned to it as part of ship creation.

Why not just use those numbers and translate them into game mechanics.


*Disclaimer*

This does clearly benefit the Free Worlds as all our canon LFB ships have battlearmor marine's and plenty of them*.

It always bothered me people stacking essentially entire marine division and army groups on warship's that then didn't have to account for them but I have always gone "whatev's" and moved on.

WAAAITAMINUTE HERE... you can do that? without PAYING FOR IT??

[chaosxtreme]

No you pay for their construction.

It's just in fleet action's you don't know how many there are until you actually board a ship.

No one has to disclose that their 1FP vincent has 40FP of Marine's huddled onto it somehow.

This is not a new thing.

[Cannonshop]

No you pay for their construction.

It's just in fleet action's you don't know how many there are until you actually board a ship.

No one has to disclose that their 1FP vincent has 40FP of Marine's huddled onto it somehow.

This is not a new thing.

whew.  I'm glad I wasn't paying for something I didn't need to.

[Daemonknight]

Honestly Cannon, I have a slight issue with the constant "zomg you guys are screwing over the little guy, and only powering up the big factions". First off, thats total bullshit. The rules are designed without a thought for individual factions.

Secondly, if the UIW is at a slight disadvantage because of a rules change, and this disadvantage stems from its small size, thats your problem. YOU chose to play a micro-faction, knowing full well that your size was always going to be a factor. You built your military in such a way as to optimize it for the current rules. Well obviously when the rules change, your optimization backfires. And I don't really feel sorry for you.

Every faction in the game is affected in the exact same way by these changes. If the size of your faction hamstrings you, thats your problem- you WANTED to be a tiny state with no resources. Thats what you've always wanted. So complaining that its happening, doesn't make much sense.

[Cannonshop]

Honestly Cannon, I have a slight issue with the constant "zomg you guys are screwing over the little guy, and only powering up the big factions". First off, thats total bullshit. The rules are designed without a thought for individual factions.

Secondly, if the UIW is at a slight disadvantage because of a rules change, and this disadvantage stems from its small size, thats your problem. YOU chose to play a micro-faction, knowing full well that your size was always going to be a factor. You built your military in such a way as to optimize it for the current rules. Well obviously when the rules change, your optimization backfires. And I don't really feel sorry for you.

Every faction in the game is affected in the exact same way by these changes. If the size of your faction hamstrings you, thats your problem- you WANTED to be a tiny state with no resources. Thats what you've always wanted. So complaining that its happening, doesn't make much sense.

It MIGHT be argued, that you're pushing to optimize the rules to favour YOUR faction build.  I won't argue that, I won't make that claim, but I find that being accused of that by you does tend to lower the inhibition against doing so.

the question was asked, I'm raising what I feel to be reasonable concerns.

[Daemonknight]

Well, saying that, and then being like "well I'm not saying it", is a cop out. You said it, just admit it.

And since I'm not the one designing the rules, your notion is laughable at best. Dave is doing these rules drafts. And what, exactly, is my faction build, according to you? Because thus far, everything you say is about how the big factions are these massive entities that can just absorb all these rules changes without ill effect, but yet they somehow just decimate your entire faction.

I don't see it.

[Daemonknight]

I'm waiting to see reasonable concerns raised. What I see, is you trashing the rules as attempts at re-writing the rules to favor only the big states. If your faction is so small that it can't function with the same rules as everyone else, thats a flaw in your faction, not the rules.

[Cannonshop]

Well, saying that, and then being like "well I'm not saying it", is a cop out. You said it, just admit it.

And since I'm not the one designing the rules, your notion is laughable at best. Dave is doing these rules drafts. And what, exactly, is my faction build, according to you? Because thus far, everything you say is about how the big factions are these massive entities that can just absorb all these rules changes without ill effect, but yet they somehow just decimate your entire faction.

I don't see it.

Dave is asking for comments-as in to have problems found before, not after, the rules hit final.  In rules development, this is the point where people are supposed to find the breaks that toss the balance off.  it's NOT where people are supposed to rave about how they LUV the new system, only to have the faults turn up in actual play two turns down the road.

I'm bringing up issues I not only expect to experience myself, but issues I rather expect OTHER people to suddenly discover they have-after keeping quiet during the comments period out of some fear that they'll upset either the developer, or the GM.

Instead of tossing around accusations and character slurs, maybe you should try to do something constructive-like testing the claims of the doubter yourself, on a faction that isn't a composite Clan/Great House with the second biggest income in the game-see if it works on a small scale, then check against your results on the big scale, see if I'm right, or where I'm wrong.

Instead of getting all defensive and emotional.

[Daemonknight]

How about reading the rules in full, and testing them out, instead of attacking them on the premise of "this means my faction is totally screwed, and I wont get any of the money i spent back" without actually ASKING US FIRST.

Instead of getting all confrontational and emotional about it

[Cannonshop]

How about reading the rules in full, and testing them out, instead of attacking them on the premise of "this means my faction is totally screwed, and I wont get any of the money i spent back" without actually ASKING US FIRST.

Instead of getting all confrontational and emotional about it

Honestly Cannon, I have a slight issue with the constant "zomg you guys are screwing over the little guy, and only powering up the big factions". First off, thats total bullshit. The rules are designed without a thought for individual factions.

Secondly, if the UIW is at a slight disadvantage because of a rules change, and this disadvantage stems from its small size, thats your problem. YOU chose to play a micro-faction, knowing full well that your size was always going to be a factor. You built your military in such a way as to optimize it for the current rules. Well obviously when the rules change, your optimization backfires. And I don't really feel sorry for you.

Every faction in the game is affected in the exact same way by these changes. If the size of your faction hamstrings you, thats your problem- you WANTED to be a tiny state with no resources. Thats what you've always wanted. So complaining that its happening, doesn't make much sense.

Note the bolded text.

If I WERE "Optimizing" under the current rules regime, there wouldn't be ANY discussion about what I might or might not be losing-I'd have done what everyone else is doing, and poured the build budgets from the 20 year jump straight into transported aero in parking orbits, those stations on the map? yeah, they wouldn't BE THERE, there'd be no Mobile ground, because that's a sub-optimal choice under the current rules scheme, and the ground units? would be parked, and I wouldn't have pursued a war at all with the Spirit Cats, because that is ALSO a sub-optimal choice.

oh, and ALL my naval buys would've been transported Aero, so no naval buys that weren't.  I'd also not have bothered with so many shipyards, nor with the recharge stations.

because ALL of those decisions were sub-optimal decisions.  I'd have dumped all the funds from upgrading member worlds into control worlds into more factories, etc.

My faction would've been a very optimized lump that requires a major house or major Clan to take down.  I didn't do that, so knock off with the claims of min/maxing, powergaming, gaming the system, or being a munchkin.  I know how to be a munchkin, I don't do it.

Now, second...

I ran the numbers.  I actually did the math.  I looked at what has how many slots, and how many collars it takes to move it.  I looked at FP cost for Jumpships, I looked at the current budget multipliers, and I put that together with the numbers squeezed out of the example sheet Dave B. posted for the economics/territory tab update.

I didn't do this in a vacuum, Daemonknight.  I did what you're supposed to do when presented with rules for comment-I tested them.   I then provided my commentary on how they'll work vs. how I expect they were INTENDED to work.

You don't like my analysis, you can always run the same test and see if your outcome reads out differently.

[Cannonshop]

THIS is pre-alpha-release material.  I expect there'll be at minimum a beta level examination long before the final hits 'street date' to knock the kinks and bugs out.

[Dave Baughman]

I guess I need to clarify something before we go any further. I thought I had posted this earlier, but maybe I am misremembering or maybe its just buried in an obscure thread somewhere.

1) Regardless of the final form of the rules, no one is going to get left in the cold in terms of prior construction. When the switch to real transport goes into effect, everyone will get transport units based on the contents of the cyclical movement pool. The details of this trade-in will be calibrated to ensure you don't take a financial loss based on buying-in-good-faith under the old rules. This means that if you have mobile units, you will get 10x as much towards your 'transport budget' as if you had bought those units as transported (give or take minor adjustments for cost calibration). If anything, you and others with similar builds will make a profit on your transported units.

2) Ship's militia will never be enough to repel a serious marine assault. The numbers in my head are: JumpShip (of any size) - 0.25 FP, Small Warship (Corvette, Destroyer) - 0.50, Medium Warship (Cruisers & Battlecruisers) - 0.75, Heavy Warship (Battleship, Super-Battleship) - 1.00. People who want 350981570813750813750831703150758710837105FP of marines on their Lev II better put some DTs on it, as it will need Lift to haul them.

3) The critical event tables are on the list for revision. Simple resolution boarding actions right now are way to rare (both versus canon and versus 'fun') and that is probably a result of less than optimal statistical design in the original printing of the rules. In the future, I expect to see boarding opportunities be more prevalent (though in SR they will still require a critical event, for game balance and megamek-encouragement purposes).

4) Independant Wings cannot be converted into jumpship groups. I'm not sure where you heard this, because I'm preeeeetty sure its not in my draft. The only influence they will have on jumpship group formation will be in the initial trade-in of movement points where of course they will only be worth 1/10 of their FP.

5) Intrinsic lift. Part of the purpose of IL is to 'evict' large groups of marines that are 'living' on small ships. the 40 FP of marines on the Vincent in the example Chaos posted is a great example of this. I'm OK with marines living on warships and jumpships, but 40 FP is a bit extreme (but then again, that's why he's chaosXTREME I guess lol). However, IL should not prevent those marines from zooming around in space, since all those marine FP are mobile FP and will be contributing their full FP to the MP trade-in pool (maybe even more if they are LFB mobile), so I doubt your Marines will be 'stranded' in the final equation.

6) Force Composition. I know this is in the draft, but let me reiterate: lift is lift is lift. You do not have mech lift/vehicle lift/infantry lift/whatever... you just have lift. A unit with 125 lift can haul around a 'mech regiment, a vehicle regiment, an infantry regiment, or even a regiment of ground-based aerospace fighters.

7) Reducing jumpship access. You are correct that unresearched tech (i.e. jumpship designs) are going to be tightened up on. Guess which faction, as best as I can tell, only produces one jumpship design in the IS (and a design with only one collar at that)? TH. Guess who would be right there with them if it wasn't for the Ravens' homeworlds production? Clan Ghost Bear. Having laid that explicitly on the table, let me point out that I did say earlier that the periphery factions would be given non-canon production sites as a game balance measure. Yes, UIW, TC, etc will probably not receive non-canon Monolith or Star Lord yards, but they seem to have been getting along just fine so far without 24/36 collar mobile units so something tells me they will survive (and there's always the option of buying from your neighbors). I actually considered taking a hard line and giving the small factions no non-canon JumpShip production after the MP trade-in, but right now I don't believe the benefits of that outweigh the disruptive effect it would have in terms of giving economic power to the big factions.

I actually kind of wanted to give the smaller factions access to some of the obsolete jumpships like the Leviathan class, but unfortunately no canon stats exist and I'm not inclined to write fanon status only to see them later obsoleted.

I hope that addresses some of your questions and concerns. If you run into more issues with the rules, please keep posting them, however:

In the future, if you have incomplete information and are concerned something might be broken, instead of assuming the worst case scenario and then attacking the rule in vague terms and/or questioning the integrity of the staff, please first ask for clarification and let us fill in the holes. I don't deliberately write broken rules, and a lot of the above text is spent explaining assumptions you made (no cashout/starting transport force, speciated lift, etc) as opposed to talking about the actual rule.

I want these rules to be good, and I would rather keep you guys in the loop about what's coming. CS you rightly pointed out that "YAY I LUVZ IT" posts aren't helpful, but like I said - please fact-check before you tear into the rules and/or the writers. I'd rather spend twenty minutes showing you a detailed example of how a rule works or bugfixing a problem you find right away as opposed to getting in a debate about perceived problems that aren't even in the rule and were never intended to be in it in the first place.

[Dave Baughman]

Also, I'm locking this thread until midnight. This is not to punish anyone, but clearly we need to take a little bit a breather. Please do not move this argument to the OOC thread, just let it lie for a bit and take some deep, meditative breaths before we continue.

[Dave Baughman]

OK, thread is unlocked.

[Dave Baughman]

I'll be posting cargo rules and a lot of associated rules changes dealing with salvage, raids, and other fun stuff tomorrow. Feedback is not only welcome but encouraged, but please remember to make sure you ask about anything that is unclear before jumping to any conclusions. That will let us be more productive in ironing out the kinks from the rule.