de moribus: Ideas for NESing

[foolish_icarus]

The purpose of this thread is for everone to post what you like about NESing, what you don't like, and what you would like in the hopes of coming up with a sort of method for creating some NES scenarios with staying power. It is interesting that despite the fact we have only a fraction of the number of players as CFC's NESes, our game styles are far more diverse. Unfortunately, we don't have the numbers for picking and choosing; if you will, the marketplace doesn't work here, so we must resort to a bit of central planning .

If there's anyone who checks in here occasionally but doesn't play for whatever reason, anytime's a great time to speak up and make suggestions or ask questions, but now is especially good!

Hopefully we will be able to come up with some kind of consensus or applicable variety on what it is we want personally in NESes, as well as what needs to be done to revitalize this honorable craft here at Poly.

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Personally, I like most any settings for an NES: Historical, modern, ancient, near future, alt history...Sci fi can be good if the technology/physics model is sound, allowing players to know what goes and what doesn't. I'm not fond of fantasy NESes, which in my memory there haven't been any here at poly, but they do them occasionally at CFC. Quirky or alternate settings, such as the gnome one are good, again as long as the parameters are sensible and well defined.

The big thing for me is a particular NES's system. I don't have a problem with complicated rules, but I've seen that it is very difficult to have realistic rules that aren't incredibly dense and unwieldy. I've seen a few complex rulesets that I liked a lot, but typically I tend towards the simple, abstract ones.

I don’t like it when a game slows to a crawl. No one does, but I place a great deal of importance on momentum.
I believe that the issue of game speed and the issue of how the Mod and players relate to each other are closely intertwined. At a given time, the amount of action a Mod has to do and the players have to do are usually inversely related. Players must submit orders and the mod waits, then the mod must process an update and the players wait. This is dangerous, often deadly to the life of a game. The two need to occur as near simultaneously as possible. This cuts down on the action/reaction aspect of the game, freeing players and mod to write more about what they want to do, rather than just being obligated to respond to a certain number of issues.

And, of course, there’s accessibility. Good lord, where is everybody? Either a ton of people have no desire at all to even try something like this, or a ton of people aren’t curious enough to find out what goes on in this forum or think they know and just dismiss it.

Post your thoughts.

[appleciders]

My main line of thinking along these lines has simply been to try and figure out why Micha's AHENES was so good, and what we could do that would work. I've found lately that excessive numbers and calculations make modding vastly more time consuming, and the lag time as players and mods wait breaks that all-important momentum.

So here's my proposition: an NES with a mod but no updates. A set amount of time passes, maybe one year game-time for each real-life day. The mod simply resolves disputes, and changes things in an ongoing moderational process. Any comments or criticisms of that?

[Micha]

appleciders: (and: thanks )

foolish: I totally agree with your "likes" and "dislikes". The problem of abstraction is that a fair amount of guessing replaces the safety of written information that we all like to rely on. I would much rather train two divisions of musket infantry and attach heavy artillery bataillons to them than upgrade my army to "medium"...
But both of you are right (as I had to learn by bitter experience), it´s much too time consuming for the mod to have too much of a detail. I was spending between 12 and 16 hours per update in the AHENES which just isn´t possible when you´ve got some kind of a real life...

[Cyclotron]

And, of course, there’s accessibility. Good lord, where is everybody? Either a ton of people have no desire at all to even try something like this, or a ton of people aren’t curious enough to find out what goes on in this forum or think they know and just dismiss it.

Dunno, I've been on this site for years and I just found this forum today. Do tell when the next one starts, it looks like great fun.

[foolish_icarus]

Will do. How'd you find this forum? It might help us figure out how to bring in more participants.
I think the forum needs a new name, if for nothing else than people scrolling down the forum list going, "Huh?" and checking it out.

AHENES was a jewel, its burden resting on the shoulders of Micha's efforts. I think I can pinpoint a few elements that contributed to its success: Obvisouly the system was immersive and detailed, creating plenty of intricacies for players to get into, without being overly burdened by them.
And the quality of the updates created a strong sense of reward and incentive to address a lot of issues. These came at the obvious cost of the required mod workload and thus the speed, although it kept chugging along regardless, and was even restarted what, twice? Which is unprecedented so far as I know.
But these attributes were not totally unique to AHENES--Other fine NESes with similar qualities have not fared so well, and many lesser ones have fared just as well.
I think the third crucial element, which I have observed as being key to success in other NESes, is that there were immediate conflicts---which is not to say players have to be plunged into war right off the bat, but that each player country must face a handful of issues, some short term and some long term that will have serious negative detriments if not addressed and positive benefits if they are handled successfully. With a bit of luck the historical setup will be such that the players are forced to interact with each other right off the bat.

Ciders, to your suggestion. I’m not sure if you’ve trawled through the archives, but once upon a time that’s exactly how it was. Those games have a different flavor. It moves faster, obviously. There’s typically more diplomacy and more alliances and more wars and more outrageous stuff, and yes, more power gaming, but there is a happy medium that can be reached.

Micha, there are definitely elements I like about number descriptions for armies. They work well for any era before modern times, but I dislike how they are usually handled for early modern/modern armies. 1000 tanks and 200 thousand infantry and 2000 artillery for your country just doesn’t tell the whole story, and then of course people want to design their own tanks and rifles etc. And armies are continually expanded without regard to upkeep costs, desertion, the proportion of an army that simply plays support or logistics roles, or that fact that soldiers, you know, retire from the army? That the infantry you paid for 30 years ago isn’t exactly fit to fight now?
An alternative that I think would work better, especially for modern times, is to have armies, or battle groups of a specific type, but not necessarily having to enumerate its exact components. Just say, “a tank division”, or “a fighter wing”, and know that the tanks will come with the fuel trucks, the mechanics, the cooks, the supply train…This also makes it easier to assign upkeep costs, e.g. One tank division: Cost to recruit/build is 8, cost to maintain inactive is 1/turn, cost to maintain active within borders is 2/turn, cost to maintain on campaign in a territory a certain distance away is 4/turn, etc.
I am not fond of the CFC style economies that have been popular, almost ubiquitous, for the last long while. An economy has a number output, e.g. from 0 to 10 and you can spend that amount per turn either on military stuff, civilian stuff, expanding the economy to the next productive level, or some combination. Bah. An economy is not such a manageable thing as that; it is fickle in entirely different ways! I like prose descriptions of economies, you can describe overall health, regulation, presence or lack of central planning, wealth disparity, presence of technology, industry, urbanization, corruption, predominant economic sectors, et al. quite easily. At most, only one parameter need be assigned a number value: The military budget available to you to split up amongst your armies as you will (and as you can). If you are in a depression, you will have less available. If your country is small in population, you will have less available. If you are suffering from a critical lack of industry or raw resources, you will have less available (or be unable to build/maintain some types of units at all). If you want to suck more money into your military program, your average standard of living will go down, or you can defer it by assuming a larger national debt. Everything else can be described cleanly, accurately, and efficiently in words: Establish Civilian Works Program and fund generously…cut social security and welfare…grant more monies to weapons contractors for advanced development…etc.
Well that’s my take.

[appleciders]

Originally posted by Cyclotron


Dunno, I've been on this site for years and I just found this forum today. Do tell when the next one starts, it looks like great fun.

One thing you'll find about this forum is that we're always ready to have someone join in the middle of a game. Anytime, just notify us that you're picking up any NPC nation.


No, I haven't been through the archives, but I saw some mention of it on CFC.

I dunno, I tried CFC for a while, and there were a couple big problems with it, in my mind. The first and most obvious one is that everyone there wants to mod, and then drop out of every game they're playing in when they decide to mod a new game. This leads to lots of people dropping out of an NES by about the third turn, which kills the mood.

The other problem with CFC is that everyone gets really, really bogged down in historical correctness, and NESes turn into nothing but a citing contest, as everyone goes nuts trying to prove that a particular model of tank came out in a given year.

The other thing I like about 'poly is the small community here; I've gotten to know what to expect from most of the people here, and it's cool to play with people you (sort of) know.

[Tassadar500]

For example, everyone knows that you should expect Tassi and I to be slightly insane, and to expect anything.

[foolish_icarus]

ciders, I agree completely with your analysis of both CFC and Poly NESing. There are other things i don't like about their style of NESing, but that's not really pertinent.
Anyway, here's a bit of "what the crap??" information for you: I just found out that Tass's account and all his posts have been deleted.

[Tassadar500]

Originally posted by foolish_icarus
ciders, I agree completely with your analysis of both CFC and Poly NESing. There are other things i don't like about their style of NESing, but that's not really pertinent.
Anyway, here's a bit of "what the crap??" information for you: I just found out that Tass's account and all his posts have been deleted.

Yes, that was a rather interesting and confusing day...

[foolish_icarus]

when and why? He announced he was leaving some time back, said it would probably be for a while, and then...?
(I don't like it when pristine threads get screwed up with post deletions) . That and Tass is gone Athenikia, come back to us! I promise I will continue to fund your entirely unjustified civil expansion projects and listen good heartedly to your obviously fabricated conspiracy discoveries!

[Tassadar500]

Originally posted by foolish_icarus
when and why? He announced he was leaving some time back, said it would probably be for a while, and then...?
(I don't like it when pristine threads get screwed up with post deletions) . That and Tass is gone Athenikia, come back to us! I promise I will continue to fund your entirely unjustified civil expansion projects and listen good heartedly to your obviously fabricated conspiracy discoveries!

Very complicated story, most of which I'm not at liberty to tell you, for various reasons.

[appleciders]

I dunno, BP gives you both a run for your money in terms of randomness.

[Cyclotron]

Originally posted by foolish_icarus
Will do. How'd you find this forum? It might help us figure out how to bring in more participants.

To be perfectly honest, I tried to click on "other games," but a picture must have loaded while I was clicking, and I hit this instead. Call it serendipity, I guess.

One thing you'll find about this forum is that we're always ready to have someone join in the middle of a game. Anytime, just notify us that you're picking up any NPC nation.

Will check it out, thanks.

I do have one question - how long is the usual time between updates? Is that something that changes, or is that set by the "mod?"

[foolish_icarus]

Updates occur at a set interval or whenever the mod has the time and the orders necessary to do it. An update every three days would be an unusually fast turn rate. 7-8 days is more average, but it can stretch longer. Part of what we're trying to address is the bottlenecks on play that happen because of either the players or the mod. It can be best for the mod to just forge ahead to keep the game going, but when your number of players can be counted on a pirate's hand, the mod can often find himself forging on alone.

[Cyclotron]

Thanks, icarus. That's certainly a doable rate for me.

This really does need a name change; when I clicked the button and saw "stories and diplomacy" I frowned, made a guttural growling sound, and immediatly thrashed at the forum jump bar to get me out. Then I saw "NES" and thought it was some Nintendo afficianado group, which I thought at the very least might be entertaining to read. Imagine my surprise when it turned out completely different...

"Never Ending Stories" has always seemed like an odd name to me, but maybe it's because I've been taught to look down on them as inferior from my time spent in the stories forum. Nobody there seems to like them very much...