IOT Developmental Thread

[Sonereal]

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[Sonereal]

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[Tyo]

As I said in SARR, I have a new project in the works. You can view current progress here.

Comments are appreciated.

 

[Tambien]

How many planets? I'm assuming you're using the hexographer (or whatever you used for Space Seed).

All 8, plus Pluto/Charon, the asteroid belts, the major moons for the gas giants, and the Kuiper Belt (probably, I may axe it if I dont got room)

What is the point of a wet navy unless it is made up of submarines? What is the point of Dreadnoughts if there are battleships?

Can be used to assist in land-based actions. In conjunction with orbital bombardment, it is the doctrine of "overwhelming force." They can also be used to transport troops, thus making construction of a large number of resource-intensive aerospace transports unnecesary.

Dreadnaughts are what they sound like. Bigass ships that can beat the crap out of everything other than a large fleet. Battleships are like mini-dreadnaughts.

Why does range correspond with speed? Bombers in real life are slow, yet they have long range. The larger a ship, the longer the range it should have in my opinion since it has more room for fuel.

Its the size of a ship that is the common factor. As for the "larger the ship, the more room for fuel" argument, you have to remember that this is space. The more fuel you pile on, the more mass you have to push. Meaning you need more fuel. Which you also have to push. And the more mass you gotta push, the slower you are going to accelerate.

Interesting.

I hope thats good interesting!

This is sounding less and less of anything less than an IB-level IOT by the moment. The main problem here is that it is all highly variable depending on the size of the map. A medium-sized map is going to have a crapton of GMing go behind it just because of all these improvements.

I am working on map sizes now, but I'm not sure what direction I'll go with this yet beyond a BETA with a small system (on a small map) to test the ruleset (if I do indeed develop one). If I did this, it would be during summer with as much automated as possible. And I would love it, as Space is my passion.

Hopefully this doesn't do what MP(R) does. Namely limiting the amount one can progress in a technology field at one tech per turn in a field.

Not at all. I disliked that.

Meh. I would adopt the Stability System from Capto Iugulum. It gives the GM more leeway and is harder to game than the RR system.

I'll look into that.

Good idea.

Thanks.

 

[Sonereal]

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[Mosher]

Tambien, mass has no affect on a ship's range if it is in space... Remember, there is NOTHING in space, nothing to cause friction between the ship's hull and the atmosphere since there IS no atmosphere. After the initial push off of the planet you only need fuel to change direction.

 

[Lighthearter]

Tambien, mass has no affect on a ship's range if it is in space... Remember, there is NOTHING in space, nothing to cause friction between the ship's hull and the atmosphere since there IS no atmosphere. After the initial push off of the planet you only need fuel to change direction.

Not technically true. There is SOME matter in space, but for all practical purposes you're right.

If you got to your speed and cut the engines at a certain point, EVENTUALLY you'd slow to a stop because of the almost unnoticeable friction, but you'd have passed through several galaxies by then so yeah it has almost no meaning.

In other news. TLP2IOT, based on Multipolarity(the original, not the cheap Thorvald knockoff) rules is in the works.

-L

 

[Sonereal]

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[Tyo]

So here's what I have so far on my current project, IOT: The Next Step

Summary: IOT: The Next Step is an upcoming project in the works, being produced by Tyo with some outside input taken into consideration. The setting is 300 years into the future, 2300 AD. The world seeks to colonize the stars in search of national security and wealth. In this IOT, you can expect complex rules regarding space along with basic rules regarding the structure of Earth and its politics. Economy of the nations of earth are simple, as is the placement and population values and Revolt Risk. Meanwhile, Space has a lot of factors and is what is intended to be the main source of activity and turmoil, from satellite-mounted WMD to full scale colonial space battles reminiscent to Star Wars to the bread and butter of IOT, empire-building.

Spoiler :

Premise

Three centuries after the dawn of the millennium, humanity still walks a path no scholar nor prophet can predict. The world is a crowded place and still not so different from three centuries ago... But it is different. Nations have risen and fallen as they always do. Now humanity finds itself on the beginning of a new era- one that resides in the stars.

The point of this IOT is to build your empire, but this one will attempt to take it to a level rarely taken to. Your goal is not just building your civilization on earth, but expanding into space. This is a fresh start IOT even though it takes place in the future of earth as we know it today. That is not to say the Earth has gone through apocalypse or anything; it is just very hard to predict what the future 300 years from now will look like. So you decide. Your only limitations are that your nations must be realistic. No Darth Vaders or Elves. It must also make sense. No "Empire of Mainland Hawaii" based in California. So anyway, let's talk about...

Joining

Simply select 45 territories. A brief history of your country from 2010 to the present(2300) is required, as is a flag. Based on your claims' position on the map and your history, I will expand and otherwise edit your borders so that they are nice and make the most sense. So don't fret if you haven't enough claims to take all of America if you're playing as the US or some equivalent other, your borders will more than likely improve on the initial 45. Stating whether your economy is interventionalist or non-interventionalist is required as well. The different affects of each can be found below.

Spoiler Map :

Economy

Everyone starts with Economy at 100. Overpopulation decreases economy by a hard amount based on the severity for every turn overpopulation is a problem. Economies have a 5% chance of recession and 2% chance of depression. Respectively, they destroy 10 and 20% of an earth-bound economy. Economy can rise in two ways. If you are interventionist, 10% of economy invested raises the economy by 5%. If you are non-interventionist, economy naturally increases by 0-35, determined by RNG. Increasing domestic tech helps increase economy. View technology section for more information. You can switch systems, but it’ll take a turn. So the turn you announce your switch, work with our original system. The next turn you cannot gain economy via the two systems AT ALL. The next turn you work with your new system. Switching also increases RR based on the size of your economy, and destroys 3% of your economy.

Note: If you’re interventionist, PLEASE invest in nice even portions. If your economy is 145, invest your money in multiples of 15. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don’t give me, “Invest 28 in industry.” PLEASE.

Space

This is the main course here. Endless possibilities await in launching space missions. The first thing that comes to mind in a futuristic IOT about space is colonization, I'm sure. Well it's all but possible. From the get-go you can colonize the solar system, and once you research warp tech you can begin to go extrasolar. Advancing your warp technology increases the range and speed of the standard warp engines on all your extrasolar space vehicles, which at game start are only your basic colony ships. Colonizing celestial bodies come in percentages. Colonizing something like mars obviously yields a higher percentage colonial claim than colonizing the Alpha Centauri System. You share celestial bodies you colonize with other nations who have likewise completed colonial missions. Once a body is colonized at 100%, no colonial missions can be undertaken to that body unless settlements are destroyed by events or warfare. Colonies canon course by conquered, so feel free to fight colonial wars to your heart's intent.

While it may seem nobody in their right minds would pass up colonizing space, there are some who probably won't. Rather, wouldn't if I was giving you people a choice. The world is becoming quite crowded. Overpopulation on the home world leads to famine, squaller, and civil unrest. Your economy, health, and very way of life is threatened if you don't colonize. Of course you can always choose to not do it regardless. It would make for a truely interesting and hard game.

Now, we aren't quite done with space yet. Warfare in the void will be discussed in the military and war section, but there's more to space than colonization and star wars-esque battles. In this IOT, you may send out satellites to undergo missions depending on the kind. There are commercial satellites that help improve your economy. Military satellites help with warfare on the surface. Espionage satellites help with espionage missions. SDI satellites help stop surface-to-air missiles such as ICBMs. There are also special satellites that have their own specific uses; the Telekinetic Assault Satellite in the WMD section for example. It is a satellite whose strikes are immune to SDI. The only way to destroy satellites in the beginning of the game is to commission anti-satellite satellites, but these are limited to destroying one satellite per turn. An Anti-sat vs another at the same satellite tech is determined by a 50/50 RNG, and they can destroy each other. Once you advance in technology enough to commission your first combat spaceship, you can theoretically destroy all your enemies' satellites, but sat tech can improve enough to create anti-ship satellites, however. Beware.

Colonization

Mechanic-wise, here’s how colonization works. At game start, everyone has the ability to build colony ships to colonize all colonizable bodies in Sol. Each colonial ship costs 200, and have a maintenance fee of 25. Upon success of a mission, at least 10 population will be sent to the colony, relaxing tensions on the homeworld. In the most basic colonial tech, 5% of the colonizable body in the solar system being colonized is colonized by each colonial ship sent. That is to say that 20 missions to the same planet by all players results in the complete colonization of it.

Now you’re probably wondering what else is advantageous in colonizing besides keeping your whiny people happy. MONEY of course! Each colonizable body has an amount of predetermined-by-me resources. These resources are pretty unspecific and for gameplay purposes, we’ll just call them resources 1 through 5, 5 being the most valuable. Each body has a set of these resources in different quantities. This quantity is unknown by the player unless one were to do an expedition to find resources. This would require that the body is at least 20% in control of the explorer nation and those nations who allow for open travel between their colonies. I will select how much each body gets based on RNG and my own rule of thumb.

After enough Colony Tech has been researched, Penal Colonies become available. These colonies relieve your civilization of half as many people and at least 5 RR, while being half as expensive as regular colonies. They also only colonize 2% of a colonizable body in Sol. There is a downside, however. These colonies are unstable. Unlike regular colonies which start off with no RR, these automatically and passively have an RR of 10. RR increases in a colony by 2 per turn, and increases by 3 for every additional penal colony put on the same planet as another penal colony. The only ways to reduce RR of penal colonies is by increasing the garrison, which also decreases RR in regular colonies, or by increasing Space Military Tech. Penal colonies also produce 75% of what a normal colony working with the same resource would make.

Extrasolar Colonization becomes available once the Warp Drive is researched. Once it is, basic Warp speed is pretty much exactly the speed of light. That is to say 1 lightyear’s worth of travel takes exactly 1 year. All systems will be rounded to the nearest whole lightyear dependent on their distance from Sol. To colonize an extrasolar system, one must either build a new colonial vessel which would thus have warp drive and other necessities installed, or upgrade a regular ship in one’s possession for half as much as it would take to build a new ship. Unupgraded ships cannot colonize extrasolar systems.

 

[NinjaCow64]

Note: If you’re interventionist, PLEASE invest in nice even portions. If your economy is 145, invest your money in multiples of 15. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don’t give me, “Invest 28 in industry.” PLEASE.

Just use Excel or something, that will make things easier. Also: I assume that interventionist economies are communist-esque and non-interventionist are free market, correct? And I assume you are still working on the technology sections?

 

[Tyo]

I do use excell. Figuring it out isn't the problem. The problem is the gameyness of not giving me proper numbers. For example, if say someone starts off interventionalist and decides to invest 25. If I decide to round, which I logically would seeing as I wan it to be 10%, the gain the same income as Someone who invested 30. If not, I'll take out funds on something else to make it fair which is kinda dicky. It's not hard to just divide your income by 10 and multiply that by the amount of times you want to invest. it's safer for everyone that way.

Regarding the systems, yes. Interventionalist economies can be assumed to be communist/socialist and non-interventionalist economies can be assumed to be capitalist. In case anyone's wondering, mixed economies won't exist due to potential balance issues.

 

[NinjaCow64]

I do use excell. Figuring it out isn't the problem. The problem is the gameyness of not giving me proper numbers. For example, if say someone starts off interventionalist and decides to invest 25. If I decide to round, which I logically would seeing as I wan it to be 10%, the gain the same income as Someone who invested 30. If not, I'll take out funds on something else to make it fair which is kinda dicky. It's not hard to just divide your income by 10 and multiply that by the amount of times you want to invest. it's safer for everyone that way.

Why don't you just give the guy who invested 25 (assuming that the original amount of money he has is 100) 12.5% increase and round down to the nearest unit? The guy who invests 30 would get 15%. Fair and simple.

 

[Ailedhoo]

I am already making plans to claim as much as Britian (specially England) as possible to forge the lands to be owned by Virgin Group.

 

[Tambien]

Acceleration doesn't mean longer range. A larger ship can use more bulky, but "effective" propulsion systems. That's why a Nimitz aircraft has rather unlimited range, because its reactors can power it for 20 years. On the other hand, a Arleigh Burke-class destroyer only has a range of 8000 or so miles.

So, I don't know why a space-based navy wouldn't operate the same way Earth-based bombers or naval ships do. A larger ship should have longer range, with acceleration being a different question altogether. I understand that the ships would have slower acceleration but if a turn takes a year....

Hmmmmm.......... I suppose thats true. I'll change that.

A surface-based fleet seems like a really poor investment in a world with orbital bombardment being standard. Earth/planet-based surface navies sound like something a third-rate power with no other option would do.

Edit: If I say "interesting", it means I like it. Forgot to quote that.

Exxactly. It is a last ditch defense for earth-based districts, and it limits the amount of orbital bombardment you have to do, which you want. Orbital bombardment is extremely wasteful, costly, and innacurate. So when doing that you will actually have a possibility of hitting others/yourself depending on where you're bombarding.

 

[Tyo]

I guess the targeting systems suck in the future?

It's not that hard for math dudes in the military today to properly calculate where a telekinetic strike would end up if someone were to build a station today and use it. Why would they be less accurate in the future? It sounds like just sending nukes is more profitable if you have a chance of shooting YOURSELF with a WMD.

Why don't you just give the guy who invested 25 (assuming that the original amount of money he has is 100) 12.5% increase and round down to the nearest unit? The guy who invests 30 would get 15%. Fair and simple.

That could work for the first turn and any turn with a number divisible by 100, but not for every other turn. Why? Because someone could easily game it by giving me purposely weird numbers that result in rounding up. The gain is marginal but it's still an unfair gain.

What's so hard about dividing by 10 anyway? It's literally all the work I'm asking the player to do here!

 

[Sonereal]

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[Tyo]

Note: If you’re interventionist, PLEASE invest in nice even portions. If your economy is 145, invest your money in multiples of 15. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don’t give me, “Invest 28 in industry.” PLEASE.

That's basically what I said, except I didn't say that exactly.

 

[NinjaCow64]

That could work for the first turn and any turn with a number divisible by 100, but not for every other turn. Why? Because someone could easily game it by giving me purposely weird numbers that result in rounding up. The gain is marginal but it's still an unfair gain.

What's so hard about dividing by 10 anyway? It's literally all the work I'm asking the player to do here!

No, as I said, you round DOWN. Then there is no way to game the system.

 

[Tyo]

Rounding down all the time would lead to undercutting in the same way that situationally rounding up would lead to overcutting. What's so wrong with just doing investments by 10% anyway? The numbers are easier to use and it doesn't take a genius to figure what 10% of a number is. What's your arguement against just sticking to my request?

 

[NinjaCow64]

Rounding down all the time would lead to undercutting in the same way that situationally rounding up would lead to overcutting. What's so wrong with just doing investments by 10% anyway? The numbers are easier to use and it doesn't take a genius to figure what 10% of a number is. What's your arguement against just sticking to my request?

More freedom/flexibility for the players.

Anyways, unless someone has an idea for IOT X (as Son retconned his to being IOT something-else.5), I would like to host it. It won't be for a while and I would prefer someone more...experienced to host a numbered IOT, but I will do it if no one else wants to. It would be a stock standard IOT, with a random event feature that is inspired by NationState's one (but much better). Anyone interested?