[PBEM/PBF] High Frontier - design rockets, and industrialize the solar system!

[Tamas]

You probably know the game already:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/47055/high-frontier

IIRC the designer claims somewhere that the patents he is using in the game are actual ones. Half of the rulebook is flavor text explaining more how they would work.

You, as a private or state agency (each has advantages. Japanese can hoard patents like there is no tomorrow, Chinese can abandon their crew in space and just generally piss on everyone else's business etc), must acquire patents to build a rocket (thruster, robonaut, and optional refinery to haul), as well support equipment in the expanded game (radiators, generators, reactors), fuel it, launch it, then lay claim to asteroids and parts of planets, done all on a quite authentic map of the solar system (designer used to be a rocket engineer). A relatively easy system manages to show you some interesting stuff on the map, like how it is easier, energy-wise, to land something on one of Mars's moons than on ours.
Then you can build factories on these bodies to produce advanced versions of your patents.
Unless your radiators malfunction when you go through Jupiter's radiation belt on your way to a juicy slingshot.


Here are the rules. 2nd part is only the flavor text: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/73901/high-frontier-living-rules-december-13-2011

Vassal module: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/83413/high-frontier-vassal-module-v39

The only problem is that there is no separate map for the Basic Game, so confusion-wise I think we would be better off with doing the advanced game straight away.
What the advanced game adds:
-go further away than the Asteroid Belt
-slingshots
-radiation hazard
-events
-support patents

The latter are probably the biggest. They make creating an efficient rocket a bit more complex, but that also means that you have much more customization options than in the base game, and can come up with some very efficient (or quite horrible) designs.

So, I am looking for volunteers! Since there is no hidden info, I can take it up to deal with the Vassal module, so we would post actions here and I'd do the update.

[The Brain]

Can you volunteer other people?

[Tamas]

Can you volunteer other people?

oh ha-ha!

[Tamas]

you know you want to

[Tamas]

[Syt]

That shit looks way too complicated for my little brain.

[Tamas]

That shit looks way too complicated for my little brain.

It is actually pretty easy. You move along a line. You pay fuel cost at each pink circle. At those circles, as well as regular Lagrange points, you may switch "lanes". at a non-round intersection, you either move on, stop for the turn, or pay two fuel burns to switch lanes. You can go as many fuel circles a turn as your speed.

There, that is all the movement rules (apart from slingshotting. When you enter a slingshot circle, it gives you as much free steps as it is written on it).

[Fireblade]

Can I be NASA?

Which I'll RP as.. NASSA

http://youtu.be/9XPCzckUcYY

[Fireblade]

Tom "Loopy Louie" White



First Nigga on Mars

[Habbaku]

Why did Peedy delete his post?

[Tamas]

Why did Peedy delete his post?

dunno, it was funny

Do you want to play?

[PDH]

Why did Peedy delete his post?

I didn't - it's in the boardgames thread.

[Habbaku]

Why did Peedy delete his post?

dunno, it was funny

Do you want to play?

I'll give the rules a look soon and let you know.

[PDH]

In reality I don't have time to figure out how to make "grand divisions" Tamas.  I have to go over my new textbook for spring and write my syllabus, teaching starts in a week.

[Razgovory]

This looks like a game you would need a calculator to play.  Or in Tamas' case, a slide ruler.