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Why are they called Nubians? Wed, 17 August 2016 07:20 Go to next message
magic9mushroom is currently offline magic9mushroom

 
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For basically every other hull, I can understand the rationale behind its name. There are a bunch of RL warship classes, and the rest are mostly straight descriptions of what the hull does. Nubian, I'm stumped. Does anyone know?

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Re: Why are they called Nubians? Fri, 19 August 2016 20:32 Go to previous messageGo to next message
ManicLurch is currently offline ManicLurch

 
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Not sure if this is the answer, but it seems to fit:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Nubia_Star_Drives,_Incorporated

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Re: Why are they called Nubians? Sat, 20 August 2016 04:01 Go to previous messageGo to next message
magic9mushroom is currently offline magic9mushroom

 
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Can't be. Stars predates the Star Wars prequels. Laughing

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Re: Why are they called Nubians? Sat, 20 August 2016 14:24 Go to previous messageGo to next message
ManicLurch is currently offline ManicLurch

 
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Yes, Stars does predate the movie prequels. I thought maybe there were some written star wars stories out there that might have been published before Stars. Or maybe star wars stole the name from Stars.

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Re: Why are they called Nubians? Mon, 22 August 2016 00:18 Go to previous messageGo to next message
neilhoward

 
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ManicLurch wrote on Sat, 20 August 2016 11:24
Yes, Stars does predate the movie prequels. I thought maybe there were some written star wars stories out there that might have been published before Stars. Or maybe star wars stole the name from Stars.

Both seem plausible. I am sure there is quite a bit of influence from the books and other SF. I would not be surprised to encounter a Nubian class ship in a David Weber book either.

I wonder if there is any allusion/reference/explanation in the unofficial history. I don't know where it is (didn't seem to survive Art's last migration).

Here is my guess: Not a geographical reference to a region of Africa, but an anglicized Latin term.
From Nube. Cloud, Volley, Swarm, Formation, Gloom, Threatening Approach;
Means of Concealment, Veil, Cloak, Phantom;
Name of a Greek Nymph responsible for setting in motion events which would lead to mythical reification of kingly authority across the Mediterranean;
The translation of Aristophanes (among other things) hilariously taking the wind out of Socrates;
and oh yeah, also RULER OF THE SKY.

drops keyboard and walks away [/neilhoward]

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Re: Why are they called Nubians? Mon, 22 August 2016 15:13 Go to previous messageGo to next message
iztok is currently offline iztok

 
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Hi!
magic9mushroom wrote on Wed, 17 August 2016 13:20
For basically every other hull, I can understand the rationale behind its name. There are a bunch of RL warship classes, and the rest are mostly straight descriptions of what the hull does. Nubian, I'm stumped. Does anyone know?

Some dormant part of my memory stirred and generated a piece of info I can't confirm: "In Roman empire black people from Nubia were famous as ferocious fighters."
...
Heh, seems wiki agrees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nubians I'm actually relieved my memory isn't completely rusty. Wink

BR, Iztok

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Re: Why are they called Nubians? Wed, 07 September 2016 21:55 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ron is currently offline Ron

 
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magic9mushroom wrote on Wed, 17 August 2016 07:20
For basically every other hull, I can understand the rationale behind its name. There are a bunch of RL warship classes, and the rest are mostly straight descriptions of what the hull does. Nubian, I'm stumped. Does anyone know?

I asked Jeff McBride, and he said "They are called Nubians because Newbies would think they were all good with no downside. Really. Truly."



Ron Miller
Stars! AutoHost

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Re: Why are they called Nubians? Wed, 07 September 2016 23:18 Go to previous messageGo to next message
JeffMC is currently offline JeffMC

 
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Yup. What he said. Laughing

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Re: Why are they called Nubians? Thu, 08 September 2016 22:58 Go to previous messageGo to next message
magic9mushroom is currently offline magic9mushroom

 
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I feel honoured to receive an official response; I didn't for a moment expect one. Thanks.

...So when I made a joke with some of my friends 8 years ago about "nubian" (in relation to Stars!) and its similarity in pronunciation to "noob", I was accidentally describing its actual etymology? That's quite the irony.


[Updated on: Thu, 08 September 2016 22:58]

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Re: Why are they called Nubians? Sun, 20 November 2016 07:34 Go to previous messageGo to next message
jscoble is currently offline jscoble

 
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Funny thing, in late-game they actually are the dominant warship class.

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Re: Why are they called Nubians? Mon, 21 November 2016 07:45 Go to previous messageGo to next message
nmid

 
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I read this thread in Sept + saw Jeff's reply. Didn't realise it was THE jeff.
I felt like a fan boy when I just reread and saw that Ron had added the forum avatars confirming it.

WOOOOOT Very Happy

How I wish that the jeffs get together and make a new stars game.
Don't care about the graphics (as a LOT of steam indie hits show, even pixel/non 3-d games are big hits - Star dew valley, Terraria, Starbound etc).. just want an updated stars game with bigger limits and more tweaks/addons Very Happy



I know my minefields.. but I'm a chaff sweeper.
I used to curse when I got stuck in traffic... till I realised I AM traffic.

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Re: Why are they called Nubians? Sun, 05 August 2018 07:57 Go to previous messageGo to next message
jscoble is currently offline jscoble

 
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Ron wrote on Thu, 08 September 2016 03:55
magic9mushroom wrote on Wed, 17 August 2016 07:20
For basically every other hull, I can understand the rationale behind its name. There are a bunch of RL warship classes, and the rest are mostly straight descriptions of what the hull does. Nubian, I'm stumped. Does anyone know?

I asked Jeff McBride, and he said "They are called Nubians because Newbies would think they were all good with no downside. Really. Truly."


Well aren't they?
There's a reason or two that the Nubian hull pretty much dominates the late game era.
What are the downsides supposed to be?

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Re: Why are they called Nubians? Fri, 21 September 2018 14:10 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Altruist is currently offline Altruist

 
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jscoble wrote on Sun, 05 August 2018 13:57
There's a reason or two that the Nubian hull pretty much dominates the late game era.
What are the downsides supposed to be?


Well, you need to spend an unholy amount of research points to get them... usually so many that you could had easily won by just building a fleet and attacking instead of researching. For WMs dreadnaughts are of interest at con 16, for ARs death stars at con 17, for other PRTs there is no reason to research construction beyond level 13... nubians come at con 26.

Might be worth in big long games with mineral shortages but in small and supposed to be short games: boring and lack of fighting spirit.

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Re: Why are they called Nubians? Thu, 23 May 2019 05:54 Go to previous messageGo to next message
magic9mushroom is currently offline magic9mushroom

 
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jscoble wrote on Sun, 05 August 2018 21:57
Well aren't they?
There's a reason or two that the Nubian hull pretty much dominates the late game era.
What are the downsides supposed to be?


There are a few downsides:

- high cost (the only hull that costs more is the Dreadnought; the B-52 Bomber costs 7 more resources but 25/4/6 less minerals). For warships this is obviously outweighed by the Nubian's substantial advantages, but for the various utility roles it has pretty stiff competition from the Frigate and Galleon.

- low hull initiative of 2. Nubians need a substantial number of computers to pull ahead of BBs and DNs in init. Of course, they have the slots to do that, but this exacerbates the next problem...

- Germanium. Nubians' reliance on electronics and Beam Deflectors means that every viable Nubian warship design will cost large quantities of the yellow stuff. This is a bit of a problem for factoried races, since they likely used up a good chunk of their whole-game supply of the stuff building factories. If you managed to get your grubby little paws on the Enigma Pulsar, and you don't have Regenerating Shields, this one can actually be enough to make Superlatanium Omega Battleships interesting in the Nubian era (not dominant, but interesting).

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Re: Why are they called Nubians? Wed, 29 May 2019 07:35 Go to previous messageGo to next message
iztok is currently offline iztok

 
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magic9mushroom wrote on Thu, 23 May 2019 11:54

There are a few downsides:
...
- Germanium. Nubians' reliance on electronics and Beam Deflectors means that every viable Nubian warship design will cost large quantities of the yellow stuff. This is a bit of a problem for factoried races, since they likely used up a good chunk of their whole-game supply of the stuff building factories.

Yep. Been there several times. An usual trick is to push elec over 20 to decrease the germ cost. OFC if one can afford that, he's already won the game. Laughing

BR, Iztok

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Re: Why are they called Nubians? Fri, 31 May 2019 04:14 Go to previous messageGo to next message
magic9mushroom is currently offline magic9mushroom

 
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iztok wrote on Wed, 29 May 2019 21:35
Hi!
magic9mushroom wrote on Thu, 23 May 2019 11:54

There are a few downsides:
...
- Germanium. Nubians' reliance on electronics and Beam Deflectors means that every viable Nubian warship design will cost large quantities of the yellow stuff. This is a bit of a problem for factoried races, since they likely used up a good chunk of their whole-game supply of the stuff building factories.

Yep. Been there several times. An usual trick is to push elec over 20 to decrease the germ cost. OFC if one can afford that, he's already won the game. Laughing

BR, Iztok


The other big Germ hog is high-tech shields. If you use two slots of Complete Phase Shields, that's 90 kT of Germ right there. A second shield slot on beamers can actually be a bit dubious for this reason vis-à-vis the first slot of jammers or another slot of deflectors (always better than the second slot of jammers, though, and torp/missile nubs cost way more and thus want the better protection).

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Re: Why are they called Nubians? Mon, 16 December 2019 01:43 Go to previous messageGo to next message
jscoble is currently offline jscoble

 
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The fact remains that if a game reaches the Nubian Era, players who don't build and use them will lose to players who do.

If the Jeffs did not intend for the Newbie-an to be serious warship null, they shouldn't have given it 5000dp armor. That's 2.5 times a Battleship hull, and a bit more even than a Dreadnaught.

And Nubians make it easy to have gate-able capital ships. Which means a substantial fleet can be built and collected fairly quickly.

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Re: Why are they called Nubians? Mon, 16 December 2019 07:34 Go to previous messageGo to next message
mrvan is currently offline mrvan

 
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Yeah, nubs are pretty much a game changer, maybe even more than BBs are. Also, BBs come in pretty quickly after CCs, while the gap from BBs to nubs is considerable. This gives a nice strategic choice: pour resources into building lots of BBs and go conquer, or tech towards nubs for a considerable advantage.

Besides the good armor it has many more slots that can fit mechanical and electrical. Since deflectors and capacitors are pretty cheap it is much more cost effective to build fewer weapons/armor with better modifiers than ships with more expensive weapons.

Case in point was an encounter in the PV2018 game where I had nubs with 2 slots AMP, 3 cap, 4 deflectors [2 slots because of IS expensive weapons], and an enemy had almost all slots filled with AMPs. Even though his nub was much more expensive, the damage per turn was almost comparable since my 2 slots were multiplied by 1.1^6=1.77 and his damage was multiplied by 0.9^12=0.28, so each of my weapons did equal damage to >6 of his.

On a BB, you can fit only a single deflector and have 2 slots for both jamming and capacitors, so that is very limited.

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Re: Why are they called Nubians? Thu, 20 February 2020 00:48 Go to previous message
magic9mushroom is currently offline magic9mushroom

 
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mrvan wrote on Mon, 16 December 2019 23:34
Case in point was an encounter in the PV2018 game where I had nubs with 2 slots AMP, 3 cap, 4 deflectors [2 slots because of IS expensive weapons], and an enemy had almost all slots filled with AMPs. Even though his nub was much more expensive, the damage per turn was almost comparable since my 2 slots were multiplied by 1.1^6=1.77 and his damage was multiplied by 0.9^12=0.28, so each of my weapons did equal damage to >6 of his.

On a BB, you can fit only a single deflector and have 2 slots for both jamming and capacitors, so that is very limited.

I think you mean you had 1.1^9=2.36x power on your AMPs.

I'd probably go for three slots of AMPs even as IS. 50% more damage is nothing to scoff at, and it's only 15% more resource cost. Reduces Germ expenditure, as well. (If you're short of Boranium, of course, it's a different story.)

The problem with using BBs in the nubian era is that any and all beamer BBs will get eaten alive by AMP nubs (due to, as you say, the capacitor/deflector issue, plus BBs always outmassing nubs) and any missile ship without speed 2.5 will also get eaten alive by AMP nubs. However, if you can get speed 2.5 Omega Battleships (with Mystery Trader parts), then they're of some use (as one option, and alongside nubs, obviously; I don't for a second suggest BB-only fleets).

I'll also note for the record that fully gateable BB beamers can be built, although they're still obsolete when nubs appear.

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