Fwurg

[Brend]

In light of the current multiaugmentation thread I wish to propose a new racial characteristic, and I would like your feedback on it.

As you all know, the Hemet Veolians are designed to be 'faster, better, stronger'. In discussion with Mercury, I came to the conclusion that Militaristic and Coordinated do not fit this theme very well. For one, Militaristic implies being good at building machines of war, and hemet veolians aren't good at that, they have normal veolian to do the heavy lifting; and Coordinated clearly indicates a level of natural cooperation, something the Hemet Veolians can do, but not in the 'harmonious cooperation' sense of the word.

As the Combat Ability models the physical superiority of the Hemet Veolians so well, we concluded that a new Racial Characteristic was necessary to model the Hemet Veolian's superior intellectual capabilities. However, these do not necessarily manifest as analytical, because they are not really defined by their analytics (a lot of hemet veolians do a lot of their work on intuition). I've tried to keep a low vibe of telepathic ability in the fluff of the Hemets, and we have tried to define a racial characteristics that models this:

Telepathic

Your race can maintain some form of telepathic communication over short ranges, allowing them to disseminate information quicker and better than others.

For every full billion of inhabitants in a system, a single fleet with its home port in that system gains a +● bonus to a single defensive rating. Every fleet can only gain a single bonus point in this way, but having multiple billions allows you to improve more fleets.

The placement of the bonus point is set when the fleet starts using the home port. (Note: this makes it possible to redistribute the bonus point by putting the fleet to inactive, and taking two turns to redeclare the home port.)

Economic Bonus: Your fleets gain a +● bonus on a single defensive ring.

Jedi Bonus: The Jedi gains the Telepathy force power at level 1.

We feel this better models the Hemet Veolian's propensity for being able to work as group.

Note that I have not fluffed out exactly how this telepathic power works, which is in accordance with the other racials -- every player can fill that in for him/herself.

I invite everyone to PEACH! (that is: Please Evaluate And Criticize Honestly)

[Chriz]

A force power is a pretty powerful bonus... They are supposed to be unique and are not as easily received as skill points or even combat maneuvers.
I understand that it is still not comparable to Force sensitive, but that is the one characteristic that is pure Jedi.

Does this mean you stay with 4 racial characteristics?

[Brend]

A force power is a pretty powerful bonus... They are supposed to be unique and are not as easily received as skill points or even combat maneuvers.

Go ask yourself how many actual missions there were, and whether that number can be used as a significant sample. Than go ask yourself how many times we have actually used a force power in a mission.

When you did that, compare it to the weak economic bonus. A single dot on a defensive ring does not even give you more income, and is basically just half of a fleet upgrade.

(@Mercury: told you so that this would be the first reaction!)

Does this mean you stay with 4 racial characteristics?

That's the basic idea. Four racial characteristics expresses the über-species approach very well. (I'm not sure what to do with the extra augmented species though -- maybe I'll petition for switching it to a increase of the number of Hemets, or it might just go back to being a boring moon-size-increase)

[Fedor]

I certainly do not think this is overpowered, as someone could for that charateristic take tiny instead and add a defense zone to a single planet for every billion inhabitants, and this can only be applied once per fleet.

Force sensitive to me seems like a better racial characteristic than this because you can put your jedi on your fleet and that would grant +1 on everything.

I have no objections, though reading this thread makes me want to have augmented species myself.

[Brend]

...though reading this thread makes me want to have augmented species myself.

Why? (You are aware that this gives only 10% of your population an extra racial characteristic? I would also be interested in how you explain it in your current fluff ^_^)

[Elmer]

I have the feeling this characteristic does not quite fit within the current FWURG system.

First: the baseline for characteristics is that they provide a general bonus. 1 point in telepathic is not very general. (Yes not all characteristics give a general bonus, but the baseline is to keep it general.)

Second: I have the idea that abilities are trained and are special, and thus not given by birth ore something like that. This means that in my opinion the jedi did have to put effort in the ability, and not get it because he or she is noble or something like that, I hope you get the point.

Third: I think the previous characteristics do fit really well in your race. You only have to explain it a little bit different: Your hemet are very good in telling how to move stuff, and how to build. Your hemet make sure the common people are all lined up during a drill etc. Like you once said yourself, compare them to exalted people from the RPG Exalted. Being militaristic does not mean the hemet build stuff, in your case being militaristic means that your hemet like to get fleets build, and they tell the common people how to do so.

Coordinated means for your hemet they have the natural ability to rule and to lead. They are there to make sure everything is running smoothly.

They way you described your hemets to me, telepathic does not fit in this. So my final thought about that is: keep telepathic like something the hemet can train. Just like the way the night sisters train abilities, and let your hemets be awesome rulers, not mumbo jumbo telepaths

[Chriz]

I agree with Elmer that it is too specific. Furthermore the racial characteristics are supposed to give a bonus to the economy and one to the Jedi. This special gives a strong Jedi bonus and a weak economic bonus. For me this is the direction as what I did with the sarcastic example 'Materialistic achiever'. You focus on one thing and ignore the other and claim that it can be so strong because the other is so weak... The problem is that the economy and the Jedi rules are not comparable.

I vote for a system where all Economic bonuses have to be about equal and all Jedi bonuses should be about equal. You should not give a strong bonus to one and a weak one to the other on purpose. An other option that could work in my opinion is giving each race separate economic and jedi characteristics. In this case you could get for example 2 economic characteristics and two jedi characteristics. You could see Force sensitive as a exception to the rule, but this racial does the same thing.

[Mercury]

I disagree about Militaristic and Coordinated fitting the Hemet Veolians.

As a group, Veolian's main cultural characteristics are fertility and genetics purity (with the Hemet Veolians being a convenient way to combine their seemingly at-odds r and K strategies towards breeding.

I like this concept a lot and it shows an original angle, which is also the point of the Augmented Species special.

Furthermore, the Veolian concept fits very well with the Veolian race's High Fecundity and Organics Oriented nature. I can see Gas Oriented fitting in their as well through weapon production. This all fits very well with the Veolians.

Looking at Hemet Veolians, as far as I can tell, Hemets have more advanced intellect and are capable of seperating their thought patterns in their mind. Shebi Ajava has roleplayed this in fact.

Additionally, Hemets are much stronger than regular veolians. Finally, they have an extended life span. This is all from the Hemet Veolian page.

The fact that Hemet Veolians would inherit the High Fecundity trait from their Veolian progenitors makes perfect sense to me, and the Force Sensitivity fits with the setting for advanced individuals.

Combat Ability lists the race being naturally suited for combat through such things as claws, venom or shoulder mounted missile pods. I can see superhuman strength being helpful in combat, and there's certainly a presidence in Wookies (who despite having claws never use them, but do rely on their strength). A case might even be made the Veolians use their horns in combat.

But I don't see Coordinated as fitting in there. Coordinated means the race has a natural propensity for cooperation (as per the text of the racial characteristic). The Veolians, and especially the Hemets, are split up into six different factions which fight with one another for favour, through methods both socially acceptable and not so socially acceptable.

I fail to see how the Hemet Veolians have a natural propensity for cooperation when their society is so splintered up into own-interest groups. In fact, the entire Veolian state seems to very carefully considder its own interests.

And are Veolians truly better at building warmachines (whether or not that is by leadership from Hemets? I don't see this. In fact, their culture appears to be one of subterfuge and political manipulation. In other words of surgical strikes by special forces. Not large armies and big warmachines, which is what Militaristic is about.

Regarding the second point, racial characteristics by definition are something that's born from your genetics and culture, not something you were trained for. Wookie claws, Mudry wings, etc. are not trained for. They are just there. With Hemet Veolians being telepathic, having the telepathic point makes sense - its not very general, but frankly I have a hard time justifying giving out Force Jump as a result of the species being telepathic.

[Mercury]

I agree with Elmer that it is too specific. Furthermore the racial characteristics are supposed to give a bonus to the economy and one to the Jedi. This special gives a strong Jedi bonus and a weak economic bonus. For me this is the direction as what I did with the sarcastic example 'Materialistic achiever'. You focus on one thing and ignore the other and claim that it can be so strong because the other is so weak... The problem is that the economy and the Jedi rules are not comparable.

Force Sensitive.

I vote for a system where all Economic bonuses have to be about equal and all Jedi bonuses should be about equal. You should not give a strong bonus to one and a weak one to the other on purpose. An other option that could work in my opinion is giving each race separate economic and jedi characteristics. In this case you could get for example 2 economic characteristics and two jedi characteristics. You could see Force sensitive as a exception to the rule, but this racial does the same thing.

I don't see how you can maintain that there is no balance issue in a Jedi starting with 5 (or 8) racial characteristics instead of 3 because you can earn those bonuses through going on missions, but you do have a problem with some racial characteristics being stronger than others for purposes of balance. Could you explain this to me?

[Chriz]

With the special points that are required for the augmented species mentioned here you can chose to buy pure economical things as well. While the Racial characteristics have either a balance between a economic bonus and a jedi bonus or a pure jedi bonus. There are no pure economic racial characteristics available.

[Brend]

There are no pure economic racial characteristics available.

There are. They are called "(Raw material) Oriented". Only, because it seemed logical, we gave them a free skillpoint as well. No-one objected, though we have had some very extensive discussion on the merits and problems of racial characteristics...

I'm sorry, but I also fail to see how you can have a problem with this, but not with having multiple augmented species.

[Elmer]

I agree with Chriz in the sense that it is hard to balance jedi and economy. At this moment there are some racial characteristics which are greatly benefits the jedi, at costs of the economy, but when we do this the other way around, this causes issues of being to good. (Brend once told me that tiny is actually quite overpowered, as the economy trait is very good, and the jedi trait not that bad.)

The fact that a lot of people immediately shot down chriz his characteristics proposal is an indication for me that it apparently is wrong to boost your economy at costs of your jedi. (I admit, he had it coming, but still.)

For Brends characteristic: I keep my opinion that the original idea still fits the hemet, as they are coordinated within their houses. Which are still around 2 billion each if I am correct. This is as much as a starting population from a faction. And militaristic can in their cases result in a few specialised ops, instead of thousands of droids. Just like rare elements can be two particles, or a Lubbrehulk filled with copper.

As an example how Brends proposal can be more general:

Hightend mind functions

These people have more advanced and active minds. Giving them certain benefits.

economy: + something on I don't know, dots on an army ore something.
Jedi: +1 ability.

For the hemets will this result in their separate mind ability, no sleep acquirements and telepathic for their jedi.

[Chriz]

I have spoken with Brend about this topic and we agreed that the balancing between the economy and jedi is not really possible. The current system makes it possible to put some focus on either one of them and either one of them is still an interesting choice. As for the current racial characteristic: Telepathic is ok and not that strong, approved.

[Stuiter]

I think it is good to think about these thing before we go more public (I hope we do to get some more players).
I find it hard to make a decision.
On one side you want you like the characteristic of your race to both economy and race, but on the other you don't.
You want to have some fluff but it has to work too.

I do not know what more generalizing the jedi bonus (like +1 skill point or +1 attribute) would do.
You want to keep the race bonus bit connected, but maybe a good background story will suffice to get it acknowledged.
Not being too specific in general and leave it up for the player to fill in the fluff might be the better option.
As Brend has clearly some problem on determining his racial characteristic.

[Elmer]

As a side note: What Chriz and I see is the same phenomena as in League of Legends (for those who know it.) FWURG started with some basics, but now everything new has to bet better, faster stronger and more awesome than the existing. This does not have to be bad, but in time we are going to need some rebalancing stuff to let the old rules keep up with the new ones.

For now, I can live with the baseline of the characteristic, but prefer it to be more general. For later it might be a good idea to review the characteristics and revamp them to give separate characteristics for economy and jedi, like Chriz said.

[Mercury]

So in conclusion: we want to talk more about the racial characteristics affecting both Jedi and Economy, but for now Telepathic is approved, is basically the story!

[Chriz]

As a side note: What Chriz and I see is the same phenomena as in League of Legends (for those who know it.) FWURG started with some basics, but now everything new has to bet better, faster stronger and more awesome than the existing. This does not have to be bad, but in time we are going to need some rebalancing stuff to let the old rules keep up with the new ones.

This is not my opinion, Elmer unjustly attributed this to me. I do not see it as becoming stronger and stronger, I just had the idea that there was a polarisation between the Jedi and the Economy. As I said in my previous post, it should be an interesting choice.

[Elmer]

My apologies then, I misinterpret then the bottomline of your opinion of our talk. But I didn't post stronger and stronger, I posted, faster better stronger and more awesome.

[Dragonmaster352]

ok quick question.
my race (Astrians) normaly communicates thru a wireless link using their brain implant.

Does this qualify as telepathy or not?

it's not something they naturaly poses, but rather a consequence of them being cyborgs.
just want some clarity on that.

[Brend]

my race (Astrians) normaly communicates thru a wireless link using their brain implant.

Does this qualify as telepathy or not?

it's not something they naturaly poses, but rather a consequence of them being cyborgs.
just want some clarity on that.

I think it does -- but that's up to you. You can easily declare that they use their form of communication as if it were speech. Speech does not give a race a specific edge in some situations.

In your case, I would say that having a wireless network uplink implanted in your brain does not make you naturally adept at telepathy; it does offers some nice benefits, but those can be obtained by using a handheld tablet as well.

The racial characteristics are intended as something that really identifies your species; so if you feel that their network uplink is one of the three defining properties of the Astrians, you might consider taking the Telepathic racial. However, if you feel that it is basically a normal function of their existence, just like breathing, eating or talking, you leave it at that (which is: a description of their cool and unique way of communication on the wiki, but not as defining as their cyborgism)

[Brend]

As a side note: What Chriz and I see is the same phenomena as in League of Legends (for those who know it.) FWURG started with some basics, but now everything new has to bet better, faster stronger and more awesome than the existing. This does not have to be bad, but in time we are going to need some rebalancing stuff to let the old rules keep up with the new ones.

For now, I can live with the baseline of the characteristic, but prefer it to be more general. For later it might be a good idea to review the characteristics and revamp them to give separate characteristics for economy and jedi, like Chriz said.

I propose we go into this at the write-a-thon.

But, for the time being: think of all the possible dimensions the current rules allow to improve a Jedi, and imagine the relative power of a Force Power (at level 1) with respect to an attribute or skill point... Force powers are really very circumstantial in their use, which makes them relatively weak, even though they are very powerful when the circumstances match their intended use.

There are some arguments to be made for not separating the economic and jedi characteristics, and I will go into those at the write-a-thon.

[Elmer]

ok quick question.
my race (Astrians) normaly communicates thru a wireless link using their brain implant.

Does this qualify as telepathy or not?

it's not something they naturaly poses, but rather a consequence of them being cyborgs.
just want some clarity on that.

I would say that telepathic is not a racial characteristic for cyborgs. Simply because cyborgs use a piece of equipment to communicate. During the designing of the cyborg characteristic for my race, one of the big issues was the fact cyborgs are really adaptive. We decided that the current cyborg rules did fit. There is some sort of unwritten rule that a cyborg can be equipped and changed, because of being a cyborg. But this is more like a circumstantial bonus. You cannot send a message to somebody who does not have a receiver, while telepathic is about sending a message without equipment.

So bottom line: Following personal experience does giving all your cyborgs a comm link not provide the telepathic characteristic.

[Elmer]

With telepathic more or less being approved, can someone please tell my why we did telepathic, and not my proposed more general 'increased brain activity'? Which everybody seems to ignore?

To freshen up the minds (A little rewritten):

Increased brain activity

The population has more active brains, making learning and area awareness easier compared to most other species.

Economic Bonus: Your fleets gain a +● bonus on a single defensive ring.

Jedi Bonus: The Jedi gains one extra force power.

[Brend]

With telepathic more or less being approved, can someone please tell my why we did telepathic, and not my proposed more general 'increased brain activity'? Which everybody seems to ignore?

To freshen up the minds (A little rewritten):

Increased brain activity

The population has more active brains, making learning and area awareness easier compared to most other species.

Economic Bonus: Your fleets gain a +● bonus on a single defensive ring.

Jedi Bonus: The Jedi gains one extra force power.

Because: a) it does not follow naturally that having increased brain activity (as described in your fluff) should give a +1 on a defensive ring, as opposed to for example an increase in , and b) the proposed Jedi bonus is very generic, and does not feel connected to the fluff either.

Sot it basically boils down to: it seems like you just smacked some bonuses together and tried to explain it through 'increased brain activity'. You can just as well explain anything else through the 'more smarts' approach, which seems a bit unflavourful with respect to Telepathic.

Next to this, your previous proposal did not say 'one extra force power', but instead said '+1 ability', which most everyone took as a +1 in any attribute.

((Side note: I have added Telepathic to the wiki.))

[Mercury]

The reason I did not go into the Hightend Mind Functions proposal was that it appeared to be incomplete. The original proposal listed "something on I don't know, dots on an army or something." on the economy and "+1 ability" on the Jedi powers, which appears to be a rough draft rather than a real proposal, so I was waiting for it to be fleshed out more before commenting.

That said, I probably could have given some comments on it a tad earlier and I apologise for not doing so.

Now, I have taken a serious look at your new version, which appears to me to be a lot more complete than the previous one.

First off, the name "increased brain activity" is somewhat human centric - presuming the species has a brain, which may not be true - but a simple renaming to "intellectual", "smart" or "sagacious" or something would put it more in line with other racial characteristics.

However, while I don't entirely agree with the way Brend put it, he does raise a valid point that I noticed as well: the economic and Jedi bonus do not seem to follow from the fluff and do not form a complete package together.

In the case of Telepathic, it is clear that the Telepathic force power is linked to the Telepathic racial characteristic for obvious reasons, and while I agree that the fleet bonus is hardly a perfect fit for the characteristic economically, I can see how it would help fleet operations if you can communicate with guaranteed privacy while easily transferring complete idea's in three dimensions to one another. I have yet to hear a better economic power proposal though I am open to one.

However, I am missing a similar link in your proposal, and the theme and the two powers don't really fit together. The move from increased brain activity or smarts to an additional force power is a bit of a stretch, and I think an extra mental attribute would be more fitting with the proposed theme. The economic bonus is also a stretch (though no more so than the telepathic one, to be perfectly fair), and I think it can be done better for this particular theme

If you are looking to make your race more intelligent, I am sure we can construct a racial characteristic along those lines though?