The SMAXDG Pbem game mechanics

[Hercules]

I know it is still early days, but I thought it would be useful to give old and new participants a thread to discuss how things would operate in a SMAXDG pbem game. So that new participants have an idea of what's involved from lurking to active playing.

For example:
Teams and turns

Frequency of turn.
Team discussion forums: how they might operate for the likely human factions.
Who posts the actual turn? Commissioner? President, Admiral, Dictator.
IRC or email or PM or poly chat
Openness or secrecy in discussion and policy making
RPing
Spying/espionage: legitimate tactics? rules

Areas of common interest.

new members / recruitment
reporting on game / team progress?/ CNN
Rec. Commons we know and love. (Visit at your peril)
General forum/market place/ merchants exchange

[Hercules]

I mean we need somewhere for Kass ( and Drogue and TKG and Maniac and GT and well me too) to contribute to the game

[Method]

Re: The SMAXDG Pbem game mechanics

Originally posted by Hercules
Frequency of turn.

24 hours is enough IMO

Team discussion forums: how they might operate for the likely human factions.

They'd be private forums only open to the members. it's up to the team how they operate

Who posts the actual turn? Commissioner? President, Admiral, Dictator.

nobody posts it. it's sent to the teams like a PBEM

IRC or email or PM or poly chat

of what?

Openness or secrecy in discussion and policy making

that's up to the teams i suppose. they can choose what information they want to divulge

RPing

...

Spying/espionage: legitimate tactics? rules

what do you mean?

new members / recruitment

up to the teams

reporting on game / team progress?/ CNN

Teams can post what they like i guess

Rec. Commons we know and love. (Visit at your peril)

of course! how can we go without that!

General forum/market place/ merchants exchange

[Drogue]

The IRC thing isn't needed in PBEM, spying is about how do you keep members from other teams out of your forum, so you can keep your tactics/place, etc. secret, I think the CNN Herc was on about was a central one, to report on the progress as a whole, as well as individual team ones, and the forum is a place to discuss diplomacy and treaties when we've met in game. At least, that's how I took it

I agree with TKG on what he said, although I think we need rules on forums, on secrecy and on diplomacy first. Remember, this isn't just a normal PBEM, so we may need slightly different rules to compensate. At least we have PtW to copy

[Method]

Originally posted by Drogue
spying is about how do you keep members from other teams out of your forum, so you can keep your tactics/place, etc. secret

I believe the team leader has to approve all attempts to join the team. that way people from other teams are kept out.

I think the CNN Herc was on about was a central one, to report on the progress as a whole, as well as individual team ones, and the forum is a place to discuss diplomacy and treaties when we've met in game.

sounds good

At least we have PtW to copy

exactly. so we can just get GT to write all the rules for us

[Jamski]

Each team should have a stickied thread in the ACDG forum for :

1.) Sign-up
2.) Posting "WHO'S GOT THE SAVE!!!!"
3.) Open discussion with allies/enemies
4.) Members list and contact details
5.) Getting in touch when there's no other way
6.) General spam

Also there should be a stickied Planetary Council thread. One member of each team (not the leader, I'd say) is the ambassador to the Planetary Council, and so on and so forth.

Also we need a rec commons of course

-Jam

[Micha]

As for the CNN: It would be great to have each team posting its own propaganda point of view as part of a Chiron-world-report or something like that!

Or there will be an independent news agency which gets reports from each team (Director of foreign affairs?) and puts it together. That way one could gather like three different views on a single item, which would enrich the fun factor immensly (IMHO)...

[Drogue]

I like that idea. As for threads WoA, I am not sure about some, since you shouldn't have diplomacy until you've met in game.

[GeneralTacticus]

I agree with TKG on the points Herc raised in the first post; most of the stuff is up to each team to determine by itself.

[Jamski]

In a normal PBEM, Drogue, you start with the com frequencies of the other human factions, or am I mistaken? SO we could have diplomacy from the start

-Jam

[Method]

technically we can, but we really shouldn't.

[Jamski]

And I thought you were evil

-Jam

[Method]

nah, i just like boreholes and genejack factories

[Maniac]

As it's PBEM, does that mean that the turn is only sent to the "Provost/Chairman/Captain/Prime Function" of the faction in question, or is the file attached in a thread, so everyone of the team, knowing the correct password, can access the turn and suggest things for when the Leader comes on line and can play the turn?

[Maniac]

I have another question as well. Will we simply allow the standard victory conditions, or add others ourselves (*)? Will we allow cooperative victory of eg two human factions? Will we allow human factions to become submissive pact brothers/sisters (**)?

* I was thinking, to encourage RPG, that an extra victory possibility could be to convince/force all other human factions to adopt your favourite SE choice. For example for the Hive Police State (or Planned if the Hive players want to pretend the Hive to be democratic & Marxist), the University Knowledge, the Pirates Power, and the Consciousness Cybernetic (or Planned if the prerequisite tech for Cybernetic isn't reached yet?).

** This wouldn't force conquerors to destroy all human opposition. Instead they could accept submissiveness (together with for example other conditions such as having to give all your new tech to the conqueror, or having to pay the overlord 100 ec each turn), and the conquerors wouldn't have to destroy every single human base to achieve victory. Also it would leave some hope/fun for the attacked faction. I was also thinking, to prevent all submissives to break the "vassalage" once the conqueror/overlord's armies are mostly gone, or to prevent them breaking the vassalage one turn before the overlord achieves victory, that the vassalage is only broken if the overlord agrees to break it, or if the overlord's faction itself is destroyed. In other words, the vassal simply declaring war on the ex-conqueror wouldn't suffice: the ex-overlord could still achieve victory, and the ex-vassal would not be able to achieve any victory itself before both parties break the agreement.
This achieves a good balance IMHO. A vassalage isn't just a paper agreement, giving it some value to the overlord. And it doesn't make the situation hopeless or completely without fun for the vassal: the faction could conspire together with other human factions to attack the overlord on a moment of weakness, and force him to break the vassalage.