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14:28, 29th March 2024 (GMT+0)

Game Announcements.

Posted by RefereeFor group 0
Referee
GM, 186 posts
Fri 7 Aug 2020
at 01:46
  • msg #1

Game Announcements

This is the thread for all game-wide announcements.
Referee
GM, 187 posts
Fri 7 Aug 2020
at 01:46
  • msg #2

Results from 2065 War Round#1


All of the orders for War Round#1 are finally in and I have had a chance to look them over, and the results are ….there is no combat for this War Round.  ☹ A surprise to me, I was sure, but when I work through all the conditions that is the net effect. Your Referee has decreed that there will be no War Round#2.

However, before we go onto ending out the Turn, players will have an opportunity to influence actions with Response PApoints. To the summary of Political Actions in the 2065 History section I will be adding a very brief summary of the results as things stand, for most little more than Success/Fail. I have already been working through processing your orders and I still have much to do on that but I will have it complete and posted by Aug 10, 2020. After that we will have a 1 week period where you can write and submit any final orders for the Turn before this Turn is closed and we move onto 2070. *

As you likely know, Ken Ditto (UK and India) has left the game, thank you for playing Ken, I was looking forward to seeing the results of what you were doing for the UK. The really bad thing is this brings our active player count down very low. I will be posting notices in various places about getting new people joining the game, but I need your help. Remember the contest that I mentioned earlier! So, ask your friends, post notices to your gaming groups, etc., we need more players!! This game is a lot more fun when your opponents are actual 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 exact sequencing of activities within a turn is still not completely settled. The sequencing of activities mentioned in this paragraph is how we are doing things for THIS turn, but this is an area for refinement which I am actively working on improving. The sequence may be different for the next Turn.
Referee
GM, 188 posts
Mon 17 Aug 2020
at 23:44
  • msg #3

Turn 2065 results summary has been posted

Okay everybody, I have finally got the preliminary results for all of the nations done and have posted a basic summary to the History page (https://sites.google.com/site/.../history-2065---2069). You have until Aug 24, 2020 at 1200 UTC to post any final orders e.g. use any remaining Response PApoints, movement of units. After that the results will become final, I will give you access to your full turn results file, then the 2065 Turn will be closed and it is onto the 2070 Turn.

Google has put out a warning that the current version of Google Sites, the host for our primary website, will be discontinued shortly and replaced with a new version. I will be beginning the conversion process soon, hopefully there will not be too many changes, I will let you know if something really bad happens.

Yahoo! continues to downgrade what Yahoo! Groups will do, obviously they have concluded it is not worth their time. This is a problem because we have been using Yahoo! Groups for years as our primary group messaging service. So we will be moving to a simple group list out of Gmail. From this point on you will not be receiving any more updates about the game from the address '2300GreatGame@yahoo.com', only from 'greatgamereferee2300ad@gmail.com', so be sure to include it in your list of safe senders. You might have noticed that I have also added a new thread to the RPOL list 'Group Announcements', this is where all game announcements will also be echoed.

It does not affect anything for this turn, but in order to facilitate the quick and easy change-over to all Division sized units, the Referee will for this one-time in the 2070 Turn only allow similar unit types to be converted into a different type e.g. an Infantry brigade may be allowed to convert to Mechanized so that it may be combined with other Mechanized brigades to make for a Mechanized Division, you must first pay the difference in cost between unit types e.g. it costs $(10-2)*QL to convert an Infantry brigade to a Mechanized brigade of the same Quality. Important note: You will only be allowed to convert the type of the 1-4 remaining brigade sized units after all others of the same type have been merged into Divisions i.e. when you would otherwise have to convert them into a Division of lower QL. Your Referee will be monitoring this process to ensure that this is not abused i.e. using the opportunity to change all of your Inf to Mech just because you want the upgrade, will not be allowed.

Artillery type units are also going to be going away after the 2070 Turn, they are an unneeded complication to the rules and it is difficult to explain their existence with Division sized units, so for the next Turn only the Referee will also allow the same limited unit type conversion.
This message was last edited by the GM at 23:48, Mon 17 Aug 2020.
Referee
GM, 189 posts
Wed 26 Aug 2020
at 23:51
  • msg #4

End of Turn 2065

Hooray! The 2065 turn has now ended and I will be emailing out your final turn results over the next few days. You may now make your updates to the Facility_List file as needed.

The automated conversion of our main website to the new Google mandated format went about as well as could be expected, so it will be a while before the mess is sorted out and we can begin the new turn. In the meantime, do not make any updates to the original site. We will assume that all attempted deals for uplift capacity with NPCs were successful, I do not think there was any competition for uplift.

The rules we will be using for the new turn will be a cleaned up version of what is in the Rules_Proposal file. See section 11.1 for a summary of all of the changes. I am pleased to note that this list of changes continues to decline in number, and while I expect small balancing tweaks to be a game feature I do think we are finally closing in on a time when the game will not have significant changes each turn. Of course, the biggest change is not in the Rules_Proposal, it is the elimination of Brigade sized units for non-Spaceship, that is likely to be a requirement by the 2075 Turn

 Remember the contest that I mentioned earlier! *  Ask your friends, post notices to your gaming groups, etc., we need more players!! This game is a lot more fun when your opponents are actual 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!!  

*From now until the next turn, the player who brings in the most new players will receive 3 Response PApoints next 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!
Referee
GM, 192 posts
Wed 9 Sep 2020
at 03:07
  • msg #5

Updates September 8, 2020

I have got a whole lot of updates to pass on to everyone!

  The automatic conversion from the old Google Sites to the New Google Sites that I spoke of earlier went about as well as these sorts of conversion tools usually do. After spending much of the past week on it I have managed to sort out the worst of the bugs and make it at least usable. Go to the site and have a tour, it has the same web address as before just a whole new look. Yes, I know, many pages, especially the Articles from 2010 to 2045 are still a scramble of text boxes and fonts, it was much worse. It is functional enough for now and I will get it sorted later. Currently almost every page is both ugly and not very intuitive on how to navigate around but these are things that the new Google Sites is very good at so with enough time I should be able to improve it into something much better. Unlike the old Google Sites, in the new Google Sites there are no page level permissions, so to change your nation's page under the Player Characters section you will have to request the Referee to do it for you.   

  The change in the format between the old and new Google Sites has forced one important change, we cannot continue to do deals with NPCs the way we have been. This is actually a good thing as the old way was spread out and not consistent thus making it much more complex than it needed to be. So I have created a new thread on the RPOL site which will be the one, unified place where all deals with NPCs are to be requested and recorded. Be sure to read msg#1 of that thread.

  There is a trend starting which has to be quashed because it will be a book-keeping nightmare if allowed to continue. What I am speaking of are orders to construct a facility that somehow fail e.g. the hex is taken by another nation, a deal for transportation falls through, the move is illegal for some reason, what has been allowed up to now is that the facility is allowed to exist in place, on Earth, until its final proper location is worked out. Effective immediately, if there is some kind of problem with setting up a new facility in its target destination then the facility will be considered to be destroyed, its mass and $ wasted. No preemptive orders on a backup location will be accepted. 

   Remember the contest that I mentioned earlier? * Ask your friends, post notices to your gaming groups, etc., we need more players!! This game is a lot more fun when your opponents are actual 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!!

  And now we have finally reached the portion of the update that you actually want to hear: "When are we going to start the new Turn?". The answer is: It will still be a few weeks. Now that I have got the website back into a state that it can be used I can finally turn my attention to getting the new turn started, and that still takes a lot of time.

  All of you should have received notices from Google about having been granted access to Google Drive folders that have the same name as the nations that you play. If you did not then email me immediately. Into these folders I have placed every bit of orders or results for that nation that I have on record. When it comes time to submit your orders for the new turn you will place them into that folder and into the same folder I will respond with all of your results. So no more emailing files about orders back and forth. 



Yours in Service,
K

*From now until the next turn, the player who brings in the most new players will receive 3 Response PApoints next 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!  
Referee
GM, 193 posts
Fri 30 Oct 2020
at 00:18
  • msg #6

Start of 2070 Turn

And we are back! After putting in a huge amount of work the 2070 Turn for the Great Game is now open! You will have 3 weeks, until Nov 15 at 1200 UTC, to submit to me your budget and written orders portion for the new turn. As before, for each of your nations I have put into the shared Google Drive folders a file 'Orders_<nation>_2070' where you will enter in the written portion of your orders.  Remember, this does NOT mean I will tolerate 'negotiating your orders' or 'editing to react to events post due date'!!! This just means that it will be much easier to fix errors and respond to questions. Your access to edit the written orders file and budget spreadsheet will be removed on the due date.


This last turn, and preparation for the new turn, took much longer than expected. I had been hoping for a much quicker turnaround when the last turn started but there have been a huge number of mostly unexpected changes and upsets. The good thing is that they are now largely behind us; I know that I say this every new turn but I really do hope that we can get through the new turn much faster than previous turns.

I have spent quite a bit of time getting the website for the game into a more usable order after what the automatic conversion did to it. The articles section is still a mess, but I think that correcting that is something that can wait. I do expect that when I do get around to fixing the articles that I will have to dramatically cut them down and reformat them, many of those articles really do not do anything right now except scare newcomers at how much reading they have to do to get upto speed.



Updates:

Note that the rules have been updated to version 2020901, as always see the section 11.1 for a summary of the rules changes. The most obvious change is that the split between Division and Brigade sized units is going away. It has long been obvious that Brigade sized units were not the right size for a game of this scope, I resisted for a long time for several reasons but it is just too important, Brigade sized units have got to go. Brigade sized units are ok for this turn, but this is your warning that any non-Starship type unit which is still Brigade sized at the end of this turn will be marked as destroyed.

-The other thing which is going away at the end of this Turn are Artillery units. They add a surprising amount of complication to the game for only a little benefit. If you have any such units in your nation's inventory they must be converted to some other unit type by the end of the Turn or be destroyed. I am not going to issue any explicit rules for their conversion to some other unit type, I want to leave it up to you to come up with a plan; explain to me what you are doing in your orders and I will review and make a judgement then.

-I have had to reorganize the entries for the Budget Spreadsheet. This is another thing I did not want to do but there are some quirks to how Google sheets works that made the old format very labour intensive for me to create each turn. Most of these changes have the effect of automatically accounting for some player options/decisions without having to first clear it with the Referee. One of these changes is that it is now the players responsibility to fill out the number of ACTIVE Orbital facilities, which can affect the budget totals. This will allow for much greater flexibility in accounting for the effects of trades and lack of supplies etc. The default is to carry over the answer from the previous turn, but it will be your responsibility to fill it out correctly.


  -I have fixed a large number of errors in how our spreadsheets do things, so you may notice some changes in the balance of the various entries. The most obvious are the upkeeps, for most nations the portion due to upkeep of tech has gone down while the portion due to other corruption&pollution, ect have gone up. The upkeep due to Settlement size should now be much better balanced to what it was intended to be with Settlement size and population.

-On the budget spreadsheets I have not filled out the usual record of deals made in previous turns as I understand them, that is now the player's responsibility. It is the Referee's responsibility to figure out what happens if you get it wrong!


Recruitment:

We 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!


Be sure to:

-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 confused 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 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.

-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.




Yours, In Service,

K
Referee
GM, 194 posts
Mon 23 Nov 2020
at 00:37
  • msg #7

Orders are all in

I now have all of the orders in for all player nations for the 2070 Turn and will begin processing the orders before then getting onto combat. I have changed the permissions on the orders files for players to be 'Commentator' and if I have problems or questions then you can respond there or on the Follow-up thread on the RPOL site. I have some reason to think that processing the orders will be done quicker this time around, but it is a labourious and complicated process that can still easily take weeks.

Glancing through your orders and discussions, I think I see a misunderstanding growing. It is mentioned in the rules (section 3.2 par#4) but I need to be clear, almost any action/deal which changes the published statistics of a nation will not take effect UNTIL THE NEXT TURN e.g. a deal to change the ownership of Research Modules will not have any effect on cost to increase Tech level until the next Turn. Yes, it is on my list of things to do to expand section 3.10 of the rules so that much of what is in section 3.2 par#4 is also reflected there.

I have had to remove from the game RDrucker (Korea) and SirKerry(Indonesia) for lack of participation, ...and I find it very rude that they did not bother to let me know that so I can prepare. I do not mind if people have to leave the game, I understand, but I get very upset when they just disappear! So if you have to leave, then tell me.

 As you all seem to already know, welcome to Ludwig, our new player for the Nordic Federation. Ludwig was brought into the fold by Carl, so Carl is the winner of our competition for this round. Carl has 3 free Response PApoints to do with as he pleases for this Turn.  Given that we are still desperately short of players, you can expect that the competition of awarding Response PApoints to players who bring in new players will continue next Turn.

Another thing to expect is that there will have to be more changes to the budget spreadsheet format in the coming Turns. The spreadsheets that we have were set up a long time ago by long-gone Referees who I suspect never really expected that we would ever get beyond the Earth's atmosphere; so the format they made is not particularly well suited to colonial empires, ... which is what we are on the verge of doing right now. Over the turns I have made many changes to the budget spreadsheet which have helped to extend the life of the format, but looking over your orders there are more things I am going to have to do. I just do not know what yet but these changes are going to have to be substantial else we risk the game collapsing from the weight of its own bureaucracy.



Anyways, that is all for now, I will let you all know when we are ready to get to the combat for the turn!
Referee
GM, 196 posts
Fri 18 Dec 2020
at 17:12
  • msg #8

Orders needed for War Round#1 of 2070 Turn

All of the initial Turn orders are in for Turn 2070 and we are now onto the War Round portion of the turn. Your orders for War Round#1/2070 are due Jan 3, 2021 at 1200UTC. As always, a summary of the player actions in the Turn so far has been posted to the History section. In addition to any orders for combat, this is the time to impress the Referee with your role-playing and use of Response PApoints to enhance the chances of success for your Political Actions that you submitted at the beginning of the turn AND to interfere with the Political Actions of other players. Remember, except for special cases as determined by the Referee, the posting the final results for Political Actions, the construction of new facilities and the seizure of hexes does not occur until the END of the Turn.

   At the current time for this War Round#1/2070, your Referee knows of no combat occurring, I will inform the relevant parties if that changes. If there is no combat during a War Round then the Referee MAY have another War Round or MAY declare that the turn has ended and move on to close it out, meaning any left over Response PApoints are wasted. You have been warned, it is at the Referee's discretion.

An update to note: Ludwig has taken the role of Nigeria.
Co-GM
GM, 228 posts
Sun 31 Jan 2021
at 12:17
  • msg #9

New UK Player

In reply to Referee (msg # 8):

We have a new player joining who is taking over the UK - everyone welcome Kameron
Co-GM
GM, 229 posts
Thu 4 Feb 2021
at 01:59
  • msg #10

Completion of the 2070 turn and Warround #1 AND new players

In reply to Co-GM (msg # 9):

As a Reminder, since I failed to post it here originally, as per my original email there were no combats to run through for War round #1 and so there is was combat this turn.

Whilst world peace reigns the GM decreed there is not to be a War Round #2 - and so we have been processing the end of the 2070-74 turn.

Any remaining response PAs had to be declared on the RPOL follow-up thread for the nation concerned by 23:59UTC on 06/01/2021

We are now well on the way to 2075 and turn results should be being pushed out to you shortly - keep an eye out for that.

As a reminder, we are still in need of new players - so please do try and recruit from your friends, gaming groups, etc if you know someone who might enjoy this game.

This turn we will offer a bounty on new players, so anyone who manages to recruit at least one new player will get 2 bonus PAs (so long as that new player completes and submits orders for that turn). An additional prize will be granted to the person who recruits the most people (minimum of 2).

I am also delighted to say that, in addition to the new UK player, we are being joined by an additional 2 players - Martin is joining us and taking over Canada whilst John is joining us and taking over the USA

Please do make them feel welcome.
Co-GM
GM, 230 posts
Sat 6 Feb 2021
at 20:25
  • msg #11

Starting 2075 and another new players

In reply to Co-GM (msg # 10):

And finally we also have a Second John joining us this turn, who is taking over Germany.

This brings our total number of new players up to 4 this turn. Please make sure you confirm any existing deals with the new players so they know what is going on and so that these can complete, assuming both sides are continuing.

For all new players, you should all now have access to the orders from previous turns and the results - the results of the past turn will be posted to those google drive folders and the new turn orders for you to fill in will also be posted there.

You should also check your 'Handover of Country Name threads for some basic information on what your nations have previously been up to, though be warned this is going to be quite brief and you should also read through previous orders and the history for more in game info.

Now then, Time for an updated on where we are in game terms

I am happy to report that orders have been processed and results will be released shortly, news for the past turn should be published not too long thereafter and we are about to start producing the budgets for the 2075 turn, this should mean we will be looking to begin the new turn soon.
Referee
GM, 199 posts
Mon 22 Feb 2021
at 19:54
  • msg #12

End of 2070 Turn

Hooray! The 2070 turn has now officially ended and I have released your final turn results to the appropriate player nation directories. You may now make your updates to the Facility_List file as needed.

  The rules that we will be using for the new turn is version 20210215 and includes many corrections, simplifications, and clarifications over the previous version. See section 11.1 of the rules for a summary of all of the changes. The most obvious change is the elimination of the option to have Brigade sized units, this is a change that I did not want to make but I could not ignore the massive simplification to this overly complex game that it allows.

  Remember the contest that I mentioned earlier! * Ask your friends, post notices to your gaming groups, etc., we need more players!! This game is a lot more fun when your opponents are actual 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!! I have many updates to do to the game system first, but I expect that we will be starting the new 2075 turn in about one week.

* From now on, the player who brings in the most new players will receive 3 Response PApoints next 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!
Referee
GM, 200 posts
Sun 7 Mar 2021
at 23:32
  • msg #13

Start of 2075 Turn

The 2075 Turn for the Great Game is now open! 
You will have 3 weeks, until March 28th at 1200 UTC, to submit to me your budget and written orders portion for the new turn.  As before, for each of your nations I have put into the shared Google Drive folders for your nation a file called 'Orders_<nation>_2075' where you will enter in the written portion of your orders. Your access to edit the written orders file and budget spreadsheet will be removed on the due date. As always, the new players are encouraged to get to me some sort of 'trial' orders soonest so I can review, this is a complicated game and mistakes can easily happen.

  On those blank order forms that I put in your shared folder I did make a few changes on the 'Use of Economic Units' table. Namely making it clear just what is the meaning of having a negative number for an entry versus a having positive number. A subtle but important difference that has been causing much difficulty with everyone. The changes should make it more intuitive just what is needed.
 
I know that I promised large changes to the appearance to the game to handle larger colonial empires, but lack of time and good ideas forced me to focus on continuing to clean up and formalize our various internal processes. It may not make any apparent difference to you, the players, but it is a big thing to me as not only does the game run even smoother than before but I think we are finally to the point that someone other than me, such as co-referee Liam, can actually run a whole turn by themselves. This could end up being very helpful to the game as Liam and I tend to alternate getting pulled away with real life issues; hopefully now there will be a better chance that someone will be 'on-duty' to advance the game.

One change to the rules that has to happen, just not yet, is the removal of the ability of Orbital Factories to produce Supply Units +limits on the number of OFs per Settlement. As is the current rule is difficult to justify that an OF could produce the range of products needed, also severely undercuts the 2300AD canon importance of Core Worlds, and at worst is an exploit. To give you time to adapt, as an OF has already been built and various deals and plans are based on the current OF rules, I am not going to immediately make the rule change, nor in the next turn (2080). The change will happen in the 2085 Turn.


Recruitment:
We have lately been quite successful in bringing in new players (this month alone, welcome Regis and Robert Hayes!) but 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!


Be sure to:
-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.


Yours, In Service,

K
Referee
GM, 202 posts
Thu 15 Apr 2021
at 23:28
  • msg #14

Orders needed for War Round#1 of 2075 Turn

Hooray! I finally now have all of the written orders in for all player nations for the 2075 Turn and have reviewed them, making corrections and adding comments as needed. I recommend that you review your orders to see what, if anything I have done. This now puts us into the War Round portion of the turn. Your orders for War Round#1/2075 are due April 29, 2021 at 1200UTC. As always, a summary of the player actions in the Turn so far has been posted to the History section. In addition to any orders for combat, these War Rounds are the time to impress the Referee with your role-playing and use of Response PApoints to enhance the chances of success for your Political Actions AND to interfere with the Political Actions of other players. Remember, except for special cases as determined by the Referee, the posting the final results for Political Actions, the construction of new facilities and the seizure of hexes, ... does not occur until the END of the Turn.

   At the current time for this War Round#1/2075, your Referee knows of only one combat occurring, Brazil has begun an invasion of Argentina; I will inform the relevant parties if that changes. Unless any other player joins in, the Brazilian invasion of Argentina will be handled by the full, detailed combat rules. If any other player does get involved in a significant way then we are likely to switch to the Quick Combat rules as per section 10.12 of the rules, as the situation could quickly become extremely complex. Yes, because Brazil has already committed to the attack the Referee will be giving them a bonus to Initiative.

Another global flashpoint of note is that a Chinese Destroyer unit has moved into hex Sol-Gamma-3N22 and is actively disrupting Japanese construction of their new colony, Ōshan'u-erusu. Tensions are rising and construction deadlines are slipping, threatening the entire project with collapse.

If there is no combat during a War Round then the Referee MAY have another War Round or MAY declare that the turn has ended and move on to close it out, meaning any left over Response PApoints are wasted. You have been warned, it is at the Referee's discretion.

---------------------------------------------
We have a winner for the Recruitment contest! It is our own Liam Harper! Liam has brought in 2 new players that have met the requirements, thus Liam is awarded 6 free Response PApoints to use as he pleases this Turn. ...so everybody pile on Liam's nations and make him pay for it!

You may have noticed that I have changed the names of some of the Settlements of player nations, usually by adding a 'Prime' as a suffix e.g. 'China Prime'. This is me being extra cautious, I worry that there will be confusion between the nation name and the name of its most important Settlement. Let me know if you have a suggestion for a better, more creative, name for your player nation's chief Settlement.
Referee
GM, 213 posts
Sun 30 Jan 2022
at 04:08
  • msg #15

Results of 2075 Turn actions released

Hooray! Despite some attempts to the contrary I am still alive and still at it. Is everybody ready to see what the future holds for our little reality?!?!?

I have finally released your turn results to the appropriate player nation directories. You will have until Feb 05 at 1200 UTC to submit any Response Political Actions in an attempt to change those results. You may now make your updates to the Facility_List file as needed to reflect any new construction. Once this is done the 2075 Turn will be officially over and we will begin moving onto the 2080 Turn.

Yours In Service,
K
Referee
GM, 215 posts
Thu 17 Feb 2022
at 04:03
  • msg #16

Announcement on the Beginning of the 2080 Turn

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
Referee
GM, 220 posts
Fri 4 Mar 2022
at 20:06
  • msg #17

Extension until March 27

Several players have requested an extension, I would rather not but I have other things that are pulling me away too. So I am officially moving the deadline for your Turn 2080 written orders to March 27, 2022 1800 UTC. 

Related to this is that sometime between March 12-20 I will be travelling and for this trip I expect to have limited connectivity. I might be able to answer emails with simple questions during that time, I am not sure. So plan accordingly.

On a side note, something I should have emphasised is that the Unit_Listings spreadsheet is a new file from the old. The hyperlinks have been updated on the website and rules, but just in case anyone used bookmarks, etc. the new file is at https://docs.google.com/spread...Xd7sKFOZ8ILfj3qTTPTE

Do NOT use the old file https://docs.google.com/spread...Q_nTGKlCFCu3RtLmqjQ/   any movement orders written there will NOT be accepted.
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