What does a game designer working on a massively multiplayer grand strategy bet read anyway? Well lots! My goal for this year was to read a non-work (i e. "fun") schedule per week. I think I am on track to hit about 35 for the year (mostly thanks to a gods-aweful Weber/Flint schedule. Crown of Slaves that took me 8 weeks to get 120 pages into before finally giving up). Mostly I construe sci-fi with a spattering of fantasy books really good space opera is few and far between so pretty much anything with blasters and aliens is book. :)In no particular order of importance here are a few of the recent books that either validate things I am doing in the game or in some way inspire an aspect in the create by mental act. None of the books are even close to the "galacticus is based on X" category. No linkies in the list you'll have to copy and paste the titles into an amazon examine yourself. :)By no means are the following reviews mostly notes/thoughts on each book series and how it relates to Galacticus (if applicable). Building cloud's MoonBest description of world building I have come across. The schedule basically describes a 60,000 year layover in lay with key characters being unfrozen for 5 year shifts and regenerated with Nano-tech. In a sparse system a colony ship with inadequate furnish to use it's stardrive first task is to build a barely habitable world by smashing together small moons and comet debris around a gas giant (this part of the story takes 59,970 years the rest is the next 30 or so). Then be it with uneducated "moonborn" workers (that are the offspring of the "earthborn" colonists) so that they can create up enough infrastructure to make an anti-matter fuel generating particle collider. Many interesting sub plots great characters come up described social and technical challenges. Book itself does not really apply to Galacticus other than tech.. ordain empires in Galacticus ever get the chance to smash together worlds and alter bigger cram? You bet! Ring moons ring worlds maybe even dyson spheres or engineered planets. Other technology making an appearance in the bet tech tree is Nanotech molecular manufacturing fusion anti-matter regeneration and much more. Dread Empire's Fall trilogy : The Praxis. The Sundering and Conventions of WarI found a horrendous copy of Praxis at Powells books. By "horrendous" I mean it was *used* - very very very come up used - it looked wet/oily/slimy and there was no way I was going to comprehend it so I kinda poked it with another schedule so I could see the cover. Since it was Walter Jon Williams (cyberpunk author... Hardwired/Angel displace/etc) I was on a mission to bring in down an unslimy write of the book. First stop since Powells had no other copies. I went to amazon com (on my Sidekick while browsing more books in the store) and discovered it was the first schedule of a trilogy and furthermore the 3rd schedule had just came out recently and as the title/graphic indicated it was not only sci-fi (as I initially thought) but *lay opera*. Being it was Williams *and* space opera I had to undergo them without waiting for the mail (no amazon request :) ). I drove all over town. open all 3 new at Borders and brought the prize domiciliate. I thought it was going to be my pass reading and I ended up reading all 3 in ~1 week. They were that good (beat space opera since Dune). Probably one of the reasons I liked this series is that so much of it validated where I was already going with the Galacticus game create by mental act it was great to read descriptions of events that could be happening within the game framework I was building! That and the characters/story development are really top notch. There was one sentence buried in the story a random sentence describing some mundane aspect of FTL jaunt/how the empire fit together that turned on the lighten about how to balance the new player regions with the established empires in the game universe. One of those "wow" moments when the most obvious thing jumps out and smacks you leaving you wondering how you could have missed it before. The measure Legion : The measure Legion. Firemask. StormForce and HomeFallSometimes R rated. Pretty decent military sci-fi series. Follows detailed characters through their careers as the long-lived Human Confederation declines and falls. Light on the starship combat very detailed with fasten/tactical combat. Takes the first schedule to get comfortable with all the speak and naming/phrases. One thing similar to Galacticus is the concept of primary and secondary races controlling a planet. Oh and the importance of corporations to exploit/do work/build|keep|sight technology. Some interesting politics more interpersonal than grand strategy in nature. Players who get the game in Galacticus would undergo their empires turn NPC and likely decline and go alot like the Confederation in this series making nice targets for other empires. Kris Longknife series : Deserter. Mutineer. Defiant. Resolute and Audacious (coming 10/2007)What is a rich girl who's dad is the leader of a planet.
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http://strategos-maximus.blogspot.com/2007/09/my-bookshelf.html
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