HOPS

HOrseless carriage Player Simulator

HOPS allows owners of the board game with only two players to play a three-player game

Game graphics used by kind permission of Splotter

Include tutorial?

Version 1.0 20230702

Choose Player Colours

Choose player colours and their order on the historical focus track. Identify which player is HOPS.

HOPS?

HOPS skill level

Place Research Tracks

Click first on the track placed at the bottom of the market, then the track at its side, then in top down order for the remaining three.

Design

Range

Reliability

Safety

Speed

Place Initial Buyers

Place the initial buyers onto the board: either click Autofill or click on a niche, adjust its contents, click on another niche and so on.

Phase 1 - Research

Select where you are advancing your (or someone else's) markers and click Continue - numbers shown are [min spec / your marker]. For HOPS, just click Continue.

Phase 2 - Set Focus

Each player must click on the desired focus track number or pass.

Phase 2 - New Focus Order

Make Gantt Track Correction

Use this panel to manually correct Gantt points (e.g. in the event you forgot to record taking a planning office)

Phase 3 - Build Factory

Adjust the number of tiles in each stack to reflect what each human player took (and update your physical stacks with what HOPS took), then click Confirm followed by Continue.

Confirm

Phase 4 - Print Sales Brochures

These are the specs for the HOPS dealerships.

Small dealership

Medium dealership

Large dealership

Reminder: increase your Gantt chart markers by the number of planning offices in your factory
(each player should have added an expansion tile to their factory at the end of the previous phase).

Phase 5 - Sell

Take turns to sell to buyers.

Phase 6 - Game Over

The game is over. Well done to the winner!

Phase 8 - Grow Demand

Repeatedly Click Next as the players play face-down cards to quadrants. HOPS' quadrant choice is highlighted. When all cards have been played and revealed, update the market (and timecard).

Phase 7 - Advance Expectations

Change the research tracks as shown below.

Reminder: don't forget to increase the minimum spec for the outgoing track.

Market Board

Adjust niche contents as needed

The panel displays all the station stacks and the number of tiles remaining in them. For each human player decrement the stacks to reflect the tiles taken, then click Confirm followed by Continue.

When HOPS takes tiles the stack number changes to show how many tiles were taken rather than how many remain.When you have updated your physical stacks to reflect the tiles HOPS took click Confirm followed by Continue.

If you realize later you've changed a stack by the wrong number, try to make your correction during the affected player's turn. That is, if you accidentally recorded that the Green player took two radiator parts when it should have been one, return the extra radiator part during Green's turn. This is because HOPS keeps track of who has what parts in their factory.

HOPS has dispensed with the dealership names and instead simply refers to them by their size: small, medium and large.

Reminder: click on this panel to conceal/reveal it.

In sales focus order each player takes a turn to update the market board with their sales. If a player chose to pass, click Pass, otherwise update the board with the player's sales and click Next.

On HOPS's turn you only have to click the button showing (either Next or Pass) as HOPS will have updated the board if necessary. The niche to which HOPS made sales will be coloured to match the dealer window frame.

When HOPS makes his first sale for a dealer he will put the market window onto the board and remove the market window placed for his previous dealer, if any. This is because HOPS makes sales for one dealer at a time and the removal of superfluous market windows declutters the board.

When everyone has passed click Finished.

Reminder: click on this panel to conceal it/reveal it.