I agree; let the Arena games begin! But before the Arena itself is built I wanted to try one little game. The Great Rift has some rather...interesting mechanics, and I wanted to test them with a little race. I told some explorers to embark on what would have been a 4-watch flight "as the crow flies" across the Great Rift, but their computers freaked out and calculated a 32-watch path taking them on an enormous round-about through an even worse crossing and looping backwards on their path several times. I mean complete, full circle loops. I didn't even think it was possible to do that.
Anyways, how about two empires get some vanguards to one world and have them race across a rift zone to a set ending world. You could choose to leave the ships on autopilot or manage every jump, but I though it would be interesting to see if manual drive was actually faster than autopilot. (It certainly was in my case; I managed to get the ships across in six watches by managing every move.) I'd set up some form of prize for the winner of course, perhaps some ships or even whole planets if the empire wished. Outside of Anacreon, I can offer to write a custom Transcendence mod for those who play it or do some sort of artwork (very basic skills, though). What a competition without some compensation, after all?Let the Games begin!
Long live the Barricades!
