New PBW game - Great Experiment 3

[geoschmo]

For anyone that didn't get the news...

Ok, I am having a bad night. We have to wait on a new empire from
Nodachi. In addition, one player has raised a question about my changing the
game settings from 5K starting resources to 100K at the Last minute. He
feels that would have affected his empire setup. If anyone agrees with
this and would like to send me a revised empire file with the
understanding that it's to be a 100K start, I will use that for the restart.

Geoschmo

[geoschmo]

The game is restarted. Not sure why the mail isn't working. Must be related to the DNS problem. There is a new turn and a new news message.

I attempted a compromise and went with 20K starting resources. The people without natural merchants are going to have to plan their first few turns carefully, but at least there is a posibility now that they can keep their empire economy from crashing if they play it right. As I realized with 5K there was no chance. It simply was impossible to build a space port and a single mineral fac before the storage would be depleted.

I hope noone minds too much that I changed the settings without asking. The reason I didn't was that honestly I saw no reason to change your empire file so taking a poll to me would have been another uneccesary delay. In my mind anyone that took Natural Merchants would have still taken natural merchants, whether the starting resources were 5k, 20k, or 100k. Those that did not take natural merchants would have been screwed with a 5K start because of a simple mistake in empire setup. That's no fun for them, and no fun for anyone beating them either.

If I had this to do over again from the start I would probably give people 4 faciliites instead of zero.

[AMF]

You can count me as one of those dips who didn't realize the value in taking the natural merchants trait. At least I know that all my spaceports will be useless to everyone when y'all capture them!

Originally posted by geoschmo:
The game is restarted. Not sure why the mail isn't working. Must be related to the DNS problem. There is a new turn and a new news message.

I attempted a compromise and went with 20K starting resources. The people without natural merchants are going to have to plan their first few turns carefully, but at least there is a posibility now that they can keep their empire economy from crashing if they play it right. As I realized with 5K there was no chance. It simply was impossible to build a space port and a single mineral fac before the storage would be depleted.

I hope noone minds too much that I changed the settings without asking. The reason I didn't was that honestly I saw no reason to change your empire file so taking a poll to me would have been another uneccesary delay. In my mind anyone that took Natural Merchants would have still taken natural merchants, whether the starting resources were 5k, 20k, or 100k. Those that did not take natural merchants would have been screwed with a 5K start because of a simple mistake in empire setup. That's no fun for them, and no fun for anyone beating them either.

If I had this to do over again from the start I would probably give people 4 faciliites instead of zero.

[geoschmo]

Email sent to catch everyone up to speed...

Players,

The game has been restarted, and the new turn is on PBW now. We are having an apparent DNS problem that is affecting the turn notice emails and the game news from being sent. Also, to get to the site and download your turn you will have to connect to http://69.3.206.249

Let me go through everything that happened step-by-step so noone has any confusion.

I created the first turn Last night. At the Last minute I realised that anyone that had decided not to choose the natural merchants racial trait would be totally screwed with this game as advertised because with only 5k starting resources you would not have enough to build even a space port and one mineral miner facilitiy. The result would be that your economy would crash and you could get next to nothing done. You'd have nothing in storage and 200 per turn coming in. At that rate it would take years (maybe decades) just to get enough mineral facilites built to be able to build a space yard while the players that happened to take natural merchants would be building up almost normally except for a few turns to rebuild their homeworlds.

I felt this was an unfair situation, so I decided to give everyone 100K starting resources. This would give you really 50K in storage to play with. I made this change at the Last minute and notified everyone by news along with the first turn.

I did not think anyone that had chosen natural merchants would decide to not take it just because they now had 100k to play with, and it was not my intention to allow every one that did not take it to change their mind after the game started since I was giving them more resources, they could avoid the econ crashing by a careful use of those resources in the first few turns. That is why I did not let everyone know before starting. I felt doing so would be an unneccesary delay in the game.

After the first turn went out I relized a couple people had duplicate shipsets. This I felt was sufficent reason for a restart and I sent a message asking those people to send me new empire files.

In the mean time one person expressed the opinion that I should have given people the opportunity to change their empires becuase of the higher amount of resources at start. I still don't understand it, but nonetheless I sent a message offering that opportunity. Noone, including that person, contacted me expressing a desire to do so.

This morning I restarted the game with the new shipsets and decided on a compromise and gave everyone 20K starting resources. This is enough that a non-Natural Merchant player will have enough to build enough facilities to prevent the economy from crashing, without giveing everybody full storage of resources.

I was not trying to take away the advantage of the natural resource trait. I still feel that it was a wise use of 1000 points for this game. But those players that decided not to take it at least now won't be totally screwed.

The game is ready to play now. I see no reason to do anymore restarts or allow anyone to revise their empire. To this point noone has revised their empires except for changing shipsets, so noone should feel that anyone has an advantage over them. Anyone that took Natural Merchants shuld not feel their choice has less value now, and no one that did not take natural merchants shuld feel they have no chance to compete now that they have 20K resources.

At least that's how I see it. If anyone disagrees and feels they should have another restart and a chance to revise their empire please let me know why and we will discuss it. Perhaps I am missing something that will help me see that point of view.

Otherwise, let's play.

Geoschmo

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by alarikf:
You can count me as one of those dips who didn't realize the value in taking the natural merchants trait. At least I know that all my spaceports will be useless to everyone when y'all capture them!

I don't think you are a dip. Given enough resources at start to build a space port and a couple mineral faciliites not taking natural merchants equates to about a five turn head start for everybody else. That is big, but not everyone will agree that it's worth 1000 points. It depends on your play style, and how long you expect to Last in the game how much of a difference that five turns will make.

On the other hand, with only 5K reasources to start, natural merchants would have been an absolute neccesity. Without it you would not have enough to build a space port and a couple mineral facs and your economy dies. The result would be everybody that didn't take it would be dead in the water. I just don't see this as very fun, even for those of use that took it. It's a crudy way to win if your opponent can't even get off their homeworld.

[AMF]

A while back, you implied that you had run games wherein the players started with *only* a set number of colony ships, and no planets.

I am interested in starting a game like that (I always have been, really) but not sure how exactly such a game would be created. Camn you tell me how I would go about doing that? For that matter, how did you make it so the TGE III game starts like it does?

Thanks,

Alarik

[Slynky]

Sigh.....

Only turn 2 and already past the turn deadline.

[Fyron]

Start the game and control all human empires. Build 3 colony ships, then scrap everything on the HW, space the people, and abandon it. Then, once all empires have just the 3 colony ships, put it on PBW and get going.

With TGE III, Geo used a mod to generate turn one that made the HW planets have 1 max pop and 0 max facility spaces, so they start out empty. Then, he processed a turn with stock SE4 to get it back to stock and uploaded that as the first turn on PBW.

[Unknown_Enemy]

Originally posted by Slynky:
Sigh.....

Only turn 2 and already past the turn deadline.

Sigh.....
Me miss autoturns.

[AMF]

I am SO looking forward to next turn. I think I'll have...A facility!

woo hoo!