Since these change will be implemented in ~ 1month you have plenty of time. Only officers on ships in commnad will be converted - after that its down to negations with the GM

What's the difference betwen "open access" and "closed/standard access"? In both cases it says that any ship in the squadron can issue orders.

Fair enough. Will there be a place for officers in command of a starbase/outpost though?

Generally 1 political has command of a squadron (it is listed on his political turn). If the squadron is closed then only the commanding politicals ships can issue squadron orders.

If the commanding political makes the squadron open access (by assigning noone to the commander positions) then any ship in the squadron can initiate squadron orders (taht will be run by all ships in the sqaudron). If the squadron is open access its on everyones political.

The naval officers are only necessary for ships - all other positions do not need them to add enemy lists etc. So any officer on a starbase will not be converted but will still add their combat exp as usual.

Yes i can see what you mean - may be better to check SD - its not a major inconvenience for me to do that.

I've been on 'holiday' for a month so i managed to get a lot done.

No sorry, squadrons are per affiliation however they require 1 set of orders and are run through 1 position (you don't get turns back for other ships ran unless they have a battle). So allied ppl will still have to coop as allies and not the same affiliation.

An ABC ship ventures into XYZ space where it is not allowed. XYZ wish to destroy the ABC ship for trespassing, however the incident is not serious enough to declare war over. The ABC ship is not currently posted.

How do XYZ attack without declaring war, or waiting to get the ship posted, which would also warn the ship they have been spotted when the "We have been posted by XYZ" message appears on their turn?

You can not. It formalises things a lot more to avoid

To attack the ship you post it. Its what posting is for, otherwise there is no point to it.

The warning only occurs at the point where you can attack the ship (not when the issue is created), so the person does not get much warning. Also this does not apply to starbases etc only to ships.

Declaration of War - has this got a "secret" box so everyone is not informed. if not it excludes the possibility of pre-emptive strikes.

Is everyone informed if an AFF declares war?

Geoff

A mixed squadron seems a bit clumsy to handle - how about a battle squadron screening a freighter squadon instead of individual ships?

Still on the subject of squadrons, If one ship is disabled in a battle and cannot move will it be necessary to remove it from the squadron before moving the rest out?

Will there be sequencing problems????


Geoff

So, using the earlier example - if I spot a ship nosing around in a FGZ controlled system, let's say Winter for example, and if the enemy ship avoids starbases... once I have spotted it I have to wait for a vote to pass to post it before I can actually shoot at it?

Provided of course, that I am not at war with the affiliation controlling the ship in question, I would personally prefer the option to be able to shoot on them without needing to wait a week while the posting order goes through.

Similarly, having to 'declare' war draws the lines in a lot more definition than the political situation would dictate. For example, the FGZ - FCN situation. We are not at war, but neither are we exactly the friendliest of neighbours. A FCN ship poking about Winter last week may well have taken a pounding if I had remembered to get my pin-ships in the correct place (Doh!)

No - only politicals players can use squadron orders. Non political ships can be part of a squadron but they can not issue orders (only have orders issued for them). They can use open squadrons and note that these only issue to ships that are at the same location.... so it is possible.

Its combat speed, and yes more than 3g and you can not hit. Thats up for discussion though - the whole being really fast to launch is stupid.

Ok add to that officers with experience or in command....

Everyone in the aff you are declareing war on is informed the moment the issue is passed by you.

Posted list

Basically thats war for me. I can change the name if you like to Hostilities.

We can also make posting immediate if you like but that would prob need to be acompanied by a 1000 stellar charge to provent sillies, but that could be added as a default bounty.

I would like to separate states for attacking people -

1 Defence - if you are in a system claimed by yourself, your can attack anyone (so if you dont want anyone coming into your space, you can blow them away immediately they are spotted). If the programming cant recognise system claims, then could it be allowed to set who you attack in an individual system (so say, I will attack everyone in Winter System, have Yank system in your DNT list, support you allies in Inferno System, etc).

2 War - as already suggested by yourself (attack anywhere).

I think being xenophobic about your own space and who gets to be there (defending your turf) is different to going out and actively hunting down an enemy (war).

Mark

Not possible in the current way its done.

It would curerntly - i'll think on that. Certainly disabled ships could be ignored but badly damaged ships cause other problems.

Squadron orders run through the standard interface, its just another turn. You can run turns before and after via sequence. Just the issue with sequecned updating starbases that are the problem

That would be cool! Presumably the free fire would only be for your affiliation (and maybe allies??) - anyone else entering your system doesnt get free fire, they would have to have you on their posted list, be at war, etc?

If its possible, does that mean you can have no-fire systems too? So you could add neutral systems (like Yank for example) to your no-fire list.

Mark

But wouldn't that make it really hard for you to defend your system when the Hive battlefleet arrive and start pounding at your outposts? With a no fire zone your assets would not return fire.

Nothing to do with owning the system - anyone could declare free fire anywhere. So an enemy aff could declare free fire on your system - everyone in the system would then get informed of it and it would be on the political situation order. Its all about declareing what you intend, it could be included in the system message also...

Makes sence - we will see how it pans out.

I have actually seen it in several different space squares. It wasn't in the quadrant it fled from last week until a day or two before (Or at least not scanned ).

But that aside, I like the thought of automatically adding allies to the DNT list.

Similarly, and concurrent to this: Change the ability to target anyone (On naval officer-controlled ships) to 'neutral' and perhaps have an enforced targetting of enemy affiliations with 'war' status. Would certainly make people think twice about declaring open war against each other, given the repurcussions available.

So..... it is possible for me to set up 100 Dummy accounts and get 100 new starting ships....
Then I use my legitimate political to create a Squadron and I add all these new "freebie" ships to my squadron.....

I now have 101 ships in a squadron to use as cannon-fodder, screening etc....

If I read that right, there is a major opertunity for abuse that should be plugged.

IMO this takes too much control away from the player.

Been there since the DNA starbase was there....... )

As far back as my political turns go atm actually... And it was unmoving at least as far back as the beginning of July (which is when it last got an update run on it), and i'm pretty sure since before that as well.

So my new cloaking technology works just fine <g>

PIR are viable targets for any naval officer

When the bounty is set.

Whoever kills the ship gets the bounty

Yes
Bounties are handled by the EEM after issued - end. No options, its just too messy.

Squadrons - i believe all the orders you mentioned are squadron orders. There is a new catagory on the order editor or squadron orders and squadron standing orders - any other orders will not work.

I believe that the intent was to have the dodge of the screener be reduced to that of the target - or its too open to exploit.

Screening only transfers the target to the screening vessel - nothing else. The one its screening may be targeted by another ships and unless there is another screen it will be targeted.

Its the targets speed, and its open for other suggestions.

And they usually got trashed, which does not happen with the differential speed thing. Perhaps to fire torps you have to drop your dodge ?

I ammended the targeting lists text - its for ships only (i forgot). Platforms/ Starbases / Gps are not affected.

I can run a ship editor off after i have the space combat do - about 1 day todo after i have a fixed model. Some more issues

The lists only apply to ships - so starbases/platforms are ok. You can enter the fight with ships using enemy lists as there are now no restrictions.

Basically ranks are just a name - which is now incidently on the officers. I can not see a use for them that is not restrictive and does not dish out enough power to require everyone to be an admiral. I thought about the squadrons but i just saw paiun when ships were forgotten because of ranks that coul dhave been set for nothing....

Its done because they can basically put a projectile into an arc/orbit that hits anywhere on the planet. Low orbital velocity is ~5km/s and rail guns have that kind of velocity (but you could no doubt control the velocity, thus landing the projectile where you want). The US is planing to use then for the next generation of artillary.

I have a problem that torpedos are supposed to be slow, and therefore the difference in speed seems to be totally wrong. And no matter how sluggish the opposition will be, the torp will be a slug to them......

You mean 30/100 - its the item capacity of the hull - which is the installed section of the ship. So H=30/(100+30)=23% N=50/(100+50)=33% L=70/(100+70)=70% XL=90/(100+90)=90%

For heavys
Damage - > 77% Hull + 23% Installed items
Damage to Installed Items -> Destroys items + Destroys Item Cargo

Its a action that can incure a integrity loss - but its less than landing

That removes the flexibility which comes from the use of sequencing ... however i think i have solutions that covers both.

A squadron is formed from all squadron ships at the location of the ship that issues the squadron orders. So all we do is add a Ignore Squadron Ship {} Order and we should be away.

So when a Start squadron Orders, is issued it looks through that turn for a Ignore Squadron Ship {} and removed that ship from the list of ships taht wil be issued orders. I'm also going to drop any ship from the squadron that can not move, or we will get lots of screw ups.

BTW is you issue squadron orders on a ship that is stuck you are stuff for sure....

I like the Ignore Ship {} option, it will allow you to leave pinned ships to try emergency jumps as well as not keeping the rest there for the ones that cannot move.

Having the cannot move ships automatically ignored is a bit iffy unless cannot move is carefully defined.
A ship in orbit with only thrust engines can move out of orbit but will seize up for system movement and jumps.
Similar situations occure if a ship has lost either its ISR engines or Jump capability.

So what is cannot move, precisely?

Geoff

As I read the announcement, the squadron orders form part of the single ship's turn (with the rest of the squadron following that ship's lead).

SO if you issue orders for those two ships to move away/emergency jump/whatever, then sequence the order for the ship which will have the squadron order cascade after those ships they will not be in the same location (assuming the emergency jump worked!), and so will not affect the squadron movement

Dan

And if the emergeny jump does not work you are truly up the creek without the proverbial paddle.

Geoff

Regardless of what ships an aff is using, the cost for putting a naval officer on a small ship seems disproportionate.

They follow their induvidual enemy lists. You can set an enemy via squadron orders but this is optional. Squadron orders are jsut a way of issuing the same orders many ships. The only difference to multiple turns is that all orders (and induvidual movement steps) are performed by each ship in the squadron before moving onto the next order (or step in the movement).

Movement steps are a section of the movement that can cause a scan.
So moving to a planet at alpha,5 when the ship starts are beta,1 will be turn

-Move to Planet {xxxx}
to
-Move to Alpha,1
-Move to Alpha,2
-Move to Alpha,3
-Move to Alpha,4
-Move to Alpha.5
Enter Orbit {xxxx}

Hope that covers it.

Ships within a squadron must still be processed one at a time, so presumably the cargo would be first placed in the first processed ship, any left over would go in the next etc?

(What will be the order of processing within a squadron btw? Can you schedule indivudual ships within one, can you schedule them with ships inside and outside of the squadron, can you schedule squadrons, etc.)

Not sure what you mean - if you mean can two ships, with a 2500cargo space each, when in a squadron (thus giving a total 5kmu capacity) carry a Principle (a 5kmu item) then I would think it cant...its still two separate ships, just following the same orders.

Regarding how cargo is put into ships, if your squadron is made of different types of merchant ships (different speeds, PDs, Marines, etc) then you would want your cargo put into the best defended cargo ships first. In case one of the ships gets stopped, boarded or something. So as Steve mentioned, how the squadron processes orders for its component ships needs to be able to be scheduled.

Mark

Yes

Yes

If any squadron ship enters battle then any other squadron ship that has their 'flee options' set to NEVER will enter combat. This provents frieghters going into combat by accident and gets all the combat ships to attack as one.

Can you make that suggestion again when squadrons have been working for a bit (ie when the bugs are out). Basically its a bit complicated to do right now and it would definatly mess things up