Ready for blind playtest - design partner sought to share credit and any money

The wheel (sliderule) was added for the cardboard purists (people here at BGDF complained that using an app or calculator was anathema). The offset function for hyperspace jumps is an add-on to the circular sliderule once we got stuck with having that wheel and then some people did not grasp the idea of the offsets wrapping around.

I do not like the wheel myself. Using the silly thing would not make me feel more like a stargates and steampunk ship navigator or fleet commander. But, I do have to admit that it adds a small thematic element and should satisfy the cardboard purists.

Correct. See the addendum at the end of the pdf. 200 cups are to be included along with 40 of each color fleet stands/clips.

2 oz is specified because the 1.5 oz size sells at 120% the 2 oz price. Came as a surprise to me, but since either size works went with the cheaper. Making a playtest prototype the cup cost is $5 or less.

Colored clips or stands for the fleets were also generally priced and can be acquired (in bulk only) at about the same price as the cups.

The assorted color packs of small paperclips were looked into and a package sufficient for a playtest prototype can be found for about $7 shopping around.

Wording now changed to "As needed, convert combat fraction..." for clarity.

Only morph the number to match the dice when you are actually going to roll them. See the Combat Appendix also.

Converting to a percentage is simpler math than converting to 5% increments.

I have fixed that so you know which line to read for point values now.

Over at BGG one of the main complaints was that they wanted more of what I think of as a hook at the beginning and maybe a quick paragraph about what the game is about. I used to have part of the theme here but now it is mainly a blurb followed by instructions on game setup.

Over at Redit at least one person was having trouble following the rules because theme was intertwined with rules and over here the theme must not have been as clear as I thought because people thought ships were used for transport between planets you controlled. A small addition to theme text and moving the theme to an appendix have hopefully solved those issues.

I had also considered drawing and keeping displayed 3 altitude chits as offset values. Any method of randomly selecting and displaying the 3 hyperspace offset values for the game is fine - playtests should lead to an actual decision here.

This is an attempt to give a potential design partner, who would be making a prototype, all info needed. See the Fleet Stack appendix and the Addendum.

The term seemed to fit better than calling them the Rotating Chosen One. Prime Player does not quite seem to fit. But it really doesn't matter.

Many hours have been spent on this. The concepts interact so much it forces referring to some things yet to be explained no matter how you arrange things.

Only if Disney has placeholder art lawyers - images were grabbed from the web and slightly modified as placeholder art.

New wording:
A faction wins by declaring control of 25 or more of the 37 planets at the beginning of a turn, then maintaining control of at least 25 planets through that turn and the next turn. Control 25 or more planets at the start of 3 consecutive turns including the turn in which you make the declaration.

They used to be described that way. People said they didn't understand that.

You are correct. I used to have a thing about your color = 5, 2 closest = 4, gray = 3, 2 almost opposites = 2, and opposite color = 1 point but I removed that.

In the Economic Phase it now says
Collect 1-5 points per planet owned depending on color – your own color is worth 5 points
which should clarify it there and I have added a similar note on the front page.

No real reason. Stance declaration and sensor sweeps are both "might happens" and I just always thought of them together.

Same player who just repaired can then hide before the next player does both as opposed to all players hide after all have finished repairs. Hide is a reverse repair and actually part of repairs but since repairs are also an economic action that involves points they get completed for that player before chits not involving money start moving around.

From the final line in the Initiator section (top of page 2):
When players go in sequence it begins with the Initiator and proceeds clockwise.

The cups keep ships with fleets plus keep damage chits with the ship they belong to. Also they are cheap.

Such mods are for after playtesting about the same time that placeholder art is replaced. A matter of changing player "named as a color" to player "named as something else" in the move direction names and extra printing on the board and on some chits. However, using other than color coded fleet clips/stands might run that cost way up.

Warp moves to an adjacent space in any direction (flat plus altitude) and uses 1 drive unit per warp.
Also see the Theme appendix.

The move section is indeed the first place (other than in the Theme appendix if it had already been looked at) where movement is talked about.

Warp - move to adjacent space
Slip - same as warp but can leap up to 3 spaces depending on range
Jump - that pesky hyperspace helix thing

Those 3 "coordinates" are the hyperspace jump X offset and Y offset and Altitude offset for the game (different from one game to another).

If all 3 offset values were 0 the location (3,4,5) would jump to (5,3,4).
With an X offset value of -4 it would jump to (1,3,4) instead.

If the offset makes the new number more than 9 or less than -9 it wraps around for the new value.

3D space is a basic concept of the game (the move system for warp and slip actually warp a cylinder into fitting in a sphere).
3 Dimensions (multilevel space) - 37 planets spread among 19 levels (271 hexes per level)

Adjacent spaces are up, down, all six flat directions, all six flat directions plus up, and all six flat directions plus down.

Note that while offset values for jump may wraparound the space itself does not and any move that would exit the game board and go higher than level 9 or lower than level -9 or any flat location not on the board (all board locations fit the -10 < X+Y < +10 description in mathy terms) bounce back off the event horizon and end movement for that fleet for that turn.

We have made a couple of changes from feedback in this thread so far.

The game itself is a Heavy Wargame / Miniature Battles hybrid.

But first, I wanted to mention that the move section now also has this paragraph just before the sample orders. I do not know how that bit escaped and the escape remained unnoticed by me for this long.

A move order consists of 4 segment orders and is executed beginning with segment 1 in sequence with all segment 1 orders for all fleets considered as simultaneous actions and then all segment 2 orders, and so forth. If fewer than 4 segments are ordered for a fleet the remaining segments are all “hold position”.

Back to the time question - I do not know for sure yet but best current estimate is 3-4 hours for a 6 player game. Playtesting is needed.

Right now the document is being prepared for a potential design partner, not the players as such. (But I do want the rules able to be used for blind playtesting.)

The timeframe to play a game is at best a SWAG right now (Scientific Wild Assed Guess).

Rounding up players for a potential evening long game requires warning them of this ahead of time, but it has too little basis in actual fact to go writing it in the rules yet.

Much general fiddliness only activates itself as needed (more than 2 sides in a battle).

Back in the 1960s the Avalon Hill games involved converting odds into ranges from 1:6 to 6:1 and rolling dice and looking up results on the appropriate table and applying those results for each combat location.

Here we convert a fraction by dividing a one or two digit number by a larger one or two digit larger number to get a 2 decimal place answer dropping any remainder. (Easy math.) Then roll to hit and apply damage.

Is using a sliderule (the wheel) or an app or a calculator before rolling the dice any different from looking a result up on a chart after rolling the dice as far as player effort is concerned?

That was what I thought about the upkeep and such. When the tray idea jumped me combined with only carrying damages I had to fall back to the too expensive defense. And then that excuse fell out from under me (and the cups replaced the trays) and we ended up where we are now. I did my best to resist this and continue thinking about my battling telepaths idea. I read several books and even binge watched the Tick to delay things.

As a technical matter, while this is a physical variant of the online game, the online game (online, digital, but NOT a "video game" unless Diplomacy online or a Vassal module are video games) was a digital expansion and revision of a physical game with a bunch of hidden information added and this new physical version is actually closer to the original cardboard than the online version was.

So, not a rehash so much as the completion of a journey into digital and back out again for the 1978 game. Clunkiness in mechanics was shed going into digital and reduced hidden info combined with "moving fleets can have movement ending encounters with other moving fleets" makes the return to cardboard version more of a wargame than the digital "guess where I have troops, I hope my ally did not blab" version.

But, the board and overall movement and combat system are the same. Cups, damage chits, and altitude chits just do all the tracking paperwork. The ghost of my old Hyperwars - Sector 27 game is satiated.

3-4 hours of play (maybe even 5-6 sometimes) is the intended timeframe for this particular game.

(But I rarely play anything that doesn't take an hour or more. Sometimes, but rarely.)

About the "lite" Minis with website integration idea: last real coding (freelance) I did before the game was in PHP4 (5 was just coming out then but not yet supported on most servers) and HTML4. So, I updated myself enough for the game project as I was coding the digital game.

My Alchelemental game was an easy enough "learn just enough of Vassal and convert it" that I did a Vassal module as well as a print-and-play. It falls in the chesslike hour plus timeframe to play, by the way, and is a 2 player game.

My website is just a personal site that currently - for lack of other interest - has domain name and overall content dedicated to the digital game. I also use it instead of a cloud account to store things. And I kept a database free for playing around with. Never intended to be a commercial website.

My site is also NOT mobile friendly. The digital game is based on a minimum 1280x720 screen resolution and at least a ten inch screen (better with 13+) - desktop or laptop or large tablet so you are not constantly zooming in and out - and uses some character codes not properly handled by Silk and Aurora browsers and barely handled by Explorer or Edge).

Plus, I am a mechanics person. Storylines would have a couple old book projects unearthing themselves that best remain buried with those iron spikes holding them down. True graphics - as opposed to basic image manipulation - is not my skillset either.

I also dislike anything involving realtime interaction (I got all burned out on hand-eye coordination "video games" in the 80s when I had every game and other software that ever came out for the C64 even though I only cracked one of them myself.) (Online "stuff happens while you are thinking or napping" games also lack appeal.)

Unless something else pushes its way up front I am back to thinking about a telepathic duel (2 player probably) which is how a wizard duel idea has shifted itself lately with psychic constructs instead of spells. It needs to percolate a bit further before I dredge it up and shake the mud off again for a better look.

Naturally, it just now threw the idea of a playing field of different sized circles - where small circles both shield from some constructs and prevent making those constructs at that location - at me but I am going to finish reading my current book before I give that thought further attention. Shifting locations on the field also needs to be an "attitude adjustment" instead of physical movement sort of thing as well.

"Must stop typing" he gasps out, realizing the game meme is burrowing deeper into his brain with every keystroke.

Why is everyone afraid of short division?

The only time you need to divide is when you pick up the dice to roll them and now need that fraction as a percentage.

Let's look at the most complicated combat I can imagine in my game - all 6 players and each player allied with the player on each side of them on the board. At this level of complexity - very rare in the game - you have to reveal weapons and everybody adds up their enemies and displays that number.

Purple - allies red and blue - 6 weapons
Red - allies purple and yellow - 5 weapons
Yellow - allies red and green - 7 weapons
Green - allies yellow and cyan - 8 weapons
Cyan - allies green and blue - 4 weapons
Blue - allies cyan and purple - 6 weapons

Purple enemies yellow 7 green 8 cyan 4 = 19
Red enemies green 8 cyan 4 blue 6 = 18
Yellow enemies purple 6 cyan 4 blue 6 = 16
Green enemies purple 6 red 5 blue 6 = 17
Cyan enemies purple 6 red 5 yellow 7 = 18
Blue enemies red 5 yellow 7 green 8 = 20

With each player in the combat showing enemies total (how strong you as an enemy are shooting at them) the to hit fractions are simple glance at and know

red vs blue = 18 vs 20 = 20/38(18/38)
red vs cyan = 18 vs 18 = 18/36(18/36)
red vs green = 18 vs 17 = 17/35(18/35)

If I am red and decide to shoot at blue I pick up the dice and only now want to have 20/38 as a truncated percentage (the first 2 decimal places in the answer when you divide).

If only red and cyan were in the battle the enemies numbers would collapse into simplicity with red 5 weapons vs cyan 4 weapons = 5/9(4/9) to hit.

I still care about that as a percentage only when I pick up the dice to roll them.

When someone loses weapons in a combat round there will be different enemy totals and fractions in the following combat round. Weapons unchanged is unchanged odds next round.

Tracking damage and repair costs etc IS handled by the cups in the fleet stacks and chits moving between stack and combat arena and the bank and does not involve mathy stuff beyond buying new ships from the bank and reverse selling (pay bank to take them) damage chits back to the bank at 1 point per chit.

Any design partner would need to be a player of heavy evening long wargames themselves. I am aware of the niche market aspect of this game.

Back in 1978 my old Hyperwars game went through playtest etc and even into production (the production guy ripped off the money guy and the prototype version was sort-a-kinda printed instead of a final version which never actually was prepared).

The playtesters actually bought (at cost) copies of the lousy still a prototype production. This may have gratified me but did not really help out the money guy and the production guy had vanished already. Very glad it was not me but the money guy who brought in the production guy in the first place.

Now I design as a retirement hobby. (I also do some coding for my own use, but that is not really deserving of hobby status.)

So, Hyperwars had flaws and intentional clunkiness to hold down number of ships to keep tracking paperwork limited. Screen resolutions had become "good enough" on the low end of computer standards to make a digital version possible with the entire board visible at the same time. No spending of actual money needed.

(I dropped having a personal cheap but paid webspace for a year or so when I was shifting from looking for a new job to just deciding to do early retirement, but since site and domain name run under $100 a year at regular prices I grabbed one again but kept the game scripts suited to localhost and free webspaces as well as cheap webspaces.)

Hmm. Maybe website tinkering does qualify as a hobby now........but the coding is not anything spectacular, just spaghetti code tossed off as I was still writing the rules. The most impressive convoluted algorithms in it were me trying not to add more fields into the database beyond my original layout (would have been easier to add fields to the database but I was being stubborn and later I had to anyway for the ecopolitical section).

Since it went online, feedback has led to improving the move interface in that game.

Alchelemental jumped me pretty much full blown - an old concept about a geometry based game developed itself on back burner and I just filled in details over 3 days. It first used 4 colors but was easy to make more colorblind friendly.

The timing of that game just happened to mesh with Board Game Geek's 2017 2-Player print-and-play contest - (player feedback had me rewrite a bit of rules for greater clarity about power unit movement but otherwise no change).

Vassal was easy to learn enough and make a module for Alchelemental (a couple of days to finished tweaks) so I can actually play that one if I ever get any opponents myself.

(It also took first place in the Heavy Games category in the contest. Whoopie.)

Then somewhere in the back of my head the idea that tracking paperwork could be eliminated by use of trays (which became cups) in a physical less-hidden-info version of The Singularity Trap began to percolate. When it invaded the front of my head, I could not resist playing around with it further. And then it claimed there should be a way to produce it at "within range" cost and turned out to be right about that also.

Unless someone who enjoys heavy wargames wants to advance Fleet Admiral - Singularity further it has exhausted its "design as a hobby" capability now. I am not going to spend money myself to make a prototype I doubt I will ever have opponents to play against, and if the rules - when you read them all - are clear now no further tweaking of the wording is justified at this point.

But "as a hobby" is the best description of my game design activity now.

Procedural (vs OOP) is indeed what I write.

Object oriented is just a grouping system for procedures anyway (amounts to a fancier way of grouping subroutines together - I used well commented subroutines with a set of reserved "parameter passing" universal variables that behaved as objects way back on the C64 for one truly complicated hobby project of mine).

set the values (including flags on how to process things - "property" flags in OOP terms), call the routine, use the result values

Spaghettification is what I did to the code with multiple patches and variations and not much in the way of comments and leaving abandoned bits in it and so forth.