A Sheet of Metal Between the Void and Flesh

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"We step into the abyss my friends, our planet has been blessed with so many unique cultures and now, after many years of searching, we have come across new cultures outside of our solar system. Behind me, behind this sheet of transparent aluminum, is the first Interstellar Convoy to leave our planet. The year is 1905, and only twenty short years ago did the precursor vessel crash to the Atlantic Ocean, recovered only by the brave determination of the Navies of Europe and America. The secrets that were held within have helped us make great strides in all fields of science and technology; even now the first ground based nuclear turbines are being built in Paris, Berlin, London and New York. But this is a technology known to work, a technology proved to work by the existance of the fleet behind me, all of them powered by Nuclear Fission, a technology so novel that our scientists could not have dreamed of the wonderous power!

"It has been just over a century since we first slipped the surly bonds of Gravity to wander the skies in our primative hot air balloons, now we take flight again, this time to wander skies of a different kind. Know that you carry the hopes and asperations of the whole world with you. God Speed."

 

 

Welcome Admirals, you have each been selected by your representive nation to travel to the system of Grimalkin where you will make formal first contact with the race of Aliens that our unmanned probes have picked up. Your cargo ships will be transporting parts of our culture, parts of our technology and, most importantly, parts of our scientific community. While we do not anticipate any trouble once we arrive, there are many lightyears between here and there and any number of threats could exist, so a contigent of Warships has also been included.

 

 

Game Mechanics:

The game is simple. 3 or more players attempt to cross a grid, or survive for more than 25 rounds, while another player/s attempts to stop them.

The game is every man for himself, but the Convey group may feel inclined to work together as they are individually smaller than the pirate fleet.

Your main objective, if you are part of the Convoy group, is to protect your own Freight (Either by surviving with it for 25 rounds, or getting it off the map, either by the sides for 25% of its value, or the top for 100% of its value), this can be stored in specially build Haulers, which are relatively defenseless, or inside warships, the choice is yours.

Your objective, if you are part of the Pirate group, is to raid the Convey as best you can, with points being awarded for the amount of Freight destroyed, and double points being awarded for captured freight (however they then have to survive till turn 25, or leave the map by any side to count)

 

The points can be used to buy new technologies, which open up new ship construction avenues.

 

 

 

Unfortunately, me being me, I have decided to post about this game when I am not fully prepared and, indeed when I will not have time to prepare it for a good while (Friday at the earliest, though the next week is gonna be touch and go. After next Thursday (The 3rd of May) my schedual clears somewhat.)

 

That said, I have spent several hours building a database =D

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12603519/A%20Sheet%20of%20Metal%20Between%20Flesh%20and%20Nothing/Ship%20Stuffs.ods

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12603519/A%20Sheet%20of%20Metal%20Between%20Flesh%20and%20Nothing/Ship%20Stuffs.xls

 

Also a website (Which will serve as the map for encounters)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12603519/A%20Sheet%20of%20Metal%20Between%20Flesh%20and%20Nothing/index.html

 

And a bunch of ship sprites.

 

 

Anyway:

If people are interested please sign up (Includes Mather) or post your thoughts about what I have got so far =)

To sign up simply post your country and your Admiral's name.

If you want to look through the ship details then feel free, don't be discouraged if they don't make sense yet, they are not finished, they are just included to show people the direction I am heading in. (It looks more complicated than it is, you basically need to have positive Power and Control to build a working ship, everything else is just dressing =P)

 

 

Denver Fudge Tavenites.

[Resistance]

Admiral Prof. Arthas Roine

Finnish

[Earth]

Admiral Saren Vimes.

USA

[Resistance]

Admiral Saren Vimes.

USA

Named after Samuel?

 

--

 

I've looked through the database, and will ship to ship combat be entirely based on the offensivity and defence of our weapons? Could I say, send a spy onto a ship to cut the engine apart?

[Icuownage]

Sir Admiral Ridgewell Dawkins

UK

 

One of the best in her royal highness's navy. Dawkins was born into nobility, learning about warfare, strategy and tactics all from a young age. While traveling on his father's to the lush continent of Africa, Ridgewell discovered and embraced his love of the ocean. Describing it in one of his many autobiographies as "A wild in-tameable creature that is beautiful and graceful yet vengeful and full of wrath". Luckily for Ridgewell, his father fully embraced his ambition of becoming a captain of a ship, and supported him by paying for lessons with one of the navies finest Captains at the time Captain Nigel Thorner. It was not long until Ridgewell was able to enlist into the navy, of course being of high class and education, was assigned an officer role. He was second in-command of the fine ship, HMS Defender which was charged with the defense of British trade ships as they made their routes, specifically in the Caribbean; which was captained by none of than Captain Nigel Thorner.

 

An infamous pirate by the name of Arthur McFlintlock (A fake name given to him for his expert skill in guns) ambushed a trade fleet which was unloading goods at the time. Unprepared and outnumbered by the superior pirate fleet, the HMS Defender was sunk. Survivors of the battle say that the HMS Defender went down valiantly, sinking a good few ships of the pirate fleet before being obliterated by the pirate flagship (Juggernaut, a dreadnaught class ship). Dawkins survived the battle, swimming to the relatively close port, but Nigel went down with the ship and was lost to the sea.

 

Seeking revenge for the death of his mentor and friend, Dawkins trained and fought to settle the score with the infamous pirate. For his actions at the battle he lost his mentor at, he was promoted to captain (it was vacant for obvious reasons after the battle), in the appropriately named ship HMS Revenge. For many years, Dawkins scoured the Caribbean sea, finishing off what few pirates remained as their numbers dwindled. McFlintlock was one of the last pirates and by far one of the most nefarious.

 

It was a rough stormy night when Dawkins spotted Arthur's dreadnought off the coast of an unnamed island in the Caribbean, but being a man of honor and very British, he approached the pirate and did not engage until the pirate was out in open ocean. There were only two ships present in the battle, Juggernaut and HMS Revenge. There were rough waves that day that bashed harshly against the cold iron of both ships. Like angry titans, Arthur and Dawkins fought one another to the end. It was ultimately the HMS Revenge that triumphed the ship combat, which Dawkins described in his autobiography "The sea picks who she favors, and let's him win", as the wind was in Dawkin's favor. However, Arthur did not go down with his ship, he instead rope swung to the Revenge, to challenge Dawkins one on one in a sword duel.

 

The crew of HMS Revenge could only describe the scene as mesmerizing as it was frightening, two masters in the art of war and two very skilled duelists one on one in a thundering storm. However, Arthur was wounded from a shrapnel of cannonball explosion, and fatigued from the long battle. He succumb to a stab wound inflicted by Dawkins to the torso and was dumped overboard. For his efforts in eradicating such a fearsome pirate, he was knighted and promoted to Admiral, and dubbed "Pirate slayer" by peers.

 

When the computer was found, and space travel became possible, Dawkins was appointed admiral of the British space fleet. Although not like the sea, Dawkins hopes to rekindle the feelings of battle in space when he battles the pirates.

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I've looked through the database, and will ship to ship combat be entirely based on the offensivity and defence of our weapons?

 

Pretty much.

 

Could I say, send a spy onto a ship to cut the engine apart?

Not really, you can board the enemy ship, or you can target specific modules, but you can't send a spy onto the enemy ship to destroy stuff.

[Retech]

Ah, so it's numerical.

 

How would this game be played? IRC, Forum, how much time per turn, etc?

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IRC plus Automapping website, ala:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12603519/A%20Sheet%20of%20Metal%20Between%20Flesh%20and%20Nothing/index.html

 

Aka, you give me the instructions, I move the ships around on a GIMP image manipulator, save the new PNG over the old PNG and it auto-refreshes every 10 seconds.

 

On the assumption people don't work with overly huge fleets it should be fine (I build 9001 fighters and fly them all seperately)

 

Game will be turn based, with some mods (You are in the shower when the alarm bell rings, -2 Initative).

Player turns will last 2 minutes each, and hopefully I will be able to update the map in less than 3 minutes. Thus, assuming 5 players, one round should take 25 minutes or less.

 

Inertia will not count unless you are making some intricate manuever using it (I am already traveling 5 that way, so I move 5 this way to go 5 diagonally, around the weapon arc of ship X)

[Earth]

Sounds like a good plan, and no less speedy than most of our previous gaming adventures.

[Nexaduro]

Admiral Faust Holiday

United States

Pioneer of the F.I.C.U.S. combat system

Psyche Profile: Honorable by intent, with terrible consequences. A mind as tangled as a wicker basket, and about as sharp. To be denied involvement in government project P-94XC.

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Ok. Given I had a few spare minutes(Which could have been more productively used but still), this is what the combat screen should look like during the game:

[hide]

[/hide]

 

To run through:

Pink/Red:

The symbol for the IHS (Imperial High Seafleet) Bismark is for a ship between scale of 250 and 1,000.

The two other symbols are two squadrons of Fighters. (You can have up to 10 Squadrons)

 

Blue/Aqua:

The symbol for the HMS (Her/His Majesties Ship) Victory is for a ship between scale 100 and 250.

The symbol for the other two are for ships between scale 25 and 100.

 

White:

The symbol is the command ship. This ship has the main sensor system (shown by the large circle). If a pirate vessel is beyond that range then it will not show its position.

 

I have experimented with weapon ranges and they are not easy to implement. However each ship/Squadron will have a stat sheet (Generated by you :thumbup: ) so it shouldn't be hard to recall.

 

I would strongly recommend short ship names, preferably without IHS/HMS identifies, as they become unreadable if ships are next to each other.

 

Now I am off to Seminars (yay).

[Corvus]

Raider Captain: Captain Ironwing of the Crimson Eagle

Homeland/Allegance: Unknown

 

Captain Ironwing is a figure shrouded in mystery, with little concrete information being gathered on him since he began his raiding career 15 years ago with a daring raid of the Spanish Lunar colony with only his current Capital Ship The Crimson Eagle. Using the fame of the raid, Captain Ironwing has attracted a fairly sizable following of Pirates to follow his lead in his raiding operations. At present no reliable visual description of Captain Ironwing due to massive inconsistances as to his appearance and occasional dellusions by agents being reported as fact, though it is likely that the Captain always wears a Red Tricorner cap based on the overwhelming inclusion in reports on him.

[Nexaduro]

Raider Captain: Captain Ironwing of the Crimson Eagle

Homeland/Allegance: Unknown

 

Captain Ironwing is a figure shrouded in mystery, with little concrete information being gathered on him since he began his raiding career 15 years ago with a daring raid of the Spanish Lunar colony with only his current Capital Ship The Crimson Eagle. Using the fame of the raid, Captain Ironwing has attracted a fairly sizable following of Pirates to follow his lead in his raiding operations. At present no reliable visual description of Captain Ironwing due to massive inconsistances as to his appearance and occasional dellusions by agents being reported as fact, though it is likely that the Captain always wears a Red Tricorner cap based on the overwhelming inclusion in reports on him.

A worthy foe.

 

I quite like how that works with your avatar and signature.

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Ok, it has taken hours, but a usable design database now exists.

It is not finished (Of course), but it should provide a usable enough interface for you to design a few ships.

 

It is spread across 4 sheets.

Sheet One "Starting" Is the database itself. A huge amount of generally uncatagorised data is hidden between J and T (At least in the ODT version), feel free to look through that if you like. The rest of the data SHOULD be finished with, as in it won't be changed (unless it turns out that if you put these two things together you have negative mass or something).

 

Sheet Two "Tech" is your individual tech Score. You start with these scores, plus 3 points you can spend anywhere.

All are relatively self evident (If you look at the uncatagorised data anyway), with the only exception being Economics. Economics is a modifer for when you actually come to trade in your freight, and no I don't know how that is working yet.

 

Sheet Three "Ship Design"...These are all pretty self-evident, but anyway... If you highlight an entry on Sheet One, between the Name Column and the Tech Level Column, and copy it, you can paste it into the Ship Design Sheet and it should work (As long as you have it under the right heading! :thumbsup: ).

 

This page is purely about making sure the ship actually follows the general rules laid down, and for determining the Scale of your ship. If you look at row 2 and row 1 thats all the important information; as long as there are no Red marks you should be fine.

 

The final page is the summery page, mostly for reference purposes and ANY Feedback would be much appreciated as I started it about 30 minutes ago and am sort of 'Errr'

 

As three special notes:

At present I am thinking you start out with 7,000 points to spend on ships.

The database is a tool to help you...You don't have to rigidly follow what it says (Except in the case of the front page). For instance I haven't included anything to do with the Subsystems, so you will end up deviating from the database if you do...This is fine. =P

Finally, I will not be on much over the next few days (if I can help it) as I really need to do my readings and write the last essay(YES I WILL BE HERE FOR CROSSROADS).

 

At any rate I hope you enjoy playing around on the database and I hope I have exausted the myraid of mistakes made so none made it through :thumbup:

 

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12603519/A%20Sheet%20of%20Metal%20Between%20Flesh%20and%20Nothing/Design%20Database.ods

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12603519/A%20Sheet%20of%20Metal%20Between%20Flesh%20and%20Nothing/Design%20Database.xls

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Right then people...Are you interested? Are you confused?

 

I know I haven't really been following this with the effort that I should, but now that the essays are out of the way I can devote more time to this...But I kinda need to know if the system so far is adequate?

 

I can imagine that learning how to create ships would be time consuming (Once you know how it takes no more than 10 minutes), so if people would prefer I can create a set of generic ships, run training sessions, ect, ect.

Just need to know if people want me to do that or quietly leave the thread to die.

[Corvus]

I have been waiting for information on how many points the Raiders get for their fleet as there was mention before of them getting extra I think?

[Earth]

I'm not sure really, I've had little time to look over the systems. I'll take a look at it over the weekend if I manage to snag computer time besides recording stuff.

[archimage_a]

The raider fleet should contain 1.5 times the points as a player fleet.

EACH of the player fleets should contain about 7,000 points worth of ships.

Ergo each of the raider fleet should contain about 10,500 points worth of ships.

 

It should be noted that the raider fleet do not have to carry freight and thus they actually have greater advantage that would be immediately apparent.

[Earth]

I've spent almost a week dicking around with the links archi. The downloads blocks apply. I can't look at them.

[archimage_a]

Should have said:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12603519/A%20Sheet%20of%20Metal%20Between%20Flesh%20and%20Nothing/Ship%20Stuffs%20-%20Copyxls.txt

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12603519/A%20Sheet%20of%20Metal%20Between%20Flesh%20and%20Nothing/Ship%20Stuffs%20-%20Copyods.txt

[Earth]

Ones a download and the other is a massive wall of random symbols interspiced with coherent text.

[archimage_a]

One is mistakenly id'ed as a zip file.

The other one needs to be saved like I showed you way back when...as an xls file.

[Earth]

Aha. I getcha. I'll do that now.

[Earth]

Done, and I'll look at it. So we need cargo ships as the capital command, and the "Cost" is taken from how big we can have our fleets?

[archimage_a]

I think so.