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Twelve Gates Summary Sat, 09 October 2004 21:36 Go to next message
donjon is currently offline donjon

 
Lt. Commander

Messages: 808
Registered: November 2002
Location: Benque Viejo del Carmen, ...

Well the dust has settled on the Twelve (Was Thirteen) Gates Game. Now the Guild has moved on and left the Kwie (aka Shadow Whist) as the maintainer of the gates of the universe.

And its time for the host to step back and analyse this game a bit.

The Setup

Taking a look at the announcement of gen start, Jan 10, and the announcement of the game going public, Jan 20. I see 11 days for the gen, that time is basically a blur for me.

I genned and regenned to get an appropriate seed for 3 days, Jan 13 is the creation date of the xy.

After that it took 204 years to get my gateworlds ready and chase the MT and get the Jumpgate.

Sidenote: the MT Jumpgate was not given to me, I scrapped groups of MT Scouts on numerous occassions and finally in the end it payed off.

This time could have been slightly minimized by using a zero cost setup (or perhaps it could have been greatly minimized, if you can build MT Gate scrappers {have to check that})

During the game proper, the Gates opened for travel around 2620, and there was only one incident where the Guild actually attacked a fleet at a gateworld, and another was actually attacked and lost a Starbase.

I removed the rule for purchasing gate locations. Players needed to find gate locations totally by experimentation.

Fun Stuff Silly hair

  • Host intervention to slow invasions
    Quote:

    Greetings Fellow Races,

    As you may be aware, the Guild is experimenting with quantum-dimensional gating. We are aware of certain effects this has on traditional gates, and may render some gates inoperational for short periods of time.

    We assure you that if there is any interruption of service, it will only be temporary.

    We remind you of God's last message to his creation:
    Quote:

    We apologize for the inconvenience.


    regards,
    Traveller's Guild
    ----
    We take you There


    Due to early observations I decided that some players were not ready for massive intrusion as of yet so for 25 years, I randomly removed gates from starbases or replaced them with any/300's resulting in non-jumps or destructive jumps or completed jumps on a random basis. [The players almost lynched me for this trick]

  • Easter Time
    Quote:

    Greetings Friends,

    The Easter Bunny has been hop-hop-hopping around our universe and has hid some easter eggs Purple bounce L Blue bounce Red bounce in plain sight for all good little races.

    You will need to look hard for these goodies because they are cloaked at 62%; however, you will know you have found some when you find a guild fleet composed of three mini-morph hulls. UFO In order to claim your prize just meet the fleet, and it will be transferred over to you assuming there is no other race present. Dueling

    Personally, we like easter eggs; they taste good with helium and mawmaws, of course your own preferences may be slightly different.

    Hurry! Supplies are limited! There are a dozen stashes of easter eggs in the hinterlands and no more will be made.

    Host/Guild note:
    These ships are not scrappable, if you wish to trade them in you may transfer them back to the guild and receive a credit of 1000Kt mins per ship.

    regards,
    Traveller's Guild
    ----
    We take you There UFO abduction


    The Easter Egg was a Mini-Morph with Jumpgate, 2 Anti-matter Generators, and some Multi-Contained Munitions, with scanning and cloaking abilities. Essentially a ship that could continue at Warp 10 with no cost forever, or gate to a gate if it chose to. I was hoping the WM race would pick up on my broad hint but perhaps they were not able Sad The Kwie, surprisingly ferreted out most of these ships picking up 21 of the 36 Easter Eggs.


Overall, record-keeping was high for this game, requiring a lot of time for a quasi-inactive host. Tracking contributions from various races and ensuring they had appropriate technology levels for the requested JG Freighters took a lot of time. Also, tracking the battlespoils from the later battles and ensuring the race who won a battle got their spoils.

We tried working with freighters on the gateworlds but it didn't work fairly, there was always a question of which fleet gets the uploaded minerals, resulting in great confusion at times. So, I ended up just crediting the race in question with the mineral additions and then would transfer them or they could purchase JG Freighters with them.

Sidenotes:
This is the first time I have played an IT Race as an inactive host and it is very interesting.

Once a world has a gate, then basically you can consider all population and minerals as a massive pool and move them as you see fit.

For the future:
Despite saying I would not run this game again due to the massive setup time, I believe that with zero-cost setup the time would be greatly reduced. I would consider running this game again but not until Octagon V has run Smile

regards,
donjon

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Re: Twelve Gates Summary Sat, 09 October 2004 21:40 Go to previous messageGo to next message
donjon is currently offline donjon

 
Lt. Commander

Messages: 808
Registered: November 2002
Location: Benque Viejo del Carmen, ...

Well, since the general consensus is that this game is done... I guess I'll put in a few words:

Statistics first off:
The Guild sold 453 Jumpgate freighters with:
40% purchased by the Kwie,
28% purchased by the Funny Bunnies,
11% purchased by the Sivxi,
9% purchased by Sprocket.

The Guild received 180721 KT of minerals for purchase of ships...
This does not include battlespoils...

The largest battlespoil was 60000 Kt of mins from a battle a couple of years ago resulting in the Kwie receiving 41 jumpgate freighters filled with mins!!!

Eyeballing the universe right now I would rate the players in the following order first to last:
Kwie, Funny Bunny, Sauron, Zentoid, Valkyrie, Kotosians, 17'rs, Sivxi, Hamalki, Sprocket.

This rating is based first on presence in clusters, next on planets, next on pop...

It certainly has been a game of ups and downs... with Sivxi first on the up and then Sprocket, and then finally Funny Bunnies and Kwie.

Interestingly enough this game has shown a comeback for the tri-immune HE race... Kwie was such a creature... something to think about Wink

Its been a fun game, too bad the freedom-fighters did not come into the picture... but oh well, it was just a diversion anyway Smile (like the Easter Eggs)

Anyway, thank you everyone for sticking it out and making a game which was truly enjoyable... even for the host.

Congratulations Whist! and an honorable mention to Edog.

regards,
donjon

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Re: Twelve Gates Summary Sun, 10 October 2004 09:38 Go to previous messageGo to next message
iztok is currently offline iztok

 
Commander

Messages: 1202
Registered: April 2003
Location: Slovenia, Europe
Hi!
donjon wrote on Sun, 10 October 2004 03:40


Interestingly enough this game has shown a comeback for the tri-immune HE race... Kwie was such a creature... something to think about Wink

Not surprisingly. With gates available from Guild, waaaay to many space among custers to make regular gates usable, and compact cluster(s), all HE disadvantages just vanished. Frankly, I too had a 3i 5% HE ready for that game, but 've applied to late. Eh... Maybe next time. Smile
BR, Iztok


[Updated on: Sun, 10 October 2004 09:57]

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Re: Twelve Gates Summary Mon, 18 October 2004 10:51 Go to previous message
Shadow Whist is currently offline Shadow Whist

 
Chief Warrant Officer 2

Messages: 167
Registered: August 2003
Location: Vancouver, WA
After thinking about the concept, I decided to take a little risk and try something new... I liked the idea of the scenario removing many of the HE disadvantages. At the same time, it was not a cake-walk and there were a few touch and go moments...
>>>if you want to read a post describing the general phases of the game, goto the 12gates game forum and look under summary<<<
____________________________________________________________ _____

Race Design
After thinking and reading about the 12 gates concept, I realized that the traditional way of viewing the galaxy needed alteration. Instead of a galaxy 3000ly from side to side, the galaxy was only at the most 300lys across. Basically, the any/any gates stacked or linked the sectors to each other in such a way that the distance from a planet in sector A to a planet in sector B was how far they were from their respective gateworlds. This might seem intuitive but this realization shaped my race design. Additionally, I theorized that the dominate economy would be HP, with races attempting to maximize
their respective sectors.An HP too slow but about par with everyone else. A -f race would be fast but not have the long-term resources needed.

One last consideration was the victory condition. The uncontested control of all 12 gates did not mean Huge fleets battleing over gate control. It meant domination of the surrounding planets and cutting them off from gate access.

With this in mind, I needed something fast, with a great Hab range, and with the ability to grow long-term. So when Sprocket suggested HE, I considered it. Its disadvantages were countered with the scenario's gates. So this is the design I went with:


HE
IS;CE,OBRM,NAS,LSP
3-immune
6% (HE doubles to 12%)
1000
15/6/16 (factories)
box unchecked
10/3/10
Weap, Con -cheap
En, Elec - normal
Prop, Bio - Expensive
21 points spent on Factories.



Upon reflection, the only thing I NEEDED to change was the Mine settings. There was always a mineral shortage. Also, I did not need such High factory settings (I never do! ). LSP hurt for a long time. But I figured that by turn 20-25 I was outpacing everyone elses pop growth because I was growing everywhere at 12%! I gambled that the game would be longer term, thats why the
LSP. OH, and CE was manditory (it still sucked!) but being able to throw lots of ships together quicker and cheaper helped secure my sectors.The only other thing I should have picked was the RS...


Strategy

My goal was threefold.
Fill up my sector as quickly as possible. (yeah tri-immune!)
Build enough scouts to find all the other sector gateworlds. (knowledge is power)
Find the weakest players and take over their sectors. (I Am HE you know! )

Later strategy
Scout every gate every year (except Funny Bunnies(is)) (to assess the fleet strengths)
Establish long range scanners to cover every sector(95% cloaked morph w/ 875ly range)
Diplomatically keep everyone in the dark about my true strength and abilities (I think it worked!)

What happened.
While meeting or working on the first strategy goals, I found the open sector. This changed my strategy to one of occupying the new sector. It moved from their to progressing into other sectors. I attacked a weaker AR race (does AR need the adjective weaker?) From that point I began building up to attack the stronger AR alliance but shifted to attack the game leader instead. After trying to convincing the rest of the galaxy to let us duke it out one on one, I was able to move on the last AR.

Summary
Only in the last 20yrs or so did the Funny Bunnies formalize our agreement to form an alliance til the end. Up until that time, I was consistantly guarding my back or grimicing when I left large
portions of my space undefended.


Due to the nature of the Gateworlds, the only defenses needed were the ones orbiting the enemy sectors gateworld. For most of the game, the only ships at my gates were the ones being routed to the main battle fleets. Control of the gate is as important as Aircraft carriers are to naval warfare. Additionaly, I had built up defenses all my important worlds.

Finally, the most important thing is to know what's at every gateworld every turn.

AT the end game, I had 650 capitol ships, 13,500 chaffe, 400bombers, and I could make 30-40 moreships a turn (depending on what I built) I probably could have continued that for 5-10 years (maybe more depending on loot from the sivxi sector). Seriously, it was only a matter of time...

Maybe I could have won sooner, but I did not want to tip my hand too soon. Then for sure I would be facing the whole galaxy... That would have been a problem. Therefore I devised the strategy of occuping the planets surrounding each stargate.

I think the game lasted for about 100years...

Thanks for reading, and thanks for playing!
_____________________________________________________
"At the end, only the Singulari will remain"
Quote from the Kwie Singulari at the 1st conference for Kwie Imperialism...


[Updated on: Mon, 18 October 2004 11:06]

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