Welcome everyone to the 2080 Turn of The Great Game! The written portion of your orders for the 2080 Turn are due March 6, 2022 at 1800 UTC. I have altered and improved the orders sheet, be sure to use the latest version, which can be found in the directory of your nation’s files with the name ‘Orders_<Nation>_2080’ for your orders this Turn.
The new rules set has been published and are now the official rules of the game. There are a great many changes to the rules from the version we were using for the previous turn, some minor, some major, most are to do with how combat is handled. The 2075 Turn was the first real opportunity that we had to actually test our rules for combat and a great many things were found in need of improvement. The most consequential changes are to the rules regarding Initiative and Air units, as well as finally closing a long standing problem that any level of armor could render a small force invulnerable. So read the new rules closely. As always the rules changes are summarized in section 11.1, which for this version is unusually lengthy; also the specific changes, in green font, can be found on the document
https://docs.google.com/docume...LDNQ7rtrlPcfcBCppHJc
In doing my checks on various parts of the game I found a lot of mistakes on the Facility_List spreadsheet. Remember, the Facility_List spreadsheet is the official, final, list of what facilities there are and where; keeping it updated correctly is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY. That means the cells with white background you have to fill out! Yes, I have fixed everything that I can think of to be updated correctly as of the beginning of the 2080 Turn. Yes, the entire colony management system is, just like the combat system last Turn, untested and obviously cumbersome and will most certainly need a massive overhaul once we see just how badly it fails when someone really pushes it, ... just like the combat system last Turn. Yes, the idea that the Facility_List spreadsheet will become so riddled with errors as to become useless, and thus cripple the game, is a nightmare of mine… SO KEEP IT UPDATED!!!!!
I have been spending quite a bit of time fixing and revising the History section of our website, if you recall it was badly scrambled in the automatic conversion from the old version of Google Sites to the new version. While there is still much more work to do I am formally scaling back the emphasis that we used to put on newspaper-like Articles. There was a time when we thought that the Articles section could serve as the only public record of all actions by the players, specifically that there would be 1 article for every Political Action by players. That led to +50 articles per Turn and an incredible effort to create and read, even if you could discern which details were true or important and which details were wrong or trivial. I have had new players quit the game immediately once they realized how much reading it would take to immerse themselves in our game universe, an amount that was growing by approximately 20 pages per Turn. This does not mean that I am permanently ending all new Articles or deleting the old, I enjoy the Articles immensely and I think they add something special to the game, but they will be much rarer and less regular than before. The old articles are mostly being spread throughout the website, often not attached to a specific Turn, after being heavily edited.
Another change that you might notice is that I have been altering names of some Settlements or nations. Originally, the names were often the same e.g. ‘Canada’ the nation and ‘Canada’ the Settlement, so this change is to eliminate the chance of any confusion between the two e.g. ‘Canada’ the Settlement is now ‘Canada Prime’.
Recruitment:
We still need more players! Remember the contest that I mentioned earlier?* This game is more fun when you can actually deal with another person instead of somebody's low priority alt. Spread the word around! Ask your friends, post notices to your gaming groups, etc., we need more players!! I and Liam try but there is just so much else for us to do that there is no way we can give newly NPC nations the kind of intense, creative focus that a nation really needs to be a worthy adversary. We need more players!!
* The player who brings in the most new players will receive 3 Response PApoints this turn per new player. A new player only counts if that new player stays around long enough to at least submit valid orders for the new turn. The player who brings in the second highest number of new players gets 2 Response PApoints per new player. If you play only one nation, being willing to take on 1 more nation also counts as having recruited a new player. We need new players!
Bonus PA points:
[to those new to the game, this is where the Referee hands out rewards for good play]:
-There are no bonus PA points this turn except what you get by recruiting new players! We need more players!
Reminder :
-The RPOL characters 'GMDirector' and 'Israel' are dead mailboxes. Do not address anything to them, they will not be read. I would have changed/deleted them long ago but certain quirks of the RPOL site rules prevent me from doing anything about them.
-List the Settlement# where something is going/built/put/referring/etc/etc in your orders. Even if it is obvious! Right now it may be obvious, but as the game progresses, as more and more Settlements are built, then it will not be so obvious and you do not want a Referee that is guessing about where things are. We have all got to get much better about being in the habit of listing exactly which Settlement we are talking about!
-Coordinate closely with anyone that you are making a deal with. Your Referee has to check and log the effect of each of them and has diminishing patience for sorting out conflicts and uncertainties between the order sets. Expecting the Referee to research the orders of another player to find out what your nation is going to do is unacceptable. You must explicitly state exactly what your nation is going to do! Fail at this and your Referee has, and will continue to do bad things to your precious plans.
-Again, all players, the newer players especially, are encouraged to first submit a set of trial orders to the Referee so I can review them. This is a complicated game and mistakes are all too easy to make.
-Orders with an ‘if’ in them will not be accepted. The Referee will NOT be making judgements for you or trying to parse competing decision tree matrices. Not knowing, having to take a chance, is part of the fun of the game.
-Keep the Facility_List spreadsheet updated! Anything in white background is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY!
Yours In Service,
K