[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Never-Ending Spacerace

[Paul Zastoupil <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, May 08, 2003 at 05:39:16PM -0300, Mark Metson wrote:
> 
> I would like an option allowing the game to have the spacerace but to not 
> end when someone reaches the destination star/planet.
> 
> This is so that the mother-planet can continue to have effects upon the 
> colonised planet when we proceed to play out what happens on the new 
> planet. I have already been working on scenarios for the colonists, 
> presently I assume all the players all landed on the same planet with the 
> same number of engineer units at the same time. But eventually it would be 
> nice to be able to stagger their arrival in accord with how far behind 
> each other they were in the space-race.
> 
> Then eventually to have a container-game in which planets or starsystems 
> are a terrain-type, and allow interstellar activity to progress to 
> more-advanced ships instead of just the basic colony-ship that carries one 
> or two units of engineers. (It is sort of the "trireme" of the galaxy...)

This is a cool idea.  If the details can be worked out it would make
for some very interesting fun.  I'm not sure the freeciv engine is set
up to be able to handle this kind of "container".  

It brings to mind another way to play the game.  What if you were in
charge of the colony while someone else was playing your home nation
back on earth?  You could aldready do this inside the current game,
but there really isn't enough game content to want too many players
connected to the same nation.

Working at a MMO game company always puts these crazy thoughts into my
head ("Lets make Freeciv MMO"), but perhaps now I'm drifting to a whole
different game.

> I am thinking of aiding and abetting people's commitment to long-term 
> games by adding financial incentives. An ever-growing fund would be 
> invested in various ways that produce daily, or at least regular, income, 
> and this income would be split up each turn based on some game metric such 
> as maybe the scores of the players or how much gold they have on hand or 
> something. Plus some for lump-sum prizes for particular kinds of minor or 
> major victories and some for constantly increasing the capital so that the 
> total amount of funds involved keeps on growing.
> 
> It looks like it should be possible for example to run a game in which 
> each player pays a clerical fee of $10 to play and all players end up 
> receiving at least $10, some receiving more. For example right now there 
> are numerous fairly reliable investments on the web that will yield 
> 1%/day. If a one turn per day game lasts more than 100 days it will thus 
> be able to pay out more than was put in...

1%/day?  That's 270% in just 100 days (3778% annually), where do I
sign up?!?!  Can you also buy a bridge?  Maybe some beachfront property
on the east coast of Peru?

This gets ugly.  Who invests the money?  Who pays taxes on it?  Who pays
out the money?  Not I, thanks.  I'm already dealing with these issues
on a very small scale with the donated funds.

-- 
Paul Zastoupil