Character Transport Loophole

[RTGPete]

Flexibility, fair enough. If your Pathfinder were in a nexus system you couldn't drop him off on a planet. Otherwise you'd do as per your note - drop off at a planet and await the new Explorer from your homeworld.

 

The problem is that allowing assignment to an empty fleet implies the gaping exploit of NEWF + AC at an extremely distant location. That's a pretty big loophole since unscrupulous players who didn't care about burning lots of orders could move their best Explorer class character all over the map (or Naval Commander). I figured not too many players would be keen on the idea of being placed at the significant disadvantage to players who had the oomph to carry out that strategy.

[DWillard]

The problem is that allowing assignment to an empty fleet implies the gaping exploit of NEWF + AC at an extremely distant location.

Not quite sure I follow you here.

 

I was under the impression that the exploit involved decom'ing an empty fleet that had a character in it. Then you could NEWF the same fleet number in a different system and the character would still be attached to that fleet number. To me, the problem was that you could decom an empty fleet that still had a character, not the fact that you could have a character in an empty fleet. So I thought the obvious fix was not to allow a DECF if the fleet still had a character in it. Simple fix. End of loophole. So as long as the AC order is limited to in-system only, why should it matter if I AC to an empty fleet.

[RTGPete]

True - but the straightforward fix was to simply make sure that characters couldn't be assigned to empty fleets. It didn't make much sense anyway to have them assigned to shells, and I figured that the instances were low that you'd have a fleet in a nexus system with a character that you wanted to transfer to another fleet that hadn't arrived yet but you wanted to move the current fleet off before the other fleet arrived. Does this happen often? In a system with planets, you're covered. In a nexus you'd have to keep the fleet in place or move it back to meet up earlier (that would be the fastest solution, though with Nuclear Transwarp Drive technology the whole point becomes moot - the new fleet would in all probability arrive very rapidly).

 

I also figured it would be nice to save players orders by transferring the characters over for free when a complete RN occurred - that had been suggested before, and it seemed like a good idea.

[hobknob]

Ok, here is real world example of how this will cost more orders. Since there is no way to resupply a fleet with drones or fighters, and there is no way to make fleet to fleet transfers what this leaves you is using the RN order to assign all of the ships of you war fleet into the resupply fleet and then moving them all out again. It won't work the other way since it is the leaveing fleet that takes all of the stuff. Since any major war fleet will likely have a commander or 2 or 3 in it you would now have to make the required AC's to move the leaders back to where they wer supposed to be. This also makes it very messy if any of these types of resupply orders are executed within a convoy route.

 

Now, I don't have any idea of how often the above scenarios will play out, but they will increase in frequency as we all start to get further afield with more and more fleets and characters.

 

 

edit:

 

I don't see that it makes any difference if you find yorself in a nexus or not. Simply having planets and the opportunity to drop a beacon doesn't mean that is what is likely to happen. Personnaly I am a little bit skitish of laying down the bread crumb trail back toward "my space".

Edited January 26, 2004 by hobknob

[RTGPete]

Point taken, though forward bases are a far superior way to resupply a carrier fleet. Your edit concerning the bread-crumb trail is totally valid - I concur - but that's the price paid to gain complete control over your transfers during a war situation.

 

The only reason players would need fleet-to-fleet transfers is for fighter/drone resupply (accomplished with maximum flexibility by using a forward base to allow designation of exact fighter/drone types) or to take advantage of a cargo-transfer exploit. Long range cargo transfers across one's empire can still be chain-reaction exploited, but action points have to be expended to move to a world stockpiling those items. Short of flagging each cargo item with action points (like ships are flagged as they expend actions), this potential exploit will remain. As it happens, I'd prefer to make players both work a little and expose a series of warehouse colonies to risk if they want to transfer goods vast distances - thus no fleet-to-fleet cargo transfers.

 

In this way another empire could more easily raid behind your supply lines and capture one of your warehouse way stations or simply station ships there to cause havoc. The extra action points required to carry out such operations also adds cost to the merchant ships in the form of additional engines. A side benefit is that empires conducting peaceful trade can set up fixed shipping lanes to carry their goods great distances under free-order convoy routes.

 

I would think that the orders saved by the large number of complete RN orders carried out across the galaxy exceeds by far the few lost by the odd fighter/drone resupply-during-war actions. The number of such character transfers in real war situations would seem to me to be fairly rare on average (your war fleet would have to survive an engagement but lose enough fighters/drones to make significant resupply an issue - but outside of a forward base because none were constructed).

 

In total I still see an average order savings, along with elimination of characters being assigned to dead fleets.

[ShadowKitsune]

Hobknob,

 

Your resupply issue only applies if every ship in your warfleet requires Drones/Fighters. If you have just one ship that does not require Drones or Fighters, your Characters would stay behind on that ship. That one ship could be a Fleet Tanker, a Command vessel, an Electronic Warfare ship, a Troop Transport or whatever.

 

M2CW,

 

-SK

[hobknob]

I had thought about that except for the need to also get fuel at the same time. You can't leave anything behind because that is where all your empties wind up.

 

Pete-

 

Would it be possible to get an order to erase the breadcrumbs by deleting a pop group? You certainly don't need all of the pop groups you will likely put down and they just take up space.

 

[MadMartinB]

Pirates being a peaceful type of individual would never use a bread crumb trail.

[RTGPete]

By the way, another reason to avoid characters in empty fleets is to avoid the invulnerable commander issue - fleets without ships cannot be engaged in combat, because they dont have anything in them. A character in an empty fleet would therefore be invulnerable - big exploit there

[PhaseDragon]

I like the idea of erasing a pop group also....sort of like a DECF order. It would have to have the same conditions as the fleet order - empty except for the flag that always appears. (of course this would also mean any characters in the recent spirit of this converstaion).

[hobknob]

Pete,

 

Suppose you scuttle the last ship in the fleet, what happens to the assigned commander(s)?

 

[RTGPete]

He'll override the scuttling of the last ship in the fleet. Scuttling is so incredibly rare in any event that this is unlikely to occur. However, assigning him off to a planet or another fleet in-system and then scuttling would work fine.

[Pandaemonium]

Do we have a way to transfer an EMPTY fleet from one location to another within a system or elsewhere in the galaxy (since they are only a theoretical entity anyway)?

 

- Mike Curtis

[Lord Xaar]

Do we have a way to transfer an EMPTY fleet from one location to another within a system or elsewhere in the galaxy (since they are only a theoretical entity anyway)?

 

- Mike Curtis

use DECF HOME

 

It will move all empty fleets back to your HW.

[RTGPete]

Do we have a way to transfer an EMPTY fleet from one location to another within a system or elsewhere in the galaxy (since they are only a theoretical entity anyway)?

 

- Mike Curtis

The empty shell of the fleet remains in place - you could transfer ships to it at that location, DECF it to obliterate all traces of it (and then NEWF it elsewhere if you wanted to use that fleet # again) or DECF, HOME to bring all empty fleets to your homeworld.