PBEM Fanzine volume 94 number 4 (article about Galaxy!) From: gl8f@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl) Date: Sun, 17 Jul 1994 21:09:29 +0000 ====================================================================== @@@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@@@@ @@ @@ @@``````````@@ @@``````````@@ @@`````````````` @@@@ @@@@`` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@``@@ @@ @@`` @@@@@@@@@@@@ `` @@@@@@@@@@@@ `` @@@@@@@@@@@@ @@`` @@ ``@@`` @@```````````` @@``````````@@ @@```````````` @@`` `` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@@@@@@@@@@@ `` @@@@@@@@@@@@@@ @@`` @@`` `` ```````````` `````````````` `` `` ====================================================================== A Fanzine for Free Computer-Moderated Play-By-Electronic-Mail Wargames ====================================================================== volume 94, number 4 july 17, 1994 ====================================================================== Greg Lindahl, Editor gl8f@virginia.edu ====================================================================== World Wide Web: http://fermi.clas.virginia.edu/~gl8f/pbm.html ====================================================================== Table of Contents: Opening Stuff o The Editor's Corner o Short Summary of Available Games Articles o Ship Design in Galaxy and Blind Galaxy Howard Bampton Regular Features o Game Descriptions & Information o Archives and subscriptions by email o Hints regarding sending electronic mail to other networks o What's this "ftp" thing anyway? ====================================================================== The Editor's Corner ====================================================================== Helping with my quest to find out the relative sizes of all PBEM games, Kerry Harrison went and scoped out Diplomacy on CompuServe. He found that there are 2 'zines there containing a total of 33 games. This compares to some 276 games active on the various Internet Judges, or about 1/8 as many. I posted a message a few weeks ago to rec.games.pbm asking if folks thought that I should cover commercial PBEM games as well as non-commercial games, or perhaps even snail-mail games. My major concern is that I do not receive many articles, yet there seems to be fairly substantial readership for the magazines. If you have any thoughts on the matter, please send me email. -- g ====================================================================== Short Summary of Available Games (full information down below) ====================================================================== Atlantis 1.1 --- open-ended strategic fantasy game, with 88 players. Celestial Empire --- a more complicated space-opera game. There are 2 games running. New games start occasionally. Dougal Scott is looking for a moderator to take over running these games. Diplomacy --- Play Avalon Hill's Diplomacy boardgame by email. On April 15, there were 1000+ players involved in 276 games, with new games starting frequently on several fully automated email servers. Galactic Conqueror (German language) --- An economic/strategic space-opera game, with fancy interface programs available for PC's and Atari ST's. Galaxy / Galaxy/2 / Galactica / Blind Galaxy --- An economic/strategic space-opera game. There are 200+ players involved in a twenty or so games. New games start occasionally. Republic of Rome --- Play Avalon Hill's Republic of Rome boardgame by email, using an automated server. Star Empires --- A simple strategic/economic space-warfare game. Fly around the galaxy, maim your enemies, capture their planets, and produce more ships to maim the enemy with, etc. Sports Simulations --- a variety of different electronic leagues are available. Each game generally has one or two seasons per year. Decentralized games --- a couple of games are available which are designed for a few players, and the moderation programs are available so you can run your own games. For more information on any of these games, please wade through the "Game Descriptions and Information" section below. It lists ftp sites and the addresses of the moderators. The sports simulations and decentralized games descriptions are located in the "PBM List", which is a separate document available at the FTP sites. ====================================================================== Ship Design in Galaxy and Blind Galaxy Howard Bampton ====================================================================== This article is intended for the beginning to semi-experienced Galaxy player. Experienced Galaxy players have no doubt already thought about all the details that this article mentions, and have made their decisions on the subject. Since in many cases there are no "correct" answers, I have generally refrained from doing anything besides pointing out the pros and cons of both sides of the issues. There are 4 general duties that a ship is typically expected to perform: Cargo runs, picket duty, commerce raiding, and offensive duty. Although a single ship design can be used for several of these duties, a multi-duty flexible single design does a worse job at each task than a ship specialized for just one job. Cargo ships There are several schools of though on cargo ships: "single cargo space and drive", "large cargo space and drive", and "armed freighters". Single cargo space and drive cargo ships are typically (1 0 0 0 1), or sometimes (x 0 0 0 1) (with x=2, 3, or 4). The general concept is: we want something fast and cheap. With all drive and cargo, we aren't wasting production building shields or weapons that we don't want them to use in the first place, and we aren't slowing our ship down by carrying them around. An additional advantages is that they are inexpensive, and so we tend to have hundreds of them. Furthermore, we can afford to send them unescorted (or lightly escorted) to systems that we'd like to claim, but where they could run into resistance. In a last ditch defense, they make OK cannon-fodder, albeit expensive to lose. Since there are lots of them, we have great flexibility in moving cargo around: if we have 5 CAP here, 3 COL there, and some MAT somewhere else, we can move it all. The downside to this kind of cargo ship is that if we are attacked, a large part of out merchant marine can be knocked out by a single small enemy warship. These ships also don't have the bulk carrying capacity that larger cargo ships do. Large cargo ships (say mass 20+, with 10+ spaces for cargo) also have their pluses and minuses. On the plus side, they can carry a lot of cargo, and do it cheaper than a horde of smaller ships. On the minus side, it is often difficult to keep them full. When loaded, they tend to be very slow, unless we have high drive tech, invest in cargo tech, or have sizable engines on them. They are large enough that putting a weapon on them isn't a total waste of time, but shielding them is not easy, especially when loaded. Remember that shield strength is a function of the ship's mass, which includes cargo. Losing a large freighter is very expensive, so they tend to be sent only to well-defended systems. In order to keep their cargo ship losses down, many players build armed freighters. They typically have minimal cargo space (1 or 2), light weapons (1 or 2 as well), reasonable drives (4+) and some shielding. Some players will further tweak the shields so that the cargo ship is immune to strength 1 attacks (i.e. the effective shield strength when loaded is at least 4). Picket duty Picket duty consists of guarding an empire's borders. Designing picketing forces is one of the most difficult tasks in Galaxy. Too weak a force, and we are asking for invasion. If we have too much of our economy invested in picketing forces, we cannot field an effective offensive fleet, which will cause us to lose. There are 3 or 4 types of picketing forces: orbital forces; slow, heavily armed and shielded warships; obsolete warships that have not or will not be upgraded; and normal warships. Orbital forces (all shields and weapons) have the best bang for the buck (no drive or cargo mass to lower shield strength), but can't move. Furthermore, they allow the enemy to make some educated guesses about the size of the system: a 100 mass orbital fort is a dead giveaway that it is a homeworld. We can do some things to confuse the issue, such as building some forts with mat stockpiles handy, or upgrading some ships at the system at the same time. To overcome the problems of orbital forts, a few players build slow-moving warships (typically < 25% drive). They have drives, so we can move them from system to system as needed, but they still pack a sizable punch. It is common to use old, obsolete warships as pickets. These ships could be awaiting upgrades, or could be too expensive to upgrade. The most common picket forces, however, are warships that we have not yet deployed for offensive duty. Commerce raiding A commerce raider's goal is to get cheap kills of the enemy's cargo ships and systems. We want to bomb unguarded systems, and prevent (re)colonization of others. Depending on our enemy's tactics, commerce raiders doing the later job can end up being attacked by his bigger commerce raiders engaging in the same activity. There are 3 varieties of commerce raiders that are typically found in Galaxy games. The most common is a small, normal warship, which is often called a fighter. The second variety is a fast, lightly armed, unshielded warship. Typically, we want to catch systems that the enemy has lightly defended (single fighter, or no armed warships), or prevent him from sending unarmed freighters to a system. The third and most devious variety is a medium-sized (or larger) fast, lightly armed, and heavily shielded ship. This raider is less concerned with taking out the opposition's ships, and more concerned with bombing systems. This third design philosophy exploits two of Galaxy's documented quirks, namely that combat ends when neither side can damage the other (so the enemy raider could destroy all our unarmed cargo ships, leaving our picketing force largely untouched), and that bombing occurs if a hostile force has a ship in orbit after combat, even if we also have ships left. Don't be surprised by these quirks. Offensive operations Given that Galaxy is a wargame, we might think that offensive ship design would have been worked out to the last detail and everyone would be running around with the same ships as everyone else. Well, we are out of luck: it is still an art. Some general conclusions have been reached concerning what we should and should not do: Our offensive ships should move roughly the same speed. Fleets remove the dangers of having half our forces arrive this turn and half next turn, but it is better to have all our ships moving about the same speed so we aren't wasting production making extra drive when we could be making heavier shields or weapons. What speed should our fleet move? Alternately, we could ask what percentage of the ship's mass should be drive? This question is something that has not been decided, either. It is safe to say that going below 30% drive, or above 50% drive, will have a major effect on our tech research: going for low drive mass tends to encourage high drive techs, whereas high drive mass tends to encourage shield and weapons development. This isn't to say that going outside those extremes is never done: I was one of the co-winners in a Galaxy game where my fleet design was 25% drive, roughly 25% weapons, and 50% shields. Good luck with diplomacy, and, in the later game, some very nasty flack that the opposition had a hard time killing, probably are why I got away with it. Before I go further, I should mention a few definitions of ship types. A "drone" is the smallest & fastest possible scout, (1 0 0 0 0). A "gun" is the smallest warship, (1 1 1 0 0). "Flack" is a ship designed to soak up enemy firepower and make his large weapons waste their time destroying small ships, while our large weapons destroy his large ships Mixed forces are good. A mixed force is a fleet (not necessarily in the game sense) of groups of different types of ships. A fleet with all large ships is vulnerable to a fleet of equal mass which has heavy flack cover and a few large ships. Similarly, a force with no large weapons can be defeated by a single ship with heavy shields. This leads players to build fleets with a few large ships (which can have big weapons, or can have lots of small ones, sometimes called "shotguns"), lots of small (mass less than 10) cannon fodder (or flack), and a smattering of ships of sizes in between. There has been considerable debate in some circles about what constitutes a good flack design. The obvious (1 1 1 1 0) "fighter" suffers because it has a poor chance of hitting unarmed enemy flack, and it has a good chance of dying when shot at by enemy guns. Similarly, drones (1 0 0 0 0) die a horrible death against an opposing fleet that has many small guns. Using unarmed flack (say, 1 0 0 2 0) means that we need to either have lots of medium sized ships with guns, or build shotguns in order to have enough guns to take out enemy flack. Should we build any medium sized ships, bigger than flack, but smaller than 50? Unsurprisingly, there are two sides to this debate. On the plus side, these ships are cheap enough we can have more than a handful in a fleet. The down side is that these ships are vulnerable to a lucky hit from the enemy's anti-flack guns (or even their flack's guns), and they almost certainly will die when hit by the big guns. Are very large ships (mass 150+) worth it? Again, there is no consensus. If we consider the relatively small number of players that use them, we can say "probably not." Large ships are very good for spooking other players and can sometimes attack an enemy fleet on their own and win. On the down side, upgrading them is horribly expensive, and not upgrading them means that 15 turns later, after everyone has developed better technology, they can be knocked out by an embarrassingly small ship. Then there is the spoiler factor: some players have been attacked simply because someone else saw them building a 3+ turn-to-complete ship. This factor has something to do with a temptation of making the enemy waste several thousand industry for nothing. General construction policies If all our systems were the same size, ship designs would be easy: we'd be able to interchange production quite easily from world to world. In Galaxy, and even more so in Blind Galaxy, we seldom have this chance after the first few turns. So what are we to do? Should we have hundreds of designs tweaked for the production abilities of each world, or have a smaller number of ships types and not worry about production lost due to round off? Certainly both sides have merit. Production capacity varies considerably, depending on the resources of a system and MAT availability. For the beginning player, I would recommend settling on roughly 10 warship designs. Have 2 or 3 large ships customized for being built at your homeworld. Have your non-flack designs tweaked for other worlds where you intend to produce them, and don't worry too much about production round off error for your flack (which you produce at the other systems). Once you have become comfortable with this strategy, you may experiment with having dozens of warship classes. For reference, in the game I mentioned above with the 25% drive design scheme, I had a total of 33 ship designs. Of them, 8 of them were orbital forts (6 mass 99/100, 2 flack-types), 3 were cargo ships, the obligatory drone type, and 21 warship designs. In the warship designs, I had 1 "Miscalculated its mass, oops!" type, 1 prototype commerce raider, 4 designs that were intended for picket duty, 2 types of flack (1 of which I stopped making after turn 40 or so, and reassigned to picket duty), and 14 heavy warship designs (7 which were actively being produced at the end of the game, including 1 mass 300 ship, and two mass 198 designs). Conclusion I hope that this article has pointed out most of the issues that come up regarding ship construction, at least as far as the ship's mission(s) are concerned. I welcome comments, either directly, through rec.games.pbm, or one of the Galaxy mailing lists. ====================================================================== Game Descriptions and Information ====================================================================== Note: This information grows old. If you are looking at this issue from an archive, consult the file "PBM.list.gz" in the ftp archives for more up-to-date information. ====================================================================== FTP Site: ftp.erg.sri.com username: anonymous Directory: pub/pbm Contains back-issues of this magazine, source for Galaxy, and rules for a whole bunch of games. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FTP Site: ftp.cp.tn.tudelft.nl username: anonymous Gopher Site: gopher.cp.tn.tudelft.nl Directory: pub/pbm The same stuff as sri.com, often a little more up-to-date. European users are encouraged to use this site. ====================================================================== Game: Atlantis 1.1 Type: strategic economic/military, fantasy setting Duration: open-ended Turns: one per week GM: jjc@mpa15c.mv-oc.unisys.com Status: up and running, accepting new players Description: Atlantis 1.1 is an upgrade of Russell Wallace's original Atlantis 1.0 system. Atlantis features multiple faction types, a mostly player-run economy, simple economics, and a simple combat system. The major changes are increased movement for ships and mounted forces, and reduced taxation income. About 88 players are participating as of July, 1994. The rules are available from the ftp sites, as are back-issues of the player newsletter. If you would like to join, read the rules and then send email to the GM. Russell has written about half the code for 2.0. If you are interested in completing it, write him at rwallace@vax1.tcd.ie. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Game: Celestial Empire Type: strategic economic/military space-opera Duration: close-ended, 30+ turns Turns: one per week GM: Dougal.Scott@fcit.monash.edu.au Status: occasionally starting new games Description: Players compete to capture worlds which produce many different types of resources, of which different amounts are needed to manufacture various items. The author, Dougal Scott, is running several games, and he periodically starts new ones. The rules can be ftped from yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au in the directory /pub/celemp. After you have read them, if you still want to join a game, send your name to Dougal at the address above. He is also looking for a new moderator to take over running his games, because he is graduating. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Game: Diplomacy Type: email version of Avalon Hill's pure strategy game Turns: frequency varies from one per day to one per 2 weeks for different games. Email Server: judge@morrolan.eff.org HELP in body of message; the subject is ignored. Description: The Diplomacy Adjudicator is a fully computer-moderated gamemaster for Avalon Hill's Diplomacy boardgame. To get more information from the moderator, send email with the word "HELP" in the body of the message (the subject is ignored) to judge@morrolan.eff.org. There are also other judges available, but most games are run on the EFF judge. The diplomacy Hall of Fame is available via ftp from ftp.netcom.com, directory /pub/starkey. Diplomacy is probably the biggest PBEM game out there, with 276 games going as of July 15, 1994. I'd estimate at least 1,000 players are active in one or more games. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Game: Galactic Conqueror (German language) Type: strategic, economic/military, space opera setting Duration: typically 25-30 turns Turns: typically 1 per week GM: hz@zardoz.ruhr.de (Harry Zimmermann) Description: Galactic Conqueror is strategic SF-PBeM-Game for up to 50 players. Each player starts the game with a small fleet of starships and is the owner of one of several hundred planets. The winner is determined by an point system which gives points for specific actions each turn. The first player who reaches a pre-set winning score will be the winner of the game. Since there are almost no trade options in the game, player interaction mostly concerns negotiations about borders and coordination of attacks or defense. Players can: o invest in science o build industrial facilities and strongholds on planets o build ships (26 different classes) o attack enemy or neutral planets o engage in espionage or corruption o and much more... At the start of the game, each player can see only 4-10 planets, whose coordinates are given relative to his own starting-planet. Every time a new planet is conquered, all planets up to a given distance from this new one are revealed. The rules and an Atari ST and PC Clone client can be ftped from ftp.cp.tn.tudelft.nl, in the directory /pub/pbm/Galactic_Conqueror. The clients are graphical point-and-click interfaces to the game. You could play without a client, but this is not recommended. An X11 client is in the works, as is an eventual translation of the rules into English. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Game: Galaxy Type: strategic, economic/military, space opera setting Duration: typically 50-80 turns Turns: typically 1 or 2 per week Email Server: galaxy@acca.nmsu.edu, Subject: HELP GM: bampton@cs.utk.edu (Howard Bampton) GM: rwallace@vax1.tcd.ie (Russell Wallace) Description: The game typically takes place on a 100x100 2D map, with a few hundred planets and 20 to 50 players. Players compete to capture planets, which can be used for economic expansion. You can purchase technology in several different areas, allowing your ships to fight harder and move faster. Galaxy turns range in size from 10kbytes early in the game to 100-200kbytes late in the game. The rules and source code are available for ftp, or via the email server, whose address is galaxy@acca.nmsu.edu. It takes commands in the subject line. Start with "help". There is also (at the moment) a separate mailing-list server at galaxy-request@acca.nmsu.edu, which has mailing lists with game announcements and discussion of code development. There are 17 games running on this server as of May 11, 1994, with about 200 different players participating. You can write to humans who run games; they start games occasionally and also have standby positions. They are: bampton@cs.utk.edu rwallace@vax1.tcd.ie Howard Bampton has a variant called "blind" galaxy. You can ftp the source for it from cs.utk.edu:/pub/bampton. It features a wraparound map, a double-blind mail-forwarding system, and you received only limited information about other players other than what you can observe at systems where you have ships. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Game: Judgment Day Type: strategic economic/military, present day setting Turns: one per week GM: rwallace@vax1.tcd.ie (Russell Wallace) Status: beta-test finished, looking for a moderator Description: Judgment Day is a game for up to 25 players. Each player controls an empire which can build weapons and attack each other. When the nukes start flying, remember to duck and cover. The source code is available at the ftp sites or from Russell. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Game: Republic of Rome Type: Historical (Roman Empire) Turns: player-paced Email Server: ror@hpeswlw.fc.hp.com HELP in body of message, the subject is ignored Description: RoR is an email adjudicator for Avalon Hill's game Republic of Rome, a cutthroat game of politics set in ancient Rome. All aspects of play are fully automated; there is no human GM. Players control factions of Senators; each turn they must elect officers and vote to raise and deploy forces to fight the many wars that arise; they work to increase the influence and popularity of their own Senators but must also work together to prevent destruction by war or by popular revolt. If Rome falls everyone loses. To get started, buy a copy of the board game, read the rules, then send email to the address above with the word "help" in the body of the message. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Game: Star Empires Type: strategic empire-building, space setting Turns: one per week, 60+ turns per game GM: rhl@jambo.mitre.org (Roger Lincoln) Status: occasionally starting games; watch rec.games.pbm Description: Star Empires is a very simple game which is very addictive. Players compete to control planets, which produce resources which can be used to build various types of ships. There is generally a large amount of diplomacy, and the GM encourages humorous player press releases. The rules are available for ftp from the Dutch ftp site. ====================================================================== Archives and subscriptions by email ====================================================================== PBEM is archived for ftp at "ftp.erg.sri.com" and "ftp.cp.tn.tudelft.nl", or check archie or use Veronica to look for gopher sites, of which there is at least one, cic.net. I have a mailing list that distributes the magazine, but I prefer that you obtain it via Usenet or CompuServe or other means instead of asking to go on the mailing list. ====================================================================== The remainder of this magazine does not change, and is not of interest to most readers anyway. Skip it. ====================================================================== Hints regarding sending Electronic Mail to other networks ====================================================================== OK, so now you're wondering, "I'm using FidoNet or CompuServe or FoobieBlech and those email addresses he keeps on talking about sure look funny to me!". Welcome to the modern world of networking. See, there's this big amorphous network called the Internet that lots of other networks and services, like FidoNet, CompuServe, DELPHI, America Online, GEnie and Prodigy are hooked up to. And you can send email between all of them, if you know the right incantations. Sometimes size or cost limitations will keep you from being able to play games on another network, but at least you can send me letters to the editor or articles. If your Compuserve ID is [76515,1122] then your canonical Internet address will be "76515.1122@compuserve.com" -- notice that the comma has become a period. To send mail from CompuServe to the Internet, you use this sort of address: >INTERNET:gl8f@virginia.edu Compuserve users have to pay extra for mail to or from the Internet. If you're a flat-fee user, the cost is 5 cents per 2500 characters, minimum 15 cents, but the first $9 per month is free. This can add up to a bit of money if you send frequent messages, or get into a Galaxy end-game where your turns are large. In addition, the maximum size for a given message is 50kbytes, and most Internet games do not split their game turns into pieces if they are too large. Diplomacy and Arena, for example, generally don't have large turns. Diplomacy games with no press don't send that many messages. America Online does not charge any extra fee for Internet email, and has recently removed their limit on message size, so they are perfectly adequate for playing Internet games. Their addresses look like "username@aol.com" Delphi addresses look like "username@delphi.com". Internet access costs $3/month extra, but that gets you access to email, ftp, irc, gopher, etc. at their normal hourly charge. Prodigy has finished their gateway. I don't know how much they charge for sending messages to the Internet. They do have a charge for sending large numbers of messages inside of Prodigy. Their addresses look like "username@prodigy.com" GEnie's addresses look like this: username@genie.geis.com. The maximum incoming message size is 900kbytes, but the biggest outgoing message is 50k or 2500 lines, as limited by the GEnie message editor. These sizes are big enough to play all games. GEnie doesn't charge extra for Internet email. FidoNet addresses, such as "Dale Webber at 1:105/55.0", look like dale.weber@p0.f55.n105.z1.fidonet.org in Internet form. To send email to the Internet from FidoNet, send normal netmail to the user UUCP, and then on the first line of the message, put the line: To: gl8f@virginia.edu Unfortunately, unless your FidoNet BBS is hooked directly to the Internet, they ask that you keep email under 10kbytes and only occasional. Ask your sysop for more information. ====================================================================== What's this "ftp" thing anyway? ====================================================================== ftp is an acronym for "file transfer protocol", and it is only directly available to the privileged few who are directly hooked to the Internet using heavy-duty hardware. There is a way to use ftp via email, and if you can get email to me, I will send you a document explaining how to use it, or send email to ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com, with an empty Subject: line, and the word "help" in the body of the message. The Dutch ftp site, ftp.cp.tn.tudelft.nl, has a way for you to retrieve any of its files via email, either by sending it mail or telneting to it. To get the helpfile either : telnet ftp.cp.tn.tudelft.nl 2001 MAIL <your mail address> HELP (for small help file) or SEND HELP (for big help file) or INDEX (for the index) QUIT or mail to pbm-server@cp.tn.tudelft.nl with the following body : BEGIN HELP or SEND HELP or INDEX END ====================================================================== PBEM is published monthly. Please redistribute it far and wide, but do not modify or delete any articles. Write me if you want to redistribute it in other forms; such permission is easy to obtain. For example, some old articles are being translated into German. PLEASE CONTRIBUTE! Our focus is primarily on free wargames, but we're interested in articles about anything relevant. Up