So I've been off on a pretty awesome tangent for the last week or so playing an online "boardgame" called Neptune's Pride 2: Triton. It's a compelling strategy space game that's heavy on intrigue and diplomacy, but its greatest attribute by far is its speed, or lack thereof.
You play the game as the ruler of an interstellar empire accumulating resources and vying for control of a galaxy with 7 or so other players. As you send your ships off hurtling through hyperspace on various attack vectors you quickly discover that:
- Once they're in motion, they're in motion. The carrier ships that move your fleets from one system to the next are like bullets leaving a gun, you can't call them back or reconsider their orders.
- Hyperspace travel between start systems is not a swift process. Once you've sent a carrier ship on its merry way, you pretty have to sit back and wait eight hours before you'll see the result.
- Darn near anything can happen in 8 hours. A star system that's empty when you launch your carrier ship towards it might very well get conquered twice by rivals in closer systems before you're even half way through your journey.
In short, you play this game over several weeks at a leisurely pace that requires only a few minutes of actual effort in any given day. Requiring both patience and foresight, it is a slow-burning pleasure that is hard to beat.
