RSW

Ugh, missed sign up by a few hours. I'd been waiting for an advanced tournament game with all the default settings for a few months.

Never mind, figured it out.

I dropped 3 ships as robots on a world with population 21. My news reported that 21 humans indeed died. I expected, though, to see a surplus of 3 robots remaining on the planet, thus giving me ownership. Instead, the population and robot population both show as 0. Any idea why that might happen?

The rule book, in the final list of what happens in every phase, doesn't clarify when population growth happens. (It only mentions when you can raise the population limit, and when excess population dies off). Anyone know exactly which phase it happens?

Thanks.

From the "create game" interface, I was able to determine that the answer to my question is: yes, by default there will be a uniform balance of characters, so 6 character types for 6 players should mean each player gets unique types.

If you play a classic game with 6 players and random character assignment, are you guaranteed that each person will get a different character role?

Which maps are used by default in classic? Do you have to "opt-out" of the complicated 3D maps if you don't want them, or does it choose a random handcrafted 2D map unless you opt-in to the 3D?

I last played RSW around 4 years ago, and I'm eager to recruit a new group of friends to try it, maybe over the summer. Around the time I last played, there was a lot of experimentation going on -- experiments with hand-crafted, symmetrical maps rather than randomly generated maps, experiments with ...

So it sounds like for best possible results, you'd want to play a non-communication game where the roles are public knowledge. That way, you could experiment with gifting an artifact to a collector, for example, and see if he gives you something in return. I'm still pretty hazy on how you could comm...

In the Classic and Advanced games, are there some roles that just don't work well in non-communication games? I remember thinking that some of the roles such as the Collector and Trader would be nearly impossible to play without communication, but I don't have the experience to back that up. What do...

Thanks. So now that the hand-drawn maps have been the default for nearly a year, what do people think? I've only had a chance to play RSW once since the change, and I found the highly regular square map to be kind of dull. On the other hand, the randomized maps can often be "unfair". Are t...

Is there a setting that corresponds to the old random-connection computer-generated maps? Last time I created a game, I thought I was choosing random maps, but it seemed like it just randomly chose from the highly regular topologies.

If you set this to 0, will it disable the ability for people involved in the game to take over abandoned positions?

No problem. One other thing I think I mentioned at some point, and am still interested in, is the ability to disable anonymous messages within a game. Just wanted to keep that idea alive as well...

Since it's been about a year since I brought this up, I thought I'd mention that it's still an option I'm interested in. If "hidden scores" were a customization option, I'd pick it every time. I really do think some players tend to get demoralized when they see they are falling behind, and...