New PBW game starting: "If you build it, they will come..."

PvK · #1 April 17th, 2002, 03:01 AM

Hehe - you could make a super-anti-evil AI empire with its own hyperpowerful techs, that will kick the *** of anyone who gets to be Mega Evil, but otherwise is completely benign. Then no one player could achieve domination without getting hunted by the anti-evil AI.

PvK

Bman · #2 April 17th, 2002, 03:15 AM

lol. good idea with the AI. Have it be uberpowerful but never attacks and never trades/gifts. And make sure its ships are fairly immune to ship capture which i guess they would be if they were uber powerful. But you need to make it go megaevil on your butt when you are dominating the other *human* players. By definition, the AI needs to be more powerful than you already. I don't think the mega-evil setting will ever kick in.

Actually PPP is not really a game breaker. It *can* be defended against by either your own intel or by crushing the guy with the intel facilities. And I'd hate to not have warp-closers. What if you just modd'ed out the system shield facility? Tell people not to lock up a system by taking advantage of the the 10-warppoint limit. If they do, you go mega-evil on their butt...

Instead of building a ringworld, place one in the center of the map with no warp-points leading to it. Make sure all the starting positions are an equal distance from the center. Now people just need to develop warp-opener tech to reach it. It does not require a large construction investment, so there is incentive for people to strive for it, since owning it gives a definate advantage. Your same rules apply as far as how to win.

For extra grins, tell everyone it will be rock/oxy. Then people can choose to be rock/oxy for the mega-population if they get it or they can be something different and hope everyone else is rock/oxy (so they get more worlds to colonize)
That would be fun.

geoschmo · #3 April 17th, 2002, 03:42 AM

Well, the uber race and ringworld in the center are ideas I guess. They have been done, and weren't really what I was going for here. I wanted to setup a game where you have to build a ringworld yourself.

Maybe we could have a one starting planet but go with high tech tech level start. Or high enough tech that you could build the ringworld. I could do that simply enough with a modified tech area file. Then you'd still need to develop the resources to build the thing.

I was also think maybe ten years is too long to hold it. Maybe go for five instead.

Geoschmo

Phoenix-D · #4 April 17th, 2002, 07:01 AM

"I thought of the fact that someone may get the bright idea to just kill everybody else and thus win by default. I suppose there isn't anything I can do about that. I hoped that if I made the the quadrant big enough we could avoid that."

Actually, this CAN be avoided. Put the homeworld in a system connected to the outside by only a one-way warp point. Then put a system grav shield in that system, or make a level 5 obsure nebula there (can't kill it if you can't see it) That way, they can be beat down to one world.. but no one can ever destroy the homeworld. So they can't kill the race.

Phoenix-D

PvK · #5 April 17th, 2002, 09:34 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
Actually, this CAN be avoided. Put the homeworld in a system connected to the outside by only a one-way warp point. Then put a system grav shield in that system, or make a level 5 obsure nebula there (can't kill it if you can't see it) That way, they can be beat down to one world.. but no one can ever destroy the homeworld. So they can't kill the race.

That would be quite effective. You could probably make system grav shield an ability of the home system, and if you take a hint from MM's recent typo, you can make a system type that is Ztorm or something, so storm clearers won't even clear the storm. Will the grav shield ability block the possible attempt to turn the home system's star into a ringworld? If not, you could just specify that the "winning" ringworld can't be in the safe home system. You could also put some good colonizable planets in the same home systems, to allow a good safe and productive base area for each player.

PvK · #6 April 17th, 2002, 09:38 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Bman:
lol. good idea with the AI. Have it be uberpowerful but never attacks and never trades/gifts. And make sure its ships are fairly immune to ship capture which i guess they would be if they were uber powerful. But you need to make it go megaevil on your butt when you are dominating the other *human* players. By definition, the AI needs to be more powerful than you already. I don't think the mega-evil setting will ever kick in.

Nah, because it wouldn't have to have a lot of ships, since they'd be hyper-powerful, and it wouldn't need to colonize or build resources or research, so its score would be minescule, even though its few ships would be able to mulch entire late-game warfleets.

PvK

[ 17 April 2002: Message edited by: PvK ]

geoschmo · #7 April 17th, 2002, 05:07 PM

Actually MEE isn't really a good indicator of whether you are trying to wipe out another player. And wouldn't someone that is strong enough to build a ringworld probably trigger it? Although that is an intersting idea for a scenario. I wonder if you could get an AI race to lay dormant like that unless a player got strong and then swoop in an knock them down a peg.

I thought about putting the players in nebulaes. And keeping them from building their ringwolrds in the nebulae is simply a matter of not putting a star in the nebulae too.

Geoschmo