A page dedicated to space faring play by mail (PBM) and play by email (PBEM) games.
Long longish ago, in galaxy round here somewhere, strange creatures would gather to play computer moderated war-games. Several player would sit around a machine and examine the state of a simulated universe. Each would then enter orders for the industrial and military development of one of the species living within the universe. After the orders had been entered the machine would process the turn, determine the outcome and output results for the next turn. For long distance play orders were set in on paper (or by posting floppies ) and thus 'Play By Mail' (PBM) gaming developed. From here it was a logical step to transferring information by email and the today's PBEM games.
OK this description ignores human moderated PBMs which are similar but processed by highly complex ( if somewhat slow and buggy ) machines.
Most PBMs that I have encountered are loosely based on the universe depicted in the original 'Startrek' TV series. The social, political and strategic aspects of this are based largely on the cold war. The tactical military aspects are based solidly on WWII naval actions (and movies of the same ). So why take the whole thing and base it in space ? I can see a number of reasons.
By setting things in a fictional time and place the 'experts' can't nit pick about technical errors.
By setting things in a fictional environment there is no chance of bringing up bad feelings about real world events.
If space warfare occurs it will be fought on a battle field of at least three dimensions. Computer screens are 2D so its convenient to stick with a 2D model and naval battles are conveniently flat.
This is the latest in Jon Wilson's series of games. It follows on from 'Empire Builders' and 'Second Empire'. The game is non-commercial and the Win16 version can be obtained from this link ...
Download this then unzip into a directory and run.
The help system is currently incomplete but there should be enough to get you started. This code is provided as is. To the best of my knowledge it is virus free and will not damage your system however, as usual, nobody at this end accepts liability for anything that this code does ( or doesn't ) do.
My PBM. This is actually a simulation of a medieval world but the game mechanics are similar to the space faring games. The initial implementation of this was text based and ran under UNIX and on the Atari ST. After a short test run it succumbed to a number of design bugs which, while proving the concept of an object oriented game, did nothing for the feel of the thing ( I never intended people to build flying castles ! ). A windows version is under development and will be available here when I get anything worth showing ... don't hold your breath.
A commercial game (with shareware single player version). More details can be obtained from here.