Topic: Musings on the new server idea

[Hexx]

Mainly because I like starting new threads.
Makes me feel manly.

The more I think about it, the more I think you/we should try a "theater" server before going for the whole General War.
Pick a theater (obviously the Klingon/Fed border being the best choice for familiarity/balance and likely player participation)

Start it sometime mid war, let it run to late.

Include Expeditionary fleets, set fleets from the other combatants with no/minimal reinforcement possible(through EPs of course).
(Obviously the Kzin/Lyran Rom/Gorn would be more concerned with keeping fleets closer to home fixed up than one deployed in an allies territory)

Other questions

-  Are we going with the SGO(ish) shiplist? I know many ships have been balanced for D2 play, I was thinking though (looking through old arguments) that it wouldn't be that hard to include different models for differnt fronts.
(for example) I remember t00l saying that adding B racks to a C8VK was unfair to Hydrans, even if it was needed to balance the Klingon ship vs Kzin and Fed ships.
So we could include one C8VK for the Kzin/Fed fronts, and another version (sans B racks or whatver) for the Hydran front.
(again as an example, not looking to reignite any debates)

Does this make sense to anyone? Or ar we going with the original non modified ships for this?

Was also thinking for the cj ships, maybe a limit of one for the first year or per year? I assume the Lyrans would want to test out a BCV before they convert them all to the design. So it'd make sense if there was some sort of trial run.

[FPF-DieHard]

Mainly because I like starting new threads.
Makes me feel manly.

The more I think about it, the more I think you/we should try a "theater" server before going for the whole General War.
Pick a theater (obviously the Klingon/Fed border being the best choice for familiarity/balance and likely player participation)

Start it sometime mid war, let it run to late.

Include Expeditionary fleets, set fleets from the other combatants with no/minimal reinforcement possible(through EPs of course).
(Obviously the Kzin/Lyran Rom/Gorn would be more concerned with keeping fleets closer to home fixed up than one deployed in an allies territory)

Other questions

-  Are we going with the SGO(ish) shiplist? I know many ships have been balanced for D2 play, I was thinking though (looking through old arguments) that it wouldn't be that hard to include different models for differnt fronts.
(for example) I remember t00l saying that adding B racks to a C8VK was unfair to Hydrans, even if it was needed to balance the Klingon ship vs Kzin and Fed ships.
So we could include one C8VK for the Kzin/Fed fronts, and another version (sans B racks or whatver) for the Hydran front.
(again as an example, not looking to reignite any debates)

Does this make sense to anyone? Or ar we going with the original non modified ships for this?

Was also thinking for the cj ships, maybe a limit of one for the first year or per year? I assume the Lyrans would want to test out a BCV before they convert them all to the design. So it'd make sense if there was some sort of trial run.

I'm biased because it's my work so take it with a grain of salt -  I feel the SGO mods and fleeting rules are pretty darn close to balance.   You bring up the C8VK as an example.   I the last 4-5 servers we removed 2 disrupters and added 2 B-racks.  This has been close to fine, you get WAY more mis-matches with non-traditional enemies (Lyrans fighting plasma for example) than you do with the mods we have in here.

I honestly don't think we have enough players for a "real" D2 campaign anymore.

[Hexx]

I had actually meant it for a staged battle server (not a traditional D2 one)
I remember that we've run into unexpected issues a few days/weeks into servers, so would it maybe make sense to start on a smaller scale?
I know you and t00l were planning on working around balancing the Gorn EP cost, why not try a simpler server first (without having to worry about balancing 8 races economies)
So run it the same way (set battles on a seperate D2 server), but just have the whole thing focused on one smaller area.
Bonk can see how his stuff runs, you guys can work out any unforseen issues with EPs/base Planet assaults/whatever.

Bascailly consider the smaller scale a test server wthout actually using the "test" word.

I thought it'd be much simpler like this, could be wrong though.

[762_XC]

I'm not worried about the economy. To me that's the easy part.

Resolving fleet battles in a game designed for 3v3 is the hard part.

It's going to start in the western theater anyway. The plasma races don't enter the game until 2273-74, and by then we will have already fought GW1, GW2 and GW3.