Re: Galaxy: trading ?

From: poing@luna.nl (Paul van der Valk)

Date: Sun, 12 Oct 1997 00:00:00 +0000

On 2 Oct 1997 18:50:39 GMT, phy3dxl3@sun1.bham.ac.uk (Mr D Lovett)
wrote:

>Does anybody else have any ideas on these  ?  I really like to hear them :)

Some Galaxy ideas I've been playing with:

- Waste. For N units of production 1 unit of waste is produced. The
effective size of a planet will be (planet.size - planet.waste). This
is both realistic and useful. Planets will need to have an additional
production option: wastedisposal. Perhaps an additional techfactor
'recycling' will determine how much of the waste is transformed back
into materials.

Advantages of this scheme:

o It reduces the exponential growth factor a bit. Currently, nations
with an early advantage have an overall dominance throughout the game.

o Transport becomes a bit more relevant. Transport issues in Galaxy
are a bit of a background issue now.

- Introduce a tech factor that can increase planet size and/or
resources. In 'reality' this would mean that further planet
exploitation takes place underground (or something). Planets will need
to produce 'size_increment' (better name?) to achieve this. Should be
a relatively expensive option.

- In TradeWars (old BBS game) there was a planet named 'The Wanderer"
which hyperspaced every N turns. This would work quite well in Galaxy
too. Apart from the auto-hyperjump it would be a normal planet that
needs to build industry etc.

- There is a game (forgot it's name) that allows you to attach
thrusters to the asteroid (they use asteroids instead of planets) and
gradually move an asteroid toward a certain direction. I'd like to see
this in Galaxy! This should be an expensive option, it would take a
lot of resources to move a (heavy) planet, but there is no friction: a
planet will move in a certain direction forever until it receives
another impulse.

- Perhaps a cloacking tech level: you can't see ships with a cloaking
factors 2 times higher than yours.

- There are advantages on the GalaxyNG scheme where you get 25% of
the planet resources after winning a battle, but I somehow like the
traditional method of completely bombing out a planet. Perhaps a
combination would do: a planet (bombed) below a certain percentage
will die out.

- Introduce a ship reflective shield factor, which reflects instead
of absorbs incoming shots. This should be a relatively expensive item.

- I like the simplicity and symmetry of the Galaxy rules the way it
is now, but adding a few more stats for variation won't hurt. Some
possibilites: fuel and ship damage. Resulting aspects: fuel capacity,
refuel-generator-capacity, hull-repair capacity, possibility to set a
'flee-threshold' below a certain point.  An escape from battle / lock
opponent factor. A fire-distance or speed parameter that defines which
ships fire first in a battle. Stuff like that. Basicly yer good old
RPG stats in a modern theme.

- As opposed to the planet-increment, introduce a factor the reduces
the (usable) planet size by n% after a bombing. Also some slight
natural decay of techlevels is a possiblilty to reduce the relatively
large figures (no fun afaic) in the mid-end game. Perhaps a tech
reducement of turnnumber/N (N=100) will do. Possibly multiplied by the
nations total industry (N=200,000).

- I once implemented a Planet Busters (ancient BBS game) that had a
max damage factor for each planet. The bombing damages are added and
once past a certain limit the planet explodes. This
'can-take-so-much-damage-factor' is unknown to the players, so
attacking a planet is always risky. To balance things: new planets
with random size and position will be generated every N turns.

- Also in planetbusters there was the possibility of The Plague that
could spread among planets if you aren't careful. I don't like this
concept completely, but it might be useful. Possibly add a medical
tech level for viral immumity.

- Techlevels are currently global. It would be more realisticly to
associate techlevels with planets. Tech can be transported just like
cap/mat/col (this would be a 'copy', not a 'move'). Again this makes
transport more worthwile, reduces the exponential growth advantage of
large nations somewhat, and extends planet personality without
introducing specific predefined mumbo (i.e. terrain types).

- The wargame Empire (amiga version anyway) has an option to hexdump
the world data. This is quite easy to implement on the server side,
and makes it a heck lot easier to implement turnviewer parsers. For
example, there is currently no waterproof method for a galaxy
turnviewer to identify a nation after a name change.

Once the turnreport and turnviewer talk hex, the user part of the
turnreport can be tailored to whatever needs, without breaking
compatibility with existing turnviewers.

- I like the classical RPG concept of spending experience gained from
battle on certain qualities. Can't think of something usable in Galaxy
ATM.

- Just had an idea to combine the 25% take-over in GalaxyNG with the
traditional all-bombing-out: keep the 25% rule, but introduce a planet
self-destruct mechanism that activates in case of a bombing. There
should be a possibility to give it a N-turn delay (higher cost for
more turns) :-)

Hmm.... any more ideas?

Paul

References

Galaxy: trading ?
phy3dxl3@sun1.bham.ac.uk (Mr D Lovett)
Thu, 02 Oct 1997 00:00:00 +0000

Referenced By

Galaxy: trading ?
phy3dxl3@sun1.bham.ac.uk (Mr D Lovett)
Thu, 02 Oct 1997 00:00:00 +0000