Game code changes - proposal

[prozenfeld]

I like the idea of making long jumps more difficult. In my old Ultima Online days, I remember many of the seasoned players yearned for the days when almost nobody could teleport. Regions took on special character, journeys were treacherous (and rewarding) adventures unto themselves, and geography took its toll on all players old and new. But as soon as teleporting became ubiquitous, all that geographic richness disappeared. People blinked in and out as they pleased, and the only travelers on the king's highways were my fellow noobs, out to hunt for rabbit pelts and the like.

In FH, I would agree to the suggested rule change, or I would add a second level of danger to long-jumping. Perhaps a higher chance of ship destruction, or perhaps a telepathic blast that would inform all players of the jumping fleet's specs at that instant.

Completely agree with your UO analogy. Space "travel" should present itself as a challenge, rather than be just instantaneous change of location.

I encountered another race/species, this turn. It proved to be a very stale experience.

The encounter itself is bland. The diplomacy / roleplaying that follows should be more interesting

If it is possible for a player to start with a position that guarantees him a leg up when playing (assuming he knows how to exploit it), once that fact becomes known, players will drop as soon as they see that they did not get that kind of a position. The only ones left would be the ones that got the better positions and the noobs, who would be dead men walking.

No single race is able to "win" in Far Horizons without allies. The pace of development for a species depend on many factors. Strong home system is a most obvious and easiest to tweak of them.

I would guess that you are equating position equality with all positions being clones of each other. That is certainly not what I meant, I don't think it is what I wrote, nor is it what I believe anyone else has been talking about.

Absolutely agree. The intention of my changes is to keep starting position variance within limits.

I would think that a greater issue would be addressing the entry level appeal issues. In its present form, I think that player dropouts will be common, particularly in the early phases of the game - thus rendering the mid-game fairly moot, for them.

From my experience playing 4 games, the dropout rate is ~10-20% (manageable). It does not affect the game significantly for those still playing.

Sifting through the game manual for Far Horizons has been an exercise in tedium writ large. It is very time consuming, and is a chore to be viewed with dread, from my perspective. Whether the game is balanced or not is the least of my concerns, as a player. I would rather that the game simply be more fun, not balanced.

I understand your point about barrier of entry. But the intent of this thread was to improve the actual gameplay for those who are familiar with the rules.