I designed Vector 3 back in 1979, and am releasing it here for free under a Creative Commons "attribution non-commercial" license. Actually, I've made some fairly substantial changes to the game.
Vector 3 is a 3D space combat board game; its virtue is that players learn the essentials of vector arithmetic and Newtonian mechanics by playing. On a number of occasions, people have told me they learned more about this from the game than from lecture courses. I could see using it in the context of a high-school math or physics course.
It's not a brilliant game, but not a bad one, either. I've rewritten the rules extensively, both to eliminate old-school SPI legalese and make them more readable, and to make some changes that I think improve the game. Mainly, these increase the effectiveness of torpedoes and mines; the problem with games where there's no terrain, facing is unimportant, and there's no equivalent of the weather guage, is that maneuver becomes irrelevant. The presence of missiles and mines at least gives some texture to space, and therefor a reason to maneuver.
As well, the original game was highly constrained by the format in which it was published -- a "minigame" with 100 counters (no more and no less). Though we often playtested with multiple players, it was released as a two-player game, since that's all that the counter limit could accomodate. I've reworked the counters to allow for more -- and of course, in this context, you can always just print more components from your computer.
The zip file linked below contains the full game -- rules PDF, ship display and counters as printable graphics. You'll need to provide graph paper, dice, scrap paper, pencils, and a calculator, however.
creative commons
I have never played this game (or any other of the old SPI sci-fi games) but I look forward to give it a try.
It will be interesting to see if we will see 'remixed' versions of this soon from the DIY boardgame community.
Brings back memories
I remember playing this game! OK, I'll be honest... that was a long time ago. I remember the cover, and remember that I played the game, and have hazy recollections of actual gameplay.
Looking forward to trying it out again! Thanks!
Your comments in the
Your comments in the "designers notes" section of the rulebook are interesting. It is true: with no terrain, no ship "facing", and no weapon firing arcs (i.e., no "crossing the T"), there is little need for 3D, or for a map at all. This was a problem with the first edition of the game "Starfire", it could have used a ruler for a map since the only variable was range to the target.
The game Attack Vector: Tactical independently discovered your insight: certain weapon types can double as user placed terrain. Missiles and "shotgun rounds" can be used to deny certain vectors to the target. This allows one to "herd" the target into a desired vector.
The game Star Fleet Battles added ship facing and weapon firing arcs to two-dimensional maps. This allowed "crossing the T" and instantly made maneuver of primary importance.
Attack Vector: Tactical and Squadron Strike manage to solve the "crossing the T" deficiency in three dimensions. It uses clever play aids to allow the players to use three dimensional facing and three dimensional firing arcs.
Déjà vu
I'm having all kinds of Déjà vu right now.
I independently designed almost this same game in high school in the early 90's. I used three maps, XY, YZ, and XZ. It seemed to help with visualizing what was going on. I taped them together along matching axis so that they could be laid flat for normal play, but a player could fold them into half a cube on their turn if they wanted to. It was fun to see someone holding their fingers in three dimensional space over the folded maps trying to make estimates before sitting down with pencil and paper to calculate their shots.
I also ran into the problem of games turning into slugfests. I got around it by adding a planet or two to the maps. The math started getting a lot more complicated at this point, but it was worth it. It was pretty exciting to put a missile in orbit around a planet and have it actually hit the target. The excitement came more from solving the problem correctly than scoring a hit. I've not seen anyone give a high-five over geometry since.
As the games got more complicated, we started using a game master. They weren't really in charge of anything, they were just there for independent verification. When a player decided what they were going to do on their turn, they would write it down at the top of a sheet of paper that the game master could also see. The player and the game master would both do the math. If they agreed, the player executed their turn. If they did not agree, they would briefly consult, and they would both turn their papers over and do the math over again. This would continue until they both came up with the same solution.
Thanks for releasing this. I don't know if I'll be able to talk my wife into playing it with me though. Maybe it's time to call up some old friends.
Oh yeah . . .
I still have my old copy, but I'll download the freebie just to see the new material.
Does Metagaming still have its claws on that space merchant game?
(I had a frigging DREAM about playing an old board wargame last night. It might have been Tactics II, which I read a review about recently.)
(Note: By "frigging dream" I do not mean a game involving frigging.)
Trailblazer
Yes, Trailblazer is the only one of my old games I never managed to recover the rights to, largely because Howard Thompson, who ran Metagaming, seems to have disappeared from the face of the planet.
Excel!
One thought that jumped out at me as I read your rules.
It would be fairly straightfoward to make an excel template to automate the rules and the calculations.
On one tab you could have users enter the location of the ships on the map and this would automatically calculate the distance between them.
Then it could look up the fire chance based on the technology.
Javascript
Hmm... Actually, in similar circumstances (e.g., doing a paper prototype for a digital game with fairly complex mathematical calculations), I've done a little calculator in Javascript, stuck it up on a website, and pointed my laptop to it.
In those wondrous days of
In those wondrous days of yore, many SPI games used a printed table to calculate true distance in two dimensions with the Pythagorean theorem.
Doing three dimensions with a paper chart would require either a series of tables or some species of nomograph. Even more so if you wanted to add hit chance by tech level.
Nowadays a pocket calculator with a square root function costs about a dollar, and spreadsheets are ubiquitous. You young whipper-snappers don't know how good you have it nowadays. ;)
This reminds me of another
This reminds me of another space/vector game - triplanetary.
Trailblazer is fun - I still have a copy in the basement!
Triplanetary
Yep.... I'd played Triplanetary previously.
I keep my copy of
I keep my copy of Trailblazer inside the box for Web And Starship. This is because the designer's notes mention they were both part of a sort of series about the possibilities of Earth's place in the galaxy (hi Mr. Costikyan!)
More than you think about the "T"
I want to thank you for getting this game out into the world again, and even better that it is free. I played this game in the 80s but didn't have friends that enjoyed geometry so I just ran some scenarios by myself.
Now I have a son with a gift for math and I can use this game to help him flex those muscles and learn some things about physics and logic; great!
I expect to make my own "house rules" that will make it somewhat more complicated, but folks don't have to use them. One idea is to make a Star Trek sort of Phasor weapon that works on energy. This will require that I somehow track energy, but that will be a fun exercise (I hope).
Regarding "Crossing the T" ...
I have been playing only the first scenario with my son. He has been extremely lucky with the dice, which has helped him enjoy playing the game. He doesn't often beat his daddy. However, while he is not quite astute enough to understand, I have managed to cross the T with him. Impossible? Nope.
Lets say we both start with a pair of 6-pod ships. The ship groups start about 25-30 squares apart. He basically charges me at a fairly straight approach. I begin by charging him, but then I dive or climb to get a range against one ship closer than the other. Then I get to fire twice needing a hit at 10-12 (2 or less) while he is returning fire with one at 10-12 and the other at 13-15. This gives me an advantage similar to crossing the T. He still gets the lucky roll, but I win a sort of moral victory.
As for house rules, might you wish to consider having unguided torps accelerate for two turns, or have guided torps accel for no more than four or five turns to represent the max fuel they might carry? Subtle changes like this could be used to handicap one player, and also give players new problems to solve.
I am also looking into tracking fuel. That really makes the math get fun. Thanks again for making this available.
more weapons, tactics
If you would like to get ideas for more weapons, read the Honor Harrington series by David Weber, or the Starfire series by David Weber and S.M. Stirling. There are energy weapons, various types of torpedoes, mines, etc.
Keith
The never-released third game
What I'd like to know is what the scope of the never-designed game that was supposed to be published after Trailblazer and Web & Starship would have been. It was mentioned in the Web & Starship design notes. Would this have been mainly exploration? Trade? War? Similar scale to the others, or longer term like SPI's Sword and the Stars?
Future History Games
qulqlan, actually, the third game I did design but could not find a publisher for; it was called Terra Uber Alles, and was a tiny-earth-vs-huge-galactic-empire game. In retrospect, it needed a lot of work, and anyway Imperium does that scenario well. Other ideas I had were for a politico-diplomatic game (tentative title: The Treaty of Io) and a highly grand strategic game of the galaxy assuming slower-than-light conflict (like Outreach only less boring).