NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/rec/games/pbm/3456

Text File | 1992-12-31 | 2.8 KB | 60 lines

Newsgroups: rec.games.pbm
Path: sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!news.cso.uiuc.edu!s.psych.uiuc.edu!amead
From: [e-mail] (Alan Mead)
Subject: Re: Galaxy Results Format
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail] (Net Noise owner)
Organization: UIUC Department of Psychology
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 22:10:29 GMT
Lines: 48

[e-mail] (Durwood Y. McKinney) writes:

>Someone wrote.....
>>>But the problem (or just the fact) with Galaxy is that once you loose
>>>a big fight, you're pretty much out of the game.  There's no real way to
>>>start over and come back later and win.  One (major) mistake and you're
>>>dead.  Once you get too far behind in industry you can never catch up.
>>>
>>>It might be interesting to try and modify the game so palyers were a
>>>lot harder to knock out of the game.  Where you could loose more
>>>battles but not loose the war.  Then the concept of having longer
>>>games would make more sense.

>[armies idea deleted]

>Another simple way to do this would be to simply change the rules where
>an armed enemy warship has to be orbiting a planet at the end of two
>consecutive turns to bomb it.  This would make it easier to defend a
>large empire.

Galaxy's author, Russell Wallace, mentioned some time ago that he has
thought about a second game that, if I recall correctly, would have
more micro comcepts like armies.  I don't know if he has gone beyond
thinking about it, but I also never realized how prolific he is.  I've
seen hundreds of lines of his code on comp.binaries.os.msdos .

Anyway, yet another simple way to make battles less absolute would be
for there to be a limit on the number of shots fired per turn.  Have
any of you seen a battle between two (or more) fleets with a lot of
small ships?  Then big battles would have to rage for more than one
turn (with the possibility that you could draw reinforcements in).

Typically these discussions "degenerate" into debates about "what is
realistic" (which always seems to me to be beside the point) but...  I
think this would be more realistic in the sense that worlds and solar
systems are big!  Do you think that you could find, catch and destroy a
fleet of 500+ ships scattered throughout the solar system in one year?

You would also have to alter the rule that if there are ANY armed enemy
ships orbiting a world at the end of a turn then they bomb (which would
be a good thing anyway IMHO).  But you could allow "incidental" damage
during the battle.  So maybe I lose 5-10% of my stuff for each turn
that there is a battle (ie, a battle involving empires hostile to mine)
above my world.

Just a thought.

-alan mead