I pretty much guessed what Nagot had in mind.
(However I did choose pretenders I thought were good and that I would want to play myself. And no, I'm not the one who was talking to Norfleet.
)
Sounds fun. I'm in.
BTW, I was in a fun and interesting game like this of Space Empires IV Gold. It's a bit easier there in that you can share star systems and fly through foreign positions as long as you have a peace treaty. It's also harder in Space Empires, because of the ability to give things to threatened victims to keep them alive. It got perverse at the end, though, because it was a "game over when the first one dies" game, and the first threatened victim player tried to use reverse psychology by refusing to rebuild himself "my weakness makes me strong", which sort of worked but ultimately backfired. I managed to keep them alive and make myself strong enough to stay alive, but then the race trying to kill me got frustrated at my defenses and blackmailed me to scuttle my defenses or he would end the game by backstabbing the weakest victim. I refused and attacked the blackMailer, the weak victim refused help, and my assassin then killed the weak victim, even though it meant giving the win to the weak victim's assassin.
Fortunately, in this game it won't be possible to trivially keep a weak player alive, and the point system means it's not so "all or nothing". However there is still the interesting element that it is in no one's interest to assassinate anyone except their target, and that target probably won't be a neighbor at first.
I have a question about the scoring though. Supposedly it's intentional that two killers can win... but I don't see how. I only see that a 2nd or 3rd killer can win if all previous killers are dead, but no way to tie.
PvK