New game idea: how many people would play?

[Bman]

The idea is simple:

The galaxy is a single system.
You start with Full-tech.
Racial points: 0
In the center of the system is a tiny planet.
Scattered around the edge of the system is a bunch of sphereworlds. Each empire starts with one of the sphereworlds. The objective of the game is to be the empire that has a colony on the center tiny planet on turn 20. If no one has a colony at that time, then we check again on turn 40, and so on...
Most of the system would be obscured with storms (are there storms that block all sensors?). All of the sphereworlds would be obscured so you could not see what sort of fleet is being built by each other. The tiny world would definately be visible. There would be no star in the system to prevent someone from blowing everyone up.

Your choice of empire would very likely decide the outcome of this game. But you do not get many points to work with. (You get 0, but you can drop research down to 50% for some points).

My question is would people want to play this game on PBW? If so I will set it up.

[geoschmo]

Sounds interesting.

Storms can be made to block all sensors. That would make everybodies homeworld immune to attack. Very interesting.

One possible problem. You will have to test this to be sure. I think if your only planet is obscured by a storm, you cannot make contact and thus will have no in game communication with the other races. Seems like that happened on a test map I was playing with once. Of course that may or may not be a bad thing depending on what you are going for with the game. If so it would eliminate any intel.

Geoschmo

[ 10 April 2002: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[Bman]

quote:

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Originally posted by geoschmo:
Sounds interesting.

Storms can be made to block all sensors. That would make everybodies homeworld immune to attack. Very interesting.

One possible problem. You will have to test this to be sure. I think if your only planet is obscured by a storm, you cannot make contact and thus will have no in game communication with the other races. Seems like that happened on a test map I was playing with once. Of course that may or may not be a bad thing depending on what you are going for with the game. If so it would eliminate any intel.

Geoschmo

[ 10 April 2002: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

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Hmm. The planets could still be attacked with a storm, they just couldn't be seen correct? I wanted to make it so you couldn't see what the others were doing unless they made a gambit for the prize world or unless they attacked you.
I hadn't considered the problem with no contact though. I'll have to experiment to see if that is true or not as I did not want to keep people from trash-talking each other. Regardless I am not sure intel will be a major factor. Since you only have 1 shipyard, you probably will have better things to do than tie it up replacing your facilities with intel facilities.

Speaking of which, can someone tell me how to fiddle the data files so the homeworlds start with monolith facilities instead of mineral/organic/rad extractors? And possibly with a resource converter as well...I don't know much about data-file editting so tips would be appreciated.

[Bman]

Hmm. Now that I think about it, you are probably right that you could not attack each other's homeworld. Given that, I will probably nix the storms as I want that to be a strategic decision: keep your fleet home, send it to the prize, or go whack someone else who has moved their fleet off their homeplanet.

Edit: Okay I have a solution:
Instead of planets in the main system, there are warp-points. Each warps to a new system that has a single planet sitting on the warp-point. Now if you want to see what someone has on their planet, you must warp to it. But as soon as you warp to it, you enter combat. So there is no easy way to see what sort of defenses someone has on their planet. Hmm. I might even make each of the homesystems have a warp-point directly to the other homesystems. So you cannot just sit on the warp-point in the prize system to guard your planet. If I do my math correctly, that limits the game to 9 players due to the 10-warppoint limit.

[ 10 April 2002: Message edited by: Bman ]

[Suicide Junkie]

Use the Map editor to create the galaxy, and you can add as many warppoint as you like.

Nobody will be able to SM more warppoints until enough have closed to drop you back under the limit.

[geoschmo]

Ok, actually you could have 10 players with each in their own system and having a central unocupied system. You don't need a warp point to your own system. One to each of the other nine and one to the center.

This gave me another idea. Kind of like yours but a little different. Hope you don't mind me putting it here.

Drop the central system idea. Have 11 players each in their own system. Warp points starting on their homeworld and ending on each of the other players homeworld like you said. Put some more planets in each home system so you can expand and build up. Then when you think you are ready, you warp to another system and "BOOM".

Now you could wait till you have SM and close the warp point to another guys system and then open a new one to it so you don't have to pop into tne teeth of his defenses, but that would take time and resources that you won't have to defend against someone else attacking you. Or as SJ said you can have more players, but then you have to close a bunch of warp points before you can rearange things.

This is different from your idea of colonizing a planet to win. Becomes a standard extermination game, but with a twist.

Geoschmo

[ 10 April 2002: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[Bman]

Heh. Another variation is take your setup, and instead of having a warp-point to each other homeworld, just have a one-way warp-point to the "next" homeworld. I haven't messed with the map editor but I suspect you cannot specify the output point if the warp-point is one way. But I suspect you can predict it and put the homeworld at that spot. Do this, and you have a sort of one-way circle. You can only attack in one direction and cannot actually attack the guy attacking you until you work your way around the whole map.

[geoschmo]

Actually you must set a destination point for your warp point, but you do not have to have a reciprocal, so that would work fine.