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I said huge dense in the first post. But probably large would be better. I just can't see it working properly in small.

A straight-out everyone-plays-3-races would be extremely fun in small, I'd agree.

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You should consider a medium universe. I can't imagine anyone controlling 1/5 of a huge dense universe or even more having fun... At least not anyone with a reduced amount of time

Hey, that's 945 planets (910 in large), that makes 189 planets per player just on average. The 108 in Medium Dense seems much more playable IMO.

Just my

Andreas

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Oh ho. A challenge not for the faint of heart! I'd love to play this one.

A Huge Dense is probably too much, though. I'd settle for Huge Normal. Anything smaller wouldn't be worth three races to control.

As for the Habs, since they're different sects, there should be some leeway, say 5 clicks max in each hab, between them. But that's a minor thing that would mostly allow a reasonable intersettling of the different sects as well as more competition with the enemies.

The main thing is: will the allied sects live near each other? Or be scattered away, possibly mixed with untrustworthy aliens?

Also, I guess this would mandate a setting of everyone to Enemy and also no diplomacy nor tech trade nor any other kind of trading?

What would be the Victory Conditions?

You could set it up either by using some of the planet and race editors, or the old-fashioned way, by creating the universe, setting research for everybody and force-genning a number or turns. Or even by using some item editor to create cost-zero scrappers for the advanced techs you'd want every race to have. There's a widely used Mod for this last one.

Cheers,

PS: I may not have the time to play, unfortunately...

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wizard wrote on Thu, 27 November 2008 17:41

I can't imagine anyone controlling 1/5 of a huge dense universe or even more having fun... At least not anyone with a reduced amount of time

You have a point with the amount of time, but, consider that to win you'd need to control (not necessarily inhabit or exploit) at least *half* the whole universe.

It would be *huge* fun for those with enough free time.

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m.a@stars[/email] wrote on Fri, 28 November 2008 05:39]Oh ho. A challenge not for the faint of heart! I'd love to play this one.

Exactly what I was thinking

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A Huge Dense is probably too much, though. I'd settle for Huge Normal. Anything smaller wouldn't be worth three races to control.

How big was Schizophrenia? I was thinking either Huge Normal, Huge Dense, or Large Packed. A bit of a toss up. Huge Dense doesn't have that many more stars than Huge Normal, you know.

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As for the Habs, since they're different sects, there should be some leeway, say 5 clicks max in each hab, between them. But that's a minor thing that would mostly allow a reasonable intersettling of the different sects as well as more competition with the enemies.

Meh, might be worth it.

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The main thing is: will the allied sects live near each other? Or be scattered away, possibly mixed with untrustworthy aliens?

Random, I'd be thinking.

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Also, I guess this would mandate a setting of everyone to Enemy and also no diplomacy nor tech trade nor any other kind of trading?

You could tech trade with yourself, of course! I was thinking about allowing inter-species negotiation, but realised that it'd quickly get all over the place since noone knows which races are the same, and you're not allowed to tell.

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What would be the Victory Conditions?

50% colonisation between your three races would be the best RP victory condition. Also the Blight must be exterminated for any other player to win.

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You could set it up either by using some of the planet and race editors, or the old-fashioned way, by creating the universe, setting research for everybody and force-genning a number or turns. Or even by using some item editor to create cost-zero scrappers for the advanced techs you'd want every race to have. There's a widely used Mod for this last one.

Hmm. How would you get rid of spare pop and mins though?

Another thing, I'd probably need someone else as host, as even though I'm a beginner, I'd like to play the Blight.

[Updated on: Thu, 27 November 2008 23:27]

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Altruist wrote on Fri, 28 November 2008 04:16

To cut down on the load of making orders for 3 races... you could make it an alliance game.

Alliances can be broken and rearranged. The word you're needing is Team Game, where it is also common that teammates do each other's turns if needed.

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"There are 5 Teams of each 3 players. Teams are made pre-game and may/must coordinate their race designs with each other according to the following rules...."

Alternatively, some "Teams" might consist of just one player...

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But I'll have the same problem as Andreas, no time to play and especially from huge or big games I better keep away since they aren't my style.

I'm not sure about what time I might devote to play, but I'd sure love to. Big wars are my style!

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magic9mushroom wrote on Fri, 28 November 2008 05:26

How big was Schizophrenia? I was thinking either Huge Normal, Huge Dense, or Large Packed. A bit of a toss up. Huge Dense doesn't have that many more stars than Huge Normal, you know.

And now everyone else does too... Sigh. At least that will weed out the faint-hearted and/or the overbusy.

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Meh, might be worth it.

Well, since the playground is big, it would allow a better exploitation of the land...

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Random, I'd be thinking.

Ouch. That's a quite different game. Harder to techtrade with yourself, harder to intersettle, harder to coordinate and defend... And a huge boon to those lucky enough to land one or more sects besides each other.

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You could tech trade with yourself, of course! I was thinking about allowing inter-species negotiation, but realised that it'd quickly get all over the place since noone knows which races are the same, and you're not allowed to tell.

Plus, you don't really want to see several Teams allied and jointly fighting.

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50% colonisation between your three races would be the best RP victory condition. Also the Blight must be exterminated for any other player to win.

Fair enough. Will the Blight be located randomly too?

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How would you get rid of spare pop and mins though?

The hard way: You build a few dozen fancy LFs for them, load all the spares, then delete the LF design. It's called "spacing".

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I'd probably need someone else as host, as even though I'm a beginner, I'd like to play the Blight.

Good thinking. Plus, the setup might not be trivial, after all.

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magic9mushroom wrote on Fri, 28 November 2008 05:29

But the whole point is to have players controlling three races. *facepalm*

What's probably meant is that the turns should be genned with enough time for everyone to do their races, which could take several days, thus it would be a long slow (but not at all boring!) game with no more than 3 turns/week, likely only two or even, in the crucial stages, one.

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m.a@stars[/email] wrote on Fri, 28 November 2008 22:09] magic9mushroom wrote on Fri, 28 November 2008 05:26 How big was Schizophrenia? I was thinking either Huge Normal, Huge Dense, or Large Packed. A bit of a toss up. Huge Dense doesn't have that many more stars than Huge Normal, you know. And now everyone else does too... Sigh. At least that will weed out the faint-hearted and/or the overbusy.

Huh?

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Quote: Meh, might be worth it. Well, since the playground is big, it would allow a better exploitation of the land...

OTOH, your sects should be far enough away from each other till the midgame that intersettlement isn't really necessary.

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Quote: Random, I'd be thinking. Ouch. That's a quite different game. Harder to techtrade with yourself, harder to intersettle, harder to coordinate and defend... And a huge boon to those lucky enough to land one or more sects besides each other.

I'd actually prefer remapped with the sects spread out along the edges, spaced out so they wouldn't be next to their teammates, with the Blight in the centre. I don't know much about remapping though. I have no idea how to use most of the utilities.

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Quote: You could tech trade with yourself, of course! I was thinking about allowing inter-species negotiation, but realised that it'd quickly get all over the place since noone knows which races are the same, and you're not allowed to tell. Plus, you don't really want to see several Teams allied and jointly fighting.

Exactly. But more to the point, a player could get one of his races to ally with one of another player's races while waging war on it with another of his races, and this would become far too complicated.

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Quote: 50% colonisation between your three races would be the best RP victory condition. Also the Blight must be exterminated for any other player to win. Fair enough. Will the Blight be located randomly too?

Actually, now that I think about it, 50% is pretty dumb. Not many races will have that sort of effective hab. Requiring it of the Blight is OK, though, I think, if they started in the centre. After all, a 3i AR benefits by colonising EVERYTHING. As I said above, I'd prefer them remapped to the centre but don't know how.

EDIT: Actually, a better idea for a victory condition would be a fixed resources number, to have "rebuilt your empire". What's a decent res count for controlling half of a huge/dense universe? I'd be thinking something along the lines of a million resources to win, your thoughts?

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Quote: How would you get rid of spare pop and mins though? The hard way: You build a few dozen fancy LFs for them, load all the spares, then delete the LF design. It's called "spacing".

Forgot about that. They'd have to be SFs/colony ships though, as only those who took knowledge of Construction would have LFs from the get-go.

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Quote: I'd probably need someone else as host, as even though I'm a beginner, I'd like to play the Blight. Good thinking. Plus, the setup might not be trivial, after all.

The setup would indeed be non-trivial if we were to do remapping, as well as research the correct tech for everybody. Speaking of the tech, we'd have to ban GR, wouldn't we.

[Updated on: Fri, 28 November 2008 08:46]

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magic9mushroom wrote on Fri, 28 November 2008 14:02

Huh?

Some are afraid of "dense" but not of "normal".

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OTOH, your sects should be far enough away from each other till the midgame that intersettlement isn't really necessary.

As I guessed, a quite different type of game. The sects cannot truly be said to have been "reunited". At most they have "sighted" eachother.

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I'd actually prefer remapped with the sects spread out along the edges, spaced out so they wouldn't be next to their teammates,

That will force each "sect" to be fully able to fend for itself. A different set of tradeoffs needs to be made in their design.

On the other hand, that would open up an interesting "guessing" game, at least to avoid fighting more enemies than you knew you were fighting...

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with the Blight in the centre. I don't know much about remapping though. I have no idea how to use most of the utilities.

Can be done. I've seen it in other games. Someone out there must know how.

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more to the point, a player could get one of his races to ally with one of another player's races while waging war on it with another of his races, and this would become far too complicated.

Schizophrenia, indeed.

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Actually, now that I think about it, 50% is pretty dumb. Not many races will have that sort of effective hab.

But they can "fake" it by colonising enough red planets to reach the magic number. And to do that they'll need to effectively control that much space lest the competition messes their setup.

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EDIT: Actually, a better idea for a victory condition would be a fixed resources number, to have "rebuilt your empire". What's a decent res count for controlling half of a huge/dense universe? I'd be thinking something along the lines of a million resources to win, your thoughts?

No clue. Total res output would depend on race settings. Plus you need to sum all three sects. Plus, even the winner of a war can see their res drop. It's easier to declare winner by vote or make do with the percentage of planets effectively controlled.

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Forgot about that. They'd have to be SFs/colony ships though, as only those who took knowledge of Construction would have LFs from the get-go.

And could give those ships to the races that don't have them.

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The setup would indeed be non-trivial if we were to do remapping, as well as research the correct tech for everybody. Speaking of the tech, we'd have to ban GR, wouldn't we.

Only if you go with everyone researching their own techs instead of using zero-cost scrappers.

Although a GR race would research more than one tech, they could find themselves far from the higher tech levels, so they would still need some kind of tradeoff.

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Some are afraid of "dense" but not of "normal".

Yeah, well. There's always some people who don't actually know the numbers. It's ~800 vs. ~940.

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As I guessed, a quite different type of game. The sects cannot truly be said to have been "reunited". At most they have "sighted" eachother. That will force each "sect" to be fully able to fend for itself. A different set of tradeoffs needs to be made in their design. On the other hand, that would open up an interesting "guessing" game, at least to avoid fighting more enemies than you knew you were fighting...

See what I mean about going insane? And this is without allowing diplomacy. Also, I never said "reunited". I said "reestablished contact".

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But they can "fake" it by colonising enough red planets to reach the magic number. And to do that they'll need to effectively control that much space lest the competition messes their setup. No clue. Total res output would depend on race settings. Plus you need to sum all three sects. Plus, even the winner of a war can see their res drop. It's easier to declare winner by vote or make do with the percentage of planets effectively controlled.

Still harsh. 1M res shouldn't be impossible, given that a universe full of 15 Expert AIs at war with each other can put out close to that by 2550, and most human designed races are better than those in res/space (they were almost all Robotoids).

Problem with consensus is of course that nobody knows who's who.

Maybe a HW-based victory system could work?

On GR: Why would anyone take it anyway in a universe where you start with a high level of 1 tech (all the research you'll ever do on it probably, in 2 cases) and have 2 tech-trade partners? Seems sorta pointless.

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magic9mushroom wrote on Fri, 28 November 2008 17:26

Yeah, well. There's always some people who don't actually know the numbers. It's ~800 vs. ~940.

Me I love these numbers, but some would object to nearly 20% more planets...

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I never said "reunited". I said "reestablished contact".

It takes more work to juggle three different races, each playing for itself, instead of having them all sharing the same corner of space. Challenge is bigger, too.

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Still harsh. 1M res shouldn't be impossible, given that a universe full of 15 Expert AIs at war with each other can put out close to that by 2550, and most human designed races are better than those in res/space (they were almost all Robotoids).

I'd have to check some old games to see what kind of resource output were the winning races getting. But I'd say anything over 300k would be unusual.

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Problem with consensus is of course that nobody knows who's who.

How it usually goes is this:
Player1 announces: I won! I beat you all!
Player2 answers: No you didn't! I can yet win!
let the slaughter continue ...
repeat until no-one answers

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Maybe a HW-based victory system could work?

Possibly. You need to be careful to plug any loopholes, though.

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On GR: Why would anyone take it anyway in a universe where you start with a high level of 1 tech (all the research you'll ever do on it probably, in 2 cases) and have 2 tech-trade partners? Seems sorta pointless.

Perhaps for extra RW points. Who knows.

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iztok wrote on Fri, 28 November 2008 20:06

After the 100-turns gen I had 110 planets. Just balancing minerals and setting queues took me 2 to 3 hours. When we started fighting, a turn took 4-6 hours. I usually did it in two shifts. Very soon we turned to "1 turn per week" gens.

Yours must have been a more "interesting" situation than what I had, but for my 3i-HE holding 100+ planets in a Team Game I set up the queues just once after a 100-year gen, bulding basically the cheapest of my main nubs, then tweaking maybe 10% of queues to add another kind of ship here and there. Total time per turn: 15 mins. Plus another 15 mins for balancing whatever few minerals I still had a surplus of, and up to 30 mins for warfleet moving. I usually did each turn in two shifts too.

But coordinating the Team by email took at least five times that, per turn. That was hard work. That's why we dropped to 1 turn per week too.

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m.a@stars wrote on Sat, 29 November 2008 06:33

magic9mushroom wrote on Fri, 28 November 2008 17:26 Yeah, well. There's always some people who don't actually know the numbers. It's ~800 vs. ~940. Me I love these numbers, but some would object to nearly 20% more planets...

Meh.

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Quote: I never said "reunited". I said "reestablished contact". It takes more work to juggle three different races, each playing for itself, instead of having them all sharing the same corner of space. Challenge is bigger, too.

S'pose. Still fun, though, methinks.

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Quote: Still harsh. 1M res shouldn't be impossible, given that a universe full of 15 Expert AIs at war with each other can put out close to that by 2550, and most human designed races are better than those in res/space (they were almost all Robotoids). I'd have to check some old games to see what kind of resource output were the winning races getting. But I'd say anything over 300k would be unusual.

Hmm...

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Quote: Problem with consensus is of course that nobody knows who's who. How it usually goes is this: Player1 announces: I won! I beat you all! Player2 answers: No you didn't! I can yet win! let the slaughter continue ... repeat until no-one answers

Problem: Player 2 doesn't know which races Player 1 is, and vice versa. How would a victory announcement work then?

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Quote: Maybe a HW-based victory system could work? Possibly. You need to be careful to plug any loopholes, though.

Such as?

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Quote: On GR: Why would anyone take it anyway in a universe where you start with a high level of 1 tech (all the research you'll ever do on it probably, in 2 cases) and have 2 tech-trade partners? Seems sorta pointless. Perhaps for extra RW points. Who knows.

Yeah. Well, I'm not going to be hosting, so whoever steps up can decide that themselves.

{mod edit: fixed quote}

[Updated on: Mon, 01 December 2008 07:57] by Moderator

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magic9mushroom wrote on Sat, 29 November 2008 03:26

S'pose. Still fun, though, methinks.

Of course. Only it does not come cheap, in terms of time spent.

I checked and old game where a Team of 6 races (long story) managed to control nearly half a Huge Packed galaxy. None of them had more than 265k res, including the 2 that weren't HE, but all 6 added up had just over 1Mill resources, despite having suffered some losses in the war.

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Problem: Player 2 doesn't know which races Player 1 is, and vice versa. How would a victory announcement work then?

Either they fight against those declaring themselves winners, or they don't, allowing the other to win. Of course the winner must declare which race is winning.

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Quote: Possibly. You need to be careful to plug any loopholes, though. Such as?

It would depend. If you give points for taking HWs, or inhabiting them, or controlling their orbits, how easy would it be for people to attain the nominal Victory without going to all the work of actually being the best/strongest.

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m.a@stars wrote on Sat, 29 November 2008 21:46

Of course. Only it does not come cheap, in terms of time spent.

Hmm, I guess. Still, it wouldn't make much sense if the colonies spread all over the galaxy had been right next to each other.

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I checked and old game where a Team of 6 races (long story) managed to control nearly half a Huge Packed galaxy. None of them had more than 265k res, including the 2 that weren't HE, but all 6 added up had just over 1Mill resources, despite having suffered some losses in the war.

So, you think 1M resources over all your races is a decent victory condition?

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Either they fight against those declaring themselves winners, or they don't, allowing the other to win. Of course the winner must declare which race is winning.

But you'd have to declare all of your races. Which you aren't meant to do.

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It would depend. If you give points for taking HWs, or inhabiting them, or controlling their orbits, how easy would it be for people to attain the nominal Victory without going to all the work of actually being the best/strongest.

Yeah, yeah, I know. As I said, 1M res looks good to me.

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magic9mushroom wrote on Sat, 29 November 2008 12:46

Still, it wouldn't make much sense if the colonies spread all over the galaxy had been right next to each other.

Indeed. It's an interesting variant from the usual Team games. Let's hope more people are interested.

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So, you think 1M resources over all your races is a decent victory condition?

I think it could work, but perhaps not fairly enough for all race designs and playstyles.

Another possible way would be "exceed 2nd place score by 30%" or something similar. That would be a bit more flexible.

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But you'd have to declare all of your races. Which you aren't meant to do.

I see. The proposed winner would then have to run the risk of declaring all, or possibly declare win just for one, and risk that one being targeted by everyone else. And then using the other two to defend the main one...

It's why only those actually winning, or at least ready to face the opposition, should declare a win.

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