I mean, I’m not even done adding all megastructure I have found to the list, but if you manage to come up with a weird new never before thought of megastructure I’d be happy to reason with you on the requirements.
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That’s all well and good, and I know that you’ve done a lot of research into this topic, so I trust you to be able to accurately make those calls, but I’m a little hesitant to have one person (no matter who that person is) as the be-all end-all for whether something requires exotic materials or not. I think it should be encouraged for people to try to explore new types of megastructures and implement them in creative ways. However, as I said before, you’re probably one of if not the most qualified among us to make that call, so my best compromise with myself would be that as a rp community we agree on a checklist based on your inputs so rpers can look it over and decide for themselves whether it would require exotic materials or not. If there’s still confusion after that, then they should by all means go to you for clarification.
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Oh yeah, of course. As soon as the infrastructure list and all the articles in it are completed, we can all go through it together so we can clear out doubts and discuss disagreements over certain megastructures.
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Like, I can change the paragraph about Magmatter megastructures to Exotic Matter megastructures, and then we can all decide together which ones go in the Exotic pile and which ones don’t.
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That sounds perfect, thank you 
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I am bumping this topic to ensure it doesn’t go quiet.
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I’m actually shocked that it’s only been three days since I last posted, it felt like that was years ago.
So, what do we have to do right now?
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These are very good arguments for and against keeping a cap on megastructures.
I agree that the number of megastructures is one the stats that can be inflated and induce power creep. But there are several other stats that are power metrics, like fleet sizes. I tend to employ a rather passive strategy to dealing with power stats both in roleplays and as a mod. The stats are acceptable if they can be backed up by other stats and if they aren’t totally different from a canon average. And more importantly, backed up by good RP. A good RP does not include powergaming or steam rolling fellow RPers. One should also be open to whatever fellow RPers can come up with that might balance things out. Like IRL, there are mega-sized dams for electricity, but much smaller nuclear reactors can provide the same energy output.
I’m for abolishing the cap if we can agree upon a base number of some kind that would be considered a reasonable amount of megastructures that players then can multiply by anything between 0.1 and 10 or something for their specific nation.
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Suggesting a base number—most regular nations probably wouldn’t need more than five megastructures (give or take one or two). Some will probably need more than five, but most people who come through here probably aren’t going to need insane levels of energy or tons of megahabitats.
Although, my personal position on this is that we don’t really need any kind of limit or suggestion at all for megastructures. As with everything, if you can create a good IC reason for why your nation has or needs a certain amount of megastructures, then in my opinion, you should get that amount of megastructures.
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Right now I’m in favor of getting rid of the limit for non-“exotic matter” megastructures, and I think we should slightly raise the limit for “exotic matter” megastructures to 20. I also think that the megastructure limit should be more per-nation, rather than territory. So, even if you capture a lot of space in a war, you still only have 20 megastructures
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I agree with this
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Agree on the basis of balance
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A problem with it would be though people splitting plots to gain more megastructures, but there’s a simple solution to that, you just implement two more rules:
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1 nation can have up to 20 Megastructures
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1 roleplayer can have up to 20 megastructures
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Rule two doesn’t override rule one
And everything is covered
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Yeah, you have a point, I forgot about that. I think this is a good fix, kinda reminds me about the three laws of robotics a bit XD
I think this probably gets my idea across a bit better than I did.
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I am of the opinion that we should keep the limit per plot instead of per nation.
For example, if two nations already had their maximum amount of megastructures filled out, and then they merged, they would technically have to cut their number of megastructures in half. Of course, exceptions can be made, but by that same reasoning exceptions can be made for everything.
Also, I think having more megastructure slots is a fair thing to acquire if you go to the trouble of conquering territory through armed warfare. After all, I highly doubt anyone will just allow half of their nations to be taken over at all, and even less without a proper war and/or eventual pushback.
I don’t really see a problem with this to be honest, if two nations merge and then they also get and added bonus of 2x megastructures, all that does is increase the gap between them and other nations. Merging already comes with benefits that other nations just won’t get, I don’t see why we should reward the practice even further.
If by going through the trouble of conquering territory you mean agreeing with the other people rping in the war that your nation should win, again, I don’t see why you should be rewarded for that with more megastructures.
I mean, look at COE. It’s not having the nation taken over (with the exception of the conquered Enver territory), but it’s still gaining the majority of the plot that is currently Colestia. Clearly losing half your plot isn’t some unheard of idea that no one will want to do.
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Just a note, I don’t really like the implications of the phrasing “going through the trouble” because it implies that the canon is some adversarial system where one can “win.” In the end, this is a platform for collaborative writing, not a strategy game, so I want people to keep that in mind as they discuss.
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I agree here, the cannon is a collaborative project, which is also why i dislike per plot structures. It gives a ooc initiative to conquer as it gives a flat buff. Conquest is something that should be done for purely IC reasons and highly limited. Even by mentioning conquest in rules it will make it more common which has massive implications for the rp.
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Given the possible upscaling of A1-0, megastructures would lose their status & impact compared to the current status quo. Realistically if we increase the plot sizes, megastructures would need to become necessary infrastructures and thus more susceptible to community feedback loop than any hard or soft cap ruling.
In other words, if we increase plot sizes megastructures just become structures.
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Maverick you are positively surprising me today
But also yeah, makes total sense. Given the higher resource availability and necessary stats to justify such extensions, megastructures wouldn’t be so exclusive anymore