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I would expect that the Sim battle system wasn't really designed with ramming in mind. Also remember that ramming gets very costly and not just in morale. When you ram lose a ship and while you know that make sure you're picking the right targets for ramming. Think about the size and defense of the target you're hitting.

(Big, don't forget the Dominion)

Ok, rule change coming out on R&D for speed.

Since everyone in Alpha has passed the 9.99 speed we noticed an issue with the spreadsheet. Without thinking about it people asked what to put in for warp 9.995 or 9.999 and were told 99.5 or 99.9 respectively. This is doing two things. 1. It cost that speed improvement way too low as 9.999 is way way more than twice as fast as 9.99. 2. The map has started to feel very hemmed in at these speeds. Most fleets can blow across half the map in a matter of days. I want to get that changed.

So here is what we are going to do.

1. All ships now go no faster than 9.99. If you have built ships in excess of this the GM's will calculate the extra money you spent (which is not all that much since we did it wrong) and credit that back to you.

2. Assuming you have reached that level your R&D calculator will reset for speed. Your new base will be warp 9.99 and the number you input will be the two decimal places beyond that. So warp 9.9901 would be 1 in that cell. Warp 9.991 would be 10. Warp 9.999 would be 90. At that point the calculator would reset again for the next set of numbers. This should allow for a more reasonable progression of speed as the game moves along.

3. This also will restore some need for proper positioning on the map. Ships were getting so fast that they would make moves in a time that no reasonable carbon based lifeform could respond in many situations (such as a fleet approaching earth and vulcan that could be like 2 minutes from both at the same time). Additionally it worked oddly with things like planetary invasions and seige rules as even a 1 unit planetary shield could buy you a week and see your whole fleet rally on the attacker in most empires.


Yeah, I know, it kind of sucks but it was the least crappy of crappy solutions. If we did something like this again I would just use xC to calculate speed cost for a ship as that is nice and linear.

Wouldn't it be easier to just add a zero to our distances? Instead of something being 50ly it becomes 500?

Deepcrush wrote:Wouldn't it be easier to just add a zero to our distances? Instead of something being 50ly it becomes 500?

Thought about it but the R&D calaculator issue had to be fixed anyway. Might still mess with the map scale but this was primarily a spreadsheet driven fix.

Makes sense.

The fact of the matter is now that everyone figured out that 99.9 got them a ton more speed every new ship is the same speed anyway. Effectively it does not hurt anyone. It is my bad in that the warp scale is a bit counter intuitive, at least for simple math.

Hurts me!

having just looked at the RnD section, i've noticed that if cell B6 has a figure of 99 in, that would equal warp 9.99 IC yes? By that scale, in cell D6 i start off at 0. Does this mean we all have to restart at warp 9.0?

No, Cell A6 has what 99 would equal. There are two variations, it could read fractions above 9.0 and fractions above 9.99. The former would be 9.[contents of cell B6], the latter would be 9.99[contents of B6]. Since your D6 cell is set to 0 I'm assuming you have the latter and therefore your starting at 9.99 and a 99 in cell B6 would be 9.9999 IC

The little red corner not that Big puts in states that to express 9.99 you would put 99 in the B6 cell, which is what got me confused.

Reliant121 wrote:The little red corner not that Big puts in states that to express 9.99 you would put 99 in the B6 cell, which is what got me confused.

He likely didn't change that note when he changed the sheets. Basically it's cell A6 Followed by cell B6 so if A6 says 9.0 and B6 says 50 then it's warp 9.50. If cell A6 says 9.99 and Cell B6 says 22 then it's 9.9922

Question.....if we wanted to start research into a new form of propulsion, something unrelated to common warp drive, say like the Borg transwarp conduits......could we?

I think we discussed that a while back; I think Big said something along the lines of "you could try it, but it would probably be extremely expensive and take forever".

Mark wrote:Question.....if we wanted to start research into a new form of propulsion, something unrelated to common warp drive, say like the Borg transwarp conduits......could we?

Yes, its hellishly expensive though and might not work.

Basically you progress in chunks.

Say we were describing the original excelsior project.

One would basically put millions of credits into the project and work on it for 5-10 years. Then it MIGHT work. If that does not work (and chances are solution 1 won't) then you start over. What you know now is one way that won't work.

So if the first time you had a 1 in 20 chance of making it work, the next time it might be a 1 in 18 chance. And so on until you get a successful roll.

Could be worth it in the long run.