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Post by The Admiralty OOC on Jul 11, 2018 11:03:52 GMT -8
I would like to point out that in my version of the stat block, the freeform section at the bottom is were you would go about actually describing the ship in question. How many X, what kind of Y, how exactly it is designed for the role it has picked. It also covers crew numbers, other side details & even the history it draws on, both directly & as general inspiration.
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Post by Zion Morviael [RETIRED] on Jul 11, 2018 19:05:41 GMT -8
Anything I put out is not going to be perfect, so feel free to take it and run with it, adding more details, etc.
I might slap together a template tomorrow, with section explanations so people can fill in the blanks.
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Post by The Admiralty OOC on Jul 12, 2018 7:21:47 GMT -8
Yeah, my version is sorta ... free form after that, due to them mainly being based on existing designs. So a lot of my explanations are 'where this is different from the original model'.
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Post by Zion Morviael [RETIRED] on Jul 13, 2018 18:09:08 GMT -8
^ basic template, further formatting can be done per individual request.
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Post by Zion Morviael [RETIRED] on Jul 15, 2018 5:50:11 GMT -8
So, something that probably definitely needs to be discussed and agreed upon by everyone, is how would we handle the "approval" process, so to speak.
It's one thing to want Custom Tech and have a submission process with stats and such, but eventually, once a submission has been put forth and people have discussed and argued the pros and cons of something, someone will have to decide a point at which something is deemed OK for use in open RP. So how should that work? Should it be that an RPA member has to read through it and give it the OK? or should several RPA members have to OK it? Or would it be a process wherein maybe another group of volunteers decides once something is good to go?
How would we handle a situation where, say for example, one of the people assigned to giving approvals looks at something and decides it still needs refinement or more balancing, while the rest of the team is OK with it? Would 1 no vote stop something going ahead? how do we handle a submission where someone refuses to make changes suggested by other community members?
These are fairly crucial things to consider, and definitely need discussion by everyone. so if you haven't dropped your two-cents worth in yet, please, I highly encourage you to do so now. Considering this will affect people both actively participating in this discussion and not actively participating, please think about everything here and put a solid answer for why you think something should be this way or that. In this situation, I think it's best this discussion happens on the boards. If you guys debate it on Discord, please link the discussion into a post here.
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Luxeria
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Post by Luxeria on Jul 15, 2018 8:04:06 GMT -8
It should be handled by either all the RPA or a group created to look over it, those who have solid knowledge at what their looking at, obviously. Decision making like that shouldn't be left to one person. Now whether or not it should take 100% approval or majority vote, I can't say. I'd sooner go with the majority, or at least 3/4 of those making approvals. Sometimes a full agreement can be made easily enough, but with those entries that are closer to the line that starts dividing them, it suddenly takes much longer trying to come to an agreement, then the one posting the entry has to keep compromising on their design simply due to one person.
To be honest, looking at the example template given with the block system, I'm utterly confused. It makes no sense to me in how to actually judge what number each should or shouldn't be. Unless that is being decided by a group for ships, for example, the Baudo class star yacht I'm looking to build. With or without all the information needed, I don't know how to translate it to this system without it being done with set numbers. However, if this is strictly involved into creating new tech and ship instead of simply modifying canon ones, that makes it a bit easy though I'd say even canon ships that are being modified should probably go through this process as well. I've seen too many ships on people's profiles simply saying modified/heavily modified with no info in regards to what those mods are and what it has on it.
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Post by Zion Morviael [RETIRED] on Jul 15, 2018 8:32:16 GMT -8
So, the MAD system has an explanation on how to work it on the previous page. but here is the post for reference: boards.jedivsith.com/post/115626The way it works, is that the stats are based on the average for that ship size. There is some canon examples in the post, which give run downs of how some of the most common ships fit within the system. We will be applying this to the ship database project, once we get that up and running. But far as I can tell it, most canon ships fit nicely within the system. Let's work the Baudo for a moment. Compared to other ships of its size on wookiee, does it have the same amount of guns? more guns? or less guns? If it's roughly the same amount, it's offensive sits at 3 points based on the scale. If it had fewer guns, it would sit at 2 points. If you were unsure of how it would rate, you could try your hand at it, and then, assuming all things work as they are meant to, someone could help you work out more accurate point distribution. Ideally, yes, every ship would go through this process to keep them balanced without someone simply being able to heavily modify their ship without any draw backs. Especially if we manage to classify every ship and maybe one day use the MAD system for combat (currently that is a work in progress proposal that I believe will be presented soon by those working on it).
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Post by The Admiralty OOC on Jul 15, 2018 9:38:49 GMT -8
For approval I say don't bother. If it is 15 points or under it should be pretty close to balanced with most other ships, though stronger or weaker in particular areas. After all, the beauty of this system is that it doesn't matter if your description of the ship says it has a thousand guns or just one really honking big one. An Offensive stat of 5 is a stat of 5. The fluff details are just that, fluff. They will effect how the ship is written or used outside of combat, but in the end the fluff is completely meaningless once the firing starts.
On how to grade ships. Average is a stat of 3 (regardless of the stat in question). Weaker is lower, stronger is higher. It was purposefully chosen that way for two reasons.
First is simplicity. It is much easier to compare stat that can only range from 1 to 5. The old PO tried to go into far too much detail about how much each type of gun & blahblahblah. It was a complex mess that very few people wanted to deal with & it was full of loopholes.
The second reason is it allows ships that don't have perfectly exact descriptions of their weapons/engines/whatever to be easily stated out for use. After all, with the exception of ships that just a passing mention by name only, the basic details of the ship are usually brought up. Was it a slow, solid slugger? A nimble speedster? Was it really able to take a pounding? All but the most vague ship descriptions can be fitted to the MAD system.
On Boudo designs: that is a bit of an odd example, as that is less a class of ship & more a company, in fact each example of their work was technically a completely custom class. Personally designed for the customer. However on average I would give it the following block:
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Luxeria
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Post by Luxeria on Jul 15, 2018 10:53:37 GMT -8
I'm (hopefully) closing in on the set up for the ship for approval. Looking mostly at finer details such as picking power cores, hoping to at least identify the engines, picking nav computers and hyperdrive. To me, while they could be important, outside of the power plant choice most are just to give details rather than give advantages, as I've said before, a nav computer really doesn't seem to mean much and unless your going through a hyperspace chase, even the hyperdrive rating is so-so important. The only thing I'm worried about is this system making most of the modifications having to be removed for having too many or something. I may have misinterpreted something watching this thread to think that, but overall, I believe if a ship can be modified, there should be no limit to those mods provided its done right and balanced.
If anything though, once the approval process has been set up, we can use my ship as the test run and see what we can do.
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Post by The Admiralty OOC on Jul 15, 2018 11:11:51 GMT -8
Again, all that (type of engines, brand of navicomputer, etc) wouldn't have an effect on the actual stats. Just on the fluff of the design & how it gets handled when it is out of combat. Now, if you do have particular brands in mind for everything, more power to you. It would certainly make a more interesting design. But once the blaster bolts start flying a speed of 3 is a speed of 3, regardless of the particular model of the engine. ;}
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Post by Nicademus Delvardus IV on Jul 15, 2018 11:14:33 GMT -8
I believe I can speak for the whole RPA on the matter of a system of approval: there should be one and will be one. Otherwise, it will become a mess. We need this custom to be approved on a case by case basis with the RPA and the patent presenter(s) involved. That is one thing that should be common between the old PO department and this new system we are building.
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Post by Zion Morviael [RETIRED] on Jul 28, 2018 6:16:33 GMT -8
For approval I say don't bother. If it is 15 points or under it should be pretty close to balanced with most other ships, though stronger or weaker in particular areas. After all, the beauty of this system is that it doesn't matter if your description of the ship says it has a thousand guns or just one really honking big one. An Offensive stat of 5 is a stat of 5. The fluff details are just that, fluff. They will effect how the ship is written or used outside of combat, but in the end the fluff is completely meaningless once the firing starts. Yes, but what is the point at which something is considered to be set in at that point total? Cause there is definitely going to be plenty of people out there that aren't going to fully understand the system from the get-go, or perhaps ever really. And if the process is meant to be a collaboration to help people who don't fully understand how the system works, at what point do we go "well, we've settled on a final point total, you're good to start using this". Yes, less than 15 points would be deemed balanced by the system, and an offensive stats of 5, is an offensive stat of 5. But how do we figure out for certain if it's really going to be a 5, as oppose to say a 4, or a 3, and someone can't just go back to the discussion after each battle and be like "no, the speed stat is a 4, not a 2. and the offense is 3 not 5". ya know? As a side note, are we going to include Custom Tech within the Ship Database area, and if so, would we want to separate it into it's own area? or just mark custom ships with a little moniker in its thread/entry name? an example of how this would work, would be: [Custom]TIE/SI - Super Interceptor. [Canon]Chiss Star Destroyer.
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Post by The Admiralty OOC on Jul 28, 2018 7:04:27 GMT -8
Well for Canon ships I was thinking a more streamlined entry:
Maybe include a wookiee link in each one. Custom gear would need its own section obviously, with pages for each ship. But there isn't a reason that a similar directory couldn't be set up for it as well.
So for who decides how many guns is what stat? Well, that is why the stat block comes first. If you have an A3 stat, I don't particularly care if they have three hundred weapons mounted on the ship. They would just be seriously under powered individually. In the MAD stat system, the actual number of gun mounts, barrels & (for now) type is FLUFF it literally doesn't change anything for the ship to have one super powered nose mounted laser pointer of death, or a hundred thousand flashlights superglued to the hull.
Sure, there are enough examples you can draw a rough guideline of how many whatevers you should put on your ship for a given stat. But the stats should come first, then the details filled in after. As for deciding what MAD stats to give a canon ship? Simply look at how the ship was considered in canon. I will state again: The stats are based on AVERAGES not specific numbers.
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Post by Zion Morviael [RETIRED] on Jul 28, 2018 8:04:02 GMT -8
So, the Canon entries we are working on separately as to how their entries into the Ship Database will look and be setup. I was just asking whether if we should have a separate list for Custom Tech. Was just asking if we want to keep it simply and list them in the same database or have a separate area to list them?
And we did discuss the second part of your post. But basically I think we both agreed that at some point, some approval will need to be given to get a custom ship added to the list officially.
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Post by The Admiralty OOC on Jul 28, 2018 8:18:37 GMT -8
Yeah, I had misunderstood that point of yours, but I agree that to be added to the list, someone at least needs to check & make sure it adds up correctly. As for how it is laid out, that was simply a first draft idea on how to minimize the size (both in post & in thread) & keep it simple & easy to find what ship you are looking for (it is short enough that a keyword search will jump right to it, if it is kept to a single page). & since wookiee is good for at least providing way more detail than is practical here, I figured only the base block would be needed.
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Xeonon Solomon
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Post by Xeonon Solomon on Jul 28, 2018 8:35:57 GMT -8
Now as someone who has not used this system before I did find the post linked at the top of the page to be very helpful and now that I have actually done it once this seems a lot easier. Looking at this though is there something that I didn't do or overlooked? I did not use all 15 points instead opting to use 10 simply because I feel this ship based on how it is described does not meet the requirements to get a higher rank.
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Post by The Admiralty OOC on Jul 28, 2018 8:49:44 GMT -8
Exactly. both types of missiles are already covered under the Offensive section. You don't need to list them in special gear (that is for the weird, unusual, non-weapony tech). It fits the canon description of the class very well. It isn't a maxed out ship, but not every ship has to be in order to be effective. Personally, I would like to see the addition of an optional economy system that rewards people for low point ships by either making them cheaper or faster to build.
I might say it has a few points of long range enhancements (for the missiles) but that is something we are still working on how to handle (it would likely be no more than 3 points though, even for that kind of extreme range). That would still only bring it up to an 11.
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Post by Zion Morviael [RETIRED] on Jul 28, 2018 8:58:00 GMT -8
Yeah, I had misunderstood that point of yours, but I agree that to be added to the list, someone at least needs to check & make sure it adds up correctly. As for how it is laid out, that was simply a first draft idea on how to minimize the size (both in post & in thread) & keep it simple & easy to find what ship you are looking for (it is short enough that a keyword search will jump right to it, if it is kept to a single page). & since wookiee is good for at least providing way more detail than is practical here, I figured only the base block would be needed. A master list with every ship in the database would be good as well, cause I get where you’re going. And I actually like the idea. Basicallly a list with the ship names and their stat blocks, then they could link off to a page that gives some more in-depth information if you wanted to read it.
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Grand Admiral Zuhel
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Post by Grand Admiral Zuhel on Jul 29, 2018 18:45:01 GMT -8
I suppose the next question we should be asking is whether the custom stuff should be added to the ship database or if it should have its own database.
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Post by The Admiralty OOC on Jul 30, 2018 9:06:15 GMT -8
I believe Z indicated that it would have its own (in chat), however I'm not entirely certain that is correct. Personally, I'd say have one for Canon & one for Custom.
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