Forgothrax
Not Going Gently
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The GMs have hinted that attempts to abuse the TF system like that would go poorly. Something as simple as having high DCs requiring multiple ships to succeed could easily counteract single ship TFs.
To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)
- Thread starter OneirosTheWriter
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- star trek exploration fully automated luxury gay space communism top level canon (canon) #hashtagcontent all-encompassing space amoeba cardassian boy bands cardassian magical girls darkest bureaucracy debate makes the qm cackle like palpatine hoh is an empire quest it has to be foreign infiltrators more ships ship happens singers delenda est starfleet this is not an empire quest ur waifu is collective?
The GMs have hinted that attempts to abuse the TF system like that would go poorly. Something as simple as having high DCs requiring multiple ships to succeed could easily counteract single ship TFs.
They didn't go to warp badly damaged. They pushed the throttles to the max, disabled all the safeties, and committed suicide. By placing their scuttling charges on the warp core by the sound of things.
Maybe we just won't make any new task forces then, if you have to commit a large number of ships for 5 to 25 worth of tag influence per quarter. If that's all you get out of a diplomatic task force, I think one ship tasks forces would be eminently fair, not "abusive".
I mean, this is still the "sell the players on why they should even want to make Task Forces" stage, not the "Task Forces are so obviously awesome we must cripple their capabilities with super-high DCs and mediocre rewards to prevent abuse" stage.
- Location
- Australia
Attempts to make multiple single-ship TFs to exploit mechanics will be met with "Har har har" and a merger.
Also flesh-eating ferrets.
Maybe not that first part.
Also flesh-eating ferrets.
Maybe not that first part.
Yeah but like, if a task force was +25 per quarter, that would be grossly hugely overpowered. We don't get results that good from Diplopushing Affiliates, and since they can be directed onto single target points, or *stack* with diplopushes, then things could potentially get very silly indeed.
Let's meet the hypothetical Dooblies. We meet them at...50/100 in Q1 and immediately form a task force to go after them, and diplopush the Dooblies for good measure. We get a +30 from a good diplopush and a +20 from a good task force, and they're in our camp and the diplopushes are all more effective. We keep pushing, because hey, at a conservative +40 per month from diplopushes and task forces, it's only 2 and a half years to get them in as New Members.
pheonix89
Wants to be Seven Of Nine
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- North American Plaguelands
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People, people, people, we have a sample size of ONE so far. Chill out a bit.
We don't know if this was the low end of average or the floor or what. Or if there are mechanics for increasing efficiency over time or who knows what else.
We don't know if this was the low end of average or the floor or what. Or if there are mechanics for increasing efficiency over time or who knows what else.
Assuming 10 relationships per quarter we'll gain 40 relationship per year.
Cost for this is
-5 pp for FDS Diplomatic Team
-2.5pp points for continued use of 2 frigates and cruiser from a member world.
-Tied up Excelsior.
Actually, It doesn't look that expensive comparing to 20pp snakepit option
Cost for this is
-5 pp for FDS Diplomatic Team
-2.5pp points for continued use of 2 frigates and cruiser from a member world.
-Tied up Excelsior.
Actually, It doesn't look that expensive comparing to 20pp snakepit option
Actually, I wanted to ask... will it be possible to send largish task force to deal with several different tags of one race? Or even two neighboring races? Or, let's say form an [anti-slavery] task force to influence slavery tag in every nation that has it?
Okay, in all seriousness...
I actually rather like the idea of assigning a single ship to a task and it only bringing back very minor rewards each quarter, but making steady progress. The main argument against is that it would place more writing burdern on the QMs, not that it would be some kind of mechanical exploit. The Lightning isn't exactly serving as a task force right now with its isolinear test bed, but something in that vein would be kind of cool.
From a narrative perspective, I don't like big task forces of five or more ships. It just turns them all into a big fleetball where you can't track what any individual ships is about or contributing.
I actually rather like the idea of assigning a single ship to a task and it only bringing back very minor rewards each quarter, but making steady progress. The main argument against is that it would place more writing burdern on the QMs, not that it would be some kind of mechanical exploit. The Lightning isn't exactly serving as a task force right now with its isolinear test bed, but something in that vein would be kind of cool.
From a narrative perspective, I don't like big task forces of five or more ships. It just turns them all into a big fleetball where you can't track what any individual ships is about or contributing.
Forgothrax
Not Going Gently
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Mmm, I think this may be a difference of opinion on how the game is designed.
TBG is, in the end, an exercise in having mostly supreme power over Starfleet... At the expense of inability to micromanage. We can choose who runs the GBZ, but we have no say in what they do there, for example. We arrange for and fund EC missions, but they investigate random things that are beyond our ability to control (ie, we are not permitted to say "send Enterprise to X location, prioritize First Contacts."). The Snakepit is one of our best ways to affect change in relations, but it's limited by both PP costs and by restrictions on the number of pushes we use.
The TF system is an opportunity for us to gain micromanagement opportunities that we otherwise cannot get. Options to diplomance another polity are randomized outside of Snakepit. We only get to buy one push per polity, and only four total. TFs give us another tool to change the game world in ways we otherwise could not. Yeah, a TF may not be super-powerful in comparison to it's cost... But that cost needs to be considered in light of the fact that if we chose not to use the TF, we have limited options that are bound by restrictions harder to lift than PP cost. Sure, a TF may cost 40pp and only generate about a Push worth of tag removal, maybe more. But you cannot buy two pushes on the same polity, so it may nonetheless be worth it.
In other words, TFs may have a relatively high cost to benefit ratio... Because they are letting us subvert the game system and make active decisions we would otherwise be unable to make.
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I still want to try to use Task Force Jade as a general purpose anti-Horizon influence team, so hopefully.
You could limit Task Forces to solving tags, but don't let them advance the 'main' diplomatic track because that's the business of the FDS.
Eh, that's just not coming off as very appealing right now. For me, diplomatic task forces are only interesting insofar as they interact with the Tag system. I like the idea that task forces are for solving specific problems. Sometimes those problems are diplomatic, such as a Tag. Sometimes they might be other sorts of problems. But that's why they're interesting, because they're tackling a problem. And if they're tackling a problem, I want to see them actually making progress on it.
You can just keep assigning them to Horizon-related tags as they finish one or another, I guess.
Forgothrax
Not Going Gently
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Eh...
Like, if we say we average out 10 progress/quarter, that's still much better than an average Push. Not for Affiliates, but TFs are best used on non-affiliates anyway. It's still solving the problem, it's just that it's not doing it instantly.
Even in the prototype to TFs, which was assigning an EC ship to the problem, it took time for things to resolve... And that's with our best people on our best ships with the cachet of the EC behind them.
I'm content to see this play out, but I suspect we aren't going to be seeing TFs as a silver bullet, just a tool for when we really want to fix something faster.
Fairly easily, if you are willing to wait. Just put an efficient low-thrust engine on a small planet and leave it to work for a few decades.
Maybe the Hur'Q or Klingons were running low on disruptor power and torpedoes at the time?
fasquardon
Um, I think you messed up your math. We get 8pts of ships for 40pp initially and 20pp/yr as a recurring cost. That means each pt has an annual cost of 2.5pp. A frigate is half a point and a cruiser one point so two frigates and a cruiser come to a total of 2pts which means the member ships cost 5pp per year not 2.5pp.
This is of course assuming we can actually pay fractional amounts of points. It may be that even if we return enough ships to go under 8pts worth we still have to pay the full 20pp/yr.
Citations:
The idea that you only have to pay half the pp cost to keep ships for another year is pretty unintuitive to me. I know that's how the rules were written, but it doesn't make sense.
Asking a Member Fleet to loan some of their ships for a relatively short time should be pretty cheap. Asking to keep those ships for additional years should get more expensive, not less. Like, I would expect the Orions to start increase the pp cost to keep their cruiser every year we want to keep it.
Asking a Member Fleet to loan some of their ships for a relatively short time should be pretty cheap. Asking to keep those ships for additional years should get more expensive, not less. Like, I would expect the Orions to start increase the pp cost to keep their cruiser every year we want to keep it.
- Location
- Germany
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Any in-character reasoning for that? If we had the ships, why not task specific ships with a specific job? EC already does that, their job is to explore the unknown. Another ship might get the job to gather intelligence about Horizon ship movements and capabilities. Another one to stay on station with the Tauni. And so on.
Why wouldn't we do that?
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
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Intel likes hedging their bets.
Or they're someplace well off the beaten path.
We can always give the ship back to Sabek... >.>
I'm kinda worried what happens if a TF (especially a single ship TF like some others have mentioned) fails an event with a really low roll. In normal ship events, this can become negative relations (like the -100 bomb with the Sydraxians). We can't really afford something like that happening with, say, the Breen. Do we know if that's a possibility with this new system?
At least with the snakepit diplo-pushes, we have enough bonuses that it can't be a negative score.
I kinda agree with this from a narrative standpoint. I think maybe it should be more expensive now. But then after we research...Hand in Hand, I think it was, the doctrine slide after United Starfleet, then the upkeep should be severely discounted or even free.
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- Location
- Australia
Well, there's a few reasons - one is that multiple independent task forces becomes a tremendous pest when you consider we custom build event tables for each task force. We also don't actually want to replicate what makes the explorer corps technique - a ship can be put onto an assignment like intel gathering, but it should be part of a broader effort.
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But are they adorable flesh-eating ferrets? This is an important distinction to make!
Oh good, time for a dose of much-needed humility for our favorite captain.
In other words, we finally have a use for those useless Mirandas.
Forgothrax
Not Going Gently
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Thinking about things, actually, the math is pretty good for TFs. Assuming that they generate a diplomacy event per quarter (which, if we're stacking the TFs, we're likely to pass) we can use 8pts of ships fairly well to generate 5-25 progress per turn.
Let's do it this way. 3 TFs, so 2.5pt apiece and one has 3pt. A Mohane Orion Frigate has P5/D2. One for each TF. A Centaur-B has P4/D6. One for each TF. Grab a Renny for each TF as well. That's 2pts for each TF. We can then grab a Starfleet Rennie or Excelsior for each TF to act as Fleet Flag, and either add an extra diplomacy-focused escort to two TFs and steal the Orion P7 cruiser for a vital TF, or add two Diplomacy escorts to one TF and one each to another TF. Either way, you can have 5-6 ships hitting events with decent D (can replace the Mohane with something else) and good P scores. If it's a singular event to respond to, then I expect that at least a few ships will pass the response roll and thus we'll have plenty of doubling up to minimize chance of Diplomacy failure.
So in the end, 40pp (maybe +5pp if you buy the FDS team for one TF) for what sounds like 3 diplopushes worth of progress on non-affiliates is a great deal.
Let's do it this way. 3 TFs, so 2.5pt apiece and one has 3pt. A Mohane Orion Frigate has P5/D2. One for each TF. A Centaur-B has P4/D6. One for each TF. Grab a Renny for each TF as well. That's 2pts for each TF. We can then grab a Starfleet Rennie or Excelsior for each TF to act as Fleet Flag, and either add an extra diplomacy-focused escort to two TFs and steal the Orion P7 cruiser for a vital TF, or add two Diplomacy escorts to one TF and one each to another TF. Either way, you can have 5-6 ships hitting events with decent D (can replace the Mohane with something else) and good P scores. If it's a singular event to respond to, then I expect that at least a few ships will pass the response roll and thus we'll have plenty of doubling up to minimize chance of Diplomacy failure.
So in the end, 40pp (maybe +5pp if you buy the FDS team for one TF) for what sounds like 3 diplopushes worth of progress on non-affiliates is a great deal.
Now that does raise an interesting question how does the compositon of a task force affect it ability to perform its mission?