From: Ross Hagglund <ross@informix.com> 
Subject: Re: "Web and Starship"

> From: Dave Kohr <kohr@mcs.anl.gov>
> Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 00:08:17 -0500
> Subject: "Web and Starship" (was Re: H G Wells SciFi/Fantasy Game award) 
> 
> On a tangentially similar topic, how is this game "Web and Starship'? 

Dave,
	I haven't played this game since it first came out so my facts
	may be a bit "rusty". W&S is a three player game (one of the
	best three player games I've ever played). One player is a race
	of "moles" (moles in that they move by sublight from one planet
	to the next, once they reach a planet they create a "tunnel" to
	link the planet into their network). The second player is a
	"flyer" (meaning this race is all FTL jump ships which operates
	like your classic space opera fleet). The third player is the
	human, the human has a little of both technologies and attempts
	to steal/research whichever he finds more appealing.

	The three races fight over a cluster of star systems which have
	variable value to each race. The goal is to be the first to
	conquer enough points worth of planets (and hold them?) before
	anyone else does. Alliances are often shifting with the primary
	focus being the mole vs flyer, until the human becomes a threat
	(and then things become wide open).

	You have an array of ships, ground troops, planetary defenses
	from which to spend your economic points on purchasing. 

	The reason this won the HG Wells award is probably due to the
	effective use of plausible future technologies in such a fashion 
	as to make a well balanced game.

	I believe the only reason I've not played the game in some time
	is that the owner moved away (and I only recently acquired my
	own copy).

	If you have any other questions I could dig up my copy and 
	provide correct information (i.e. not from memory)
	
Ross
(ross@informix.com)

------------------------------

From: Neal Sofge <Neal_Sofge@rand.org>
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 10:03:25 -0700
Subject: Re: "Web and Starship" (was Re: H G Wells SciFi/Fantasy Game award) 

>On a tangentially similar topic, how is this game "Web and Starship'? The
>catalog describes it as "hard" SciFi

It's hard all right.  I never did play it because I didn't want to deal
with the 3-D movement involved.  The map is of the local group, and stars
are coded as to their Z-axis coordinate.  The game comes with a rangestick,
which you use to find the lateral distance between two stars, then you look
up the true range on a chart that figures out the Pythagorean Theorem for
you and rounds the distance to the nearest integral value.  Which is about
as easy as 3-D strategic movement can be, but still too irritating for me.

But the map is beautiful, and accurate as far as I could tell (my only
other reference being the map from Traveller 2300) and the game's concept
is a rare attempt to get 3-player mechanics to work without using the old
2-on-1 trick.  If I hadn't lost it to moving frenzy, I'd probably try it
one of these days.