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Mark wrote:Big, I do feel for you and the trouble your having with cloaking tech, but I've made several suggestions to you and Staplic to simplify it and nobody has really paid much attention to me. I'll try again with this new idea.

Cloaking tech is upgraded constantly, as well as sensors. We rate them.

If you've developed a level 3 cloaking device, and your enemy has level 2 sensors, you've got a tiny chance to be spotted. The greater discrepency in level, the greater the odds of success or failure.

As it stands now, cloaking devices are nearly useless except to hide an enemy force. You can't use cloak/strike/cloak attacks that we've seen over and over again by the Klingons and Romulans. You can't for s**t sneak up on an enemy during combat.

The rules need an overhaul.

Mark, I appreciate it and will address this when I have time to write it all out. Your idea works GREAT for combat but the problem phase is when fleets are moving around. I will explain more later this weekend when I have some time to write it all out.

I agree some of the rules need overhauled and as I said above, I don't pretend I don't make mistakes with things. Lord knows I do. I just want people to know it is not an intentional attempt to screw them over. It is an attempt to create interest and happenings in game that sometimes don't work out right. It is hard to create a crisis that is large enough to hold the interest and give a real existential threat to a group like the UFP or Klingon Empire but still lets other powers feel important in things.

In retrospect given what people want I wish starting powers were much more even for the various powers. But again, lessons learned.

Perhaps next time we SHOULD start in the Enterprise era.

If you want phasers and photon torps, R & D them. It would provide a better base I think.....or at least an easier one.

I tend to agree a different starting period makes more sense in some respects, depending on what the objective of things is.

For the moment what we are going to do is this. Alpha is going to go on long-term hold simply to allow everyone to cool down and let us take a look at the whole system. Once it and Beta are sort of wrapped up we will consider doing a re-write of some of the rules and reworking the sheets. Some things worked well, others didn't. Some things I thought were important were, others hardly mattered. I like the era and genre a lot and think it is worth doing but a few fundamental principals of the Trek genre and the game mechanics need to be reworked to create natural conflict rather than almost all artificial conflict. Things like resource scarcity need to be rethought and an earlier age might make that possible.

In the interim I have talked to a few people about doing something new and simpler in many respects. I will post in more detail regarding that shortly but would welcome any and all to join up. The tracking and sheet aspect of it will be roughly similar, though slightly less complicated than the Trek stuff I think, but some issues such as deployment and defense will be greatly simplified. Check the general threads in the sim area for a prospectus on what I am talking about.

I must say, I enjoyed getting the stuffing kicked out of me... twice. I would definitely be in on any others.

You must have considering everything that happened to bring those fights on...

Players must produce and use minerals and gas in Starcraft. In Space Empires players must produce and use minerals, radioactives, and organics. Command and Conquer players must harvest tiberium to make game purchases. Do you have a system to keep track of antimatter usage and creation per empire?

Can you build civilian facilities in this game?

Tholian_Avenger wrote:Players must produce and use minerals and gas in Starcraft. In Space Empires players must produce and use minerals, radioactives, and organics. Command and Conquer players must harvest tiberium to make game purchases. Do you have a system to keep track of antimatter usage and creation per empire?

Can you build civilian facilities in this game?

Yes there was and is. Anti-matter and ore necessitate refineries and mines respectively.

I'd still like to see greater room for tech advancement. Christ, it was the US developing the Atomic Bomb that completely shifted the focus of power in WWII.

Does each starsystem have a unique set of stars/planets/asteroids/transneptunian-objects with their own resources read out or do you just have a resources readout for each starsystem?

Just each major system. Tracking thousands of objects would be a bit much.