December Hybrid Session – Procurement Bonanza (on-side and off-side reports by James Halstead)

Future Space Wars Procurement Game (On-side Report)

In the December 2024 hybrid meeting I was finally able to run my procurement negotiation game whcih I designed last year and have since been denied the opportunity to run ever since both by train strikes and the demands of the final year of writing a PhD!

This game was designed loosely inspired by the various fighter jet procurement programmes which European countries are involved in. I decided, however, to transpose it to a generic science fiction setting generally to give myself a bit more license to play fast and loose with the boundaries and to remove players from real world constraints and preconceived ideas.

It is a game designed to force players to make hard decisions and tradeoffs to deliver their planetary fiefdoms desired weapons platform. None of the planets have enough money to build one on their own, which forces them to pool their resources and make compromises over the capabilities of the various weapon systems available for them to purchase. The players manage Finance, Industrial Capacity, Research and Development and Political Capital to achieve the maximum results possible in procurement. Procurement is incentivised around a points system for each desirable characteristic – weighted differently for each country.  I designed each country and each weapon system without any real world system in mind as inspiration – they are designed entirely for the game, but I was influenced by real world considerations. For example, one country needs to make sure that they unlock as much industrial capacity as possible (and fill it with orders) in order to help rebuild their domestic industry.

There is more to it than that, and there are a number of random elements that throw up extra nuances and challenges for players but thats the core of the system… and the decisions that players have to make in the game’s reality.

There are ten game turns (we only played three) in which players spend 20 minutes negotiating amongst one another and then declare what actions they will be carrying out. Whcih mostly revolve around who is partnering with whom and to build which Weapon System

Generally the game seemed to go over well but I definitely need to make sure I remember quick reference sheets next time. My overwhelming impression of the feedback was that the way that it is designed means that players are still somewhat railroaded towards certain dilemmas… and that those dilemmas are fairly easy to solve. I designed the game to make players have to pool finance but from the comments I received it sounds like this is actually stuck in an awkward position between too much, and too little.

Generally from my perspective most worrying to me was that the players spent a lot of time in the first turn setting things out but that a lot of them didn’t really have a great deal to do after the first turn and generally stuck to their strategies. I think there needs to be something that happens during each game turn to make players make more decisions during the game. I also think I need to build up much more of the evolvign decision-space. A lot of the decisions that I want to make players make while playing this game is about tradeoffs and, more to the point, evolving tradeoffs as they deliver these procurement programmes. What I do not want players doing is setting a strategy in the first turn and then simply running through these programmes on autopilot. Ideally they will be constantly reassessing their options throughout the course of the game as the decision-space around the procurement of these weapon systems evolves.

The other major comment was that for a negotiation game there is a bit too much of an oppositional element which restricts the players which certain sides interact with. I think I need to pare both this aspect, as well as those player objectives down a bit to make them less of an extreme and make them an extra dynamic to be considered by players.

Evan’s Star Wars Procurement Game Off-Side Report

It was a double bill of procurement games as Evan also rolled out his Star Wars Procurement Game. In this case we were procuring star ships for the galactic empire fleet and each playing rival shipyards developing ‘screen’ and ‘capital’ ships.

Players had a lot more free reign in designing their ships in this game. Essentiall yyou designed a ship to try and sell to the empire, the imperial navy players then assessed the various ships produced in a ‘presentation’ of their designed by each player. Then there was an opportunity to change your designs and present them again before the final imperial navy decision.

There was less of a directly oppositional mechanic therefore in this game, but I found it a really interesting perspective on a procurement game, mostly as you were playing ‘industry’ and trying to second-guess and find a unique space in the market, then to sell your products as hard as possible to the imperial navy players. Interestingly, despite trying to aim for a unique product offer I’m not sure I really found that and the differences between everyone’s designs were in inches rather than in miles. I think this was still interesting but I think more time to reassess and to prepare to present the arguments would have been useful. Ultimately, though, we were constrained by the time available.

One of the especially interesting points that came out in the James, Evan, and Mukul post-session pub washup was the power of names. Especially the impact that you got from encouraging each player to name their class of ship. It really added to the ‘sale pitch’ element of the game.