Ruins 2: More Ruined

Planetologie_des_Ruines

Ruins 2 Ground Combat Prototype

Off the shoulder of Orion

Strategic Facets

This is a set of attributes ('Facets') that represent broad, holistic capabilities and requirements to engage in missions on the strategic level. In essence most units will have one or more facets which represent things they can do outside of the narrow-focus tactical domain, while conversely various tasks and missions will require a defined number of specific facets to complete. This allows for clear strategic determination of requirements and resources.

Fundamental concept:

• Guns, Armor, etc are for tactical gameplay (combat sims)
• Facets are for strategic gameplay (conducting espionage, garrisoning places, engaging in large-scale events, etc)

Example

To properly patrol the star highway between Khitomer and Bajor requires a total of 10 Electronics.

Most warships have Electronics, but a special limited edition electronic support cruiser might have Electronics (3) and a Supergalaxy-class Heavy Explorer has Electronics (2)

So to cover the Khitome-Bajor star highway you could assign 10 cheap frigates (Electronics 1 x 10), four electronic support cruisers (3 x 4) or five heavy explorers (2 x 5). You might want a few extra in case of trouble.

This is all very simple, but the patrol frigates might only cost $10 each, while an electronic support cruiser might cost $50 per and the heavy explorers $100 each. Conversely, the patrol frigates are essentially just spacegoing police vehicles while the heavy explorers are battleships by any other name.

Second example

You've determined based off the distribution of your colonies that the Space British Empire needs a minimum of 45 'pips' of Electronics in long-endurance ship to patrol the empire and ideally 25 "large escorts" for the battlefleet. The Coruscant Naval Treaty has limited you to $5000 worth of cruisers, and as they are a vanilla hull type all cruiser have Electronics (1). Worse yet, the Kilrathi are known to be building a run of cruisers of $100 each; the Kilrathi are also a signatory and have a limit of only $3500 but have no sprawling empire to defend.

Do you build a set of minimum cruisers (say, $50 each) to fill up the 45 required Electronics for patrols and then spend the remaining on as many large, powerful cruisers as you can to ensure your main fleet can fight the Kilrathi one effectively?

Do you build large patrol cruisers to make sure they don't commerce raid (as their large cruisers cannot easily overpower your equally large ones) you and crash your economy, and then only small cruisers for the fleet, trusting in your battlesheep?

Facet

• Admin
• Cargo
• Command
• Covert
• Diplomacy
• Drones
• Electronics
• Engineering
• Garrison
• Marines
• Medical
• Mines
• Ortillery
• Overt
• Science
• Supplies
• Underworld

An operating assumption is that MANY things should require facets and in various combinations; an espionage operation might require a number of Covert pips, plus a pip of Electronics and Underworld.

The other thing is that the mission doesn't care where the facets come from, only that they are supplied. The important interactions are the second-level things like opportunity cost of deploying battleships to patrol the spacelanes or commandoes to perform SCIENCE.

Some facts could cross over, like every 2 pips of Drones could replace one pip of Electronics - or of Garrison.