advert: Conquest and Destiny From: vinson@shiva.seas.upenn.edu (Jack Vinson) Date: Mon, 05 Apr 1993 15:24:31 +0000 CONQUEST and DESTINY This is from the "Game Preface" in the ~30 page manual sent as your "start-up" kit. The manual describes the game pretty well. "Conquest and Destiny is an open-ended game. This means that the main galaxy will exist as long as there is someone willing to play. There is no deadline for winning and you can play at your own pace." The galaxy is broken down into quadrants (27), subquadrants (27/quad), sectors (27/subquad), and subsectors (27/sector) with stars and planets found in the subsectors. According to the manual there are over 4 million planets in the galaxy. Along with the stars and planets are black holes, "wormholes" which can be used to travel across the galaxy, supernovae, pulsars, quasars, and "naked singularities." The game master has also indicated that there are some ringworld and sphereworld planets. One moves around in a variety of ships, starting with the basic Scout and Cutter and various transport ships (for people, troops, mining and refinery equipment). There are spies and commanders and a galactic stock market. There are seven races with possibly more on the way: Marauders kill off other organic races (basically, robots gone awry), Miners can mine where others can't (asteroids and gas giants), Pirates raid planets and steal ships, Power Corporations can build "power centers" which decrease costs of building by 20%, Traders can set up trade centers all over including on your planet if you let them, Transformers are able to increase mining efficiency creating a higher cash flow, Travelers can move planets. The technology level of your race is governed by a "knowledge constant" (KC) which is increased by spending money on research and development. Defenses, weaponry and ships get better as the KC increases. Also things like the ability to go through wormholes or blackholes without totally falling apart come with higher KC. As far as other players are concerned, you can communicate with them via diplomatic couriers in order to begin friendly conversations, start wars or end them, or simply buy/sell services. The game allows for the development of consortiums and alliances. So far, the planet seems to be central to the game. This is where mines and refineries exists and produce credits to spend building more mines, refineries, people, ships, etc. Obviously, one needs to explore the surrounding galaxy as well and try to keep away from others for a while exploring and expanding (or just wipe them off the map). I've played about thirty turns and have been very happy with the game. So far, I have not participated in much battle, so I can't say much about that, but even so the process of searching my home area and finding other races (so far all have been willing to be friendly) has been quite exciting. The game is set up such that one can play by surface or electronic mail, although surface mail play costs 50% more because the game master must enter commands by hand and pay for mailing of results. Actual cost is $0.10 per "event" where each group of 10-120 events is a "turn" which are currently being processed approximately every other day. Time-wise, I spend a couple hours on each turn and thinking about the results of the last one. If you are interested, I have an electronic copy of the rule book that I can send to you (I am vinson@shiva.seas.upenn.edu). If you are really interested and want to play, send me a note, and I will get you in contact with the game master for a registration form. You will get to pick which type of race you would like, the name of your race, and some basic information about your race. Start up fee is $10 which gets you a hardcopy of the rule book and $10 to start playing the game. The Purple Puddle Eater Jack Vinson vinson@unagi.cis.upenn.edu Up