Yeah, it’s just a shared folder for the turn files. I’ve also put the latest edition of the living rules in there. Feel free to add any player aids or anything else that might be of interest.
Oh, I didn’t weigh in before but the house rules are fine with me. I’ve only played a grand total of three times, but I found that combat is practically nonexistent anyway. That said, it’s precluding allows China’s power to be actually useful.
You can still commit felonies during anarchy (and war), though.
Also a note to those who haven’t played before, there are critical rules buried in the glossary of all places, so be sure to read that too.
The suggested house rule of 12WT and Idea Turns is a good one as it will greatly speed up the start of the game (which is normally a whole lot of research auctions before someone launches). However, unlike normal auctions idea patents do not come with free supports. Considering you will be making those decisions before the game even starts, please keep that in mind so you do not cripple yourselves.
Yeah, good point. Also remember that there’s a faction auction before the Idea Turns, so remember to save some money to buy technology. :)
Ok, let’s do this! I’m in… (2-3 turns a week should be manageable. The fact that everybody has to take a turn in order will probably be enough of a check).
And because everybody has to post on the thread makes it much easier to force myself to post my turn…
I’m very excited (never played a game with all the modules in)…
Excellent! That brings us up to 5 players, so we won’t have to bust anything. I’m still missing email adresses from a few people, as well as feedback on the proposed house rules. If anyone has any additional proposals for house rules, now’s the time to post them.
Once we’re ready to go, we’ll start the faction auction. I suggest we just make it an open outcry auction that keeps going until everybody has passed on all but one faction. Once that’s done, we’ll randomly determine the turn order for the Idea Turns, and I’ll set up the board and put it in the dropbox folder. Final turn order will be determined by whoever passes first during the Idea Turns (as in he gets to go first, but the actual order will be the same).
Well, if all factions are in, I think combat has to be allowed too. That’s my only feedback on house rules, really.
I could go either way on that question. As I said before, it’s a rare occurrence in any case.
Well, let’s do a vote, then. Here’s the format we’re going with (although I’m obviously voting yes on all of them):
-
yes
-
yes
-
yes
-
yes
- no
- yes
- yes
- yes
- No
- Yes
- Irrelevant?
- Yes
House rules vote:
- Yes, with the caveat that combat is allowed to prevent a Footfall or New Venus future.
- Yes
- Yes
- Yes
But the thing is that somebody attempting those futures might want to launch some preemptive strikes to take down a close rocket… Plus, it brings more interest to the political game (controlling the peace, anarchy, war state).
I guess Sharaleo is the tie-breaker…
Yeah, Sharaleo gets to be the tie-breaker, but it seems we agree on the other 3. Except, like Juan says, number 3 is of course irrelevant with 5 players.
Well, I’m torn. I’m going to have enough on my plate figuring out how to play, so the prospect of ignoring some of the rules for this game is appealing.
That said, it seems we are split, with suggestions that combat is rare anyway, may possibly hamper some nations and should be used in a couple of fringe cases anyway. So, in for a penny, in for a pound:
- no
- yes
- yes
- yes
Ha ha! Ok, I guess I need to read the combat rules then!
p.s. I’m having trouble downloading the module from the vassal site. Can someone put it in the dropbox?
p.p.s Ok, I downloaded the module, but Vassal won’t open it (it says “The file High_Frontier_2.7.0.vmod is not a valid VASSAL module”). Has anyone else gotten it to work?
Maybe your file is corrupted? I uploaded all the files to the dropbox folder.
Anyways, I’ll update the OP to reflect the house rules we agreed one (and remove the one we didn’t). Next we’ll do the faction auction. Just bid for whichever faction you’d like to play. Once you’re leading the bidding for a faction, you can’t bid for another faction unless you lose that lead. The auction ends once everyone passes on all but one faction.
I’ll kick things off by bidding 1 for ESA.
Oh, one more thing regarding the Vassal module, that I forgot to mention: the glory and ventures track on the score board is wrong, so we’ll have to use the ones on the map board itself, and add those points manually at the end (so instead of one any site glory spot, there is one each for any site in the jupiter zone and beyond and one in the uranus zone and beyond. Each glory disk is worth 2 points, each venture disk is worth 3). I’ll update the first post.