Stellar manip and movement in simultaneous game

[douglas]

The information on when stellar manipulation happens currently in the FAQ is incorrect. I have tested it pretty thoroughly and posted my results in the Updated the FAQ thread a little while back. Here are the most relevant parts to this discussion:

douglas said:
A ship's ID number is a unique identifier assigned to ships when they are built. It is not visible to the player. The first available ID is the one assigned. When a ship is destroyed, its ID becomes available again.

Within each day in a turn's movement, ships move in order by ID number. This matters for certain stellar manipulations, seek after orders, and minesweeping. Fleets move all at once when their lowest-ID ship moves.

Stellar manipulation: Whether trying to open a warp point and go through it at exactly the same time works or not depends on whether the warp opener has a lower ID than the moving ship. Also, destroying and recreating a planet in one turn with two different ships requires that the create order be executed either on a later day or on the same day by a ship with a higher ID.

Now for a way to make all this information actually useful: Ships are sorted in the fleet transfer screen by ID number, lowest ID at the top. This sort order is in effect both in the list of ships not in fleets and within each fleet. The order of the fleets is by fleet ID, which is used for nothing else that I can tell, except the order fleets are displayed in the ships screen (F6). The order ships are gone through by the "Next ship" operation, typically accessed by the space bar hotkey, is also by ship ID. Unfortunately, this order is cyclical and your current position in it appears to be stored in the savegame, even through turn execution. Of course, you could try building an escort on turn 1 specifically to keep it around forever as your known lowest-ID ship, but this isn't guaranteed to work perfectly unless you're player 1 - anything players before you build on turn one will have a lower ID, which could possibly be freed later and taken up by another one of your ships.

douglas said:
Another kind of stellar manipulation where ship ID can matter: star destruction/nebula creation/black hole creation. A ship moving on the same day as the scheduled mass destruction order has two possible options if it has a lower ID than the stellar manipulation ship. First, if it is on a warp point, it can warp to safety an instant before the superweapon goes off. Second, if it is one sector away from the stellar manipulation ship, it can move there and prevent the ship from doing anything, provided that you do not have a non-aggression or higher treaty with the owner of the stellar manipulation ship. If it has a higher ID than the stellar manip ship, it can't do anything but wait to die.

All orders that do not spend movement points happen just before the ship's next move action. This means that if a ship runs out of movement with a stellar manipulation or load/drop or similar order at the top of the queue, that order will not be executed until its first movement of the next turn.

[geoschmo]

Douglas, that's a lot of good information. Assuming it is all correct though it doesn't explain the situation that happened here. In this case the star destroyer was faster than the ships sitting on the warp point, so it should have destructed on an earlier day than the fleeing ships moved and Ship ID shouldn't have been a factor.

[douglas]

Unless I missed something, all ships involved are reported as moving at speeds from 10 to 18, and the movements in question were all the very first movement of the turn for each ship. Speeds 10 through 18 all get their first movement on day 2, so all movement happened on the same day (day 2) and ship ID determined order.

Edit: The statement about speed 18 getting its first move on day 2 assumes that such a high speed was attained by emergency propulsion, which doesn't kick in until the ship gets its first movement at normal speed and executes the use component order. If a mod allows building ships with a normal movement rate of 18, such a ship would move on day 1.

[geoschmo]

Why would a ship with a speed of 10 get to move on day 2? Oh wait. Day zero is the first day. Is that it?

In this particular case the star destroyer had a potential move of 18, but as you say five of that was emergency propulsion. I'll assume you are correct about the way emergency propulsion delays to the first normal day of movement, you've been right about everything else. But in this case it doesn't really matter because the emergency propulsion comp had been expended already on a previous turn. So the fastest that ship was going to move on this turn was 13.

But shouldn't a ship with move of 13 still move the day before (on day 1, the second day) the ship with move of 10 (On day 2, the third day)?

EDIT: I can confirm through testing you are correct. Speed 10 ships and speed 13 ships both move on day 2. And speed 18 ships move on day 1. I just don't understand it completely.

So here we have found a concrete and significant reason to hang on to those old early game escorts and frigates. Retrofit them with the fastest engines you can and stick them in your important fleets so they will have a chance to escape the star destroyer traps late in the game.

The gamey part here really isn't that some fleets can escape, it's that only those with an arbitraty lower ID# ship in them can. It's actually not all that extraordinary to think a fleet sitting on a warp point at the periphery of a system could escape being caught in the blast of the sun blowing up.

[Joachim]

geoschmo said:
The gamey part here really isn't that some fleets can escape, it's that only those with an arbitraty lower ID# ship in them can. It's actually not all that extraordinary to think a fleet sitting on a warp point at the periphery of a system could escape being caught in the blast of the sun blowing up.

Gamey is one way of phrasing it. It is a clear and problematic bug, it is the same as the old firing by player number problem.

As for "escaping" the supernova, unlikely, it blasts out at the speed of light.

[Spoo]

Joachim said:
As for "escaping" the supernova, unlikely, it blasts out at the speed of light.

No it doesn't. Fast, yes, but not light speed.

EDIT: Although there would be a component of gamma rays that wouldn't be too nice.

[geoschmo]

Joachim said:
As for "escaping" the supernova, unlikely, it blasts out at the speed of light.

Well, we are getting into a discussion about what it realistic or not in game terms, which is problematic. But if you assume that the warp points are at least as far from the sun as Pluto then even traveling at light speed the shockwave would take over 5 hours to reach the warp point. It's not unreasonable to say that it wouldn't take that long for a fleet to enter a warp point.

[Joachim]

geoschmo said:

Well, we are getting into a discussion about what it realistic or not in game terms, which is problematic. But if you assume that the warp points are at least as far from the sun as Pluto then even traveling at light speed the shockwave would take over 5 hours to reach the warp point. It's not unreasonable to say that it wouldn't take that long for a fleet to enter a warp point.

Yep, lets stay on topic.

The ship in the example was a very early build, but I assume that the escaping fleet must have had a ship built earlier? Does this mean we should keep our earliest ships and retro them up to stay with our important fleets so that the entire fleet moves first on in that critical second day everyone moves stage?

[Slick]

I wonder if retrofitting changes the ship's ID.

[ToddT]

ok after blowinig up about a 4 suns. ship id# is key, and since i know the ship joachim used was origially built before most if not all ships in the event in question, by both parties, retrofitting changes ship id#
so if its any consolation Joachim, i would have the same problem, though in this case i had reason to believe i could escape, hence the email mentioning i thougt you where bluffing, how was i to know you were not aware of id thing i didn't.