Re: BSE Question

From: gl8f@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl)

Date: Wed, 07 Oct 1992 16:07:12 +0000

In article <1992Oct7.152704.514@dct.ac.uk> mcsdc1ts@dct.ac.uk writes:

>	I will have you believe that FET is not
>		Frontier Exploitation and Terrorism

Well, who knows the real truth behind the facade? Only the shadow
knows.

>	Please would you care to enclose any hints, tips e.t.c.
>	next time you post (serious hint's e.t.c.).

Beyond the Stellar Empire is, in my humble opinion, a really sucky
game. However, understanding the warts is the key to success.

The biggest screwup for new players in the old game, which probably
exists in the new, is that the price for shipping is too low. 1
stellar per mass unit per system? The true cost is much higher, on
order 10 stellars per week traveled. The scam in the old days was to
get the GM's to loan you lots of game-money to buy GM-produced
manufactured goods for a colony, set up as close as possible to the
"home system", ship in mining and manufacturing goods, and then start
running valuable stuff like pulac or fissionables back to the "home
system", and buying more mining and manufacturing stuff.  There are 2
bad consequences to this:

1) the operation produces positive cash flow, driving inflation
   of game-money.
2) nobody ships in metals/nonmetals because they aren't worth it,
   which doesn't have any bad game results, but it shows that the
   economy is broken.

The only way to "win" at the shipping game is to either operate a lot
of cargo ships yourself, running your own cargoes to your own colony,
or to sucker other players into running cargo for you, spending their
real-world money to make you game-rich.

No doubt they have attempted to tweak the economics by making
manufactured goods hard to buy from GM sources, but the reality is
that a healthy economy will never develop between players, because
anyone with a manufacturing facility is better off just keeping their
output than selling it for any price.

So, if you want to win, cash in on every source of GM manufactured
goods you can find, and then either spend lots of your real world
money shipping it or start suckering other players early. I did quite
well in the original game by trading GM-produced manufactured goods
for shipping services -- only GTT players were efficiently able to
turn (worthless) stellars (cash) into something useful.

You should also beware the highly variable size & production from
mining deposits. It was possible to find deposits 10 times more
lucrative than "normal" in the old game, and a person on such a
deposit has an enormous advantage.

Finally, you should beware inconsistant moderation on alien races,
special actions, and research. That depends on the GM's, and I don't
think it is humanly possible to do right in the BSE universe.

Hope this helps. Perhaps you can comment about what the GM's are
trying to do, if anything, to "fix" things this time around.

-- greg

References

Re:BSE Question
mcsdc1ts@dct.ac.uk
Wed, 07 Oct 1992 14:27:04 +0000