Hi there; your happy moderator/designer here..

[StormcloudCreations]

Hello all, and welcome to the message board for Stormcloud Creations/Shrapnel Games Thunder Pack Platinum! I'm the designer and programmer for the 4 game pack, and I hope to hear more from you regarding the games. Compliments are especially welcomed.
I'll be happy to answer any gameplay questions you may have. Thanks!

[Zandolf]

Regarding the trader game. Do you really think having pirates attacking every 2-3 turns is fun? I was actually attacked my first time leaving a planet in 2 games. There is no way with the credits I had, that I could have bought any thing to counter any of the pirate raids. Fun? not for me.

I had hoped this game would be close to a game put out by Omnitrend in the days of 8 bit computers. It's not. The economics make no sense, Pirates attack every 2 - 3 turns, limited choices and trade centers that dissapear.

Prices rise and fall 100% plus,in a turn. Actually, 2 turns. for instance, I was on a planet where they sold an item for 22 credits, the next planet I went to, they wanted 9 credits for the item. I loaded up, returned to the 1st planet where it was 22 credits 3 turns before, only to find the item is now 8 credits. No worries though, the pirates took them off my hands the next turn.

Another problem, if you leave a trade center on a planet, you can't go back, unless you leave the planet and return. This is a problem if you don't have the credits in your pocket to make purchases. The trade center ignores credits in the bank. Leaving a planet to get the trade center back usually involves pirates and you crash a burn and so on.

Purchasing fuel is another problem, you either don't get any, or fill it up. If you don't have enough credits on you for a full tank of fuel, the entire purchase becomes a loan, again ignoreing credits in the bank and what ever you did have in your pockets.

The game choices are limited, you have 8 total planets to deal with, and each planet only offers 3 items at a time. The items do vary from planet to planet, but with such a small offering of items on each planet, it's hard to gauge what will sell where for what. Although, I get the feeling that it doesn't matter, since prices rise and fall on a random whim.

I was really looking forward to something like that old Omnitrend game. Guess I should go hunt down that old computer. I wonder if the disks are still good after 20 years?

Zandolf

[StormcloudCreations]

It sounds like you just didn't enjoy the basic structure of the game, or were putting expectations on it to be something it wasn't (it also sounds like you had a rough few games, which can happen sometimes). I know a number of people who got a little frustrated at first, but worked within the structure of the game and grew to enjoy it quite a bit.

Trader was not and is not a "serious" economic simulation really and wasn't advertised to be; it's a light diVersionary space trading game, more along the lines of LavaMind's Gazillionaire. Pirate attacks are random in nature, meaning they could happen at any time. And yes, you can visit a trade center once per planet visit, since abuses could occur; you could keep potentially keep leaving and returning to the planet trade center (since the values are calculated in semi real-time when you enter the trade center) until the values are what you would like them to be. So that means you have to plan to have pocket money, and carefully consider what you wish to buy once you're there.

The economy isn't total nonsense; certain planets do sell things higher, and other ones sell things lower in a period of time. If you study the planets though in a game, patterns do emerge as far as selling and buying prices in a 20-30 turn period. It does change during a game though. Otherwise, it would be a pretty dry, dull game, shuttling between the "high" planet and the "cheap" planet.

You do make a point about businesses not taking your savings into account. That's something I could add perhaps, in a future Version.

Hope you enjoy the other 3 games more, if you decide to try them. If you have other concerns, feel free to write here, or at my e-mail address in my profile.

[StormcloudCreations]

Some quick tips for you to get started:

- Many players have found it necessary to grab a loan on their first planet visit, and either get a Pirate contract (reduces pirate attacks significantly) or buy some ships quick. Make sure you're defended quite well one way or the other before starting to buy/sell things.
- Planet Contracts are good too, they increase the amount of items offered on that planet, they make it so that when you leave a Planet where you have a contract, you cannot be attacked by Pirates (the city escorts you), and makes the prices a little more in your favor, and makes visits to the Prime Minister on that planet free of charge (there's normally a 500 credit charge).
- When visiting a planet you generally know to have good low prices for stocking up, visit your bank and withdraw some money before going to the Trade Center.

Thanks!

[Mephisto]

Don't be so bitter. It's just a fun little game, no high complex economy model. Try it again, I really think you will like it in the end. Pirate attacks aren't that frequent and most of the time I had no problem fending them of with the ships the planetary governor gave to me for free (hint! hint!).

[Willgamer]

I was happily playing Overlord. When I needed to quit the game, I always Saved and Exited. Til now...

I Exited w/o saving (though having saved many times before) and LOST my whole game

Please at least add a "Are You Sure?" before allowing the player to destroy everything with 1 inadvertant click!

One more thing... the town size (600) needed to win seems way too small. I never had an opportunity to even visit any of my towns! How about an option to set this to at least 5000?

Thanks... (hoping to get happy again...)

[ February 11, 2003, 23:35: Message edited by: Willgamer ]

[StormcloudCreations]

I was happily playing Overlord. When I needed to quit the game, I always Saved and Exited. Til now...
Please at least add a "Are You Sure?" before allowing the player to destroy everything with 1 inadvertant click!

Probably a good idea, though I tried to separate the buttons enough so that "accidental" clicks didn't happen. Saved games are deleted when they're loaded again in all 4 of the games in the Thunder Pack (to prevent save/reload cheating), so always be careful to save your game when you have to leave if you want to continue it later on. I'll have to remember to add a "Are You Sure?" pop-up box in future games when quitting.

One more thing... the town size (600) needed to win seems way too small. I never had an opportunity to even visit any of my towns! How about an option to set this to at least 5000?

You're having an easy time getting to 600? Most players when I beta tested the game found 600 for each town as goal to be a real challenge, requiring several hours and a fair number of setbacks at the least to get there. You must be a heck of a good Overlord player!

[Willgamer]

Hmmmmmm.... maybe I just got lucky!

It was my first "real" game after messing around with Overlord for a couple of hours. Based on that, my impressions were that: going to town was mostly too expensive; a strong military was the highest priority; a 500+ copper reserve was needed.

So initially I bought a military oriented general and troops (trying to keep the numbers of each type even). I clicked thru the months and if there was a copper surplus bought a building every couple of years starting with the military ones. I said Yes to all requests if I had the copper.

That's about it; I'll definitely try more games to see if it was a fluke...

In any case, I like the idea of these (relatively) quick to play games where losing is a definite possibility.

[StormcloudCreations]

Hmmmmmm.... maybe I just got lucky!
It was my first "real" game after messing around with Overlord for a couple of hours. Based on that, my impressions were that: going to town was mostly too expensive; a strong military was the highest priority; a 500+ copper reserve was needed.

Visting town functions are necessary most of the time though for the smoothest game. You can get a stronger feeling how a town is actually doing with the leader's feedback, and change the internal functioning of a town (shift the priority more towards military, trading, or farming), gain money through extra taxes for a time if you need the money, attract more people to the city, and other things. Yes, a strong military in each city is important, and yes, keeping an extra copper reserve is essential.

I said Yes to all requests if I had the copper.

Well, this is generally good, but don't put yourself out too much for the leaders; they may grow to depend too much on you and put you in a bad spot financially at some point. And make sure that you aren't just bailing out a dumb leader that isn't doing a good job; keep their stats in your head, esp. Intelligence and Honor. You don't always necessarily want to be funding a "ruthless dictator", so to speak.

Thanks for your feedback! If you have thoughts or questions on any of the other games, feel free to post them.

[mlmbd]

I actually 'WON' my first game of "Domain Wars". Oh yeah, Baby! I am just so, COOL! OK, don't ask about the other 3 games, YET!

mlmbd