RSW

The Starweb rules state that a standard Starweb game has 15 players, 255 worlds, and 255 fleet keys, making 17 worlds and fleets per player. As I understand it, RSW scales the number of worlds and fleets based on the number of players in the game. For instance, in a 6 player game, I would expect 6*17 = 102 worlds and fleets.

I checked an already finished 6 player game, and it does indeed have exactly 102 worlds and 102 fleets, numbered sequentially.

I'm confused, then, because in some of my current games, I'm seeing world and fleet numbers that exceed what should be the maximum number of worlds/fleets.

What could be going on here?

There is an intentional random variation in the world count. This is the "NumWorlds" random factor that is printed on the final game report. While the average (and typical) galaxy will have 17 worlds per player, some galaxies might have as few as 14, and some might have as many as 20.

It seemed to me that this random factor can help make the game more interesting. Smaller galaxies will favor certain character classes over others; larger galaxies will favor different character classes.

David

Interesting. Do the number of worlds always match the number of fleets?

Also, I wonder whether it may be interesting to have a game option that allows people to see the game biases (perhaps excluding the final target score) as soon as the game begins. I can see how it's fun to discover that as the game progresses, but it also might be fun to know it as soon as the game begins and be able to craft a strategy from the beginning for the given conditions.

The number of worlds does always match the number of fleets.

Not a bad idea to show the game biases from the beginning. Eventually, I hope to be adding a bewildering forest of game options. This can be one of them.

David

I just finished a game (dutch4z), which had 71 worlds for 3 players. Your previous post implies that the upper extreme should be 20 worlds per player. So is 71 worlds for 3 players a problem, or is the range of variation larger than your post stated?

Since the time I made this post, I've changed the variation a bit.

Now the normal variation is 12 to 24 worlds per player, so 71 worlds for 3 players is exceptionally high, but within tolerance.

Also, the number of fleets no longer necessarily matches the number of worlds. And the normal variation for fleets is 10 to 27 fleets per player.

But the more typical number is still 17 per player for both worlds and fleets.

David