RTH has filled all slots; discuss the game here!

[Ragnarok]

That's right folks! The famous Return to Hell classic from PBW will soon be entering its second installment. This time it will bring new twists to the proverbial table to make things a little bit more interesting.

For those who are not familier with the first RTH game here is a little bit of history from it.

A while ago I started a game on PBW that was called Return to Hell. In this game we had 12 players and each player started in his own cluster of system (12-15 or so in each cluster) with no warp points to access the other cluters.

Technology wise we started with fulltech on meaning that every technology was available to each player from the very beginning. It was a 5 or 10 planet started as well, I don't remember which, so this meant those clusters filled quickly with planets and soon resources were more then abundant.

By the time people started leaving their clusters they had multiple, yes multiple, Sphereworlds all over their clusters. It wasn't uncommon to see multiple fleets of 500+ baseships flying around.

But by the time any major wars started breaking out, and before anyone invaded any sphereworlds the game reached a limit. PBW could no longer process the turns because the turn file was greater then 2MB! We could have continued the game by me manually processing the turns from home and then sending to everyone but this too proved to be hidious as I did not have the time to undertake the task at the current time. Therefore, we declared a 3 way (I think it was 3 way) tie between the top 3 empires in the game.

It was truely a historical game and one that will never be forgotten, by me at least. But now it is time to break those records, and bring new twists to the game. Yes, it is time for RTH2!

This time there will only be 6-10 players to help with the file size. I imagine we will have 10 players because a few of the players from RTH 1 said they would play in Version 2 once it was started.

Over the next few days I will release some information regarding this game as far as game settings and so forth. I started this thread in order to see who all will be interested in playing in this game and too possible get some ideas that we could implement into this game.

If you do have any ideas please let me know either here or by emailing me at seivgold AT yahoo DOT com.

Once I decide on how many systems and I find out how many players (max 10) will be in this game I will be needing a map maker who will not be participating to make the map for me.

Any comments and suggestions are most welcome.

[ February 18, 2004, 13:24: Message edited by: Ragnarok ]

[Ragnarok]

Here is a little bit more information that I have for right now.

We will not be starting with full tech this time around. This will make the mid-game a little bit more interesting as players begin transforming their planets to contain monolith facilities instead of just miners. And then also they will have to begin scraping research facilities to build more miners and or monoliths.

Current sign up list:
1- Ragnarok

More information will be released as it becomes available.

Edit: Another thing I should mention is that the Last game Lasted along time, several months at the very least. Therefore, if you do not think you will be able to play your turns within the coming months on a regular basis then I strongly suggest that you do not apply to join this game. But I will not let that hinder you joining as I cannot make that decision for you.

[ January 28, 2004, 19:54: Message edited by: Ragnarok ]

[primitive]

Count the Primitive one in too.

May I suggest not using FQM this time ? Converting 100s of Astroides to planets get quite tedious after a while
That will keep the filesize down a bit too.

[Spoo]

We will not be starting with full tech this time around. This will make the mid-game a little bit more interesting as players begin transforming their planets to contain monolith facilities instead of just miners. And then also they will have to begin scraping research facilities to build more miners and or monoliths.

Would it really be the same without full tech? It seems to me that this would only make the game take much longer since I'd imagine that most players would just stay in their cluster until they'd researched most techs anyway. Not to mention, I'd consider scrapping an empire's worth of facilities tedious, not fun.

In other words - if you make it full tech, then sign me up.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

make the map small, that'll cut down on filesize to.

[Paul1980au]

Wouldnt the player be best researching into open and close warp points to get access to other players - although they would be weakened to start with in terms of those players pursuing weapons tech.

[Loser]

You could use FQM no-AST.

[Ragnarok]

Originally posted by Spoo:
Would it really be the same without full tech? It seems to me that this would only make the game take much longer since I'd imagine that most players would just stay in their cluster until they'd researched most techs anyway. Not to mention, I'd consider scrapping an empire's worth of facilities tedious, not fun.

In other words - if you make it full tech, then sign me up.

You do have a point there Spoo. After thinking about it more it just wouldn't be RTH without it being full-tech. So I will we will start with all technology from the start.

Here are some other settings that can be negotiated and discussed.

Starting resources: 100000
Starting planets: 10 (Open to discussion)
Home planet value: Good
Score display: Own or allied, whichever.
Technology level: High
Racial points: 5000
Quadrant type: Custom made map.
Quadrant size: Custom made map.
Event frequency: High (Open to discussion)
Event severity: Catastrophic (Open to discussion)
Technology cost: Not applicable.
Victory conditions: Hopefully Last man standing, but allied will be acceptable if circumstances do not allow anything else.
Maximum units: Till the game will allow no more.
Maximum ships: Till the game will allow no more.
Other game settings: Intel will be off.
Surrender will be allowed but only to the player whom is whooping your arse at the particular time. If in the event of two players beating you with an ugly stick then something will need to be decided. I am open to suggestions in this regard.
No locking yourself in; either by system shields or by warp point max.

Regarding the map. I agree that we shouldn't use FQM this time. Having that many planets was rather tidious to keep track of and everything. I liked Geo's idea of;

How about a modified quadrant type with a fewer overall number of planets, but larger then normal proportion of huge planets. You could get some really staggaring size military forces without the corespondingly large number of planets to deal with.

I'm sure once Sphereworlds come Online that regular planets will play less and less of an important roll, so having large numbers of planets will be kind of redundant in a way. I'm thinking somewhere in the area of 100-200 total planets per cluster will be more then enough.

[geoschmo]

How about a modified quadrant type with a fewer overall number of planets, but larger then normal proportion of huge planets. You could get some really staggaring size military forces without the corespondingly large number of planets to deal with.

[Ragnarok]

*Bump*

Revised list of players:
1 - Ragnarok
2 - Primitive
3 - Spoo(?)
4 -
5 -
6 -
7 -
8 -
9 -
10 -

Anyone else interested? The rest of the game settings will probably be decided when we get our final group of players together.

Also still looking for a map maker.