Are you tough enough to be the "King of the Hill"?

[David E. Gervais]

Narf vs AvatarMan:

Wow about this setup narf?

Se4:Gold Unmodded v1.84
Quadrant type: Mid-Life
Quadrant size: Medium
Event frequency: None/low
Technology cost: Medium, allowed (default)
Starting resources: Medium
Planet value: Good
Number of planets: 1
Racial Points: Medium (3000)

Game Conditions: Ancient Race NOT allowed.

If you agree to this, I'll send a copy of this info to Asmala.

Btw Narf, Asmala will set all this up, all we need to do is create our empire and upload it to the PBW site. (remember when you create your empire do not take the ancient race Advanced trait.)

Cheers!

[primitive]

To Mouse and (Avatar)Man:

Just a bit of advise.
Midlife gives a high probability of a very unballanced game. I would recomend either a "Tesco" map (fixed maps with preset starting positions) or the KOTH standard; a small Spiral map (which usually prevents beeing blocked into a few systems by providing a back door).

[David E. Gervais]

Thanks for the advice Primitive,

So the starting info now looks like this..

Narf vs AvatarMan:

Se4:Gold Unmodded v1.84
Quadrant type: KotH Standard
Quadrant size: KotH Standard
Event frequency: None/low
Technology cost: Medium, allowed (default)
Starting resources: Medium
Planet value: Good
Number of planets: 1
Racial Points: Medium (3000)

Game Conditions: Ancient Race NOT allowed.

Cheers!

P.S. Or if you prefer to try the 'tesco' preset map, I'm ok with that too. (It's all new to us either way right?)

[ February 01, 2004, 10:44: Message edited by: David E. Gervais ]

[Asmala]

Unfair maps are nasty, as too many have experienced. I wonder if it's possible to make a mod which generates as fair maps as possible. I don't know how much can be done but even removing black holes would help a little. Of course removing map aspects aren't always a good idea.

Mirror maps would be another solution to unfair map problem. Baron Grazic has make one but we'd need a lot of them to Koth games and I think they are a way too hard to make. Mirror maps would also remove some aspects of the game.

What you guys think? Is it possible to make such mod?

[Slynky]

Originally posted by Asmala:
Unfair maps are nasty, as too many have experienced. I wonder if it's possible to make a mod which generates as fair maps as possible. I don't know how much can be done but even removing black holes would help a little. Of course removing map aspects aren't always a good idea.

Mirror maps would be another solution to unfair map problem. Baron Grazic has make one but we'd need a lot of them to Koth games and I think they are a way too hard to make. Mirror maps would also remove some aspects of the game.

What you guys think? Is it possible to make such mod?

The one the Baron made looks playable. And there was another one in a link (I didn't look at). Also, there is the patch coming out that is supposed to help the "evenly spaced" problem. But I don't know about a mod that can help.

[geoschmo]

You could mod out black holes, although I am not sure that's going to help much. I think those systmes are basically neutral. Some times they will actually help a player in a weaker position to defend his space.

However, one thing that makes maps uneven is when one player gets several habitable systems close to his home, and the other players is surounded by dead ones. So from that respect it's probably helpful to remove them.

You could design a modified quadrant that has only Standard type systems. You could also make it a little heavier on the warp points then a normal stock map, to make it harder to grab the choke points and bottle up a player.

As a matter of fact, their may be a map type like this in the FQM mod.

What you can't do is prevent the clunky way the game sometimes places empires, putting one guy in the middle and one in a corner, or two empires next door to each other. That's a code issue. As Slynky says he's working on it for the next patch.

[ February 02, 2004, 11:26: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Originally posted by David E. Gervais:
Thanks for the advice Primitive,

So the starting info now looks like this..

Narf vs AvatarMan:

Se4:Gold Unmodded v1.84
Quadrant type: KotH Standard
Quadrant size: KotH Standard
Event frequency: None/low
Technology cost: Medium, allowed (default)
Starting resources: Medium
Planet value: Good
Number of planets: 1
Racial Points: Medium (3000)

Game Conditions: Ancient Race NOT allowed.

Cheers!

P.S. Or if you prefer to try the 'tesco' preset map, I'm ok with that too. (It's all new to us either way right?)

sounds good, but i would also add, event severity low.

might have more to say once my brain has booted.

[Asmala]

Thanks for comments. The player placement isn't a big problem since I can set the starting positions manually. But if a player has a huge breathable or even more in his homesystem and the other player has nebulas around his homesystem, the result of the game is quite predictable.

FQM maps might be good for Koth games. There is so many planets that the luck plays a lesser role. One thing I don't like in FQM maps is the vast amount of asteroids. It's pretty easy to build a planet creator and after that normal planets are almost worthless because asteroids have resource values of 200%-300%. Of course I could mod the FQM and remove those asteroids.

Too bad there is too many colony/atmosphere combinations that you can't make systems almost equal to all players...Just get an idea: Perhaps the map could be balanced for two planet types. I mean that for example every system has equal amount of facility space for rock/oxygen and gas giant/methane players. I have never made a mod so I don't know whether this is possible.

Comments?

[geoschmo]

I made a quadrant type/system type combo that attempted to balance the available facility spots for every atmosphere/planet type. Basically it comes down to not too complicated algebraic formula and finding the least common denominator.

It is possible to have completely balanced systems, however, what I found was that you ended up with a gawd-aweful large number of planets in every system. IIRC like 40 or so, but I'll have ot dig it out to be sure. As a compromise what I did was have like 5 different system types, all with a equal chance of being used in the quadrant. Assuming an equal spread of the system types being used, you would have an equal number of facility spots quadrant wide. But because of random placement you would have a little bit of a range of values for any specific starting system. And the systems had a more reasonable numebr of planets.

What you could do pretty easily is limit the players to a few different atmosphere/planet types. You could then have completely balanced systems with a reasonable number of planets per system.

I'll dig out my files and post them in the next day or so. Actually Fyron might have put a modified form of it in the FQM deluxe mod, but again I can't remember for sure.
We talked about it, bu i don't remember if he decided to or not.

Geoschmo

[Renegade 13]

Could someone please tell me how I can join the KOTH league? Any help would be appreciated.