Some remark from a stars! player

[LGM]

Different game parameters will make weapons more or less useful. Many people consider weapons based on (Damage /Mineral Cost / KT) and what they can skip (shields and/or armor). However, if you have a small ship limit (200-300), then cost matters little once you get an established empire and you are more concerned how much damage you can pack into each kiloton (maximize Damage / KT).

I have heard many complain about the inability to build one ship and carry over left over capacity to the next ship. I have intentially left one piece of armor or one weapon off a ship, just to get its cost to be one turn less. Of course, these boundaries ship when you add population bonuses or improve you shipyards. I too would like to see that changed.

----
Stars has its problems as well. In stars, you target enemy fleets, not individual ships. This causes all kinds of Fleet Spliting scenarios when trying to target something. Stars tracks damage in percent increments instead of damage points, so that the minimum damage you can do to a ship is .2% on a hit. In stars ships are maintenance free, so people just build ships until they run out of resources. In stars, the research tree is exhuasted in about 100-120 turns. In SEIV, you should have plenty to still research for another 100-200 turns. In Stars you avoid combat because there are few rewards. You want to save your resources to build the most Nubian later in the game. In stars, you cannot win with superior resources and inferior technology. In SEIV you can. You have many more ship strategies: Shooting, Capturing, Ramming. In stars you can shoot or run away. Running away in SEIV is difficult (many of complained about this), in Stars running away is easy in the early game and nearly impossible in the later game (Missles and Range 3 beams are yard to outrun since they get at least 3 shots at you with missles or 2 with beams).

[E. Albright]

quote:

---

Originally posted by DirectorTsaarx:
[...]
Carryover of production ability might be nice, but I have no idea how difficult it would be to program. Or what the effect would be on the AI's production ability.
[...]

---

[WILD_SPECULATION]
Weeell... If we assume that the AI is filling its build queue in a knapsack-esque fashion (w/ a scheme like "weight" = cost, "capacity" = time, and "value" = importance to the AI given the situation), than it seems like it ought to be trivial to convert the build queue to a fractional knapsack algorithm, which would solve the AI portion of this problem quite nicely. 'Course, that first assumption might be a bit of a tall order...
[/WILD_SPECULATION]

(Anyone care to guess who ought to be studying for an Analysis of Algorithms final instead of reading the forums?)

E. Albright

[EDIT: Corrected parameters ("weight", etc.) in my knapsack analogy / speculation / whatever. Hmm... If my initial post reflected my understanding of knapsack problems, I REALLY ought to be studying...]

[ 06 May 2002: Message edited by: ealbright ]

[capnq]

quote:

---

This headache is even worse, if you have fleets with 2 different movement rates, because then you have to calculate how to move them, to get them all to arrive in a combat sector within the proper combat phase window, where they will all fight at the same time!

---

It's much easier to just move the fleets to a rendezvous point, manually merge them into a single fleet, then proceed to the target.

But being able to order ships to move to join a fleet would be nice, too.

[ 07 May 2002: Message edited by: capnq ]

[Athena]

warning : Forget my clumsy english, I'm a foreigner.

I thank you all a lot for your detailled responses. This forum seem to be of a very high level regarding patience and proficiency.

I wont comment on stars! pro and con. Having been a fanatic of stars! I would be too partial, even if I recognize quite a lot of better features in SE IV.

There is only an answer I would comment, it's on the usefulness of all weapons. I think that even if you can mod it to your liking, I suppose that most of the players in PBEM/PBW will play with the official release to avoid endless discussions. So for a specific example, I would use the anti-matter torp line of weapons. Frankly how can you use this thing? This weapon is inferior in all other in all stats. I looked in the components.txt hopping for a hidden to hit bonus that will change my point of view, but no bonus either...

Ah also... I just forgot the main point. I have never been able to start preparing my PBEM turn save it and resume the planification afterward. I cant imagine that I must plan my turn in a single session really (stars! permit it yes .

Just tell me how you do !

thank you all for your input. I think I will stay a while in this forum ;o)

[Bman]

quote:

---

Originally posted by capnq:
It's much easier to just move the fleets to a rendezvous point, manually merge them into a single fleet, then proceed to the target.

But being able to order ships to move to join a fleet would be nice, too.

[ 07 May 2002: Message edited by: capnq ]

---

That requires an extra turn which you sometimes do not have.

[dogscoff]

quote:

---

Ah also... I just forgot the main point. I have never been able to start preparing my PBEM turn save it and resume the planification afterward. I cant imagine that I must plan my turn in a single session really (stars! permit it yes .

---

Sorry, you can't save your PBEM / PBW turn and play it in several sessions. You have to play it all at once and hit "end turn." This sucks, and you're not the first person to say so=-)

The good thing is, if you keep writing to Malfador, they might eventually include the change you want=-)

quote:

---

I'm a foreigner....

---

quote:

---

...planification...

---

Let me guess... French, right?

[Athena]

Me a French?? Why, no, I'm from Mount Olympus, Greece


Yes you're right. Don't blame me though, nobody is perfect

[Wardad]

I Wish I had known about STARS! years ago.
I played it recently while waiting for SE4 GOLD.
STARS! is a fun game. I Bet it was great Multiplayer.

I hope the sequal happens.

--------------------------------------------

UPGRADES HAPPEN

[PirateRob]

About Anti-Matter torps.. they have several advantages that might make them worthwhile with the right strategies.

1) They ARE direct fire weapons rather than seekers and have a high damage rating. (compared to other similar tech level DF weapons)

2) Because they are direct fire weapons, you can use the weapon "mounts" to greatly improve thier efficiency. A HEAVY Anti-Matter torp mount does 2x damage with only a 1.5x increase in size. Mounted on a base, the higher level torps have an amazing range and constant damage output over that range.

3) The Anti-matter torp (and the quantum torps later) fire every other round. This lowers thier damage over time rating to slighlty less than an equivalent beam weapon. HOWEVER, the fact that you can do a LOT more damage in that first strike CAN and DOES make a difference in battle. In the end game, using HUGE mount quantum torps, my Baseships can cripple or outright destroy enemy Baseships in that first barrage. A ship mounted with similar beam weapons would barely pierce the shields, allowing the enemy to shoot back. The weakness is that those baseships are practicaly helpless while they are reloading

In my opinion, the only better Direct Fire weapon in the game is the Wave Motion gun... Better for MASSIVE first strike potential that is.

Rob
(A fan of Anti-Matter Torps)

[Baron Munchausen]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Athena:

I thank you all a lot for your detailled responses. This forum seem to be of a very high level regarding patience and proficiency.

...

There is only an answer I would comment, it's on the usefulness of all weapons. I think that even if you can mod it to your liking, I suppose that most of the players in PBEM/PBW will play with the official release to avoid endless discussions. So for a specific example, I would use the anti-matter torp line of weapons. Frankly how can you use this thing? This weapon is inferior in all other in all stats. I looked in the components.txt hopping for a hidden to hit bonus that will change my point of view, but no bonus either...

---

This game, any 4X game, is a truly huge project. Yet, this one is the work of one person. Yes, Malfador Machinations is one programmer company. It's really too much for one person to design the game, write the code, and play balance the whole system. Fortunately, the game was designed to be easily customizable. So, we players have sort of formed an impromptu 'extension' of MM here and worked to play balance it for ourselves. The most active posters here are all tinkerers who are probably wannabe game programmers themselves. There are many problems in the original configuration of the game but we've often worked out fixes for them.

Regarding the problem with Torpedos, you have actually hit upon the solution that most of us agree is the best compromise. Most of the 'modifications' published will have a 'to hit' bonus for torpedos. There are other possible approaches to this problem if we could get MM to implement some code changes we have been asking for, but in the mean time this will have to do.