At this point I'm against just voting. I would still like a rules meeting to discuss the proposed changes. I don't feel that the admins have put their best effort into trying to schedule this meeting since the abrupt cancellation of the August get together. How about a call for open dates again and lets see if we can schedule this before Christmas.

Celestial Empire Rules Party
...and General Meet and Greet
7 April 2007

Attendees: Ardak, Kevin, Thomas, Dave, Blackrock, Kyle, Brian, Bob, plus yer friendly admins: John and RJ.

Please add to these notes if you notice I left out something.

=== OLD BUSINESS ============================================

=== 1. Ore Transport (aka Ore Shuttle) ===
We will implement ore transport. Each planet you own will be able to transport up to 4 ore to any adjacent planet. Any ore can be transported to any adjacent planet, without restriction.

We discussed more complex schemes for transport, including N (amount of ore that can be transported) that declines the further away the planet is from your home, the inverse (more ore the further way from home), and a zone approach with layers. Finally we settled on trying a straight N for all planets, and we decided to use N=4 for the first game. If this is too much, we can try a smaller N or one of the other approaches in the future.

Ore Transport will be tried out on an Expert game first, before we subject newbies to this dramatic new game element.


=== 2. PDU Go First ===
Nope. Leave it the way it is.


=== 3. Alliances Changes ===
We voted, but then the Lord High Council overrode this decision and so the decision is Yes.


=== 4. Destroyed Multi-Jump Ship ===
We decided that if a ship gets burned so badly that it doesn’t have cargo hold capacity to hold onto its contents, the contents will drop onto the planet that fired the shots. PDU will become active immediately. If the ship takes sufficient shots to strip the ship all the way down to the hull, the hull also will stop moving at the planet that fired the shots.


=== 5. Ships Do Anti-Jump Autofire ===
This one required a lot of discussion. In the end, we chose to let ships do autofire even if there was no PDU present. We are not sure how we voted regarding whether you had to be over your own planet or an ALLY planet; we believe the consensus was, “Had to be over home or ALLY,” but we’re not sure and we don’t know at this moment how we would vote anyway, so we’re pulling executive prerogative and opening this to discussion in the forum. Should we allow this over your own planet only? Or you’re your or an ally’s planet, or over any planet regardless of owner? John said, “Well, I can think for reasons for any of those. Certainly does add an extra layer of chaos, and would lead to interesting strategies. But I’m worried that we will go the same way as RP chaos when it could be done against non-allies.”


=== 6. Tow Multiple Ships ===
Deferred. Number 17 is deferred for the same reason.

Everyone is in favor of making tractors more powerful, though we voiced caution against going too far too fast. We voted Yes on being able to tow multiple ships. This left two primary questions.

First question: Do you pay a linearly-increasing or exponentially increasing cost for towing multiple ships? An increasing cost would reflect loss of efficiency using the tractor hardware over multiple targets, in the same way shots get diluted when spread over multiple targets. For instance, if you have 6 tractor units, can you tow 2 ships each with mass of three? If the cost is linear, you could tow both ships. If the cost is exponential, or linear with a scalar greater than one, you could not tow both ships. We generally agreed that there should be a cost for towing multiple ships, but we did not decide on how to define the cost. What formula should be used to calculate this cost? Based on the ratio of tractors to mass of the towing ship? Other?

Second question: Should tractor units become more powerful with number? Tractor units currently have a linear relationship with number: 1 tractor unit tows 1 unit of mass, and 10 tractor units tow 10 units of mass. We could make tractor units more powerful as they are more in number, in a fashion similar to PDU; for example, 10 tractor units could tow 15 mass, according to some formula. We agreed that this should be done, in some way, but we decided not to decide until we had more facts.

We need tables that show the possibilities, and some sample tow jobs accompanying each of the possibilities. After we get a look at this material we can decide on new tractoring parameters.


=== 7. Earth Unbuild ===
Yes.


=== 8. Eliminate Player When Homeworld Is Lost ===
This is really a complaint against players firing on their own PDU in order to “gift” the homeworld to another player. Some were indignant against being able to do this, exclaiming that the rules make it clear you can’t reduce PDU of your homeworld below a certain level by loading, because your population won’t allow it, yet you are free to shoot at your own PDU and destroy them? Seems grossly inconsistent. Others, however, talked about forcing their population to endure all dictates of the Taliban because the future of civilization is at stake, so comply or die. It was a long discussion.

We agreed killing off a player when the empire lost its homeworld would be a serious deterrent to this kind of behavior. This would make for an interesting game, but it punishes both those who would give up their homeworlds and those whose homeworlds were taken away from them. In the latter case, why take away the player’s right to seek revenge with what starships remain? Not everyone wanted the game to become Elimination, but many liked the idea, so we decided to make this an option in future games. In an Elimination game, if your homeworld is lost, you are out of the game and everything you own becomes NEUTRAL.

Also, new rule: Homeworlds always fire back. No matter who fires on a homeworld, whether it’s an enemy, a friend, an ally, or yourself, your homeworld will fire back if fired upon. This doesn’t eliminate the “gifting away your homeworld” strategy, but it does make it more expensive.


=== 9. Earth Takeover ===
Phew. I think we spent the most time on this issue. Many proposals were considered. In the end, we rejected some ideas, approved some ideas, and tabled some for future discussion.

We finally decided on a fairly simple system, though there remains some contention about the sensibility of the choice.

- Earth starts out in a happy state, EARTH_HAPPY, and remains that way until, if ever, Earth is attacked. While Earth is EARTH_HAPPY, Earth does all normal trading, contracting of industries, and building.
- If Earth is attacked, Earth immediately transitions to an EARTH_SHOCKED state. While EARTH_SHOCKED, Earth will do normal trading, but will not contract industry and will not build anything, not even PDU for its own defense. (?) Earth never reverts back to EARTH_HAPPY. Earth remains EARTH_SHOCKED until the end of the game or until Earth becomes owned by a player
- If Earth becomes owned by a player, then if it’s an Earth Win game then the game ends. If it’s not an Earth Win game then what is left of Earth becomes a normal planet owned by the player.


=== 10. Timing of RP Inventions ===
From now on, between games only, and everyone will know about the new ones. Inventors will get some sort of reward, such as a few extra ring-2 mines, and a reward plaque.


=== 11. RP Commands Affect FRIENDLY? ===
No way!


=== 12. RP Ownership Reporting ===
Leave it the way it is.


=== 13. Report Earth Alliances ===
Add new content to the turn sheet that itemizes Earth’s relationship with the empires that it dislikes.


=== 14. Change the End Turn Range ===
We agreed to scale the end turn range from 10-100 down to 10-50.


=== 15. Relax the 250 Max ===
No.
But then John said, “Let’s talk the experts into playing one game without the limit, so they can see what it was like.”


=== 16. Make RP022 More Flexible ===
RP022, busting a planet link, is defined as needing battleships to do the job. Other ship types are not allowed. Any battle ship, including one with as few as 3 shots, would suffice, but a Deathstar with 500 shots could not participate.

We decided to drop any consideration of the ship type and gauge whether a ship can be part of the RP022 command based only on the number of shots the ship has; if the ship has the minimum required shots, it can be part of the process. The minimum, we decided, would be 25 shots per ship.

We decided for now to table the question of whether an ALLY could own some of the planets/ships involved in the operation, perhaps at the expense of making the ALLY also use an RP.

We decided to table for now the question of a single ship being involved in multiple link-cuttings in a single turn.


=== 17. Tractoring Part of Jump, Not Battle ===
Deferred.
We tabled this one until we can gather more facts. See the explanation under Proposal 6 above.


=== 18. Battle Reportage ===
It was resolved Yes.


=== 19. RP Increase PDU ===
Rather than create a new RP command, we decided to beef up the existing ones (RP005 and RP006) by doubling the effect of those commands.


=== 20. PDU Get First Strike ===
No.


=== 21. Limit Power of RP018 ===
No.


=== 22. Intelligent Spacemines ===
No.


=== NEW BUSINESS ============================================

We also agreed on two new features: Big Lumps of I (called Lumpi), and enhanced building at Earth.

Big Lumps of I
We are going to experiment with creating planets that have big lumps of Industry on them. The goal is to create a remote industrial capability and see how it affects game play. We will create a planet that has 20 I, is ring-2 from your home planet and ring-4 from the home planet of the nearest empire.

Enhanced Earth Building
From now on, you don’t have to have the ore in your cargo hold for building on Earth. You can use ore in your cargo hold AND you can use ore that you’ve purchased from Earth. There will be a new type of ore purchase, a “For Industry” purchase, where the purchase doesn’t actually take place unless you also successfully contract for Earth industry that turn.


Here is the list of items that have been tabled for future discussion:

- One-way planet links
- More Earth AI to build PDU, mines, I, etc.
- Earth fleet
- For RP022, can an ALLY own some of the planets/ships involved in the operation, perhaps at the expense of making the ALLY also use an RP?
- For RP022, can a single ship be involved in multiple link-cuttings in a single turn?
- For the new ore transport capability, add RP commands such that a single planet is enhanced, 1 RP = +1, 2 RP = +3, 3 RP = +6, 4 RP = +12
- RP SCAN Bomb and RP SCANBLOCK Bomb – one-time snapshot (1RP – ring1, 4RP
– ring2, 9 RP – ring3)
- RP command: Take over NEUTRAL planet remotely.
- Ships acquire autofire response capability, similar to PDU
- Staged timing of RP (perhaps +4 turns from discovery, perhaps +4 or more timed by you)

New items that we rejected:

- RP command that lets you teleport or drag-teleport a ship that is in orbit around the RP away from the RP, perhaps to teleport to the homeworld
- Limit RP025 if the target is ALLY, not your own?

Sorry, I left out something important. This proposed command was controversial because it would have worked on any ship in orbit around the RP, whether own or ALLY, FRIENDLY, NEUTRAL or HOSTILE. It was roundly rejected because few are willing to open that can of worms again.

Earth Takeover

Earth industry should continue to build their own defenses. But it should happen within the "rules" of the game. i.e. after Earth is attacked it will start to rebuild PDU (but not on the same turn it is attacked, since that would be out of order).


Tau

---

...coming to subatomic particle near you...

Tractors!!!!

This is how I see improved tractors working.
I believe that more tractors should be efficient so that you can haul more mass with fewer tractors than you can now although so it should be an improvement over the linear scale.
I also believe that splitting the tractors over multiple targets should have an associated cost like how shots are lost when you multi target from a single ship.
And finally the tractor activation command should not be part of the battle section but in the movement section where it is actually used.