Threshold Volume 1
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[ PLAYER TYPES ] [ FAQS ] [ INPUT TURNS ] [ THRESHOLD ARCHIVE ]  |
Letters to the Editor
Editor’s Corner
Player Fiction
How To
Diplomatic News
Empire Histories
Takamo Updates
Other Issues
The input program doesn’t do enough idiot checks to keep me straight. A full blown program that would show planet, ship and economics would get me back in. I personally don’t keep good records and don’t have the inclination to do so. A good graphic interface would make Takamo one of the top games to play.
Skip Franklin
Could you post the current Tax, Sell, Buy, Build sequence for planets.
PLEASE REMEMBER THAT THIS SEQUENCE IS IN ALL PROBABILITY A TEMPORARY ONE. WE HOPE TO BE ABLE TO ELIMINATE ALL SEQUENCING REQUIREMENTS AT A LATER DATE.
HERE IT IS:
1. TAX;
2. SELL TO THE WORLD;
3. BUY FROM THE WORLD;
4. BUILD MU, HMU, FTRS, ETC.
EDITOR’S CORNER
Welcome to the first on-line volume of Threshold. This edition was first published in ASCII TEXT format and distributed to playtesters via e-mail links. The second volume of Threshold was published on a permanent website that all players are now able to access.
The planned frequency and release schedule for the newsletter is the fifteenth of each month. We encourage playtesters to submit empire histories, game articles, fiction, and diplomatic messages. Without player submissions, the newsletter can only be a rather dry supplement to the rulebook. In addition to player submissions, we plan to publish articles on new player capabilities, planned additions to the game, tactics, and playtest progress reports.
We hope you will enjoy this first edition.
Legends of the Smuggler Scourge
Tramper lore speaks of species that are able to move unseen among the living. Wraiths who exist between moments; unseen but sensed. Species that exist on stealth; beguiling others to provide for their needs.
It is remembered these entities were highly prized for their traits. Trampers maintained stocks which were well tended and trainable. Such was their value for purposes of exploration that special transports were included in all deep space expeditions. Specimens and related equipment have been found in the archives of many worlds though the names and technology are forgotten.
Ancient ledgers discovered on mining worlds long abandoned record the lechery of species known to be smugglers. Organized as cells, hidden within lairs they would observe, watch and record events. Peculiar but welcomed and docile, they eventually chose to abandon civilization and seek its destruction. Gifts of culture and knowledge were taken and exchanged for pestilence, plague and terror.
Due to the Trampers close association with the various species, they were able to assist civilizations in monitoring smuggler activity. Though unseen by most, a Tramper was able to perceive the presence of smugglers. The perception was strong among a lineage that reportedly joined the expeditions to the galactic core generations ago.
Today many of the wanderers who trace their development from the smugglers of old are loath to identify with the known legendary species of Naplia. These again are welcomed by civilizations.
It is theorized that distance and the diaspora of smugglers created the pirate species known in Naplia today, the remnants of the ancient smuggler species. Time and hardship having bred the most odious traits into the pirates, they are even more elusive. Little is known of pirates existing in Naplia.
This section of Threshold is dedicated to articles about how to get the most out of the game. This is where you can tell others all about your nifty new stellar mapping methods, your empire’s strategy and tactics, how you get the most out of your actions in Takamo, etc. All articles submitted must have a “How To” theme that will in some measure aid other players in the Takamo universe. All stories should be submitted to the Threshold Editing Staff. Submissions may be single articles or a multi-part series. All submissions become the property of Aleator Games. No payment is offered for your article. All submissions should have the title of the article clearly set out in capital letters at the beginning of the story, and the name of the author in small letters, directly below the title.
May these articles show you the way…
WARFARE IN THE TAKAMO UNIVERSE
By James Schmidt
Everyone playing Takamo will at one time, or another, have to go to war with another player. It may be something so simple as defending a planet, or something as complicated as taking another player’s home world away. While some of you have no plans, I assure you it will happen. How it happens will go a long way towards your success in the game. The players in Takamo are basically divided into two basic groups. The first type are the wolves, whose existence is based upon preying on other players for expansion and survival. Under this category would come the Cybers, Pirates, and Smugglers. Their basic existence is contingent upon interacting negatively on other players, such as raiding , smuggling, and extermination. On the other side, we have the sheep. These players such as the Nomad, Independent Builder, Trade Corp, Ag Corp. and Miner are usually going about doing their business, and hope for at least a minimum of interference from other player. In some cases such as the Corporations and Miners, their growth comes from the ability of their race to interact peaceably with another race for mutual benefit.
While the sheep may not see the need for weapons as much as the wolves, they will need to defend their planets and holdings. There will never be a planet that can be completely defended. No matter how many ABM’s, Fighters, MU’s, and other weapons you put on a planet, a determined person will always be able to find a way to take it away from you. If he is persistent enough, and devotes enough resources to it he will get it. So why defend it at all? Why not expand out faster than people can locate you and destroy your holdings? If they do, this would another cost of doing business you say. This might be a viable philosophy early in the game as players are expanding out, but as you start making contact with other players, and information is traded (yes, people do work together), your positions will become well known quickly, and a determined effort by a group of other players could bring you down faster than you can expand.
If you cannot defend a planet, and you cannot expand out fast enough, then what other alternative exists? For the answer to this question, we must determine what type of warfare is the most successful in Takamo. Warfare in space, as portrayed in Takamo is very similar to warfare as sea or in the oceans here on earth. The only thing of importance is the islands (planets). Your existence requires you to possess at least one. You get all kind of weapons to put on it, and all kinds of warships to defend it. The problem is that unless you are a Nomad, you cannot move it. And once its location becomes known, any warlord feeling his oats will take a shot at it. On the other hand, a fleet out in the middle of the ocean(deep space), will be virtually impossible to find, much like the proverbial needle in a haystack. The attacker can come and go at will.
The secret of this type of warfare is the fighter group. It is the cheapest combat unit per ton, and as you get high enough tech levels, it can be mounted on vast fleets of carriers. These carriers need not be exposed around a planet, but instead, may be parked in deep space. In the event that another player blasts through your defenses, you can immediately counterstrike him from out of reach, and make his new conquest so expensive, he will have to abandon it as a non profitable venture. If he has to build an invasion fleet, and then has everything he builds get blasted, especially if he is unable to retaliate, will cause him to abandon your planet and look for easier pickings. You then become the aggressor, and can determine when and where you want to fight. You may feel that it is not worth keeping, and go about your business. But there is nothing like a five hundred strong fighter sweep every once in a while to keep your adversary looking over his shoulder.
To summarize this method, determine the importance of your various holdings to you, and defend them accordingly. Do not count on a large fleet of warships or planetary defenses to keep an invader away. If he is determined, he will get it. Instead, get to a high enough tech level as soon as possible to acquire carriers. Until that time, keep a few fighters secreted away in deep space on some freighters so that you can do the same thing as a carrier attack by using an adjacent planet. Remember, he will not necessarily know where the fighters originated from. By keeping your planetary defenses to a minimum, this will allow you to keep a movable response with your carriers and not use all of your budget for defense. The key to making this system work is to hit anyone that hits you back so hard and often that it costs him RU’s to hold the planet.
SUCCESS
By Todd Frantz
I guess “success” comes down to how you measure it. Is success a high static income? I have a number of planets where I have not maximized the number of MCs and PCS. I have not even built all the PCS my current MCs can support. This is more because of the cost of using precious actions rather than the cost in RUs.
There is an idea. ICBs can expand their terraforming range as the go up in Tec Levels. How about if other player types expand the range they can count as their habitat range for the purposes of building MCs and PCS. If I get high enough, I would be able to build 2 or 3 MCs or PCS per action, rather than just 1, on worlds just outside my habitat range. Perhaps it would be a combination of overall player Tec Level and the planetary Tec Level. The higher Tec Level, the easier it is to deal with the environmental problems.
Anyone can build up a static income by just colonizing planets and building Colony Bases. In fact, colonizing a planet takes two actions and 100 RUs. Adding a CB takes 2 actions and 50 RUs. Each additional CB only requires 50 RUs plus actions spent building. If you do the math, colonies are a better ROI than MCs and PCS. The world is colonized with one CB for 150 RUs. The break even is 7.5 actions. A colony with 5 CBs takes 5 actions and costs 250. The break even point is 4.25 actions. One MC with 5 PCS only requires two actions but has a break even of 8.3 actions.
Is it the number of terraformed worlds you own? As a non-terraforming character, I am at the mercy of the galaxy for planets. I don’t think counting on the placement of relatively weak NPCs counts as a good strategy. With the new defensive growth of NPCs, it seems like a pretty bad one.
How about some measure of how you have spread your empire across the galaxy, making it more difficult to stamp you out? I only have a few planets outside my starting sectors so I am not doing so well here either.
The Lensman Mining Guild.
You entered our space, with what appeared to be peaceful relations then without warning you began aggressively destroying our unarmed ships, invading and looting our worlds, killing thousands of our loyal defenders. Your troops began hunting down our populations as they fled from your invasion, you began to assemble them at starports to be taken back for your slave labor camps. You tell us to leave our own space, or the attacks will continue until you are terminated by Guild marine units. We continued our peace efforts, only to have our ambassadors executed, other races intervene under the flag of truce, pleading for your attacks to stop. But, you still continue your missile attacks against our Homeworlds.
Now, We tell you! We freed our people from the brutal rule of Biological Infestations long ago, We shall do it again! Our populace screams out for your Guilds blood the Space and Marine units of our military forces shall give it to them. When we find your leaders cowering in the mining tunnels you call civic defense shelters, you will find no refuse. The leaders of your Guild who initiated these attacks against our people shall be terminated. We shall spare nothing in the tracking down of your holdings, we will be free! We shall not stop our attacks until your member Guild is exterminated from the galaxy. Future Diplomatic missions will not be initiated by our Empire! A state of WAR now exists between our Empire and your Guild!
This section of Threshold is dedicated to the fictional histories of Takamo empires. This is where you get to tell other players in the game what your empire is like, how your alien race appears, what they eat, their philosophy, their political views, their leadership, how they wage war, etc. All messages should be submitted to the Threshold Editing Staff by the 20th of the month for publication in the next issue of Threshold. Submissions may be presented as single submissions, updated periodically, or presented as a series of articles. It is important that all empire histories be presented in a manner that upholds the dignity of your stellar empire. All submissions should have the name of the empire clearly set out in capital letters at the beginning of the message, and the name and title of the historian who prepared the history must be set out at the end of your submission.
May the history of your empire be glorious!
GAME ADDITIONS
Fighter Recon From Fleet (AC 84)
Players who have the technology for Fighter Carriers now have a new recon capability — Fighter Recon from the fleet (Action Code 84). Action code 84 allows you to send your carrier fighters to recon for alien fleets anywhere in the same subsector (or adjacent subsectors within the same sector if your tec level is high enough).
This is the first of a line of move and do action codes, meaning that you use action code 84, give the fleet its new destination in the Location #1 position, the fleet number of the fleet conducting the recon mission in the Fleet #1 position, plus the number of fighters you wish to send on the recon mission in the Spec. # position. The fleet then moves to it’s new location and performs the recon mission with the fighters allocated. This action code works exactly like action code 83, Fighter Recon From Planet, but is from a fleet rather than a planet.
The example below would move fleet 99 to XXX2221 and order it to recon XXX2221 and all planets in the system with 30 fighters.
84. Fighter recon from Fleet – Allows you to recon for Alien Fleets anywhere in the same subsector. Orders # of fighters to recon the entire system for Alien fleets.
Action Code / Location #1 / Fleet #1 / Spec. #
84 / XXX2221 / 99 / 30
However you can use the Location #2 as the destination of your search without your fleet having to move there. For instance: If you want to recon a system from an adjacent system you would use the following example, which orders fleet 99 to XXX2221 and orders it to recon XXX2225 and all planets in the system with 30 fighters.
Action Code / Location #1 / Fleet #1 / Location #2 / Spec. #
84 / XXX2221 / 99 / XXX2225 / 30
This gives you the ability to recon one location while keeping your fleet safely at another location. You could also give Location #2 a planet location in which case all recon fighters would just recon the target planet. If you moved your fleet to a subsector without giving it a location #2 then the fighters would recon the entire subsector, all systems, and all planets and report if any alien fleets were spotted. If the subsector were full of stars and planets, then it would take about 200 fighters to do the job.
You can send any number of FTRS on the recon mission, however the greater the number of fighters in the search the greater your chance of spotting alien fleets. Since the chance of spotting an alien fleet in a stellar cloud is far less likely, you should increase the number of recon fighters allocate to recon missions in subsectors and systems that have stellar clouds.
There is no guarantee that a fighter recon will find an alien fleet even if it (the fleet) is in the search pattern. Success is even less likely if the search is in a stellar cloud. There will be operational losses of fighters on recon patrol due to navigational problems and mechanical failures. The chance of mishaps increases in stellar clouds.
The owners of spotted fleets will be notified that their fleet has been spotted unless the fighters remain undetected. Fleets with cap up will most likely spot the recon fighters. Fighters may be lost if spotted by an alien fleet and attacked. The spotted fleet may even destroy the recon fighters before they are able to report. If so, then the attacking fleet will probably be aware of the empire name of the recon fighters which were destroyed. Alien fleets will assume any fighter recon is hostile and may attack it even if allied. Recon fighters will never attack alien fleets that they spot, although alien fleets may attack them. This is the first in a series of new fleet capabilities — We hope that you will enjoy them.
PLAYTEST PROGRESS REPORT
Well, it is hard to believe, but we have been playtesting the e-mail version of Takamo for over a year. As you know, we have made a number of fundamental changes to the game, particularly in the areas of economics, artificial intelligence, and scanning.
The immediately visible effect of the economic changes for most playtesters has been a “slowing down” of the game, much to the frustration of some. The less visible, but far more important effect of the economic changes has been a balancing out of economies that gives all player types an even chance.
Artificial Intelligence changes created a great amount of fear at first. Players thought that vast non-player empires would be retaliating against them for invading non-player worlds. However, what we did was create a government on each world that will analyze alien attacks and try to build defenses using only the resource units that would be available to that planet in one turn’s worth of production. We will tell you that there is a proposal in the works that would allow nearby non-player worlds of the same empire to build small fleets for the defense of their sister world, but that is a long way off.
Scanning is the other area that we have been working on — mostly behind the scenes. We have decided that Stellar Clouds need to be murkier and less able to be penetrated by scanners. We have also been working hard to change the scanning capacities of fleets (and in some cases planets) so that they see alien fleets more readily. One of the newest capabilities introduced is Action Code 84. Many of you have said “That’s nice that you can send out recon fighters from fleets, but so what.” Well, if you have the capability to build carriers, you should get a fleet with a couple hundred fighters, send them out on a recon and see what you’ve been missing. This is a very powerful tool for finding alien fleets. Additionally, another action code will be introduced in the near future that will give you the capacity to recon and follow up any contacts with a fighter strike from your carrier fleet.
The next fundamental change to the Takamo universe will be in the area of fleet to fleet combat. We are revising the battle sequence, adding new standing orders, fleet maneuvers and adding new capabilities to ships that will make combined fleets of various starship classes an absolute requirement for all interstellar navies.
Also in the works are, new player capabilities, special planet classes, stargates, move and do action code revisions, player to non-player diplomacy, and much more.
Stay Tuned.