Supporting continuing development for Empyrean Challenge / Cluster Wars
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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.
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I like it. I suggest the following refinement.
In terms of theme, the narrative is that the entire cluster was once populated, but fell into disarray after a catastrophic civil war. The players represent the civilizations that have regained HEN tech. We could make it so you need HEN-2 to get anywhere -- even off your home system to the nearest other star. The players all start with HEN-2, but no other (non-player) planet has it.
Then make it so EVERY hab-world has an existing population. Or most of them, at least. They all have other tech artifacts remaining from before the civil war -- just not HEN.
And make it so there's no second hab world in the home systems. No radio contact. Players have to make the thematic jump to hyperspace to start conquering these remnant worlds.
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