RE: [GZG] First go at a campaign - some questions

[Oerjan Ariander <oerjan.ariander@xxxxxxxxx>]

David Rodemaker wrote:

> One fundamental problem of this sort of campaign system is that the side
> that starts winning tends to keep winning [...]
>
> ---
>
> Though not as "sexy" as the "build lots of ships" flavor of game, one way to
> control this is to make building ships far, far more difficult that
> repairing them.

Not really - it changes the dynamics a bit, but the "snowballing" effect 
remains. Once one side has built up an advantage in ships (eg. after a 
decisive battle where it managed to destroy part of the enemy fleet), it 
can afford to pull damaged ships out of battles and still have enough ships 
left to win that battle; the side with fewer (or smaller) ships side has to 
choose between withdrawing early (concede the battle in order to fight 
another day) and staying in the fight to get a chance to win but also risk 
losing an effectively irreplacable fleet.

The best-working solution to the "snowballing" problem that we came up with 
in StarFire was to require that newly-conquered resources (planets, 
populations etc.) be heavily garrisoned to keep them from revolting, and 
also prevent the conqueror from actually getting any use out of the 
newly-conquered resources for a while after the conquest. This gives the 
"losing" side a chance to recover after a bad defeat.

> This also brings about a more "realistic" style of play that
> inhibits the fight to the death syndrome found in many players.

That it does, yes... after the first few defeats, anyway <g>

Later,

Oerjan
oerjan.ariander@xxxxxxxxx

"Life is like a sewer.
 What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
-Hen3ry

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