Aurora 4x
Fiction => Sublight's Fiction => Aurora => Community Game => Topic started by: sublight on November 30, 2012, 06:53:08 AM
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Return to Sol is a sequel to Children of Sol (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,4595.0.html), my first multiplayer game. It eventually suffered a heat death and died. Probably the new limits on civilian shipping would have been enough to allow an even longer game with the original setup, but I've taken the added step of splitting the starting factions into their own systems.
Return to Sol: Multiplayer Aurora 6.2 Coming Soon
The Setup:
The players each start in their own star system 1 jump away from Sol. (In theory this minimizes sensor checks and make the SM turns go faster.)
400 million accelerated conventional start.
> All conventional industry preconverted
> +50% starting research labs (6 total)
> +1 free commercial shipyard
> 2x Naval shipyard expansion (choice of double size or double slipway)
> 20,000 starting RP
> 6x Missile Complexes*
A 0RP Trans-Newtonian start is 40,500 RP ahead of a conventional start, so these conditions add up to, roughly, 1/2 of a TN start. The following are the base T-N starting techs. You may spend your initial techpoints from that list with 1 restriction: all races must start with all theoretical knowledge needed for at least one fully functional beam weapon system.
Tran-Newtonian 5000 Mobile Infantry 2500
Nuclear Thermal 2500 Crogenic Emerg 2000
Particle Beam 2 2000 Presurized Water 1500
10cm Laser 1000 10cm Meson 1000
10cm Microwave 1000 10cm rail 1000
15cm carronade 1000 Active Scanner 10 1000
Beam FireCon 10k 1000 Maint. Storage 1000
Alpha Shield 1000 Shield Regen 1 1000
Cargo Handling 1000 Cryogenic Small 1000
Cryogenic Stand 1000 Flag Bridge 1000
Garrison Battalion 1000 Gauss Velocity 1 1000
Gauss Rate 1 1000 Geological Sensor 1000
Mag Efficancy 75% 1000 Meson Focus 1 1000
Microwave Focus 1 1000 Particle Beam 60k 1000
Railgun Velocity 1 1000 Duranium Armor 500
Infared Laser 500 Mag Ejection 70% 500
Replacement Bttl 500
All beam weapon systems require Active Sensor 10, Beam Fire Control 10k, and Trans-Newtonian. Further, I'll bet that every player picks Geosurvey Sensors, Pressurized Water Reactors, and Nuclear Thermal Engines. After paying for all that stuff each player will have about 8,000 RP remaining for hopefully unique technology. *Anyone using a portion of their starting RP on PDC compatible racial component tech may chose to replace the default Missile Complexes with customized PDCs worth up to 2200 build points.
House Rules
Technology trading: I felt there this was a little too advantageous last time around. So:
- If tech is traded any prerequisite tech is leaked to every player race.
Communication
Ship communication is near instantaneous and works across systems. Traditionally in AAR reported games there are self imposed limits that can lead to lost ships and unreported dangers, but handling this in a multiplayer setup was rather awkward last time around. If players want this and can agree on a rule set easy to adhere to I'll reconsider, but for now <insert technobable> allows survey ships to send automated black-box reports from across light years.
Both players and spectators are free to add comments to this thread.
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How frequent is turn turnover? If that spot's still free I'd like to join up, should be interesting
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We try for 3-day turns. Three days for players to upload orders, followed by up to three days for the SM to advance time. Turn extensions are available as needed on request. Total turn turnaround can be as fast as every 4 days if I have time and none ask for an extension.
Early game turns are 1-year long (possibly 2 for the first decade if everyone wants to accelerate the early years)
Late game turns will be 6-months long.
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That sounds doable. Sign me up! PMs preferred for contact
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I'm in as well if you have a spare slot.
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Niflheimr: Sorry, fresh out of slots. To create more slots I could set up an additional game, but we'd have to find someone else to be the SM for it.
Players: when you have a chance please drop me a PM on:
a) starting tech.
b) how you want the starting 800 conventional industry converted.
Game starts after I get PMs from everyone, or after 3 days when I make random starting tech/industry assignments for the undecided.
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I prefer instant ship communication.
I believe communication and diplomacy between factions should be possible after they meet in space?
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I believe communication and diplomacy between factions should be possible after they meet in space?
Yes.
I'll create a diplomacy thread once factions start to meet.
I'll create an AAR thread to replace last game's spy reports once the game hit's the 10 year mark. Same 10-year time release lag.
Anyone wishing to write inspired short fiction or who wishes to write their own time-delayed AAR faction report is welcome to create threads for that.
Backstory Cannon coming with the AAR thread. For now know that the Invaders came, smashed sol, destroyed terrafroming efforts, poisoned home world atmosphere, and left to destroy intligent life wherever it could be found. They also destabilized the jump gate network. That was hundreds of years ago. Recently Deep space tracking stations have picked up the background resonance traces of interstellar communication. Apparently someone else in the local neighborhood has discovered TN technology. Thanks to relaxed population and industry control standards in the last century or two the surviving colonies are now too big and two 'noisy' to hide if anyone comes in system. That leaves you one option: Pick back up the TN tech of your ancestors and grow big.
Suggested Game Objectives:
Victory path A) Reclaim Sol to form the heart of a new Solarian Empire
Victory path B) Diaspora! Claim and colonize more systems than any other.
About Sol: There may be ruins and/or xenophobic survivors to claim in Sol. Since Mars/Earth/Venus were strip-mined of TN minerals last game, any survivors will probably be in an conventional existence at best.
Conscript Gray will be playing one of the former aliens the rest of you met in the last game.
Hmm... what else...
Oh yah, each of you named your starting system after yourself by default. For example, the Martians call their home system 'Martians' ... feel free to rename your home system.
If anyone has further questions and concerns, just ask.
Other than that... Game On!
Are 1-year turns acceptable for the start, or would people prefer a longer time-steps until inter-faction contact is made?
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I'd go with 2 years at first, nothing major should be happening during the initial build up.
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Yea. 2 years is fine with me. Seems most games the first few years are just cycling 30 day increments waiting on tech to finish.
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i am fine with the 2 years
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And with me that's unanimous for 2 years for now
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Since I was a little slow getting the last SM turn out and had time I went ahead and took the SM turn early once all the orders were in. Year 2031 is waiting in the dropbox.
I'll start posting the AAR commentary once 2035 hits, unless people prefer I wait until the longer of 10 turns or 10 years.
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On the one hand I'm deathly curious what everybody's been up to, but on the other hand it doesn't make much sense to know just yet. Well, in-character at least. If it's more an external AAR instead of the spy justification of the old game then fire away, and I can start relating what I've been up to in all those years ;)
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I'll publish the AAR as if it was a Historical account of known events 100 years in the past rather than as a 'spy' report.
Anyway, I'm going to slow the game down to 5-day turns for the next three weeks. Next week is going to be rather busy for me, and I still haven't gotten orders in for the Mars and Venus exiles for this current turn.
I'll next advance time this Wednesday (about 48 hours after this post), work in another time advance somewhere Tues-Thurs next week, and then again somewhere Wed-Fri after the New Year. After that I should be able to resume support for the normal update rate. First AAR publication will occur with the first SM turn taken in January, whatever that might be.
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Year 2035 posted, and that brings the game to the 10 year mark.
At this point everyone has geosurveyed their home system and constructed at least two different ship classes. Research is booming, and activity is starting to pick up.
Its time to slow the time increments down from 2-years to 1-year. The next few turns might be a little slow at 1-year speeds, but a shorter time advance step will let me use a higher 5-day/30-day ratio and pay closer attention to the event log.
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Year 2038 uploaded.
I think I'm going to try posting spiffy graphs showing relative production over time instead of the tables from last game.
This will probably make for fewer AAR updates each containing more information. First true report coming with 2039 when I can post 3 data points for 2025, 2027, 2029.
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Ok, I think the reason I failed at graphs last time was because I was trying to show too much information on the same graph.
So, here is Try #2:
(http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x184/sublightrun/Children%20of%20Sol/ScreenShot2013-01-19at13452PM_zps0aaae4aa.png)
Option 'A'. Graph by sub category. Sort of what I was trying to do before, but with only one line per faction. Trying to graph everything this way every update would take up too much space, so I'd either have one Statistics thread stuffed with everything, or else only post two or three new graphs with each AAR update.
(http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x184/sublightrun/Children%20of%20Sol/ScreenShot2013-01-19at13508PM_zps20e6a002.png)
Option 'B'. Graph by Race. This make comparison between races harder, but makes racial changes easier to see. Likely I'd create one Facts-page per faction that contains all known ship designs and production trends. Or those of you running race specific AARs could copy the image links and stick them there.
(http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x184/sublightrun/Children%20of%20Sol/ScreenShot2013-01-19at13520PM_zps5ffd1bcd.png)
Option 'C'. The pie-chart does a nice job at showing relative production across multiple categories and races, but gives up the historic trend data that the other options show.
And there is Option 'D'.
A PDF of the raw table data as an attachment.
Any thoughts on what should be my primary AAR production report formate, and what/if I should periodically include for secondary information?
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Go Venus!
Also, I like pie charts. Mmm, pie.
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I choose option A.
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Hm. I like A, but in combination B and C could give a nice overview of things
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I like option A with perhaps the data that is shown each update is a little different. Kinda like how in Civillization you have the "wealthiest" the "strongest" etc updates every few years.
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Ok. I'll post a current status pie-chart for "universes best" backed by the necessary historical trends (a mix of A and C).
Just to clarify for any player who's delaying taking turn: I try to post AARs to cover 2 turn segments each with a 10 year offset from the segment ending. Since the early game ran at an accelerated 2 years/turn at first, this has lead to a rather slow starting update speed. The next posted AAR won't come until after the 2042-4043 turn ends.
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Hmm. Thats twice in row now that I've needed two days to process an SM turn. If that happens again I'll need to either add an extra day or two between updates or else cut back to 6-month long turn increments.
Any players have a preference between slightly less frequent updates or shorter time advances?
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Yearlong increments are a lot easier to plan for than half-years. I'm fine with the time taken for updates
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Panopticon will be stepping down from Supreme Commander of the Empire of Venus.
niflheimr has agreed to step up as the next Venusian leader.
Next SM turn will be about three days from now to give niflheimr time to review the situation and post orders. In the future I'll go with Conscript Gray's suggestion of taking a 1-year SM turn every 4-5 days up from every 3-4 days. Once players establish contact with each other and aliens are turned back on we may drop back to 6 month turns every 3-4 days, but that will be a discussion for another day.
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Will be doing my turn tonight - sorry for the delay but it took some time to figure out how things are going in my empire :)
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The game has now gained another +1 level of heat death and will have to either slow down, or loose resolution.
The current settings are:
Time Increment: 1 year
Player turn time: 4-6 days
SM turn time: 2-4 days
Average turn frequency: every 7 days.
Solutions include:
a) Shorten time increments to 6 months.
b) Begin extensive use of minimum number auto-turns. This will greatly diminish the SM's ability to promptly respond to unexpected situations.
c) Add +2 days to player turn time and +1 day to SM turn time, reducing average update pace from once a week to twice every three weeks.
Is the increased time between updates still the preference, or would people prefer one of the other time management options this time around?
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Hm. I think we're approaching the level of interaction where a 6 month increment might be good for more responsive player actions. This time of year I'd rather not increase the update pace, and autoturns often lead to silliness.
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I vote for 6 month increments, they might solve the problem for some game years. If they will save the game I also don't mind 3-4 auto five day turns.
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6 month time advances it is.
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I had a player ask about victory conditions. There aren't any. Have fun.
However, I will be awarding titles when the game ends. Anyone competitive is encouraged to try for one of those.
Suggested Game Objectives:
Victory path A) Reclaim Sol to form the heart of a new Solarian Empire
Victory path B) Diaspora! Claim and colonize more systems than any other.
Ruler of Sol: Whoever meets two of the following when the game ends:
> +25% larger population than the next closest faction
> +25% more non-infrastructure installations than the next closest faction
> +25% more PPV in-Sol than the next closest faction (excluding ICBM silos)
Note: Conquering the Remnant is not necessary, unless going for the largest population category.
Conquered populations add their political reliability % to your population count for victory titles.
Ruler of Stars: Whoever meets two of the following when the game ends:
> +25% larger total colony population than next closest faction
> +25% larger mobile military PPV than next closest faction
> +25% more systems controlled than next closest faction. A system is controlled if one faction has twice the population and military PPV of all other factions, minimum 10 million total system population.
As of 2045 the Remnant was the undisputed Ruler of Sol, while the Syndicate was the Ruler of Stars with a mobile military worth nearly 200 PPV and a total colony population of 9.9 million.
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No SM turn this week on account of low player feedback. Only one order set has been received.
Next SM turn will occur in say, 3 days. (about 72 hours from this posting)
If half of you happen to university students taking finals shout out and I'll put the game on hiatus for the rest of the month. Otherwise please take your turn, or send me a private message saying 'Pass'.
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After over a decade of leadership niflheimr will be stepping down from leader of Venus.
The Venusian slot is now open again if any are interested.
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HIATUS
The Return to Sol Multiplayer game is going to stop updating for the next few months.
The Venusian vacancy has come at a rather awkward time in-game. About 5-10 game years remain before I would have had to give up and end the game anyway. That isn't really enough time left for me to push hard at recruiting, but just long enough that I don't want it to end so soon. Still, as Maharava and Nightstar reminded me, playing SM for a multi-faction game isn't as easy as I try to pretend most days.
So, here is what's happening. I'm going to take the next few months off. Do some summer traveling. Replay old games, and get back into the Pulsar project. At the peaks before I extended turn intervals or shortened the time advanced being SM was eating nearly half my free time. Since being SM was a fun hobby it wasn't a big deal, or it wouldn't have been if I wasn't also committed to being a lead Pulsar developer.
I'll be back. After the Pulsar alpha release. Maybe I'll start a new improves scenario setup, or maybe I'll continue Return to Sol from where we left off. Feel free to drop me PM pokes to remind me to work harder.
Sublight Out.