Okay, I'm starting a vacation tomorrow night, so I'm going to be bringing BNT back this week. Suggestions on things to change?!
I don't know how feasible this is, but my ideal alterations would be... 1) Disable realspace engine upgrades 2) Disable warp editors. 3) Leave IGB interest at the level of the last game but return planetary interest to the original settings.
I'd vote for 'no SOFAs', because those piss me off. Getting rid of Warp Editors would really mess things up, though.
Uh, Nick, I tried to open BNT and got a lot of fatal errors - this normal right now? And how can a total novice learn to play the game without getting killed within the first five seconds?
Getting rid of warp editors would just make it possible to have a smaller universe that feels a lot bigger and is easier to hide in. It would also make good trade route locations a lot more valuable. I would actually suggest a 1500 sector universe, with no warp editors and no engine upgrades.
ARE YOU HIGH?! That's a recipie for an absolute fucking NIGHTMARE! As soon as your EWD is engaged, you're up shit creek and out 200 turns while you try and find a way back to where you need to be. Not to mention getting Sol Bumped into the unknown regions and not being able to get back. It'll be a slapping contest over the first useful trade route someone finds, because nobody is ABLE to get out from normal shipping lanes and actually build any sort of infrastructure. I can tell you exactly how the game will go: An alliance will jointly colonize and mine the first convenient trade route and go out from there. A second alliance will blindly wander across a second trade route. These alliances will spend the entire game not interacting, because the movement costs in realspace are so high that it isn't at all worth it. Might as well recommend a game without hull upgrades.
You do realise that when your computer is built up you can calculate the warp jumps needed to get between two points?
Which is nice, once you have the billion or so credits for it. Even if your computer is level 30, you have to actually have seen the sectors, your computer can't map out a warp link it hasn't ever seen, so that means for your plan to work someone would have to spend 4 days exploring the entire galaxy just so that SOMEDAY their computer is good enough to work. Even then, it'd be dozens of turns between sectors via warp links. What are new players supposed to do in the meantime? It'll go down exactly as I laid out, there's no way around it.
At the start of the game players have to find existing trade routes anyway since they don't credits to build warp routes or get decent engines.
A higher amount of starting money, the first 8-10 levels are very dull and a real pain to get through
Yes, they do. With YOUR way, people won't be able to move beyond that point, because they'll have to go poking about deep space and hope they find something good, all the while wasting turns. What happens when its time to start colonizing planets? You can waste ten turns per load, or you can colonize the sector right next to the special port, which makes you a target. Given we've still got people who are going to be playing for their first time, do you not see what a bloodthirsty and desperate game your plan would make?
It's not wasting turns though since everyone will need to use turns to explore. I'm not seeing why being right next door to a special port making you a target is a problem...it means there is more strategy involved. You can have your planets somewhere obvious and have it be more convenient to build, but be more of a target, or you can hide a couple of links away and be safer but it's more inconvenient. Um, yes, that's entirely the point. To make the game more interesting. It seems you are more interested in another exciting round of spreadsheets in space though.
to increase trading and fighting... 1) set IGB and planetary interest to zero. 2) reduce the amount a products selling cost decrements per trade 3) make energy more profitable - and if possible remove/replace the energy ports 4) make special ports freespace, so people can own thewir sectors and ban trading at them (other than sector 0 of course) 5) increase the number of bases required to own a sector to 5, and maintain 5 as the maximum number of planets per sector. 6) increase the sol tech level up a couple. 7) alter planetary production settings along these lines: goods, organics or ore: 100 colonists per turn energy or torpedoes: 5000 colonists per turn cash of fighters: 10000 colonists per turn i've just yanked those values out of my ass, so they're more of an idea than a well thought out concept and if possible... create an 'imploding universe' - every update theres an x% chance of a sector ceasing to exist. if its blank, no biggie, if it happens to be owned by someone... well entropy's a bitch. and of course you can still link to it... follow that link and you'll be killed though.
remind me, whats the game called again? anyway thats bollocks, my suggestions are aimed at making trade route important and people wanting to control them. of course if you consider sitting on your arse making imaginary money entertainment...
I don't like the idea of no warp editors and no real-spacing in one move, but maybe there could be a limit to how many warp-editors you can carry, and how many warp links systems have? I think for this next round, we should just go back to normal interest rates but keep the galaxy and planet populations the same.
It's called Black Nova Traders, but the intent is to give people a choice of trades. That's why I think warp editors and realspace engines should be nerfed, within a couple of days anyone can afford to build their own warp links and the existing routes become basically worthless.
Instead of eliminating warp editors altogether, you might jack up their price hugely and compensate by starting everyone out with one or two apiece for insurance against getting lost on, like, level 3 engines. Maybe limit the number any ship can carry to maybe 3 or so as well. Also, I like bank interest. Keep it.
