Week 8:  Slacking it up?

Well, to be fair, I was sick for a while, but in the interest of not being full of excuses and just taking one for the team like a grown-up or something, I’ll just admit to slacking all over the blog this week.

Precipitational Social Etiquette

Now, I’m going to say right now, before we get into anything else, that I am refusing to talk about the weather and the cyclones contained therein.  I’m not going to, and you can’t make me, because (as we all know, or should know) as soon as someone brings the weather up in a conversation - the conversation dies.  Killing a conversation in the middle of a blog post is pretty much criminal, so I’m not even going to entertain the thought, and neither should you.  So I don’t want to see any comments about weather or weather-related topics/events/notions/lotions/cats down there.  Nope!  The foot has spoken.

This week in the Last Journey of the Eye of Odin

Something was different, but Alison couldn't put her finger on what it might be. She was sure the EM-wave patterns had changed slightly, but she couldn't work out how. Alison was trawling through the complex logs of previous EM wave states, to see if she could nail down what had changed. “What is it doing?” She asked no one in particular.

“Excuse me, Doctor,” the nearby intercom blared.

“Yes, Felix.” Alison rolled her eyes and looked up from the workstation.

“I wanted to inform you that it is possible that the high-powered signal emanating from the device in your laboratory is not being completely muffled by the ship's hull and cargo. There are vast differences between the make-up of ore in one container and ore in another, so there will likely be large soft-spots in my transmission dampening capabilities. In the interest of a successful mission however-”

“Hang on, Felix. You're detecting a signal from it on the comm array?”

“Yes, Doctor. It is nearly out of the range detectable by the array, but it is there – and quite strong.”

Alison flipped the log waveforms quickly, looking for Felix's high-power yet borderline imperceptible signal, and there it was – just as he had said, right on the outer edge of the graph. “Incredible. A distress call perhaps. Some kind of beacon. Or a warning maybe?” Alison looked at the device. “What are you up to? Thank you, Felix. I'll see if I can cut power to the signal, right after I take enough recordings to analyse.”

“You're welcome, Doctor.” The intercom clicked off again.

Fantasy Tabletop Strategy Game - continued

This week we’re going to cover one of the more easily explained parts of the game, but one of the most important: logistics.

Logistics

Logistics limits how many unit stacks a side can support. Unit stacks inside cities do not count against this limit. A side’s logistics limit is equal its total population points plus its number of cities. For example, a side with one population point can support two stacks of units. However, a side with one city of three population points and two cities with one population point each, can support eight stacks of units.

Units can be moved between stacks without creating a new stack, but only if they are within one turn’s movement range. Anything that causes them to stop before joining their destination stack (such as unforeseen combat or an unknown terrain obstacle in the way such as a mountain) forces the creation of a new stack, and if there are not enough remaining logistics points to provide for this new stack, all units in the new stack are disbanded.

Youtube

I’ve already uploaded five more Crash Landing episodes to the channel, and they’re listed in the playlist.  There are more coming, however, as I already have some ready to upload.  So stay tuned for the channel feed to update.

Well, that’s it from me for this week, but I’ll leave you with a tip.  Before going to appointments, check your phone for missed voice mail, so you don’t turn up and discover it was cancelled and needs to be rescheduled.

-Ix.

"Cue theme music!"