Call for Players: New FT Game Starting in August/September

I'm in! (If available) Being in the video game industry, I feel honor bound to
try to shoot at the Japanese! So, if available, I would like to play a Tsarist
ship.

Hi, gang. I've been working on an idea for a PBEM FT game for later this year
and I'm wondering if any of you are interested.

The game is set in a universe I call "The Age of Iridium". I got the idea from
the "Hornblower" thread a couple of months back. The ships and
background are loosely based on the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 in the
pre-dreadnought era (the Age of Iron). It will be a fairly large
engagement
with each player controlling 2 - 3 capital ships, or 3 - 5 cruisers, or
4 -
6 destroyers. The "Imperial Tsarist" fleet will be attempting to break a
blockade by the "Nipponese" fleet. If everyone enjoys the battle, a second
game can be played based on the Tsarists linking up with their blockaded
fleet, with a Nipponese fleet in the middle.

As in Ludo's PBEM game, there will be jump points. However, jump points in my
game are formed only in the corona of binary star systems. Ships jump out of a
system by diving for the jump point within the star, while they maintain their
entry velocity on the other side of the jump point. This is good, since a
portion of the battlefield will contain the star's corona, doing an automatic
1 point of damage to each ship within the corona at the end of a turn. Most of
the battlefield will be outside of the star, though there will also be a
hotter zone on the board edge that does 2 points of damage per turn. This
should make for an interesting tactical environment.

I'm trying out one optional rule: ships WILL be able to fire in the rear arc.
I agree with the design team of FT as to the reasons for preventing fire into
a rear arc (mostly, that it increases the tactics needed for the
game). This is necessary in a game that allows players free-reign when
designing ships. To make a rear arc playable, I've designed the ships along
the lines of pre-dreadnoughts, with forward and rear turrets and
secondary batteries that have at most two firing arcs (and often only one).
This should make for a unique FT tactical excercise that will mirror
pre-dreadnought combat. I intend to publish my "Age of Iridium" design
rules on this list after they've been tested in the game.

The ships are built around weapons from the main FT rules, but I'll be using
some of the More Thrust optional rules (mostly damage control and striking the
colours). I was just going to stick with basic sensor rules, unless I hear
requests to use the more advanced MT sensor rules.

Anyway, I'm wondering if any of you are interested in playing. I can
accomodate anything from 4 to 12 players. So far I have 4 berths confirmed,
with another berth probable and a 6th berth possible. I thought I'd extend the
invitation to the FT mailing list in general.

I'm planning to start the game sometime between August 19 and September
9.
This is lots of advance notice, as I want to code a database system for
maintaining and running the game. Also, we're just entering prime vacation
time. The universe background and ships will be sent out a week or two ahead
of time.

This should be an interesting battle, and it's likely to be a bit different
from any other FT game you've played.

> Allan Goodall wrote:

Sure...Sign me up.

Later

> At 01:16 PM 18/06/96 -0600, you wrote:

Count me in as well.

Do You have Allan Goodall's E-Mail address handy.

I might be interested in his FT game as well, but need to get a better idea of
when it's going to go.

Thanx,

Sean Bayan Schoonmaker wrote at sometime in the past:
> Do You have Allan Goodall's E-Mail address handy.

Speaking of this E-mail game, I'd like to be involved.

(Alan, I sent you e-mail earlier, but I'm not sure it made it through.)

Thanks!