Author Topic: The Design Championship.  (Read 9160 times)

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Offline Sheb (OP)

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The Design Championship.
« on: May 13, 2016, 08:53:39 AM »
So, I was thinking of running a ship design championship. Everyone get a set amount of BP to use to design a ship. I get the ship design and any doctrine for its use, and make them fight. Winner gets to move to the next level, until the Forum Champion of Design as been found.

This is my tentative ruleset:

Technology
All techs costing less than 5000 RP are allowed are allowed for the first round. Later round will take place at a higher tech level. Race-specific tech don't count (so you can have a humungous sensor if you want).

Design
Player gets 5000 BP to spend on ship(s) during the first round. Later round will include more BPs. The design are submitted privately (to avoid the other side optimizing its design for a specific opponent) and revealed when both side have submitted their design.

There is no restriction on the designs apart that your ship or task group must be able to travel at least 7 billions km (it's not fun if both side runs out of fuel before the fight).

Combat
All combat take place in Sol (No, you can't have PDCs). Players get to put their ship anywhere within the orbit of Pluto. I then run the fight according to the player's instructions. If the instruction cause the game to stall (for exemple, both sides are camping with actives sensors off), I will not respect them. If neither side can detect the other, I'll simply send all ships toward Sol until they can detect each other.

Victory
The last side to have ships win. If the match get stuck because no side is able to damage the other one, whoever got the less damage (expressed in number of BP) wins.

Player List:
1. Panopticon
2. Thanatos
3. Iranon
4. Sublight
5. Lenson
6. MarcAFK
7. Drgong

Matches:

First Round:

1. Panopticon vs. Thanatos: Thanatos victory!
2. Lenson vs. Drgon

You can still join! Just post in the thread, and PM your design and fighting instructions!
« Last Edit: June 11, 2016, 02:10:51 PM by Sheb »
 

Iranon

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Re: Design championship
« Reply #1 on: May 13, 2016, 10:46:29 AM »
I'm in! Some observations...

Tech: I think some amount of RP budgeting may be advisable.
Otherwise, design approaches dependent on multiple lines get a major boost, and those that need one key tech just above the threshold may be unable to compete although they'd require half the total RP.
I'd favour a mixed approach, along the lines of "All techs up to 10k are free, discretionary budget of 100k". This gives entrants some leeway, but avoids most of the beancounting.

Game setup: It's probably a good idea to set some modest requirement for fleet speed, range, maintenance life and deployment time for anything not carried in a hangar, to avoid designs that are good at winning battles but utterly impractical.
Ordnance should probably also count towards the BP budget, if we just create things with Fast OOB it's free.

Some really cool ideas about to spice things up for consecutive rounds. I'd be wary about creating an unstable equilibrium though... part of it is rock/paper/scissors, we shouldn't be rewarded too highly for countering something hard in round one.
In a limited form, this could be interesting and also take into account the operating costs of different approaches: BP increased, replacement of losses (and repair costs if that's easy to track) is heavily discounted, fuel and ordnance will be restrocked at list price. Left over budget can be spent on new designs.
 

Offline Sheb (OP)

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Re: Design championship
« Reply #2 on: May 13, 2016, 10:58:39 AM »
If people are willing to do the beancounting themselves (aka, provide a list of tech price they used), I might consider the tech budget. Or maybe for another game.

Missile should cost BP as well. Spent missile will also count toward the damage counter in case were both sides still have ships at the end of the engagement.

 

Offline AL

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Re: Design championship
« Reply #3 on: May 13, 2016, 06:01:07 PM »
I'd be interested to see what the results of this are. One thing I thought of is whether the BP budget is large enough to allow for fleet actions - do you want this to be more of a "which single ship is better" or a "which fleet composition is better" competition? Perhaps it might even be worth splitting those two up into separate categories. Also, will the budget be restrictive of the "big ship" designs that some like to use?
 

Offline MarcAFK

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Re: Design championship
« Reply #4 on: May 13, 2016, 08:45:59 PM »
I'm thinking we could operate in tiers, based on average research level needed for competent Military vessels at various tech levels, ion tier, magneto plasma, etc. BP should be somewhere around 30-40ktons for the first test then increasing by 50% for each new level. I'm going to poke around in SM mode and see what looks like a good standard. I'll also check the design forum and see what kind of BP/ Rp cost the average ION era ships there seem to be.
" Why is this godforsaken hellhole worth dying for? "
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Offline Thanatos

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Re: Design championship
« Reply #5 on: May 14, 2016, 04:05:17 AM »
I like this idea. I am game for it.

As far as tech and BP goes. I'd combine the ideas: IE, enter the tournament with a ship at the same engine tech level, but give a budget for weapons and peripheralia.

It is very important to start at the same engine tech level, or someone could very easily plug all their RP into engines, and be uncatchable.
 

Offline Sheb (OP)

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Re: Design championship
« Reply #6 on: May 14, 2016, 04:35:11 AM »
So for we seem to have 3/4 players. I'll wait to see if I can get at least 8 to make 3 tiers of championships.
 

Iranon

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Re: Design championship
« Reply #7 on: May 14, 2016, 06:20:33 AM »
The tournament rules prohibit running away forever, and that's perfectly realistic: If your fleet wants to claim a tie by running away forever, nasty things will happen to your home planet.

The other speed- related problem, "if you outrange and outrun them, you're untouchable", actually becomes worse with fixed engine tech. Those who want to go for this can now focus entirely on long-ranged firepower. They now have the guarantee that nobody will be able to close the range quickly, without blowing much of their budget on engine tech.
 

Offline MarcAFK

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Re: Design championship
« Reply #8 on: May 14, 2016, 06:47:10 AM »
I propose literally fixed engine tech level, but each design has leeway on power modifier, size etc. at a cost of research points and build cost of course.
" Why is this godforsaken hellhole worth dying for? "
". . .  We know nothing about them, their language, their history or what they look like.  But we can assume this.  They stand for everything we don't stand for.  Also they told me you guys look like dorks. "
"Stop exploding, you cowards.  "
 

Offline AL

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Re: Design championship
« Reply #9 on: May 14, 2016, 07:01:42 AM »
Would that necessitate running the contest across various tech levels then? I feel like certain ship concepts are only really feasible in specific tech ranges, as an example (at least for me) fighters are only good at magneto-plasma or higher engine tech (and maxed multipliers)
 

Offline Sheb (OP)

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Re: Design championship
« Reply #10 on: May 14, 2016, 08:07:19 AM »
It's going to be fixed tech level. I'm not going to keep track of RP (It'll be a "you can use all techs costing less that X RP" thing). Tech level will go up as the tournament progress. (So, maybe Nuclear Pulse for the first round, magneto-plasma for the semi final, hightech for the final), with number of BP going up as well.

 

Offline Garfunkel

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Re: Design championship
« Reply #11 on: May 14, 2016, 07:13:18 PM »
I'm in, sounds interesting!
 

Offline xXKageAsashinXx

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Re: Design championship
« Reply #12 on: May 15, 2016, 09:28:36 PM »
Count the newbie in as well :D

That moment when you see the alien force, and realize it's bigger than yours.  
 

Offline Panopticon

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Re: Design championship
« Reply #13 on: May 15, 2016, 11:20:02 PM »
Yeah alright, I'll give it a go.

 

Offline AL

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Re: Design championship
« Reply #14 on: May 16, 2016, 07:05:41 AM »
Perhaps it might be worth keeping a sort of registration list in the opening post? That way we can get an idea of the numbers at a glance.