07-20-2011, 11:35 AM
ENTRY-THIRTY ONE
With no response to my prior e-mails having been forthcoming, I have decided to post a closing entry in this, my diary-like thread that pertained to my relatively short stint in the game, Far Horizons.
Though I skimmed the rules many times, I never did end up reading the entire rulebook for Far Horizons from cover to cover. In hindsight, it's just as well, it seems, since the game has apparently gone belly-up, while Ramblurr continues his tour of the world. I don't really begrudge him the opportunity that has manifested itself before him. Moderate a dated space game, or tour the world? That one is a no brainer, in my book.
I never managed to colonize another planet, in spite of my previous alluding to the same. It's such a shame that we didn't get at least one more turn run, since more warships were en route to enemy locations. Pah!
At game end, what I now affectionately refer to as the last turn run for this particular game of Far Horizons, the Minions of Darkseid controlled a fleet of four warships. Respectively, they were:
Escort Granny Goodness
Escort Devilance
Frigate Mantis
Frigate Himon
Originally, I had intended to post nothing that would be informative of what my empire was created around - Darkseid. Sure, old Darkseid is a comic book character, but I needed something to go with for this test game, and he seemed as good of a choice as any.
The game was a fairly quiet one, for the relatively short duration that it lasted. To help fight the boredom, I decided to deviate from my original plan.
I opted to forward with the war against the Consortium, when I did, primarily because I felt that it would damage that empire's chances of winning the game. War, by its very nature, tends to be an expensive undertaking, and this game proved to be no exception to that general rule. At a bare minimum, by being hard-nosed about war with the Consortium, it would force that player to alter their existing strategy.
It never mattered to me how my empire ultimately fared. My perception of Darkseid is that he acts in his own interests, on his own whims. No sacrifice is too great for his ultimate glory.
My own experience in the game was that Ixnay, the Consortium player, would not favor fighting a war against an empire on his own home turf - complicated by the fact that he likely did not know where my own homeworld was located. I found his homeworld first, and he suffered for that stroke of destiny.
I perceived that Ixnay wanted to build up his forces unobstructed. he wanted to develop a good economy, one that would provide a solid footing for wars to come much later. What better way to throw a monkey wrench into Ixnay's plans, than by forcing him to contend with war well before he wanted it?
Regardless of how Darkseid's war with the Consortium would eventually turn out, I felt that it would leave the Consortium weakened - and hence, easy prey for other empires that made contact with them later in the game.
Revealing the locations of Consortium worlds ensured that Darkseid could never hold them uncontested, for any length of time. They were, in a word, expendable.
At game end, my empire's tech levels were as follows:
Tech Levels:
Mining = 24
Manufacturing = 25
Military = 21
Gravitics = 16
Life Support = 8
Biology = 11
The overall minimal amount of communication and interaction with other empires in the game made the game far more boring that it had to be. Little wonder why Darkseid acts as he does - The loneliness of space definitely impacts the mind.
The game is better suited to creating an empire from scratch, than it is trying to make a pre-existing empire fit within the game's format. There were no Boom Tubes nor advanced Apokoliptian technology to aid me in this game. And that, I think, is one of the deficiencies of the game, although how does one design a game to effectively allow one to emulate virtually any pre-existing space culture known to the human imagination?
Having no advanced Apokoliptian technology to speak of, I opted for the next best thing - the impression of advanced technology. Destroying the Consortium freighter helped with this, although I had enough sense to know that I wasn't fooling any experienced Far Horizons players. For all practical purposes, though, Ixnay, himself, was the other players in this game, as far as I was concerned.
I didn't really know how to role play Darkseid. I never really intended to. But, as things progressed, I decided to inject him into the dialogue, for better or for worse. I didn't feel that he would trust anyone, and that coming into contact with Darkseid's empire would be quite a different adventure than, say, coming into contact with NASA or with Starfleet would be.
With no response to my prior e-mails having been forthcoming, I have decided to post a closing entry in this, my diary-like thread that pertained to my relatively short stint in the game, Far Horizons.
Though I skimmed the rules many times, I never did end up reading the entire rulebook for Far Horizons from cover to cover. In hindsight, it's just as well, it seems, since the game has apparently gone belly-up, while Ramblurr continues his tour of the world. I don't really begrudge him the opportunity that has manifested itself before him. Moderate a dated space game, or tour the world? That one is a no brainer, in my book.
I never managed to colonize another planet, in spite of my previous alluding to the same. It's such a shame that we didn't get at least one more turn run, since more warships were en route to enemy locations. Pah!
At game end, what I now affectionately refer to as the last turn run for this particular game of Far Horizons, the Minions of Darkseid controlled a fleet of four warships. Respectively, they were:
Escort Granny Goodness
Escort Devilance
Frigate Mantis
Frigate Himon
Originally, I had intended to post nothing that would be informative of what my empire was created around - Darkseid. Sure, old Darkseid is a comic book character, but I needed something to go with for this test game, and he seemed as good of a choice as any.
The game was a fairly quiet one, for the relatively short duration that it lasted. To help fight the boredom, I decided to deviate from my original plan.
I opted to forward with the war against the Consortium, when I did, primarily because I felt that it would damage that empire's chances of winning the game. War, by its very nature, tends to be an expensive undertaking, and this game proved to be no exception to that general rule. At a bare minimum, by being hard-nosed about war with the Consortium, it would force that player to alter their existing strategy.
It never mattered to me how my empire ultimately fared. My perception of Darkseid is that he acts in his own interests, on his own whims. No sacrifice is too great for his ultimate glory.
My own experience in the game was that Ixnay, the Consortium player, would not favor fighting a war against an empire on his own home turf - complicated by the fact that he likely did not know where my own homeworld was located. I found his homeworld first, and he suffered for that stroke of destiny.
I perceived that Ixnay wanted to build up his forces unobstructed. he wanted to develop a good economy, one that would provide a solid footing for wars to come much later. What better way to throw a monkey wrench into Ixnay's plans, than by forcing him to contend with war well before he wanted it?
Regardless of how Darkseid's war with the Consortium would eventually turn out, I felt that it would leave the Consortium weakened - and hence, easy prey for other empires that made contact with them later in the game.
Revealing the locations of Consortium worlds ensured that Darkseid could never hold them uncontested, for any length of time. They were, in a word, expendable.
At game end, my empire's tech levels were as follows:
Tech Levels:
Mining = 24
Manufacturing = 25
Military = 21
Gravitics = 16
Life Support = 8
Biology = 11
The overall minimal amount of communication and interaction with other empires in the game made the game far more boring that it had to be. Little wonder why Darkseid acts as he does - The loneliness of space definitely impacts the mind.
The game is better suited to creating an empire from scratch, than it is trying to make a pre-existing empire fit within the game's format. There were no Boom Tubes nor advanced Apokoliptian technology to aid me in this game. And that, I think, is one of the deficiencies of the game, although how does one design a game to effectively allow one to emulate virtually any pre-existing space culture known to the human imagination?
Having no advanced Apokoliptian technology to speak of, I opted for the next best thing - the impression of advanced technology. Destroying the Consortium freighter helped with this, although I had enough sense to know that I wasn't fooling any experienced Far Horizons players. For all practical purposes, though, Ixnay, himself, was the other players in this game, as far as I was concerned.
I didn't really know how to role play Darkseid. I never really intended to. But, as things progressed, I decided to inject him into the dialogue, for better or for worse. I didn't feel that he would trust anyone, and that coming into contact with Darkseid's empire would be quite a different adventure than, say, coming into contact with NASA or with Starfleet would be.