Game Diary Summary - May

5/31/2007 I created two new robots (HK-1 and HK-2) which are a hunter/killer team: the first is the scout and the other is the killer.

5/30/2007 I completed most of the tables for robots, which is not really hard but kinda busy work. I showed off a draft copy of the whole rules to some of my coworkers: they said it looked like a lot of work and that I had too much time on my hands. ;-)

5/29/2007 Over the holiday i made good progress on the rules, incorporating the changes I had made. I also formatted some of the tables and added those into the rules. I need to also add an Example section that steps the reader through the building process (for robots).

5/25/2007 Yesterday I created another two robots: a PAbot (for personal assistant) like Cornelius, Prince Richard's robot; and the Interpeterbot like the spy used by the Magna Embassador.

I just reread my game diary for the last month (concerning the Robots chapter): it's interesting how much this chapter has evolved over the last month.

5/24/2007 I've started to rewrite the robot rules to reflect the changes I made. I can keep most of what I've already done, so I don't think I'll lose too much time doing this. Yesterday, I also created a sweeperbot (the same one that appeared in Ch1 of Alexander the Prince) and a GenBot (which appeared in several different chapters (including Ch1).

5/23/2007 Using the changes I made to robots, I created a medical and attack bot. I'm fairly happy with the outcome so I might go with the current rules. As for my suggestion of changing some stuff in the Encounters chapter, after rereading the chapter, I'm going to just leave things the way they are. At this point, changing stuff might do more harm than good.

5/22/2007 I'm back from my vacation and I used the long drive times to think about the game. I decided to do some consolidation in the Encounter section to make the species more relevant. For robots, I added Attributes directly to the chassis table, with some attributes modified by controller, shell, arms, and hands. Also, I've changed the armor section to be more consistant with the armor in the Gear chapter.

Currently I'm using a cost multiplier (of the base chassis cost) instead of set prices. However, for components that don't actually change in size/power for different chassis sizes, it's not very fair to charge more for larger robots. I will probably have to go with flat prices per component.

5/16/2007 With the new robot system, the biggest stumbling block is the allocation of the slots: how many hi, lo, and average slots the player gets. The total number is easy, but dividing them up is proving hard for me. I think instead of having a set number of slots, I'm going to start with a base number of slots and allow the player to divide up them between hi, lo, and av; but with the max hi slots depending on PP.

I've been making more tweaks: Instead of slots only known by their power, I've changed it to have slots by sizes (small, med, large) and then the player needs to power those slots (if necessary). I'm going back to using EPs, but in a much simpler way (again using lo, av, and hi power that cost 1, 2, and 3 EPs respectively). I've been doing some more tests and so far it's promising. I hope I don't find something that ruins my day.

5/15/2007 Okay, I decided that my original robot design simply isn't working the way I want: it's just too complicated and anything that has too much math cannot be good. J/K. However, I struck on an idea I had for starships (borrowed from Eve Online) involving low, average, and high energy slots. I'm going to play with that and see if it works better. I'll be out of town Thur through Monday so I'll have some time to contemplate what I want to do.

I've been able to essentially redo everything already and I'm pretty happy with the result: it's much more simple, but still allows for great variety.

5/14/2007 Started working on weapons: going to have set CP across sizes since the weapon doesn't get bigger on larger sized robots. Debated about doing this for other components; will likely redo sensors and comm.

After making the changes above, and reducing the EP output of the reactors, I went back at the three practice robots and I'm happier with the result. Of course, I need to do more testing, especially for military bots.

I ended up recalculating the Drive Train values also. Trying not to get depressed . . .

5/12/2007 After redoing some of the CPs for some of the components, I decided I needed to change the total number of CPs per chassis (up by 25%). I may now look at reducing the EP capacity by 25% but i need to run some more tests first. Keep in mind that I was using the old values to determine the CP costs for each individual component.

5/11/2007 I completed most of the EP numbers and now I'm done enough that I can actually start creating robot builds. To that end, this morning I started to create the little robot from Alexander the Prince. During this process, I made changes to the CPs for Standard/Positronic/Gravitronic CPUs.

My first impressions are that CPs seem a little low and EPs seem a little high. I may need to adjust them accordingly.

5/8/2007 Today I'd like to write up some notes on communications and sensors for robots: there will be a default and enhanced version, plus additional ones for greater capabilities.

5/7/2007 Got some more done on robots over the weekend (controllers). At this rate, however, I doubt i'll be able to publish the rules by the Fall as I had hoped: I'm just taking way too much time to get things done (and I have no one to blame but myself, or perhaps the makers of LOTRO)

5/4/2007 I wrote alittle about the Robot Freedom League and what could be described as an underground railroad for runaway robots.

5/2/2007 I'm struggling with what i want to do with robot programs. I want to make it fairly straight forward, but I also want to give the game flexibility.

Need to add rules for changing out robot components (cybernetics roll)

5/1/2007 I updated the Wiki to include Factions & Reputation, and the overview of robots. Sunday, I wrote more about controllers, end effectors, and arms. For controllers, there;'s still a lot of details to do, like stats on hacking and operations: might include set "programs" that a robot can run with a particular cpu.