Interstellar Communicator #5 From: dpierce@eri.erinet.com (Daniel Pierce) Date: Sat, 15 Apr 1995 00:00:00 +0000 Interstellar Communicator Issue 5 Stardate 1036 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The newsletter of Interstellar Traders and Galactic Empires Copyright 1995 by Daniel Pierce Email: dpierce@erinet.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------- We need your articles. Your comments. Your ideas. Your gripes. What's going on? G.E. goes pay. Starting May 1st Galactic Empires will be $1.00 per turn. All current players won't lose anything, except a dollar per turn. Interstellar Traders is and will remain a free game. We need players! About 400 of them! Both parts, I.T. and G.E. need lots of players. The current system the game runs on can support 1000 players and simple upgrades can handle 5,000 more. We have only about 20 at this time. Where are all the hard core sci-fi wargamers? Pirates ain't pirating. As soon as there was a threat of punishment for pirating all the pirates stopped their illegal activities. I would like to know why and see what can be done to encourage more diversity in roleplaying. Better system generation. Newly created systems now may have multiple suns and many class M inhabitable planets. About 1 in 3 systems will have a second sun and planets and 1 in 3 of them may have a 3rd sun, etc. in 1/3 ratios recursively. So triple systems are 1:27, quads are 1:81, etc. Owning and operating a trading base: Interstellar Traders can own and run Starbases. As starbases are used only for trade it is fitting that they should be able to have them. To get one you must assemble one. You will have to buy the basehull, ship it to where you want the base, buy the defenses, set your prices, transfer it lots of credits, and get others to trade there. As you can only operate one ship it will be necessary to get others to ship/sell you the items you need to quickly get a base into operation. Questions: 1) One small question not noted on the ship descriptions: How big are the fuel tanks of the larger ships? a) Unless otherwise noted ships can hold 1000 fuel times their ship class. So a class 1 holds 1000, class 5 5000, class 10 holds 10000. 2) The TRANSFER command is supposed to trasfer money both to and from the bank. How do you specify which way the transfer should go? a) Positive numbers go to the target, negative takes from the target. 3) What happens if several players try to buy/upgrade to the same ship? a) The players who got their turn emailed first will get the ship. As many merchants may be trying to get the same ship a new method has been created. See the following section on BUY/SELL SHIP. 4) If I "UPGRADE" to a new ship, do I need to "TRANSFER" to it also? a) Yes. Interstellar Traders are limited to issuing orders to only one ship. We are working on a way to have many ships but be only able to issue orders for one of them per turn. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Notes from above: Next turn: statistics! We are working on a general information report that will go in the newsletter telling how many players, systems, planets, bases, starports, ships and their classes, etc are in the game. In about two weeks I will have an updated rule book for Interstellar Traders which will integrate the new G.E. rules they can use and more suggestions for long term goals. One of which is owning and operation trading bases. Warehouses and Cargo bays: Planets and bases now have three places to store items. The storage places are limited to 900,000 of any one thing. You can have 900,000 of something in each place. Buy/Sell ships: All players may now buy and sell ships as easily as any commodity. Ships may be bought only from those in storage and there are conditions of sale. At any LLL location you may buy any ship in storage there. At other locations you must be a parent/client, ally, or trade ally of the person owning the ship you want to buy. At LLL locations the Star League will buy any ship you sell but to sell to someone else you must be a parent/client, ally, or trade ally. These conditions apply to everyone, I.T. as well as G.E. The price of a ship is the build cost times the Galactic Price Index plus the owner's profit margin. The sell price of a ship is the build cost times the G.P.I. divided by two. As this leaves a wide profit margin you might get better deals by dealing directly with an empire for a better price. When dealing, nothing is automatically transfered from ship to ship and items on the ship are not included in the prices. Class limits on bases: So far it has been hard to determine what and how much on a base might be for sale. From now own the base's class will limit how much is for sale. Each class level (0-250) means 10,000 people, industry, fuel, and 100,000 basehull will not be forsale. Items in cargo bays will always be forsale. Class 0 is special in that it means nothing on the base is for sale. It may be a turn or two until the computer run empires figure out what they want to set their base's class limits to. ========================== End of Transmission =========================== -- --- ********************************************************************* *: \ | / : Programming Services, Unit 16 : \ | / :* *: -- * -- : Daniel Pierce - dpierce@erinet.com : -- * -- :* *: / | \ : Pacunium-non-fumo - Money doesn't stink : / | \ :* ********************************************************************* Up