Belter From: rlewis@isi.edu (Roger Lewis) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1991 01:05:29 +0000 Well, now that I know I'm among fiends..er..um.. friends :-) I'll bother to post some ideas I've developed about Belter (in my whole two turns of experience) :-) and see what y'all think. I'm sure I'm probably overlooking some things, so feel free to point out any flaws. ----- 1: Although a certain amount of mining and exploration seems useful, doesn't it make sense to put the majority of your resources into Factory production? I say this mainly because it seems like it'd be much easier to guard your home colony than to guard your colony AND a bunch of asteroids. Of course, maybe I've only seen boring (not particularly valuable) asteroids so far. Valuable asteroids might be worth fighting for. ----- 2: With the weird (to me) concept of only being able to build mines in adjacent sectors, do belter games turn into cosmic games of "go"? (With people trying to block each other's expansion and contain each other to smaller areas)? ----- 3: It seems that you can only "assault" home colonies. Am I correct in seeing that although you can "raid" another player's mine, that there is no way to remove a company's control of a sector, once they've established a mine there? ----- 4: Independent vs. Directed research: 10 scientists upped my Pharmaceutical rating by 21 points in Independent research. My only expense is their salaries (10 wealth). In the same turn I put 50 scientists to work on Mining technology, pay their salaries (50 wealth) and pump in 280 wealth into their research and my mining rating rose by 54.1 points. It seems that I got a better bang for the buck from my independent research. I noticed something similar the turn before that also. I'm *almost* tempted not to waste wealth on Directed research, but instead to hire more scientists with the same wealth I've been putting into Directed research, and then let the scientists ALL work on their own pet projects. On a similar note... What would happen if you put 50 scientists into directed research and DID NOT give them any additional money for equipment? ----- 5: The rules say that a player is allowed a maximum of three positions in each game. Do people play three positions each (with double turns)? [shudder] :-) If so, that makes the "share technology" command pretty gross, doesn't it? (I'm only playing one company, while I'm learning the game. I don't know what I'll do in later games.) ----- 6: My first attempt with the "new projects" command was a waste. What kind of results do you tend to get from them? It seems that you are using TWO commands for the one result, so you'd want it to be worthwhile, since the number of commands reflects REAL money spent on the game (as compared to mere colony wealth), and you could be doing other things with those same two commands. (I say two commands because on turn 1 for instance you issue the N command. The next turn you issue another command for the project that was suggested.) ----- -Roger rlewis@venera.isi.edu Referenced By Up