RSW

The client is looking pretty nearly full-featured and largely stable. The server has been chugging along merrily. I think it's time to start thinking about what the rules for the third RSW game type ought to be.

I think the third game should have moderate-to-complex rules, something more in line with a typical modern RTS. We could go the route that StarCon went: take the Classic rules and add things like ship classes, bomb classes, multiple types of metal, and more things you can do with artifacts. In fact, maybe we should do this sort of basic rule expansion immediately, and then start talking about the fourth RSW game type.

I was hoping to add something a little more dramatically different, though.

For instance, I was thinking about a game centered around interstellar commerce. Suppose there were five to ten different kinds of resources--ore, fuel, water, grain, electronics, industry, art, and so on--and each world produced certain kinds of resources, and demanded other kinds. Primitive worlds would produce ore and grain, and modern worlds would produce electronics and industry. You could then get wealthy by flying around and delivering resources where they are demanded. Of course, there would be other players also doing this, so you would compete with them to be the first one to deliver the goods to a particular world (the world might not be so eager to trade with the second player to arrive bearing the same cargo).

Wealth can then be used to purchase fleets or ships. Or worlds. Ship-to-ship battles can exist more or less as they do now, but we add the ability to have actual piracy, and steal your opponent's cargo hold.

Character types? We can have:

- The Dealer, who gets points for making successful trades.
- The Baron, who gets points for owning worlds and taxing their populations.
- The Slaver, who gets points for enslaving population. Slaves can be sold as another resource. Eww.
- The Developer, who gets points for elevating worlds from primitive backwaters to modern industrial producers.

We can also keep the Classic character types like Positronix, Missionary, and Raider. Maybe Collector too. Why not?

What does anyone else think? Does this sound like something worth playing? Any other ideas to contribute?

David

drwr wrote:For instance, I was thinking about a game centered around interstellar commerce. Suppose there were five to ten different kinds of resources--ore, fuel, water, grain, electronics, industry, art, and so on--and each world produced certain kinds of resources, and demanded other kinds. Primitive worlds would produce ore and grain, and modern worlds would produce electronics and industry. You could then get wealthy by flying around and delivering resources where they are demanded. Of course, there would be other players also doing this, so you would compete with them to be the first one to deliver the goods to a particular world (the world might not be so eager to trade with the second player to arrive bearing the same cargo).

Do you know about Skyrates?
http://skyrates.net/
Skyrates Manual

It has some striking similarities to what you're describing, although of course it's also very different in some ways. It was a project at the ETC, and a couple of the developers actually work at Schell Games now.

Anyway, it's worth playing on its own, and definitely worth looking at if you're going to make an RSW trading variant.

I was aware of Skyrates, and always meant to take a closer look at it one day, but somehow never quite got around to it. Guess idea-mining is as good a reason to check it out as any.

David

How about customizable ships? You start by deciding how large a hull you want to build (larger hulls being more expensive), and then outfit the ship with various pods such as engines, energy collectors, weaponry, shields, armour, sensors, cloaks, life support and cargo. More engines make your ship faster, but each pod adds weight and slows the ships down. Different types of pods require different resources to build, and some types might be available only on certain planets with those resources. Some types of pods would require resources to operate, for example engines would require a certain amount of fuel, and shields and some weapon types of weapon would require energy gathered by the collectors. There would be multiple weapon types, for example lasers which would require energy, and torpedo launchers for which you would have to buy the torpedos. In a battle you would decide which weapons to deploy and how much of each. In defense, shields would give some protection from lasers, and armour might reduce the damage caused by a torpedo.

Some ship types might be:
- scouts: small hull, lots of engines and sensors, not much else.
- fighters: small hull, lots of engines, light weapons and shielding.
- haulers: lots of cargo pods and enough engines to move the ship, maybe some shields or armour.
- battlecraft: slow, but with heavy weaponry and shielding.
- spycraft: similar to scouts, but heavily cloaked so they can look at systems without being detected.

Faster ships would have a chance to use their speed to avoid being destroyed in combat, slower ships would have to stand an slug it out. Ships could protect other ships, for example a heavily shielded ship might guard a hauler by absorbing enemy shots directed at the hauler.

Has this gotten complicated enough yet? For now, maybe I'll skip discussing universities where you could research better types of pods, and planetary ground defenses which would have to be overcome in ground combat by troops dropped from assaulting ships.

MikeTomalin wrote:How about customizable ships? You start by deciding how large a hull you want to build (larger hulls being more expensive), and then outfit the ship with various pods such as engines, energy collectors, weaponry, shields, armour, sensors, cloaks, life support and cargo. More engines make your ship faster, but each pod adds weight and slows the ships down. Different types of pods require different resources to build, and some types might be available only on certain planets with those resources. Some types of pods would require resources to operate, for example engines would require a certain amount of fuel, and shields and some weapon types of weapon would require energy gathered by the collectors.

Sounds more like Skyrates every day.
http://skyrates.net/upgrades.php

If I'm late with my turns for the next few days, blame FishSpeaker I'll be busy thumbing through the Skyrates manual and maybe trying to birth a character.

Whatever you do don't go too deep on details. We made Master of Orion 3 and it was as good as playing your taxes against the IRS. You probably don't want a game about designing and managing ship designs when so far the game has been largely about managing resources and logistics.
Where the Classic game has a lot to do with managing material transport as a prerequisite to operating on your characters class's individual goals, it might be worth:

1:expanding the logistics model by allowing the transport of population with/without metals and making the galaxy more sparse and emphasizing the role of population through formal colonization. As it is any population above 10 serves little more purpose than to count as more points for several player types. The aggressive role of the Positronix should come out in this case where we can currently operate in almost total seclusion given enough initial territory.

2:install (randomized) goals for each individual player to carry out in concert to their character type (bouses for aggression/passivity/generosity/greed, etc.) If you have Collectors who are also awarded minor points for Aggression while also awarded for Generosity the political dynamic may resolve into more interesting variants without a lot of obligated complexity.

This sounds a little bit like "Riftlords" which Flying Buffalo runs. The cool thing about Riftlords is that it's open ended and played in a seemingly limitless universe. I played it for a while but had other things come up in my life and had to drop it. I like the idea of stepping outside the "Starweb box" instead of just adding onto Starweb a la Starcon. Set it up and I'll be glad to give it a try.
ZenCat (Dale Perkins

Just an idea, it will cost X industry to send a message. Where X is some number like 5 or 1. Of course that gets defeated if you send your email address in the first message, but hey it's an idea.