Shipping problem (and aircraft too)

Thanks for the ideas guys

I think I have partially cracked the problem, although not with a duplicate board (too big/confusing) or overlay (potentially too messy, and I need to distinguish between different types of route), although just discussing the idea with other intelligent people and seeing such varied ideas has opened my mind to more radical methods.

I want to keep things simple, so I would rather not worry about actual turn-by-turn vehicle movement, just the routes and control markers of the appropriate type.

My idea is to assume all possible routes exist between airports i.e. 4 yellow airports means up to 8 possible air routes for the yellow player (4 C 2) could be utilised.

However I dont know how to extend this idea to ships (since they might be in discrete regions separated by land), and the revenue pricing is still problematic:

Seo:
"...you probably don't want a plane flight from LA to SF to take as long as one from LA to NY. "

Quite right- I dont want players cashing in on air routes between 2 adjacent towns, so I need to find a way of determining which routes are in use, or else limit how close airports can be built to one another.

Paul

First and foremost:

Outsidelime:

I think that 4 yellow airports would result in 6 possible air routes for the yellow player. Draw 4 points on a page and connect them all together. 6 routes, max. Unless you have planes taking off, doing a brief circle, and landing at the same airport again, which in any case gives you 10 routes.

Mistake on mine there- I realised that as I lay in bed last night thinking about the problem- I knew someone would pick it up! (I have recently acquired a degree in maths too- doh.)

To answer your questions

Q1) Is there a limit to how many ports/airports a player can build?

Ans) Yes, because each will most likely be represented by a hex tile placed on top of the map. i.e. there's a only finite ammount supplied in box

Q2) Can anything "happen" to a plane or ship in a positional context? That is to say, can planes/ships collide with each other, or encounter storms that occupy certain hexes, or any such event that pertains to exactly where the vehicle is on the map?

Ans) Probably not, since I would prefer not to overcomplicate the game, although I am not ruling it out at this stage

To give you a better idea of the map, I imagine it made up of a number (3-7 ish) of large catan-shaped modules that can each be rotated in 6 orientations (maths check here!), and used in combination with the others to make a random game world.

The point here is that different potential routes will exist in every game, so nothing is fixed.

jwalduck:

What is the object of the game?

I think that the game will time out after 10-12 turns or so, after which players count up how much money they have made, possibly counting the value of what they have already built towards the company value.
Im not entirely sure yet, I just want to get the core mechanics in place before I can address endgame issues. The big idea is to "create the most impressive transport network"

How do players aquire routes?

Players acquire road and rail routes by laying the infrastructure on the board and putting train/lorry/bus markers down between the 2 locations.
As for sea and air, we're still working on that...

What are the differences between short and long routes?

I want long routes to be more profitable (generally), but like you say to make different vehicle types more economic depending not just on the length of the route, but also the stage of the game (like the fuel types in Power Grid- fossil fuels are best at the start, but later nuclear or waste incineration plants are cheaper to run). i.e. road replaces rail, then air gets more viable too etc.

I am not certain how to implement these ideas just yet.

Thanks for the ideas.
Paul