Zen Nomads - Discussion Thread

[JacenHan (OP)]

Interesting. Only thing I've seen like this before was a Battlestar Galactica roleplaying game on Bay12, but it didn't make it far.

Looking forward to the "in-character" introduction.

[Vandermeer]

So, finally, the first post has been done after such delay. I was occupied with developing that excel tool which I will need for this campaign, and then also lost a day when I ventured too far into material gathering. ...Well, at least I have a stock now to draw on.

I hope the size is not too large for most screens and not too small for the colored font to become unreadable. Hopefully it also doesn't take extra long to load. It is all fine for me, but who knows.
I had to hold myself back to not call the person of the quotation "Lady Geo". That would have been too obvious, and also doesn't hit the theme of this race.

From here I can finally for real start playing. Thus far nothing but preparation, setup, tech unlocks, then redoing it all over, and not a single interval passed.

[Vandermeer]

After discovering so much resource, I decided not to venture out of the system before I had the Swarm Fleet built. There is more than enough around, and hard accessibility only makes it a time question after this. Compared to other plays I did with similar goals though, this here may be very delayed since I do not have access to a sufficient source of Corundium. If you try to do some gigantic size building, you will need to find at least one good source of that normally, as it allows you to constantly build auto-mines, through which those 0.1 acc. planets become so attractive in the first place... (you need to count in thousands) . Since I stay so low tech here, I await not having too much problem and relatively cheap designs though. Also, security as well as story wise it is much better to venture out later if you have the option. Makes it more thrilling to have this enormous step to finally venture into other star systems to be done by a huge mobile home mothership.
Another crucial thing missing is a Gas Giant who could have Sorium. This will limit fuel production critically, meaning that I will have to send out the swarm fleet mostly 'hungry' as you cannot possibly come up with enough fuel through lame refineries alone.(not even with a 54m 0.7acc. Sorium Deposit attached to them... ) The problem will solve itself though as soon as the first 'somewhat' Sorium containing Giant is found.

[Vandermeer]

Just to be clear about the crew size: I divide Auroras numbers by 10 in my head. If you compare other sci-fi franchises with their tonnage:crew ratios, you will find that Aurora stuffs in people incredibly dense. Some comparisons: Star Trek Galaxy Class with around 1000+ persons against ~5mt, so 5000 tons per man. Then Intrepid class with 140 to 700k, so same. They are luxurary however, so here: Warhammer Dictator Cruiser 100k crew against 29mt size ~ 290tons per man. ...And those are described as extremely pressed military quarters, which a rogue trader should improve upon purchase to not lose the morale of the crew.
I think you could still size it down a little, but I am inclined to agree that much more mass would actually be needed for every crewman. Not only his private space counts after all, but also the extra food, water and oxygen storage/refinement for months to come, then hygiene and medical space, eventually some public areas, and not to forget the ever growing network of corridors and lifts etc. . Encase all that with a metal shell, and I am sure the number will go quite above 10 tons per man, which seems to be Auroras absolute maximum.
I am still giving out unedited design plans, but when eventually talking about it, I will consider at least a 10th of that. Probably even less.

...Works good with fighters by the way, which then have either 1 or 2 pilots, just like it should be.

[Icecoon]

PTW

This is a very interresting idea. Please continue

[Vandermeer]

 

[JacenHan (OP)]

Beam weaponry requires a range of 10,000 km to function, so the weapons on the void-gears won't do anything.

[Vandermeer]

Thanks - I feared as much when designing, but I was hoping that it would still work since those are only supposed to fire at point blank. I think even now they will be left with the pilot's skill minus enemy ecm, which is not much especially with that fire rate.
Did I mention that I have their failure scene already prepared?

[Vandermeer]

I am having the fun of my life right now with this game. I need to catch up with the reports quickly.

[Jakalo]

I`m liking the AAR, but I would much prefer simple text with images in between paragraphs instead of text overlaid images. Much harder to read this way.

[Vandermeer]

Bear with me for a bit still. In two posts it will finally get serious, so that is when I change style to mainly in game screenshots of map and reports. There will still be pictures frequently (I accumulated >300mb by now to chose from...), but more as a supplement.

I wish there was a design element that would make it so I could create two layers images, and when you hover over a picture, anything but the text darkens to make it more readable. ..Technology came this far, but there is always need for more.

[Vandermeer]

Following that thread that discussed how there could be infinite maintenance hangars, I actually tried to have that for the Laputa design. It would have been so great to have a literal 0-thermal base hangar that I could drop anywhere with one of my quick massive freighters. I would've had stealth base deployments which can not really be spotted by AI other than by accident.(fighters that escape the active sensors will be stealthy again with their low thermal, and thus not draw suspicion when traveling back and forth)
Sadly it appeared to be impossible as designs of this size will always get a maintenance error message every now and then, no matter how much engineering I put onto them.(had a 600k design at one point, where nearly 300k was just engineering, and the tests failed still...) Even though nothing every broke for real on those infinite deployment types, the error message alone would break the tractor link, making it first tedious, later (with rising IFR) straight impossible to tractor them around. So for now my solution is to have these really easy maintainable engines on them combined with massive MSP storage. Since only one module ever breaks at once-> even if they would fail on every single 5-day interval, a Laputa would stand exactly 124 years without a refill. ..And of course they don't break this often.
It might become a problem on future designs though when engines actually get expensive. I will probably need some revision or new concept then.

[Vandermeer]

To make it clear, the "thick shell" of the Zodiark is of course not just the 10 layers armor, which the others have too, and it isn't all that dramatic to begin with. But since the shell is explaining how the design can be shielded against space erosion so good, and the main reason why they are so good encapsuled are actually the 24% engineering spaces, I count those to some degree towards the protective shroud. That would make it around 8 times as thick at highest, but I assume around factor 5 - whatever, it is a made up mind explanation.

Also, the reason why building all the ships took so long were not the shipyard times, but resource shortages. Everyone is 260kt duranium, and then also around 73kt mercassium and 103kt boronide. Rest irrelevant. To use the time, I built most components ahead already like the cheap reactors or the rather expensive cryogenic berths. The real assembly thereafter was ridiculously short. Despite only having one slipway, I managed to manufacture all the 14 super-freighters for example from 5.2308 to 4.2312, so around 4 years, meaning about 4 months build time per ship. That is nothing. After those I was again a little short on minerals yet again - mainly because the asteroid miner would consume my rarest and most needed resource, corundium, in amounts that would equal a couple thousand auto-mines. He however holds by itself more mining power than the whole rest with its 6 dedicated mining ships combined.

[Vandermeer]

A remark to the current post: I actually thought about introducing drama artificially at this point of the game, e.g. by blowing some ships of the fleet up shortly after transit and say "it was aliens", along with declaring the communication and way back blocked somehow. That would have created some scarcity and stranded situation, which could have been very interesting. A jump start for further plot.
I have however decided that I will, with exception of a distant finale maybe, never fall to artificially alter the game for this purpose, so all will be as it is thrown at me, even if that might cause episodes of boredom at some point. There are spoiler reasons that I can be glad that I did so, but technically I also really didn't need the boost here, since the first system luckily already positioned objects for plot right in front of me.

[Vandermeer]

There is nothing rigged here. The only thing I got out of these wrecks aside from forgettable amounts of minerals, was literally only this one military jump drive. ...The plot just emerges from itself.