Recently, 4 Nomad Platforms were obliterated by Lancer missiles in the same turn, and by the same empire,
 causing a flurry of questions to be raised about how it could happen, and what could be done to prevent it.  The simple answer appears to be "stop using Platforms if you are not a Nomad'.

This successful use of the previously under-utilized Lancer missile has created a galaxy-wide increase in production and deployment of the Lancer ship, and huge swaths of the galaxy are now being scanned for Platforms. When they are found, they are mercilessly targeted by Lancer crews.

Unfortunately, due to the limited ability of a Lancer to be targeted at a particular world, some neutral Nomads have suffered at the hands of these Lancer sweeps.

That targeting drawback has recently been corrected, and now Lancers may be directly targeted at platforms owned by a particular empire, or anyone with whom the owner has declared War.

Massive Lancer fleets, some numbering upwards of 60 ships, now blanket the galaxy, ever on the hunt for enemy Platforms, rooting them out wherever they are found.

Howdy, I'm brand new to this type of game, although I've played many standard RPGs online by post. I was wondering if anyone had some good suggestions for a strategic kingdom-management game for a player new to this genre? Clash of Legends looked interested, but I don't know how friendly it is to newbies, and it looks like you need to be invited by an existing user to play?

If you are a fan of great Sci-Fi novels, and/or Sci-Fi gaming, this projects combines the best of BOTH worlds. Click it, and show it some love,
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tak...-steve-rz/

Suppose you're playing a game that has quests and/or adventures for you to complete.  The game is primarily text based, so you're not going to get a lot pretty pictures or cinematics.

The question is, are you happy with getting a quest that reads something like:

A raiding part of orcs has captured Destin, Lord Byron's son.  Destroy the orcs, gain some loot and forever have Destin and Lord Byron as an ally.

Or, do you prefer a two page narrative that describes how Destin was captured, how distraught Lord Byron is, what the orc encampment looks like etc.?

For me, I like the stories to be as short as possible because I'm more interested in the loot than I am in the story of a minor quest.

For major quests, something that is a part of an overall story-arc, I would likely enjoy more detail but I still don't want to have to read a novel.

Any thoughts on this?

Hopefully I'll eventually find a topic people will have an opinion on!

I've had a few of my Cohorts alpha testers comment on the game's implementation of Strength vs. Carrying Capacity.

In Cohorts, the two items are unrelated.  I fully understand the argument as to why they (perhaps) should be related, but keeping them separate helps with the game mechanics.

In Cohorts, units (characters, military units & agents) have both a strength rating and a carrying capacity rating.  The strength rating typically affects damage during combat and bonuses to strength related skills.  Carrying capacity is a rating that describes how much a character can carry, both in terms of equipment and inventory.

Aside from the fact that strength already has too many associated bonuses, carrying capacity behaves differently (IMO).  A human has a carrying capacity of 10.  This allows him to carry up to 10 weight-units of gear.  A horse has a carrying capacity of 50.  This allows him to carry a rider, plus his equipment up to a weight of 50.  In the case of a man riding a horse, he can exceed his personal carrying capacity so long as his weight plus the weight of his gear does not exceed the weight of the horse.  Now, consider a centaur ... he has the carrying capacity of a horse and the strength of a man, but he can still carry up to 50 units of weight in gear.

In Cohorts, equipment is one size fits all.  Giant or pixie, you all wear the same gear.  This keeps things a lot simpler for the players because you don't have to worry about 6 different equipment sizes, resulting in getting loot that is useless to you.

If a Giant, which might have a base strength of 25 has the same carrying capacity as a Human.  They're both 10.  This allows for the magical re-sizing of gear without getting into odd circumstances where fairies can't wear anything and Giants can wear the very heaviest of everything.

Some races might get an advantage or disadvantage on carrying capacity, if the game designer chooses them to be different.

Units can increase their carrying capacity by gaining Talents, Titles, Statuses and/or special gear.

---

Do you think this is a broken game mechanic?  I personally think it adds a lot of flexibility, but is it worth it?

I attended a board-game convention this weekend, in DC.  It was my first time ever attending something like this -- in all my years of gaming, I've never gone to an actual con.  Very well-attended -- maybe a thousand people over 2 days.  There were family games (kid-friendly), euro-games in great abundance, social/party games intended to get people mingling, role-playing games, card-driven games (like Magic the Gathering), and even a light scattering of war games.

I met one fellow in particular, who lives in my general area, whose focus is on RPGs.  He plays online, using a system (d20?) in which a web server keeps track of all the stats and I guess they play via voice chat and/or text.  He remembered the PBM days and was interested in hearing of new developments.

As a number of us sat at one of the many tables and played several euro-games, a guy dropped off a leaflet advertising another upcoming local con.  It occurred to me that we ought to have some sort of presence at these gatherings.  We ought to have a few leaflets ready to hand out, a newbie-friendly web page to welcome them, and some good games to direct them to (galac-tac comes to mind).  Maybe even arrange a live demo of games in which turns can be run by the moderator "on demand".  It would be wild to see a "live" game of Alamaze packed into a 2-hour window!

I've just published the first (alpha) release of the standalone version (v0.1.30) of Cohorts.

With this version, players can run through the entire game (at least with as much content as is currently available) without having to submit turns to the server.  You can run turns as fast as you can prepare them.

I'm pretty excited at the prospect of this release.  Now I have to wait and see how my alpha test group likes it.

Would you like to try it?  Drop me a note and I'll happily add you to the alpha test group.  You'll just need to keep in mind ... it's an ALPHA test.

Cheers,

Paul

I was in a meeting the other day with a prospective contributor to Cohorts.  I spent a good part of the morning giving him the rundown on what PBM was, how Cohorts worked and what Cohorts was all about. 

Inasmuch as there was a lot of information conveyed to the prospective contributor, he made a comment that really stuck with me.  His comment was Cohorts, and possibly PBM games in general, have a very high Barrier to Entry.

In this case, he wasn't referring to the traditional barrier of trying to break a new game into a strong market, he was referring to the barrier presented to a new player who might want to get into Cohorts or the PBM world in general.

"There's so much data and so many rules ..."

Now, those of us that have been in the PBM world for a while know this is what we love most about PBM, but newcomers might just as easily see this as an impossible hill to climb.  It was suggested that perhaps new players could be introduced with a 'limited ruleset'.  I pretty much baulked at that idea because it's the ruleset that makes the game what it is.  He countered with a suggestion that perhaps the game could first present the player with high-level dashboard data rather than toss them into the thick of things with the full-on data goodness.  That was something that I felt I could get on board with.  So for the past few days, the idea of a high-level dashboard that gives a player an instate state of affairs of their position, their characters, their armies, etc. has been percolating in my mind.

What I've come up with at this point is, producing this sort of representation of data is non-trivial.  I find it non-trivial because I have trouble separating the critical information from the wonderful noise that is produced by pages and pages of data.

Here is a scenario challenge for anybody that would like to take a crack at a dashboard-like design.

Suppose you have a D&D character sheet.  It's got lots of wonderful information on your character.  What key bits of information would you take from that sheet, either as a single piece of data or as a set of data summarized into just a few values (or charts/diagrams of some kind)?

Now suppose you have a party of 6 D&D characters.  You need to represent that party in just a single pages with no more than a handful of values, charts, etc.

This section will served as a repository of files that players and potential players of various games can download various different files that are required for certain games. Rulebooks, maps, etc. can be found here. The files listed here will continue to be expanded upon, with the passage of time. Game moderators and game companies that want copies of their games' files available as a free download for PlayByMail.Net's forum users and forum visitors should send the relevant game files to: GrimFinger@GrimFinger.Net

One of the concepts that I'm implementing in Cohorts is the coexistence of PvP and PvE on the same map.

The idea is that there are areas on the map that are considered "safe" from being directly attacked by enemy factions.  Other areas are designated PvP areas where players are free to attack their enemies at will. 

The idea is to create areas where players can safely go about their business while trying to advance their faction.  However, the best "loot" can only be gained by venturing off into areas where the players must also contend with other players.

Does anybody have any thoughts on this concept?  Do you like it, hate it or see any potential problems with it?