NPE empire TL

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Emiricol
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NPE empire TL

Post by Emiricol »

What's a rough correlation between empire age/size and TL? 1E detailed this but I can't find it in the draft doc for 2E.
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Re: NPE empire TL

Post by Tyrel Lohr »

The various drafts of the 2E empire generation rules disassociate empire size from tech level for the most part. This creates a situation where you could find a fairly expansive TL 0 power, or a stay-at-home TL 20 power. Generally speaking, though, more advanced powers tend to have a better chance of starting with larger empires, IIRC. I'll hunt down those rules and make sure they are reintegrated into the book, since they are obviously missing (again).

That does beg a question that I've been asking myself for some time: should the rules for randomly creating new empires be included in the empires chapter, campaign setup chapter, or scenario chapter? Any clear preference. Ditto for system generation. What sounds like the most natural home for these rules?
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Re: NPE empire TL

Post by virtutis.umbra »

How about moving those long, complex procedural bits out into appendices, and referencing them from appropriate places in all three chapters?
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Re: NPE empire TL

Post by Tyrel Lohr »

That isn't a bad idea. They tend to fall into the "use once, ignore the rest of the time" category that would work great as appendices at the back of the book! It also keeps them from breaking up the flow of the rules within the book itself.

Empire generation is probably going to be the wordier monster in the 2E Campaign Guide if only because I simplified the system generation down to 2D6 or 2D6/2 (RD) rolls with modifiers being applied in the Companion. That makes those tables boring, but not unnecessary. I may yet decide to adjust them before release, too, but the simplification sure made generating system stats so much faster!
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Re: NPE empire TL

Post by Emiricol »

So in your view, what TL would an advanced power be? 4? 40?
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Re: NPE empire TL

Post by Tyrel Lohr »

The way that the tech levels have been realigned, a TL+0 is baseline interstellar that has just left the cradle, while TL+100 is approaching a level of power close to that of ancient powers (at least in most settings, I would assume). Technically speaking, though, the only thing that really matter is how many "multiples" of strength a power is at compared to the baseline. TL+10 is 2x of TL+0, TL+20 is 3x, TL+30 is 4x, TL+40 is 5x, and so on. So the TL+100 can build units that are 11x as powerful as those built by a TL+0 power. They also cost considerably more to maintain, which is the balancing factor that emulates a situation like Babylon 5 where the ancients have units that are individually much more powerful than anything the lesser races have, but there are fewer of these super units to go around.

To illustrate the point, consider a 20 EP battlecruiser. At TL+0 this unit has 40 mass units to spend on its combat factors. Ignoring special abilities, let's say this ends up being 10 DV, 10 AS, 10 PD, 10 CR. This gives the ship a maintenance cost of 4.

Now let's look at the TL+100 battlecruiser at 20 EP. It has 220 MU to spend. That gives it 55 DV, 55 AS, 55 PD, 55 CR. Ouch. But such a ship also has a maintenance cost of 22, so the TL+0 power can maintain a little more than five of their battlecruisers for the cost of one TL+100 BC of the same cost. In a straight-up fight the more advanced BC is going to mop the floor with its less advanced rivals, but without a strong economy there is no way that the more advanced power is going to be able to field enough of its BCs to be everywhere at once. This gives the less advanced empires a chance to swarm them or attack them in enough locations that the ancients have to split their forces.

The tech advancement rate in the core book is unrealistically fast, much like population growth. If you wanted a more balanced long-term tech progression you would increase all tech costs by 10 so that it would take a decade to get a tech increase instead of just a single year.
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Re: NPE empire TL

Post by Emiricol »

Outstanding, thank you for the insights. Just what I needed.
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Re: NPE empire TL

Post by Tyrel Lohr »

I'm adding that commentary back into the current CG draft, as it looks like it is something that is valuable or necessary to understand the rules. One of the bad things about staring at this for years is that you start to take some of these things for granted -- which makes sanity checks like this extremely valuable! :D
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