Anyone for a PBEM game?

[zsozso]

ProvostB and me are planning to start a PBEM game and we would welcome more players to join.

Please, post here or email if interested.

zsozso

[edgecrusher]

sure. i'm up for it.

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"edgecrusher" Spartan Probe Team 'angelis'

[caselogic]

Im interested in a smacx pbem game. My icq number is 322963 -

CaseLogic

[Cthol]

if its a smac game im in. well... is it?
email me at cthol@iobox.fi

[zsozso]

Hi guys,

I am glad there is some interest!
One problem seems to be the question of SMAC vs. SMACX.

Me and ProvostB both have SMACX, but I do not mind playing plain SMAC either.

Caselogic and Cthol stated their preference. How about you, edgecrusher ?

We could even start 2 PBEM games, one with SMAC, the other with SMACX.

I'd like to play Gaians in SMAC and Cult of Planet in SMACX.

How about your preferences?

zsozso

[zsozso]

I've got an idea:
Let's play SMACX the 5 of us (ProvostB, edgecrusher, caselogic, Cthol and zsozso) with all human players and let the AI play the two alien factions. They are more powerful, but the AI is dumb, so that would make a nice balance.

How about using the accelerated start to avoid a very boring start ? Otherwise at start you make a move with your scout and the turn is over so you have to wait a long time for all others to play their turn and email you back the game for another 5 second play...

zsozso

[Cthol]

i agree with you zsozso.

i know that zsozso wants to be the cult and

i think that provostB wants to be the cyborgs

(just a guess) so that leaves the probes,

drones and the pirates. i would like to be

the probes.... but ill manage with the

drones. (dont want to play as the pirates)

so make your choises people!



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Cthol
Datalinks

[rockville]

How often are y'all thinking about updating? If it's not several times a day (or once every two weeks) then I'd be interested... shoot me an email...

[ProvostB]

if the pirates are going to be the AI, can we at least kick them out?

[zsozso]

I just got an email response from Gerfang, he is interested to join too. With rockville, there would be 7 of us, so we can play a full human player game if everyone is still in.

For faction choice, we do not need to limit ourselves to the new factions, you can pick from the original 7 too. My only request is that nobody should pick aliens. If we do not get all 7 players in, then we leave whatever remains for the AI with aliens.

If someone else wants to play the Planet Cult, then I do not mind to play Gaians either.

As for the speed of the game, I would expect 1 full turn per day, i.e. everybody would play his/her own turn every day. For this to work out well, we need to organize the player order according to time zone and play-time preference. Fortunately, SMACX allows to setup the faction order as we wish. Faster turn -around is not realy practical considering the fact, that there is 7 hours time zone difference between me and Cthol and it might be even worse when we see the whole picture...

Please, everybody respond either here or to me in email with his/her preferences:

1. Faction (may indicate several in preference order)
- my preference is Planet Cult or Gaians
2. Play time of the day with time zone info
- my time zone is EST (Toronto) GMT-5, preferred playing time 9pm-12pm local, but 10am-4pm is also possible.

ProvostB emailed me, that he hates the accelerated start, beacuse the stupid AI does a very bad job. Well, that's true, but otherwise the PBEM takes off very slowly.
Another idea I've seen is to mess around with the starting parameters in the txt files to start up with several (e.g. 6) colony pods and scout patrols instead of one.
Let's vote on this question!

My suggested setup parameters:

1. standard size random map, average everything
2. all victory types allowed
3. Do or die ON
4. Look first OFF
5. tech stagnation OFF
6. Spoils of war ON (steal tech when conquer base)
7. blind research OFF
8. intense rivalry ON
9. No Unity Survey OFF (i.e. you DO see the land mass silhouettes)
10. No Unity Scattering OFF (you get the lucky pods scattered)
11. Bell Curve ON (no random events)
12. Time Warp ON (accelerated start)
13. Iron Man ON (you have a save at every turn anyway, that should be more than enough)
14. Randomize factions (both options) OFF

These are just suggestions, speak out if you have objections against any of these options, then we will debate it and/or vote on it.
Once I got all responses, I'll post the suggested game setup. If everybody accepts then we can get going!

zsozso

[Cthol]

i wanna play smacx! (bought it today)
(sorry...)

i would have bought it before but it wasnt on sale.
smacx came to the stores 30th of november.


and one other thing... i haven't played a pbem game before. so i hope it wont be a problem. if there is anything totally new in it please tell me.

i know that Zsozso and ProvostB are damn good at playing Smac/smacx so i hope that you others arent very good at it. (i dont mean that im not good but... i could be better.)

[This message has been edited by Cthol (edited November 30, 1999).]

[Cthol]

1. i wanna be Cyborgs (Aki Zeta 5)
next choise probes but i really want to be the cyborgs.

2. i live in GMT+2 i can/rather play 4pm-9pm

what if there comes a day when lets say someone has to go somewhere where there are no computers? and he cant play his turn.

im not saying that i'd have that problem but its possible.

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Cthol
Datalinks

[edgecrusher]

Arrr, me maties. me wants the pirates. failing that the drones would be interesting.

the Ghost Pirate edgecrusher.

[Gerfang]

Hello. I live in EST and I'd prefer to play between 6:00 and 9:00 PM. I do believe that it is unrealistic to assume 1 turn per day. It's a good goal, but we should assume that there will be one or two days a week when people can't mail off a turn. I'm pretty reliable, but might sometimes be away on a Saturday.

As for faction, I'm thinking the Fundies or possibly the UN. I will be purchasing SMACX tomorrow. I can start playing anytime after that.

[Gerfang]

Hello. I live in EST and I'd prefer to play between 6:00 and 9:00 PM. I do believe that it is unrealistic to assume 1 turn per day. It's a good goal, but we should assume that there will be one or two days a week when people can't mail off a turn. I'm pretty reliable, but might sometimes be away on a Saturday.

As for faction, I'm thinking the Fundies or possibly the UN. I will be purchasing SMACX tomorrow. I can start playing anytime after that. Also, I'm kinda against accelerated start up because the game can be very random in quality of positon. I'd hate to have a restart because someone got a unfair disadvantage.