MHGC data/beta players (if you aren't, skip this) From: Dave Dickie <ddickie@clipper.ssb.com> Date: Sat, 18 Mar 1995 04:46:08 +0000 This is for Mega Hyper Galactic Conquest data or beta players, for the purposes of discussing design deficiencies with the game (bugs should just be sent directly to me via Email.... I'll put out bug status in the general turn notes each turn). For the basis of future discussions, there have been three MHGC games thus far, alpha, data, and beta. Alpha was the first game (now defunct). Data is the second game, which I am running for my friends (the reason I started all this). Beta is the beta test of a "large" game. Data is on turn 32, beta on 11. The following Email is intended to kick off discussions on the games. This was sent by Keith in response to Email I sent him (ie, I'm the ">" lines). >Keith, > > I think light cruisers are a little too powerful, and the scan >range is excessive. I don't think SuperScouts are worthless; they are >much cheaper and are a non-warship, which makes them ideal from a >border-patrol without pissing off the neighbors. Three SSs can do the job of approximately five Scouts in border patrol. That 40% savings amounts to 16 production units for each SS built and 4 per turn for each maintained. When you consider that most people end their expansion stage with ~4 scouts, return on investment (ROI) for replacing them is 40/4=10 turns. Savings for newly built ships are 16EUs + 4EUs/turn. These are acceptable until you consider that the 250 EU investment in the tech, which, incidentally, is not a prerequisite for anything except megascout tech (not particularly valuable), requires you to build something like 5 new ss and maintain them for 8 turns or replace 5 scouts with ss and maintain them for 22 turns! Add to this the fact that between 1/3 and 2/3 of my border scouting can be accomplished perfectly well by Light Cruisers (and they're then already built and available for instant response), and my conclusion is that there are many better investments than superscouts. >I think Defenders need >to get beefed up. I may have to reduce the "fast chain" capabilities all >together (from a attack/defense perspective) in order to make it reasonable >to defend, since the LCs do move to far (and thus the fact that defensive >ships are much cheaper from a tech perspective doesn't matter, since you >can't guess where the LCs will attack). I completely agree. As a start, I suggest [3/5/3/5/0] for LCs and [3/6/1/2/0] for Defenders. > > EHC didn't work out as planned; I'm going to get back and look at >it at some point, since the models I did indicated that it was worthwhile >for MH and PH systems, marginal for H, and worthless for VH and EH... but >people seem to be complaining that it is worthless on MH and PH as well. >It is obviously critical as a stepping stone to CB. Biofoods I think is >a critical technology, but maybe I am wrong. > That was the way I expected them to shape up. I think you succeeded more with biofoods than with EHC. > I'll put out a new version of the rules soon with the fleet orders. > Up