Supporting continuing development for Empyrean Challenge / Cluster Wars
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I agree with Jim great start.
I noticed when you add a quantity of an item, such as 1,000,000 AUT-5, or 1E6 AUT-5, that both forms of entry will work.
However when you press the add item button, they will appear in the ship design in the form of entry that you originally wrote them.
I suggest that they always appear in the numeric form of entry.( I think it's both easier on the eyes and on the brain)
along such lines, I also noticed that items in the ship colony design, for instance fuel, have no commas to delineate the numeric form of entry. when you look at a quantity of fuel and let's say it is 100 million or 1 billion, it is difficult to determine which is which when you are looking at a 10 or 11 digit long string of zeros with no commas to delineate them.
Hopefully I have other suggestions soon.
also I did not notice any way to save the design once you have begun work on it.
Personally I like Beamer's that can move everything except people.
When you're not allowed to beam people, enemy skirmishes will always have the possibility, or even just the threat, of capturing the one element of the game that is difficult to generate or replace, which is of course population. Struggling to capture enemy population, is a valid alternative pathway to victory, and produces many extremely interesting turns or scenarios in the game.
I must also say I'm completely intrigued by the prospect of drag-and-drop interfaces, this could save so much work I couldn't help wondering does the drag-and-drop amount always have to be 100% of the supply or can you drag a lesser quantities say any number percent.
I found that the easier it got to build different kinds of ships, I would find different uses for them or different theaters of warfare to engage the them, hopefully, always coming up with the right answer to counter the enemy configuration.
Beamer's were invented simply to reduce a huge number of orders.
This argues strongly for the capability of Beamer's to transport population.
That being said personally, I favor the necessity of moving the population
the old-fashioned way.
ADN's, MRG's, STP's ,Standing orders ,and the ever useful Templates in the DESIGNER,
were also a very effective way or reducing the amount of orders necessay to
translate an idea into a action.
I believe many aspects of the game benifit from less bookkeepping\,and more action.
That concept ,(possibly along with less population) would make the game considerably easier and faster. I'm not sure we want each game to last the 70+ turns it was taking.
Mysteries of the universe
One of the faults of the game, is that there are too many turns spent just manufacturing the means of production and then exponentially increasing it.
CW 2 introduced an effective and hopefully interesting s'shortcut to this, which could be used again and even multiplied.
Every home system had an open colony on its in systems secondary Hab world, and another enclosed colony on one of the asteroids.
These colonies were referred to as relics, they were supposed to be the remnants of ancient civilizations, and they contained
what amounted to valuable prizes once you explored and captured them.
If I recall correctly,one was lightly defended, and one was not offended at all. In each one contained a high tech item, that was immediately useful
two your fledgling Empire.( Such as a high tech item, for instance 20 Frm-10 or 20 Tpt-10. Once you explored out system worlds, you would find an ancient civilization
that you could invade and capture which also contained useful items such as 20 Sen-15.) The ancient civilizations were much harder to invade and capture
and you are expected to fail in the first, or second attempt.
These 3 ancient colonies, along with their useful artifacts, not only provided a way to speed up the race to higher TL levels, but also provided the novice players with extremely useful combat experience with little or no downside. Honing your skills in various order writing techniques (necessary to to affect successful combat, or even to play the game on a competitive level) seemed to me, to be a necessary instruction and experience.
Here are some thoughts on what Vern and I wanted to happen in creation of the universe.
We wanted all home systems to be similar, but not completely equal.
But the real rub, is that we wanted each game to have generated a completely new & unique universe. The last game was the result of one such randomly created universe.
The number of systems would range between 80 and 200.
CW-2 had 200 systems, which incidentally I believe was way too many.
The universe's supply of metals and nonmetals and fuel would vary in several different ways. Each new universe would have a different mix.
The original EC games had a universe of 33% metals 33% nonmetals and 33% fuel. As you randomly raised or lowered the amount of fuel in the universe, it would affect your game strategy. In a fuel rich incarnation, energy weapons would be by far the best way to go, in a fuel poor situation, missile launchers would rise in value. If the universe was poor in metals,gaining control of metal producing systems would be a legitimate and valid strategy. Finding out the individual makeup of each universe the would result in quite different long-term strategies in each game.
I had also wanted to greatly vary both the average amount and the yield of deposits in each game. The same would apply to both starting population, available habitability,and variable birth rates.
New game = new strategy required for optimization.
Your memory was essentially correct.
The game was originally played on a 30 x 30 x 30 grid.
In its last incarnation the grid was used, but Vern had an algorithm or formula for keeping systems out of the corners, resulting in a spherical looking universe.
You did indeed need a higher tech hyper engine in order to reach your nearest neighbors. I would mention that with the old geometrical progression of hyper engine ability everything was too close, and almost everything could be reached in two or three jumps once you got past tech 10. To remedy this problem I believe we used the TL squared divided by 1.5 .
As to your question about the home world's, It Was Vern's successful Intention to make every home world exactly equal, with three unlimited deposits, and for every home system to have an additional 3 unlimited deposits scattered throughout, Also every home system was to have an additional Hab planet ( containing one of the 3 additional unlimited deposits). What he unintentionally failed to do was to make all the home systems identical. The preceding accounted for 4 planets, the remaining six planets were randomly created. This resulted in different HW systems being relatively rich (or poor) in either Mets Nonmetals or Fuel
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