Subject: Subject: Moving

From: "Snow" <snowl@s...>
Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2000 17:08:50 +0100

Moving seems like a sufficiently fundamental place to start.

A number of ways of working it spring to mind:

1) The Mornomic way: The LV can be changed by a small amount each
turn. A player can move a distance equivalent to eir LV.

2) Turn at a time: Each player can move at most X stations in one
turn.

3) Time limiting: Moving 1 station takes 10mins. The further e moves
the less time e has available for shunting, blocking...

With the last 2 no record of the current LV need be made. The first
may encourage more long-term planning.

Other thing to bare in mind are: changing lines, moving for other
reasons (shunting, straddling...), how many times per turn a player
can move (possibly more than 1) and whether the route taken need be
noted.

I think moves should be made actions to standardize the notation.

Snow
-Running my monitor at 1920x1440 simply because I can.

---

From: "Wayper, Paul" <WayperP@p...>
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2000 14:33:43 +1000

My thoughts on the grand issue you can read in another email. For now:

On Tuesday, June 06, 2000 10:49 PM, Kevan [SMTP:kevan@s...]
wrote:
> As for Shunting - you're thinking in MN terms, Paul. The easy 
> solution is simply to say that Shunts move the victim four Stations 
> along a Line. (And eight for a Power Shunt, or whatever.)

OK, you've got me there. Good point.

> I like this, myself, because it makes real-life play very easy - you 
> don't need to keep track of LV at all, it's just always three, unless 
> certain things are in play (such things giving it enough diversity to 
> add strategy). Having to keep tabs on ever-changing variables is 
> quite fiddly - anything short of twiddly brass dials would, I think, 
> be cumbersome and ugly.

Well, if we're doing that, why have tokens?

> As for the timing thing - I find this just too fearsome, and I'd be 
> happy to see this aspect of the game being killed off entirely. The 
> "no more than an hour's worth of Actions" is fairly awkward to keep 
> track of, particularly in real-time play ("Right - LV increase, Move, 
> Drop Token, Straddle, Shunt, Collect Token. Your go. Unless anyone's 
> buzzing.") - this would be much, much easier as (again, cribbing 
> MC:CG) "one Action before your Turn, one after". Although that does 
> limit cunning stratagems a bit, I suppose. Maybe two either side. And 
> the "big" Actions having a "This can only be played if it's the only 
> Action of your Turn" thing.

Yep; if we're going for real-time face-to-face play we should dispense with
time altogether.

But see my other email for why I may be taking the attitude I do here.

Paul Wayper -- DPI IS&S ITO Computer Systems Officer
SigClean 1.5a prevents all errors in transcription, transmission, and
reception of eMail, destroys sig and email viruses, and stops flames.
Report all bugs to the author. SigClean is FreeWare. (c) 1998-9 PJW