Community Plays; Star Traders 4X

[johndramey]

Since the game has been running for a while, and the first post is a little out of date, I'll update it to explain what we are doing and how you can join.

Here's the basic set up for our game;

So, you can see, we'll be playing on The Rim which is a 100x100 elite map and using the Great Houses, another elite only perk. The houses are a little different from their counterparts in their bonuses, and I'll lay those bonuses out here so you can understand what we are getting into.

Clan Javat is the economic power in the houses, which gives them an additional +4 credit from each mineral mined.
House Thulun is our industrial base. When active, their colonies will produce +2CP to aid in construction. When idle those CP disappear, but they gain +2RP. A nice, helpful people, eh?
Steel Song is our military powerhouse, their ships all start off with 5 experience which gives them a decided tactical edge and their colonies all start with defenses and produce +3EP.

I’ll also be using my special, super secret alpha code to give us a boost in the early game. The alpha code allows my starter templar cruisers 4 moves a turn instead of 3 and also boosts my starting bank by around 3 times so I’ll be swimming in cash. Give you guys a reason to want Alpha membership next time around!

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Currently, the game is operating in a rather interesting manner. We've split active players into the three houses, basically each player just joined the house they liked the most. Each house gets 1 vote, decided within the houses members. I will run some turns, called a cycle, and then post an update with some questions. Usually I'll break a cycle at opportune times, for instance when some particularly good research has completed, we run into the Xeno, etc. Each house will debate, negotiate and woo the other houses to support or block its actions, and then I take the results of that and run the next cycle.

Currently, the houses look like this;

Steel Song	ncaoa, Officer Genious, squee
House Thulun	xdesperado, En1gma, lixxx235, abysmal
Clan Javat	slayernz, Brutus Aurelius, LordofSyn

If you want to join in on the fun, please feel free to post in the thread. Each house also maintains its own discussion thread separate from this one, in order to facilitate easy debate. Links for each house are below.

House Thulun's thread
Clan Javat's thread
Steel Song's thread

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Links to the updates
1 - Blocking Action
2 - An Auspicious Start
3 - Prelude 1
4 - Recon, Recon, Recon
5 - Prelude 2
6 - Welcome Home
7 - Prelude 3
8 - And so it Begins
9 - Reconnoiter, Consolidate
10 - RED ALERT
11 - First Contact
12 - Thin Red Line

[johndramey]

Blocking Action

Life is good and life is fine,
Everyone knows my life ain't mine,
I may toil or I mat play,
But Steel Song shall always stay!
-Steel Song children's rhyme

Personal Log - Gerard DeCampos, Carrier of the Song

[Begin Transcript]

The Hive ships have been cruising through the void for generations upon generations and many, including myself, felt we would never call a halt to the great migration. I was secure in the safety of the Hive, living with my compatriots in the glory of the Song. Comfortable, that is, until a fleet wide conference was called...

It appeared that the xeno threat was greater than we had expected and our great floating hives had attracted Xeno attention. There were definite signs of Xeno activity closing in on our fleet and, if unhindered, they would overtake and consume our houses within a decade. Our families would be lost, our history would be destroyed and our Song would be extinguished. Something had to be done.

With a heavy heart it was decided that a vanguard would have to be broken off to halt, or at least slow the approaching enemy. No single house would accept the loss of power that would come from a Hive departing the fleet, so our elders decided a group of Hives must be left behind. I willingly offered to take my Hive and face the Xeno threat. After all, what better test of Steel than that of the fires of battle? Even should I fall, the Elders of Steel Song shall add my name to the chorus of our heroes for eternity. Not only that but I will have bought some small solace for my clan.

As treacherous as they may be, the Thulunese and Javatian Hives will be of great help on this endeavor. While they lacked the honor to volunteer for this fate, their Hives have been chosen and will accompany us to the nearest sector of space. Hopefully the fabled Javatian economic prowess coupled with the Thulunese love of industry can help to fuel our fleets. Together, with a little luck, we shall defeat the Xeno threat and establish the first of many bastions of light in this dark section of the galaxy.

[End Transcript]

And so begins our journey. On starting the game we get a nice little cinematic intro explaining our plight as well as our first advisory message;

She’s basically just telling us to hurry the hell up and get a move on.

Our map, as of turn 1

Not a whole lot to look at, eh? This, my friends, will be our first vote. The Song, Thulunese and Javatian ships are all standing by. That red dwarf star down in the lower left-hand side of the map is actually relatively nice, and has been dubbed Excanium with 8-26 Minerals and 2-20 Quality. It could make a nice base for any of our houses but my initial thought would be to let Thulun have it in order to establish a basic industry base right off the bat. Other options would be to scout around and try to find a couple of other planets before we settle anything, keeping our fleet in this general area of space. We could, however, move the entire fleet to the south in the hopes of finding worlds. After all, where there is one star more should follow.

The Vote

1. Move to colonize the visible star system with one of our hives. Be sure to vote on who should get it!
2. Keep our fleet in the general area and scout, but hold on colonizing any planets until we get some more options for colonization.
3. Relocate the fleet southward, hoping to find more stars for the houses to take.

So, my friends, there we have it, our first vote. What do you, ruling body of the great houses, feel the fleet should do? I’ll give the thread 2 days from now to vote, hopefully we’ll get some good debate. Feel free to ask any questions of me or anyone in the thread, we want to have a strong consensus and that can’t be achieved without much deliberation. If you have a vote, well then post it and give your reasoning!

[abysmal]

I say colonize and since creds are more important than research imo, javat gets it.

[En1gma]

Move southward, and colonize the planet on the way. Send scout to anomaly.

[slayernz]

Of the three choices, #1, colonize with Javat ... let's get the economy going!

[Officer Genious]

I'd go with Javat for the same reasons as everyone else, and add that the higher minerals of that red planet makes it perfect for Javat's bonuses. Even if you get unlucky and get a crap Quality planet, you won't have to worry as much about it for a good long time thanks to a relatively easy to reach Habitat 2 upgrade.

Oh, and I know you wanted to call the thread PlaybyCommunity, but the initials look a little odd, in my opinion. Maybe a Community Plays ST4X? Or just spelling out Play by Community 1?

[slayernz]

Yeah for a second, I thought it was all about Peanut Butter Cups ... mmmmm

[johndramey]

Haha, awesome! I got some bites!

So far it looks like option #1 is way in the lead with 3 votes while the other options have.. well... not a lot. If it keeps going this way it should be pretty obvious which way we need to go.

Javat getting that planet, though, is a little surprising. High minerals are good, but I love me some industry. However, we definitely are operating by committee and I will do what the will of the people says to. Still have some time so the vote can shift.

As of now the vote stands...
#1 with 3 votes (Javat has 3)
#2 with 0 votes
#3 with 1 votes

Let's keep the votes going, bookmark this thread and post in it as much as you want! Discussion is good and the more traffic we get here the better!

Officer Genious, good idea! I'll shift it over to your idea of "Community Plays; ST 4x" Thanks for the suggestion

[xdesperado]

Javat colonize red system explore south with others

Not only for the mining but Javat and SS need to colonize first, Thulun gets that CP bonus which will let them easily catch and surpass the other two houses.

[fallen]

I vote #3 with En1gma.

[johndramey]

So, slayernz had a really great idea that I should have had earlier. Since we have three separate houses that, in theory, should operate independently, why are we using basic pure democracy to play this? How about this idea;

IF we can get at least one person in each house (Thulun, Javat, and Steel Song)
and
IF at least one person from each house can be a part of the votes each time (basically, you'll have 48 hours to get at least 1 vote per house in)

then we could have a... house of sorts. By that I mean, each player could join a house's ruling council and vote/argue among each other in the thread. At the end of the 48 hour time period, each house will then submit a single, house vote which has been agreed upon. After that, I just listen to those three votes. It would be a nice political microcosm of the US's electoral college, basically.

So, do we have enough interest to pull this kind of thing off? I think it could make each voting session a lot of fun, and from a role playing and story telling perspective it could be a whole lot of fun. What do you guys say?

We do need at least one person per house, so someone will have to accept Steel Song! I knew they would be the least popular so that is why my starting monologue was from the Song's point of view

[lixxx235]

We should drop song(yes, it doesn't even deserve a capital S to start) and insert Cadar.

BTW, I vote what fallen said.

[slayernz]

Hey all ... I've discussed this in the other thread too ... but I'm keen for us to add an additional twist. We are each allocated a faction that we come from. We all still work for the "common" good, so long as that common good helps our home clan in some way. That is, we play the game the way the game plays us.

We'll certainly see faction wars,


and alliances,



and see complaints of resource hogging.




But that's exactly what the silly little factions do all the time anyway.

[slayernz]

Oh ... I spent so long writing up my post that JD beat me too it

I'm Javat!!! Hear me dig!

[xdesperado]

I nominate the cat to be SS house leader...think of it...Steel Cat Song has a sorta catchy ring to it