Lachlan
I don't treat any one aspect of #18xx as holy, and I'm rather willing to break any conventions. One of the big ideas that keeps coming into my mind is "What if routes only ever got set once?". Keen on thinking how to design in such a way that games move quicker - and routes is something that I've noticed slows down lots if players. Dunno if it's a step too far for #18dracula though
@grayson @jcl Yeah - that was more PUaD than I really wanted. The little bits with the resource cubes over narrow gauge should really do me.
But - I kind of have an idea. Going to spreadsheet out to see if I can make it work:
1 - Resources are still there to deliver as one of the actions. Payment is 1, +1 if any connection to a port, +1 if any connection to a city
2 - Cities pay, but there's a table that moves along each dividend reducing how much they pay
3 - Replacing my bonds cards with interest (technically, it'd be 'coupons') + increasing interest payments, with a bond market a la 1848, which also leads to the fun interactions of increasing everybody's interest rate
With sufficiently high costs and low enough starting capital, bonds are necessary. That hits it both sides then to reduce profit from both increasing bond cost and decreasing revenue - but, it might be too hard.
Still going to have to balance out those numbers a bit. But, I think this is overall what I'm going to be working with at the sec.
My concern is that... it is a very complicated looking tiny cube rail board. The whole reason I started was that I wasn't clever or experienced enough to balance #18Dracula yet. I really hope that I can get the numbers to a point I'm happy to call it done and interesting. I still think at least I can get the rules simple enough to be 2 A4 sides, but, I'm still nervous about it having the elegance I admire of Chicago Express.
But even ChEx has different values on lots of tiles and a develop action that does 3 different things depending on where it is.
lachlan slowly taming rust
