Re: Strategic Thrust using BR25

On Fri, 2 Apr 1999, Michael Sarno wrote:

> ShldWulf@aol.com wrote:
> 
> > I'd also considered adding some rules for detection and stealth. It
might be
> > possible for the various planets to know your coming, or for you to
hide as
> > you come in.
> 
>     I like that idea a great deal, but all the ideas I've had on
making that
> happen require way too much in the game mechanics department and hence
> playability suffers greatly.	If you have any ideas on this I'd be
very
> interested.  So far, the best idea I've had in this regard is to have
counters on
> the board that correspond to the fleets and then keep each fleet's
ships' records
> in a separate pile clearly marked with the same symbol, letter,
number, color,
> whatever as the fleet's counter on the board.  You'd have to trust the
opposing
> player when his fleets meet in space and he starts to shuffle papers
between
> fleets, or you'd have to have a referee.  It just seems like a lot of
work and

you could put the ship sheets in manilla envelopes and clearly mark
which
fleet they're for. you could then give them to the other player so he
can
be sure you're not cheating. of course, you then have to be sure he
hasn't
looked at the sheets.

> you still don't get to have a genuine sneak attack.

i recall a scheme used in wargaming where a huge matrix of drawers (made
from matchboxes in this case) was used; each tray corresponded to a cell
on a map grid, and counters were placed in each tray to denote the units
present. the player would go to trays with his units in, and move them.
if
he moved into a tray with opposing units in, there would be a battle.
this
sort of depends on people not peeking in the trays. it would be trivial
to
replace the grid of trays with a set of envelopes - ordinary letter
envelopes would do, with fleets written on index cards. you would then
label each envelope with the grid square it corresponds to. again, we
assume the players can be trusted not to peek.

perhaps the best option is a computer. computers are fairly good at
automated refereeing in simple cases like this. you are bound to either
be
or know someone who has enough mastery of computing to knock up a simple
tool to do this.

one other thing springs to mind. a while back, joe dever (the chap
behind
lone wolf of fighting fantasy knockoff fame) brought out a series called
'combat heroes', which contained two pairs of books. one is "black
baron"
and "white warlord". these could be played as escape-from-a-dungeon solo
games, or as a two-player game: this involved both players reading out a
string of numbers which accompanied the location they were in (printed
at
the bottom of the page). if there was a matching number in both lists,
both players turned to a new page, specified next to that number in the
little table at the bottom of the page. this new page had, as well as
the
expected terrain, the other character, who you could then have a crack
at.

it really was fiendishly clever, and i've never figured out how it
works.
basically, it allowed you to check if the two characters were adjacent
(in
some sense) without ever revealing to the other player where you were!
well, if he had an index of the number lists correlated with locations,
i
expect he could figure it out, but that's a nontrivial task.

anyway, if it could be figured out, reverse engineered and applied to
this
situation, it might allow computerless, refereless blind movement. which
would be nice.

Tom