"The Campaign for North Africa"

Where you get to track the increased water use of Italian units because they have to boil their spaghetti rations!

Individual plane/tank/truck fuel and ammunition expenditures the effect of dust storms etc etc etc

In other words a pre-computer MMO that looked fantastic...in the box.

But oh how I wanted to find an opponent dedicated as I was to actually getting the •••• thing to worK!

Sniff...I've outlived my gaming world and find myself a stranger in a strange land...

Well, thank goodness SFB is still here! I still have a "Lifeline" to the "Golden Age" of tabletop games!

By Xander Fulton (Dderidex) on Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - 08:37 pm: Edit

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Quote:

The current tactic is therefore to in effect get the worst start possible....so you get a boost for the next turn!

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By Jon Murdock (Xenocide) on Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - 10:45 pm: Edit

Yeah, in Power Grid I only want to shoot ahead too far when I am about to win or when I have the power plants I need for the forseeable future (usually meaning I got lucky and got a good one early) and can leap ahead and just cash in for a few turns without growing. Then people will pass me and I will hopefully have a little more money for the endgame to win with.

The Italian spaghetti rule was a joke:

http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2017/09/18/pasta-rule-campaign-north-africa-not-actually-thing/

My favorite quote from the designer:

“When I said ‘let’s publish this thing’ they said ‘but we’re still playtesting it! We don’t know if it’s balanced or not. It’s gonna take seven years to play!’ And I said ‘you know what, if someone tells you it’s unbalanced, tell them ‘we think it’s your fault, play it again.’”

I know people who have played it and the game has some big problems. Airplane strafing was often mentioned as being way too effective.

By Robert Cole (Zathras) on Thursday, January 25, 2018 - 02:16 pm: Edit

So, my local Half Price Books got a hold of copies of 'Richthofen's War'and 'Luftwaffe'.

Both are in decent shape (considering their age).

I thought about buying one of them, but was curious if any of you guys had any experience with them.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Thursday, January 25, 2018 - 02:53 pm: Edit

Robert Cole:

Played both back in the 1970s. Memory is sadly not what it was. I have noted elsewhere that we had a campaign of Richtofen's War going, where I made "triple ace" and was shot down and killed while on my way to "quadruple ace." I recall there was a "critical hit: pilot killed" but do not remember for sure. I was downed because a critical hit jammed my controls, and for something like six turns I failed to roll a 1 or 2 on a single die to unjam them, all the while an enemy plane sat on my tail shooting my plane to pieces. I remember it as being amusing to play, but as with any "turn based dogfight system" not having a very realistic feel to it. But I do remember it playing more or less smoothly for all of that.

Luftwaffe I think my major opponent and I never really played it properly. I am certain we were doing something wrong, but we did play it a lot even if I am not sure we would have ever really said we were having "fun." Still, we played it a lot. I would have said the biggest problem was the aerial combat system. Low die rolls were not just bad, they were really bad, and a few high die rolls would inflict casualties that, compared to the low die rolls were ridiculous, which tended to give a feel that "luck" was much more of a factor than "skill."

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandor) on Thursday, January 25, 2018 - 05:24 pm: Edit

Well I have both Games in storage. Richthofens war was if you shot first you win. Unless of course you are playing a lot of planes.

Luftwaffe played very little of that one.

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandor) on Thursday, January 25, 2018 - 05:25 pm: Edit

Also Richthofens War is real easy to teach to any one.. and yes a lot of luck involved

By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Thursday, March 01, 2018 - 09:50 pm: Edit

What game mats are people using for their games?

Has anyone heard of GameMatz?

What do you think of them?

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Thursday, June 14, 2018 - 10:03 pm: Edit

Something you don't see every day ... I just won a game of chess vs. computer by pushing a pawn to the eight row and promoting it to a knight. I had the enemy king boxed in (stalemate position) on the seventh row two columns over, so it was the only piece that could win the game for me.


Garth L. Getgen

By jim howard (Noseybonk) on Saturday, June 16, 2018 - 06:06 am: Edit

my group played space empires by GMT last night, game sits somewhere between F&E and ST ascendancy complexity wise, thought i'd share.

By Wayne Borean (Wayne9999) on Sunday, June 17, 2018 - 01:28 pm: Edit

Any Trade Wars 2002 players out there? I used to play a lot, and programmed a major add-on for it. I had Gary Martin ask me to be careful with the add-on as he was worried about game balance.

He was right, I could have totally destroyed the game balance, so I worked really carefully going forward.

By Marc Michalik (Kavik_Kang) on Sunday, June 17, 2018 - 09:27 pm: Edit

I used to play Trade Wars and Barren Realms Elite, and I have a 25 year old 200 page design document for a game called "Pirate Dawn" that both of those games loosely partly inspired (along with SFB and Subspace), but haven't played either since I was using a 2400 baud modem to call a local BBS before the internet even existed.

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandor) on Monday, June 18, 2018 - 05:05 am: Edit

Trade Wars with a 24baud modem... ah yes by the time my order to run was typed in i was dead... sigh. What fun. When i discovered that the players that were always winning were running 5 accounts each and then teaming up. It lost a lot of its appeal.

By Wayne Borean (Wayne9999) on Monday, June 18, 2018 - 04:44 pm: Edit

LOL. Yeah, the cheaters always existed. I ran a BBS to distribute the TW addon software I wrote, and was very careful with who was allowed in. I saw guys doing that all the way from v0.96 on.

I’ll never forget when I got the 20,000 sector addon completed, and the first players got bounced to a different universe. They were sooooo confused!

By Marc Michalik (Kavik_Kang) on Saturday, June 23, 2018 - 12:05 pm: Edit

Well... the programmer I had been working with on an unfunded indie game has stopped responding to e-mails. I am about to start looking for another programmer to start over. I thought this time around I would ask here first, since an SFB player who is a programmer would be the ideal choice. We speak the same launguage, what often takes me 3 or 4 pages to explain to other programmers could often be explained to another SFB player with a single string of initials and abbreviations! On top of that, you guys even understand this stuff just as well, and in some cases even better, than I do.

I am currently trying to make “Space Hockey”... a perfect example of what I just said. I don't even need to say anything more too an SFB player, you already get it! This is actually just the tip of the iceberg of a 12 game “rock & roll comedy sci-fi universe tribute to all of the sci-fi that came before it”. The Star Fleet Universe has probably been the single greatest source of inspiration, but is only one of a couple dozen or so primary ispirations behind it.

https://www.gamedev.net/blogs/entry/2263927-space-hockey/

The ultimate goal is for Space Hockey to turn this indie effort into a commercial game company which then makes all 12 games of my “Pirate Dawn Universe”.

On Monday I am going to begin looking for a new programmer on the industry forums, but if anyone here is a programmer and interested in this... I'd much prefer to do this with another SFB player! Heck, maybe we can even build an entire team out of nothing but SFB players, that would be great!!!

If you are interested in this, send me an e-mail at kavik_kang@hotmail.com. SVC probably doesn't want me talking about my games here, this is a place for talking about his games.

By Terry O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Wednesday, July 11, 2018 - 11:18 pm: Edit

SJ Games had an "interesting" announcement on their daily blog today. They are announcing that they will concentrate on their core games (Munchkin, Ogre, GURPS, Fantasy Trip, Car Wars) and not so much on others because there is a bit of a glut of new products on the market at the moment. They will be cutting staff, as well. Shame to see people losing jobs but I suppose it can't be helped.

By A. David Merritt (Adm) on Thursday, July 12, 2018 - 01:20 am: Edit

Unfortunate and sad, however not surprising. They have made some comments on their discussion board indicating this might be their next move. At least they still plan to do some GURPS.

By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Thursday, July 12, 2018 - 02:03 pm: Edit

Here is the link to the aforementioned blog post by SJG-http://www.sjgames.com/ill/archive/July_11_2018

By Steve Zamboni (Szamboni) on Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - 09:26 pm: Edit

Splurged on a copy of Cthulhu Wars for Black Friday.

I'm going to need more paint...

By Marc Michalik (Kavik_Kang) on Monday, February 04, 2019 - 03:09 pm: Edit

Oh...

Since I mentioned my lifelong quest to translate SVC's ways and the SFU to the world of computer games over in another thread, I thought I'd mention this here. I don't want to keep posting it, but I've posted the link to my “Pirate Dawn Universe”, “Kavik Kang” on GameDev.Net, here before. I have seen many of you in the SFU community talk in the past of sensing something there in SVC's Impulse Chart, something “big” within simulation design but you just can't put your finger on it. I've heard many tell the same story of attempting to make AH's Panzerblitz! Run on SVC's Impulse Chart (How many of us did that with that same exact game?!?!?!) only to discover that the system becomes unplayable with more than a few units... on a tabletop. Not inside of a computer processor!!!

That “special thing” so many of us were sensing was actually there all along, and I can even quantify it for you. It begins with the “Ancient” & “Family” games... “I go, you go” turns. The “first generation” of game design. Then the military Ruler & String games, commercialized by Charles S Roberts and Avalon Hill... “phased-turns”. The “second generation”. Then Steve Cole and his “Impulse Chart with embedded Sequence of Play”. The “third generation of Artificial Time”. In translating SVC's work to the computer, for 25 years, I ultimately arrived at what I call “Rube”... the “fourth generation of Artificial Time”, which is indistinguishable from “God”. “A functioning simulation of God”. Rube says that that what we percieve as “time” and “god” are indistinguishable from each other. This is the “Holy Grail of Simulation Design” and it is the fundamental basis for things that look very much like CyberSpace, “The Matrix”, & a “Holodeck”.

I am not making things up, this isn't April Fool's Day come early... if you look at my GameDev.Net postings you'll see that I've been talking about this for about 5 years now. That “special thing” really was there, and it is the most advanced simulation of “artificial time” ever conceived by man which can trace its heritage far past SVC and I back too the earliest forms of phased-turns found in military Ruler & String games. This AH/ADB/LAS line of game design really has led to something important in real world science and technology... if only anyone will ever actually listen too me about it, haha!!! That's a joke, there are some serious people who believe in my “Rube Goldberg Card Sorting Device” now;-)

By Marc Michalik (Kavik_Kang) on Monday, February 04, 2019 - 03:18 pm: Edit

Well... at least they believe that it is not nothing at all, and that's progress!!!

Haha!!!

By Marc Michalik (Kavik_Kang) on Monday, February 04, 2019 - 03:24 pm: Edit

And if you want my advice...

If you arrive at a way to build a warp drive and a phaser, but you can't actually build the warp drive or the phaser yourself... just throw it all in the trash IMMEDIATELY!!!

This really will save you... 5 years and counting... of trouble and grief. Most likely for nothing in the end. So if you can't actually build the phaser to shoot people with until they stop denying its existence, just throw away whatever it was you merely had written on paper.

That really would be the best way to go in that situation, haha...

By Marc Michalik (Kavik_Kang) on Monday, February 04, 2019 - 03:28 pm: Edit

Oh, and CyberRube is evil... I'm not making that one, haha!!!

By Marc Michalik (Kavik_Kang) on Monday, February 04, 2019 - 03:34 pm: Edit

I know, all the posts, I'll stop after this one, but this audience will find this so intriguing and get it more than any other... without really understanding...

In SVC's, and your, "third generation" world of how "game turns" or "artificial time" works it is termed "Impulse with embedded SoP".

In M&M's, my Rube's, "fourth generation of Artificial Time", it is termed "Moments of Time Containing Reality".

Interesting too the SFB crowd, isn't it?

By Glenn Hoepfner (Ikabar) on Tuesday, February 05, 2019 - 12:21 pm: Edit

I am utterly and confoundedly (sp) confused. I will get a cup of coffee then come back and re-read this last several posts.