The four player revival was interesting but there was kinda a cold war buildup in the center and it took a while before anybody had enough ships to make a successful attack. I am thinking of expanding the map to 6 players but the way the map parsed out, it looks a bit uneven. On the other hand, it looks awesome for a team game! I see that a team game is being organized elsewhere on the forum and I would like to see more of this type of play.
In this map, orange, green, and yellow would be a team–the colors might change with each new map but it would basically be east vs. west. Thoughts?
If there are no teams, it looks like each star has a bit of an uneven start but it would be a dark start only so totally random. I haven’t created this game yet, just want some feedback on the map.
When it comes to balance, each player has easy access to about the same number of stars (about 13). There will be a bit of an advantage for blue and green here, as their stars are more concentrated and will give their fleets easier access to the front lines. Far from being an advantage, though, that may just serve as some balance to being stuck in the center and being accessible from all three enemies.
I would also guess that any game with this setup will end with a cold war. Players only have one direction to go, which takes them away from the frontlines. No one is going to want to commit to moving forward until they’ve gotten enough of an advantage to take and hold some territory, but with everyone following the same strategy, I can see where stagnation could occur.
As a possible fix, what if starting positions were moved back off the frontline by about 3 stars? This would give players/teams the option to sprint forward to gain the middle territory, but give up the demilitarized zone, or move away from the front to consolidate a safe base of operations, or both, depending on teamwork. I think that might inject a bit more variability into the game and would allow the teams to work more closely together on creating a strategy.
With this kind of map a cold war standoff is going to be hard not to have. I was thinking about making the home stars not have any starting infrastructure but maybe some ships so exploration could occur right from the begging. That way the players would invest in the outer stars more readily and more even spread would occur. I noticed in the 4-player revival, the ships on the home worlds were increasing very fast and no one wanted to send extra ships out to the outer rim for fear of an attack on their very valuable home.
I like the idea of moving the home stars 2-3 stars back. I’ve been playing with different map set ups with different player amounts and I think it’ll go. The main idea I wanted for this type of map was that everyone was within scanning range of everyone else right from the begging. I knew there would be a building up in the center and my hope was that the players would strategically move ships to try to take the outer rim and then move in on the center from multiple directions. I was able to gain a huge advantage in the 4-player game because I chose to invest in the outer rim and stage attacks from there instead of the center. No one saw it coming and I am one star away from victory.
Having some stars in the middle of the home star circle could be quite fun! It would be like the chaos at the start of a doge ball game. I’ll have to find a map that lets this happen. Thanks for the feed back @Praxus.
