Interesting... The tile idea from Donald Hosford <Hosford.donald@acd.net>
sounds like something mentioned in a Fred Saberhagen berserker story. The evil
machines had a mind scrambling ray and a pet chimp, had to fight the ship
while the humans were "out to lunch" The chimp used a game with tiles to give
a near intelligence to it's behavior when running the ship.
I'll try to see if I can hobble something together...
PS sorry about the last messages formating. I have a strange
connection to my e-mail account so my formating can get really screwed
up. Hopefully this time is a little better.
> Mark Donelan wrote:
> Interesting... The tile idea from Donald Hosford
The evil machines
> had a mind scrambling ray and a pet chimp,
That was the "box and bead" system. You had one box for each position in the
game. On the face of each box, you had a diagram for that position, and
colored arrows to show the possible moves. You would draw out a bead, and make
that move. Nice and simple in
thought, but unmanageable in practice. Tic-Tac-Toe (or Naughts and
Crosses) requires some 400 boxes just for the first few moves...
I am working on a partly random but mostly scripted oponent at the moment.
Some information from the general FT public would help though. How fast do
people normally move? How Big is the average game board? How big is the
average fleet?
I'll try to post a prototype some time soon no matter what people say. based
on my own expierence I am probably going to use spee 12 and a 12'by 7' game
area. Fleet saze of about 1200 points.
PS I wish I could have made the CON it sounded great. If you ever have one in
the NE of the USA, I'm there.
> I'll try to post a prototype some time soon no matter what
Those seem reasonable.
> PS I wish I could have made the CON it sounded great. If you
By 'NE' do you mean 'Nebraska' or 'North-East'?
Mk
Being IN Nebraska, crossed my mind. ;->= Heck, I'd love one in KC(as in
Kansas City...)
However, as his address included the word 'shore', I knew it had nothing to do
with where I am. 'less you count edge of cow ponds.
Anyway, I'll be bringing the Superior SGD's to GenCon for a little
psuedo-robot, Juggernaut-type scenerio thats been bouncing 'round my
brain for years. Just don't yell at me if I still only have one painted.
I'd rather spring the battle fresh on those attending, but anybody who won't
be there, I'd love to bounce the thing off others, and get suggestions(i.e.
respond directly to me).
I hear all night gaming areas will be available, too. Just as long as I don't
sleep through all the auctions.
The_Beast
Step awaaaay from the wiffle bat! <KOCHTE@stsci.edu> on 03/04/98
06:02:34 PM
Please respond to FTGZG-L@bolton.ac.uk
To: FTGZG-L@bolton.ac.uk
cc: (bcc: Doug Evans/CSN/UNEBR)
Subject: Re: Solitaire robots for FT
> I'll try to post a prototype some time soon no matter what people
Those seem reasonable.
> PS I wish I could have made the CON it sounded great. If you ever
By 'NE' do you mean 'Nebraska' or 'North-East'?
Mk
> Mark Donelan wrote:
> How fast do people normally move?
> mark donelan
The area is normally 4 feet by six feet for up to 4 players and 6 feet by 8
feet for more than five players. (one or two star mats.) The human to Kra'Vak
points ratio in current use is 1.5 to 1.
Bye for now,
For my games, which may or may not be 'average'...
> How fast do people normally move?
Not too quickly, generally up to 12-16" or so.
> How Big is the average game board?
6'x4'
> How big is the average fleet?
A dozen ships per ide on average (I prefer mini-campaigns to one-off
battles, so battles are dictated by the way the campaigns go)
> How fast do people normally move?
usualy about 12-16 inches per turn
> How Big is the average game board?
4 x 8 ' (2 - 2'x8' tables placed together)
> How big is the average fleet?
1-2 Capitals (usually battleships and smaller), 4-6 Cruisers, 8 or so
Escorts
> Mark D. wrote:
> I am working on a partly random but mostly scripted oponent at
Depends on the thrust ratings of the ships and the movement rules you use.
For the standard movement rules, speeds of 15-40 are the most common -
only thrust 8 ships go faster than 40, and normally only thrust 2 ships go
slower than 15. For vector movement (see the Page for details), the speeds
are lower - about 2-4 x the Main Thrust rating of the ship. These speeds
go down quite fast as the gaming area gets smaller, though.
> How Big is the average game board?
My table is 120 * 80 cm, but since I measure all distances in cm that is
equivalent to
10' * 6'8".
> How big is the average fleet?
The most common fleet sizes are 5-10 ships or so - 1000-2000 points, but
the average gets a bit higher thanks to some, well, big battles (25+
ships per side).
> I'll try to post a prototype some time soon no matter what
For a 12' by 7' game area, I'd say that speed 12 is very slow for any unit
with a thrust rating of 3 or more.
Later,
> How fast do people normally move?
usualy about 18-24 inches per turn
> How Big is the average game board?
big.. about 6 foot by 12 foot.. we line a bunch of tables togetehr and crawl
around on them when we can't reach the ships
> How big is the average fleet?
1 capital, 2 cruisers, and 4 more escort sizes usualy.. all the same ships
with torpedo tubes added... the people i usualy play witha ren't too into
building fleets.
> On Thu, 5 Mar 1998, Oerjan Ohlson wrote:
Sorry to reply out of sequence, but here goes:
> > How Big is the average game board?
IMHO, space is, by definition, infinite. Any space game that fails to reflect
this, well, isn't much of a space game.
> > How fast do people normally move?
Is that "how fast do people normally move" or "how fast would they move if
they cared more about winning than the inconvenience of running out to the
backyard to move their ships"?
As for my personal opinion: The game (2nd ed. that is) starts to rapidly
break down after speeds exceed weapon ranges.
> > How big is the average fleet?
5-10 is IMHO the best size. We did all too many megabattles, and the
game just bogs down too much.