Reading through this article on the site and the thought exercise SPP was running over in the proposals sections regarding a G1 attack on a colony....

Well, my mind started running to the 'SimCity' games. First, go read that article linked above.
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Okay, read it? No, seriously - go read it.
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Okay, now, wouldn't it be cool to make a small game (single-player?) to simulate building a colony using the same system (economy balancing various city needs) SimCity uses, as an example? Probably be best to do it as some kind of card game...dunno...but it'd be neat to play around with.

The cool thing is that, after a couple of sessions, you'd have quite a variety of remarkably different planetary base setups that could certainly add an interesting element to a campaign.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Monday, July 12, 2004 - 12:05 pm: Edit

Haven't time to read it but I will. Still, ya that actually sounds kinda cool. The finnished set up could be a play aid for GPD.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica) on Monday, July 12, 2004 - 02:03 pm: Edit

It could be done as a tile-based thing, sort of like Settlers of Catan.

By Xander Fulton (Dderidex) on Monday, July 12, 2004 - 04:54 pm: Edit

That's kinda what I was thinking - spinning of off the 'Settlers' games. Course, those don't really do well for single-player, IIRC.

OTOH, it would be interesting to have a competitive play. Although the article does not mention it, it would not be difficult to believe two competing colonies on a planet - or, perhaps, two competing idealogies of colonists vying for control over the future and development of the colony. Either situation would allow the development to progress as a two-player situation, with, again, the 'results' of the game at any point being interrupted by an SFB scenario as an Orion or enemy cruiser show up to harass the planet....

By Ben Moldovan (Shadow1) on Monday, July 12, 2004 - 10:31 pm: Edit

Starfarers of Ceti-Alpha VI!

lol

By Thanasis Kinias (Tkinias) on Saturday, August 14, 2004 - 06:13 am: Edit

This would probably be fairly simple to do with FreeCiv, the free/open source (GPL) clone of the Civ series games. IIRC someone is working on a fork of that codebase to do a sci fi variant (like the Alpha Centauri Civ game).

That sort of thing is beyond my coding ability, but probably not too hard for a good C programmer. I recall the FreeCiv devel guys being a pretty amiable bunch...

By John R. Poirier, Esq (Joisey) on Monday, June 02, 2008 - 11:00 pm: Edit

I drafted a set of rules back in 2000 for a campaign game where the player takes the role of running, and growing, a colony. I called it "Colony Commander", and I'm working on retooling the rules. One of the philosophical problems is that Petrick's article puts a stranglehold on the development of colony defenses. For instance, limiting two medium fighter bases to "Member Worlds" only is ridiculously stingy.

Maybe I'm misreading his intent.

If you look at what even modest pirate forces can deploy, Petrick's restrictions on the size of Planetary Defense Battalions (and the number found on small colony worlds) are obviously inadequate for the defense of isolated colony worlds...worlds where the local Police Corvette is a day or more away, and would only arrive to sift through the ashes. There must be alot of colonies paying protection money to the Orion Pirates with defenses this minimal! Nor are they adequate if they have to contend with most monsters marauding through a system. Oh, sure, eventually a fleet element will show up, but it won't do the colony any good in the meantime.

I think there is alot of appeal to gamers in the CIV genre, something the SFB franchise could use for players of SFB who get tired of the Tournament Scene. But for this sort of campaign to work, the player needs to be able to have less fettered decision making. Not that I'm making an argument to allow colonies to buy their own police cutters, I'm not (they're relatively cheap, and players could easily have their colonies surrounded by dozens if there weren't some restrictions). But if a colony wants to field two or more squadrons of second hand fighters, they ought to be able to, regardless of their size.

Given that there is already an established limit of six small ground bases per hexside of planet, and that a colony player needs a certain number of slots devoted to bases that produce income, I think the risk for abuse is low...defenses need to be paid for and maintained, so a colony can't deploy 36 phaser IV's even if they wanted to. But leave it to the player what he wants as to the mix between income generating bases and defense bases.

Didn't mean to rant, but I've been thinking about this concept for more than EIGHT YEARS.