[MarkY]

Well, I think it's somewhat unfair to paint me as being unable to enjoy "the concept of exploration," although even if that were so, it would hardly explain why I like my games to be fair and frank.

Star Control was also a game of exploration, both in the accurate sense that it was about *exploring* and in your sense that it concealed details from the player -- you had no idea what each ship did until you piloted it -- but unlike WW, Star Control very quickly conveyed that information to you, because you fought battles frequently and the stakes were relatively low. You could afford to lose an Earthling cruiser here and there (or to take a few hits with your cruiser before getting the hang of it). In WW, the battles are almost always all-or-nothing affairs and you seldom get a chance to "try a gun" in anything short of an all-out slug-fest. The first time the enemy hits you, either you'll kill him or vice versa, whereas in SC battles had a great deal more give and take.

The larger problem with the opacity of the gun rules though (the smaller ones being fairness and inconsistency with other component parts) is that because I know how good a few guns are -- the Particle Vortex Cannon, the Multi-Missile Launcher -- and because I tend to be able to get those almost every game, I simply don't experiment with the guns as a player. That means the only benefit you're identifying ("discover as you go!") is illusory. The way the games are structured, there is almost no reason to engage enemy fleets until you have crushing superiority. Fast drives and scanners let you avoid enemies until you've picked clean the unoccupied systems, by which point you should have a couple of ships and heavy firepower. Then you train that firepower on the fleets left, in order of power, and you win. Or, you don't. (Or, you get a mirror, or a furies gong, or some other item that lets you defeat every foe without any struggle.) But either way, you don't go around seeing whether you can wipe out the massive Tan Ru fleet with a Micrometeorite Gun and a Sardonion Optimizer, since you know that you can find a better gun before you have to try it. As it stands, I'm never, ever, going to find out what the special things a Neptunium Railgun can do are, unless I stop playing the game for score and start playing the game with artificial restraints (like playing Freecell but handicapping yourself to only three cells). *But even if I were to play with such a handicap,* it's still not clear why the game shouldn't tell me that for *basic shooting* the Neptunian Railgun ranks a 2 and that short range guns are best for point defense while missiles are best for capships.

As I've said several times, the nuances -- the little tricks that each item hides -- can come out in the playing, but the gross plan of the rules should be evident to the player quickly. Obviously, that's the core design philosophy of WW, or else *every other component* would be just as vague and opaque in its worth as guns are. Drives would just give you fuzzy information, computers wouldn't tell you that they have the "optimum" ability, and shields wouldn't use obvious ranking language in their descriptions.

It strikes me that you're making a post hoc defense of the gun vagueness based on a philosophy that doesn't track with the rest of the game.

Anyway, I'm not going to return my copy, or not recommend the game, or anything else based on this issue (although I would mention it to everyone who asked me how the game played). It's a fairly minor point. But the refusal to hear legitimate complaints -- under the guise of having already considered, philosophically, the alternatives -- strikes me as a very poor form of customer support.