Nemesis Campaign - Comments

[procyon (OP)]

Well, some sick babies are hard to fix,
And some there is just no fixing...

But for tonight, the good guys won.

In games, strife can be fun,
but in real life, I'm all about the happy endings.

Few more hours of charting and I can go home.

But for the moment, I'll get this next part posted.
Thanks for reading.

[procyon (OP)]

Sorry it took a while to post August part 2.  The computers have been down at work while we change owners/systems.
Using my mom's PC while I visit her.

Will have part 3 out shortly.

[procyon (OP)]

Well, our computers are back up at work, but they upgraded the web filter.
Its taken awhile to figure out a way back to this site, but I've finally gotten a reliable path.

[Beersatron]

Well, our computers are back up at work, but they upgraded the web filter.
Its taken awhile to figure out a way back to this site, but I've finally gotten a reliable path.

Welcome back!

[Beersatron]

Still about Procyon?

[procyon (OP)]

FOUND YOU !
I'm not real good at hide and seek on the computer.  The link I had used before to get to Aurora would only give me a "Can not display page", so I had no idea what had happened.  Was a little concerned the site had shut down  .
To make it worse, my mother was away on her first ever (and rather long) vacation to Europe.  She just got home on the 21st.  I was able to find out what the new site was the next day, and have spent the last few trying to find a reliable way into the site that the hospital's web filter won't block.
I didn't have my jump drive with me tonight, so the latest post is just something I've thrown together and redone from the actual no.7.  With no way back to the site (and not sure if it was there), I haven't really put lots into cohesive writing.  The actual August no.7 is now a MASS of text and going on its third rewrite.  I will try and put it into something fit for posting on the site this weekend.

[Beersatron]

I was beginning to think that you had been permanently barred from the forums!

I predict an all-or-nothing Battle Royale in the future

[Erik L]

In theory, there should be a notice on the old site directing people to the new one.

[procyon (OP)]

I found this site existed when I got to my mother's house and checked on her computer.  Problem was I don't go staight to your old home page (or this one) to get into the site because it is blocked by my work.  The address I used to get to the old site just gave me that the web page couldn't be displayed.  After I found out about the new site, it was just a matter of being able to find a way in that wasn't blocked by the hospital's web filter.

As for this last post being even slower than I had hoped, I discovered that infant boys should never be changed within 3 feet or so of your work station.  Little guy took out the tower and my flash drive in one 'shot'  .  I've spent the last few nights copying my old posts one at a time so that I could get started again.  I now have a back up on the computers at home to avoid just such an incident.

I did discover that September 2203 part 3 was missing from the posts on this site when I went back through and copied them, so I sat down tonight and retyped it from the hard copy book my wife and kids keep to read.  I will be posting it here in a few minutes as an edit on to the end of Sept 2203 part 2.  Sorry nothing new yet, give me a few days.  This has been a horrible last few weeks at work.  Lots and lots of babies, plus the start of the flu season for us (came early this year).  Then cut three of the RN's that can staff the NICU and my short weeks here have been over 50 hours.

At least the kids are hoping for a good Xmas with the extra $ in the paychecks.

Part 9 should be done in a few days.  Hold on.

I predict an all-or-nothing Battle Royale in the future

Without saying much, what happens next is actually pretty small in scale, but combined with what just happened, probably has the biggest impact on the shape of the conflict of anything so far.  You'll just have to guess or wait....

[mavikfelna]

How much of the player's capacity got shot up? SY are pretty hardy with 10 damage each.

From the looks of things, China got away with almost no damage and the FSC wasn't significantly affected.

My guess is that Mars is going to get hit next and finished off and then Neptune relieved. I'd be surprised if the Earth powers could do much to stop it at this point.

Unless something significant happens tech wise, I'd say only the Chinese are going to be significant for a long time to come.

--Mav

[procyon (OP)]

Hey Mav,

As for how hard everyone got hit, I will go into that in more detail on the overview after the next couple posts  (Yes, couple even though we are in the last 36 hours of the month).

As for the SS's, figure a st can carry a Pta even with the x3 MSP size the CP drives require on missile sizes.
A Pta does 2 dmg over most of its range.
No drive gives a x3 dmg mod.
SS weak hull gives a x2 on top of that.
So 2 x 3 x 2 = 12 on a successful ram,  2 on a FAILED attempt.
Doesn't take much to rip up a SS/SY that way.....
Even China's SS took hits.
Only the FSC got off without any damage, but they don't have a lot to shoot at either.

As for what and who gets hit, that would be a fair assumption, but you are going to have to wait to see if its accurate.....
As for China being significant, that would be accurate.  Dominant.....  

[athomaswn]

Hello Procyon,

I've enjoyed the read on the New Empires campaign. 

A lot of orbital construction capacity was damaged, but don't the three major players have between 5 and 15 ground construction facilities each?

Looking forward to the continuing story. 

[procyon (OP)]

The 'big' powers (China, Euro, US) each have ground capacity of greater than 10 SY.
The FSC only has about 2 at this moment, represented by S Africa and New Q.land.

As far as space to build ships, they have tons of extra space.  Their limiting factor has always been the very limited incomes available to them.

With incomes in the 1000 - 1400 MC range, and a substantial amount going to research to try and get an 'edge', the little bit left over usually couldn't fill the 3 to 4 orbital SY they had available.  Now that they have to increase the cost of the construction by 50% to build or repair space units with ground industry in most cases, their ability to replace losses just got squashed.  They were not a happy crowd to be around after that battle.

The big choice facing most of them for the moment isn't apparent from a first look, but was my real hope.  The loss of the SY would slow down production and make PDC much more attractive, giving the Nemotians time to rebuild.  It also faced the players with the devil's choice of either scraping the damaged SS to try and finance a short term building spree - at the cost of crippling their long term construction capacity.  Or.... tie up the few undamaged SY fixing the DAMAGED ones.  In a game with small incomes, fixing a shipyard was about 2 months worth of net income after other expenses, and would tie up the operational SY for 6+ months after they finally came up with the cash.  They could do it with ground industry but that would leave them with no excess income for 3+ months.
With the players out earning the Nemotians over 3 to 1, and having chopped off the income from Triton, it was going to be a short campaign if the economics weren't evened out significantly.

All these expenses also made the ground combat on Neptune very hard to support/fund.

My time in the Army taught me one thing very profoundly...
Amatuers study tactics.  Professionals study logistics.

Its all about what you can support in the field.

The next installment of the story (I should be able to post it Thursday if all works out) will show you one place they could lose a LOT of money they hadn't anticipated.
One of the players got VERY upset.
And the balance in the game shifted wildly after that for a while.

Thank you so much for the feedback.  Hearing from someone that they like what you are doing is definitely the fuel that runs the engine.
Hope you enjoy what is to come as much as the players hated it....

[mavikfelna]

I've enjoyed your work, and envied your ability to get your family to play, since you started posting. Please keep it up!

--Mav

[procyon (OP)]

Sorry for the wait again.
I had it ready to post last Thursday when I went to work, but the census was low so they put me on stand by and let me stay home. 
YIPEE !! 

What made it better was that I had the next three days off… a four day week end!!!
PAR – TEE !!! 

Which at my age and with six kids, actually means SLEEP…..   

I  got back to work last night just as a woman came in and gifted us with a cute pair of twins that were two and a half months early.  Needless to say, I didn’t get around to posting part 9.
(or eating, getting any bathroom breaks, etc, etc,….)

So here it is,  part 9, better late than never.

And Mav, it is wonderful having the family play these games together.
We just finished off the big kids’ zombie survival game (ran for 18 months) and just started a modern day conspiracy based one.  Its been a busy last few weeks, but LOTS of fun.
The only problems are when one of them gets the short end of the stick one night, you get to hear about it over, and over, and over… , or when they can’t figure out a puzzle and they just keep pestering….
It not like they go home and I get a rest.  But it sure is easy to set up time to run stuff.
The kids like video games, but even they drop them when we can sit down and play.  There is nothing quite like getting a group together. 

Thanks again for reading !