Anmelden
What is the sound of One Corporation Merging?
An Evil Vizier and a Noble Prince were among a group playing Stellar Ventures. True to his wicked ways, the Vizier greedily bid to acquire the “best” corporation, only to discover that he could not retain control of it. The Vizier skulked as he lost.
The Noble Prince contemplated: ego led that one to believe that it could “control” a corporation, when it could not even control itself and attained enlightenment.
Stellar Ventures tries to mix cube rails (like Chicago Express) with 18xx train rusting. There are certainly differences.
In Chicago Express anyone can put any stock up for auction (assuming there are “auction a stock off” actions available this round), which means that as long as a company has stock certificates left, it can be diluted. In Stellar Ventures the President can auction off a share each corporation round, and a single other share will be auction during the boardroom battle. As I wanted to mention in the first thread I listed (before deciding to make this a post), “Bidding too much for a company gives it capital, and the ‘best’ company will naturally attract investors wishing to a) share in the profits or at least b) dilute the profits for the President.”
I’ve still only played S.V. once … and like many of John Bohrer’s games it seems clear to me that groupthink is incredibly important in this game. You do not have the free form ability to weave incentive structures like silk is in his cube rails games; but there will be a raid each turn. It will be important.
It also goes without saying that while “paying too much” is a failure mode; so is “not being willing to pay the going rate.” Sure, you can sit on a stack of cash and miss the round 1 payments. Because the companies need trains spaceships their first payouts are $2 … if you buy nothing and then win the first boardroom battle (presumably for roughly as much as the second richest player has) you can do fine if you also pick up another cheap share. But will you?
S.V. has this weird thing where companies need money (for routes and spaceships) but players can basically pay for their routes (or expand them) during the Investor Round. A president with a broke company (that is not worried about a rust) can choose to put up a share in round 2 to get $10 for the company, at the cost of halving his income for the rest of the game … or perhaps he can pay $5-10 during the prior investor round, get 100% of the profits for that round, and only auction a share during the next board room battle (and, should it not come to that, issue one the following turn).
The other problem with “missing out” is that the companys’ president(s) can earn some Alien Cubes with company money, which can be spent on improving companies (probably the same ones, but you never know) or straight up laundered for profits.
And all of that doesn’t even touch on “Signing the Deal.” I don’t think it is right to sign the deal when you expect to miss (and have your stock tanked to a $1/share valuation at the endgame) … but it provides a burst of cash that might come close to compensating you (particularly if you use it to grab a replacement share or two. And, of course, if you sign the deal, get the burst of cash, and manage to actually meet the goals you are in a great position. But I’ll need more games to think about this.
