STARWEB EMAIL DISCUSSION GROUP (THE SEDG) (Sponsored by Flying Moose Technologies' Starweb Analyzer - http://www.flyingmoose.ca) VOLUME 83 Feb. 2005 CONTENTS Feature Article - Variants; Breathing New Life into an Older Game By Elliot Hudes Questions - Biggest Blunders SEDG Web Page URL The Swap Corner Correspondence SW-AM/230 (Anonymous, no-Merchant, multi-Starweb game) By Jack Fulmer FEATURE ARTICLE Variants; Breathing New Life into an Older Game By Elliot Hudes We don't like getting stuck in a rut. Playing the same games in the same old way. I know, I know, we all try to vary our playing style. The marauder this game, the diplomat the next, win this one, be a king maker the next time around or for the truly schizoid personality the multiple accounts complete with aliases and their own personalities. But in the end someone once said, "Show me the child and I will show you the man." It's hard not to be who you are within the confines of the rules of the game. So obviously, we should change the rules of the game. That's where variants come in. We change the rules as best we can without invoking a higher deity, in this case a mythical being called a programmer who could conceivably conjure up new code into the tired old genetic codons of the Starweb matrix. The SEDG Anonymous, Not so Bitter End Dual Multi game has begun since our last issue of the SEDG. We found ourselves with only 7 players and decided to play it as a dual multi game where the winner will be declared when a player gets one of his two characters to the Victory Conditions of owning 86 worlds. We even found a volunteer to act as the game historian. He receives the moderator's printout of the whole game each turn and is allowed to interview the players as the game is in play. At the end we will be receiving a history of SW-XM/240 for us to enjoy in the SEDG. What about other Variants? Can they be thought up to satisfy player needs for excitement, new goals or novelty? I say quite vociferously - YES! I've dedicated previous SEDG articles to the topic of Variants and I have even played in a number of private games based on them. But let's examine what resources we can tweak. What do we have at our disposal? I would say that just about anything that appears on the turnsheet could be manipulated without requiring changes to the Starweb Matrix. We can make adjustments to the Character mix and numbers, Worlds - numbers and resources and to the keys themselves. In addition you can also limit art by isolating pieces on worlds that don't connect to the main web. The actual map itself can be created to provide a universe with unique properties. Finally, some of the actual rules of the game could be altered such as in a Bitter End game where the goal is for total worlds owned and not for score. Of course tweaking a rule without touching the coding for the game requires cooperation and honor among the players. For example: If you set a rule that players can only ally with 2 players in the game at a time. This can't be enforced by the SW algorhythm but would require that players follow this agreed upon plan OR had a human being at FBI review the turnsheets each turn to make sure that more allies hadn't turned up on any printouts. Why don't we look at some modifications and where they might lead a game? I recently found out that FBI could put a 16th HW into a game when we were anticipating having 8 players in that SEDG Dual Multi. They can edit the universe with only one drawback. The 16th HW is a HW by virtue of editing it to have 30 industry and the correct set of mines and population. If you lose it you wouldn't get a free probe of it each turn like a 'real' HW. Other tweaks we could give to the resources in the game could be quite interesting, perhaps a snooze or even not viable. Who knows? Perhaps we will have a ground swell of support from our readers to play some of these games. Characters I believe FBI has offered games populated only by pirates. I once ran an all Apostle game because I thought that the character was unique and could play out the game in so many different ways. You could have vast armadas wandering around enemy territory trying to convert the infidels to your creed, declare Jihad and shoot martyrs from your willing or perhaps involuntary target. The players of this game certainly enjoyed it immensely. Would other mono-character games work? All berserkers? Perhaps, because some would prefer to use the combat ability of robotic attack to wrest worlds away from other's control while many would be content to concentrate on the scoring aspects of berserker play. All Merchant? I can't imagine this would work because you could only haul metal for other merchants who wouldn't want to favor you in a deal. How would you get an edge? All Empire Builders? Well there is the potential that combat for world ownership would be the focus similar to that in Bitter End games. The gambit to try and build up Industry for later use might be tried accepting the risk of early extermination while your ship resources are weak. This would lead to a slow early game but might wind up with an exciting finish. All Art Collectors? SNORE! How about limiting play to two character types? What would work well? I think the berserker/Apostle game would be obvious and workable. Pirate/Merchant? I envision many alliances with half of each type. Since we can edit the universe, why not have a game guaranteed to promote friction, such as too many characters and not enough resources along the lines of that classic movie 'Soylent Green'. Let's stick 25 empires among the 255 worlds. In a standard Starweb universe there might not be enough mines in your fair share of 10 worlds to keep your HW at full ship production. Pirate plunders could be debilitating and a valuable strategy for the invading pirate to hurt his prey. Keys, ships, art and the push to score might have to wait until a few characters were eliminated. Of course you could ask FBI to stock enough mines and industry to allow these smaller empires to work at 100% efficiency but I think this would minimize the point of this style of game. I think in such a crowded universe the poor expanders; non- communicators and loners would become a bigger target than they already are. Manipulating the world's resources would also allow other styles of play. I would like to see other player types win the game other than the Berserker and Merchant. Can we create a universe that promotes the Empire Builder scoring while at the same time tames the Merchants and Berserkers? Let's walk through this thought experiment together. A universe rife with high mine worlds could boost the EB nicely. To hobble berserkers a limitation of population size would make PBBs less profitable and perhaps only useful for the points created by the blast itself. How do you limit the damage a merchant could do in a high mine universe? I would say there are three things you can do. You realize they get 8 points per metal dropped on an industrial world up to twice the number of industry. A typical HW is worth up to 60 metal dropped or 480 points a turn. Even having only 1 ally and gifting your HW to them allows a potential 960 points/turn scoring possibility. So here are your three options: Limit HWs to 20 industry, have many merchants in the game and have populations set to less than the mines we have just boosted to limit metal. So now my universe has 20 industry HWs that can only generate 320 points per turn. Still a good merchant with 5 clients (inclucing his own HW) can generate 1600 points/turn. This is where you stock the game with 5 or 6 merchants and let economic forces coerce them to compete. Yes, I know that multiple merchants can join the same alliance and score well but if metal resources are scarce - they won't be able to capitalize on this either. If population on most worlds is less than the mines present you automatically have limited the metal available to these merchants. For example a world might look like this: (Industry=2,mines=12,population=6,limit=8). The EB gets 15 points/turn for this world. There isn't enough population to drive all the industry and the mines and so you would see 2 ships built and only 4 metal produced each turn. The merchant would only see 2 surplus metal for hauling on this world which equates to no more than 16 hauling points for the merchant. A berserker could only score 12 points for a robotic attack (plus 5 points/turn for a robotic world) and a PBB would generate only 200 + 12 = 212 points. Even if a berserker managed to robotize his worlds by T10 and bomb them at the end this world would likely be worth 12 points for kills, 10 turns as robotic = 50 points plus 200 for the PBB for a total of 262 points. On a game timeline of 16-20 turns this puts the worth of this world to a berserker at no better than 13-16 points/turn. A pirate plunder the first time generates 50 points and must wait 3 more turns for recovery, which maps out to about 12.5 points/turn for them. Interestingly an Apostle with a 50 ships key can easily convert this world allowing him to obtain the 10 points/turn for a totally converted world. So here I've designed a world that promotes EB scoring while not providing a lot of extra metal or ships, encourages Apostle scoring and limits Merchant/Berserker scoring. The value of this world remains in the 12-16 point range, which makes all the character types including the pirate on a fairly equal footing for score. Similarly, you could manipulate the industry in the universe so that there is a lot of it around to boost EB scoring but lack of mines or population will limit their usefulness. Or if you are up for a game with tons of ships, jack up the industry and mine count and let everyone play with lots of ships. Here are the typical ranges that I feel would promote the score equalization: (Industry=0-4,mines=10-20,population=2-40,population limit=50) I would add that population never exceeds the mines for any worlds where mines are more than 3. So high population worlds (pop=50) will have a low mine count and not produce large amounts of metal to promote merchants. Obviously I can't take ever factor into account. Would you overly hinder berserkers and require some higher population worlds? Would pirate plunders be so crippling to metal production that you might need more mines? I'm not sure but I think my tweaking of resources would lead to fairer scoring amongst the character types and I would like to see a game where the Pirate or EB tries to win. I would be interested in trying this version at some point. I can think of other resource manipulations that wouldn't necessarily equalize scoring but would lead to offbeat universes that would be interesting to try. The Universe is a Wasteland Scenario The typical worlds would be (Industry=0-1,mines=0-2,populationo=1-40). It's hard to haul, build and score. Life in this universe would be hard. The High Resource Universe (Industry=1-10,Mines=1-10,Population=100-200). The tons of homefleet generated by such a universe would change combat as ambushes became predominant. Sure Merchant and Berserkers can score but I imagine that Empire Builders could also. Lopsided Resource Universes Who says each player's empire should mirror each other? Let's grant some players HWs with 50 industry and 10 keys while others start with the standard 30 (and 5 keys) but they could have the additional 20 industry and keys scattered amongst ring 1 & 2 worlds. The latter empires might be more defensible while the former would be awesome at creating ship armadas. Ships! Here is an interesting resource. Constraints of the programming limit it to 255 keys. Would a universe with 150 keys be interesting (the other 105 keys being segregated on a world cut off from the main web by virtue of having no connections)? Speaking of worlds and connections, is there any way to configure the map for more interesting play? I had done this previously in a private game with my Pocket Universe Map. It contained 5 pockets of 40 worlds that had 3 characters inside. Each pocket had 4 tunnels consisting of 2 biconnectors in a row that hooked up each pocket at ring 3 worlds. The ring 3 worlds were common to 2 or 3 of the empires within. The final 5 worlds were strung in a pentagon and each one connected to a world ring 5 to all the empire HWs within a pocket. We played it once and it appears that the pockets that became aware of their geometry and allied together did better than the pocket that didn't ally and it was easily conquered. So you see, the Starweb universe can still throw you a new curve and surprise you. Shall we play a game? Elliot ---------------------------------------------------------------------- QUESTIONS - Can anyone answer these? Last issue I asked: What was your biggest blunder? I have not received any feedback on this question but I would still be interested in hearing some tall tails. I remember one pitched battle where I transferred ships to the enemy pirate allowing him to blow away many of my ships and capture the survivors. The next turn he asked 'What the hell do you call that maneuver?" I calmly explained that my fleet captain had mutinied ;-). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- STARWEB EMAIL DISCUSSION GROUP - is now available on the web. Look for our new MAPPER'S SECTION on the SEDG Web Page. http://www.accessv.com/~somnos/sedg.htm ----------------------------------------------------------------------- FEATURE - THE SWAP CORNER STARWEB ANALYZER V1.5 - It's on the web site and it's no longer a Beta! Go get it! As before - registered clients of any previous V1.x version can upgrade for free. www.flyingmoose.ca There has been a lot of movement with The Starweb Analyzer V2.0 but it will be a while before it's launched. It is being built in the Dotnet framework and has a lot of potential for neat new features but at present it isn't as advanced as V1.5. It is being alpha tested by a few diehard fans and I will report more about it when we have gotten a little further along. Elliot ----------------------------------------------------------------------- CORRESPONDENCE Jack Fulmer writes: El, the additional variant SW game that I previously mentioned to you has finished. It was an anonymous, no-merchant, multi-SW game. Normal anonymous multi-SW rules applied except that no one could have a Merchant as one of their characters. Rick sent out a call for players in the summer of 2003 and I responded. I'm not sure if the original idea for this variant was Rick's or another player's. It wasn't my idea but I jumped at a chance to play it. As I began to suspect on turn 6 or so there were actually only four player including me. All of us had at least one character that needed lots of worlds to score well. So splitting things four ways instead of five ways was probably OK with everyone. With both a Pirate and an Empire Builder I certainly was not going to complain. As it turned out all four of us were experienced players. No surprise there I suppose. My basic plan was obvious... 1) Capture as many worlds as possible during the exploration phase of the game. 2) Get all worlds to my Pirate and EB fast! Then rotate them between the two characters as indicated for maximum scoring. 3) Pick another player to attack. This was so that I could get more worlds for my world-hungry guys and so the Berserker could kill someone else's population. If successful this part of the plan would also eliminate one of my rivals chance to win the game. 4) At the appropriate time (probably middle to end game) build maximum industry on a few worlds for the EB. This was so that the EB could score from the fewest possible worlds while the Pirate got everything else to maintain a winning scoring rate. Once I figured out with some certainty what the other players characters were I set out to beat their Pirates. In the end my EB was down to 17 worlds with more going to my Pirate on every turn. At the end my EB was still scoring 500+ points per turn due to worlds like the two shown below. The world info is copied from the final turn of the game. W128 (9,71,140) [APOLLO] (Industry=168/2,Metal=2,Mines=5,Population=100, Limit=100,Turns=3) W210 (39,72,115,125) [APOLLO](Industry=127/9,Metal=9,Mines=5,Population=100, Limit=100,Turns=2,I-Ships=4) The reason there was almost no metal on these worlds at the end of the game is simple. I knew the game was about to end so I stopped hauling and turned as many ships as possible into industry on the last two turns. By the end of the game I wound up transferring all but two keys to the Pirate. Of course I plundered as fast as I possibly could throughout the game. The plan worked but it was a hotly contested game and a lot of fun. Here are the final results. SW-AM/230 (Anonymous, no-Merchant, multi-Starweb game) Duration: 24 turns from 13 September, 2003 to 24 August, 2004 Final Results -- Victory-point limit was 10000 (1) Jack Fulmer [APOLLO]: Empire-Builder (Score=10373,Worlds=17,Ships=25,Industry=359, Mines=89,People=1428,Artifacts=13) [FOMALHAUT]: Pirate (Score=10356,Worlds=47,Keys=60,Ships=366,Industry=8, Mines=110,People=1101,Artifacts=8) [KAPRA]: Berserker (Score=10422,Worlds=3,Keys=2,Ships=11,Industry=31, Mines=9,Robots=52,Artifacts=12) (2) [JANUS]: Pirate (Score=9464,Worlds=57,Keys=49,Ships=804,Industry=80, Mines=195,People=2866,Artifacts=1) [MENKAR]: Berserker (Score=10425,Worlds=35,Keys=10,Ships=115,Industry=37, Mines=54,People=76,Robots=136) [LEMURIA]: Artifact-Collector (Score=12228,Worlds=3,Keys=4,Ships=37, People=187,Artifacts=33,Bonus=1500) (3) [ZANIAH]: Pirate (Score=7160,Worlds=20,Keys=55,Ships=1127,Industry=4, Mines=45,People=670,Artifacts=5) [ATLANTIS]: Apostle (Score=8498,Worlds=19,Keys=11,Ships=146,Industry=14, Mines=90,Converts=1469,Artifacts=5) [YAMA]: Berserker (Score=8242,Worlds=26,Keys=19,Ships=286,Industry=122, Mines=57,Robots=267,Artifacts=7) (4) [RIGEL]: Pirate (Score=5139,Keys=26,Ships=102,Artifacts=8) [QUARK]: Berserker (Score=6694,Worlds=5,Keys=8,Ships=28,Industry=3, Mines=13,Robots=16,Artifacts=4) [KOCHAB]: Apostle (Score=4753,Worlds=1,Keys=4,Ships=9,Mines=7, Converts=70) El, I have not been in touch with any of the other players. Since it was an anonymous game maybe you will want to delete their real names before publishing this message. It's your choice as editor. Just keep my email address private! If you can convince one or more of the other players to write their account(s) of the game I would greatly appreciate it. I would eagerly read them. Regards... Jack Editor: Well Jack I did drop a note to the players that I recognized but couldn't find anyone to write their view of the game. I wanted everyone to enjoy your account so I'm providing it here. I removed the names of the players as requested (except for yours). El Gary Schaefers writes: EL - Feel free to distribute this to your list of ppl. I will send in my set up data in a separate email. I welcome the opportunity to play in a private SW BITTER END GAME. I don't know why you think 125 worlds would be too much, that is what FBI runs regularly. They do run ANON BE games as well. But since you announced your game criteria, I would like to join regardless of the Ending Number of Worlds. Since it is not set in stone, why not up the ante to 100? The problem with ANON Games in an even tighter circle is that somebody is bound to be tempted to talk to their friends, and then start breaking the ANON part of the game. This is unfortunate, but often happens when humans are involved. I would hope that everybody who signs on will honor that NO TALK clause, to the extent of the law. If you can't be honorable, don't join!! If you do not get 10 or more players to join, consider each player who wants to play, to run 2 positions, or even 3 if there are 4 or 5 who want to play. Alternately, there could be a semi-ANON version, depending on the number of responses you get. Teams of 3 positions could talk to each other. These 3 positions could be played by 1 player, 2 players (one plays 2, one plays 1), or by 3 individual players. I would have no problem playing 3 positions, and keeping ANON. Similarly, there could be teams of 2 positions. Those 2 positions could communicate between themselves ONLY. Again, the 2 positions could be played by 1 person running 2 positions, or by 2 players talking to each other. This gives you some flexibility in setting up the game, depending on the # of responses you get. Say 10 ppl want to play, and 4 of them indicate they will play more than 1 position if needed. You could start a 10 player game. Or you could partner 6 ppl into 3 teams of 2 (6 positions) and let the other 4 players play 2 positions each ( 8 positions) giving you a 14 position PARTNERS/ANONYMOUS/BITTER-END Game. (whew - hard to read that, huh?) FBI offers the ANON/MULTI/BITTER-END SW Variant, which I shall continue to sign up for. Sometimes it ends up being a short game - LOL. Hope you get some interest in your attempt to start a new Game, and thanks for all the effort you put into the SW email Discussion Group Newsletter. I enjoy reading the issues :-), and an sorry that I am not a regular contributor. :-( Good Luck in gaming in 2005. Best wishes to all your readers. Gary Editor: Thanks Gary. I will save your note and use it in an upcoming SEDG. So far I have 7 signups so your idea for a dual multi did happen. Similarly I have an open mind about your other suggestions, which helped inspire me to write the present article on other Variants. Perhaps in future games. Well, that's it for Volume 83. Don't be afraid to submit articles or suggestions. They don't have to be long. Address your correspondence to Elliot Hudes at somnos@compuserve.com