Welcome to the Great Narn-Centauri Conflict(tm)! We hope you enjoy your visit and participation during your stay (for however long it lasts).
This marks the start of an email barrage to get initial things in the game going. You should also receive the following messages:
http://scivax.stsci.edu/~kochte/ftgame.html
Do you all have WWW access?? Anyone who doesn't?
How I would like to run things. A number of you have played in PBeM scenarios of mine before, but most of you haven't. For the benefit of those of you who haven't, and for those of you who have, this is how I would like to do things: at the top of the main portion of the detection report will be a date when the next batch of orders are due - YOU CAN ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS SEND ORDERS IN EARLY!!!!! I *don't* have a problem with this (and encourage it :-). Orders that come in early means less work for me on the due date (and with 22 ships in this scenario, that's a bit of work). I would like orders to be in by the end of the day on the due date (ideally this would be around 5pm Eastern Standard Time U.S.; for those of you not in the states, do the best you can). I know some of you work, and some of you are in school, and a variety of things can come up to delay getting your orders in - please let me know if something will be delaying you and I'll do my best to accomodate (I understand this 'cause I'm often in that same boat). To try and keep the pace of the game, I'm going to try and be semi-stringent on order due dates (unless something comes up, as I mentioned just a moment ago). If I don't get orders from people, I will then use 'standard default orders': your ship(s) will continue in the same direction and with the same speed they had during the previous turn (as with everything, there are exceptions to this, too).
Orders. Since this is a substantially larger scenario than my last one, I'm going to ask for movement and fire orders in one shot. I know a couple of you would prefer to send in movement orders, get a movement detection report, then send in fire orders, but this would slow things down quite a bit. Sorry. :-( You *can* give me contingency orders, in case a particular target is out of arc but another target is available. I encourage contingency orders for some things, especially in case of missile attacks (you'll know from the detection reports who has missiles ;-). Be sure you read the 'new rules/expanded rules' message about PDAF/ADAF 'enhancement'.
Feedback, however, is always welcome. I'd like to stay with one set of orders for a full turn, but if things get complex enough and you all feel you want to break it up into 2 sub-turns, let me know. If this becomes the case, I'll want to get movement orders on tuesdays, fire orders on thursdays.
Sample Orders:
As long as it's *clear* to me what you want to do, you can probably pretty much use any form you want for your orders. But I've found this to be clearest:
Thrust: 8 <---- aka, speed for current/upcoming turn
Heading: 4 <---- ultimately where you want to end up facing
Movement: 2P+4 <---- how you're going to get there from the prev. turn
Fire: [anything acceptable as long as it's clear who you want to shoot at;
secondary targets acceptable if primary is out of range/arc; if none
specified and primary target is out of range, you will still fire -
you'll just automatically miss; if primary target out of arc, you will
not fire]
Other: [anything else here, such as configuration for the turn of C-batteries
being used for anti-fighter/anti-missile mode (default is anti-ship),
PDAF/ADAF in interceptor mode (default is anti-fighter/anti-missile;
see also the 'new rules'), what systems damage control will attempt
to repair, etc, etc]
I would like for each side (once you get the message that will tell you who's on your team) to chose a 'leader'. The reason for this is that this person will be my main 'contact' person for the team for any difficulties that might arise (such as if I'm not getting orders from someone, the 'leader' can issue default orders that will override *my* default orders). The leader _can_ issue 'group orders' if he so desires - but you don't have to follow them if you don't want to (it *is* your ship, after all). Note that while you have a group leader, this doesn't mean you must go through him if you have any questions for me. The interface/communication route does not go 'from God to SM to leader to you'.
I encourage you all to talk amongst yourselves in working out strategies and tactics - this *is* a team effort, after all! Lone doves will quickly become dead ducks if the other side finds them away from the group. At the same time, I would request that I be included in on your communique's between yourselves. Not so much that I'm 'spying' on you, but more to see what you guys are coming up with, and if there are tweaks the scenario will need in the future (I'm sure there are things I neglected to think of that probably should be taken into consideration). Plus it's fun to watch how you guys work things out. :-)
More to come...
Mk