Re: [OT] Campaign detail and playability - was RE: [semi-VV] Multiple resources

Binhan Lin wrote:

>I think it comes down to how much can be expected of a campaign 
>player.  Essentially, to make a game quick and fun, it should basically

>boil down to about 3 major decisions per turn.  As you add detail you
add 
>complexity and the number of decisions you have to make increases
rapidly, 
>and trying to determine the ramifications of each decision becomes
harder 
>and harder.

"Complexity" isn't just "lots of decisions". *Paperwork* is a major part
of 
game complexity, or at least of what the players percieve as (and
complain 
about as) complexity. For example:

>Throwing out a hypothetical scenario, postulate 3 resources, money and 
>ships.  The resources are FTL material (FTL), Weapons material (W) and 
>Hull material (H). Money is the nice generic Mega Credit (MCr) and
ships 
>are FT ships.
>
>A generic nation (Generica) might be:
>
>3 star systems (A, B, C) connected by wormhole transits
>Star System A produces/refines FTL - 2 units per turn
>Star System B produces W and W at 2 units per turn
>Star System C is the national capital with the shipyards
>
>The treasury is 1000 MCr and the nation has a fleet of 12 military
ships 
>and 6 cargo ships.
>
>Since this nation produces 6 units of resources at locations different 
>than it's shipyards, it requires 6 units of cargo ships to "transport"
the 
>materials, although in reality this would also encompass the
appropriate 
>planetary and orbital dock facilities to handle such cargo.
>
>The game system should track 2 possible bottlenecks - manufacturing and

>transport.

Yep. And here's where the paperwork starts to accumulate; with only
three 
systems and eighteen ships it isn't too bad, but when you get a score of

systems and hundreds of ships it is. It gets even worse when freighters 
take multiple campaign turns to reach their destinations (eg. if it
takes 2 
campaign turns for a freighter to move from system A to system C), since

then you also need to track the progress of the cargo.

This is *very* similar to Imperial StarFire - with the added complexity
of 
having to juggle multiple resource types instead of just one. Sure, no 
individual piece of paperwork is difficult - it's just that there is so 
*much* of it after a while :-(

Regards,

Oerjan
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

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