Hi,

I'm new here and first of all let me apologise if I have got the wrong forum for posting this kind of thing ... if it is wrong, my bad, I'll go elsewhere (but constructive suggestions as to where would be nice)

I'm bored ... that's how this started. I'd like to play a game but I don't do the standard games much ... sure I have Quake 4 and other games but after a while they bore me and they are way too difficult for someone who's near 50.

So I started thinking and I thought PBEM ... I used to play a game called VGA Planets which had crap graphics but was really quite involved, it was strategy, not exactly real time but something like and not role play although you could play about with characters outside the game to add a little interest.

Seems to me that most PBEM's are specially set up games, often universes with thousands of players and I really don't want to do that. I'm not really all that interested in playing out on the net, it would take me years to build up to the skill required to stay alive and I'd rather play with friends I know and can be mock abusive to (as they would to me). I like space trading, fleet, fight, flight, combat but future war is OK too and I want the game to be able to feature alliances and be large in scale.

In essence I am looking for something we can host ourselves, something that perhaps can be automated and can't easily be cheated but something that takes skill, tactics, thought and so on.

So I'm looking for a few suggestions.

Kyu