Week 4: Wanted Ads, Boring Diagnostics, Jurassic Soybeans, Strategic Building Crews, and Extremely One-sided Survivalists

Request to fill a vacancy: Senior Proctologist in Administrative Bureaucratic Assessment and Escalation Recovery

Applicant needs to have twelve months experience in finding lost escalated issues, and assigning recovery teams to pull them out of sometimes-extensive “Too Hard Baskets”.  Though it is not required, it will be useful to have experience is abseiling as it is anticipated that some of these so-called “Baskets” are in fact closer to being sinkholes.

It is anticipated that there may be cases where the escalated issues have been found to have become part of a pile of old paperwork replacing a failed telephone book on the chair of an employee who is either severely stature-challenged or using a chair with a failed gas-lift feature, or both.  It is possible, in cases like these, that the issues may need to be remolded into readable material using digital recovery technology to erase the more grossly noticeable backside grooves made by the rear end that was sitting on it.  This will require some experience in digitally editing people’s rear ends in photographic software.  A portfolio detailing this experience will be required.

In extreme cases, of which there may be many, some of these escalation documents may in fact be completely lost to the backside sitting on them.  Your proctological expertise will be vital in this instance, to both save the patient from severe intestinal abrasion from years of ignoring their own acute laziness, as well as retrieving the documents for proper processing - albeit with use of protective equipment.

This week, from The Last Journey of the Eye of Odin

Ted hated Remote Sensor Relay repair missions. He suspected that he even hated it more than everyone else in the unit. But he was pretty certain he was also the best qualified to do the work, which explained why he was picked for these jobs more than anyone else in his unit. Ted wondered how much of the Oort Cloud the Station's sensors could see now, with new RSRs being deployed every month or so. Last time Ted was in the office, a few weeks ago now, several of the white-­collars were marvelling at data on two newly discovered dwarf planets that the corporation big-­wigs on the Station would want to know about. Each would open up numerous opportunities from mining survey missions and possible colony establishment down the track too.

Tapping a few panels, Ted glanced over to see how the latest set of diagnostics was progressing on this particular relay module, RSR­411e. He blinked. “Interesting... Now, what are you then?” A small anomalous object blipped on the read­out feeding back from the sensor diagnostic program.  The program finished and the read­out flicked back to a command line interpreter. “No!” Ted groaned, and began running a manual sensor sweep of the area. The blip was gone. Or at least, it wasn't where it had been a moment before. Ted opened the sweep to a larger area and re­ran the program. “Where did you go in such a hurry?” He pulled up the log files left by the diagnostic.  “Good. Let's see if we can pull a trajectory at least.” Ted activated the communication system that utilised the RSR's link to the Station via the sensor relay network. “411e to Home Away From Home, do you copy? This is 411e, do you copy? Over.”

A voice returned quickly as there was always someone on duty back at the Station. “This is Home Away From Home. What's up, Ted? Over.”

“Hey Barry. I've got an anomaly recorded on the sensor diagnostic logs. Can you take a look at it for me? Maybe you can get a trajectory and use the rest of the network to get a better look at it.  I'm uploading to the RSR backup array now. Over.”

“Sure, buddy. I'll let you know when I have something. Over and out.” The comm system clicked off.

Ted went back to setting up the next diagnostic – a boring three hour simulation of the collision detection system, using neighbouring relay nodes to pick up threatening Oort-­cloud asteroids and comets, and test­-firing the short-­range thrusters.

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Fantasy Strategy Ruleset - continued

This week, we’re moving on to cities: placing your first one and how they manage construction efforts.

Cities

After the villages have all been placed, next come Cities.  Only one City location can be chosen per Side at the start of the game.  Roll a dice to determine a new order of turns, and one by one each player can choose a location for their starting City.

Cities have several functions.  Firstly, they produce units to both defend the Ruler and further the Side’s ability to defeat the other Sides.  Secondly, Cities allow the construction of features in the surrounding countryside that provide wildly varying benefits.

Don’t worry!  You can construct other cities later in the game, and we’ll discuss this in a future section.  Once all the starting cities are placed, the true game begins.

Construction Points

Each turn, players can make one construction action in each City’s area of influence(*) per population level of the City.  So a starting City of 1 population would have 1 construction point to spend per turn, but after the population increased to 2 (see population later in this document) it would have 2 construction points to spend per turn.

* Cities have an area of influence that includes a number of hexes surrounding each City equal to the population level of each City.  So a level 1 City may only have one adjacent hex in its area of influence, while a level 2 City may have two adjacent hexes in its area of influence.

A City’s construction points can be spent on City improvements such as unit production buildings or fortifications, or on other features out in the terrain surrounding the City. A single non-City hex can attain up to five construction points worth of features, for example a specified hex might hold a keep, moat, earthworks, trenches, and pitfalls before further construction is impossible.

Each construction feature provides a different bonus and a single hex cannot have two of the same feature. For example, it is impossible to build a moat where there is already a moat.

A player cannot spend more than one construction point in a hex in a single turn. For example, a level five City could spend five construction points in a turn, but not in the one hex. In the next turn, the City could spend another five points in the same five hexes that it built in during the previous turn.

Construction points cannot be saved up from one turn to the next.  Just like in real life, construction takes time to accomplish - so you must spend it each turn, or lose it.

Some construction features are prerequisites for others. For example, to build a siege workshop in a hex, a lumber mill must first be constructed in the hex, or in an adjacent hex. Other features, such as farms can only be built in hexes with no other features in them, and must be destroyed before another feature can be constructed in the hex.

Some construction features can only be built by Sides with control of certain races. For example, fairy rings by fae units.

Non-defensive construction features are automatically razed if an enemy side takes their hex in combat. Defensive features like keeps on the other hand, become occupied, providing the same bonuses to their new owners that they did to their previous owners.

A full list of construction features and their benefits follows this section.

Feature	Allows/Benefits	Feature	Allows/Benefits
Lumber Mill (NDF)	Resource: Timber	Graveyard (NDF *)	Unit: Undead Infantry (with aid of magic)
Barracks (CB)	Unit: Infantry	Mine (NDF)	Resource: Ore
Quarry (NDF)	Resource: Stone	Tower (CB)	Imp. City Attack Range
Siege Workshop (NDF)	Units: Siege units	Fairy Ring (NDF)	Units: Pixies
Farm (NDF)	Logistics +1 to stacked unit caps	Keep (DF)	Defense +1 to occupied units
Moat (DF)	Prevents all non-ranged land units from attacking the hex.	Earthworks (DF)	Defense +1 to occupied units
Trenches (DF)	Attack +1 to non-ranged infantry	Pitfalls (DF)	20% of attacking units to be lost before engaging enemy
City Walls (CB)	Non-ranged ground units cannot attack units in a city with walls unless they are assisted somehow	Trading Post	Flexible +1 construction or +1 production per trading post connected by road.  Points can be allocated to any city connected.

DF = Defensive feature

NDF = Non-defensive feature

CB = City building

* Graveyards cannot be occupied by enemy forces and thus are not listed as defensive features in this list, however enemy forces who try to move through an enemy’s graveyard will often find the very ground itself to be hostile.  Magicians using graveyards to summon undead forces can easily enchant the area to deter enemy troops from passing through.

Youtube

I had recorded a whole lot of Crash Landing gameplay this week, for uploading to Youtube (and plugging on here). But unfortunately the player chat audio was either non-existent or very one-sided (with only one player’s mic coming through to the video).  It was very hard to follow so I decided to scrap it.  I have since recorded more raw footage to turn into uploadable videos and yes - I have confirmed that the audio in this new stuff is actually okay.  I should have it cut up into watchable stuff over the next few days hopefully, so I’ll put a link up in next week’s entry.

That's it for this week.  Ix out!

-Ix