Friday, December 18, 2020

Proposal: Reforged

Timed out and enacted, 4-0. Josh

Adminned at 21 Dec 2020 12:15:46 UTC

Repeal the rules Pilot Development, Shell Archetypes, Custom Shells, Mods, and Emergency Shutdown (including any subrules).

Throughout the ruleset, change “Demobbed” to “Outfitting”. Change the status of each Pilot who is Demobbed to Outfitting.

In the rule Pilots and Shells, change the text

At any time each Pilot may be Demobbed or Jockeying or Recovering, defaulting to Demobbed, and their status is publicly tracked. An Demobbed Pilot may change themselves to be Jockeying at any time. A Jockeying Pilot has the following tracked information: a Shell Type (whether Archetype or Subtype) and amounts of Power, Attack and Defence (which are all non-negative integer).

When a Pilot sets themselves to Jockeying, they must select a Shell Archetype or Subtype. The list of available Shell Archetypes can be found in the rule Shell Archetypes. They must then set their Power, Attack and Defence to the default value for their selected Shell Archetype.

If a Jockeying Pilot ever has a Power of zero then their Shell is destroyed. A Jockeying Pilot with a destroyed Shell must set their status to Recovering and blank their Shell Type, Power, Attack, Defence.

To read

At any time each Pilot may be Outfitting, Jockeying or Recovering, defaulting to Outfitting, and their status is publicly tracked. A Outfitting or Jockeying Pilot has the following tracked information: a Shell Type (whether Archetype or Subtype), amounts of Power, Attack and Defence (which are all non-negative integer or “-”), and an Arsenal, all of which are “-” by default.

When a Pilot is Outfitting, they may freely select a Shell. They must then set their Power, Attack and Defence to the default value for their selected Shell. They may also freely select an Arsenal, which is comprised of a list of Arms; whenever a Pilot changes their Arsenal they must modify their statistics as appropriate. The list of available Shells and Arms can be found in the rule Armoury. At any time, an Outfitting Pilot with a Shell may set themselves to Jockeying.

If a Jockeying Pilot ever has a Power of zero then their Shell is destroyed. Additionally, as a weekly action, a Jockeying Pilot may perform an Emergency Shutdown to destroy their Shell. A Jockeying Pilot with a destroyed Shell must set their Shell Type, Power, Attack, Defence and Arsenal to “-” and their status to Recovering..

Add a new subrule to the rule Pilots and Shells, called Armoury:

Each Shell has a name, a brief description (which is flavourtext), a default Power value, a default Attack and a default Defence. The following is the list of Shells that has been approved by RAID R&D:

* The Mark I
** Description: The first Shells to roll off of the Ansible’s production line. Clunky, slow, but durable.
** Default Power: 90, Attack: 15, Defence: 20

Each Arm has a name (which is flavour text), cost and an effect. The cost of an Arm must be spent in Power when it is added to a Pilot’s Arsenal, and may be refunded if an Outfitting Pilot removes the Arm from their Arsenal. An Arm may not be added to an Arsenal if it would cause a Shell’s Power to be reduced to zero or below. Multiple instances of the same Arm do not stack in effect. The following is the list of Arms that has been approved by RAID R&D:

* Auxiliary Reactor - Cost: 10. Effect: +20% Power -20% Defense
* Structural Reinforcement Plates - Cost: 10. Effect: -20% Power +20% Defense
* Side Jets - Cost: 20. Effect: +10% Attack +10% Defense
* Onboard AI - Cost: 20. Effect: Every time a Pilot with this Arm defeats a Bogey, gain 20 power.
* Efficient Circuitry - Cost: 30. Effect: Each subsequent Fire Attempt on the same Bogey after the first costs 7 Power instead of 10.
* Cluster Munitions - Cost: 40. Effect: When a Pilot with this Arm declares a fire post, they may declare a second Bogey as an additional target, using the same fire vector at no additional cost. When such a fire post is resolved the main target should be resolved first, followed immediately by the additional target.
* Shielded Cabling - Cost: 20. Effect: A Bogey’s abilities can’t reduce the power, attack or defense of Pilots with this Arm.
* Soul Threasher - Cost: 30. Effect: Whenever a civilian attack is resolved successfully, Pilots with this Arm gain 10 power.
* Heavy Core - Cost:0. Gain 10 Power. If a Jockey has this Arm in their Arsenal then they may not have more than one other Arm in their Arsenal.

Add a new subrule to the rule Pilots and Shells, called Learning and Development:

Each Pilot has the following trackable variables: Experience and Memes.

Experience can be gained in the following ways:

* A Pilot gains 1 Experience every time they start Jockeying a new Shell
* A Pilot gains experience equal to the Experience Yield of a Bogey’s sub-species whenever a Bogey is eliminated as a result of one of their Fire Actions
* A Pilot gains 1 Experience every time they cease to be Jockeying because their Shell is destroyed, unless it was destroyed as a result of an Emergency Shutdown

Whenever a Pilot’s Shell is destroyed, while they are Recovering, they may spend the cost in Experience of an Arm that they had in their most recent Arsenal to gain it as a Meme. While Outfitting, a Pilot may add any Arm that they have as a Meme to their Arsenal without paying its cost.

Change the description of the ‘Refracted Crystal Heart’ DEVA Reaction to “-”. Remove the Mechanoids of all Pilots. Uphold the statistics of all currently Jockeying Pilots.

If Proposal: Know Your Enemy was enacted, add the following to the list of Arms:

* Cellular Sampler - Cost: 5. Effect:  If any Pilot with this meme is Jockeying when a Scheduling Post is posted, any Bogey that completed a DEVA Action during the period confirmed by that post shall have its Subspecies revealed (if it wasn’t already public).
* Camera Turret - Cost: 5. Effect:  -10% Attack. When a Bogey deflects or is destroyed by the Pilot’s attack, its subspecies shall be revealed (if it wasn’t already public).

Bucky’s comments on this from before:

“Your intended list of Arms is actually another list of Shells. Drafting error?” - Fixed

“I’m not sure what an Armory is in the last couple of sentences. Assuming it means Arsenal, Pilots might be able to use memes as Power boosters by adding arms for free and removing them for a refund.” - Fixed

“As worded, I think it’s possible to carry over your Arsenal from a previous shell without paying for it in your new Shell. Or, since it’s untracked when not Jockeying, to claim all the ex-Mechanoid Arms for free while Outfitting. This supersedes all my concerns below.” I’m not sure that that’s true - the to-be text contains ‘A Outfitting or Jockeying Pilot has the following tracked information’ and the changes to the destruction sentence. I’ve tightened up the language a bit though.

“There’s little point in having an Auxiliary Reactor that costs power to equip, or to have the Plates cost extra power beyond their cost.” I don’t agree at all so have left it as is.

“The power-conserving Mechaniods seem to be overpriced here.” Agree, to an extent, although getting them in as Memes is intended to defray the cost

Comments

Coderblaze:

18-12-2020 16:18:05 UTC

for

Bucky:

18-12-2020 17:50:59 UTC

Observations upon thorough analysis:
(1) Voters should note that the Soul Thresher is cheaper now.

(2) It should be explicitly mentioned that an Arsenal of “-” represents an empty list, rather than e.g. a single entry list containing a mod named “-”, and that a Shell Type of “-” means the Pilot does not currently have a Shell.

(3) Meme gain doesn’t work because a Recovering pilot’s “most recent Arsenal” is set to “-” right before they become Recovering.

(4) An Outfitting Pilot can select a Shell, use it to pay for an Arsenal, then select another Shell (or another copy of the same shell) with its default Power while keeping the Arsenal.

(5) It turns out that the core rules, while they cover some special cases, are totally silent about the general case where a variable ceases to be gamestate and later becomes gamestate again, except that by definition their modification is clearly not regulated!

(6) The obvious solution to (3), (4) and (5) is to blank the Arsenal upon selecting a new Shell, rather than on destruction.

(7) It should be made clear that the effects of a Soul Thresher and any similar mods do not apply while a pilot is Outfitting, as is already the case for Cellular Sampler.


I think the issues still add up to an against , but only because of the exploit in (4).

Josh: Observer he/they

18-12-2020 17:52:48 UTC

On 4, I don’t see where a pilot can voluntarily change their shell except by self-destructing?

Josh: Observer he/they

18-12-2020 17:54:44 UTC

Oh, there is a weird thing where a pilot can select a shell when they already have one?

I think that’s a real problem but easily dealt with with a quick fix proposal.

Bucky:

18-12-2020 17:55:20 UTC

“When a Pilot is Outfitting, they may freely select a Shell” is not conditional on whether they already have a Shell. I think this is a desirable feature, but it interacts poorly with the Arsenal selection process.

Raven1207: he/they

18-12-2020 21:40:18 UTC

against

Bucky:

18-12-2020 22:50:40 UTC

Will CoV if I’m confident the Omnibus Fix will pass.

Raven1207: he/they

19-12-2020 03:33:14 UTC

for

Bucky:

20-12-2020 00:03:32 UTC

CoV for