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[nahkh]

Oh I wasn't suggesting that all deals be made public.
It's just that if you make a secret agreement and the other party breaks it, who would believe you?

If both parties negotiate between themselves and let me know by PM when an agreement is made, I'll take a copy and keep track of them. I'm even inclined to decorate them in official language if need be.
If one party requests the deal be made public, I'll post it here.

I think that this would reduce the overall confusion of whether something has been agreed upon or not. I've spotted quite a few instances of one side thinking that it was just discussed while the other thinks it was agreed on. Admittedly most of those instances involve Li Halan and al-Malik.


In addition to managing your agreements opaquely I would be willing to keep track of all public documents (ie, declarations made to the public, claims on planets and so on) and keep an up-to-date map (of course, I would have to rely on you to keep me up to date).
I could even host all this for you.


EDIT:
And I wasn't suggesting these agreements be cast in iron either. Breaking agreements is perfectly permissible, but this way the wounded party has some grounds for his complaint.

[Aqizzar]

As if grounding of complaint meant anything.  Have you not seen Palazzo and mainiac go at it?  Wild accusation and redaction is half the fun of this game.  When we have disputes, we settle them like statesmen.  With war.

[JoshuaFH]

Give it up nahkh, they apparently like things the way they are, and it's only a game after all.

Besides, the only reason I suggested it in the first place was because I wanted an excuse to extract more juicy details of what the heck is going on between the various players.

[Aqizzar]

I for one am counting on a big post-mortem  by everyone at the end, to explain what they thought they were doing.  As is, I don't think any of us would tell an outside party anything important, for fear of gossiping.

[nahkh]

Well, it's only a thought.
I'll wait and see what the other statesmen think.
After taking the time to read through this mess I definitely want to stick my spoon in this soup.
Would IC political commentary be all right? (And I'm still for the map idea, at least)

[Aqizzar]

Knock yourself out.  I've been maddeningly silent in the thread regarding RP and such, but that's because I've pretty much only been fighting mindless AI rebels all this time.

[nahkh]

I'll get on it once I get out of work. (EDIT: Scratch that, after my Dark Heresy game)

(Anyone know where I could score a copy of this game? I think there was a rapidshare link earlier, but it's no longer working)

[Aqizzar]

That was me, and they time out so it's no good anymore.

I don't know what the "consensus status" is on EOFS regarding it's, let's say, transferability, except that every company that ever had a hand in it is long out of business.  I do know that the site I got it from was a bitch to find, and it's long gone too.  I think Home of the Underdogs still hosts it, but getting that site to work from day to day is a whole other story.

As far as I can tell, this particular PBEM game may the most activity the title has gotten in years.

[nahkh]

HotU doesn't host this game, unfortunately. The only site I found that boasts having it is c:dos, but you have to fill out some market survey to be able to download squat from there. Stinks of a scam.

And yeah, it definitely seems like the game's been gathering dust. A gem of a game from what I can tell. Just screaming for a remake. Something with no bugs in it. Almost makes me pick up the task (except I'm bogged down with other projects)

Still, if you ever get around to starting a new game, SIGN ME UP.

[Il Palazzo]

nahkh: regarding your offer, Aqizzar said it all. That is: notary, thanks but not really needed. Commentary, go ahead. Just be careful not to "comment" on something that is supposed to be a secret.

[nahkh]

Aww.

Oh well, I guess I'll start up the Imperial News Network (tomorrow, way too beat at the moment)

I'll promise not to spill out anything secret. I'll just post occasional updates on the universal state of the game, all commentary will be speculative-only. It's what all political pundits do.


EDIT: AHHAH! Found a copy online. Installing.
Oh. Oh wow.
Why did I never play this game then?

Further amazement. Man, this game is even pretty. I didn't even know this game existed in the nineties. Who the hell was marketing this thing?

[Aqizzar]

Further amazement. Man, this game is even pretty. I didn't even know this game existed in the nineties. Who the hell was marketing this thing?

No one.  That was about half the problem - Holistic Design was never a company for big ad campaigns, and the company that owned the Fading Suns franchise practically went bankrupt in the process of making the game.  I only ever found out about it from a demo CD I stole from my uncle, and even then it took me years to remember the name after I lost it.

As much as I pine for this game, don't get too excited.  The AI is a pushover, the Church is completely useless, there's no modeling of market forces whatsoever, and without extensive modding, there's only a few right and wrong ways to fight wars.  But it's an extraordinary glimpse at what could have been.

[nahkh]

Oh I'm fully aware that it's not a perfect game. But I'm a retro gamer, I can put up with a lot of crap like that.

I'm looking at some dates back in 96-97. Looks like master of orion 2 came out a few months before EFS did. I'd imagine that sucked up a lot of it's 4X thunder even if the diplomacy and setting is far better. And I guess that by 97 the hex-based strategy game was already old news, in the sense of "Oh it's another one of those".
I suspect that it would've taken a far more aggressive marketing campaign and nailing that Christmas market (it came out in February if wikipedia is to be believed) to really pick up.

[mainiac]

Somewhere in the fan forums there's an autopsy one of the programmers posted years later.  From what I recall, the game wasn't so much released as forsaken.  The development problem had been rocky for a long time.  They had a lot of cool idea's and had done some cool things but the program was full of half finished or even barely started idea's.  There wasn't a solid roadmap and the programmers weren't communicating important info to each other.  Then word comes down the pipe that they're just shoving the current release out the door and moving on.  They later patch the most glaring issues, but management didn't think the program could be saved.

[Il Palazzo]

The amount of features that are left not really doing anything is such, that I'm inclined to believe that it was indeed just like mainiac said - this game is not bugged, it's simply unfinished.

nahkh, remember to visit the Nova mod website(link in the opening post) to fully understand how we're playing. There's a whole list of additional rules that we're abiding by. It's almost like an Imperial Constitution.


Also, a question: are you guys deleting the old PMs we've been exchanging since the game started? Reading all the "top secret" correspondence after we're done might be a lot of fun(I've deleted the first batch, and been keeping the rest since January 14th).