On 3/1/07, Chris Johnson wrote:
> However, on first glance I notice that the Destroyers are color-bound. > This makes them worth somewhat less than the Frigates, which is slightly > unintuitive given the pip values. More seriously, it makes draws > possible, if two people have opposite-colored Frigates. By traveling on the diagonal, they effectively travel twice as fast as the Frigates. But I suppose that Frigates are faster, but Destroyers are more powerful... Perhaps whenever two ships of the same colour are side-by-side they could swap places as a move.
Simply swapping places is a good idea, but not quite enough to solve the problem of draws. Allow Destroyers to attack a piece to the side, and you have a complete system. That also makes an interesting progression of piece power, but could be slightly confusing.
I may take a leaf from the Looney Labs book and completely re-write the victory conditions. For example; the backstory I wrote talks about fighting over resources. Perhaps a pile of pyramids could be placed in the center of the board and the winner is the first player to collect more than half. Or one pyramid and the winner is the first to get it back to their corner.
The resources in the center is an interesting condition; I'd like to see how it works out in practice. Note that there would have to be an equal pile in each of the four center squares. - Eric