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Author Topic: Researching Star Control Board Game Interest  (Read 8411 times)
Death 999
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Re: Researching Star Control Board Game Interest
« Reply #15 on: November 02, 2004, 07:52:31 pm »

I think that a space-exploration game could very well be done using cards.

One card-game I saw that seemed fairly effective  (if weird) at space combat was a mining game in which you placed ships sequentially and then worked out at the end what happened, as each ship fired its lasers in turn (each had a number). Score was based on kills and amount of minerals mined off the central asteroid.
However, this was very much a fleet action game, not 1-on-1.

One could have a combat sub-game sort of akin to L5R's duelling system (which is quasi-related to the force draws of the SW card game). Hopefully it would be considerably more involved than either of those, though either of them might be profitably looked-to for ideas.


Quote
There are also conversions of Sid Meyers "Civilization" and "Doom 3" is currently being developed.


Well, Eagle's version of Civilization is frankly pathetic. Quasi-decent with heavily modified rules, perhaps.

As far as Magic-style is concerned, I once made up a set of cards for Star Control, but I lost them. It had stuff like

Ur-Quan Dreadnaught 1 WGRKU
Starship - Ur-quan
6/1
comes into play with 5 +0/+1 fighter counters on it.
1: remove a fighter counter from this: put a 1/1 flying fighter token into play. If the fighter is alive at end of turn, remove it from play and put a +0/+1 counter on this.

Note that 'flying' basically meant 'at least as fast as an Ur-Quan fighter'. Taking into consideration the existence of 'horsemanship' from portal, it would be fair to change this term to something more appropriate.

Kohr-Ah Marauder 3KKKK
4/8
Deals damage during first strike and regular damage phases.

Lastly, the idea behind 'Heavy Bombers' in Axis and Allies was indeed that they were nuclear. So there is no need to throw in special nuke rules.
« Last Edit: November 02, 2004, 08:01:09 pm by Death_999 » Logged
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Re: Researching Star Control Board Game Interest
« Reply #16 on: November 02, 2004, 10:31:32 pm »

Links:
Star Chamber: a card-trading online game with a space theme.  See also a post-mortem of Star Chamber (free registration req'd) by its sole author.

StarConRPG: An online role-playing game set in the SC universe.  It's built around a forum, and actual role-playing. Smiley  They may have some words of wisdom on this.

If, nay, when you get going with this commercially, go talk to the blessed TFB directly.  They're really nice peeps!
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Re: Researching Star Control Board Game Interest
« Reply #17 on: November 03, 2004, 01:46:38 am »

Actually "youBastrd" (hard to keep a straight face) TFB doesn't seem to opposed to idea, which is very exciting for me, since if given the chance I'll definately revive the Star Control Brand name, even if i have to resort to calling something it something slightly different and cheesy like Star Controller or Star Con.

As for the whole Eagle's "Civilization" sucks, well frankly...I couldn't agree more. It was actually the last straw for me as far as games go.

I couldn't stand it, so I made up different rules and slowly "repaired" my $60 dollar purchase. That was the begining of game design and slowly I went from repairing broken games to designing my own. Not to bash Eagle too bad, though, they are starting to come around. Age of Myth wasn't a terrible game and it seems like with each game released by Eagle the rules get a little cleaner and the games more strategic..

For great games stick with www.daysofwonder.com
Most if not all of their games are awesome, and Fantasy Flight Games designed by Kevin Wilson are all winners as well. Board games tend to be a mixed bag depending on what you like so for lots of opinions head to www.boardgamegeek.com  
« Last Edit: November 03, 2004, 01:54:26 am by GoldenGamesGuy » Logged
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Re: Researching Star Control Board Game Interest
« Reply #18 on: November 03, 2004, 04:34:05 am »

Heh, I actually made (or is making, rather) a complete redesign of the Civilization rules, in order to make it faster, and less based on luck. This included redesigning the combat system from scratch. It's now a system that rewards long-term planning and a proper mix of units, keeping only a small bit of the old paper-rock-scissors system.

GoldenGamesGuy, I take it you are Jason Hartgrave? If so, I'm still waiting for a reply to my email. Wink
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TiLT
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Re: Researching Star Control Board Game Interest
« Reply #19 on: November 03, 2004, 08:20:50 pm »

Dammit, my webserver is down, and I have no idea when it will be back up. Anyone sending me email, send it to (removed) instead of the email listed in my profile. If you sent a mail that bounced, resend it to this email instead.

EDIT: Nevermind, it's back up. Send to my normal email.
« Last Edit: November 03, 2004, 09:21:32 pm by TiLT » Logged
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Re: Researching Star Control Board Game Interest
« Reply #20 on: November 03, 2004, 11:22:03 pm »

TiLT, would you like to compare notes?

I did a major reworking which was pretty fun to do and pretty fun to play. It needs some work, though...
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TiLT
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Re: Researching Star Control Board Game Interest
« Reply #21 on: November 04, 2004, 12:13:45 am »

Quote
TiLT, would you like to compare notes?

I did a major reworking which was pretty fun to do and pretty fun to play. It needs some work, though...


Thanks for the offer, but no, I don't really need to compare notes at this point. I just finalized the prototype of my Star Control boardgame, and I'm pretty damn pleased with the results, if I have to say so myself. Wink Right now, all I have left to do is playtesting, and possibly removing features that are cumbersome or simply not fun. And rewriting the rules for clarity, which is what I'm doing right now. Current page count is 29 pages, and it's still growing...

Can't wait to actually play this thing!
« Last Edit: November 04, 2004, 12:15:37 am by TiLT » Logged
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Re: Researching Star Control Board Game Interest
« Reply #22 on: November 04, 2004, 12:53:07 am »

Tilt, I think Death_999 was asking to compare notes on your "Civilization" house rules. I made these rules quite some time ago, and there may be better repairs but after I playtested these rules the game is acceptable.

My Forum name over there is "Mind4u2c" and here's a couple of links to the house rules I made and some reasons why they work.

http://eaglegames.zeroforum.com/zerothread?id=1782

http://eaglegames.zeroforum.com/zerothread?id=1692

http://eaglegames.zeroforum.com/zerothread?id=2307

I also created an LANPARTY "Age of Myth" (8 player +) variant , but I'm not sure what happened to it. I'll do some searching if you want it.
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Re: Researching Star Control Board Game Interest
« Reply #23 on: November 04, 2004, 01:22:50 am »

Okay, I see... thats something else. Well, here's one tiny part of my alternate ruleset for Civilization. This is the part I changed the most, which is the combat system. Keep in mind that I haven't playtested it.

http://www.medievalfuture.com/tilt/div/Alternate%20Combat%20Rules.doc
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Re: Researching Star Control Board Game Interest
« Reply #24 on: November 04, 2004, 04:18:20 am »

Ah, I see. My changes were more drastic and fundamental. I didn't completely rewrite the game, but I did touch on just about every aspect. I have a summary ready if you'd like to see it... I didn't post it in the eagle forums because it was so sweeping they might just say, 'go design your own freaking game!'
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Re: Researching Star Control Board Game Interest
« Reply #25 on: November 04, 2004, 04:32:41 am »

I tried to be as fundamental in my redesign as possible, myself. However, I gave myself one restriction: There would have to be an absolutely minimal amount of changes to the game components. I didn't want to go about making new components. For example, by looking at my combat system, you might notice that I still make use of the "2 dice + 3" style of stats, and in fact use exactly the same stats as in the core game, but I use these stats in a wildly different way from the core game. It's been pretty challening, and when I added governments and nationalities to the game, I had to move away from that objective slightly. I believe it might just be worth it though. Smiley

Having said that, it would be fun to see your rules suggestions.
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Re: Researching Star Control Board Game Interest
« Reply #26 on: November 04, 2004, 10:42:19 pm »

There are several major changes and several tweaks. In order to make sense, they generally all have to go together, except for a few tweaks at the end.

1) IMPROVEMENTS
Improvements are no longer generic:
Marketplace, bank, and stock-market act much more like in the computer game (see below).
Masonry required for size 2, Construction for size 3, Railroad improvement for size 4.
Granary, Aqueduct, Hospital, and Health Care Complex mitigate the effects of plagues in cities of size 1, 2, 3, and 4 respectively (see events).

I was trying to figure out what to do with libraries and universities. I was thinking of a more MoO-style research, with groundwork being laid and then discovery being random. Prevents 1st-turn grabbing the good cheap techs, but would it make the game drag?

Also, happiness improvements don't improve productivity, they help mitigate rebellion (see events).
I had a complex system figured out with corruption which mirrored civ pretty well and with relatively easy arithmetic, but it would have been just a little too awkward, I think. Perhaps not, if you know the rules and know how to divide by 2 or 3. That is sufficiently complicated as to deserve its own writeup.

2) EVENTS
Remove the events from those discs put on the board (plagues, cash, scientific discovery, minor civilization), set them aside for later use. (note that this has the side effect of increasing the density of resources). Each turn, select randomly from among the discs not on the board. This is an event which goes off. Where or on whom it goes off is determined randomly (I am still experimenting with region-by-region vs player-by-player randomization). If the selected disc is a terrain or resource, it represents a climate change or resource discovery/exhaustion, and it replaces the disc on a random region.

Events are:
--Plague. Lies in one region or on the border of two regions or on the nexus of three. Starts off on one region. Each turn, roll a d6 for each affected region. A region is protected if you have as many plague-mitigation improvements as the population of the region.
1: Region does not produce, and loses 1 population. Plague then expands into an adjacent settled region if possible (you get to pick). Do not roll for that region this turn. Oh, and half of the present military units of each civilization die.
2: same as 1 if unprotected, 3 otherwise
3: region does not produce this turn, one military unit dies (you have to pick your own first).
4: owners of affected regions lose 1 gold
5: same as 4 if unprotected, 6 otherwise.
6: plague dies off at end of turn.

--rebellion (was minor civ)
You get to pick one spot as your capital. It and adjacent regions remain loyal. Also, you get to keep one additional population for each happy face you have (not counting happy faces on improvements already set aside for something else). The rest go into rebellion -- any military units there become neutral and will defend against attack; you do not produce there and do not get the resources. This lasts until you send in the army from loyal regions.

I was also thinking this was too nasty, and should just be civil unrest; rebellion saved for worse circumstances. Maybe it's just civil unrest unless your opponents bribe your cities to rebel?

-- coins
you get 10 gold. 20 if you hold the currency tech (just to make it worth something)

-- inspiration
you get a randomly selected buyable technology

If a region becomes mountainous... volcano! Everyone dies.
If a region becomes a jungle or desert, the change was more gradual; existing population can remain, but cannot build beyond new limit.

3) PRODUCTION
productive cities count double towards population production
(population)*(2+factory?+manufacturing plant?+nuclear plant?)
+(resources)*(techs)*(2+marketplace?+bank?+stock market?)

note the absence of monopolies. They made no sense to me. Note that this will greatly reduce the value of trading, but it can still be useful, especially since the base value is doubled and can expand even more than in the original.

4) PRICE TABLE
Settlers 5. Ships 15*epoch

all else same as advanced rules

5) Technologies:
I swapped stuff around a little to make boats available a little earlier... I have to check my notes.

6) misc:
ships carry only 2 now.
Settlers move only 1.
I think the main reason settlers moved 2 was so you could explore islands relatively easily. So, now ships can use their movement to peek at the resource tile of an adjacent land region.
« Last Edit: November 05, 2004, 12:12:21 am by Death_999 » Logged
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Re: Researching Star Control Board Game Interest
« Reply #27 on: November 10, 2004, 08:44:41 pm »

Just a quick update to fans folllowing this thread:

There will be an officially licensed (TFB) Star Control based board game with the projected launch date of Spring 2005.  The game will be loosely based on the events surrounding the Star Control 1 timeline. The game will pit one to four players as captains of vessels from either the Alliance or Hierarchy locked in a space melee battle to the death. The game is best described as fast light strategy game aimed at players ages 8 and up.  

A website URL will be posted in weeks ahead so you can track the games progress.
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Re: Researching Star Control Board Game Interest
« Reply #28 on: November 11, 2004, 09:11:49 am »

How cool! It should be exciting to follow its development. Good luck on the project!
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Re: Researching Star Control Board Game Interest
« Reply #29 on: November 12, 2004, 03:47:06 pm »

Cool is the word! ^__^

If it will be available here in Finland, I'd probably buy it (or try to afford it), and I know a bunch of people who probably would too. Especially if it was a good game. ;)
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