This is not an easy world to explain. But I'll try anyways. Imagine something for me. Imagine a vast ocean, but not clear or blue. No, this ocean is purple, bubbling, and caustic. Should you put your finger in it, you would lose the finger in moments. Rods of tungsten or steel? Similarly dissolved. The greatest alloy you could imagine would only last moments against this toxin. There is only one thing that can survive the ocean for long. There exists a shiny black stone, similar to obsidian, but with tiny pink streaks running through it. This stone can be submerged in the ichor and last for an eternity. In fact, the stone is indestructible as the ichor is destructive. You could put the full force of a nuclear blast against a pebble of the stone, and it would not be affected.
This world is barren. There is only the vast sea of ichor. With one small exception. Well, small to the world, not its inhabitants. If you looked at the tower from outside, you would see a vast gleaming spire of the stone, jutting out of the ocean of ichor. If you looked at it from inside, surprisingly enough, you would see a vast jungle. Or a scorching desert. Or clusters of floating islands. Or a huge ocean of true water, not ichor. For this is a tower with many floors, each a distinct battleground.
And as the tower has floors, so it has ways up and down the floors. In each floor, there are holes. Huge, gaping holes in the world, leading up or down to the floor above or the floor below. How big are these holes? Well, you could fit an entire city through them with room to spare. And not a small city, either.
Enter the two Fortress-Cities. There are two for a very good reason, which we'll get to in the moment. Each Fortress-City is a vast thing, and capable of flight too, carried aloft by the wishes of its inhabitants. And well defended, too. Suffice it to say each Fortress-City is more than capable of defense and offense... and maybe most importantly of all, sustaining a viable living human population. And indeed they do, for each Fortress-City contains vast arrays of cloning tanks to produce soldiers, farmers, technicians, teachers, engineers, designers, artists, cooks, politicians... birth is obsolete. Long live the cloning tank. These cloning tanks, unfortunately, possess one small defect. Every person produced by them is infused with a huge hatred for the other Fortress-City and all of its inhabitants. A pity, otherwise perhaps they could have coexisted. But instead they go to war. We've seen this pattern before.
Aside from the universal problems of war(logistics, technological development, strategy), the inhabitants of the tower have one other issue to deal with. The tower is sinking. Every so often, it pulses. A massive shaking that can be felt by everyone, aloft in the floating Fortress-Cities or not. Every pulse sees the tower sink just a bit deeper. And every four pulses, a floor is lost. In order to survive, the Fortress-Cities must keep on the move. Good thing they can fly, and good thing there are holes, shafts you might call them, that allow for travel between floors.
DiscordEnabrian ThreadVolcasial ThreadThe objective of the game is crush the enemy team's Fortress-City! Once this is done, you will win and it will be a great and glorious day.
Each turn is divided into four phases.
In the Design Phase you design something new and hopefully awesome.
In the Revision Phase you fix problems or make modifications to your designs. Trying to use a Revision Phase in place of a Design Phase may see you slapped with a penalty, but trying to do Revision stuff with a Design may get you a bonus.
In the Strategy Phase you decide on choices and whatnot. Trust me, you'll have a lot of potential things to do with your Strategy Phase.
In the Battle Phase I resolve the results of your choices, designs, revisions, and whatnot in glorious combat, then send back the results in the main thread. You may also get some results in your team threads.
Each player gets one vote worth 2, and one vote worth 1. Players cannot put the 2 vote onto a design that they were the one to propose(nor a design that was adapted from a design they proposed). Nor can they put both of their votes onto the same design. Whichever design has the most votes when voting is closed shall win. In the event of a tie, I will choose the more awesome design by my standards.
Rolls:
Like many arms races before me, I will be using the totally innovative 2d4 rolling system for designs and revisions. And I quote: "This means rolls will fall between 2 and 8, with the extremes being less likely.
For a design of Normal difficulty, the results are thus:
Roll (probability): Result
2 (1/16): Utter failure. You get nothing except the knowledge of what not to do.
3 (1/8): Buggy mess. Whilst you managed to make something, it isn't really usable.
4 (3/16): Below average. It works. Not especially well, but it works.
5 (1/4): Average. You get what you asked for, more or less.
6 (3/16): Above average. It works, and somewhat better than might be expected. Not a lot better, mind.
7 (1/8): Superior craftsmanship. It does its job and it does it perfectly. Its performance is exceptional and it is as reliable as clockwork.
8 (1/16): Unexpected boon. Not only does it work, but it does things you never even expected it to. If no 'bonus features' make sense, then you just get experience with some related field.
Designs of other difficulties modify the roll value like so: Trivial (+2), Easy (+1), Normal (+0), Hard (-1), Very Hard (-2), Ludicrous (-3). Designs harder than Ludicrous are Impossible, and will never yield a successful product, and will only grant experience on a 6 or higher*. Similarly, if the result of your roll would be less than 2 after modifiers, you get no experience unless I'm feeling generous.
Also note that the results above are guidelines. Results may not exactly match, but the 'value' will be the same, roughly.
*Said experience may or may not make the design possible. I'll let you know at the time."
What you're allowed to design:
Yes.***
*Magic may not function in all floors. Anti-tech zones are much rarer but may exist.
**Be reasonable. Just because it's possible to design a hypersonic bomber or demon lord summoning circle, doesn't mean you can do that in one design. Start with what you have. Everything has to be justified.
***I freely admit to being biased in favor of awesome proposals, though this doesn't mean you can get away with stupid stuff. It just means that if something is awesome and doable, I may push it a bit further than you might expect.
****Please note that "being reasonable" includes the fact that getting more resources through designs is limited. For balance's sake, you're going to have difficulty just designing yourself an extra ore every time you need one. An Operation to extract an extra ore from a certain area of the map, and needing TC to transport it? More reasonable.
Each floor is divided into a number of sections, where the number of sections varies between floor(though 4 is a good average). During Battle Phases ownership of sections will change hands according to how well you do. Most likely you'll either stalemate or gain/lose one section. If one side has utterly extreme dominance and a means of rapid movement, it's possible to gain/lose two sections in one turn.
Territory can be Neutral, Captured, or Controlled. Neutral sections are unowned by any side, and can be Captured by your forces without a fight. Captured sections are sections owned by a side, but only gained in the most recent Battle Phase. Your side will only gain the resources associated with that section once it becomes Controlled. If you hold a section that's Captured for a turn, it'll become Controlled and you gain access to the resources within it, as well as being able to perform Strategic Actions relevant to that section.
Please note that having your Fortress-City get involved in a fight provides a massive bonus to that fight, but will likely result in damage to your Fortress-City(more if you lose the fight, but some even if you win). Which is bad.
Keep in mind that every four Pulses(turns) a floor will be consumed by the ichor sea.
Your Fortress-City is like a king in chess. A powerful playing piece that you lose if you lose. Both sides' Fortress-Cities start at 100% Integrity. A Fortress-City can only occupy one section of territory, but that Section automatically counts as Controlled no matter what, and no Transport Capacity is needed to get resources sourced from that section. A Strategic Action can be spent to move your Fortress-City by one section in any direction, at the expense of 1 Oil being unavailable that Battle Phase. A Strategic Action can be spent to repair your Fortress-City's Integrity, at the expense of 1-2 Ore being unavailable that Battle Phase(1 Ore for 15% gain, 2 Ore for 30% gain). Your Fortress-City cannot move and repair in the same phase, nor can it fight and repair.
And yes, your Fortress-City can fight. Though it's a good idea to keep it out of the fighting as it's likely to end up taking damage. Having your Fortress-City fighting in a section provides a huge boost, though a defending Fortress-City's boost is bigger. If an attacking Fortress-City fails to take the section, then it is forced back into the section it came from.
Keep in mind that if a team's Fortress-City is at 0% Integrity they lose, if they're at 50% or lower Integrity they can no longer move, and the lower their Integrity is the lower the combat boost is.
If a Fortress-City is devoured by the ichor sea when a floor sinks, that counts as it being destroyed.
Resource-wise, your Fortress-City automatically provides 2 Ore, 2 Oil, and a whole lot of manpower.
Your Fortress-City may contain secrets that can be uncovered with a Strategic Action.
An extra fun part of the game. You get one Strategic Action per turn by default. Here are a few fun things you can use them on!
-Moving your Fortress-City
-Repairing your Fortress-City
-Deploying an Operation to a Controlled Territory
-Studying captured enemy tech/Operations to try and gain insights onto them(may fail and will never just give you the full design)
-Studying the secrets of your Fortress-City
-Doing other stuff throughout the game
-Scouting out upcoming floors
-Special missions(bombing run to destroy that mining Operation?)(not guaranteed to succeed)
You can design Operations in your Design Phase(and possibly Revision Phase if you roll well and the Operation requires no new tech). Operations are things like mining facilities, giant walls, and other fancy things you can deploy to sections that are Controlled by your side. Operations can provide a whole host of benefits, from getting additional resources out of a section to providing extra war power to performing on-site research.
Operations may have a resource cost that is one-time(the paid resources are unavailable for the Battle Phase) or upkeep(the paid resources are unavailable while the Operation remains).
Operations can be used by the enemy(though this requires them to make the section the Operation is in Controlled first, and then possibly have a Strategic Action put into decrypting their secrets) or destroyed(this only requires Captured status)
As stolen from Mad Arms Race and others, with adjustments:
"Most pieces of equipment have a resource cost, expressed in Ore and Oil or other resources. Ore represents the total amount of mining effort which an item costs, and oil represents its use of chemicals. If something is big, or uses rare metals, it will have a high ore cost. If something burns a lot of fuel, or uses very high-grade fuel, or uses exotic chemicals then it will have a high oil cost. Costs represent what is needed to supply a company's worth of men, or about 100 men. This means, that prices given might be for 100 rifles, 50 motorcycles with sidecars, or 5-10 tanks or planes, or even a single ship.
The map spoiler describes the resources available. If a design costs resources which you don't have, it becomes expensive, and can't be issued to everybody. The total amount of resources a design costs more than you have is called the Resource Deficit.
A design with no resource deficit is Cheap, this means it can available as much as is reasonable for that type of equipment.
A resource deficit of up to 2 makes a design Expensive, meaning it can only be issued to officers, or 1 in 10 men.
A resource deficit of 3-5 makes a design Very Expensive, available to only about 1 in 100 men.
A resource deficit of 6-9 makes a design a National Effort, you can only field one at a time - so this is only worthwhile if it's something like an enormous battleship, a nuke, or mecha-godzilla. A resource deficit of 10 or more is Theoretical, and cannot actually be built.
Some technologies are Complex, being new and difficult to manufacture, and designs featuring them become one level more expensive. Consider expenses when planning your designs! If you lose access to resources, any designs which become more expensive will immediately see the effects - equipment which doesn't have enough fuel and spare parts will need to be decommissioned."
"There are also Special Resources. Currently, none are known, but as designs grow more and more outlandish, they may begin requiring newly-unearthed resources from the map or ones provided by designs/revisions with the intent of providing that resource. Your new death ray may end up requiring Applied Phlebotinum, a new resource. It may pop up as a resource in one of the regions, or it may require a design - like a Phlebotinum Fabricator - to be acquired."
"You have a limited Transport Capacity which determines how much resources you are capable of claiming from other sections you control. Your TC is given from the various designs you have that are capable of transporting resources, and proportional to the cost of the transports. If your trains are Cheap, after all, you'll have more capacity available than if they're Expensive. Your Fortress-City's resources do not consume transport capacity, nor do any resources on the same section as your Fortress-City. Transport Capacity can be limited in certain ways, for example transport ships only working in water. Note that Transport Capacity may also be required to get your troops to their destination in certain circumstances. Transporting troops between floors is a definite example, but if you were fighting on an island chain you would need Transport Capacity to get your troops from island to island."
You start out with 2 universal TC provided by Shuttle Disks, a design both sides possess.
To join, just state which team you'll be joining in bold on this thread, or in bold on Discord.
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Topic: Sinking Tower Arms Race: Core Thread (Pulse 1 Strategy Phase) (Read 1187 times)