Rule the Waves 3 - Ship Design Contest!

[blarglol]

Oct 23, 2023 12:12:14 GMT -6 benkenobi said:

Okay, the stream was good. And kudos to the winners, although the battle carrier was crazy

However, the competition was mismanaged to the point of unfairness. You cannot on the one hand set a limit of 300 words and then happily anounce winners of whom 1/3 openly violate said rule, with the judges happily referring to something that would not have had existed were the rules observed. Asking the guys who violated the rule to resubmit with a compliant description would take 10 minutes tops. Instructing the judges to ignore it would take 2.

Very much agree - that was poorly handled. However a submission for $15 off at the store is a pretty good deal for no effort. It balances out.

[ewaldvonkleist]

Agreed, though frankly I don't think the long descriptions influenced the decision much (my description was <300 characters anyway). I think the vouchers are really generous by Matrix, both for participation and for winning, so big thanks to them! A cool event erutins and williammiller and I hope not the last one of its kind. Battleships obviously allow for the greatest design creativity, CAs or a repeat with 1936 BB technology would allow for an interesting round two in a while. 

[williammiller]

benkenobi I understand your frustration; we will work on improving for any additional contests.

ewaldvonkleist We would like to do more contests, so hopefully we will be able to set more up for different periods/ship types/etc. I'd like to see the best interwar CV designs myself...

[Burningapple3]

I applied for Category 2 but was classified as Category 1.
I could not figure out why because of my poor English listening skills.
Also, since it was hard to see on the Twitch screen, do you plan to publish the blueprints presented on the Twitch screen somewhere on the forum?

[erutins]

Oct 23, 2023 12:12:14 GMT -6 benkenobi said:

Okay, the stream was good. And kudos to the winners, although the battle carrier was crazy

However, the competition was mismanaged to the point of unfairness. You cannot on the one hand set a limit of 300 characters and then happily anounce winners of whom 1/3 openly violate said rule, with the judges happily referring to something that would not have had existed were the rules observed. Asking the guys who violated the rule to resubmit with a compliant description would take 10 minutes tops. Instructing the judges to ignore it would take 2.

Thanks for your feedback on this.  I spoke with Liam about this today and we're going to make a change for the next contest to just ask for a "brief description" rather than an explicit character limit to avoid this happening again.

In short, more than half the entries ignored the character limit rule, which was originally intended to just make this contest less of a burden for the judges.  The decision was made to just accept all entries in order to avoid throwing out many otherwise great submissions.  I understand how some may feel they were penalized for following the character limit and in hindsight, we should have just ignored everything after the first 300 characters.  Lesson learned.

Next time around, we'll just ask everyone to keep it brief and that should hopefully avoid similar frustrations.

[brygun]

Will the NWS team make a forum thread here for posting up all the other submissions?

Id prefer if a staff member started it.

It would give non-winners some visibility and the community chances to discuss among us non-judgers. Not to detract from the judges but for open discussion. Like at a school science fair where you can wander around and see all the different projects.

[benkenobi]

Oct 24, 2023 9:02:04 GMT -6 erutins said:

Thanks for your feedback on this.  I spoke with Liam about this today and we're going to make a change for the next contest to just ask for a "brief description" rather than an explicit character limit to avoid this happening again.

In short, more than half the entries ignored the character limit rule, which was originally intended to just make this contest less of a burden for the judges.  The decision was made to just accept all entries in order to avoid throwing out many otherwise great submissions.  I understand how some may feel they were penalized for following the character limit and in hindsight, we should have just ignored everything after the first 300 characters.  Lesson learned.

Next time around, we'll just ask everyone to keep it brief and that should hopefully avoid similar frustrations.

Thanks for the comment on this! As a person organising essay competitions and moot courts, I can however say that it is not a good idea, as people will stretch the scope of "brief" and the same issue as in the present round will happen again. Having a hard limit on characters or words is perfectly acceptable and fair to everyone (although 300 chars was quite hardcore). Whether the result of violation of the rule is inadmissibility of the whole submission, point penalisation, inadmissibility of the description or just asking to resubmit is up to you, but the main rule should be as clear as possible.

[TheOtherPoster]

After the agonizing under-300-characters text I submitted, I thought to write a longer description. 

1913, Spain. The idea was an alternate history in which the Armada top brass, influenced by Fisher and others, had concluded that the battlecruiser was the best option to fight a war against a bigger navy with more (but slower) ships. How they got to that conclusion and why is what the longer description is all about. With oversight we may think some things should be different (maybe more armour or stronger secondary guns) but I think the design follows better the pre-WWI hype in some naval quarters about battlecruisers and their capabilities. 

It says a lot about RTW3 that this design for a cheap but powerful BC makes also perfect sense in the game for a nation with few resources but that still needs to build a few dangerous capital ships. 

Great fun to write (probably not so much to read ).

RVE.docx (202.78 KB)

[williammiller]

I'll check to see if we can obtain/share all of the the submissions here, thanks.

[williammiller]

Second Ship Design Contest winners announced:

store.steampowered.com/news/app/2008100/view/4182225493108975331?l=english