Observations from the New Guy

[cpha...@gmail.com]

Hello, I'm Chris Hassler, and I stumbled upon 3018 a few weeks ago at
BoardGameGeek.com. I was intrigued. I've always liked space-based
games and 18xx games, so it looked quite interesting. Here are some
of my observations based on a reading of the rules and a couple of
solitaire play-throughs.

1. It would be helpful if in section 1 of the rules, you could have a
listing of all of counters and what they mean. It wasn't until I saw
how things were organized in the CyberBoard version that it became
clear to me how all of the different demand markers were used. In
addition, the differences in appearance between supply demand, ore
demand, and partial supply demand are subtle and easily missed.
Granted, this may change based on discussions about how to indicate
demand, but I think it would be helpful to those who want to play the
game in a non-electronic fashion. One thing that still unclear to me
is the meaning of the three different types of ship markers.

2. Regarding the large number of counters in the game, the way that
occurred to me to deal with this is to have a separate card for each
facility for each level. This eliminates all partial supply demand,
alternative destination percentage, and supply demand markers. You
would still need alternative destination payment markers, as well as
ore demand markers for the Corporate Headquarters. In this vision,
the initial concession cards would contain spaces for the build loads,
as well as spaces to indicate how many turns away such loads are if
their delivery was contracted. This has the further advantage of
being able to list the actual value of the facility on the card,
rather than forcing players to calculate them. The disadvantage would
be having around six times as many cards in the game. It would
potentially drive up production costs for a game publisher, but would
make it easier for buyers of the game in the event that you self
publish, since cutting out cards is easier than cutting out counters.

3. One thing that I think would be useful, is if a company could
purchase Private Corporations from their president upon floating.
Also, I couldn't find out what the floor and ceiling prices for buying
Private Corporations from players by companies is.

In general, I like the game, and look forward to playing it more.

Chris