Pevans
Mission of Gravity
This is a postal (or PBM) game of Star Trader run by Mike Dommett and published in my postal games 'zine, To Win Just Once. This is the web version of the final turn. Follow the link for an introduction to Star Trader.
Previous reports: Turn 25 Turn 24 Turn 23 Turn 22 Turn 21 Turn 20 Turn 19 Turn 18 Turn 17 Turn 16 Turn 15 Turn 14 Turn 13 Turn 12 Turn 11 Turn 10 Turn 9 Turn 8 Turn 7 Turn 6 Turn 5 Turn 4 Turn 3 Turn 2 Turn 1 Start-up
Game end statements
Rob Fuller – ALSAFI-TOLIMAN (A)
I had a pretty good time, though I had difficulty getting a foothold early on since I was taking over for an inactive corp. [Thank you for stepping in.] From what I can tell, early game investment into factories is pretty important, since unless you pull the whole 'pump and dump' tactic and sell the factories themselves, the only way to profit off the high initial cost of production is to keep the factories running for a long time.
Which is sensible. But if you buy a factory when the price is 2 or 3, paying 25 HT, and sell at 8 to 10, in 3 turns the factory has paid for itself, and anything afterwards is pure profit. Get a Contractorship and you can sell 5 units every turn at the Market Price.
To beat pump and dump, someone has to sell the commodity on the same turn that the Pumper buys; This hopefully leaves him with no profit at all, and a lot of overpriced goods.
At the very least, I think I was doing a pretty good job up until I lost a ship to piracy. I essentially lost at that point, but the game still continued for a number of turns. I don't know if that's a problem with most/all postal games, but it was a bit discouraging playing for ninth place or whatever for a long while.
I'd be interested in playing again, though a lot of the game's rules still seem unnecessarily arcane. I guess that's what we get for trying to play a board game that was released in a magazine via mail. ;p
It was an SPI game, and SPI always had dense rules; very legalistic.
Steve Bunce – TRADEWINDS (B)
This was the first PBM game I ever joined. I had no idea what it was about and certainly no idea how to play it. The rules were sent to me and I was none the wiser. Two and half years later, I don't think I know that much more. Two and a half years – if I had been told how long this would take I don't think I would have ever considered playing. I've doubled my offspring within the life of this game! Half way through I kind of begged Mike to find another player to take over. [Oops , Steve, I’m sorry I didn’t realise you wanted out] but he just ignored me, and so I soldiered on. I found a set of orders I could repeat and get some sort of result from and, without too much deviation, I submitted these turn upon turn.
Having said that, he was trading goods from factories and running passengers along routes that no one else was and was making a small steady profit.
I got accused of scuppering a player’s "pump and dump" – sorry mate, completely lost on me – just following orders. I had warehouses blown up – err, I think I'll just ignore that and continue in my usual way, I gave up trying to understand opportunities and I had no idea what my Contractorship was or how to use it. And do you know what – I didn't come last! Not only that, I enjoyed it within my sphere of participation. I wouldn't play again though – no point really, but I did enjoy it. And so, with a sigh of relief I express my thanks to Mike for running this marathon and the other players for making it so. Well done everyone!
Jerry Elsmore – TRANS SOLAR TRADING INC (D)
I'd like to start by thanking Mike for his patience in dealing with my rule queries and challenges to his interpretations during which I had several "I was robbed" moments when my "Rules Lawyer – look at the small print" badge was trumped by his all powerful "Gamesmaster" one.
The "Hot Shot Navigators" determined the game plan. Build a fleet of passenger ships financed by loans secured by the ships, increase business connections, invest in cheap factories to pump and dump, repay the loans, sell the ships, retire.
After a promising start and successfully building six ships, a NMR on Turn 5 cost two ships and the first "I was robbed" as one of them was the only one carrying cargo… Insult was added to injury as TSTI was blamed for sabotage. All I can say is, "It wasn't me guv!" And there was no collusion. I've no idea who the Saboteur was: please stand up so I can shake your hand and thank you for leaving me alone.
I was surprised by the lack of competition for Passengers and was very worried by the Piracy even after arming a couple of ships. I can only assume that the re-investment of the income from the fleet into factories and ships in the latter part of the game went unnoticed.
My Corporation Tracker ignores cargo and therefore results in lower values than Mike's whilst leading to the same conclusion: for two-thirds of the game TSTI was way behind and wouldn't have been anywhere near the finishing post in a normal length game. It was the NMRs and change of owners that extended the game that allowed TSTI to recover from the NMR and carry enough Passengers to pay off the loans.
Looking forward to the next game: if everyone already signed up persuades one friend to join in we can start next issue!
Pevans – SOLAR SPICE, LIQUORS & MONOPOLES (E)
Part of my strategy was obvious from the name of my Corporation: Solar Spice, Liquors and Monopoles. These are the three commodities that don’t need cargo pods to ship and only minimal warehouse space to store. This allowed me to cover my ships with (legal!) Light Weapons pods, rather than Cargo pods, so that any pirate who tried it on would, hopefully, be blown away. This part worked well when someone finally attacked one of my ships!
Take a bow Mr Zwillinge!
However, the main thrust of my strategy was to buy and sell heavily to gain Market Positions at the various markets for my commodities. The aim was to get to a position where I could use the Contractors’ powers to buy and sell at market prices. This would give me a bigger margin than having to bid low to sell and high to buy. The cash this generated would be invested in factories, giving me an even bigger margin from the zero cost goods produced there.
This worked, too, but very slowly. Once I’d got the Market Positions established, I was able to trade regularly and build up cash, pay off my loans and buy some factories. However, even at the end, I was only making 160-odd HTs each turn. Other players’ efforts to jack up the price of Monopoles at Mu Herculis increased the value of my factories there. As the price subsided gently, my increase in cash from trading only equalled the loss in value of my factories…
Eventually, I gambled on making a bit over cost on my ships and sold up. It was just enough to put me over the 2,000 HTs, but a turn too late. Jerry cashed up on the same turn and his Corporation was worth a lot more than mine! Congratulations, Jerry.
Going back to the start of the game, I hired a couple of Agents, as I usually do. Unfortunately, I got Poum, whose skill is sabotage. Now I regard sabotage as a purely negative tactic and not something I’m going to do. Particularly as my Corporation was not set up for this – I had no Criminal Connections to speak of. So I offered Poum’s contract for sale, provided he was not used against me. It was snapped up by Nathan with one proviso: that I didn’t make the sale public. I saw no problem and agreed. Once the sabotage started, I realised my ownership of Poum made me prime suspect! The moral of the story is: don’t trust Nathan. Ever!
Mike has mentioned that the game went on a lot longer than previous games. I think this is due to the number of players. With 14 of us scrabbling to buy and sell the same commodities, margins were very slim and profits even slimmer. Hence it has taken longer to amass the winning total. In previous games, drop-outs have taken the numbers down to 9 or 10. Our expanded version of the game seems to cope with this number, but struggled with 14 players all trading.
Any road up, it was good fun, as always, and you can count me in for the next game.
Colin Parfitt – TRADEWINDS (H)
Many congratulations to Jerry. For the first time in one of Mike's games things actually went as I planned (aside from winning). This is my best finishing position, which is ironic as I joined a couple of months into the game. Presumably I usually make all my mistakes in the first couple of turns and never recover. I couldn't work out for sure who was to blame for the sabotage, but that didn't stop me handing out punishments. Many thanks to Mike for adjudicating.
Martin Jennings – SWISS MERCENARY FLEET (K)
I was doing quite well, until the Saboteur started knocking my reputation down and making me endure enquiries with the financial and connection loss. Oh, well next time. Well done, Jerry, and thanks to Mike for running it.
Michael Martinkat – ZWILLINGE (L)
Well I thought I started out strong now that I had the game mechanics down. Unfortunately, there was this nagging agent (Poum) that pummelled me. Over 800 credits lost in fines, massive political connection rebuilding and significant commerce losses threw my position behind.
Yes, you seemed certain to win early on.
I wasted lots of money buying agents (I had a nice pool by the end of the game but too late to use most of them), but at least I got Poum off my back.
Agents can be very useful but an agent who doesn’t fit in with your play is wasted money. Perhaps I should consider putting agents up for hire – 1 or 2 a turn with the highest bidder taking the agent perhaps– and also giving them an 8 turn life perhaps?
I thought I was close at one point, but then gave up on the game after the multiple fines and just played for fun thereafter. I should have hit more TSTI ships (oh darn, that contract). It was a long game but it was a fun one.
BTW I started the three series because we were expecting our third but we lost the child during the pregnancy. :(
Did you know it was VOGONS who were sabotaging you?
No, I did not. I thought it was Pevans, based on the original purchase and the turn of everyone being hit except for Pevans’ Company.
Bob Parkins – TRANSURANIC (M)
I want to thank you for running Star Trader and giving me the opportunity to play it after all this time.
My strategy to play was to diversify my corporation. To this end I intended to own good ships and was able to start the game with a Monarch Hull. Unfortunately, I lost this ship in combat quite early in the game and so I lost that advantage. I had some satisfaction that the player that caused the grief did not survive the encounter. Anyway, I continued to build ships whenever I could to accommodate both passengers and cargo. However, it all takes time. As soon as I made some money I had to spend it to try and get to a position where I no longer had to spend money to make money. I avoided taking out a loan in case I could not afford to pay it back. I believe I played a respectable game and gave the other players a run for their money.
Congratulations to Jerry and my thanks to all for an enjoyable game.
Bob ran Star Trader himself many years ago, including one game that Paul Evans played in. I got hooked on the game myself from following that game. When you take out a loan you get the capital but you do need to make at least as much money to cover the interest payments or you end up worse off.
Nathan Richards – VOGON INDUSTRIES (N)
So who was the saboteur? All right, it was me. I wonder how many of you guessed? Certainly two players protested to Mike Dommett that Pevans was carrying out successful sabotage that the rules did not permit. Jerry Elsmore also told me he had narrowed it down to three Corporations (none of which were me from his gist) so although I did not win I did have a laugh at some players' expense.
Unfortunately for Pevans, I had persuaded him to sell me Poum under a written agreement which contained a confidentiality clause and, thus, if he accused me he would have suffered a significant reputation loss.
Fortunately for him, no-one seemed to take active revenge on him for the saboteur's actions. [A great pity in my opinion!] To further throw people off the track, I sabotaged a few of my own empty warehouses and blamed it on someone else. Why did I do it all? I feel compelled to justify my thinking since some players have protested. I like to try new strategies and in this game decided to try a strategy based around blackmailing other players for protection money and/or inviting them to pay me to sabotage their rivals. Unfortunately, Mike Dommett decided I could not do this and still remain anonymous.
In face to face play you would have had to announce you were carrying out the sabotage and letting a Corporation claim blackmail money anonymously would have taken it too far.
However, I was committed by the time I found out this fact. I therefore decided to continue to sabotage the players I thought were winning the game and take a few risks on smuggling missions to catch up with the wealth of the leading corporations. I think the wealth chart Mike published shows I was targeting the right people and my decisions were within both the letter and the spirit of the rules. In order to maximise my chances of getting back into the game, I tried to blame all the sabotage on the leading corporation until they were knocked out of the game but they did too well in their enquiry rolls.
I should have persevered when it became obvious they were trying to hire Clint but by that stage I had switched targets. I think the only player I did not sabotage was Pevans (whom I had promised not to in the written agreement but did blame). I admit that I should have sabotaged Jerry Elsmore more but he was trading me information about all the game chits and I did not realise he had quite so much in assets. Of course, all this sabotage cost me good money - by my reckoning, I spent at least 1,100 HTs on sabotage which meant that I finished miserably in the rankings. But since I was resigned to losing from a relatively early stage I was just enjoying causing trouble and prolonging the game as long as I could. I am entirely unrepentant and it was memorable if nothing else! Many thanks to Mike Dommett for running the game, congratulations to Jerry and apologies to Pevans for stitching him up.
Przemyslaw Orwat – ISKANDER FIRE & ACCIDENT (P)
Congratulations to Jerry Elsmore! Many thanks to Michael Dommett for running such a complex game and to all of of you guys for a hard and long competition!
When about two years ago (of real time) I inherited in Turn 4 a corporation with a strange name (IFA) and nothing but four (!) crappy Corco Zeta hulls. I didn't know what it really meant playing postal Star Trader. When in Turn 8 (or something like this), just before a loan repayment term all my pilots decided not to hyperjump (since I sent the turn orders without hyperjump details!), I thought the game for me was over. This stupid mistake left IFA struggling for the following several turns (and possibly out of final competition).
Now I see that playing the board version of Star Trader (which I did some 17-18 years ago), although complex, is a piece of cake in comparison to the careful planning required in a postal game.
I have one comment relating to the game mechanics: The "pump and dump" scheme - although I used the opportunity of selling factories at high price once, probably following another player's "p&d" scheme, in my opinion it is a kind of exploit and a kind of unrealistic transaction. In real world strategic investors do not sell factories in such short term (less than a year). Yes, yes I know that in real world no one manufactures magnetic monopoles... But my suggestion for future ST versions is to increase the base premium in factory building costs from [(price*5)+10] to something like [(price*5)+20] or more, to significantly lower the scheme profitability.
Second comment, more "scientific" – have you known that Epsilon Eridani really has its own planetary system? There is at least one planet known, Epsilon Eridani b, and a second planet (Eps Eri c) is suspected but not confirmed. I was surprised when I found it out some two or three months ago in program "Celestia" (a free space simulation – click the link if you like astronomy).
Greetings from Mu Herculis, err.... Warsaw to all of you! (And forgive me the Mu Herculean accent...)
I hardly noticed it.