Nebula - The space 3X streamlined down to counting beans and backstabbing !
About Tech => Actually, no. Once again I fail at reading the manual.
Don't worry, with those old manuals and their undocumented features, you might be right!
To an extent I feel that due to the house rule of not skipping turn, having unrest to quell can allow players to play last, which is usually an advantage (actually I don't see a case where you would be happy to play < first >).
End of the millennium! We have some fighting, and one more dominated species. Only the snakes shall be free.
And more unrest - mostly for me and Dayyalu.
A weird thing happened. At the end of the turn I took about ten hours ago, it said "round 3" and control went to MK. But at the end of the turn I took just right now, it said "round 2."
Hopefully just a little display bug.
Is it possible that one of us got confused with the save. I know I attached the wrong file a couple times, but corrected myself just in time.
Looking at the saves, everything looks normal. Dayyalu hasn't moved yet, but that's it.
I'm not moving until all those Rebels are under control!
While the world descends into chaos and madness (even more than usual, I swear God is trying everything to make me miss my PnP sessions)
The Universe is at war!
No special events this time, and the Scribe tries to attack Argy while he's trying to attack MK. Billions die in nuclear fire but the borders move relatively little.
Ahab and myself watch each other.
Well, I did the attack thing. Now your turn...
Ah, I'm working on it.
That said, I did run some testing, and I have questions for the other players (that maybe can correct me). So:
1) The maximum number of Force Points on a system is 9.
2) You need Force Points to move Force Points. It costs more as distance grow, and Tech has an incredibly limited effect on it (and Tech is devastatingly expensive to max, with the price increasing at a breakneck pace, I can't imagine how expensive reaching the fabled level 80 is).
3) Force Points transfers DO NOT SUM. Two 9 FP planets attacking a single FP 6 Planet will at best manage to attack twice at 8 Strength (or 9 if Tech Level 80, but let me laugh at this).
4) All attacks are do or die. Or you win and get no losses, or you lose and get all losses. There's no retreat, no chipping away the enemy.
5) Feel free to correct me, but you need a substantial Force Points advantage to have guarantee of victory. Following the manual, a 3-1 advantage gives you a 75%, and I speculate a 2-1 gives you a 50% and a 1-1 a 25% or something (maybe someone can check the code and tell us?). There's an advantage of 10% for racial domination, but... eh, good luck exploiting that.
6) The turn/round system heavily favours "activation" abuse, trying to get your enemies to waste moves so you can act without problems after they have wasted their "activations" (let me use a tabletop wargaming term).
That said, it's even possible to organize, let alone win a conflict in Nebula against a human being? The defensive advantages are immense. A single player with a 9 Force Points planet can, I guess, stop an entire empire that's attacking one at a time until the RNG fucks him up. And the empire will take dreadful losses and there's a chance of counterattacks (if you fail the attack all your forces are dead, so you are wide open). This , methinks, leads to the point that wars are .... poor choices? Attacking seems very difficult and always a terrible choice. I've started a war with Ahab because I was incredibly bored of doing nothing, but after testing I'm quite puzzled by the ruleset.
Can people correct me?
I think you're more or less correct, although I can't help but wonder if there's more to the tech level. That 80 does seem like an unreachable goal.
Yes, that's what I noticed after attacking Argyra. I think the future turns will be all the players upgrading their tech turn after turn because Defense is really much better than attack and you need to spend less "travelling" to have a decent chance.
I feel like we should have a millennium limit. End game and count points at the end of Millenium 25 ? That's already a long, long time.
Quote from The Wargaming Scribe on 28 June 2023, 13h35End game and count points at the end of Millenium 25 ?
It's a yea for me.
Random events do have a chance of shifting things dramatically. The plague event, whenever it happens, practically guarantees that planetary ownership is going to shift around, especially if it goes on for a while. Rebellion, meanwhile, if a planet ever rebels, that planet is basically lost if it has any measure of power, worse still if it's a blue or green planet. I think the purple ones are weaker in defense than the other planets, but that might just be bias, it's rare for them to ever reach full power.
As to Millenium 25, don't you think that's a little long at this point?
I think the upcoming millenia will fly fast. If you don't attack and don't have a rebellion to squash, you have literally nothing to do. That's my case this millenium.
I'm ok with 25, even if I doubt the next millennia will "fly fast".
Also, has anyone the foggiest idea about the combat resolution tables? I swear the deeper I'm getting into it the less I understand. It's a pseudo RNG number working on "combat result percentages"? At times, the combat seems almost deterministic.
Aaand the Millennium is over!
The murderous warfare between Argyra, MK, me and Ahab continues. Great amounts of manpower and ships are wasted, some amusing chaos ensues, but the end result is surprisingly limited.
Argyra conquers a system, I conquer a system. For a single Lv2 system I expended 24 Force Points, give or take. Insane, honestly.
A galactic plague hits, hitting just a system, and thankfully for everyone else it's one of mine. Thank fuck it's a secondary system, it will probably give me problems to keep the racial bonus though.
Also, I repeat, 24 Force Points (and roughly five failed attacks!) for a single system gained. What the hell.
WWI ... IN SPACE !