Ring and Sphereworlds
 

I built one of each today but I basically postponed winning for a long time until I could finish them just to try them out. They are awesome structures but it seems to me highly unlikely that a game would go on so far that building either would actually be a good idea in a game or even less so would be a big help in winning a game that close. There major advantages of size and population aren't as important by the time you can actaully build them and the research cost and material cost is just too much for them to really be useful in a close game or a game against humans.

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

I am on my 400th + turn, and I have only managed to conqure only about a 1/5th of the galaxy. I am in third place behind two AI players, and they are pounding the crap out of my colony worlds. So, I would venture to say that in my game, it is entirely likely that I will have the time to build them. And I think I shall starting in a few turns. I need to beef up my fleet, but can not do that without resources. Resources are where the SW and RW's excel.

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

Yeah but the ringworld costs 500K of each resource and the sphere twice that much not counting the cost of the shipyard ships or the cost of the facilites. Not to mention all the population you will have to skim off to populate them. It would take alot of production just to recover the cost and you get no bonus for production over 10B pop. So really the sphereworlds are not at all worth building over a ringworld at half the cost.

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

You can alter this in "Settings.txt". Currently there are 12 breakpoints where you get increased production. The 12th is set to 200,000,000,000 (yes, 200B!) in the 1.19 Version. In the interest of making ring and sphereworlds useful, I've changed that Last breakpoint to 20B (well, technically, it starts after 19.999B, but that's the same thing really...).

I just re-checked - ringworlds allow 32B pop, and sphereworlds allow 64B. So maybe you'd want to increase the number of breakpoints and add a few more (up to, say, 60B).

Reagardless, these are the relevant lines from "Settings.txt":

Number Of Population Modifiers := 12
Pop Modifier 1 Population Amount := 99
Pop Modifier 1 Production Modifier Percent := 100
Pop Modifier 1 SY Rate Modifier Percent := 100
<snip>
Pop Modifier 11 Population Amount := 9999
Pop Modifier 11 Production Modifier Percent := 190
Pop Modifier 11 SY Rate Modifier Percent := 190
Pop Modifier 12 Population Amount := 19999
Pop Modifier 12 Production Modifier Percent := 200
Pop Modifier 12 SY Rate Modifier Percent := 200

Hope this helps make your sphereworlds worth the effort...

[This message has been edited by DirectorTsaarx (edited 29 December 2000).]

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

Thanks for the info very interesting. However even with your change since both the ringworlds and sphereworlds can hold over 20B I still see no reason to ever build a sphereworld. There are more facilities allowed but since you can only build one a turn and rings have 100 thus well over 100 turns to fill it up I doubt you would ever get the extra production back that a sphereworld costs. Even setting another breakpoint over 32B wouldn't help much if the bonus was only 10 percent over a ringworld.

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

Not to mention that for the cost of a sphere you could nearly build 2 ringworlds and get the 200 percent production bonus twice instead of once. Another point however it would seem to me that in a large multiplayer game you would probably need to play with finite resources to make the game of managable length. How does finite resources effect the ring and sphereworlds?

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

Well, I build ringworlds as the ultimate defense against people detonating my stars. I don't give a darn about their production or population, but it's incredibly difficult to survive the reqired one round of combat against the volume of fighters and weapon platforms I can stick on a ringworld. In my games I bump into the 2000 unit in space limit a lot because I over deploy mines. And I do play against humans so stellar bombs get used. Stick satelites in orbit of the star and he just waits for the 30 turns to end, then kills the system. But with a ringworld, he's toast and my stars are safe.

I'm about to test an old strategy I used to use when my friends and I would play for points in Finite resource games: Blow up all non-huge worlds and rebuild them as huge. I'm wondering if this resets the resource limit on the world. While I'm at it, I'll test to see what the resources of ring and sphere worlds are in finite games. I'll have the data for you on Monday if no one else does it sooner (I don't have a connection over the weekend).

Also, if you're playing for points, and not just to win, sphere's are worth building.

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

I would be very interested in knowing about the resources. I bet in finite resource games there is a limit set for the system at the beginning of the game based on how much each planet starts with. Otherwise you could just keep blowing up planets to get more resources. If so this could make a big difference in a game in which the system the ringworld was built in had no planets of it's own before. There is a stellar manipulation shield that could be placed in a system and would stop people from blowing up your sun. This would be much cheaper than a ringworld. Of course they could still destroy the planet and thus the shield too. You could build more than one tho and they wouldn't know exactly which planet it was on in a multiplanet system. You would also have alot of response time do to their search and wasted efforts on the sun.

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

I am not sure how a ringworld could be a very effective defense considering the time it takes to build it. It certainly couldn't be built on the front line of a war. I would use cloak or suicide ships to keep checking your systems for ringworld construction then wait till right before it was done and waste all those bases with no defenses on them and or all the shipyard ships or take out the ringworld before you could put defenses up on it. Also perhaps capturing the world myself after you spent all the resources building it. I am also not sure how the points are calculated exactly but I doubt the sphereworld would be worth more points than the number of ships you could build with the same amount of resources. Unless of course you had the ship limit to worry about. But if you had 2000 ships I doubt you would worry about it too much.<G>

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

Ring worlds are awesome monsters and have enormous growth potential - once you get a decent population going , the population explodes and they grow at an amazing rate. All resources available are 150% and conditions are optimal. In one game my opponent built 3 of them. They were expensive to build but once he had one up and running- he could easily afford to build the others.

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

Speaking of ringworlds has anyone built a RW in 8-9 turns (not counting the construction time for the 11 space yard ships) without custom techs? I have http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif, and here is how I did it:

1) Create a starbase design with one Master Computer component and say 3 colonization modules, lets call it SB1.

2) Start building 11 of those around a star, @ emergancy rate (200%). It will cost you 3 x 4000pts/turn and be completed in about 4 turns IIRC.

...4 turns later...

3) Create a new starbase design that is as close to 50% more expensive than the SB1 design, lets call it SB2. Now create another SB design that's 50% more expensive than SB2... continue to do this until you have SB? that costs 2/3 of a "Ringworld SB", lets call it SB10.

4) In the same turn; pick one of your SB1:s and uppgrade it to a SB2, then uppgrade it to a SB3 and so on, all the way upp to SB10. Uppgrade SB10 to a "Ringworld SB".
Do the same procedure with the remaning 10 SB1:s, but stop at the SB? that cost 2/3 of a "Hyper - Density SB"/"Planetary Gravity SB". Then uppgrade 5 of those to "Hyper - Density SB":s and 5 to "Planetary Gravity SB":s.

5) Click next turn.

...1 turn later...

6) All the components that you need to create a ringworld are in place! Create the RW!

IIRC, it takes another turn for the RW to appear, or am I mistaken? Who cares. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Theoretically you could construct a ringworld in X + 1 (or X + 2) turns, where X is the number of turns it takes to build the SB1:s. So in the example above it would take 5 to 6 turns.
In my case it took 8 or 9 turns because I had not build up my organics and radioactives industry enough, so I had to wait a few extra turns to uppgrade all of my SBs. Needless to say this procedure uses up A-L-O-T of resources, but I never said it would be cheap, just faster. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

Yeah they are awesome all right but right before you get the ringworld tech you get the tech to change all the planets into your atmosphere which if you have any decent number of planets going would give you so much population that it wouldn't freaking matter anymore. Not to mention the increase in resources. I never said the ringworlds weren't good I just said they were impractical for a serious war and are really only good for show. They just show up too late in the game and cost far too much research and resources to be worth it.

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

How much anybody would care how many turns it took you can also be a formula. X+Y-1 Where X is how totally useless and impractical what you did was. Which in this case is near optimum. Where Y is the amount of over enthusiasm you showed for this useless and meaningless effort which was also extreme. Minus 1 is the amount your intelligence is below the sum in order for you to actually think it mattered enough to post it.

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

What's your problem, Kagetora? Joda (politely) posted an interesting way to speed-build a ringworld, and you needlessly flame him for it?

Your other Posts (and everyone else's) in this thread are all nice discussion of the game. I don't see why any flames were called for here. Grow up.

Anyway, thanks, Joda - I thought it was an interesting and worthwhile post.

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

I'm now past 1600 turns on my first SE IV 1.19 game (continued after the tutorial). I own just two adjacent systems (which I have closed all access to), completed my research tree, and have built two sphereworlds. I'm in the process of completing facility construction on them, as well as building a huge fleet. I have no idea what size of map I'm playing in, but with the resources of these two sphereworlds at my disposal, I will be unstoppable once I reopen the warp points. It took me less than 60 turns to build one (that may seem like forever, put I like long term games). I love this game! (if they fix the resource check bug, I will love it even more)

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Joda:
In my case it took 8 or 9 turns because I had not build up my organics and radioactives industry enough, so I had to wait a few extra turns to uppgrade all of my SBs. Needless to say this procedure uses up A-L-O-T of resources, but I never said it would be cheap, just faster. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


Good comments.. cheesy, but good despite kagetora's harsh attitude. I was working on a similar idea, but I try to plan everything arround a simultanious turn game, where this wont work. you end up adding an extra turn for every upgrade step you have to do, so it is only practical to do one or two upgrade steps (which in turn means a more expensive initial SB design, i was thinking of using stellar manipulation components to up the cost). the good thing is, you can emergency build the heck out of the first design, because even if your construction ships are stuck in slow build for the upgrade turns, it does not delay the construction time.

alright, its cheesy and abusive. no i dont do things like that in multiplayer, no i dont cheat all the time, yes i like a challenge. flame me with that planetary napalm, my speed built RWs give me enough surplus population that I dont have to care..

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

To Nyx: Your old strategy of blowing up non-huge worlds and remaking them as huge no longer works. The planet generator in 1.19 (and the earlier 1.11 Versions) generates planet sizes based on the asteroid field's size it is constructed from. Hence a small asteroid field will only create a small world.

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

To Director Tsaarx: When making changes to population modifiers in the settings.txt file, the Last modification must be unobtainable (hence the reason the original had the population set at 200,000,000) or once you have obtained the Last modifer's population setting you will lose any modifier obtained. Your change of the population to 19,999 will mean that once a planet reaches 20,000 and triggers the Last modifier, it will not show bonuses of 200% as one would think, but in fact shows no bonuses for population size at all. Must be something in the coding.

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Kagetora:
...looking for information and strategy that will allow us to play fairly and without exploiting the system against the AI and more importantly against humans in multiplayer. Not only did his post nor yours for that matter do this but now the programmers will have to fix this exploit. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

sigh.. i should not bite on this, but.. lots of strategies get posted for this game. using retrofits is about as much cheating as using minefields that the AI cant use well. its about as much cheating as using ECM that is bugged and the AI cant use. its about as bad as applying the mine laying patch to allow minelayers to drop more than one per turn. its as bad as using tactical combat and taking advantage of stratagies that the AI cant use. its almost as bad as the people that like to use transports to deploy sats as a portable weapon pod against the AI early in the game, when it obviously does not work against humans quite as well.

hopefully people can exercise some restraint and good judgement when playing multiplayer games, and if not, hopefully people are bright enough to play with people they get along with.

there are lots of ideas bouncing around and this board is full of different ways to play the game. not everybody likes every way, but there is plenty for everyone to choose from and enhance their own playstyle. thanks for censoring an open forum, the internet is all about one person telling everyone else what is safe to read and think and do, glad you could jump in and help us there.

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

lol - pre-pubescent? I'm probably close to twice your age. You make an issue of maturity, but you're the only one flinging insults around.

Let me add a few things to Puke's fine response...

If I wanted to "cheat", I'd turn on the cheat codes.

Things that take advantage of flaws in the games' design and regularly brought up and discussed on this board. Many of them might be considered abusive, but it is valuable discussion, since it brings awareness (and possibly leads to improvements in the game).
Why is awareness of these things good? Because what seems like a horrible exploit to you might seem like a reasonable feature to someone else. (Calm) discussion and awareness allow players to decide on what the accetable behavior/tactics are in their games together.

I also want to point out that Joda's trick is hardly a game breaker. As you yourself point out in your Posts, the reasearch and material costs of ring/sphere worlds makes them completely prohibitive in a close game. Joda's trick speeds up the construction process, but makes the already ungodly expensive proceess ****EVEN MORE EXPENSIVE****. That'll certainly be a critical edge to help you win games. NOT.

Lastly, in your original flame post, you never once mentioned WHY you were flaming Joda - just that his post was worthless and he was an idiot. I don't play multiplayer SEIV an never will - your cheating issue never occured to me. If you had remained calm and just stated why you felt as you did, I wouldn't have jumped in and maybe might have sympathized a bit.

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

Lintman, I will tell you what my problem is. It is pre pubescent little idiots like you that spend more time trying to figure out how to cheat than to play the game correctly. That spend more time bragging about doing something totally useless and pointless in a game situation just because you think it is cool or something. Well I personally and I don't think I am a minority in this are looking for information and strategy that will allow us to play fairly and without exploiting the system against the AI and more importantly against humans in multiplayer. Not only did his post nor yours for that matter do this but now the programmers will have to fix this exploit. Which these guys seem like they will keep up on but I have seen other games in which such exploits were never fixed and totally ruined multiplayer. Which would not matter in the slightest if idiots didn't spend their time looking for them and posting them in the first place.

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

Well, I think thats a really interesting procedure myself. I also think that it is something that should not be able to be done. I am not saying that you should not be able to retrofit your way to a ring/sphere world, or anything else for that matter, that is perfectly logical and feasible.
However, the real problem here is that retrofits are instantaneous. With retrofits, you can produce components with more total cost than a shipyard can actually produce in one turn. I think that retrofitting a vessel should take time, not be instantaneous. Perhaps that time should be based on the time it takes to make those new components or the difference of cost between the old components and the new components.
Either way, retrofitting should just not be instantaneous, especially if its a starbase undergoing a massive retrofit or something. If some sort of system were put into place that cost more time for bigger refits, then sphere/ring worlds and other things could not be built faster than normal.

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by apache:
Well, I think thats a really interesting procedure myself. I also think that it is something that should not be able to be done. I am not saying that you should not be able to retrofit your way to a ring/sphere world, or anything else for that matter, that is perfectly logical and feasible.
However, the real problem here is that retrofits are instantaneous. With retrofits, you can produce components with more total cost than a shipyard can actually produce in one turn. I think that retrofitting a vessel should take time, not be instantaneous. Perhaps that time should be based on the time it takes to make those new components or the difference of cost between the old components and the new components.
Either way, retrofitting should just not be instantaneous, especially if its a starbase undergoing a massive retrofit or something. If some sort of system were put into place that cost more time for bigger refits, then sphere/ring worlds and other things could not be built faster than normal. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I think a simple and reasonable fix would be for retrofits to be limited to one per turn for a given ship/base, which is apparently how it already works in simultaneous turn mode. Then you couldn't build a cheapie ship or base and then go through 20 upgrades in a single turn to super quickly make an expensive ship or base. You'd probably still might be able to make it a bit faster than normal with retrofits, but you'd have to start with a more expensive (and longer to build) ship to minmize the number of turns you spend upgrading, so it wouldn't be a big advantage.

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

I totaly agree that this kind of procedure should not be possible, and that it should take longer to retrofit a ship.
I would never use this method to cheat against a human or AI player, since that would make a possible victory less sweet. My reason for using this procedure was that in the game I was playing I was already winning (had accidently missed setting the AIs to max. difficluty http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon9.gif) and I wanted to se what a RW looked like before terminating the game. As LintMan pointed out, this method is ****EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE**** and I would not be able to afford this unless I already had conquerd many of my AI neighbours and taking their worlds, or by first growing that big by my self. But in the time it takes to grow THAT big you can construct mayby 2-3 ringwords the right way, so I would NOT call this cheating.
Mayby my original post is usless because of the extreeme cost of the procedure, but I thought mayby someone else in an similar situation just wanted to see that next level of technology implemented before playing a _real_ game. Anyway it has been posted, use it or don't, and if you do, let your own conscience (or the rules by wich you and your fellow gamers play) guide you.

Kagetora, I sense much anger in you, and anger leads to the dark side,
and the DARK SIDE leads to suffering. (sorry, I could not resist) http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon12.gif
I also respect your stand in this matter but there is no need for harsh words.

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

Beck:

Thanks for the info; I hadn't reached that population level yet (obviously), so I hadn't discovered the bug. What a pain. I'll send in to MM. They're almost off holiday now...

Maybe they just don't like the 200% production bonus? Or maybe one could add an extra level (the 13th), set to 200B population and 210% bonus... hmmmm....

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

Lintman you are not twice as old as me unless you happen to be 80. In any event exploits like this could hurt in a multiplayer situation. If I don't know about such an exploit and by using intelligence or ships I discover the ringworld being built and I plan an assault against it based on the time is should take to build it and some exploit makes my plans wrong. I could lose whole assault fleets attacking. Just because it is very expensive doesn't mean somebody won't do it and as all exploits do they will aid the foolish in beating those that are clever. You can't make proper strategy unless things are both consistant and known by you.

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

Off the subject, but...
I thought Joda's post was excellent (and hilarious). That's exactly the sort of loophole that needs to be exposed publicly. It will generate good debate about how upgrades are handled. Personally, I don't like the current limit based on comparative cost. It seems very artificial. Why can't I pull out cruddy old level one DUCs, and replace them with my latest expensive superweapons, as long as they're also direct fire and the same size? That should be easier than replacing them with storage or engines or even missiles. In Tina Turner's words, "What's [comparative cost] got to do with it?" So I definitely WILL use Joda's idea, for all my upgrade needs. (But only when playing against AIs and like-minded humans, or when I might lose. HeHeHe!)

While I'm ranting, the construction system is also very artificial. The limit of one spaceyard per planet is a good example. Only allowing one project in a planetary build queue is another example. Spaceyards should have their own queues. Requiring a minimum of one turn per facility is another example. It is bizarre that a world with 8 B will take as long to build a farm as a world with 1 M. Facility construction should be like unit construction. Actually, ship construction should also be like unit construction! Or, more simply, apply unused "construction points" to the next item in the queue, just like the research queue.

OK, the ranting is over. I will regain my composure by reciting the mantra: Flawed but still fun. Flawed but still fun. Flawed but still fun. OMMMMH!

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by dmm:
Why can't I pull out cruddy old level one DUCs, and replace them with my latest expensive superweapons, as long as they're also direct fire and the same size?

the construction system is also very artificial. The limit of one spaceyard per planet is a good example. Only allowing one project in a planetary build queue is another example. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

wow, I think you just sparked two really good and easy to implement solutions to two long standing problems. The game is setup to recognize things as being from one Category or another, which is how it is able to summarize things into the 'show only latest' views. easy answer, allow any size of upgrade, but only allow upgrading components within the same family. (weapons for weapons, shields for shields, etc).

and the construction queues, holy cow that irks me. they say its just to hard to implement interface-wise. bull-pucky. put on a 'divide points evenly' button and there you go. make it just like research or intel, the code is obviously there. and there was a bug (feature, if ya ask me) in the demo where you could build multiple construction yards on a planet and get increased points (no multiple queues, jut the points) from them. build 3 construction yards on a world, and have them divide points between 4 different projects. If it seems to abuseable, maybe adding multiple construction yards will give diminishing returns (X-(#of yards)% increase rather than a flat +X construction points)

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

I forgot to add that I also think that one should be able to have multiple shipyards at a planet all work together on the same massive project. So rather than giving each shipyard its own queue, give each planet a "shipyard queue" with construction points depending on # and type of shipyards and on population. Also give each planet a "facility queue" and a "unit queue" with their own construction points. Each of these planetary queues would work exactly like the empire-wide research queue. A planet's population would get spread among the 3 queues and facilities, and population bonuses should be awarded based on the number of people on a job, not just on overall population. So your research and resource production bonuses would go down if you had people working on construction projects. And, conversely, you could increase your construction bonuses by turning off facilities. (OK, that's a little artificial too, because people aren't instantly interchangeable [Hello, corporate executives, did you catch that?], but it is better than the current system.)

Does this make sense to anyone else?

[This message has been edited by dmm (edited 02 January 2001).]

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

Well of course a whole planet only being able to build one thing at a time is artificial. However as with any game it doesn't matter so much what is realistic it matters what is playable and fun. It might be more realistic to have to have 20 elements and combine those all into alloys and then those into components but then we would be playing a ship building game and not a space 4X game. The limits in the game now are arbitrary but necessary for playability. If you can build alot in one place it benefits you more to have a few good planets than alot and makes expansion less necessary.

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Kagetora:
Lintman you are not twice as old as me unless you happen to be 80. In any event exploits like this could hurt in a multiplayer situation. If I don't know about such an exploit and by using intelligence or ships I discover the ringworld being built and I plan an assault against it based on the time is should take to build it and some exploit makes my plans wrong. I could lose whole assault fleets attacking. Just because it is very expensive doesn't mean somebody won't do it and as all exploits do they will aid the foolish in beating those that are clever. You can't make proper strategy unless things are both consistant and known by you. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Heh - fortunately I'm not 80 years old! (I was just guessing based on the average age of gamers I see on the net).

To clarify: my point about the ringworld speedup being extra expensive was that in a close game all those resources and production capacity you might use to build that ringworld would instead be better used to build an incredibly massive fleet that would annihilate your enemy. As they are now, ringworlds and sphereworlds seem to be in almost all cases, completely impractical to ever build, unless victory is assured and you just want to build them for the heck of it. Speeding up their construction just doesn't seem like it would ever matter in a real game.

I really do sympathize with your concerns about multiplayer cheats. I play an Online FPS called TFC where you play on public servers and have little control over who you play with, and cheating is a major concern there as well.

At one point, there was discovered a method in TFC to do a "quickdet" which gave certain players an advantage. It was mostly unknown for a very long time, (with the developer not reacting to reports of the method), but some players had discovered and used it from the beginning, while others were completely unaware and so were at a big disadvantage. Then the method was exposed, and the community was able to debate on it and was pretty split. About half thought it was fair, and about half thought it was an abuse. (In the quickdet case there are valid arguments for both sides).

While quickdet went into widespread use after that, at least everyone was on level ground that everyone knew about it, and people knew what to look for if someone was using it. That let the assorted leagues rule on its legality (most leagues allowed it) but allowed other leagues and servers to disallow and sanction those that used it there. (Eventually the developers issued a patch that removed the quickdet ability, deciding the issue for good.)

Anyway, my point is that with widespread knowledge of the quickdet method, players could then adjust their play to expect it, or could seek out players and leagues that rejected it.

Above, you say "You can't make proper strategy unless things are both consistant and known by you.". I totally agree, which is why I think exposure of these abuses is better. I'd rather know about a possible abuse that could be used against me, and so be able to look for it/prepare against it, than be surprised by it by a player who got it off some "cheats" web site.

Blah blah blah - enough yapping from me!

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Kagetora:
The limits in the game now are arbitrary but necessary for playability. If you can build alot in one place it benefits you more to have a few good planets than alot and makes expansion less necessary. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I hear what you're saying, but my suggested scheme wouldn't allow you to build a lot in one place unless you also had a ton of population. The way things are now, an airless moon is almost as "powerful" as a homeworld, in terms of building fleets. That takes away a lot of the strategic importance of homeworlds, and of population-building techs. Also, the way things are now, two airless moons with 10M pop are better for rapid expansion/conquest than a single huge planet with breathable atmosphere and 8B pop. At this point, expansion isn't just important, it is the ONLY important thing, and there's not much strategy to it. One planet's as good as another, if you're only after a forward construction base. But that's bogus. Life on an airless, poorly-populated moon should be HARD, and progress should be SLOW. Planets capable of supporting large pops should be jewels worth going to war over.

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

Dmm, Perhaps adding production penalties for colonies with populations below 100M, and more severely limiting the populations of domed colonies would solve the problem? If a domed colony could only hold 1/10 of an outdoor colony, instead of 1/5, a tiny world could only support 10M people. Any reasonable scheme of penalties would be harsh at a pop level of 10M if it took 100M to be 100%. Also, adding a conditions level of Deadly, that only occurs on worlds without your native atmosphere type should help some.

The 1/10 probably isn't balanced right, but the idea itself should be sound.

------------------
Compete in the Space Empires IV World Championship at www.twingalaxies.com.

[This message has been edited by Nyx (edited 03 January 2001).]

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

Lintman, Yes I have had some experience with such things I played Heroes of might and magic 3 Online for a short time but there was an exploit that you could obtain hordes of low level creatures rather cheaply and thusly everybody wanted to only play that type character which ruined things and some people considered it a viable strategy because it was in the game even tho any idiot could easily realize it wasn't fair or otherwise they wouldn't have been doing it in the first place. I played a few games and everytime somebody showed up with a horde of gremlins I would just disconnect. However, this was a big waste of time and very unsatisfying. Anyway whether the exploit is good to know about or not depends alot on what the exploit is. It matters alot whether you are the type to make use of it yourself. I would use an exploit if I felt it was within the game design but just obscure knowledge. I would not if I felt it was totally contrary to the intent of the game. This is mostly something that bypasses an obvious limit in the game. It also might be a exploit in which I might not want to use it but feel obliged to in order to compete too. However, an exploit such as was posted here is none of those. I would not and could not base an attack on the faster production speed with a backup in case the person is playing properly. I would have to play and assume that the ringworld was being built properly and would just get burned if it wasn't whether I know about it or not.

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

dmm, I understand what you are saying and this game is quite different from most others in that regard. All games I have played before of this type have very few good planets and the same planets are good for everybody usually too. So you fight over them early and often. In this game not only can a planet that is great for your neighbor be worthless for you but you can with time make nearly any planet good. However, I have always felt that games of this type put too much emphasis on population. How many people on the earth would actually board a spaceship and go to another planet and face the dangers and start civilization from scratch with next to nothing. Not many, certainly not millions. If you have a shipyard and newport news has maybe 40,000 workers. Bath iron works has maybe 30,000. This isn't even granting the increase in automation and with this small number of population you can build as many ships as you want. It doesn't take alot. The way this game is setup for production is rather unusual. But I used to play games and if there wasn't a good planet in the direction of the enemy that basically caved that front in. At least here you can always put up a fight regardless of the map.

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

As an aside, the Heroes of Might and Magic III exploit was eventually eliminated by the developers.

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Cheers!
Jeff George

Re: Ring and Sphereworlds
 

As far as only being able to come up with a strategy if everything is constant.. that's what adaptation is for. This technique is abusive, definitely, but it is also so prohibitive that it shouldn't happen often at all (which gives you at least some sort of idea on the possibility if you were debating attacking). And if you did attack, and all of a sudden the planet was completed? Well, this is the type of surprise decoy military strategists have been fighting for decades.

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Harkonis HellRazor