Skip to Content
 

Another game idea, with (surprise) resources

7 replies [Last post]
Fri, 01/07/2005 - 18:01
Anonymous

Besides the one time I tried to make a simple war game and the other where I made a simple RPG, I haven't made a game that I even want to finish or continue to work on because they just aren't good enough, so I am trying to come up with some new ideas.

So, tell me if you haven't heard this before:

The basic gameplay consists of players moving around space collecting resources which are used to build the buildings in the player's hand. When a player lands on his planet (chosen at the start of the game) he may build one building and end his turn. If a player lands on a resource planet, he draws one card from it's resource deck, adds it to his hand, and ends his turn. Each resource "comet, or whatever more interesting space-related name I come up with," specializes in a different resource, meaning that you are more likely to draw a card of that resource, but it is enitrely possible that you will get any of the other resources. I am thinking that more valuable resources would be put farther away so players have to decide whether they want to stick with buildings that have easy to get resources but aren't worth as many VPs or going for the big resources to earn higher amounts.

When a player returns to his home planet he may draw a blueprint card (building card), add it to his hand, and build it after he collects the required resources. I suppose there would be some sort of limit as to how many blueprint cards a player could have in his hand.

What do you guys think? Does it even sound like it has potential? I want to work on something but I want it to be something that I will have fun working on. So any help would be appreciated to get me started.

aaron

Top
Sat, 01/08/2005 - 04:02
#1
Anonymous
Another game idea, with (surprise) resources

check out my star mogul idea I just posted about. I personally don't like the idea of a pre-set board for a space game

Top
Sat, 01/08/2005 - 07:18
#2
sedjtroll
sedjtroll's picture
Offline
Joined: 07/21/2008
Another game idea, with (surprise) resources

The impression I get from your description is that you could have a 1D board really... like the board could have the planets on different orbits and you move from one orbit to the next (basically a track rather than a 2D map).

The 'better' or more valuable resources (the ones used in the more valuable buildings) are on the outer rim planets, and moving from one orbit to the next gets more and more dangerous as you get further from home. Maybe the danger comes from space pirates or something, not to mention the time it takes. But if you could choose to spend some resources outfitting your ship with guns and shields, then you could brave deep space and even collect some points for beating up on Pirates you come across.

In order to make it worth trying to get the higher valued stuff, lets use Puerto Rico as an analogy-
Say the Tobacco and Coffee buildings are built from resources from deep space, and Indigo and Sugar buildings are built from nearby resources. So you could got he safer route and produce Indigo/Sugar, but you can't sell that for as much. If there's a PR stle trading house than you can't sell at all sometimes, unless you diversify.

So you build buildings which produce stuff, you sell or trade some of the stuff for resources, and you spend resources to upgrade ships or build more buildings. You send the ships for more raw materials, and maybe to battle pirates. You score points for the stuff you produce, the pirates you defeat, and the buildings you build.

How does that sound?

Top
Sat, 01/08/2005 - 13:29
#3
Anonymous
Re: Another game idea, with (surprise) resources

snipy3 wrote:
The basic gameplay consists of players moving around space collecting resources which are used to build the buildings in the player's hand. When a player lands on his planet (chosen at the start of the game) he may build one building and end his turn. If a player lands on a resource planet, he draws one card from it's resource deck, adds it to his hand, and ends his turn.

In a "distant cousin" sort of way, this sounds similar to the mechanics of Pirate's Cove, where the players determine where they are going at the start of the turn. Each port allows the player to do one type of thing. There is a "home planet" port (the center island) where the player can bury stuff for victory points. Pirate's cove also has direct confrontation and indirect confrontation (with the legendary pirates and so forth).

Another game that comes to mind is Vanished Planet for the resource aspect, where players can exchange one set of resources for another, which builds up. (Note that Vanished Planet is a cooperative game.) This mechanic is also used in Ideology: The War of Ideas from Z-Man Games. In this, you can trade in cards and build them up to more powerful abilities. Once you trade them in, though, you lose any benefit from the cards you gave up.

Top
Sat, 01/08/2005 - 13:46
#4
Anonymous
Another game idea, with (surprise) resources

sedjtroll wrote:
The impression I get from your description is that you could have a 1D board really... like the board could have the planets on different orbits and you move from one orbit to the next (basically a track rather than a 2D map).

The 'better' or more valuable resources (the ones used in the more valuable buildings) are on the outer rim planets, and moving from one orbit to the next gets more and more dangerous as you get further from home. Maybe the danger comes from space pirates or something, not to mention the time it takes. But if you could choose to spend some resources outfitting your ship with guns and shields, then you could brave deep space and even collect some points for beating up on Pirates you come across.

In order to make it worth trying to get the higher valued stuff, lets use Puerto Rico as an analogy-
Say the Tobacco and Coffee buildings are built from resources from deep space, and Indigo and Sugar buildings are built from nearby resources. So you could got he safer route and produce Indigo/Sugar, but you can't sell that for as much. If there's a PR stle trading house than you can't sell at all sometimes, unless you diversify.

So you build buildings which produce stuff, you sell or trade some of the stuff for resources, and you spend resources to upgrade ships or build more buildings. You send the ships for more raw materials, and maybe to battle pirates. You score points for the stuff you produce, the pirates you defeat, and the buildings you build.

How does that sound?

Actually, what I imagine isn't really a 1D board. It's almost like that of the Hitchhiker game recently posted for GDW, except that the board would have many more spaces. Home planets would be spread apart, and resource planets would be towards the other side of the board. On your turn you can move your Harvester to any space that is connected by a line to the one you are on. Every space except home planets has a number from 1-20 on it, this number is currently referred to as the "Asteroid Evasion" number, and you must roll a d20 to avoid incoming asteroids. If you roll higher than the number of the space you are on, you're fine, if not, your harvester takes damage. If your Harvester is destroyed, your home planet has to "Create" another one at a cost of VPs (so you would incur some sort of penalty for death). In short, the deeper you go for better resources, the harder it becomes to avoid asteroids.

Of course, though, some Technology cards (I like that better than Building or Blueprint cards, so we'll call them that for now) would upgrade your harvester so that it could hold more resources, take more damage before being destroyed, allow for two moves in one turn, and so on. So a player could choose to work solely on buildings for VPs, they could work on upgrading their Harvester so that it could survive longer and perform better, or they could cleverly mix both.

I think I am going to go ahead with this theme, it caught on pretty quickly for me and last night while watching TV I wrote up a partial rough draft of some possible rules, and so I guess I will work on it for a few months and see how it goes!

Top
Sat, 01/08/2005 - 14:12
#5
Anonymous
Another game idea, with (surprise) resources

snipy3 wrote:

Of course, though, some Technology cards (I like that better than Building or Blueprint cards, so we'll call them that for now) would upgrade your harvester so that it could hold more resources, take more damage before being destroyed, allow for two moves in one turn, and so on. So a player could choose to work solely on buildings for VPs, they could work on upgrading their Harvester so that it could survive longer and perform better, or they could cleverly mix both.

This technology aspect reminds me of one of my favorite computer games of all time: StarControl2. The ability to upgrade your ship and fly around doing stuff sounds great. Upgrading Ship range, harvesting ability, cargo hold etc. But what if instead of the game either being resource driven or being about running from pirates it is about building up an intergalactic corporation. You as the CEO are the head of the flagship which goes around building stuff. The goal is to have the biggest intergalactic corporation.

Also in general I don't like that idea of a fixed game board. it can lead to a possibility of there always being a best first move. whereas if there is a random distrubution, then there can't be a best first move that is the same all of the time.

Top
Sat, 01/08/2005 - 15:11
#6
Anonymous
Another game idea, with (surprise) resources

Hmm, I will look into that. Possibly taking something a la Settlers with number tokens (For the Asteroid Numbers) and having them redistributed each game, although then I would probably have to break those into 3 groups, low, medium, and high #s, and split the board into those sections.

Oh well, I will keep working at it for the next few weeks and see what I come up with.

Top
Sat, 01/08/2005 - 15:17
#7
Anonymous
Another game idea, with (surprise) resources

I thought of a way that the resources and increasingly good ones could be dealt with. You could say that any asteroid or harvestable area has a total number of harvests that can be taken from it. The type of resource could be variant to the amount of time spent harvesting (like you said dig deeper get better stuff) but at the same time be random.

Take for examples resources just correspond to numbers 1-5 (use value) with the higher being more valuable.
first dig you have 50/50 chance of getting resource 1 or 2
second dig you have a 50/50 chance of getting resource 2 or 3
third dig you have a 50/50 chance of getting resource 3 or 4
fourth dig you have 50/50 chance of getting resource 4 or 5

while you spend a whole turn just digging. This would make the cost very high, but the reward also high. This might be a way to do it instead of distance from home.

Top
Syndicate content


forum | by Dr. Radut