BETA SIM OOC THREAD

[Lt. Staplic]

I apologize to those of you waiting on results, got busy with homework last night. I may have time to run it this afternoon, but if it takes much longer than I expect it may not be till tomorrow morning that I get the next round of stuff done.

[Tyyr]

Gonna be out of town tomorrow for a family birthday party. I won't be able to respond to PMs until tomorrow nite.

[stitch626]

I officially declare this to be the longest conflict I have ever been in. Its not even been 3 months yet.

[BigJKU316]

I officially declare this to be the longest conflict I have ever been in. Its not even been 3 months yet.

I have to wonder if you attract random pot shots from passersby on the streets. You seem to be in the middle of things conflict wise all the time in these sims.

[stitch626]

I haven't attracted any such RL attention... yet.

[Lt. Staplic]

Things moved a lot a little bit at the end here so the three months are almost up.

I've made a slight spreadsheet change, nothing noticeable really, just something to make it easier to track ships during war-time.

I just have news and a couple things to do and turns will be done for the first 3 months.

[Lt. Staplic]

Alright, stuff is out for the end of the three months. If I can get stuff back in on Saturday night that would be great, I know it's not a whole lot of time, but there's not a whole lot to do either. I don't need spreadsheets, I just sent those out for your reference. Any deployment of newly constructed ships etc just send in with orders and I'll deploy them.

[BigJKU316]

And yes, a huge chunk of that speech is ripped off. But it is one of my favorite political speeches of all time and I have been dying to drop it in this sim so given the chance I did.

[Lt. Staplic]

I still need the Cardassian and Breen deployment and operational orders.

[stitch626]

I'm finishing them up. you will definitely have them by tonight's end.

[Tyyr]

Ok, I've now put this off about 48 hours but my decision isn't changing. I'm out.

I really hate to do this because I know it leaves a big gaping hole in the sim as the second largest power goes NPC but mostly because I'm proud of what I managed to accomplish with the Cardassians. That's also the reason I'm bowing out, I'm too proud of what I've done with the Cardassians to keep having to put up with this.

This isn't about this war, though it would be the straw that broke the camel's back, this has been boiling for a good long while now. There are two huge problems with this sim.

1) The intel system is completely broken. Mostly because there is none. I've been running intel ops on multiple powers since the game began. 36 turns of between 3 and 5 ops a turn means somewhere between 110 and 180 intel ops. I've had maybe 3 to 4 successful ones. That's ridiculous. You cannot run a faction in an intelligence vacuum. It makes every decision a total gamble. The latest failure of intel would be the Breen. I have attempted to gain intelligence on them from day one. I do not recall a single success. 50 game years and I got nothing. The closest thing I got to intelligence on them was as the Ferengi were being taken out my turn report indicated that they probably had a bigger fleet than we thought. Well duh. 25 years of watching the Breen and that's the best I can come up with about their military? There has got to be information flow beyond posturing in the IC sim or recon by fire in a war.

2) The combat resolution is off. There are too many fights in the sim where one side gets wiped out and the other takes very little casualties, where one side is utterly dominant because of a factor that doesn't seem accurate. A gamed out combat situation where both sides have to command their forces will, I think, allow for a greater degree of skill to account for what happens as well as ensuring that what both commanders are looking to have happen happens. Right now, due to the way things are going it's just random chance it seems like much of the time.

In my situation there have been many things along that have driven me batty and the specifics aren't really worth dragging up other than to say I've been doing my best to just bite my tongue in many cases and roll with the punches as they come. I can handle losing. I'm ok with it. It happens sometimes and that's how it goes. I've often seen loses and set backs as opportunities to advance even when things appear to be going south. However I prefer to lose to someone who's actually playing the game.

The Breen are an NPC race, they have been since Reliant dropped them. After that war the Breen had no navy to speak of, no starbases, no shipyards. On top of that I occupied a section of their space for a short while and the Fed occupied a swath of their worlds including major ones. How is it possible that they managed to produce a fleet, much less a fleet with "advanced long range weapons," in that time starting from essentially jack shit and with everyone else having a 15 to 18 year head start on them I cannot fathom them being in possession of this fleet. I further more cannot fathom them assembling this huge fleet with out me ever having a clue about it.

This was supposed to be the start of the end game. The last of the minor powers being eliminated, the NPC's being taken off the board, it was looking good to boiling down to just the Cardies, the Fed, and the Romulans. Only now, because of a bunch of NPC's, not even another player but ...NPC's I'm looking at having to rebuild my entire navy and more or less sitting on my hands for a decade all because of some NPC. I'm not doing it. Not after all this, not after an entire sim of stuff like this. My patience is gone, I appologize profusely to the other players, but I'm out.

[BigJKU316]

I hope you would reconsider.

I think there is a valid complaint about the combat system though and have voiced that opinion. It is too random for my taste. Generally in the big Alpha battles the side with the most firepower came out on top, the main question was how much on top did they come out. The one fight that was very close to even (KE vs RSE with all their donated ships) basically was a battle of mutual annihilation. Theoretically it was possible to have a miracle result but it took a bunch of great rolls in a row.

It is somewhat anti-climatic to build a huge fleet and see it junked in seconds.

[Tyyr]

At this point my heart's not in it Big. And honestly I really don't want to be the guy who complained and threatened to leave until I got my way. I just don't want to be that guy. Even if the Breen war ended right now it would take me five to ten years to rebuild just to where I was when it started and I am just not up for rebuilding for that long just to get back to right here. Honestly I was looking forward to the sim rolling on to its conclusion here before too long and now I'm five to ten years before I'm back to where I am and I can even think of advancing much of anything. Never mind trying to advance tech, incorporate new resources, etc, and that's assuming I'm in control of the Breen territory because if I'm not its five to ten years of rebuilding just to invade the same NPC all over again.

Right now I just want to bow out and walk away. Complaining and threatening just to get my way makes me a whiny bitch. If things stay as is I dread every action report and thinking about going through another twenty turns of this is just about as painful a thing as I could do online and my heart wouldn't be in it. Right now I think bowing out is the best course of action.

[Lt. Staplic]

I'll let everyone know what's going to happen ASAP.

[Lt. Staplic]

After thinking on it most of today and talking with a few people about it, I am going to end Beta. I'm doing this for a few reasons:

1) As Tyyr accurately pointed out the system has several flaws. Intel was a big one, that was purely systematic, I was not intentionally not reporting intel to people. What would happen is that people would deviate from an average of between 45-60 by about 15. the rolls just didn't mathematically sync to get people intel when there was counter intel running.

The Battle Calculator was flawed, I'll be the first to admit it. it underwent serious revision throughout the SIM, in fact it's most recent one was during the Breen-CU war when it was brought to my attention by a player that the calculator was way over inflating the losses, particularly of damaged ships.

2) Without the Union, the SIM will become really unbalanced and virtually has ended. While other major powers like the Breen, while they were an NPC, and the Klingons going missing disrupted the flow, this close to what would have been an ending is going to unravel the whole thing.

So with those two things in mind, I am going to close this chapter of the SIM, and will start working closely with BIG and on my own to try and develop a new system to run intel in to escape such a vicious circle, as well as a tactical battle SIM.

I hope to use these new systems, along with the A2 format and several other advancements in a Beta 2.0 SIM, if enough of you want and are willing to play. In order to differentiate B2 from B1 or A2, I am currently planning on starting it in 2150, rather than the typical 2380 start date for A1,B1, and A2. It will still be some time before I'd be ready to start this SIM, though.

In the mean time, I'll reopen this tread, and I'll post a run down of everything that did, and was going to happen during the last turn and the few turns to come.

EDIT: If there are people that now right now that they do or do not want to play a PM would be nice so that I don't waste the next month or two working on a system that won't ever get used. No hard feelings if you don't, just let me know.