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Ideas needed for a Mars Colinization game

4 replies [Last post]
Fri, 08/13/2004 - 16:30
Anonymous

My idea is this. Space has been privatized and billion dollar corporations are in a race to colonize mars. But not only must they compete with each other but they must also compete with a previously unknown alien race living in mars.

3 players play as the human companies
1 player plays as the alien race.

The humans win by being able to produce so much (ala Axis and Allies)
The aliens win by killing so many humans.

The aliens produce more units by converting hexagons into "Hives". They get one grunt for each hive and in turn can combine grunts to make better units.

I have alot of good ideas for units for the human race but not a clue on how the humans will buy them.

The board will be modular like Settlers of catan, but o fcourse bigger and look like mars.

The only thing I really need is an idea on how the human economic system will work. I dont want anything like axis and allies where each hex is worth X amount. And I want something that the alien race can affect some how.

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Sat, 08/14/2004 - 07:03
#1
Scurra
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Ideas needed for a Mars Colinization game

One difficulty is scaling the game properly. We've had this discussion elsewhere, about designing a game for exactly four players, as opposed to making it truly multi-player.
That's not to say that this game won't work with different numbers of players, but any game in which one player operates under different rules to the others is tough to balance without including lots of specific rules for different situations.

As to your economy request.
One suggestion is to make unit purchasing require an assortment of resources, but an individual player can only produce one of those resources, plus one common one.

Imagine that there are three players A,B and C. Player A can produce Red and Black resources. B can produce Blue and Black resources and player C can produce Green and Black resources.

An infantry unit can be built with one resource of any type. A tank unit requires two different resources. And a plane requires three different ones.

So all the players can build infantry and tanks just from their own abilities. But to build a plane requires trading resources with another player.

Obviously this is wildly simplified, but it would encourage player interaction. (You have to have another method of obtaining unavailable resources, but that wouldn't be too hard to implement.)

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Sat, 08/14/2004 - 12:22
#2
Anonymous
Ideas needed for a Mars Colinization game

The way I imagined my game scaling is by the Hex map than can be as little or as big as people want it to be. Also I want the humans to be able to trade but not HAVE to. After all they are competing against each other also.

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Sun, 08/15/2004 - 12:38
#3
Scurra
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Ideas needed for a Mars Colinization game

We mean a different thing by "scaling" here.
If there are three players in the game, two of them are human and one alien. That's very different to if there are four players, three human and one alien or even two human and two alien (which I presume you weren't intending to have.)

If I were the alien, I'd much prefer my chances against two opponents compared to three! So you have to find out how to adjust the system such that it still works fairly.

As for trading, if you think a bit further about the system I suggested, you might be able to see why a requirement to trade with the other players doesn't mean you're not competing with them. See "The Settlers of Catan" for the canonical example of this in action. (The system I proposed is deliberately different to that one, of course!)

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Sun, 08/15/2004 - 13:35
#4
Anonymous
Ideas needed for a Mars Colinization game

Good point. I see what you are saying with scaling. But remember the humans are competing against each other and the victory conditions for the aliens consist of killing humans.

In a 2 player game (1 human and 1 alien). The alein and the human must fight each other. In a 4 player game eceryone is still fighting against each other (Humans can attack humans). But the key is that with more humans there are more victims for the alien to kill thus easier to win.

I'll give some more thought to what you were saying. Could be good actually.

Only one thing. If humans are fighting each other, they are not going to want to trade.

Wait I just got an idea!

Each Hex has a resource on it. Every turn players harvest the resource using a certain figuire or building. Building would be like you said. 1 of anything give you infantry 2 of anything gives you a mech and 3 of anything gives you a aircraft or something of the sort. People will still trade depending on what the map looks like.

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