Yeah, let's give it a try on a small ancient map with 4 or 5 players and no AI. If you don't mind, I could gamemaster that. I don't want to take away your idea, but since we are moving away from it anyway it will be in addition to that, not replacing it.
I don't actually care who gamemasters it, but I have not done it yet, so I could learn it.
About Black Holes: In one of my games with the demo I had my one of my explorers getting sucked into them, because it ran out of fuel. It already had solar collectors on, but had to travel through a couple of nebulae (sorry, no fuel here
). Already low on fuel they had high hopes of finding a sun at the other end of an unexplored warp point only to find a black hole... Well, the good thing about those is that you don't have to pay maintenance for stranded scouts
. In order to reach the other end of this nebulae/black hole cluster I had to develop better solar collectors, wait a few turns just outside the first nebula to refuel and then make the run (the Kessel run?). But it was worth it: On the other side, I found a really nice system with at least one breathable planet (cannot recall exactly). While the scout waited in the system to refuel and watch the system, I had to put together an actual colonization fleet (Colonizer, 2 Refuel ships with solar collectors, warships (just to make sure
)). That really gave a "Battlestar Galactica" feeling, if you know what I mean.
This little tale might illustrate best, what I mean with the fun of exploring and planning task forces. Playing in ancient maps gives you some other problems to deal with. Some might argue that playing with ancient maps in PBW can be a drag (in the boring sense), but I say we try it anyway and find out ourselves...
Just my 0.02
Rollo