gambler wrote:Myself, I've had in the back of my mind, a concept of developing 3-4 technologically similar races and letting them expand and meet, and interact, in order to keep things on a somewhat even footing.
From my experiences in solo play, unless you are aiming for a game that is mostly about Elite Officers and internal politics, you really need to start with a bare minimum of two starting empire, if not more. Three empires is probably the sweet spot, as even if two of them are in the doldrums the third should still be exploring and doing something interesting.
While four or five starting powers might make expansion that much more balanced, I have found it harder to get a campaign started when you have to pregenerate that many empires. It also makes it a bit less "personal", as you don't really get to form any meaningful emotional bonds with any of the empires, which makes it hard to build and maintain any kind of momentum.
-Tyrel
[i]"Touch not the pylons, for they are the messengers!"[/i]
Heres the events that happened between 3001.05 and the end of the campaign...
3001.06
The USK succeeds in their early tech year increase. The Mass Driver piece of special equipment is researched, and two new ship classes are proposed--the Excalibur-class SD which, it is determined, will take over from the Ark Royal as flagship. It has an ELINT and jammer suite equal to an Oracle, enough space in her hangars to base a maintenance group of Spitfires and two mass drivers to provide a small strategic weapon capacity. The second class, the Dreadnought-class strategic strike cruiser, is a variant of the Triumphant with most of the offensive weapons taken out, the ELINT ability replaced with a jamming facility and a single mass driver slotted in.
As well as these new ships, the USK intends to expand the number of fighter flights in the fleet, and that means increasing the number of Hermes CVLs. Plans are also made to increase the numbers of Cornwall CAs too.
The WFA votes to improve the industrial productivity of New Cymru and allocates funds to do just that--increasing it by 20%. The military finally gets its wish of being able to have their entire fleet in active service without bankrupting the economy.
The Pilundan League constructs three NiSek exploration cruisers. These vessels, proposed but never actually built, will form the basis of the PL new exploration fleet.
In exploration news, the USK activates an IND-2 power, the Huragian Grand Alliance. Relations are frosty but neither side moves to engage, and the three Beagles jump out of the system.
The BT activates an IND-3 power, the United Agreatian Duchies. This power, close to achieving its INT-1 status, is reasonably friendly and Normal Relations are entered into.
The IHT's remaining exploration forces discover two new systems, both fairly interesting to colonists but not to the IHT's military wing.
The WFA petitions the USK for formal membership of the USK, which is accepted.
The PAA also petitions the USK for formal membership of the USK, which the USK accepts.
(CM Notes: there was an ulterior motive for this, and mainly its to give the WFA and PAA the plans for the SWA Lundy-class hyperspace probe. Neither the WFA or the PAA had a cheap exploration unit that could be built in large numbers, so I fudged the rolls a bit. It saves the PAA having to build a new cruiser from scratch and enables the WFA to actually do their own exploring instead of being a semi-passive power)
3001.07 (campaign end)
The only news was exploration as the PL discovered the Unified Pilundan Federation. It was while generating the UPF that I lost interest.
There would have been fifteen powers after generation of the UPF, ranging from the USK and IHT at the 100+EP per turn, at the top to the ODU and BA, sub-10EP per turn, at the bottom. And with six of those powers being in a firm alliance, all of them pretty well-off, there seemed to be no way in which the USK or other powers in the alliance would have been threatened except with a INT-4/5/6 power. And, knowing my activation rolls, a host of INT-1s would have been generated too.
Not every laser dot has a loaded gun at the end of it
