Re: Even MORE galaxy suggestions...

From: amead@s.psych.uiuc.edu (Alan Mead)

Date: Sat, 08 Aug 1992 17:18:19 +0000

>>In another article, someone else suggested that the war status be
>>possibly different for each world with respect to each player.  The real
>>problem is that the turn sequence is 1) move then 2) fire automatically.
>>If instead the turn sequence were 1) fire under orders then 2) move,
>>this would give the players more flexibility than any imaginable
>>automatic firing orders.  Whenever possible, think about the fundamental
>>game design/mechanics, rather than introducing new commands.

>Hmmm... this is an interesting one; introduce a manual Fire command, to
>be executed before any movement.

I've played games with manual fire, and they all identified "fleets" in
some static way.  Public group numbers wouldn't work because they
change from turn to turn.

So, maybe you fire at a player at a world.  Does that mean you can only
fire at one player?  Does he or she automatically fire back?

One feature of Galaxy that I like is a (perceived) philosophy towards
having things run automagically.  In contrast to most games, even if
you miss your turn, transports ply their routes, your commerce builds,
your warships engage attackers.  And if you don't miss your turn (and
this is really the important point), you have a lot less to do each
turn.  That means you can control a HUGE empire.  A lot of games limit
the galaxy to something like 256 worlds and players rarely have more
than 50 worlds.  (Of course, the average player probably had fewer than
50 in Galaxy too, but empires of 75 or 100 are controllable.)

So then think about how much more complicated your turn is going to be
if you have to order a substantial amount of fire manually.

I don't see what's wrong with having War statuses at specific worlds.
Then you could always switch the order to 1) fire 2) move.   It
wouldn't add that much to playing complexity, and would probably be
easier to implement.  It's fairly rare (in my experience) that that
first comat takes place anyway.  Mostly, it just happens when someone
gets betrayed.

-alan

References

Even MORE galaxy suggestions...
d8ilvja@dtek.chalmers.se (Jakob Ilves)
Wed, 05 Aug 1992 21:41:09 +0000
Re: Even MORE galaxy suggestions...
hall@kronos.arc.nasa.gov (Michael Hall)
Thu, 06 Aug 1992 20:03:25 +0000
Re: Even MORE galaxy suggestions...
rwallace@unix1.tcd.ie (russell wallace)
Fri, 07 Aug 1992 11:39:51 +0000