Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!munnari.oz.au!bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au!brolga!uqcspe!cs.uq.oz.au!brendan
From: brendan@cs.uq.oz.au (Brendan Mahony)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.games
Subject: Re: Comments on Your Spaceward Ho 2.0 Comments
Message-ID: <1729@uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au>
Date: 3 Jun 91 05:33:39 GMT
References: <1991May31.185541.9033@neon.Stanford.EDU>
Sender: news@cs.uq.oz.au
Reply-To: brendan@cs.uq.oz.au
Lines: 35

In <1991May31.185541.9033@neon.Stanford.EDU> commons@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU (Peter Commons) writes:

>3) I kind of like the elegance of the fact that Spaceward Ho! is not so
>   complex that it takes three weeks just to learn how to play it. If I added
>   every feature people suggested (eg. doubling the number of techs, etc.), it
>   might lose a bit of that charm. Thoughts?

A lot can be done in this area by adding some artificial intelligence
style rule bases. Let fleets and planets etc be run by their rule base.
Provide some standard rule bases that essentially make these objects
work the way they do now, but also let the players define their own rule
bases. This way beginners could play games against experts, probably
they would lose but at least they can play. This would also speed up
play as the player could automate a lot of things that have to be
repeated regularly.

Some examples of rule sets might be:

Control the colonization and exploitation of a planet. Players could try
out various economic and political techniques.

Control the tactics and objectives of a fleet in a space battle. This
would allow players to try out various tactics, formations and fleet
compositions to see what they find suits them.


In any case you could add all the complexity you liked to the game and
players could take notice of it or not, depending on what interests them
and their level of familiarity with the game.

--
Brendan Mahony                   | brendan@batserver.cs.uq.oz       
Department of Computer Science   | heretic: someone who disgrees with you
University of Queensland         | about something neither of you knows
Australia                        | anything about.