STARWEB EMAIL DISCUSSION GROUP (THE SEDG) (Sponsored by Flying Moose Technologies' Starweb Analyzer - http://www.flyingmoose.ca) VOLUME 85 September 2005 CONTENTS Feature Article - What I Would Like to See in the Starweb Universe Questions - Changes in accounts SEDG Web Page URL The Swap Corner Correspondence FEATURE ARTICLE What I Would Like to See in the Starweb Universe By Elliot Hudes From the title one would think that this would read like a wish list for the game. In actual fact this is really a rant. I realize that FBI is reluctant to put in the time or money required to change Starweb in any significant way. Change would be a risk and what if people didn't like the way the game morphs? After all, it's already an award winning game. But the player base is dwindling. Once you have played a couple dozen of them there isn't a lot that's new under the sun (or any of the suns in the web) Yet, there are things that can be done to revitalize the game. We need to encourage growth in this game or it will eventually whither and die. FBQ For instance - how long has it been since we have seen a Flying Buffalo Quarterly? It's been years. I liked the articles written by players and seeing the standings of games that have been completed. It gave me a chance to see how my buddies and opponents faired in other games. This helps fuel that feeling of community. Why not get one out AND offer it online from the FBI web site. If it made the transition to being an online Ezine then production costs would be eliminated for FBI and they could explore things like message boards where discussion threads on different topics regarding Starweb or any of their games could be explored. Standings Another part of the feedback players enjoy and need to have is current standings. The web page at FBI with the player standings both individual, combined and by character type is years out of date. If you play in a competitive game such as Starweb it is very, very important to know how you stand amongst the active players and in a Starweb Hall of Fame. If you are ranked 92 in the active standings and win your next 3 games, you want to see your name rise in the ranks. You deserve recognition and bragging rights! An out of date set of standings doesn't do anything for you and only leads you to believe that FBI doesn't care enough about their customer base to cater to us a little. We deserve some attention! Variants and Offerings Amongst the more veteran players, which seem to be the majority of the player base these days, we could use some alternatives in the way the game is played to add spice and variety. You don't want to play the same game over and over - explore, build, invade, score. There must be more to life. In FBI's defense, there Change game and the Time Travel game are great examples of this and I encourage them to do more. We need more variants offered as one shot games (in their emailing) to entice us. Also, I feel there is room for some of these Variants to be offered on a recurring basis. One I would like to see is the Intermediate Length game. Too many of the Starweb games end much too early. A game that ends on T15 due to a runaway merchant is just a waste of my money. Yes, I know the answer is to not ally with the merchant but the nature of the game doesn't allow this to easily. First, they are friendly and offer you many things you need in exchange for just letting the merchant do your hauling more efficiently that you can. Second, nobody likes to do it on their own while their perceived enemies may be using a merchant while planning their demise. Yes it's a paranoid mentality but this is a strategic military game and we know it's a good strategy to build up faster than your neighbors. I think that and Intermediate Length Game where all players must choose a VPT on turn 1 between 5000-15,000 would help us have games that last on average 20 turns. At present I believe that FBI assigns a VPT of 1000 for players who fail to put in a request on turn 1. If this were true it would tend to make games shorter. I think that players who don't request a VPT should be left out. If 12 players request a VPT then it should be the average of the sum of 12 and ignore that last 3 instead of having them water down the VPT. Why not have games last a few more turns. It would add to our fun and put a few more dollars into the FBI coffers. I've written about Variants before and except for those I've organized as private games I've not seen FBI offer any up for the public. I suggest that FBI put out in their monthly mailing the Starweb Variant of the Month Club. Here we would be offered a new variant each month to try. Perhaps this is too many - I probably couldn't handle signing up for 12 extra games in a year but even if it was done every other month I think you would see that the veteran players would sign up for more games since I believe they would crave a new challenge. Instead of playing in 1 or 2 standard games for the camaraderie they might be in many new creative games that tweak their interest. Here are some ideas. Bitter End Variants 1) The Art Bitter End Game. Let's copy the style of the usual bitter end game where players must own half the galaxy and transplant it to the artifacts. How about a game where you must win by owning 50, 60 or even 75 of the 100 artifacts? I imagine you might want to play the Art Collector to make use of the more advanced art transfer abilities or you may go for the military advantages of the pirate or berserker to wrest control of the art. 2) Key Bitter End Game. Again, the idea would be to own more than half (126) of the keys in the game. To heck with the worlds. I imagine this would be a game with lots of pirates itching to execute the 3to1 capture and plenty of combat. Snuff Variant - The last person owning a HW which still has 30 industry (may require you to replace destroyed industry) is the winner. Waiting Lists What about the waiting lists? Players, especially new ones need the game they have signed up for to start in a timely fashion. I think if a game has waited for a long time to get started that FBI should mention it in one of their monthly emailings. Usually, when a special game is mentioned it gets filled rather quickly. At this moment I've been on a Partner's Starweb waiting list for over 2 years. For those of you who haven't played this variant it is a game where you join with a friend. You are allied to them from turn 1 and can communicated from the get go. That's it. But it's a nice way to enter a game with a prearranged ally that's allowed by the rules. For me it was going to be the chance to finally ally with a player who has always landed in the opponent camp from me in every SW game we've played together. (So hurry and sign up so we can play :-). The other variant that seems to have an endless waiting list is the ExtraLong Starweb game. For those of you who find that Starweb games end before they get interesting, this is the game for you. With a 25,000 VPT the game usually runs from 25-40 turns. You have enough time to carry out a very full military campaign where acts of war can affect the winner of the game. After all, a merchant or berserker can't run away with the game if he has been EXTERMINATED! I am currently in one such game that will end shortly and we just received turn 34. If you want to explore aspects of the game that are hard to achieve in a 16 turn game - such as roving the spaceways with your 400 ship Apostle conversion armada, your 1000 ship pirate armada or just to plan out a military campaign that will take out your opposing alliance you need to play this variant. Marketing How about marketing the game to encourage sign ups? Have contests, sales or campaigns. Sign up with a friend who has never played and you get 5 free turns. Sign up with 2 friends (could be a partner variant) who have never played and your game is free. Sign up for the new Variant of the Month and the setup fee is waived! Play a dual Multi at the cost of only playing one position. Web Based Advertising I'm not advocating paying for advertising but how about cleaning up the FBI home page. It's quite the mess - with endless writing and many, many hypertext links!! I think you need to put on the main page some graphics that represent your major products (whether it be card games, dice, products or PBM games) and have very little writing. If people want to read about the FBI history or other paraphernalia they can hit a link. Have the big honking graphic that's on the Starweb rule book, the space ships over the planet with a large 'Starweb' banner and have it link to the page that describes the game. Many of FBI customers are computer web designers and I'll bet some could help reorganize the web page into an easier to access and sexier page for very little remuneration. Perhaps a free game of SW in the Web Designers Tournament! OK, my rant is over. I am still a very big fan of the game so I hope that my suggestions will be taken as they are meant - as constructive criticisms and not pot shots. Please consider these ideas as I think a universe without Starweb would be a poor variant indeed. El ---------------------------------------------------------------------- QUESTIONS - Can anyone answer these? This one is directed at FBI - If I start a game under one of my account numbers can I transfer it to another one part way through? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 Currently the StarGame Analyzer is being prepped for Starcon (another game). V2.0 which handles both Starcon and Starweb won't be ready for the Starweb audience for a while. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- CORRESPONDENCE With regards to SEDG 84 (way back in April 2005) - I wrote about my idea of a SCORE EQUALIZATION VARIANT. Paul Balsamo said: El, A few coments about your Score Equalization variant: One, you're killing the apostle. If all he can get is the 10 points per turn after he easily converts the worlds, he will not be able to keep up with an EB. He doesn't get PBB points and 12 points for killing 6 pop won't do it either. Apostles need a few 100+ pop worlds that they can PBB or it ends up costing way too many ships and keys to get to multiple 40-50 pop worlds. At least half the points that an apostle needs to win usually come from pop-kills (at least the way I play). That's with a base of around 1500-2000 converts too (which they wouldn't have with low pop worlds). Two, if you want to limit merchants, why don't you just up the mines on the all the HWs? If I had 20 mines on my HW, I wouldn't really need a merchant. That also frees all the other character types up from the tedious hauling duties and promotes aggression. It'll also speed up the game as you could build 20 ships on turn 2 and more keys will explore instead of hauling back early. This also lets the pirate plunder away knowing he only needs 10 mines per turn producing on other worlds. Three, if FBI can, also limit the mines within the 3-world range. If you have 20 mines on your HW, the REALLY nice mine worlds (with low pop?) for the EB could be placed 4 worlds out. That means the HWs produce, but merchants can't get a lot of metal to them. Four, no PBBs for berserkers. If all they score from are the pop-kills and robotized worlds, that should handicap them enough. This would mean that you could probably increase the pop at some worlds and NOT the mines, giving the advantage back to the EBs (and us poor apostles that never win). Combining all these ideas means that you have 20 mine HWs with scarce mines near to them to haul, high pop worlds up to ring three, then high mine-low pop worlds starting at ring 4. You also really wouldn't need to have so many merchants. Paul Editor: Paul, you are the ultimate Apostle player (check out his awesome ranking). But still - in my scenario I think the Apostle would have a chance if they didn't play for pop-kills but EB like by converting many, many low pop worlds just by breezing by with large armada's. Despite this discussion - Paul and I are the only ones who found this an interesting enough variant to play. Nobody else signed up :-(. Tim Holt asks: >> Elliot, I wanted to toss this question out to the "masses" here. Why hasn't anyone done a nice little web-based version of Starweb? Part of what got me back interested in it all was the idea of making a web-based system where players could log in, view their current game, submit moves, message other players, etc. It seems like such a natural thing you could do with the game. Yes one doesn't want to take away from the "old school" feel of a PBM game, but PBW (play by web) doesn't seem so horrible. I'd think of it like e-bay: primarily text and simple formatting based, sometimes intense and sometimes slow interactions, etc. Besides playing the actual game via the web, a lot of other things could be done - most noteably the idea of fostering community - online forums, game standings,etc. One could probably code up an automatic "news story" generator that would read current games and give a pseudo newspaper like report on them. "Massive fleets from the XXX system today descended on planet YYY, wiping out all ships in orbit and all life forms. More on this developing story as we receive news!" Has this kind of idea ever come up before? Been considered by FBI? If done, would FB be interested in such a thing? << Tim Editor: Actually a web based more advanced Starweblike game is on the web already. It's called Starcon and can be found at www.strategyguild.com. You can do most of what you asked about - log in and view your current game, previous turns, orders, web submission of orders, message (by email) players in the game, online discussion forums, game standings etc. Well, that's it for Volume 85. 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