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Shipping problem (and aircraft too)

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lordpog
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Joined: 12/31/1969

Hello Forum

I am currently working on a game where players transport cargo and passengers between towns and industries by road, rail, sea and air.

The map is hex based and will be made up of modular boards which can be recombined in many ways, and the number of which can be scaled depending on the number of players.

Road and rail routes can easily be marked with matchstick-like markers on the board. However I cannot think how to trace the vehicles routes between players airports or for ships e.g. between an oil rig and a factory etc., especially over long distances (e.g. 20+ hexes)

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Paul

hpox
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Shipping problem (and aircraft too)

Put a thin transparent sheet over the tiles and draw the lines with dry-erase markers. The game could include the sheet and the marker of different colors for each player. As an added bonus, the tiles will not move once they are laid.

jwalduck
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Joined: 09/06/2011
Shipping problem (and aircraft too)

Road/rail and sea/air are different in a fundamental way.

Rails and roads require infrastructure linking the origin to the destination: the roads and the rails. These are constructed in the landscape, don't move, and restrict where the traffic goes.

Sea and Air transport do not require linking infrastructure, but they do require infrastructure at the origin and destination: seaports and airports. Traffic between the ports can be arbitary.

I would suggest roads and rails are build on the board as you suggest, while for sea and air transport just the ports are built. Ships and planes then move freely across the tiles between appropriate ports.

seo
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Shipping problem (and aircraft too)

I think jwalduck has it right. If you need to somehow control the air and sea travel progress, maybe your best bet is to use a secondary board. There you can place a marker to control the advance of the ship or plane. You might need this as you probably don't want a plane flight from LA to SF to take as long as one from LA to NY.

Seo

lordpog
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Shipping problem (and aircraft too)

Thanks for the ideas guys

I think I have partially cracked the problem, although not with a duplicate board (too big/confusing) or overlay (potentially too messy, and I need to distinguish between different types of route), although just discussing the idea with other intelligent people and seeing such varied ideas has opened my mind to more radical methods.

I want to keep things simple, so I would rather not worry about actual turn-by-turn vehicle movement, just the routes and control markers of the appropriate type.

My idea is to assume all possible routes exist between airports i.e. 4 yellow airports means up to 8 possible air routes for the yellow player (4 C 2) could be utilised.

However I dont know how to extend this idea to ships (since they might be in discrete regions separated by land), and the revenue pricing is still problematic:

Seo:
"...you probably don't want a plane flight from LA to SF to take as long as one from LA to NY. "

Quite right- I dont want players cashing in on air routes between 2 adjacent towns, so I need to find a way of determining which routes are in use, or else limit how close airports can be built to one another.

Paul

OutsideLime
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Shipping problem (and aircraft too)

Quote:
My idea is to assume all possible routes exist between airports i.e. 4 yellow airports means up to 8 possible air routes for the yellow player (4 C 2) could be utilised.

I think that 4 yellow airports would result in 6 possible air routes for the yellow player. Draw 4 points on a page and connect them all together. 6 routes, max. Unless you have planes taking off, doing a brief circle, and landing at the same airport again, which in any case gives you 10 routes.

Not that it's a solution to your problem or anything, just math pickiness on my part.

~Josh

OutsideLime
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Shipping problem (and aircraft too)

I may have an idea if you can answer a few questions for me:

1) Is there a limit to how many ports/airports a player can build?

2) Can anything "happen" to a plane or ship in a positional context? That is to say, can planes/ships collide with each other, or encounter storms that occupy certain hexes, or any such event that pertains to exactly where the vehicle is on the map?

~Josh

jwalduck
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Joined: 09/06/2011
Shipping problem (and aircraft too)

What is the object of the game? You said transporting cargo between cities is the objective, but that travel time is not a factor. So I am assuming cargo is transported by achieving a link between the origin and destination, possibly through a number of connecting routes.

Is this right?

How do players aquire routes?

What are the differences between short and long routes?

With air/sea routes maybe they have a fixed cost where road/rail routes are a variable cost. All air routes cost the same price which is between the cost of a short road and a long road, this way it is more economic to use roads over a short distance and air for long distance.

For your sea ports the ports in different bodies of water can be represented by different shapes. Then simply have a rule that "Circle ports can only ship to other circle ports, square only to square".

"Why are goods sent by ship called cargo, and goods sent by car called shipment?"

Jebbou
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Joined: 07/29/2008
Shipping problem (and aircraft too)

Hello LordPog,

Each seaport or airport could be numbered and colored (blue for seaport and yellow for airport). Aside the board, you could have numbered and colored tokens. When a player would open a new searoute or airplane connection, he would take the appropriate tokens (origin and destination), and place them next to each others to represent the two items are connected. You could have a specific place on the board to place these tokens, or if you have enough material for each player, they could have a personalized board (à la Porto Rico or Goa), on which they could place their tokens.

I used to work on a medieval commerce project where players had caravans, and merchandise would cross territories through trade routes, which were defined by token like this. For example, one person could have 5 numbered tokens to represent one trade route crossing five cities.

Regards,

Jeb

Jebbou
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Shipping problem (and aircraft too)

LordPog,

If you have a limited number of possible routes, another way of handling this issue would be to print on a section of the board (like in a square in the corner) all possible air and sea routes, and the income they produce. Whenever a player secure one of the routes, he places a token next to the route, to claim ownership of that route, and mark that he may collect the appropriate revenue.

Have a great day!

Jeb

lordpog
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Shipping problem (and aircraft too)

First and foremost:

Outsidelime:

I think that 4 yellow airports would result in 6 possible air routes for the yellow player. Draw 4 points on a page and connect them all together. 6 routes, max. Unless you have planes taking off, doing a brief circle, and landing at the same airport again, which in any case gives you 10 routes.

Mistake on mine there- I realised that as I lay in bed last night thinking about the problem- I knew someone would pick it up! (I have recently acquired a degree in maths too- doh.)

To answer your questions

Q1) Is there a limit to how many ports/airports a player can build?

Ans) Yes, because each will most likely be represented by a hex tile placed on top of the map. i.e. there's a only finite ammount supplied in box

Q2) Can anything "happen" to a plane or ship in a positional context? That is to say, can planes/ships collide with each other, or encounter storms that occupy certain hexes, or any such event that pertains to exactly where the vehicle is on the map?

Ans) Probably not, since I would prefer not to overcomplicate the game, although I am not ruling it out at this stage

To give you a better idea of the map, I imagine it made up of a number (3-7 ish) of large catan-shaped modules that can each be rotated in 6 orientations (maths check here!), and used in combination with the others to make a random game world.

The point here is that different potential routes will exist in every game, so nothing is fixed.

jwalduck:

What is the object of the game?

I think that the game will time out after 10-12 turns or so, after which players count up how much money they have made, possibly counting the value of what they have already built towards the company value.
Im not entirely sure yet, I just want to get the core mechanics in place before I can address endgame issues. The big idea is to "create the most impressive transport network"

How do players aquire routes?

Players acquire road and rail routes by laying the infrastructure on the board and putting train/lorry/bus markers down between the 2 locations.
As for sea and air, we're still working on that...

What are the differences between short and long routes?

I want long routes to be more profitable (generally), but like you say to make different vehicle types more economic depending not just on the length of the route, but also the stage of the game (like the fuel types in Power Grid- fossil fuels are best at the start, but later nuclear or waste incineration plants are cheaper to run). i.e. road replaces rail, then air gets more viable too etc.

I am not certain how to implement these ideas just yet.

Thanks for the ideas.
Paul

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