Kusanoki Chronicles

  The sun shone fitfully through wispy rain clouds that lazed across the sky in thin streamers as the huge warships hung above the shipyard parked as if in waiting in solidarity with their newer compatriot still semi-encased in steel girders standing silently vertical at the yards launch pad. Rain had lashed down earlier and the frequent  puddles sparkled cheerfully in seeming co-ordination with the colossal ships hulls. Crowds had gathered to view the new warship with a brisk sale in commemorative items and t-shirts. Security had also just reported that an enterprising soul had hired a local mountain that was far enough away that people could take selfies whilst appearing to balance the warships on their head or in their mouth or probably sitting on them. At least the latest fleet addition looked tethered to the ground whilst attached to its launch tower. The other warships present just floated in the sky as if the true one himself had thrown out the contents of his library but left t

  After several weapon test combats we return to the original combat to show how different things can be when upgrades impact things. The Red Ship - The Starter Broadsword lost the combat quite badly last time (and in a real fight would be lucky to escape). Since then her commanding officer, no doubt smarting under the embarrassment, has heavily reconfigured the ship. The most obvious problem was that losing a single AI Combat Navigator was enough to put the ship into efficiency difficulties which enforces four corrective options - Do nothing, it was luck that the AI Combat Navigator was hit so losing space to up crew factors wastes combat potential - Add more AI Combat Navigators for redundancy. - Add more Crew for redundancy - Reduce weaponry/items requiring crew factors - Increase officer leadership The last would be a mistake in a warship but it is listed as it 'is' an option and the first depends on your own attitude to risk. Crew are the safest response mainly

The weak sun was hot on Sumiko's skin as she dried off after some winter swimming. The shock to the system took some getting used to but was invigorating more than not. She indicated with her hands and the administrator waiting by the door eyes politely averted entered the center of the room and bowed politely. '33% angle', she considered internally. I must be doing all right. "When I was swimming I saw something unusual. Our project to re-seed the oceans with fish - when is the next stage due?" "A few more weeks Lady Kasanoki." "Good, send a message to the MOH ambassador. Allowing it goes well we will want to be prepared to start purchases for the next stage.", she started to comb her hair before continuing, "Next our new system Varitang. Defences are in in good shape, too good a shape really. Normally outposts have just enough troops to detect thievery a lot of these outposts in system are more protected than the ancient earth Fort Knox…

Our next weapon test involves our original two ships which have gone away, re-equipped and then armed themselves with a single weapon so we can see how it is working. Starter Broadsword - In the last battle this warship lost due to basically losing crew points and thus efficiency. It was not inaccurate though so the owning player has upped its armour to Mark II (increasing the armour depth from 80 to 100 allowing it to block a mean average of 50 damage versus the Mark I 40. The shields did not do much so they removed them entirely to make more space for weapons. Note that this means the actual ship's initial defence against laser weaponry is worse than before as the extra armour depth (+10) does not entirely replace the lost shield depth (-13). The shields were lost so quickly though that by round three this has switched and the ship would perform better. Since its opponent was so heavily shielded last time the owner has decided to arm itself with a Nova Cannon Mark I which is des

So far in our mini-war of a lightly armed scout versus our heavily shielded exploration vessel we have not seen much to alarm the exploration vessel. Both ships though have changed it up slightly. The Exploration vessel has upgraded from the single photon scatter gun to a single Photon Gun Mark IV just cause what appears to be shining a torch at the enemy has done nothing at all. The scout this time has decided to fire torpedo's instead of missiles. The Attacking Ship We should briefly look at how the turn report shows the new weapon  SPACE WEAPONS                                                                | |                                                              ACC       AF     HP        DMG      | | 1       Torpedo Launcher (219)                                      10                        | |         - 4 salvos of Torpedo                   +6             5                     600      | Now the torpedo launcher is very similar to the missile launcher  with the big

No system is perfect and there are some minor and less minor tweaks that can be made to the game engine to make the game even more enjoyable for players and especially to assist new players in getting more heavily involved in this side of the game. This will be a longish post but for those less interested in rambling verbiage I shall highlight the specific suggestions in red so peeps who want to come move straight to the suggestions and their reasons. Current Situation  Serious combat in game is hard mainly because of the effort involved and the ramifications. The effort is partly game engine and partly players the ramifications are all player caused. One of the biggest player caused issues is an unwillingness to fight unless you have a huge pre-ponderance of force. This leads to a lot of alliances and shifting tactical situations which is actually a good thing. What isn't is the automatic increase in threat that can happen. Let me provide an example. Affiliation A sends its 20 war