Subject: Re: MN: Re: Subject: Moving

From: riffraff@n...
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 00:29:36 -0500

>> Movement: up to 5 Stations per turn, with a charge of 1 Black Token
>>for each additional Station over 5. [5 free Stations seems necessary to
>>me to promote play on the entire board. Consider how long it would take
>>to get to Morden and back, even with free movement... without it, it
>>becomes essentially impossible... play would never get out of the Circle
>>line.]
>
>The trouble is that if the value is too low then you can't usefully
>move outside zone 1, but if it's too high then you can traverse z1 in
>1 or 2 moves. I feel that 5 is too high for inside z1, but a minimum
>for outside.

It kind of comes down to the difference between playing a real boardgame,
and playing in e-mail. In RL, it's fine (even preferential) to not be able
to do much in one turn, because it makes the turns short and play passes
quickly around the table without a problem. In an e-mail game, however,
you want to be able to do more in one turn, because of the time it takes to
get around to your turn again. With a couple days between players, a game
takes incredibly long if you can only move a couple stations in one go.

While it's important that we keep RL play in mind so that we end up with a
good game in that format, it seems to me that we're probably going to be
doing most of our actual playing via e-mail.

>OK, every time you enter a new zone you get black tokens eqivalent to
>the zone number, the further you go from the centre the more blacks
>you get, so you can afford to move. It also forces players to leave
>zone 1 if they want to move. Maybe a free move of 2 or 3 stations
>would be necessary.

That's pretty good... The problem with my idea (1 black per 2 interchanges)
was that there aren't many interchanges in the outer Zones where those
tokens become necessary. The only problem I see with this is with Players
spending multiple turns simply oscillating between Zones 4 and 5 to build
up a massive supply of Tokens. Perhaps the necessity of forefeiting
several turns to do that would balance it out.

Well, why don't we say 3 free Stations, 1 Black per additional, and +X
Black Tokens upon entering Zone X... and we can iron out any problems of
slowness or token hoarding in playtesting before we write the Basic Ruleset
in stone.

(Although my initial prediction is we'll want to change to 5 free Stations
for an e-mail game, and 3 for a RL game.)

Sound good?

Does anyone else have any comments or opposition? I'm assuming you're all
reading the posts even if you're not posting yourselves, and that your
silence means you have no objections to what Snow and I are doing here.

cheers,
--Riff

"This calls for a subtle blend of psychology and extreme violence."
--Vyvyan, "The Young Ones"

---

From: "Ole Andersen" <palnatoke@g...>
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 06:33:09 +0200

Riff wrote:

: The only problem I see with this is with Players
: spending multiple turns simply oscillating between Zones 4 and 5 to build
: up a massive supply of Tokens. Perhaps the necessity of forefeiting
: several turns to do that would balance it out.

It could just be a number of Tokens equal to the highest-numbered zone entered, though that would give a smaller flow.

Ole

---

From: Mary Davies <M.Davies@d...>
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 08:55:56 +0100

Me please

---

From: "Snow" <snowl@s...>
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 11:31:28 +0100

> takes incredibly long if you can only move a couple stations in one
go.

Good point, but moving needn't be the sole purpose of a turn. I
suppose the size of the free turn will be determined by how much other
stuff can be done inside one turn.

> for an e-mail game, and 3 for a RL game.)

If we combine this with Ole's suggestion about the highest zone
entered (or maybe the zone the move is finished at) then it sounds
great.

We might also cap the number of blacks a player can carry to prevent
hoarding.

-- Annatov Snow
Do you want to see my innuendo?