Event Feedback - Dreary Futures: Forceful Introduction

[Happy_Fox]

This is a thread for feedback on the event today, in case anyone wanted to post their thoughts on it outside of Discord.

For my two-cents I feel like the explicit threat of "intense structural damage" to our unarmed ship from 48 railguns, 6 torpedoes and an array of boarding pods, with "Probability of defensive manoeuvres breaking the lock; zero" in a region of space where we have no backup (because our backup is the warship threatening the Horizon) is probably a bit much to reasonably expect any sort of meaningful armed opposition. I was surprised to hear that there was a strong belief the crew would violently oppose the boarding party from those - to the extent that "We actually made the event for the opposite" of what happened - which was Command complying totally with the demands.

What this results in, from what I can tell, is a feeling of railroading the response of compliance - and while this can be a desired outcome it seems in this case that it was the opposite of what was intended.

[Rookie Eyes]

I agree that that much firepower aimed at a ship with only crew militia, and a small internal security team isn't going to get any realistic opposition. I don't know how it was in other departments, but science spent a good portion of the round preparing to survive if the ship was fired upon rather than to try to fight off any intruders. I think what really sealed the decision to comply was the threat of the ship guns. If it had just been a boarding party then it may not have gone differently, but it's at least more likely that the crew will oppose intruders without the belief that any action can immediately result in the ship that themselves, and many of their friends/coworkers, live on being fired upon by railguns, torpedoes, etc.

As for my personal enjoyment of the event I neither liked/nor disliked it. I wasn't engaged by it directly beyond the threat of being fired upon by another ship, and the response to that by the science department.

[Zelmana]

I was not present for the event, but I read over the Command briefing regarding the incident.

I believe that of course we were justified in our actions of handing over the phoron. I agree with the overall sentiment that there was not much option. That's completely fine and expected. However, I do find it odd that the FSF would aim at the SCC's crown jewel and expect no retaliation. Yes, we were unarmed, but 1) there's contracts in place for their protection of us and 2) the SCC could very easily have every FSF ship blown to shit in a matter of days or hours if they desired.

I don't have much frustration but rather a bit of questioning on the FSF's seemingly careless approach, maybe even the audacity they have at doing this to us. And we "renegged" the contract? Who is "we"? I certainly hope SCC Shipyard did not allow for this- I would have expected Shipyard to tell the FSF to expect bluespace artillery if they even think of doing something like that again.

[Owen]

3 minutes ago, Zelmana said:

And we "renegged" the contract? Who is "we"? I certainly hope SCC Shipyard did not allow for this- I would have expected Shipyard to tell the FSF to expect bluespace artillery if they even think of doing something like that again.

Just to explain this part--Our XO during the event sent a fax over to the SCC explaining the situation, and essentially that we were being extorted for phoron and credits. Right before the FSF left with all of the phoron, the SCC responded to us saying something along the lines of "you have full authority to renegotiate the deal in order to secure the success of the Horizon mission" (not the exact quote, but basically the same intent).

Given that there was a lot of talk about the SFA and other various pirates venturing around out there, and how the Horizon, without the Caravaggio, would be completely unprotected from even the smallest of ships carrying torpedoes, we ended up coughing up about 85k credits for them to continue protecting us. Not sure how that is going to play out in the long run, or whether or not the SCC will continue with that, but the mindset at the time was we'd at least cough up this amount of credits for the guarantee that hopefully someone would be looking out for us until the SCC was able to respond after the round. 

[Dreamix]

The announcement, for those who did not save the logs, or have not played the round:

Quote

 

Stellar Corporate Conglomerate Update

SCCV Horizon Sensor Array Alert

The SCCV Horzion Sensor Array has detected a weapon system locking onto the Vessel. Electronic countermeasures failed to scram. Probability of defensive manoeuvres breaking the lock; zero. No enemy jamming detected.

Origin(s): Solarian Taipei-Class Cruiser broadcasting IFF; FSF Caravaggio.

Weapon System(s): Main Railgun Battery, 48 barrels; 6 Torpedo Launchers; Boarding Pod Array.

Target(s): Atmospherics, Bridge, Starboard Residential Deck, Thrusters, Engineering, Science, Port and Starboard wings.

Projected shield output insufficient, high probability SCCV Horizon will suffer intense structural damage should weapons fully discharge.

The SCCV Horizon Sensor Array will emit a warning when munitions are projected to impact the vessel.

 

 

Thoughts on the event:
I played my XO. I have enjoyed the event - it was alright.

I have also enjoyed the effects of the last event on the server and Horizon, despite my "no impact etc etc" from my previous event feedback thread. I am curious to see what happens next, and also really love to see people discussing the events in game and on the relay. It's nice.

One thing I think was not ideal, was the negotiation hell, with the captain stuck with the FSF for quite a long while (around half an hour at least? not sure honestly). But that is hard to predict how negotiation will go, or organize to make sure it can go quick, I imagine, so this is not a huge negative point here. It also does not really engage many players at once, and leaves a single player (probably the captain, with maybe some other command member, or maybe two) to decide the direction the whole event and the arc might go. Not sure how to make that better though.

 

Thoughts on the expectation that we would attack the FSF:
Based on the announcement above, I did not think for even a second that attacking the FSF was an actual option that we were supposed to consider, or even actually pick.
Torpedoes, railgun batteries, aimed at a lot of critical areas, including the residential deck, with a ton of people which we had no way to actually defend or rescue. And the boarding pod array with who knows how many armed marines, ready to rip and tear. A lot of potential damage and casualties, which is only worse when it is our character's actual homes that are being threatened.

In my eyes, as command, we had about three options:
- give in to the demands - we live another day, lose some phoron, maybe have to "renegotiate" again later - and that is what we did, and I thought was the only reasonable option
- tell FSF to fuck off - they go back to their ship, leave, and fire at us - very dumb option
- try to arrest the FSF during negotiation - they obviously fight back, there are casualties on both sides, including maybe the captain, then they send the marines, or maybe we negotiate to give the hostages for safety - really the worst option, we give the hostages (or not), and then we are blasted by torpedoes


If we were supposed to call out the bluff, that they do not actually have a million railguns and torpedoes and marines aimed at us, then, well, we had no way to actually tell it is a bluff. The announcement looks, uh. Like we are going to all absolutely die, with no way to prevent it. And if they were hired by the SCC to escort us, then they probably were actually armed for actual escort duty. There was no reason for us to think it is a bluff, basically.

If we were supposed to actually fight them, then like, horizon is really underequipped for things like that. We are an exploration ship, not military. We have a small security department. Not really a lot of weapons, even including the crew armory - and crew militia is not really something that should be relied on. We also have no ship based guns, or point defense cannons, or actual armor, or shields for anything other than tiny meteorites, or any evasive ability, or anything like that. A military ship threatening us, is a huge imbalance of power.

If we were also supposed to tank the damage and repair it afterwards. That's a lot of damage to repair, and in critical areas too, atmos, the bridge, engineering. It could not be repaired in a single round, leaving us stranded and vulnerable. Really bad idea. And we are a ship in the middle of nowhere, and not a station in tau ceti space anymore. We live on the ship, on the residental deck that would be blasted by torpedoes and railguns. Escape pods are probably useless in this situation. Intrepid and mining shuttle can only go so far, to the nearest asteroid or exoplanet.

If we were supposed to make use of some of our OOC intuition, and assume that the admins will *not* just bomb the bridge, atmos, engineering, and science, and will *not* send solarian ultramarines to kill everyone, then uh. That's kinda metagaming, and roleplaying is all about reacting to IC events in plausible IC ways.

If some random security officer or someone was supposed to break any orders and common sense, do some dumb shit, and antagonize the FSF into fighting, then, uh, really. Not even really sure how to respond to that, honestly. "It literally happened in KOTW/whatever, years ago, in past events." But this is current event, now, in the current year and playerbase. I have not played in the past events, KOTW or the like, but I am sure the players from now are different than years ago, especially since the NBT and Horizon, which I would assume got us a ton of new players. Or even if the players are the same, I am sure they playerbase has matured a ton. "It happened in the past" is a non-argument imo. And really, relying on someone to do something dumb, or someone to step out of line, or to break character and act with no regards to their safety or whatever, just leaves a bad taste. We should be expected to act in HRP manner, and reasonably respond to actual threats and the like - and it should not be surprising when we actually do.

 

So, uh, basically:
If fighting was supposed to be an actual option, it should have been apparent somehow that we have an actual chance to win the fight. Or it could have only been a boarding party, and not guns and torpedoes as well. Or something like that. I can see how some people could think, that we were railroaded into the option of paying the FSF again.

Some free suggestions now. Or maybe, they could have fired 6 torpedoes as a warning shot before the negotiation, with 1 passing by the bridge, 3 falling apart mid flight, and 2 not even leaving the torpedo tubes - so we could know that their armaments are in bad shape and the weapons lock to not be trusted. Or something like that, potentially.

[Diggey]

32 minutes ago, Zelmana said:

the SCC could very easily have every FSF ship blown to shit in a matter of days or hours if they desired.

I literally can not comprehend what the plan here is (from the FSF)

Do they think they can fight off the combined forces of Idris and Zavodskoi (backed by Hephaestus shipyards) for... what exactly are they throwing everything away for again?

The chance at an asteroid with phoron on it?

I sure hope it is not for stealing a single cargo load from a pirate ship

I get that there have been losses, and that prisoners were executed, but the Phoron robbery is uh....

Everything until the phoron robbery made sense

 

The FSF has a semi stable contract with the SCC that allows them to operate without the threat of beeing extradited to the Sol Navy

The FSF is a small fry private military contractor, with most of the crews (Ghostrole main btw) beeing disillusioned with what they are doing beeing right or with them beeing furious at having to work with the corporates

Most rp with the FSF boils down to "we should betray the SCC but we literally can not"

To straight up betray the SCC with a flagship just does not make sense.

 

This is throwing away every single life loyal to you

This is abandoning everything you once stood for, stand, and could ever stand for.

Destroying your legacy

For what?

It is no longer revenge - Odds are even in the best case scenarion the SCC will never hire you again - and that is assuming you finish your contract to escort them.

 

This single action has condemmed the entire FSF to either turn into Space tramps or pirates for no noticable gain.

Edited August 21, 2022 by Diggey

[Triogenix]

Okay, I had written out replies to every single question, but there's some many similar ones I'm just going to write out stuff, many answers can be found in the summary which was posted for all to see.

1) Fighting the FSF was not what was supposed to happen, or the "correct" course of action for the Horizon to take. We rarely have correct courses of action, we have courses that will result in better things for the Horizon, and courses that will result in worse. We want to give players freedom to do what they want within a set of limits, most of these limits imposed by their own previous IC actions. There was an expectation that the Horizon may try to fight the FSF based off of previous events, the only hard data we have to base expectations and predictions on, as we'd rather not guess.

2) The FSF and the Caraviaggo didn't expect no retaliation. They are the most intact fleet group in the wildlands, the same type of group that during KOTW the SCC required the help of the next two largest human factions, the CoC and Elyra, to defeat. It is unlikely the SCC alone could mount battles of extermination even if they wanted to. There is also the additional question of would the SCC want to hunt down the FSF fleets for one of their ships pointing their guns at the Horizon? Beyond the fact the Caraviaggo has no baring on the rest of the FSF, the entire reason that mess even happened was the fault of the Horizon's crew, the most believable course of action I see given how we write the SCC, is command during the events being taken off the line and unceremoniously fired for creating this situation in the first place. This is something we obviously did not wish to do, and hopefully something we never do because it's incredibly boring and uninteresting. The SCC has no friends in the wildlands, and the FSF is one of two who aren't openly hostile, so the SCC wants to keep them like that very badly. The Caraviaggo itself also doesn't really care, they can go find work pretty much anywhere, even returning to the fold of Sol proper if they brought enough goods with them most likely.

3) This event was entirely the result of the crews actions during the last one. This isn't out of the blue, or a wild change in the way we write, but a logical consequence. The crew during the last event catastrophically failed to put up a mild resistance until after the SFA had killed the two FSF senior officers. There is going to be consequences for that, and this was the best one we could think of to push the story forward and keep the impact on the people who did those actions, while not going about it in a way that destroyed characters. Contracts don't really matter when you get the people who you signed them with killed.

4) The FSF were never, and will probably never be friendly with the SCC. Their only relationship is one of convenience, the SCC has credits, the FSF has access to equipment and ships no other mercenary organization has thanks to previously being a Solarian Fleet. By paying them, the SCC can ensure they remain on side, and not fighting the SCC, but that's only if the credits keep flowing and there's an ability to collect. If de Ransburg had so chosen, he could have set up his own warlord state in the wildlands and done pretty well, it says this much on the wiki. They're probably the single most powerful group of mercenaries in existence when it comes to who they can fight. 

5) And this is probably the most important part, you can't get paid when you're dead. From the FSF's perspective, the Horizon basically killed their officers by standing aside for the SFA, so why would they continue to protect the Horizon right off the bat if it's a quick way to get killed? They only agreed to continue protecting them after the captain during the round offered to double their original contract, and fully complied with their demands for the phoron.

6) I forgot to copy this part. The Caraviaggo is one ship, not the entire FSF. When I say FSF in this post, I mean the crew and command of the Caraviaggo. They find their own work, and as long as they're making money De Ransburg doesn't really care what they're doing, as long as it doesn't fuck with the revenue stream for everyone else. As outlined in my second point, the chance of blowback is limited, even on the Caraviaggo. But even if there is blowback, the Caraviaggo wouldn't give a shit, they made their money, got compensated for the deaths of their senior officers, and now are fine.

 

Every other question can be easily answered by reading the summary posted in the announcements on the main server, relay, and lore discord.

Edited August 21, 2022 by Triogenix
Trying to make things clearer

[Kintsugi]

2 hours ago, Diggey said:

The FSF has a semi stable contract with the SCC that allows them to operate without the threat of beeing extradited to the Sol Navy

The FSF is a small fry private military contractor, with most of the crews (Ghostrole main btw) beeing disillusioned with what they are doing beeing right or with them beeing furious at having to work with the corporates

Most rp with the FSF boils down to "we should betray the SCC but we literally can not"

To straight up betray the SCC with a flagship just does not make sense.

(...)

It is no longer revenge - Odds are even in the best case scenarion the SCC will never hire you again - and that is assuming you finish your contract to escort them.

This single action has condemmed the entire FSF to either turn into Space tramps or pirates for no noticable gain.

The FSF is not:

1. Universally employed by the SCC - most of their business is done in the MRSP, from the look of things.
2. A small fry PMC - they are a Solarian naval battlegroup strong and gradually gaining strength from defections from other warlords - for context, a lone battlegroup with no backup, no reinforcements, and no resupply took on the SCC, Biesel, Elyra, and the Coalition during KotW and nearly won - the SCC had to break out WMDs to stop them, and that still battlegroup limped away instead of being outright destroyed.
3. Betraying the SCC. This is one ship betraying the SCC, not the entire battlegroup.
4. A monolithic entity. It is not homogenous, it is not consistent throughout, it is an amalgamation of fleets and ships only loyal to the pursuit of profit. The variation will be massive throughout the FSF.
5. In control of the actions of this one ship. The Caravaggio('s acting Commanding Officer and crew) is mad as hell and doing what they please.
6. Going to be exterminated to the last man by Idris and Zavodskoi over this. Not that Idris and Zavodskoi have the capability to do that in the first place!

The FSF as a whole will be fine, and odds are the Caravaggio will be fine, if potentially in hot water with the FSF's admiralty and blacklisted by the SCC.

 

Personally, my only problem with this event was the use of the threat of ship to ship weapons against the Horizon instead of the threat of the actual FSF characters themselves. I think it worked out fine and really wasn't as railroady as is suggested, but generally thinking I think events work better with concrete entities at play instead of abstract threats. I also think that staff probably should've listed the scale/intensity as a different level each, but the rationale I saw for listing it as what it was listed as was perfectly justifiable as well. All in all, I enjoyed the event, and it was a very nice follow-up for the last one.

Edited August 21, 2022 by DanseMacabre

[Omicega]

1 hour ago, Diggey said:

This single action has condemmed the entire FSF to either turn into Space tramps or pirates for no noticable gain.

The FSF isn't a homogenous, cohesive entity. It's literally in the name -- they're the Free Solarian Fleets. What the Caravaggio itself has done essentially has no bearing on what the rest of the FSF is doing.

I want to make a bigger post about this event when it's not already quite late for me, and I'll try to get around to that tomorrow, but this idea that the Horizon is somehow dealing with the entire FSF is not correct. The event today dealt with the crew of a single cruiser of Solarian ex-military that have essentially gone privateer, not the faction as a whole.

[SilverSZ]

Trio covered most of the points I would have raised in this thread, so I'll just talk about something he didn't instead.

I think it's important to understand the SCC's power doesn't come in the same way as a nation does. The SCC is reliant on the soft-power it projects from it's stranglehold over the Galactic Economy. Only the PMCG actually hosts something that could be considered a fighting force and it is not close to the military of our larger nations. Such as the Wildlands factions and Sol Proper. The Solarian Wildlands such as the FSF are bandits. They do not care about soft power or economics, and the SCC does not have the hard power to fight against a Full Solarian Battlegroup + Extras like the FSF, and the FSF does not have any reliance in a greater sense on the SCC as most of their forces are located in the Wildlands, beyond what would be considered the SCC's primary sphere of influence.

Could the SCC build up a mega navy? Likely, they produce all the things required for such. But do they have one on hand to kill anyone they want? Not at all, it's not profitable to maintain such a thing and the SCC is not here to build a nation but make money. Heph failed to defeat a bunch of religious fanatics with no space ships on a rock, and had one of their most major corporate possessions raided in the meantime. 

In short, the SCC is soft power, not hard power. They couldn't wipe out the FSF and the FSF is not reliant on the SCC. It is unlikely anything greater between the two will come from the events, and the Carravagio will simply not be doing much business with the SCC in the future, not that they care with that payday they got.

[Sparky_hotdog]

So I figured I'd give my thoughts on the event, having slept on it. I'll start with the bad, because as per usual there's less of it than people make out, and I would like to finish on the good.

Firstly, while I understand the sentiment of "You weren't supposed to fight, but it was an option", I think it's fairly clear there was a miscommunication somewhere. Most of us read the event details and saw "High Intensity", so were expecting a firefight. I believe (And this might have been my tired brain last night making shite up) several of those involved in the planning of the event mentioned on Discord they were surprised things went so peacefully. Which is fine. It shows the choice is there, which I suppose is good. But how on Earth did anyone expect the Horizon to resist? If you scale the scenario down to something that might happen on a regular round, say a traitor holding a gun to an unarmed crewmember's head, there would be no expectation said crewmember would fight back. Setting aside some more unique cases, it would hardly be in character to try and do anything but comply. That is basically what happened to the Horizon. I'm not complaining that we had to do things peaceful (As we didn't have to, nor should every event just be a firefight) but I think more care should be taken in how "Intense" a round is likely to be in future.

My only other real complaint comes down to something that ultimately comes up in every event, but to my eyes more so in this one; Getting the whole ship engaged. Admittedly at least by having this one take place aboard the Horizon there was more stuff for everyone to do, but this felt very command focused. Clearly command are going to have an important role in any remotely tense event, but even as someone playing security I felt rather out of the loop, and was basically unaware of what the FSF wanted or why they had locked weapons until they had nearly left. Sure, this might be as a result of the decision to comply with the FSF's demands, but as above, more planning should maybe have been given to the idea that the Horizon wouldn't try to fight the Carravagio. Maybe that was just me, however, and others caught on quicker.

Regarding what I think was done well, I do think the continuation of the events on the Odyssey was well done and made sense to me, at least once I had gathered what actually occurred. The crew of the Carravagio actually make very good antagonists in my mind, with their reasoning being that which can logically explained and yet seeming entirely bullshit ICly. I literally went to bed last night fuming at the audacity of these pixel space marines. I commend everyone who took part in making me feel such. I don't know if they are likely to be involved in any future events, but something about their repeated involvement with the ship made the whole situation feel more personal, sentimental and closer to home, which is a nice change from galaxy spanning politics.

Overall, it was a fun event, and achieved something which I feel should be the goal of all events; It put the crew in a situation they would never experience in a normal round.

[SilverSZ]

28 minutes ago, Sparky_hotdog said:

Firstly, while I understand the sentiment of "You weren't supposed to fight, but it was an option", I think it's fairly clear there was a miscommunication somewhere. Most of us read the event details and saw "High Intensity", so were expecting a firefight. I believe (And this might have been my tired brain last night making shite up) several of those involved in the planning of the event mentioned on Discord they were surprised things went so peacefully. Which is fine. It shows the choice is there, which I suppose is good. But how on Earth did anyone expect the Horizon to resist? If you scale the scenario down to something that might happen on a regular round, say a traitor holding a gun to an unarmed crewmember's head, there would be no expectation said crewmember would fight back. Setting aside some more unique cases, it would hardly be in character to try and do anything but comply. That is basically what happened to the Horizon. I'm not complaining that we had to do things peaceful (As we didn't have to, nor should every event just be a firefight) but I think more care should be taken in how "Intense" a round is likely to be in future.

 

The issue with Intensity is we have to account of all possible outcomes in the event. If we had set it as a lower intensity. But then in the end a Torpedo actually gets launched or a firefight starts, that would likely go over worse as people might have considered the lower intensity as a mark of "Oh, I can play this character I wouldn't normally play out of fear of losing them". I do agree the actual event would fall under a low-middle intensity for me but I think labelling it as high was ideal for what might have happened. I don't think fighting was an option but we have to account for all actions the crew might take and there could have been people (from what I heard there were, just not people in command) who wanted to call the FSF on their bluff, personally, I just see marking it as high intensity as being cautious.

 

31 minutes ago, Sparky_hotdog said:

My only other real complaint comes down to something that ultimately comes up in every event, but to my eyes more so in this one; Getting the whole ship engaged. Admittedly at least by having this one take place aboard the Horizon there was more stuff for everyone to do, but this felt very command focused. Clearly command are going to have an important role in any remotely tense event, but even as someone playing security I felt rather out of the loop, and was basically unaware of what the FSF wanted or why they had locked weapons until they had nearly left. Sure, this might be as a result of the decision to comply with the FSF's demands, but as above, more planning should maybe have been given to the idea that the Horizon wouldn't try to fight the Carravagio. Maybe that was just me, however, and others caught on quicker.

As the FSF leader for the event I did note this as an issue. Unfortunately it was one of those events that was hard to involve people with. I hope the future events in the arc will be different personally, and intend to try and propose ways for this to happen. So hopefully people who felt uninvolved for this one will find the future ones better in this regard.

[Confused rock]

It feels a bit silly to me that the SCC would let their flagship be so vulnerable to attacks by larger ships. Hopefully this is something that's taken into account in the future, this ship being a "wake-up call" 
(also let's be real gauss carbines are far worse weapons than 9mm pistols or even disruptors, the sec surrender the event prior was close to inevitable ((which isn't necessarily a bad thing, 'cause gave fuel for this one)))

Edited August 21, 2022 by Confused rock

[CampinKiller]

I thought it was fine. I played the HoS, and while yes, we were being threatened by the guns (to which I concur with Danse), the potential was there to resist. It was 5 FSF, 2 of which were lightly armed officers. Security could’ve wiped the floor with them, and captured the CO if we’d armed up and planned it out. That said (and I discussed this with one of the bridge crew), that was really the “fuck around and find out” option. Sure we might capture the LCDR - who’s to say the acting XO on the Caravaggio cares and doesn’t just start shooting? It would’ve been a gamble, and it was one that command was not willing to make

[WickedCybs]

15 hours ago, SilverSZ said:

 I just see marking it as high intensity as being cautious.

I think it would be better to suggest an event might be of differing intensities depending on what happens rather than only marking it high due to the possibility of fighting. So, suggest it could range from medium-high intensity as an example.

9 hours ago, Confused rock said:

Hopefully this is something that's taken into account in the future, this ship being a "wake-up call" 
(also let's be real gauss carbines are far worse weapons than 9mm pistols or even disruptors, the sec surrender the event prior was close to inevitable ((which isn't necessarily a bad thing, 'cause gave fuel for this one)))

The event prior to it was completely fair and not really inevitable at all. Despite those "gauss carbines" the crew still ended up being able to defeat the marines after the fact. They are not worse weapons than 9mms either.

The marines had no armour on and only one weapon worth a damn vs sec armour (the assault rifle). Security had not one, but two ballistic armour sets available which would have completely shut out the marines, but one wearer was in the bar and too far away which is fair. The other one just ran away during the armoury fight so the rest had to deal with the problem. The "loss" and killing of the FSF members ended up being completely the fault of the crew. Obviously, It's not about winning or losing in the end and nobody really did anything wrong with how it turned out though.

Edited August 22, 2022 by WickedCybs

[Confused rock]

I don't want to get into an argument but I want to clarify, the crew defeated the marines after being given non-gauss carbine weapons: two burst rifles and two combat lasers. statistically a gauss carbine shot does less damage than a 9mm bullet if there's no armor (gauss is 20 dmg 20 ap, 9mil is 25 dmg 10 ap),  in addition to having far fewer shots, being a single-shot weapon with a handful of reserve shells each. I don't want there to be any misconception so that in the future event makers know what's being given out when they give out gauss carbines (I think they did this time, wouldn't have been much of a fight if sec had decent weapons from the start and I do like the outcome thematically more than just SFA gets absolutely annihilated)

Edited August 22, 2022 by Confused rock

[witchbells]

I didn't feel like the events were railroading the ship to a particular decision, rather, I felt like this was an event where there was real, tangible danger that weighed on every crew member. The severity of the repercussions that could befall the Horizon wasn't just felt by a few select people, which is a really common pitfall some events fall into, but an imminent danger that illustrated the perils of being functionally alone in space. That was the most important function of the event, in my opinion.

 

[WickedCybs]

10 hours ago, Confused rock said:

I don't want to get into an argument but I want to clarify, the crew defeated the marines after being given non-gauss carbine weapons: two burst rifles and two combat lasers. statistically a gauss carbine shot does less damage than a 9mm bullet if there's no armor (gauss is 20 dmg 20 ap, 9mil is 25 dmg 10 ap),  in addition to having far fewer shots, being a single-shot weapon with a handful of reserve shells each. I don't want there to be any misconception so that in the future event makers know what's being given out when they give out gauss carbines (I think they did this time, wouldn't have been much of a fight if sec had decent weapons from the start and I do like the outcome thematically more than just SFA gets absolutely annihilated)

I'm aware, but It's not really relevant. The reality is still that they had no armour on and only one weapon capable of causing serious damage. Even a gauss carbine slug is still going to hurt them massively. So if just one person in ballistic armour who can just shrug off their mostly weak firepower (smgs and buckshot) fired off maybe two or three shots that hit, it would have been over for the marine being hit. The event runners definitely knew what they were giving out, since like you said, anything better would effectively eliminate any small chance they had of securing their objective altogether.

The additional weapons also wasn't what really heavily contributed to their defeat but it did seal the deal by making people more willing to actually engage. The FSF CO and XO essentially critically wounded two or three of the SFA with just their pistols, and they mostly missed. This included the person with the AR, so it was a done deal after that.

I personally still wouldn't want gauss carbines being the main weapon even at the start of any event, since even if it's a perfectly serviceable weapon it doesn't encourage action, by design.

[Triogenix]

On 20/08/2022 at 21:21, DanseMacabre said:

Personally, my only problem with this event was the use of the threat of ship to ship weapons against the Horizon instead of the threat of the actual FSF characters themselves.

 

On 21/08/2022 at 17:20, CampinKiller said:

we were being threatened by the guns (to which I concur with Danse)

I found some time to write a response to this, so here it is.

The reason I personally pushed for the Caravaggio to use it's shipborne weapons as the primary threat against the Horizon was due to believability and consistency. The Caravaggio was hired in the first place because it has shipborne weapons, and the Horizon does not. This had been established in past events. When the Caravaggio decided to turn on the Horizon, while yes, we could have had the threat be tangible characters in vampires and heavy weapons, the Caravaggio could threaten better just using their shipborne weapons. IC'ly, I wouldn't find it believable or consistent with their goals for the Caravaggio to not use their ship to ship weapons as a threat.

It's not something I want us to do again anytime soon, since you are both right in that it is annoying to have the threat be some nebulous other thing, and not really able to be interacted with.