Ship systems OOC

[Armedes]

Ok. Let's start setting up a system of organization for ships. We'll have three levels for confirmation. Level 1 is an undeniable fact. Level 2 is a fact people agree on, but New Zimbabwe hasn't given final approval. Level 3 is a proposal for fact that needs to be voted on.

My facts are as follows.


Level 1:
The number of citizens a nation has in NationStates is the total number of personnel they have, including military, civilian and scientific.



Level 2:
None, at the moment.



Level 3:
(My proposals)
Fleets and armadas should count only fighting capital ships. A capital ship is considered anything larger than a frigate. Destroyers, cruisers and assault carriers are considered capital ships. Battleships, heavy cruisers and fleet carriers are considered super capital ships. Battlestations, spacestations, supply and bombard stations are considered stations.

To set up what each ship means, let's have the amount of crew operating each vessel:
(Small Class)
Scout: 1
Fighter: 1-2
Bomber: 1-3
Corvette: 3-31
(medium class)
Frigate: 32-150
(Capital class)
Destroyer: 150-300
Cruiser: 250-450
Assault Carrier: 450-800 crew. They can hold up to 3 flights (12 scouts/fighters/bombers each wing) extra and 2 wings (10 corvettes each) extra. You'll have to specify large assault carrier if you are maxing this.
(super capital class)
Battleship: 800-1200 crew. They can hold 1 flight extra. Probably scouts so they can aim their heavy guns.
Heavy Cruiser: 900-1500 crew. Probably the flagship of a fleet. Consider this a heavy Battleship. Can hold 2 flights extra and 1 wing extra.
Dreadnaught: 1000-5000 crew. Heaviest guns of a fleet. Please don't have more than 10 of these. Since these are so huge, powerful and awkward, it will take ages to reposition, calculate warp jumps for and other such mundane tasks. Can hold 3 flights extra and 2 wings extra.
Fleet Carriers: 5000-10000. Almost space stations, these behemothan carriers field countless ships. Hold 15 flights extra, 12 wings extra and also can hold 4 assault groups (1 assault group is 3 frigates).

(space station class)

Civilian station: 10,000+. Depends on how big the station is. Practically, they can encircle a world if you get enough metal together. Also would make a juicy target, but let's leave civilian war out of this

Battle station: 10000-25000. Sort of like Death Star out of star wars. These would take so long to accelerate to warp and decelerate out of warp that you can bring in a Dreadnaught or two to help take it down. You'd use this to finish off an enemy. 6 flights and 5 wings. 3 assault groups. This station is dominated by a single main weapon. It's surface is covered with smaller weaponry for fire support.

Bombard and supply stations: 1000-2500. Smallest crews of battle stations, this station is dominated by the huge stockpiles of ammunition and seige weaponry. These stations have huge powerplants to enable them to keep a sustained barrage to pummel at planetary sheilds and the like. Lots of point defense systems make these practically immune to fighter based attack. Also, these stations can recharge, repair and resupply anything smaller than a destroyer.

I think I covered every class of ship. The most common should be frigate size, as they have the best speed/size ratio of all the classes. Small class ships are vulnerable to frigates. Frigates are vulnerable to capital, super-capital and stations. capitals are vulnerable to small. Super-capital are vulnerable to small and capitals. Stations are vulnerable to Capitals and super-capitals.


Finally, fleet sizes.

A flight is 12 fighters OR bombers OR scouts.

A wing is 10 Corvettes

An assault group is 3 frigates.

A task group would be about 10 frigates and smaller ships with 2-3 capital ships.

A task force would be about 6 capital ships with about 12 frigates and smaller ships

A fleet should have about 12 capital ships and 3 super capitals. Frigates aren't really restricted, but let's keep them below twice the number of capitals and super capitals, in this case 30. You can have one station per fleet if you want, but it will severely slow down the fleet.

You can combine 3 fleets together to get an armada. Something this large should be rare, since it is a very inviting target, one triggered worm or black hole and you lose the entire armada.





Make comments on this structure, but let me know if you support it. Don't make your own lists, tell me to modify mine. You can pick apart pieces of the structure to say you like them, and if 2 people agree on one part, it'll get moved to level 2. Once zimbabwe agrees with them, they get to level 1 and we have our war.




Final rule for level 3 is you can't have more than 40% of your population in the military. You have to account for the people doing maintenance, the very old, the very young, the service industry, the hospital industry, government and other such concerns.

[Terran Dominion Empire]

Alright I like most of what I see. But for my country I have people as young as 12 in the Military (OOC: I know that’s really, really bad. ). About 55 % of my population is in the military in my nation state. Most of my military do more than one task. They are all engineers, doctors, scientists, and soldiers. 25 % of my population does maintenance on cities, stations and ships. 5% of my people are purely scientist. The last 15 % are every thing else. Also the level three may be seen as interfering with governments. The Level three limits what people can and can’t do.

I like most of the ship ideas but I have a few questions? What about personal Flag ships? Do we count them? How many ships can we have? What should the maximum amount be? What should a diplomatic fleet be composed of?

[Sigma Dome]

It appears to be an alright, albeit inflexible system. What if you have heavy automation or unusual ships (I'm thinking about the Sentinel-class Stealth Carrier from the Macross universe - unsd.macrossroleplay.org/sentinel.html ) that defy definition (in my example, it'd qualify as a Corvette just barely, or as a really small frigate - either way it carries either 6 or 12 fighters, depending on configuration) or, even better, the theoretical possibility of launching the Domes (not happening, but hey, they're pretty damned big). Also, I think you've serverely restricted troop flexibility (and mixed terms, but that's subjective).

Common sense would be a good dictator here ... I'll try to work a more flexible system later tonight ... but there is one thing I WILL not budge on - change the Task ____ designations. A task force is a freefloating size - my small recon force is one, as is the Entire Talycan 1st massing over an enemy ...

(Something I base a lot of my fleet designs and direction off of: unsd.macrossroleplay.org/fleet.php - I'll probably "borrow" a bunch of capships from here, but since the stats are well defined ...)

My additional proposal is to require that all ships have their statistics clearly defined ...

[Terran Dominion Empire]

First off Macross rocks. I played RPG Macross. Secondly, what about small drones, the ones the size of a missile. How many of those can we have on a ship?

[Armedes]

Small drones, missiles, probes, torpedoes and other such miniature craft classify under torpedoes. Try not to have ridiculous amounts of torpedoes and drones. I'd say for an average capital ship you'd get about 128 torpedo class. A super-cap you'd have about 900+. A station manufactures it's own, so you can have practically unlimited (as long as you resupply the ship with resources).


The level 3 designation is for a proposal (not any sort of restriction), it's sort of a hypothesis. level 2 is sort of a scientific theory, level 1 being a scientific law. These level designations are not a law or restriction, just a way of organizing our ideas for ship organization into what people like.

Yeah, the system is pretty inflexible, but it allows an in-depth understanding of fleet size and allows a standard.

If you have special craft, just count them as the closest equivalent in size. After all, you wouldn't go around saying you have 4 stealth ships en route unless you have none or over a hundred. Stealth ships don't really have to be counted, but you have to give them a few handicaps, for example a stealth fighter cannot hold it's own against a regular fighter. Stealth ships can be faster than regular, but it has to be in a certain mode that shows they can be detected.

For example, to clarify things a bit, if you have ships with smaller crew sizes (I realize 10,000 on one ship is humongous) you can raise them to the designation equivalent for your fleet. For our purposes, the Sovereign class rates as a heavy cruiser. Thunderchild would be a heavy destroyer-almost a battleship. So let's say battleship. The Intrepid and Scharnhorst are regular cruisers and Defiant class would rate as a frigate.

Beowulf class, which I think is fan-made btw, would be a dreadnaught. It's a three nacelle modification of a Sovereign.

Now you can't comfortably fit 5000 people on a Star Trek canon Sovereign class, therefore the Sovereigns here are bigger.

Simplified, really, but effective in my view.

[Terran Dominion Empire]

OK so we got most of it down but we still need a maximum amount of ships a country can have. I should think that a good number of ships should be something like 400. This number is more realistic. Of course we should not count civilian ships because for one thing they are not part of the government and technically speaking they don’t go off to war.

[Terran Dominion Empire]

Also we need to figure out a way to wage war without doing godmodding. I personally don’t want a war be it seems it is being forced on us. So we might as well figure out a way to have a war without godmodding. Maybe something like we have a person that can’t wage war or be attacked and is impartial. That hears the orders from the people and then posts the results. We can do something like a mix between diplomacy the board game and Dungeons and Dragons but without dice. We can personal message a person with orders. We can make orders like I want my 1st fleet to move to sector N1, to the green star. If battle occurs and lost retreat to N2 to the blue star in the bottom left hand corner. Or something like that.

[Halo Empire]

What 400 ships only. Come one we should at the very least have 1000 ships.

[Armedes]

Yeah, I wanted to be impartial, hence the request for neutrality. It's not too late, as I have lost no units and have made no attacks. Also, since I don't have territory per se, I am the ultimate in arbitership.

400 ships is a quite small number, but 1000 is too high. I'd say 600. This is just capital class or above. Don't have ridiculous amounts of fighters and frigates, as that sort of defeats the purpose.

If you want to have your own divisions, you can tack on Special in front of the designation, as in "Special Task Force 9" or whatever. Keep the basic layout of the division the same though.

Ok, if we are doing away with godmoding and if I am considered truly neutral and can call your shots, let me set up how you attack.

Firstly, you have to state the locations and compositions of all your major battle groups. Fleets and armadas and military supply depots. You can have 2 hidden battle groups of the above (if you want). Also, you have to state if your civilian populations remain on the planets, continue their normal activity within the confines of your borders, or ignore the war and continue trading with the other nations' citizens. So, the ideal statement would be (for BCD) "We have the 4th fleet in N1, composing of 7 destroyers, 3 cruisers, 2 assault carriers, 2 battleships and a dreadnaught." This would be quite a formidable fleet. Don't go into too much detail on frigates and lower.

Next, you should give codenames to each of your major battle groups (fleets and above). 7th Fleet, Sigmund Armada, Hrakert shipyards, etc. This is for reference so that we know who is attacking what, not just "Sigma Dome attacks the Halo Empire armada and it's ringworld and bombards the home planet". The ideal situation is if two opposing fleets (sigma and BCD) are in one sector (N1 and such) Sigma would say "2nd Sigman fleet moves to engage 4th BCD fleet in N1..."

Also, you might want to state what condition your fleets are in. If the BCD fleet was in N1 before and they are entrenching their positions (mining, putting autoguns, mapping the system for attack vectors and other techno-mumbo jumbo like that) they would be in a better position than the Sigman fleet. If the two fleets came across one another and proceeded to battle, then neither would be entrenched and it would determine on the variables like strategy and such. Therefore, a good modifier to the above ideal statement would be "2nd Sigman fleet moves to engage 4th BCD fleet in N1 on alert for entrenched positions and with Capital ships in front clearing the path". This is a dangerous position, as you have your most valuable ships in front, however, this would make the mines and autoguns practically useless as the capital ships massive point-fire systems will vaporize them upon detection.

As soon as the BCD fleet moves to confront the Sigman fleet, they will lose most of their entrenched advantage. Therefore, the best thing for the entrenched BCD fleet to do would be sit tight and send out sorties of smaller ships to lure the big ships within range of your big guns and into your strategy. While this all sounds too complicated for a game, it's just an explanation of the strategy. What BCD will say is "BCD fleet prepares for Sigman advance and attacks Sigman capital ships with bombers and torpedoes".

At this point, I would examine the ship compositions and any additional strategy either side uses to determine the rolling odds for each side. Then, after a series of rolls (don't worry, I'm lucky with d20s), I will announce the outcomes. I won't totally decimate your fleet, but I will let you know as you take losses. For example: "Sigma Dome loses 1 Destroyer and 2 frigates" "BCD loses 3 wings of bombers, 2 flights and 2 frigates" "Sigma Dome loses 1 Destroyer and 1 Assault Carrier with it's flight and wing complements" "BCD loses Battleship due to kamikaze attack from Sigma Dome Destroyer, Sigma dome loses said destroyer".

Like that. you can choose to retreat at any time and as a general rule, the fleets with the higher amount (and more powerful) of ships will be slower than the ones will less ships in quantity and power. Therefore, if you are losing badly, the chances of you escaping are quite good.

Finally, once you wipe out a fleet or armada in the same sector as a civilian place of your enemies', you can attack that civilian place. All planets inhabited have sheilds, therefore you need to bombard. Once you break their sheilds, you can either sterilize the planet or invade it.

Sterilization of a planet is considered an atrocity. Anyone found doing so will be labeled a war criminal. Also, massacaring civilian units not of your own is considered an atrocity. This massacre can be through plagues, antimatter bombs, chemical agents, conventional weapons (like soldiers going through towns phasering anyone in sight) and exotic destruction(opening a wormhole on the surface of the planet, imploding a planet's core, thalaron radiation pulse onto the entire planet, stuff like that).

Once you invade a planet, if there is an enemy fleet in 2 sectors of the invaded planet, they can attack and won't have to break through any sheilds. They will also get a bonus against your units in that sector, considering rebel factions and such fighting against you as invader.

You can also just bypass systems, and nothing bad will happen from that. I'm thinking we modify the RP map as systems and sectors are lost and/or gained.


Any questions?

[Terran Dominion Empire]

WOW! That is really good. TD and I both agree with the system. We believe that you are indeed a good choice. I just want to remind you that if you take the so called “job” you have to be impartial at all times. This includes truly terrible atrocities that may unfold during the war. I am speaking of course from a previous war with BCD where he almost destroyed my home planet. I think that we should have a thread were you post the results. Also we should send info to you via personal messages. I agree with the 600 ships. Otherwise I like it. I am asking to wait to continue the war in a few days. Soon I will get 500 million people. At that time I will personalize my nation states name.

[Halo Empire]

The Unstoppable, Uncontrollable Axis Of Really Bad Guys Of DOOM And Villainy (TUUAXORBGODAV) agree with every thing. I would like to personally apologize for my actions and the actions of BCD over the past several toward you, Armedes. BCD and I both agree that you are the best choice.

[Armedes]

Ok, as Zimbabwe isn't here to confirm our plans, everything is considered level 2.

The really bad guys of doom and the Federation have stated their grievances and have been found to be irreconcilable. Therefore, there shall be war in a few days. I shall serve as arbiter, my ships and units shall be irrelevant, therefore not present on the map.

We shall start a new thread to start this war.

[Terran Dominion Empire]

You don’t need to remove your ships its just they won’t be attacked. Sort of like invulnerability for your people.

[Terran Dominion Empire]

Just another thought what about planetary defenses? My main planet has planetary guns which defend it and its moons and ring world.

[Armedes]

As to how many fleets and/or armadas a nation can have, I have no idea. However, do not have 12 armadas. Such a huge fleet would bankrupt and de-populate even the most ardent nation. On stations, each nation can have however many stations they wish, as long as it doesn't exceed 9 stations.

I'd say small nations (below 100 mill) get 3 stations, medium (100mill to 500 mill) get 6 and large (above 500 mill) get 9. This should help somewhat. Note that stations are practically unassailable except with an armada with 2 dreadnaughts. With all the effort of transporting one dreadnaught, two would take a long time. Therefore, until you practically decimate your enemy's fleets, hold off on assaulting stations.

Remember, bonus points awarded to those with creative strategies. Also, war criminals will not recieve any penalties except there is a slightly greater chance of one or two of your citizens defecting. This will be an extremely rare occurrance, therefore worry not.

Final note is that you can arrange your fleet and armada any way you want within the parameters specified above. You can have 7 destroyers and 5 assault carriers, or 12 destroyers, or 11 cruisers and 1 assault carrier and so forth. Similarly, you can have 3 dreadnaughts, 2 battleships and a dread naught, 1 battleship, 1 heavy cruiser and 1 dreadnaught and so on. Each fleet, try to keep your frigates under 30 and each armada under 60. This is to keep it realistic.

Go to teh appropriately named thread when war is begun.