Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
SLJ,
Honestly, when I prepared the quickstart section, I did it under protest. I knew there'd be people who would want to start with little or no preparation, so I tried to cover the basics as best I could. That said, you're right, it doesn't give enough information, hence the note at the top of the section about the rest of the documentation having much more information. I will try and put together a how to play step by step document that starts with the beginning of a standard game, and post that to the EKS web site. I have to do some work on the documentation today, and that's a worthwhile addition.
Dark,
I'm glad it's coming together more for you. As to the self-voicing and GDG issue, I agree it's a matter of opinion and people are emotionally tied up in the GDG argument as well. Dentin's choice of the name was to make it clear who the target audience was, and for the significance of guiding people to the games they wanted more than any stereotypical ideas about dogs.
I personally dislike the use of guide dogs, and have issues with them, so I am not a fan of the name, but I think it encapsulates what the point is quite briefly.
In answer to your scattered fleet issue.
If you know what ships were in the fleet, you can search for them with the go to menu or with the y and s commands to find them and give them new orders. I find a method that seems quicker for me is to scroll through the board using the control arrow keys. I go to 0,0 with home and page up, then use control right arrow to see what is on the top row if anything. If the arrow announces merely 0,0 then there's nothing of interest revealed there. I then go down to 0,1 and do the same thing and so on and so forth until I get to 0,19. By this time I've found all the ships, and given them new orders based on their local conditions.
Scattered individual ships from fleets sitting around without orders are not completely useless, but this is hard to see in a lightning game. They actually perform two very useful functions in a big game on one of the other modes. First and foremost they make good observation posts: you can see some enemy fleet movements, sometimes find new planets, and generally locate what's within their scanner range. Second, they draw enemy fire. The AI doesn't like ships in its section and goes after them. This often reveals where the AI is, where it is strongest, and places to avoid in games of higher difficulties where the player is often at a disadvantage.
I'm not arguing that fleet scattering is fun. I hate it just as much as the next person. However, it isn't the disaster it might seem in every case.
Take care,
Jeremy
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