Dude, thanks so much for hosting and putting this together. It was a total blast and we should totally do it again. Based on what happened tonight, I think we should combine the captain and the sensors or comms role to give that person more to do. Then we could have a “Sulu” ship piloted by 1 or 2 people and spread the love. It seems like weaps, helms, and engineering have alot more to do.
I got to play Comms and Helm during different missions, and they’re very, very different in terms of stuff to do. Helm and Engineering are full-time positions. Science and Weapons have lots to do during combat and little to do otherwise. Comms is very leisurely, and actually, maybe the captain could double up on Comms duty. Alternatively, double up Comms and Science, and give Weapons control to the Captain, letting you run all of the stations with 4 crew members.
The tactical-warp maneuvering skills are from years of playing space sims and getting used to afterburner-based tactics. Of course, you’d think I’d have learned to avoid collisions by now…
I thought we died twice, but looking at this thread, it would seem not. I think captain running comms makes sense. If someone else brings a projector we could conceivably run two ships at the same time down here… actually, we could just use my 28" office monitor… that would neatly solve the “too many people” problem for sure. Except, of course, for the wireless router freakout we experienced – we should probably bring a switch or two and go to wired, just to avoid the hassle. Also, USB joysticks FOR SURE.
We bought this house in no small part because of its large open-plan rec room and the flexibility it entails. Delighted it’s working out as anticipated :-)
I was actually looking at Wrath of Khan quotes in that meta phone-using picture downthread. I would recommend future captains devote more time to memorizing the movie, or perhaps have index cards.
Can you guys write up a “what went right, what went wrong, what I would do differently” for the crowd out here that might be interested in doing something similar?
Go into detail. Take it from the perspective of someone who has been on the Artemis web site precisely once.
Nothing went wrong. Hell, I think we qualified to man the next space shuttle mission, if in fact there was such a thing as a “next space shuttle mission.”
But even screwing up is fun. The only rough patch was getting all the machines ready to play. This game has a pretty steady learning curve, we were figuring stuff out all along. Probably a ton of cool stuff we have no idea exists even now.
I can only comment on manning the comm position, since that’s what I played after handing off blogging duties. The others are right that comm doesn’t have much to do, but when you’re as inherently lazy as I am that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Gives you time to enjoy the others shouting at each other and getting a feel for “holy crap, we’re crewing a spaceship!”. Side note on the shouting - I now understand why Star Trek put a counselor on deck. Intense.
I will say that a few added options for comm might be welcome. I spent the game alternating between sending unpleasant epithets at every ship in hailing distance and asking for their surrender. I wish I could have made my own comments and that there was a flexible parser for handling responses, but I get that this is out of scope for a game built by a single dude. Second, since I am basically playing Uhura, it would be cool if there could be some linguistics integrated, maybe some kind of alien translation minigame? I have in mind that scene where Uhura and Scotty are thumbing through a Klingon to English dictionary trying to pass themselves offf as Klingon. But I also get that this could slow down the game even more, though it may help with role playability.
But good times! I had no idea what to expect and pretty much got my money’s worth out of hitting the red alert button. If I were a reviewer that would add another star to the score right there.
You should play Chinese Fire Drill Artemis. Have a timer that goes off every n minutes, and everyone has to get up and switch positions without pausing the game.
What went right:
Everyone picked up their roles pretty quickly, and by the end of the evening we were doing a good job of cooperating and communicating. It helped that we got to play a couple of missions manning the same stations.
We found a set of game parameters that seemed to work. Difficulty 3 was about right for the first game–by the end of the night, we probably could have tackled difficulty 5 or 6. We went with a “very interesting” sector layout and a “double front” scenario (i.e. attackers arrive from 2 entry points). We ended up turning down the sensor strength to medium, so that the Science and Comms stations had more stuff to do.
The Captain, Comms, and Mission Recorder don’t influence the ship’s actual performance very much, but they’re essential to making the whole session entertaining.
Having a large viewscreen was great. The Captain and Helm definitely need access to it, and it’s probably useful for Weapons too. The other stations don’t really need it as much, but it gives them something interesting to look at. The long-range scanner view was probably the most useful. Sadly, the main viewscreen tactical display doesn’t show weapon arcs/ranges, but individual stations should definitely enable it from the options menu.
What went wrong:
Setup was more involved than we anticipated, and we spent a lot of time installing updated laptop video drivers and getting things to work.
We completely missed that there was a “shakedown cruise” tutorial mission, which probably would have been a good first scenario.
There was a bit of a learning curve, figuring out keyboard shortcuts and which information was available to which stations. It also took us a mission or two to understand the impact that Engineering has on the rest of the ship (especially maneuvering), and when to power-up/down which systems. For example, don’t bother powering-up the beam weapons if you’re still out of range.
It would have been nice to rotate roles a bit more for variety, but of course the tradeoff is getting more experience at a single station. In particular, Comms doesn’t have a lot to do.
We still have no idea how those purple anomalies work (they’re anomalies!). We approached one, and it started shooting at us, so we ran away, and then it chased us, so we ran away faster. Nor did we figure out how some of the in-mission objectives work, specifically the ones that require interacting (?) with other ships.
We didn’t end up using the Starbase production queues very much either, but I suspect that becomes more important at higher difficulty levels where you need to resupply more often.
I get the feeling (from reading the wiki) that the comm position is primarily a resource management mini-game where you are trying to optimize the production of resources (torpedoes) at the various stations. You can ask stations to build specific types, and it’ll be important to plan dockings so that you are refreshing what you are out of. Nukes take much longer for a station to build, for example.
I played with my kids and their cousins last week. We generally doubled up comms and science, but I think we missed out on a lot of potential activities for both (we didn’t know about anomalies, for example).
Enjoyed the live blogging. I hope this becomes a semi-regular event. Would love to join in.
If we get everyone who was there tonight, plus the one who couldn’t make it, plus the three more (approx.) who’ve expressed interest, we will have two ships. I need to research how the licensing works for that. We’d also have about 13 people in the same room that fit 7 tonight, though we weren’t using half of the space. Still, I think it is conceivable, though we’d have to go fully wired (my poor crappy Verizon router will never handle it otherwise), and people will need to sort of hover when they try to walk through the floor octopus.
We would also need two USB joysticks (Denny?) and a higher viable-laptop-to-person ratio. I will try to fix the ones that were hincty last night, and get them game-ready. Everyone else should definitely install the demo on any laptop you think might be capable of playing it, to make sure beforehand and avoid getting mired in Driver Sargasso again.
Oh, and we might actually need two livebloggers posting in the same thread, causing whiplash to all onlookers. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Tom originally wanted me to write this up for the front page. I wasn’t ready with this shakedown cruise, but for the next one I will be. Not sure what form that would take, but we’ll see.
So, who could bring switches? And cables? To cover 13 people we’d need two four-port switches, and at least two 20’ CAT5 cables.
Also, why not throw a date out there? How about the fourth Sunday in January (1/29/2012), 4 pm to 8 pm? Who can, who can’t?
I’d definitely be up for another session. There’s an option to play remotely as well, isn’t there? It isn’t as fun as being there in-person, but it might make it more accessible. It might also open up the possibility of having other ship crews off-site.
Hey Brian - I wouldn’t mind doing it unless someone else (specifically a better writer) would rather write about this. I kind of feel like RepoMan has ownership since he put the whole thing together.
