What is Blind Galaxy

Blind Galaxy is a variation of Russell Wallace's Galaxy game. Like it's parent, Blind Galaxy is a multi-player, computer moderated PBM game of interstellar conquest.

You start off as one of an unknown number of empires sharing a torus shaped (wraparound) map (i.e. if you go too far to the left, you end up on the right side of the map) with several hundred solar systems. You start with one large, resource rich system. Your goal is to conquer the galaxy, through whatever means you can.

You are able to design your own ships, which have 5 characteristics- drive (i.e. engines), attacks (how many times you can fire), weapons (how strong each shot is), shields, and cargo (space for shipping around colonists, raw materials, and capital). Each of those characteristics (other than attacks) is modified by the corresponding technology, to determine it's effectiveness.

Combat is a duel to the death affair. Only one side will be left standing afterwards (except in those rare circumstances where the remaining ships can not damage each other). Combat is divided up into rounds, where every ship potentially gets an opportunity to fire. Firing order, and targets are totally random- your heavily armed warship could end up firing at an unshielded enemy probe, while his lightly armed probe killer might end up firing ineffectively against one of your best shielded warships.

Via cargo ships, systems can have colonists, capital (industrial capacity), and raw materials shipped to them and unloaded, or produced and shipped elsewhere, as well as being used locally.

Diplomacy plays a major part in the game, as the empires that tend to make it to the end of the game are the ones who can either talk their way out of a tough spot, or encourage someone else to help them dig their way out. The present GM's have double blind mail forwarding set up, so that new players can (if they choose) conceal their lack of experience from others (and so us veterans can keep from getting ganged up on (:-) )

To be a successful galaxy player, one needs to be a diplomat, shipwright, economist, and tactition. A good diplomat can talk his way out of situations, while an ace tactition can arrange for your warfleets to suffer a slight, um, accident, on their way to liberate the oppressed.

The game mechanics are designed to only give out information that you can actively observe. Empires may rise and fall without your ever encountering them. On the other hand, an empire that you saw many turns ago but haven't seen since (but which still appears on your turn report) may be down to a handful of ships orbiting distant, worthless systems, or gathering strength at systems where your ships aren't out observing....

A second design decision was to allow the player as much flexibility in the data presented on his turn report as possible. At present there are more than 20 options which affect how reports are generated. My intent has been to make the reports have all the information that a player might want in a form that is usable. I dislike the thought of having a game that in order to play as well as the better players you have to have fancy tools. Have I succeeded? I don't know.

I believe that Blind galaxy is slightly more difficult that standard galaxy. It certainly encourages one to use subtlety more (partial techs, are a prime example). Due to the limited information provived by the Status section, one is never certain if the empire one is attacking is as powerful as one believes, or not.

Back to my Blind Galaxy Page


Last update: December 5, 2012