So, basically, current plans for fundamental changes are to...
A, instead of only having one lead scientist, you have more then one. What you are limited on is scientific teams, because even a star genius can't do all the work herself. As such, besides voting for which ship to do that turn, you'll also be choosing which scientist will do it. This will let me differentiate the scientists more, as while they all had unique traits, only being able to see one of them doesn't really let you judge how they are better at stuff and so on. As well, now when you lend a scientist out, it'll mean that you just can't use the scientist until they come back, which will keep you from having to get -10 penalties on half your ships while still hopefully not making it a no brainer, because you might not get the scientist in question back for a few turns. This'll also let me make some projects take more then one turn when you all want to design a death star or super dreadnought...
B, A better way of handling the corporations and their advancements, which should hopefully make what they have to offer more logical and make lending out scientists more likely to lead to useful shinies, which will hopefully make doing so more tempting. Of course, without those scientists it'll be harder to put the shinies into production.
C, I'm actually planning on having something of a map. Now, people still aren't going to be giving tactical orders, and the strategic votes will still be more on 'which campaign to pursue next' instead of the detailed running of said campaigns, but actually having maps will let me be more detailed on the way the war is going besides 'loosing or winning' and allow for votes like 'go for system a or system b' instead of 'do we attack or defend everywhere'. I might end up changing this if it ends up too much a hassle, and the map shouldn't go more in scale then 'which solar system links to which other solar system', because argle bargle there's no way I'm going to try to make a dozen or so actual detailed solar systems with actual locations and stuff that'd just kill me. But hopefully it'll still let me make the war more interesting.
D, The aliens will have more detail then just 'grrr evil invaders', and I'm planning on having one of the starting votes behind who you are fighting and why (you think) you are fighting, or at least as much as humanity knows about the issue. I'm also planning on improving the system for how the aliens bring new ships in, as the last game's system was more a lack of a good system.
E, Some minor rule clarifications/rewrite type things to represent how the game actually ended up being ran instead of how I thought it would be ran when I first wrote the rules.
The actual map and the having more scientists and instead having to choose which one leads the project will probably be the biggest visible change to the players, but hopefully all of them will make the game work better. And if anyone has any questions or suggestions, feel free to slip up. Hopefully I'll have the new thread up this weekend, but in the not unlikely chance that real life interferes, I'll try to get it up during the week.
Also trying to decide if I should have one quest on both forums again, now that both threads can start at the same point and have the same updates, or just do it on one forum. Kinda leaning towards one forum for simplicity, but I know I have people whom like it on both forums...
