Here are the topic questions that are needed answering? Just copy and paste these below bullet point questions into your post and add your thoughts.

• Factional Name: The Roder Family


•The primary purpose for the faction to exist?
•What distinguishing feature does this faction have?
• What specific in-game benefit can this faction have?
•What makes this faction interesting and fun to play?
•What (usually mutual) factional enemies?

Here are the topic questions that are needed answering? Just copy and paste these below bullet point questions into your post and add your thoughts

• Factional Name: The Getham Family

•The primary purpose for the faction to exist?
•What distinguishing feature does this faction have?
• What specific in-game benefit can this faction have?
•What makes this faction interesting and fun to play?
•What (usually mutual) factional enemies?

Here are the topic questions that are needed answering? Just copy and paste these below bullet point questions into your post and add your thoughts.

• Factional Name: The Boda Family

•The primary purpose for the faction to exist?
•What distinguishing feature does this faction have?
• What specific in-game benefit can this faction have?
•What makes this faction interesting and fun to play?
•What (usually mutual) factional enemies?

Here are the topic questions that are needed answering? Just copy and paste these below bullet point questions into your post and add your thoughts.

• Factional Name: The Imperials

•The primary purpose for the faction to exist?
•What distinguishing feature does this faction have?
• What specific in-game benefit can this faction have?
•What makes this faction interesting and fun to play?
•What (usually mutual) factional enemies?

I’d like to consider experimenting with the basic factional designs to improve them and see what might be able to be done.  To that end, I’d like to have some open discussions about what you all think and see if we might come up with some sort of consensus.  But to be most effective, this needs to have wide input from a dozen or more players rather than just the opinions of a few.  Do you think we might be able to get some good participation on this subject?

My main concerns on this subject as a GM are:

1. I’d like to preserve game balance across the factions as a priority.  Every faction should be desirable in some way and no faction should overpower the others or be significantly under-powered by comparison.
   
   
2. Since we’ll have relatively few players to begin with, we should start with as few factions as we can manage.  I’d like to see 20+ clans in every faction, and if we have only a few apiece then we’re spreading them too thinly.  We can add new factions as the player base increases enough to support them.
   
   
3. The factions should be quite distinct from one another.  Each faction should have its own reasons for existence and desirability that are not shared with the other factions.  They should have interesting personalities each in their own right, so that playing in a different faction is somewhat like playing in a different game.
   
   
4. These discussions should be from the point of view of an arbitrary player who is really interested in the faction, rather than oriented toward your own personal favorite faction.
   
   
5. Please exclude from consideration:
   • Let’s consider the factional designs independent of “skills”.  If we end up with skills, they should be flavorful enhancements to play rather than part of the basic factional designs.
     
   • Likewise, let’s not yet plan for factions that make use of other game facilities that I’m not expecting to have in play to begin with – let’s save those for later.  I’m thinking primarily of things like naval activities here.  I expect to add support for ships and such, but I think we need to add such things later once the “land” game is more established.
     
   • I’d also like to avoid having factions in the “chaotic” arenas for the moment.  Bandits, Barbarians/Pirates, Heretics, etc. will be fun player choices in the future when we have room to expand into them, but for the time being let’s leave them as NPC opponents.  That’s not to say that (especially as Independents) you can’t go out and set up an anonymous roadblock or preach about some new religion, but let’s not try to formalize them as groups yet.
     
   
   
6. Very importantly, each faction should be fun to play.  If a faction is not interesting or isn’t fun, then nobody will want to declare for them and it becomes dead weight to the game system.
   

• Factional name (obviously).
  
  
• The primary purpose for the faction to exist – what overall goal do they want to accomplish in the world?  For instance, their purpose might be trade, agriculture, military specialists, domination/control of Midgard, religious supremacy, brokering peace between factions, etc.
  
  
• What distinguishing feature does this faction have, such as well-known defensive works, horse-based warriors, archery skills, construction expertise, etc.?
  
  
• Possibly related to that, what specific in-game benefit can this faction have that no other faction has?  This might be the ability to influence markets, limited divination, perform military training, etc.  Remember that different faction’s abilities should be relatively balanced in power.
  
  
• What makes this faction interesting and fun to play, beyond the specific benefits it provides?
  
  
• And finally, what (usually mutual) factional enemies do they have and which others do they tend to cooperate with?
  

Midgard already has a reasonably-well-described history leading up to the “present time”, but included in this were a number of obvious and not-so-obvious game “restarts” (including a quite violent meteor strike).  Since we’re talking about yet another restart, what recommendations do you have for altering the history of the Midgard world?

I guess first and foremost, should we leave the meteor strike in the history books, or rewrite the consequences of that meteor (effectively replacing it as a different strike), or get rid of it altogether?  Should we go back in time and run Midgard from an earlier time in its history, or just make little changes to it but leave it basically intact, or write a new alternate history altogether?  Should we try to “explain” the restart or just pretend that it was like that all along (story-wise)?  Maybe you can even come up with other options.


What are your opinions on the subject?

This is the last of four introductory threads on SuperNova. If you've managed your first three turns, you're ready to expand your empire. To do that, you need ships (this post) and colonies (next post).

Designing New Ships
A spreadsheet can help calculate the tonnage (you need at 25K+) and components - see the third post of How to Organize It All - but it isn't essential.

Here are basic ship designs you may find useful in the early game.

Local Colonizer
  1   Mk I Nuclear Engine
  100 Colonial Berthing
  50,000 Cargo Bay
100 Berthings takes more steel than you may have in the first turns, so some players make a initial ship half this size. Some have larger Cargo Bays and some have even smaller ones if they also make a separate 'delivery' ship (with big bays and no berthings) to shuttle materials.

Galaxy Colonizer
  1   Mk I Nuclear Engine
  100 Colonial Berthing
  100,000 Cargo Bay
  1 Fuel Shuttle
  10,000 Fuel Tankage
  1  Mk I Nuclear Jump Drive
  1  Mk I Jump Survey Sensor
  1  Mk I Computer System
  1  Mk I Short Range Sensor
The last component isn't strictly necessary, and again, you can vary the Berthing and Cargo Bay size, but this is a good starting point.

Explorer
  1   Mk I Nuclear Engine
  25,000 Cargo Bay
  1 Drone Rack
  1 Fighter Bay
  1 Fuel Shuttle
  10,000 Fuel Tankage
  1  Mk I Nuclear Jump Drive
  1  Mk I Jump Survey Sensor
  1  Mk I Computer System
  10  Mk I Medium Range Sensor (which you can research)
  5  Survey Lander
  3 Type B Science Lab (Type A is fine until you research this)
Give this ship an XEXPL order ('Explore,' and 'X' for repeat every turn') and move it every other turn to a new planet to discover new items and technology. The Fighter Bay and Drone Rack are there to hold any such ships you discover, just as the Cargo Bays hold other tech (and provide the missing feature that makes Pathfinders unsuitable for EXPL, since they have no holding area). Do additional sensors, landers, and labs help with discovery? Who knows?

A variation of this, with no Bays or Racks and more sensors, can be used to 'unlock' Warp Points. Note that you have a bonus when surveying the Warp Points going directly back to your home system, so even your starting Pathfinders can survey a 'D' WP adjacent to home.

And a variation of that without landers makes a good patrol ship, using an XSENS order to scan for incoming ships at a given WP. Whether or not you want to arm it is up to you. See Preparing for Combat, below.



All of these use a single Mk I Nuclear Engine, which is all you'll need until your production is so developed that you can stack hundreds of engines onto a ship for 2 or more Action Points.



Refueling Station
  50,000 Fuel Tankage
A Planetary installation, unlike the other Spaceships listed above. Give it the orders
    XLC     Load Cargo (every turn)    Fuel 50000
    SUPP   Resupply Duty
and it will refill itself then top off the tanks of any of your ships at your homeworld, including new ones just coming off the production line - thus saving you an order every time you make a new jump-capable ship.




To build a ship, use the SHIP order, or XSHIP if you want it built each turn. Consider adding one or two Shipyard Slips: you start with one, and each turn, you may build only as many boats as you have Slips. Also, if you build big ships, you may want to add Shipyards, which govern how much total ship-building you can do per turn.

To add any ship to your production queue, you must already have the components built the turn before. If you order more ships than you have Slips, they get added to to the Shipyard Queue and will get made in turn.

You can remove unwanted ships from your queue (like additional Pathfinders that you may not want for awhile) with the SCRP Scrap Ship order.

Ok, here's a new "game design" discussion topic for you...

As always, when getting a CVR you get a report of what's on a city's market and how much they're asking for it.  And remember that I've mentioned that through the game system, CVRs can optionally be "shared" with other players.  However, the new system provides for an extra mechanism in markets whereby the CL can place very flexible (and potentially complicated) restrictions on their marketplace.  For instance, you might be selling swords on your market but you don't want to sell them to anyone in your opposing faction.  So you can put a restriction on that item so that the other faction can't buy them and can't even get to see them on their CVRs.

I like this flexibility, and coding it is easy enough, but it presents me with a reporting problem.  How do I show restricted marketplaces on CVRs?  If it's only for you, that's fine because it's showing you what's available to you.  But if you share the CVR to someone else, it may show something to which they're not otherwise entitled to see.  The opposite is also true - you may not be seeing something because you're restricted, but the other player then wouldn't see it either even though it's available to them.  (This can be a particular problem when someone has hired you to get a CVR for them.)

What should I do about this CVR conundrum?

When getting started, remember the Golden Rule of SuperNova: you don't need everything.

If you want to record every bit of information you receive, you can... but start with the essential info and stop when you're satisfied. For your first several turns, you need the six key pieces of your system and production information, detailed in the thread of Your First Three Turns.

Then to organize all your info, it really helps to maintain three spreadsheets for

• listing planets and Way Points for each system
  
• calculating production at your homeworld
  
• planning your turns
  

• Orders Supplement
  
• Installation Supplement
  
• Convoy Route Supplement
  

This is the second of four threads on SuperNova, along with Getting Started: Setup, How to Organize It All, and Expanding Your Empire (Turns 3-10+). For more info on the game, see the SuperNova summary and links posted by Raven. This post details reading your first turn.

Your initial turn sheet arrives with a mind-boggling amount of information in those (roughly) 35 pages. Don't panic: you don't need it all, and reading it gets much easier as you go. Here's how to sort it for the first time.

Page 1: The due date and your remaining balance are the important details here. Don't be fooled by the prominent, colored graph of your racial modifiers: they don't change (until you access advanced technologies), and they have little impact on your turn planning (for a good while).

p2-3: A scan of your home System. One planet is your homeworld, and the others you can access without going through a Warp gate. Your colonists will prefer planets similar to your homeworld, particularly in atmosphere. See How to Organize It All for tips on recording the key details.

You'll also get a PMAP of terrain features and an ORB of your homeworld. The former is mostly for flavor, though future PMAPs can help you fine-tune colonization strategies for other worlds. An ORB tells you what empires have a presence there: you do!

The GEO survey is more valuable, listing resources available on your homeworld. See How to Organize It All.

Next is an ANZ, information about a resource or technology. These will come up automatically as you research new things. Then there's a description of your Bastion defense installation, which you can skip over.

Then there are about 15 pages detailing technology your empire has at start and can research. You can skip all of this - with one exception - to access the info any time from the excellent SuperNova Wiki. I actually made a copy of the pdf and edited out all these pages, along with several of the final pages (Ship Design Report, Force Battle Plan, Installations Report, and Research), since none are needed for your first turns.

The one important page here lists your Imperial Advisor Report, including four useful details, only one of which you need here: your Excess Power, available for new installations. There's other useful info here, including your number of Stripmining Complexes, your Industrial Capacity (roughly 100,000,000 - on the right side, more about this below), and the Legendary Characters on your homeworld, but these are more easily read elsewhere. Stripmining Complexes and Industrial Capacity are repeated in the Colony Report, and there's a Character Report.


Then your pdf says bit about researchable items, then comes your Fleet Report. You really just need the Fleet Number and number of ships, but here's how to read the whole thing.



Fleet #101 ('101' is how you'll identify it for orders), named '101st Recon Group,' in your home system of Galactica in orbit over planet 3 (and not at a WarpPoint). Ignore the Rules of Engagement and other items on the far right for now. It has 73,500 fuel (and room for 84,000 total). It can Jump through Warp Point gates and has 2 Action Points each turn; future ships you build will mostly have 1 Action point, at least for awhile. There are 8 ships in this fleet, of the Pathfinder type (in the broad category of an 'Express Boat,' which you can ignore). Key info: 8 ships in fleet 101, at Galactica-3.

Next is an Army Report - ignore it - and a Colony Report. Take your number of Industrial Complexes and multiply by 25 to get your Industrial Capacity. That's the figure of 100,000,000 or so from the Imperial Advisor Report. You'll use that number in planning, along with the total of 1,000 times your number of Stripmining Complexes.


On your homeworld of Galactica-3, you currently have orders to produce 5 things each turn. 'Tooled' means 'repeat this every turn.' 5050 is the number of your population group on Galactica-3. When you colonize another world, it will have its own Pop Group number. The numbers 510-550 are the order in which these get made. If you add, say, Lumber, you can assign it to your production queue at number 20 or 320 or 400, so it gets made before any of these, or 600 or 7000 or the like and it will get made after. Note that there are two ways to produce things, from your queue and through installations like Iron Mines and Gas Refineries. More on that in How to Organize It All.

Next is the list of items in your Imperial Stockpiles. You'll have millions of Construction Materials, used to make new installations, and millions of Raw Resources, used to produce things in the queue pictured above.

Then comes your Shipyard Report, where you'll have several Pathfinders awaiting production. If you have only one Shipyard Slip, only one can be made per turn. You can add more Slips later.

Warp Points Surveyed will list all the Warp Points in your home system, gateways to further worlds. The relevant info is the WP number listed first, on the left-hand side. Then it lists your home system, where they are all located, along with the places to which they connect. These are adjacent star systems for you to explore.

Ignore the Diplomacy Report for now, which will be blank until you make Alliances.

Under the Character Report, you see your Legendary Characters, all of whom need names. The exception is your leader, named in your Setup Sheet.

You can skip the next parts of the Ship Design Report, Force Battle Plan, Installations Report, and Research. Researchable Items can be useful in planning, along with the information available at the SuperNova Wiki.

Taken together, these the key parts of your first turn report are the

• Scan of your home System on p.2-3
  
• GEO survey of your homeworld
  
• Imperial Advisor Report listing of Excess Power
  
• Fleet Numbers and the number of ships in each fleet
  
• Colony Report with your number of Stripmining Complexes, and your Industrial Capacity
  
• Industrial Production Report, listing what you make each turn