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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:if people are interested
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Oct 24, 2012 04:41
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Of course!
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Oct 24, 2012 04:55
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Would there be any interest? When in doubt, 
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Oct 24, 2012 05:07
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YggiDee posted:When in doubt, Okay, okay! Hell, the response actually finally got me off my rear end so I'd write the damned email. Prepare for  :Hey, all. <GM> mentioned in a World of Tanks game that there would probably be a timeskip of around two months between our last game session and the next one, whenever that is. He confirmed this to me the other night. So I've been thinking of stuff that Miles might want to do during those two months - with the provision that any and all of these plans are subject to change if/when the Empire does hinky poo poo during that time (i.e. blows up Important Stuff). Figured I'd share those with you all. Important Note: Miles is operating under several basic legal assumptions that I'm sure our legal attaches will be able to corroborate for us: 1) By declining to contest our rule of Coruscant, the Empire has ceded the role of 'legitimate Galactic government' to the Republic. I know that they will say that they've only ceded Coruscant and our other worlds, and that their rule over all the Imperial-controlled worlds is legitimate, but make it clear that we disagree with their interpretation and that we have legal precedent to back us up. 2) By further announcing that they intend to cause 'such pain, suffering, anguish, and deprivation to the common citizens of the Republic that they will beg for the Empire's return' - or words to that effect - the Empire has officially declared their intent to embrace terrorism on a Galactic scale, according to the Republic's laws as well as the old Imperial laws (many of which were written, ironically, specifically to condemn us). The reason these legal assumptions are important is that they give "diplomatic cover" to anyone who wants to join us; opportunistic Moffs and the like who will gain the chance to say "well, what could I do? It's the law" when their citizens invariably complain, et cetera. Plus, the greedy Moffs tend to be out closer to the Rim; the Core Worlds Moffs had a tendency to be more 'law and order' types that might actually find such an argument persuasive. Besides, even if it has no practical effect, it will still matter in terms of our legacy; Miles is realizing that the assumption that Mon Mothma would come in and handle all the political poo poo will no longer fly, and without even meaning to, our group has become effectively the Founding Fathers of the Second Republic. Generations from now, everyone will forget that Miles was a slicer and Flint was an unkillable General and Victor was a hotshot pilot and that Plan B even existed... but they'll still learn about our names in history class. We're no longer the scrappy revolutionaries fighting in the streets; we're The Man now, in all senses of the word, and it's time to start acting like it. Even though he hates it.  (yes, I am deliberately aiming for a kind of Michael Collins vibe for Miles' continued growth, hopefully without him getting shot a few months after the end of open hostilities) Now then, Operation One: The Corporate Gambit involves Miles finding the most highly-ranked employee of Kuat Drive Yards that didn't flee the planet and presenting him with video of the Death Star slicing KDY's main shipyards in half and letting it fall into the atmosphere to be burned to nothingness. The video is his; he should have people look it over for signs of tampering (because, you know, it came from Miles). They won't find any, because Miles is giving him the real deal. Then a conversation somewhat along the lines of the following should occur: "Look, man - you and yours basically just got hosed with your pants on. How would you like to get some of your own back? See, here's the thing - I know you have to take this up the ladder to your bosses and their bosses and so on. That's fine, I have to do the same. But maybe we can get the ball rolling on a tentative agreement. "As the new Galactic Government, it is the Republic's position that any contracts you had with the old Galactic Government - the Empire - should be considered null and void. This would doubtless do your bottom line no favors, though, so I'm proposing that the Republic honor your existing contracts, with the provision that we be allowed to shift around purchase orders to meet our strategic needs. We probably won't want as many TIE fighters, for instance, they don't fit our tactical doctrines real well, but we can make up the numbers by buying more Interdictors, that kind of thing. "In addition, we're willing to keep the existing Corporate Sector Charter in force. Many of the old Rebel Alliance members didn't much like the CSA and wanted to see it torn down - General Solo among them - but we'll handle that. You just send the tax money to us instead of the Empire. "Now, all good negotiations come with a carrot and a stick, and here's the stick. If you decide not to play ball with us, we are also prepared to modify the CS charter. We won't simply say 'KDY is no longer part of the Corporate Sector,' that would involve going in and rooting you out, which would be a pain in the rear end. Instead we'll say 'KDY is no longer part of the Corporate Sector and all of their territories now belong to these other corporations that are willing to play ball with us,' which means we won't have to lift a finger - all your competition will gladly use their in-house security and all the hired mercenaries they can get ahold of to kick you out and take what is now rightfully theirs. Of course, if you do decide to play ball, well, you'll be in a position to do the same to any of them who won't... which could be nicely profitable for you." The upshot is, I'm hoping that if we can get KDY even tentatively on board, the rest of the Corporate Sector - or a majority of it at least - will get on board with them. CorpSec government sucks and I hate it, but it's a big Galaxy out there and we have to look after all of it now, so gently caress it. They can keep their little Libertarian Corporate Hellhole State if it means we can free the other 90% of the Galaxy. Operation Two: Fiscal Discipline involves another meeting, this time with representatives of the InterStellar Banking Consortium. See, the Imperial Credit is not a fiat currency - it's backed by "the combined wealth of the ISBC." We want to let them know that we find their continued backing of the Imperial Credit to be "economic activity in direct aid of a known terrorist organization" (see legal assumption #2, above) and it makes us very unhappy. We want, bluntly, for them to stop. (the average Moff won't give a poo poo, but for every Moff that doesn't give a poo poo there'll be a thousand Gunnery Technicians, Second Class who suddenly discover that their paycheck doesn't go as far as it used to, which should gently caress with the Imperial morale...) This time we lead with the stick - if the ISBC will not stop backing the Imperial Credit, the Republic is going to start nationalizing banks and loving with the ISBC's bottom line. Oh, we wouldn't be able to break them like that - Coruscant isn't a major banking center - but Coruscant is a nerve center for many of the ISBC's activities (kind of like how every bank has major branches in Washington, DC despite the fact that it isn't Wall Street - they need people and materiel near all the lawmakers so they can adapt to legal shifts). In addition, we'll start organizing trade and banking cartels formed from more loyalist elements. This would be the opening shots in a trade war which - and make it clear that we know this poo poo already - the Republic would lose. The ISBC is too entrenched. But winning said trade war would still cost them more money, in the long run, than just doing what we ask. The fiscally responsible decision - and the ISBC is comprised of sentients who are culturally disposed towards the fiscally responsible decision - is to back our play. Now the carrot - if they agree to do this, we will also grant the ISBC exclusive rights to conduct currency exchanges. I'm looking for an exchange rate of 2 Imperial Credits per Republic Credit (but would be willing to go as low as 1.5:1). However, Republic Signatories - that is, member states and corporations that sign on with us and other groups that aren't on our poo poo list - will be granted exclusive rights, for a limited time, to run a 1:1 exchange (encouraging our member states to go all-in on supporting us!). The reason that this is a carrot for the ISBC is that they will A) know about it before we get it set up, and B) be able to shift their own investments as well, if they so choose... meaning that the ISBC's currency speculators can and will make a fuckin' mint off the deal if they play their cards right. And since, again, they're culturally disposed towards anything that will make them money, well... (note that nowhere in here do I discuss the possibility of the ISBC backing the Republic Credit the way they do the Imperial Credit. I don't want them to back the Republic Credit. A fiat currency gives us much more flexibility in controlling economic situations - and besides, materially-backed currencies are inherently pretty stupid, no matter how much some of the Expanded Universe authors like Ron Paul) Operation Three: Burn Notice involves the Former Imperial Spy that I keep thinking of as Michael Westen. Hey, the guy's a master of disguise, able to adopt a thousand roles at short notice, extremely dangerous, and is a burned spy; I watch this dude's adventures on the USA Network. So. Let's talk to him. I want to give him a job. He wouldn't take one before, because he couldn't work - even indirectly - for Crix Madine. Right now Madine is AWOL and presumed dead, so that conflict is gone. I want to give him an attache case, and then ask him to go planetside and just start talking to people. We have no real finger on the pulse of the 'common man' of Coruscant right now, and we'll need that if we're going to avoid being caught in a counter-revolution. Inside the attache case is 100K in Imperial Credits, and equal number of Republic Credits, and three sets of IDs - IDs that don't appear on any Rebel watch-list because they're from Miles' personal collection, the ones he made for his own use (and as possible escape routes if it looked like we were gonna lose). Miles will note that it's entirely possible that this guy will just take the attache and vanish, and admit that he is okay with this. "You got shat upon, guy. We hosed you over by capturing you, Alliance Intelligence hosed you over, then Imperial Intelligence burned you and hosed you over... you just got shat on by life itself. I can't undo that, but you don't deserve that kind of grief. Maybe this'll balance the scales a little. Anyways, if you start sending me reports you'll get a steady paycheck." Trusting this dude might just bite us in the rear end something fierce, which is why I don't plan to tell anyone else about it in-game (heh), but, hell. Guy's spent the last several years being mistrusted by the entire Galaxy; I'm banking that offering him a bit of trust will appeal to him. Operation Four: I Don't Want To Hide My Art is a continuation of things we're already doing - namely, looking for the Katana fleet. Especially now that our big ships are pretty well out of commission it seems pretty important! If/when we find it (you'd said it'd take a few more days, maybe a bit over a week, last session), we should have enough techs left on our original pre-Coruscant base to go and get the refits started, and hopefully Admiral Greenfield's forces that fled Kuat should be enough to fill out the staffing complement for a majority of the ships. Operation Five: OpSec Is Our Friend means that Miles and his techs have to go through as much of the code for Coruscant's computer systems as possible, to make sure there are no surprises waiting for us. Since that's a lot of loving code, his plan is to first find the two Planetary Control Droids - the big-rear end room-sized computer brains that run planets, of which Coruscant has two of the five known to still exist, I think they were first mentioned in the WEG supplement McCracken's Rebel Operatives - and check them over first, then enlist their assistance. Five'll get you ten that Palpatine intentionally limited their access to data so they couldn't learn too much; we'll have to give them more access. Operation Six: Let My People-Like-Automatons Go! is another simple one - while Miles can't singlehandedly enact Droid Freedom Laws, he can take advantage of the limited alternatives that exist currently, namely, manumission. Start getting the paperwork done to 'free' several important droids that have been with us for years and that I know haven't gone completely bonkers - most especially CoffeeBot, because A) he's been a faithful assistant, B) he's been with Miles basically 24/7 and he has a heuristic processor, meaning by now he's probably become at least a 12th level Scoundrel just by watching me, and C) he's got a mini-missile launcher that I don't know where it came from I didn't install it and he couldn't've done it himself because he doesn't have hands holy poo poo holy poo poo this droid is way too loving competent for anyone's safety and I don't want him to start being mad at me. Operation Seven: The Chrome Cabinet is one we discussed - I figure that right now we almost certainly have more T-series Tactical Droids than are necessary to administer the greatly-reduced number of Battle Droids we still have; I'd like to reorganize the remnants of our Droid Fleet so that our 'spare' tactical droids (not counting the one that Lance has, the one he refers to as 'that rear end in a top hat') can be assigned to new, more focused advisory roles and told to start studying 'alternate' means of warfare. In order of priority: *Economic and Trade Warfare *Political Science *Media and Public Relations *Guerrilla Tactics (this droid will receive a red beret and a redesignation as CHE-1, because I am a child) *Supply & Logistics *Informational Warfare If we have more than 6 spare tacdroids I'll figure out something else to do with them; if we have fewer (as I expect), well, we'll manage. Operation Eight: Seeing the Unseen is a design task, and is contingent upon my actually understanding certain elements of Star Wars physics properly. We don't have nearly enough Crystal Gravitational Traps to properly handle the knowledge that there are at least a pair of cloaked Super Star Destroyers out there, so we need alternate solutions to spot them. First thing - we may be able to find records, somewhere of the two ships' "magnetic signatures," which can be used to let tracking torpedoes lock on and follow even a cloaked ship (see: Admiral Trench, the Clone Wars). I know the shipyard where they were built was something we uncovered during the period where I wasn't in the game; did we get any useful records or install any computer uplinks that we might be able to use to get that data? Second thing - cloaks generate "cloaking fields that completely absorbed all incoming sensor scans while shielding the host ship's emissions and reflected energy, thus rendering the starship invisible to both sensors and the naked eye" according to Wookiepedia. Thing is, shielding emissions and reflected energy isn't shielding all energy, so here's my Devious Plan - Take a Concussion Missile and replace its warhead with tightly-packed granules of material, and configure the device so that when detonated it sprays a kind of 'dust cloud' over a large volume of space. Now, the cloak may be smart enough to keep from visibly displacing the dust if it moves through the cloud, but if the dust is lightly irradiated, properly configured sensors should - at least in theory - be able to spot a distortion in the wavelength of energy emitted by the dust particles if the cloak is 'bending' the light around them, meaning that you could tell if a cloaked ship was in the cloud - or even between the cloud and the sensor. Fire enough clouds in enough regions of space and you ought to be able to triangulate a location for an SSD (at least until it hyperdrives out and renders the question moot - but an SSD that's elsewhere is an SSD that isn't shooting at us, so I call that a win). The bad news is that it's possible that we'd have to develop an entirely new sensor platform in order to pull this off - but at least it would mean that we would have a chance to detect the cloaked ships from any vessel, not just maybe from the Interdictors. Now, if I'm misunderstanding the physics, let me know... but I'm pretty sure this could work, and I'll run it by the rest of our tech-types (including the Countess!) to get their input. So I think that should be a good way to fill a couple of months! And to think, Miles kind of thought that after liberating Coruscant he might be able to get some sleep...
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Oct 24, 2012 06:57
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I wish that I was aware enough to think of all of these different economic and political vectors you're using. It makes for a very interesting read and definitely shows creative thinking, although we already knew that from reading the rest of your campaign so far!
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Oct 24, 2012 07:17
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DCB, Tell me you guys are recording this campaign somehow. I want to read the whole magnificent epic.
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Oct 24, 2012 08:05
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This is beautiful on every conceivable level. I wish I was in a game even 1/4 as awesome as yours.
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Oct 24, 2012 08:34
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quote:Five'll get you ten that Palpatine intentionally limited their access to data so they couldn't learn too much; we'll have to give them more access. FYI: when everything goes to hell, this is where it'll start.
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Oct 24, 2012 08:41
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DCB is the reason I have this thread bookmarked and I can't imagine I'm the only one.
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Oct 24, 2012 08:51
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Dammit Who? posted:FYI: when everything goes to hell, this is where it'll start. I know! Isn't it awesome? 
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Oct 24, 2012 09:54
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Nostalgia4ColdWar fucked around with this message at 00:54 on Mar 31, 2017 |
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Oct 24, 2012 10:29
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This thread has gotten me into RPGing. Thank you, and I blame all of you for me eventually dying alone. And DCB, your game is actually more awesome than the films. Lucas could get some tips from your GM.
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Oct 24, 2012 12:37
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Our GM occasionally has a tendency to borrow names from pop culture references. I say this so that the following anecdote will give you an idea of the game's age: when we were first starting out, a small Rebel cell in a backwater sector with no real combat ships to our name (there were a pair of Nebulon-B frigates we could call on for assistance and ask to stage distractions, but technically speaking they weren't under our command), there were four NPCs that worked with us, named Stan, Kyle, Eric, and Kenny. South Park was still new, see. Anyways, I'm pretty sure Stan, Kyle, and Eric got killed or transferred or something; they were just warm bodies, mostly. But Kenny, Kenny was something else. Kenny was a kleptomaniac. We'd bluff our way into an Imperial reception to gather intel or meet contacts, and afterwards we'd learn that Kenny stole several place settings from the dinner table. That kind of thing. As time went on, Kenny just stole more and more stuff. More and bigger stuff. One day he stole a hovertank. On the mission where we raided the Imperial depot that got us a bunch of torpedoes that eventually armed the Floating Chrysanthemum Fleet, Kenny was waiting for us on the cargo ship that we were loading our torpedoes on, sitting atop an Imperial hovertank. He stole it, you see. He also stole the tank commander, who had been napping inside the tank when Kenny stole it. Lieutenant Dan, as he was affectionately known, was thus our first Imperial prisoner of war. Lt. Dan refused to say anything other than his name, rank, and serial number. We left his cell door unlocked. And open. And Lt. Dan sat in his cell. We gave him choice food from the mess hall; Lt. Dan ate only bread and water. In fact, Lt. Dan eventually requested that we 'cease our efforts at psychological torture by offering him good food and stick to serving him only bread and water, like real Rebel scum traitors do.' We made no real effort to interrogate Lt. Dan; he just sat there, being our prisoner. Eventually we did have to start locking his cell door, though. Lt. Dan is still our prisoner. And he still gives only his name, rank, and serial number. Kenny is AWOL at the moment; it took us a while to notice this, as Kenny had a tendency to vanish and reappear one day with something neat and shiny, so it wasn't until he'd been gone for months that anyone started wondering where he was. Our GM insists that he knows just where Kenny is and what he's doing. My theory that Kenny was actually a disguised Yoda has, sadly, been shot down.
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Oct 24, 2012 13:43
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DCB, a possible solution for your cloaked SSD-problem: Any idea how big they are? What their maximum range is? If so, just have a bunch of droid-beacons spread around an area whenever you expect they might be around. Just have them spread out in a sphere around you, tight enough that the SSD can't possibly enter without colliding with one. Have a layer 3-4 deep, when they start going out you'll know when one of the stealth-SSDs is around and where it is coming from. No idea on how Star Wars tech would handle something like this, but they don't need more than an engine and a communication system.
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Oct 24, 2012 13:49
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nimby posted:DCB, a possible solution for your cloaked SSD-problem: For size comparison, check out this chart; SSDs (listed as the Executor-class in that picture) are really fuckin' big. The problem is that space is bigger. Near as I can tell, the extreme range of a turbolaser in Star Wars is 75 km (the range in the WEG sourcebook I'm using just lists '75', but km seems a pretty safe assumption). So even knowing that said SSD is within turbolaser range means searching a sphere of roughly 1,767,146 km^3! The SSD, meanwhile, has a listed length of about 17.5 km; a conservative estimate of its volume would probably be in the order of... oh... let's say it's width at the base is 6 km and its depth is... oh, 4 km, that's a pretty generous guesstimate, so that gives us a volume of 140 km^3. So within our sphere of 'extreme weapons range,' you could fit 12,622.5 Super Star Destroyers. (holy poo poo look at me, doing math) Anyways, upshot is, I like the idea - but materially it's pretty beacon-intensive, not to mention the logistics of spreading said beacons around. It's a great idea if we have a general idea of when and where the SSD might be - and I'll be remembering it if we learn that sort of thing! - but I don't think it's practical for more casual use. EDIT: P.S. yes, this is the kind of thing our GM will bring up - the scale of space is a much more limiting factor than one might think (especially since the films tend to ignore it...), and he's hammered us with it a few times now. 
DivineCoffeeBinge fucked around with this message at 14:22 on Oct 24, 2012 |
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Oct 24, 2012 14:20
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The game is Dark Heresy, the setting is a station in space above a hive world where the acolytes have just sparked a civil war. The acolytes are just wrapping up their mission on the world below with their Inquisitor, who turned out to be the terrorist they were sent to the planet to find and stop. He set his own acolytes against him and, well, they started a war. For this epilogue session, I had a little side adventure planned for each player, hooked off their background. The acolytes had killed the heretical vice-governor and taken his ride up to the station, and the shuttle had all of his luggage in it. The psyker, Drake, needing some new threads, took all his fancy clothes. In one of the pockets, he found a notebook containing the number of a storage unit on the station. Therein, he found all of the vice-governor's heretical texts and used them to summon a familiar. I'll come back to this. The assassin, who'd been arrested and booked on the planet below during the course of the adventure, is informed an agent of the noble house who's son he assassinated in his character background is on station. Opting to kill before he is killed, he tracks this guy down, finds him in a crowded bar, and shoots him in the head with a disposable pistol, then escapes into the crowd. He lies low for the rest of the time they're on the station. The cleric, Argrim, is in a unique position with regards to the war on the planet below. The leader of the rebellion is a religious firebrand and former degenerate drug addict. The very same man the acolytes were sent by the local crime boss to collect on, Elias. The cleric had taken this guy to their local chapel and entered him into the service of the church. It had taken pretty well, and this guy was using religious language to lead the people against the oppression of the upper hive's authority. Should this little rebellion fail, Elias and all of his associates will be hunted down and executed, so it's in Argrim's best interest to make sure that doesn't happen. On the station, he finds a ship's captain who's stuck on station (due to the war and whatnot) who's cargo is armaments destined for the PDF. He has the tech priest forge landing permission codes and sends this captain to a port where he knows the rebellion will get their cargo, greatly improving their odds of winning. The tech-priest, Osiron, while going around forging papers, spots a man in the crowd he recognizes. On the planet, while researching the bombs the terrorist was using, they encountered an odd man who calls himself Jakes with little reverence for and an unusual familiarity with technology. Highly suspicious. Here on the station, he's dressed drastically different, but it's sure him. Osiron approaches him and accosts him, but the man denies everything, claiming to be a merchant stuck on the station due to the war. Osiron is unrelenting, and chases the man through the station. The man surprises him on a corner, places his hand on Osiron, and utters something that completely drains his potentia coil, then runs off again. In the distance, Osiron spots him running into a part of the station reserved for permanent residents. A part they can't just walk into (they try and fail). So Osiron, wanting this obvious tech-heretic dead, asks for help from their Inquisitor, Cromwell. Osiron, as a secutor of the Mechanicus (his job is to hunt down and kill tech heretics), must not allow Jakes to continue breathing. Jakes works for Cromwell too, and Cromwell isn't in the habit of throwing away valuable assets. He tells Osiron in no uncertain terms to drop the issue and to never speak of it again. Osiron is unrelenting. At this point I have to pause the game. Osiron's player is tempting fate, saying he's going to kill one of the Inquisitor's acolytes, who is more valuable than he himself is. Cromwell is a hair's breadth away from shanking him right then and there to protect his more valuable asset, and he just keeps pressing the issue, saying, "It's what my character would do." He's single minded in his self-imposed job of hunting down hereteks. I try to explain he doesn't have to be retarded about it. Eventually the group talks some sense into him, and he drops the issue in his conversation with their Inquisitor. He still wants this guy dead though, so he explains the situation to the other acolytes (in character, now). He won't leave the station until this guy is dead. The psyker (whose player is really just humoring Osiron's player at this point), says he can kill the guy for him. He'll just go meditate in his room and remotely explode the heretek's brain with his mind. Deal. What he's actually doing is siccing his familiar on him. Drake had rolled incredibly well during the ritual and wound up with a familiar who can take human form and use a power sword (he had to cut his own hand off in the ritual to get this). So the familiar scrambles off into the vents to kill this guy, and does so in the most horrific, heretical way possible. Chaos symbols painted in blood everywhere, the guy is hung up by his own entrails. Really just a nasty scene. The cleric is nearby to recover the body so the tech priest can do an autopsy. During the autopsy he finds this guy is a priest of the Pure Form. Tech heresy, but a doctrine tolerated by the Inquisition. They don't have a whole lot of time to reflect on their 'success', as they're quickly approached by their Inquisitor who has finally managed to secure them transit to Scintilla off the station. He's pissed, but unable to immediately tie them to the murder. Off they go. There's no climactic ending to this one, just a clusterfuck of murder and bad decisions all around. Now I need to go have a conversation with one of my players about why his powergaming is giving me heartburn.
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Oct 24, 2012 14:24
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:For size comparison, check out this chart; SSDs (listed as the Executor-class in that picture) are really fuckin' big. One thing that could be helpful is signals traffic analysis- by looking at the volume of Imperial signals traffic and analyzing it for spikes, even without cracking the codes, you can build up a general picture of where their assets are concentrated. Then the SSDs will create wavelike patterns as they move around (surely they don't run under complete radio silence), giving you a rough idea of where they might come from, which would make any plan to defeat the cloak that much easier. Of course, this still runs into "space is big" issues, but if you have a good idea of what vector they might come in from... And, of course, this still gives plenty of wrenches for your GM to throw into the works.
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Oct 24, 2012 14:32
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Effectronica posted:One thing that could be helpful is signals traffic analysis- by looking at the volume of Imperial signals traffic and analyzing it for spikes, even without cracking the codes, you can build up a general picture of where their assets are concentrated. Then the SSDs will create wavelike patterns as they move around (surely they don't run under complete radio silence), giving you a rough idea of where they might come from, which would make any plan to defeat the cloak that much easier. Of course, this still runs into "space is big" issues, but if you have a good idea of what vector they might come in from... And, of course, this still gives plenty of wrenches for your GM to throw into the works. Star Wars cloaking devices block all incoming and outgoing radiation emissions... meaning that a cloaked ship can't actually get on the radio with other ships (though Force users can still communicate, something else I plan on abusing...). Think of the cloak like a big opaque bubble that bends light around it so that you see what's on the other side. Nothing gets in - or out. Traffic analysis is a valuable tool in our arsenal... but I suspect that the Imperials are getting wise to the fact that we use it a lot. They're sticking with point-to-point transmissions using modulated tight-beam lasers a lot more these days - and those are impossible to intercept without literally getting between the two ships. It makes sense, really - if a Star Wars cloaked ship could transmit, since Star Wars lacks the hinky kinds of comms like Trek's subspace radio and relies instead on the good old electromagnetic spectrum (well, except for the HoloNet, but no one really knows how the HoloNet works anymore...), then defeating a cloak would be fairly trivial; notice an EM emission, analyze the wavefront to get an idea of its axis of movement (and possibly a rough range based on signal strength and degradation), fire a shitload of missiles and see where the explosions don't visibly occur. Believe you me, I wish it were that easy. ...or not, really, since our own cloaked ship has let us get up to massive amounts of hijinks that would have been impossible otherwise...
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Oct 24, 2012 14:42
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Think of the cloak like a big opaque bubble that bends light around it so that you see what's on the other side. Nothing gets in - or out. I can't believe I'm getting into this, but you should theoretically be able to get around this via the predator cloak effect. Send out an active ping and have observers looking for places where the pulse gets distorted. Not an easy thing, even given the impressively large scale of the ships, but hey, anything is worth a shot, and the more cloaks are there, the easier the distortions should be to detect.
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Oct 24, 2012 15:06
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NinjaDebugger posted:I can't believe I'm getting into this, but you should theoretically be able to get around this via the predator cloak effect. Send out an active ping and have observers looking for places where the pulse gets distorted. Not an easy thing, even given the impressively large scale of the ships, but hey, anything is worth a shot, and the more cloaks are there, the easier the distortions should be to detect. The problem is that pings have to bounce off of something, and Space Is Big. (you could maybe pull a similar effect by bouncing said ping between two ships... but that only tells you if the SSD is between them, and if it is, well, you probably have bigger problems...)
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Oct 24, 2012 15:16
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:The problem is that pings have to bounce off of something, and Space Is Big. Only if you tight beam it. It's probably a bad idea, but if you put the observers a long way out, each one could watch a considerable arc of sky. I'm talking about sending a strong omnidirectional pulse out, like a nondirectional sonar ping, then having people outside the globe watch for distortions in the surface, basically. Still probably not doable, but considerably more doable than the other proposals.
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Oct 24, 2012 15:19
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Star Wars cloaking devices block all incoming and outgoing radiation emissions... meaning that a cloaked ship can't actually get on the radio with other ships (though Force users can still communicate, something else I plan on abusing...). They have to drop cloak to refuel and rearm, and that would create spikes of traffic when they arrived at port, though depending on the distribution of assets they'd possibly be difficult to pick out from regular traffic. And Star Wars communications vary immensely depending on the source. They've used EM, "subspace radio", the good ol' HoloNet, and probably a couple others that I can recall. Although apparently you've been using the full arsenal of sigint techniques, so good luck. A bit further out, but there are mass/gravity based sensors apart from CGTs. If ones sensitive enough to detect the rough proximity of a mass but not its direction or location are available and cheap enough, hooking those up to dust-filled mines along likely approach vectors would work, if those vectors were clear of civilian traffic (or if you could rig them to respond to the approach of an SSD-sized mass, though at that point they would be approaching CGTs in value). Of course, you'd need likely approach vectors, and what these would probably do is cause the SSDs to shift to less likely vectors for their assaults.
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Oct 24, 2012 15:35
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No, you've got to remember, as big a direction as he sends the ping in, there's still only one direction that draws a straight line between the SSD and where the ping originates. If the observer is just slightly to the side of the SSD, he'll get the ping unjiggered, the SSD has to be directly between the observer and the beacon. Which means you'll need at least 12,623, and that's assume you just station them as close as you can get before the SSD can open fire. Every kilometer out you want to move your observers is going to exponentially increase that number. Space is BIG
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Oct 24, 2012 15:39
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Effectronica posted:They have to drop cloak to refuel and rearm, and that would create spikes of traffic when they arrived at port, though depending on the distribution of assets they'd possibly be difficult to pick out from regular traffic. Can you interdict SSDs? If so station interdictors in systems under the guise of toll booths and use them as early warning systems.
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Oct 24, 2012 21:18
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Random Number posted:No way, they would freighter supplies to these things. Or pull a Blazing Saddles on them: "Someone's gotta go back and get a shitload of
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Oct 25, 2012 05:18
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Random Number posted:No way, they would freighter supplies to these things. I'm honestly unsure if a single Interdictor's interdiction field could pull an SSD out of hyperspace; regardless, interdiction task force pickets are pretty well standard procedure. The problem isn't "how will we deal with the cloaked SSDs if they show up to wreck our poo poo." We can do that. It will be tricky, but it can be done. The problem is "how do we find the cloaked SSDs before they show up to wreck our poo poo," and that's a much trickier proposition. Signal traffic analysis only works if you've really thoroughly penetrated the enemy's comms networks, or at least have enough Probe Droids to gather a metric fuckton of transmission data; while we can read pretty much all the Imperial messages we can intercept, the issue is the sheer number of messages is too great for us to intercept more than just a fraction of it. The volume of space needed to sweep with sensors is immense. Hell, we can't even just detail a bunch of small ships to go looking, because the SSDs are almost certainly hanging out near the Death Star, so even if we do stumble upon them there's the issue of surviving long enough to get that data back to a main force that can show up in time to actually attack. The upshot is, the Imperials have basically become Osama bin Laden with a tacnuke, and we're still the equivalent of like ten dudes trying to search through every cave in Afghanistan (if you'll pardon the admittedly tortured metaphor). Most of the remnants of our Giant Coruscant-Conquering Space Fleet got blown to bits either during the battle of Coruscant, or by the Death Star's obliteration of one of Coruscant's moons; we don't have the ships or the men to go for a brute-force approach (of which there are many, and which could all work). The reason I like the cloud o' radioactive dust concept is because if it works, it becomes a pretty simple matter to turn the Floating Chrysanthemum Fleet into Cloak-Ship-Hunters, so it lets us best utilize the resources we've already got. This is actually why working on KDY was my first priority - they have ships and shipyards, and we need them. In the end, I'm betting that it'll come down to the Force - between the two Force-sensitive PCs, the Countess (ex-Hand), Luke, Leia, and Anakin we've got six (well, 5 and a half; Leia's not trained) Force-users who have a shot of piercing the cloak with their hokey old-time mystic religion crap and who are capable of instantaneous (FTL!) communication with each other over vast spaces. But that doesn't mean I can't look for alternatives. ...yes, logistics have played a major role in the campaign, to a remarkably instructive degree - why do you ask?
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Oct 25, 2012 05:42
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You know, as awesome as all this sounds - and it really does - I'd have to go against the grain of "Man, I'd want to be in this." Mostly because I'm sure these debates and plans would come up and I'd just fall short in helping out. You're planning to use radiation to hunt down cloaked SSDs as an early warning system... I would've just focused on somehow just... I dunno, disabling their cloaking system somehow. Modified EMP burst or something after somehow getting them to show up and removing their ability to do that. But that would involve both getting them to show and managed to use whatever device would allow such a thing before they just blow you up. I am not good at these sorts of super in-depth plans... mostly, I think, due to a lack of personal knowledge in such matters.
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Oct 25, 2012 07:09
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Yeah, I mean this stuff sounds amazing as all hell, but all I can imagine is you and the GM sitting at a table discussing the finer points of electromagnetic radiation, while the other party members play on a Wii or something. Does everyone get into the non-actiony discussions, or does your GM handle all the prep and stuff outside of the game, via email discussion or something?
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Oct 25, 2012 07:20
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Have you considered that, rather than looking for the SSDs, you should instead arrange events in such a way that they appear where you want them to? Figure out a way to spring a trap on them and you've already won. Just because you guys are the Man now doesn't mean you shouldn't keep thinking like Rebel scum.
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Oct 25, 2012 07:56
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Kobold posted:I am not good at these sorts of super in-depth plans... mostly, I think, due to a lack of personal knowledge in such matters. I understand, believe me - but one of the best things about our GM is that he's also really good at explaining poo poo and if he sees a flaw in your plan he'll try and make it clear to you... and then he's just as liable to say "but you could do this, this, or this, and any of those might work." I mentioned earlier that he knows vastly more about computers than I do; for my Computer Use-focused character, this can be an issue. But there have been a few times now where I've said "I don't know how to do X with computers but I'm pretty sure Miles would, can I roll?" and as long as his immediate response isn't "no, because that's impossible and here's why," he'll not only tell me to roll but, often, tell me what it is Miles would actually do in order to do the computer wizardry I want to make happen. I do a lot of focusing on the nuts and bolts because, to be honest, I dig that kind of stuff - it's like a puzzle and I can try solving it. But I don't have to, is kind of my point. Captain Bravo posted:Yeah, I mean this stuff sounds amazing as all hell, but all I can imagine is you and the GM sitting at a table discussing the finer points of electromagnetic radiation, while the other party members play on a Wii or something. Does everyone get into the non-actiony discussions, or does your GM handle all the prep and stuff outside of the game, via email discussion or something? Everyone gets into pretty much all the discussions. My character has virtually no understanding of military tactics and naval doctrine, for instance, but I still get to chime in when we're discussing fleet engagements - just because my character isn't involved doesn't mean that I, as a player, have to keep my mouth shut (usually, at least). The thinking is that each of our characters is by now a galaxy-class expert in at least a few fields, but they're all being played by... y'know, us, who aren't really experts at anything. Five or six brains working in concert at least approach the level of knowledge that the one fictional character might have at his fingertips. I think pretty much every player has, at one point or another, said "Hey DCB, you could do this," and I've said "Oh, good idea. I do that." I think I've done the same for each of them. The GM is just fine with it, because it gives all the players extra motivation to be at the table - if Miles isn't in a scene maybe I can still come up with an idea that could help Flint's player, and so forth. So it's a team effort. If any non-actiony discussion takes too long, however - usually five minutes tops - we move on; either the GM will say "look, your character is smart enough to have figured out X, Y, and Z" or he'll call for Intelligence rolls or something, and we get the game moving again. Like I said, I like to focus on the puzzle-y stuff, but it doesn't take up a ton of game time. (besides, the puzzle-y stuff gives me something to think about between games. Ugh, the waiting...) EDIT: VanSandman posted:Have you considered that, rather than looking for the SSDs, you should instead arrange events in such a way that they appear where you want them to? Figure out a way to spring a trap on them and you've already won. Just because you guys are the Man now doesn't mean you shouldn't keep thinking like Rebel scum. Oh, definitely. I just don't know that we have bait big enough yet, what with our fleet getting whacked. If KDY signs on with us, one of their main remaining shipbuilding facilities would be a nice choice, but right now I don't see a definite option that'll get us an SSD in a place where we can beat it... yet. Well, beat it or board it, which in our experience has turned out to be pretty much the same thing. The GM has already flatly declared that he won't let us steal the Death Star, but he hasn't said jack about stealing an SSD..... DivineCoffeeBinge fucked around with this message at 08:05 on Oct 25, 2012 |
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Oct 25, 2012 08:02
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Oh, definitely. I just don't know that we have bait big enough yet, what with our fleet getting whacked. If KDY signs on with us, one of their main remaining shipbuilding facilities would be a nice choice, but right now I don't see a definite option that'll get us an SSD in a place where we can beat it... yet. Just a thought, but what if you used the Force-users as bait? You said it yourself, they're a huge logistical advantage and the Empire would know that. High risk, high reward.
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Oct 25, 2012 14:37
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DCB, you could use gravitational detection to try and find them. I don't know that much about Star Wars canon, but we already have the start of that technology now. All you'd have to do is recruit the astronomers on all the planets you control, and ask them to look for an area that has a large gravitational field, but no electromagnetic field. Its basically the same technique we'd use to find inactive black holes, but on a slightly smaller scale. Assuming that astronomers on each planet already know what they SHOULD see, the SSD's would create a noticeable gravitational ripple as they went past the planet.  And all it would cost you is promising to give the astronomers some extra grant money.
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Oct 25, 2012 17:16
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As a side note, CoffeeBinge, what system are you running this game in? You mentioned in your email a supplement from the West End game, but I also though I saw a mention of Force Points which I think are from Saga Edition.
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Oct 25, 2012 17:29
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Jewcoon posted:And all it would cost you is promising to give the astronomers some extra grant money. 
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Oct 25, 2012 18:49
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There's precedent in the films: Obi-Wan's search for Kamina, where he pointed out that the gravity patterns indicated a star that wasn't there on a map, and couldn't figure out the obvious explanation that someone erased it until a kid brought it up.
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Oct 25, 2012 19:32
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Gravitational fields are the only way in-canon to defeat a cloak, actually; notice where I mention Crystal Gravitational Traps. They're very expensive and apparently finicky to build, though, which is why we don't have a bunch. Chaltab, the game has actually gone through multiple systems; it started out using the WEG system (and the supplements for such are still considered canon) and then migrated to the d20 system; our GM refuses to switch systems to SAGA mostly because he remembers what a pain in the rear end his last system shift was. We've houseruled a lot of the d20 system to make it suck less, especially in the field of space combat.
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Oct 26, 2012 00:10
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:I understand, believe me - but one of the best things about our GM is that he's also really good at explaining poo poo and if he sees a flaw in your plan he'll try and make it clear to you... and then he's just as liable to say "but you could do this, this, or this, and any of those might work."
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Oct 26, 2012 02:15
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I'm loving the planning and deep strategic universe you're experiencing for your game, DCB! There is often nothing more beautiful than having a huge planning session, only to then watch that plan go hilariously and awfully awry. Shadowrun is perfect for this. It can get even better if one of the players isn't fully on the ball, or isn't listening to the plan. So, back when I was still playing with my Uni group we had a motley collection of guys who were up for some fairly silly and fun adventuring. (I just want to point out right before I get into this that this was 10 years ago and the GM I am now would likely do things quite differently from the GM I was then. Please don't judge me harshly for the following.) We had rotating GMs for the long-running Shadowrun campaign and I had elected to run the next one. This meant that my long-running Voodoo Shaman character wasn't around and the team would be light on magic. Enter the man I shall call Stan. Stan was... well, I'm not sure how to describe him without being unfair. He was kind of a confusing and unpredictable player. He had yet to blossom into full social skills, so was often quiet, but was definitely not passive. He would do things because they were "in character" that actually made no sense, and often didn't do anything to help the character or anyone else. He would make very strange assumptions or decisions about things, usually long after everyone else was completely clear about what was going on. I had a number of cases where I would halt the game, explain something to him out of character from the perspective of the GM, telling him that the character knew that the innocent cop wasn't going to shoot him, but he'd stone cold insist his character would go ahead and murder him in front of witnesses even though he could have just walked away and avoided all of the problems. Anyway, Stan decided he would make a magic character for the team for this game. He made a big, burly Ork biker gang-member who was also a Mage, and called him Skumm. Perhaps thinking ahead for later games, he decided he would pick all the Spells that my magic character and the other Mage (not present for this game) did not have. This unfortunately meant that he had none of the expected useful Spells the team was expecting. The idea I'd been toying around with was a crime boss hiring a mercenary team to kidnap a rival boss' daughter as an indication of extreme displeasure. So I presented that to the team and they spent about two hours going back and forth on ideas on how to make it work. Finally they decided that the best time to try and kidnap her was when she was in transit from her private girl's school in a corp compound to the private residence of the rival boss, where she would be pretty much untouchable. In order to make the kidnapping possible, they would have to force her to stop and leave the vehicle, say in order to go clothes shopping with daddy's cred stick or something. The way they ultimately worked out to engineer this completely relied on Skumm. Skumm would use his mind influence spell on her to get her to stop the car and buy the dress. But how would he be able to be on her to ensure the spell went off? They would send a locket from a "secret admirer" and Skumm would his Shapechange Spell to hide as a fly inside it. Then he could escape when she opened it, camp out in the dorm, cast the influence spell, then go with her on the Friday and hide in the car until they passed the dress shop where the rest of the team was waiting. Step 1 went off perfectly. Skumm successfully turned into a fly - differences in size make the Shapechange spell harder, so a larger than human turning into a little insect was not so easy, but he pissed it in. I gave him a fairly easy Willpower roll not to freak out being in complete darkness for something like eighteen hours in an unfamiliar shape, and he made that one handily. However, once Marietta opened her gift and he buzzed out, things started going wrong. While she and her dorm mate got excited over the locket and wondered who the admirer was, Skumm went and hid in the closet. I wanted to know when he was going to cast the influence spell, and it turned out that he was going to do it while Marietta was asleep. I thought that hiding as a fly in a closet for another eight hours or so could use another Willpower roll, especially as he'd so easily made the first roll. Of course, he failed, and suddenly reverted to his Ork form in the middle of the night. It didn't matter that much, I let him easily Stealth the door of the closet open and cast the influence spell on her while she slept, and he went back to being a fly with Shapechange. This time, however, the spell drained him and he copped some Stun damage which would make further spell-casting a bit more difficult. Come the morning, Marietta and her dorm mate went down to get breakfast and go off to classes, leaving Skumm alone in the dorm room. He reverted back to his Ork form and spent the whole day hiding in their closet until the girls returned. Ready to leap into action, he decided to turn back into a fly. He failed. Surprised that it hadn't worked, he tried again. And failed. I let him try again, which he failed. I let him try again, but with a +1 difficulty penalty that shouldn't have made too much difference. He failed again. With the girls returned and talking about getting stuff ready for the weekend, it was a foregone conclusion that they would open the closet very soon. I let him try again with no penalty, just as long as what he tried to change into wasn't a fly. Stan thought for a bit and decided that a bat hanging upside down inside a closet, perhaps hiding amongst the jackets and dresses, was the least conspicuous thing he could do. He failed again. I seem to recall that we were concerned his constant attempts at spellcasting might be heard, so I asked for a fairly simple Stealth roll, also based on the fact that he was a large Ork crammed in a cramped closet. He rolled all 1s. They pretty much heard something in the closet. One thing I should point out here is that the Shapechange spell doesn't do clothes. When Skumm stepped as a fly into the box with the locket in it, he knew he'd be coming out stark bollock naked. So, to recap, there's a huge, gruff, biker-ganger Ork, in his birthday suit, hiding inside the closet of an all-girls school dormitory, desperately hoping that one of the girls who lives in the room doesn't decide to investigate. So Stan, despite sudden and repeated objections by the other players, decided to charge up his Deadly-level Stunbolt for whichever girl opened the closet door. There's not really much a 17-year old girl can do about something like that, and she went down into unconsciousness, followed quickly by Marietta one spell later. The rest of the players are now desperately trying to help him out of this very well thought-out situation. Skumm quickly uses his Alter Memory spell on the two girls to convince them that they just fainted when they saw a rat come out of the closet. Fixed! Except he's now on Serious Stun and has nowhere to go. His new brilliant plan is to wrench open the dormitory door, and then Shapechange into a big bird of some kind in order to escape. While the rest of us are wondering why he didn't open the window and do that, Skumm wrenches open the door to the main area of the boarding tower in front of all the other girls only to fail his Shapechange roll again. Some of the girls are horrified and start screaming at the hairy, tattooed naked Ork coming out of Marietta's room, but some of them begin to laugh. Stan starts uncharacteristically panicking at this point and does what everyone had said he shouldn't do at the start of the planning session. He summons his Elementals. Having now entered the area of farce, Skumm starts running down the dormitory stairs with his meat and two veg flapping in the breeze. Halfway down he's stopped by some low-paid security guard with a stun-baton. For some reason Stan desperately wants to use his Intimidation skill and proudly shouts something like, "I'm a really powerful Mage! Fear me!" Forgetting that he is, of course, a stark naked Ork in an all-girls' boarding tower. Added to this, the Serious Stun is making him stagger like he's drunk. He manages to fail this roll (not surprising given the penatlies for being one level away from unconscious), and the guard tries to placate him and talk him down. "That's right, of course you are, now just come along quietly, sir..." So Skumm just decides to call down his Force 5 Fire Elemental and crisps the guard where he stands. He gets about halfway out of the compound on a stolen moped before the Security Mage and some backup (alerted by Astral alarms thanks to Skumm's summoning of Elementals) catches up with him. Without any kind of equipment or team backup and on Serious Stun it was agreed that Skumm was basically mincemeat. I talked it over with Stan, happy to work out a way to get him back into the team, but he seemed keen to make a new character (which would then for some unknown reason attempt to kill the whole team with a hand grenade when lazily threatened). The amusing thing about this whole thing was that not only was Skumm caught running around stark naked in an all-girls' school (and murdering a security guard I guess), he had during character creation taken the "Criminal Record" flaw. There was some conversation about what that previous record was for, and what they thought when they finally caught him. I have a couple more Stan stories.
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Oct 26, 2012 04:40
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You're looking at this the wrong way. The SSDs may be invisible, but wherever they put in for maintenance and supply sure the hell isn't. Thus what you need is an armada of probe droids  Also possibly an army of paid informants/bounty hunters tracking down the supply chain for those suckers. It's already canon (at least, novel-canon) that even normal ISDs need a hell of a lot of maintenance and without government support it's hard to keep even the basic systems working. An SSD must be a nightmare. It's mentioned specifically in one of the X-wing novels that Booster Terrik (an insanely rich grey market guy who got his hands on an ISD) could barely afford to keep it running.
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Oct 26, 2012 05:52
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Effectronica posted:They have to drop cloak to refuel and rearm, and that would create spikes of traffic when they arrived at port, though depending on the distribution of assets they'd possibly be difficult to pick out from regular traffic. Random Number posted:No way, they would freighter supplies to these things.
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Oct 26, 2012 06:19
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