Re: Complexity/Campaigns

On Fri, 23 Jan 1998, Donald A. Chipman III wrote:

> Unfortunately, Stellar Conquest, being a "MetaGaming Classic", is
probably
> only slightly easier to come by than a Pterodactyl skin Stradivarius
signed
> by Elvis.

	As far as I know, it is still available from Avalon Hill.
	The game pioneered the now classic shipbuilding/research
	dilemma.  Each production period, you as ruler of your
	race has to decide if you devote your resources on
	building ships and items with the *current* level of
	technology, or spend resources on research in order
	to advance your level of technology in various fields.
	
	You don't want to be conquered by somebody who built
	a mass of primitive ships while you were screwing around
	in the lab.  But on the other tentacle, you don't want
	to build a bunch of primitive ships,  then discover that
	invading your technologically advanced neighbor is like
	a bunch of New Guinea headhunter war-canoes taking on
	the Pacific Fleet.

	The game starts off with lots of limits that can be
	defeated with research.  Ship interstellar speeds are
	slow, ships can only travel up to a certain limit from
	the closest colony or they die (out of fuel), only certain
	types of planets can be colonized, colonists reproduce
	at a limited rate, industrial complexes have limited
	efficiency at turning the labor of colonists into
	material goods (like interstellar warships),  ships
	have to designate their destination star when they
	leave orbit and cannot change it no matter what (no
	interstellar communication),  and of course your
	ships and defensive missile bases have limited weapons.

>  I was pleasantly surprised to see that FT list newcomer(?)
> Winchell Chung, the man who designed the grim visage of the most
fearsome
> fighting machine of the 21st Century yet still found time to maintain
a
> pretty spiffy 3d Starmap page (you guys looking for realism in your
space
> campaigns could do a lot worse than visiting
> http://www.clark.net/pub/nyrath/starmap.html), had written an article
for
> General on the game. 

	<blush> Guilty as charged.  I was quite crushed when
	Avalon Hill didn't see fit to incorporate the improvements
	I advocated in my article into the game.  Oh well.
	About three times a year, I get some kind of email
	along the lines of "are you *THE* Winchell Chung,
	who made the Ogre?"  My small claim to fame.
	The starmap site was initially my attempt at
	learning HTML.	I had done work on 3-d starmaps
	for decades, so I wrote about it.  The site "just growed"
	into the monster it is today. I've *got* to give
	it a good cleaning, many of the links are dead.
	And there are about five SF authors who are writing
	books with maps they made with my info!

      * A B S I T * I N V I D I A * V E R B O ** I D E M * S O N A N S *
     
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