The second game in the Zeta series is beginning!
Looking for 20 players...
The game is listed under "Zeta 2: The Great Sign" on PBW. The background information and settings are posted there and replicated below:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Things you should know up front about this game:
* No fighters or mines (satellites allowed however)
* No Stellar Manipulation
* No ancient race characteristic allowed
* No religious race characteristic allowed.
* No temporal race characteristic allowed.
* No Intelligence. This is a no-intel game.
* Unique map
Empires will be created using PvK's Balance Mod using with 2000 point empires. This means they are "stock" empires but with adjusted point costs for the various characteristics that are more balance. As PvK says,
PvK Balance mod changes the point costs for abilities when an empire is created, to be more balanced. It makes no other changes to the basic game.
The Balance Mod can be obtained
here
Since that site is lately experiencing problems,
you can also download it from the SE4 PBW site
here
As a third alternative, email me at
alarikf@hotmail.com and I will send it to you.
Finally, as part of the set-up, I would like to get a copy of your race characteristics and a description -- especially as they pertain to the society from which it came. There are some things I will specifically be looking for, and they affect starting positions. Don't worry: no starting position will be disadvantaged (I am going to test the map with a number of AI deathmatches before the game starts) but there are just some determinants about where races start based on their societies.
NOTE:
I intend to start this game in a few weeks, shooting for around Feb 12th. The delay is because I want to finish and test the map for balance and I would really like to get 20 players for the game.
Also, I understand that many people might be reluctant to use a mod, even one that makes no changes to the basic game. If interest in this game is too low, I may consider going with the straight stock game. But for balance purposes, Id really rather not.
Lastly, I may make slight changes to the background or setting of the game, as I go back over my notes and find things I forgot to put in.
If there are any questions, feel free to email me at
alarikf@hotmail.com
Thanks,
Alarik
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Background
It is unclear to your people what has happened. Fifty years ago your society exerted all its energies into building a fleet that would travel to the distant Zeta Quadrant in order to find and, if possible, settle the Sphereworld there. That Sphereworld, was some sort of Ancient object, and presented your race with the only possible haven from an approaching wave of deadly radiation from the center of the Galaxy. This radiation was, inevitably, so powerful that all life in the galaxy was going to be extinguished.
(The background above is from the Zeta 1 game, the full text of which is posted as an attachement to a post down below)
So, your people watched their expedition set sail for the Zeta quadrant carrying with it the Last hope for your people and their entire civilization, and awaited the coming of the bLast that would destroy those left behind.
Or so you thought...
...and, indeed, the Last thing you remember is watching the bright flash of the radiation as it entered the atmosphere of your homeworld...
...and then waking up on a strange land, with many other members of your race. The "Awakening" as many began to call it, was a time of wonder and chaos. Many starved, or went mad, but hundreds of millions did not. Partly this was due to the extreme wealth of resources, and the ideal conditions on this new world. As your people reveled in, somehow, surviving certain death, many turned to religion to explain this occurrence. But all set about trying to understand where they were and rebuild their society given this second chance.
Not all members of your race survived. Your civilization spanned many planets, and many billions of people. There appeared to be no discernible pattern as to why some were "reborn" and others were not. Families were broken up, and planetary populations were mixed up apparently randomly.
The planet your people found themselves on was extremely rich in resources, giving them a fighting chance to rebuild their civilization. But that's not all. Everywhere on the planet were the countless signs and ruins of other, prior civilizations. And not just one, but many built upon the ruins of the former. When your archaeologists and miners dig into the planet, they find unending layers upon layers of ancient ruins, each totally different from the one upon which it was built, and some dating from as far back as the postulated beginning of the universe. Some of these extinct civilizations had flourishing cultures with high forms of art and beauty, others were rigidly ordered societies, and so on...but none, apparently, survived. A sobering thought for your people on this new world, lending an air of Ozymandias-ness to your rebuilding efforts.
Furthermore, the remains of this planet's prior inhabitants were none you had encountered before. Your race spanned many systems, and had an advanced knowledge of the Galaxy and its history. But the remains you have found have never exactly resembled any race your people have ever been familiar with or even heard of. Some are
similar to races your people have known, but many exhibit, in fact, characteristics that are not only completely alien but also completely incompatible with the planet you are now on. For example, you might have found the remains of fragile, winged creatures, but the atmosphere and gravity of the planet you are on would crush such life. Other life forms found are often incompatible with the planet in other ways: giant creatures that clearly resided in the atmosphere of gas giants, but your world is rocky - and your instruments indicate that it has always been so.
The mysteries beneath your tentacles are matched by the mysteries above: the sky from your planet is brightened by the glow of a great nebula above...and no more than a hundred or so stars. For some of you, the sky is filled with stars that shift, and move, and orbit each other in a constant dance of intricacy and hypnotic allure. For others, the sky is rigid and unchanging, and the stars are arranged in a patter of like distance from each other in grid like fashion.
In both cases, your conventional understanding of physics informed your people that the sky above was impossible given the laws of physics. This mystery, and the absence of the rest of the stars in the galaxy, eventually led your people to the inevitable conclusion that they now resided in that portion of the galaxy known as The Great Sign.
Before the "awakening" your people had observed the Great Sign from afar. At that time it had great significance for your people, in some cases extremely religious significance. The Great Sign itself appeared to lie at the edge of the observable universe, looking, like two clusters of stars separated from each other by a strange, radiating nebula. One of the clusters is globular, and the stars orbit and shift patterns in no discernible pattern. The second cluster is, for lack of a better word, cubic: a stable collection of hundreds of stars, unchanging in their positions relative to each other, and arranged, simply as points in a grid across a three dimensional cube. Between these two clusters is what some call
the Singularity - a stellar phenomenon emitting bizarre radiations equivalent to the output of the entire galactic core at one single point. Seen from the inhabited galaxy, the Great Sign appears to be a grand globe and a cube, both composed of stars and between them a bright outflowing of energy.
The Great Sign has played a critical, and often religious, role in the development of many star faring. This significance might have been simply interesting were it not for the
Faith Effect that developed in those races that adopted the Great Sign as an integral part of their beliefs. The
Faith Effect was a verifiable and reproducible effect that the religious races have achieved: it is the ability of the most pious and best trained of these races to meditate upon the Great Sign and, in so doing, unerringly achieve some physical goal of theirs. The most common manifestation of the
Faith Effect is that of the weapons crews of religious races starships. The most typical way they achieve this onboard their starships is through intense trance-like meditations within temple-like chambers on their starships (these rooms are colloquially called
Talisman rooms, but the exact description varies greatly by race). When certain members, usually of priest-castes, reach the highest level of trance during their meditations on the Great Sign, they can somehow channel their concentrations into the ships systems - resulting in unerring success by those systems. For example, in so doing, they can focus the weapon targeting systems of their ships to hit their targets - all the time, every time. It goes without saying this is an astonishing feat.
Because of this faith effect, the religious races adopted their primordial religions to accommodate the Great Sign as a center of their faith.
Now, on this alien world, the Faith Effect is no longer evident. This has had, as expected, cataclysmic repercussions for those religious races...and theories abound as to why it has happened. None has been proven yet.
There are other differences between here and "before." It is unclear why, but the Great Sign appears to be either "outside" of time, or perhaps at the beginning or end of time. The experiments and engineering of temporal researchers have not 'worked' since being recovered. No temporal-based technologies have had any measure of success. The nature of time itself appears to have changed here.
One final point of interest is that, on this new world, your people have had occasional sightings of the phenomenon known "The Last Man."
This is the name given to a phenomenon that has appeared to many a wide variety of starship crews over the centuries, seemingly at random and always in out-of-the-way and desolate locales. In the past the Last Man has been a rock structure with a stationary statue-like member of the observing race. If a human crew, this "Last man" will appear as an old decrepit human male, if it is a Drushocka, it will appear as a older Dru, and so forth. Generally, it appears as an older male representative of their race, but for some races it is an older female. Multi-racial crews see their own individual race represented. Often, but not always, on the rock structures surrounding the Last man are an intricate series of inscriptions and hieroglyphic type writings. None of these have ever been successfully translated, and they have something in common with *all* known Languages.
While in the past the Last Man has appeared to be an immobile statue of simple stone, now, on this world, your people have seen "visions" of it, accompanied by intricate and vast images of strange Languages filling the sky and etched into the ground. Many of your people who have seen the Last man have the undeniable belief that it is trying to communicate in some way.
Because of these puzzles, as your race rebuilt, it explored the ruins beneath its pseudopod, it examined the skies, and theorized and researched at great length - but found no answers to these mysteries.
Your people, over the years since awakening on this world have rebuilt much of their prior civilizations. It took over a hundred years, but the prior knowledge of your people remained from before, allowing a rapid reclamation of what was lost. Further assisted by the great resources on the world, your people have fundamentally rebuilt their civilization on this world.
Now, as your people have once again forged the governments, arts, cities, universities, and industries that help comprise their civilization, they are ready to look once again towards the stars and explore the their surroundings...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Game settings:
Starting resources: 100000
Starting planets: 1
Home planet value: Very Good
Score display: Allied
Technology level: Medium
Racial points: 2000 - Empires created with Pvk Balance Mod
Quadrant type: The Great Sign ("unique")
Quadrant size: Large/Unique - approximately 255 systems
Event frequency: Low
Event severity: Catastrophic
Technology cost: High
Victory conditions: By general agreement, and player determined based on in-game discoveries. One, two or many empire victories possible.
Maximum units: maximum (but no fighters or mines)
Maximum ships: maximum
Computer players: none
Computer difficulty: High
Computer player bonus: No AIs at start, otherwise High
Neutral empires: No
Other game settings:
Due to the unique energies in the Great Sign and their effects, there are a few changes to the stock settings:
* Smaller craft or devices such as fighters and mines are not viable. Satellites are viable however (I can't turn them off anyways...<g>)
* Stellar Manipulation is disallowed ("turned off")
There are other effects of the origin and nature of the Great Sign:
* No ancient race characteristic allowed
* No religious race characteristic allowed.
* No temporal race characteristic allowed.
* Intelligence is disallowed. This is a no-intel game.
A note to players of the Zeta 1 game: this game will be "higher-powered" than that one, and will have a much more even and richer spread of resources. In that one, there were some systems that were, apparently, pretty darn resource poor. That is not the case in this game. So to speak. Heh.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes on playmanship:
I try to be pretty relaxed about players in PBW games, and endeavor to make playing the game as easy and hassle-free as possible. I have set the turnaround time to 52 hours. I believe this is a good time because it allows people who work full time and return home late to have two chances to do their turns after work. Fact of life is, every now and then, something comes up and someone can't do their turn. This turnaround time gets around that problem I believe.
Having said that, I am convinced that the game will go as quick as players wish it to. Especially in the beginning, it should go fast: so get those orders in as fast as you can. Your fellow players will thank you for it.
Missed turns: If you are going to miss a turn let me know in advance. I intend to be very lenient in putting the game on ALPU, unless widespread complaints from other players arise. However, I won't let players abuse this - so please, don't ask for the game to be put on ALPU for any reason other than you are just not able to have access to your computer due to a trip, vacation, etc... the reason I fell ok in saying this is because with a 52 hour turnaround, people shouldn't be too rushed to get their turns in.
Furthermore, I, and everyone who plays PBW, hates it when players stop turning in orders and thereby extend the game to the longest possible turnaround time. Therefore, if a player misses three turns
without making prior arrangements or notifying me beforehand I will kick them out unless they have a good excuse to tell me.
Really, all I am asking is that you keep me informed if you're going to miss a turn so that we can work something out.
--------------
(note: Zeta 1 Backstory has been moved to an attachment in a later post...to avoid scaring people off...)
Re: ZQNN (Zeta Quadrant News Network)
Linear Mode
