>>6095501Another mechanic I was thinking of (inspired by those trade freighter type ships you can build in GalCiv2) basically a 4X type game where you establish trade routes. My last setting was diceless so I am tempted to make a really dice mechanic heavy next gamehehe
It is a sort of blackjack type mechanic, longer trade route equates to more income, but each node / star system / planet of the trade route is a roll, and risks some hazard or something adverse occurring. So perhaps to start with, you are on a 1d4, 1:CATASTROPHE, 2: mild inconvenience, 3... etc. Each step of the trade route you roll the 1d4, the result represents the income.
You can make the trade route as long as you want, but obviously the more rolls, the more risk of the terrible catastrophe occurring. The idea is to achieve enough income to upgrade to the next step die (this might be represented as a better or upgraded ship ie 1d6, 1d8, 1d10, 1d12 etc and the chance of catastrophe on the 1 roll remains constant (hence better ship / upgraded step die translates to longer trade route more income etc).
I was going to call this system COSMOGONY: FARHAULER and conjoin it with my 88 IAU star constellation map from COSMOGONY, the precise star sectors chosen don't really matter, it is more just for lore / background worldbuilding storytelling purposes. Still thinking about this though. Another notion I had was setting it in some real world asteroid belt / hard space sci fi (asteroids inspired by that Fragile Allegiance game)
Also I wanted some mechanic where you could "bank" the income from a trade route at a cost, ie perhaps you could prematurely abort a trade route if you felt like you had earned a fortunate sequential run of good rolls. Still thinking about how to implement this though. I was also tempted to dump the space 4X setting and adopt some completely different aesthetic idiom or genre (flying carpets? Dragons? Pterodactyls? Instead of spaceships? hehe)
>SPACE PTERODACTYL ASTEROID TRADER: Laser Swords And Usury Edition 