Play By Web : Starfury!

[TerranC]

I'd like to see how this goes; I've already put in a request to join; You all should do the same too, if only to make Geo work his head off.

[geoschmo]

Yay, questions.

Here is what I am thinking, but bear in mind nothing is set in stone till the game starts.

Maintenance. Yes, it would be an issue, by design. I will have to play around with some testing, but I am leaning towards having your base empire resource generation give you just enough to cover the maint on the bare bones ship that you get at game startup. The more advanced your ship gets, or the more ships you get, the more it will cost in maint, and the more you'll have to do to keep up with it. But I will make it so you have some chance of advancing in the game without getting choked to death paying your bills, that doesn't sound like fun. I merely want it to be one small part of the overall strategy.

Treaties with other players will give you some resources. But your empire resource generation will be so small (And all the other players too), that even 20% of that isn't going to be very much. You might make enough to support a couple extra frigates, but it's not like you are going to get rich off it.

I think it very likely that a mod will be needed for this. Mainly because I want to include stuff like a little captain avatar for all of you, pasengers, special cargo, etc. A lot of ideas will come fomr the various "Role play" mod ideas we kicked around on the forum months ago.

Missions, yes. Some things I can think would make good missions:

Go to system X and hunt down pirate raider.
Ferry Ambasador Zed to conference on Omnicron Prime.
Take medical supplies to stop plauge outbreak.
Escort colony ship travelling through dangerous par tof the quadrant.
Explore systems and sell star charts to Galactic Imperium.

All kinds of stuff really. These are just some ideas for start.

Boring AT? Well, it probably won't be for everyone, but I hope it's not boring. That's ok. I hope it becomes a popular way to play so someone else will run a game or two and I can try it out as a player.

[Slynky]

If I understand it, then someone has to be the "dungeon master", right?

[geoschmo]

Slynky said:
If I understand it, then someone has to be the "dungeon master", right?

Yes. That'd be me in this case. It sounds like a lot of work, and it defenitly is more work then the average hosting job. But I have some ideas on how to streamline things so that it shouldn't be any more work then the average PBW game would be for me if I was a player. And perhaps it might even be less since mostly it will be communicating with the players. Won't have to worry much about building an empire in the conventional sense, and not going to have humungous fleets to manage.

[Slynky]

I suppose I'm asking dumb questions , but how would a person get paid? And would it be full-tech or some way to research stuff?

[geoschmo]

Wouldn't be any need for research I don't think. The normal game you research so you can get better tech to put on your ships. In this case you progress to better tech and better ships by earning resources other ways and then buying the tech you want. I'll probably make it high tech just to make things easier on my self as game host, but you won't have access to the high tech stuff right off the bat. Even if you had the tech you couldn't build or afford it.

You'd get paid by the Imperium when you completed the task for which you agreed to perform. Specifics would depend on the job, but it would be either a gift or a trade of some kind.

I'm also thinking some sort of general trade goods could be fudged which could be bought and sold anywhere, but at different prices in different places. Think of pretty much any of your typical space trader games. I'd be doing that part manually for the most part, but with some sort of spreadsheet I think I can make it fairly painless on my end.

A lot of out of game email communication would happen during turns with the actual swaps going on through the in-game siplomacy screens. Actually I could keep a lot of the money changing out of game entirely, some sort of galactic bank account. You'd just withdraw enough each turn to keep your in game operating expenses where you need them.

Admitadly that's the least developed part of the idea at this point.

Geoschmo

[geoschmo]

Ok, well we've got a few people signed up already. Something I've noticed, a lot of have chosen names that appear to be ship names. That's ok, you can name your "empire" whatever you want, and your PBW player name doesn't even have to match your actual player name in game. Remeber though that through the course of the game you will probably have more then one ship. Often more then one at a time, at the least you'll go through susecsive ships as you advance. Of course you can always name your ships USS Enterprise if you want, but if you use different names through the game it's might be confusing if your "empire" name in game is USS Enterprise.

You could use a company name if you want too role play some sort of trade guild. Or the name of your main character maybe. It's up to you. Whatever you choose we'll all be able to sort it out I'm sure.

[bearclaw]

Just as a thought...
I imagine that you could have a Temp or Guest GM come in for special missions as an AI race. Then there would be an actual human that we would have to 'compete' against to complete a mission. That would involve some planning, obviously, and willing Guest GM's. But it would be a cool feature.

Are you protecting the caravan from a stupid AI, or a cunning human player...?