Return to Sol is a sequel to
Children of Sol, 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 SoonThe 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 RulesTechnology 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.
CommunicationShip 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.