This is the description and rules for the game The Wheel of Life V, which is expected to start early 2011. Changes and clarifications to the rules from the description and rules for The Wheel of Life IV will be clearly marked below.

General:

Universe is medium, normal, player positions special (see below).

Acc BBS.

Victory is by surrender or death of the other alliances.

No ships may be built the first turn, and all players must set all others to friend for the 50 year generation. [Change from WoLIV: "(see below)" removed]

The starting ships owned in 2400 may be used as desired, except for attack. This includes colonization, but colonization would be 'blind', i.e. there is no way to know whether the planet is a -45% red or a 100% green, or where in between it is. [Change from WoLIV: "(except for attack, as all players must set all other players as friend for the 50 year generation)" replaced with ", except attack"]

The default battle orders may not be set to attack friends, to attack everyone or to attack a specific race for the 50 year generation (the default battle orders are also the battle orders used by starbases). [Change from WoLIV: This paragraph added]

No races are banned, except that a given team of two cannot both be CA, there must be at least one non-CA in each team - That CA can be a TT, though. For those players who might not know it, PP's are severyly handicapped by a bug in the 2.6JRC4/2.7JRC3 version (the version used on Autohost), so while PP are allowed, playing PP would be a pretty bad idea.

No public player scores.

The game will be on Autohost, with 100 hour max. generation (this is 4 days 4 hours). The generation scheme may later be altered, based on player feedback.

Cheats / Exploits:

Chaff: Allowed.

Split fleet dodge: Allowed.

0.2% Minimum Damage: Allowed (it is easily countered).

Repair After Gating: Allowed (it won't help in any battle occuring the year the ships gate in, and it is practically impossible to check whether the exploit has been used).

Mine Damage Dodge: Allowed (there are too many legitimate reasons to have a cheap ship along with a minesweeper, so it cannot be easily determined whether it is an intentional use of the exploit or pure chance).

Exploding Minefields Dodge: Allowed (even if the SD flying a MML or SML into his/her own exploding minefield can see the other minefields, he/she might not necessarily know the other minefields belong to other SD races, so it cannot be easily determined whether it is an intentional use of the exploit or pure chance).

No other cheats/features are allowed. A listing of what is considered cheats/features can be found on the Home World Forum. The headings for the disallowed cheats listed there are:UR/CE Scrapping, Battle Board Overload, North/South Minefield Immunity, East/West Speed Bump Minefield Immunity, SS Pop Steal, [freepop] Hack, Cheap Starbase, Mineral upload and Target List Overload. This list of headings does not imply that anything not mentioned here is allowed. The listing at the Home World Forum also mentions the False Public Player Scores cheat, but that is irrelevant as there are no public player scores in the game.

Details:

These games are team games for four teams of two players each, using a remapped universe. The universe will be remapped to an 8 arm spiral galaxy, and the teams will be placed in adjacent arms. In The Wheel of Life I, this remapping and relocating was be done by a third party, whom the racefiles and passwords were to be sent to. This third party would also have acted as a judge, if there were disputes about possible rules violations (there were none). For The Wheel of Life II & III, I did the remapping, as I was not playing in those games. For The Wheel of Life IV, I was playing host again, so the remapping and relocating was be done by a third party,whom the racefiles and passwords were sent to. For The Wheel of Life V, the remapping and relocation of homeworlds and any secondary worlds will be done by XyliGUN who also did it for The Wheel of Life IV, as he has tools andf knowledge to make the task easier, and to avoid the minor irriation that Stars! would otherwise report incorrect fuel usage and trip time for fleet orders in 2400, but I will take care of all other host tasks for The Wheel of Life IV. [Change from WoLIV: Minor rephrasings and description of WoLV added]

After the first turn has been submitted, there will be a forced generation of 50 years, then the game will proceed as normal. The turns of the players will be checked after the 50 year generation, to make certain no homeworlds have been wiped out by wayward comets. The game starts as soon as there are enough players, and a slot on Autohost has been secured. If a slot on Autohost is not immediately available, the game will be played by e-mail, until a slot on Autohost can be secured.

Player e-mail addresses will be off on the Autohost game page for two reasons. First, the players should exchange e-mail addresses (or ICQ numbers or whatever they wish) via in-game messaging if they want to set up faster communication with another team. Second, there are plenty of spam trawlers out there that grab any e-mail they can find on any page.

The long time interval between turn generations is intended to allow teammates who live on different continents enough time to discuss strategy and coordinate actions, so the time between turn generations should be expected to be close to 4 days, though faster turn generation can happen.

Miscellaneous:

For those who have played in The Wheel of Life I - III, there have been the following changes to the rules: Each team has been restricted to one CA at most (no teams in I - III were two CA's, so that shouldn't make much difference), I have included a warning against playing PP, and the Repair After Gating, Mine Damage Dodge and Exploding Minefields Dodge exploits have been mentioned (they were not known when The Wheel of Life I - III were played).

I can be contacted via my formmail.

You can view the following images:

GIF image of a sample universe (8 arm galaxy).

GIF versions of the source bitmaps for remapping:

4 teams: 8 arm spiral galaxy.

3 teams: 6 arm spiral galaxy. Looks unlikely I will be needing that one for a future game, considering the number of applicants for earlier games.