Robots are the future! And your company is Robots! Therefore, your company is the future! In this game you act as a soon-to-be named Robot company, designing whatever type of Robots you think will get you money. This will work similar to a Weapon Design game, but your Robots don't necessarily have to be built for warfare - in times of peace a Roomba company might be making more than Deathbot Inc.
The Robots:
Robots have two types of "Parts". The first is Hardware, the physical components of the robot design. This includes things like chassis, add-ons like paint schemes or death blades, and anything on the physical side. The second is Software, the coding part of robot design. This includes anything that is digital instead of physical. Software is usually designed for a single purpose, but a Robot can run different types of software and change what software it is using so long as it has time and an internet connection. Hardware and Software are sold together in a "Package", which acts as a complete robot with all its accessories. When the economy is doing well you'll be able to sell more expensive packages, when the economy is doing poorly you'll sell more budget packages.
Robot example:
Deathbot Inc (TM) Ninja Roomba: Roomba Chassis, Deathblade Attachment, Melee Software
Every Turn you will get to design one piece of Hardware and one piece of Software, with a dice roll deciding the quality of each. You will get one Revision a turn, which can be used on either Hardware or Software. Your end product doesn't necessarily have to be a full-Robot, you can sell Packages that consist only of accessories for your or other company's robots. In general selling accessories with the robot lets you charge more for the robot, where if you sell the accessory separately you'll sell less of it but be able to market your robot cheaper. Hardware and Software will generally have traits and a blurb describing said traits, typically including the price for said piece.
The World
The World of Robotic is fast-growing indeed! At the start of the game (We'll call it 2030) you have roughly modern technology. That means you'll start out making Roombas and not Maidbots. After this technology will start to develop at a rapid pace. Every Turn represents one year, you can expect a product to become outdated in 5 years. How the technology of this world advances will depend a lot on your Company, so long as you manage to say successful and solvent.
Every Turn there will be several events mostly beyond your control. The first is Economy, which tells the overall health of the economy. This is a random dice roll with a bonus or penalty based on the previous Economy roll. When the Economy is doing well people will want more expensive things, when the economy is doing poorly they'll want the cheapest money can buy. The second is Current Events, which rolls first for a number of events then a separate roll for each to determine how "Good" they are. Bad current events are things that are bad for your company, Good current events are things that are Good for your company. This will have some variation based on your company (a War breaking out would be good for a weapons company but bad for a company that sells civilian heavy equipment that could be weaponized by insurgents and thus gets banned).
The Competition
Everyone wants a slice of the pie. As time goes on a number of competitors will rise and fall. Competition isn't necessarily a bad thing, unless they go out of their way to prevent it you will be able to sell generic accessories and software that works on other company's machine's. But it isn't necessarily a good thing either, they want the same money you want and most are willing to get vicious to get it. Competition typically has a name, a focus, price range, and quality. If you have a product with the same focus and price range you'll have to have a higher Quality or you will face significant penalties. If you have an accessory package for the same price range and quality you will instead receive a bonus.
The Company
Here is the part you come in! The Company can be anything from Space Exploration to mining to fancy toys based entirely on player input!
-Company Name: What we will call the Company and the SG
-Company Health: Healthy (5). Every turn you perform well you'll go up in health, every turn you perform poorly you go down. If you ever make it to 0 you loose. You may burn 1 Health for 1 Revision at any time.
-Company Focus: The History of your Company up to today. You can branch out into other focuses later if you want, you just won't have anything to back up if you get bad rolls.
-Company Designs: A list of company Hardware and Software, including all obsolete designs from ages past. At the start of the game you will get Two Hardware and Two Software designs.
-Company Packages: A list of what robots and packages you're trying to sell. Will probably have to wait until after the designs to actually fill this out!
Author
Topic: METS (SG) 2031 Robot Revision Phase (Read 2146 times)