 Madman |
 | Officer Cadet 1st Year |
Messages: 228
Registered: November 2003
Location: New Zealand | |
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I'm interested in exploring a game idea that would bring politics a little more to the fore, and would like feedback or expressions of interest in playing on the following rules, to work out whether to continue the idea. If there is enough interest, I'll run a game.
The basic idea is that one of the races (this would almost certainly be the host, I'd be willing to do this) is an old established but low tech empire that lets the other players (the new 'client' races) do all the work, and taxes this work to sustain itself. As the new races get more powerful, they may (or may not) challenge this regime. The Empire's role would be to try and keep the peace by persuasion, sustainable tax rates, threats, bribery, military action, etc., and the new races try and determine whether or when it is in their best interest to stay with the Empire or rebel. I kind of expect things to eventually go very badly for the Empire, but you never know ...
The game is set up so that normal players have very few special 'rules' they have to follow. The Empire starts very powerful, but has lots of rules.
Short version of rules:
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Normal non AccBBS Stars! game, except for the presence of a powerful neighbour who demands mineral taxes. Over time, the power difference disappears ...
Longer version of rules (this is only an outline, I can flesh them out later):
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There are three classes of race - the Empire, the Spacer Guild (tax collectors), and the client races. The Empire and the Guild would be played by the host. The Empire and the Guild would have a 100 year 'jump start' - every other race would start exactly as if the 100 years hadn't happened (i.e. population, minerals, defenses, and ships will be 'put back' to their 2400 values, and no research will occur).
The Empire would be a wide hab CA race that would start with several rules it had to follow:
(1) The Empire starts (after the 100 years) with no mines built, and also performs no remote mining or mineral alchemy. All minerals must come from taxes. (Actually, the Empire would preform MA (at the slow rate) after getting bio 26).
(2) The Empire may research bio freely, however for other techs, it must be presented with an item of a particular tech level before it may research to that tech. For example, the first time the empire is gifted a large freighter, it may research con to 8. It may also research to 26 once given the highest component that can be given in each field (such as the Trans-Star 10).
(3) The Empire starts somewhere near the middle of the map, and does not colonize planets beyond a predefined area.
(4) The Empire starts with a large but low-tech fleet of ships (enough to enforce it's will at the start of the game), except that it might also have some quite high tech scanners provided by the guild.
... and maybe some more restrictions in here, designed to make the Empire a race that can only be played with the help of taxes.
All these restrictions are lifted the moment that the Empire takes more than a certain amount of damage - it can then research tech and mine minerals freely.
The Guild would be a collection of races (possibly 5 IT, or 4 IT and one SS) who's only purpose is to smooth out the MM hell that the empire might have in revenue gathering. It has no restrictions on the amount of mining or research it can do (although if won't do any research during the 100 year 'start-up' - either that or SS would have to be banned as a player race), but the only minerals of gives to the Empire are collected taxes, and doesn't give the Empire any techs (unless both the Empire and Guild are attacked by the same player in which case they will co-operate). It's job is simply to collect taxes and transport any ships between the Empire and the client races (it will charge minerals from the Empire or anyone else for any other services). The rules for it are:
(1) They do not own any worlds except the ones it starts on, plus any worlds given by players. Even the secondary IT worlds are removed before play.
(2) They are very neutral
...
[Updated on: Thu, 05 January 2006 21:16] Report message to a moderator
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