Home » Stars! 2.6/7 » The Bar » Battle Starting Position
| Battle Starting Position |
Sun, 02 February 2003 07:44  |
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Now some people *may* call this cheating, but in referance to number 1, you could just give 1 ship of chaff to a variety of races until your opponent it right next to your starbase
Which brings me to a question... does anyone know the lay out of player positions within a battleboard for number of participants 3-16?
and as for number 2 - what happens if they have movement rate of less than 1.25?
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| Re: AR How Do You Build Up Your Defenses? |
Mon, 03 February 2003 02:16  |
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| Micha | 
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Messages: 2342
Registered: November 2002
Location: Belgium GMT +1 | |
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Zoid, this particular game mechanic is VERY important when playing team games and I will certainly do my best to get the required number of player on the board, checking as many "if"s as possible, afterall you can never be sure what the enemy will send in.
Imagine a 4x4 teamgame with 6-8 players on the board! This can turn out to be a real mess!
An example, in a 4x4 team game my team was preparing an attack on the enemy AR HW to kill their mining fleets. A previous surprise attack with a 98%cloacked fleet had failed due to a TERRIBLE bug, well, the bug itself was really stupid but the result was terrible since it gave away the cloacked fleets presence and the enemy sent in a warfleet that killed the surprise fleet. 
Anyway I had about 5 gatling nubs, 200 chaff and a few OCs left, they were kept out the first battle. When the enemy removed his warfleet the next turn we started planning again.
In the new battle we knew there would be the AR starbase and miners, the IT who was distributing the minerals, a minelayer of a third enemy race and of course my forces. This would mean that I would start too far from the miners, I would run out of chaff too fast and the 5 gatling nubs would get killed. So the turn before the battle I transferred fleets to two of my teammates to get more players on the board. This would put me right next to the base and would let my nubs fire and kill the miners right after the Death Star had killed most of my chaff.
If the minelayer would leave however that would mean one less player and my ships would end up too far from the miners again so just in case I also transferred a few gatling nubs to a teammate who would be closest to the base if the mine layer would leave.
A LOT of planning and testing but the plan worked  (although the gatlings made a few strange moves in the battle) Killed 12.000 miners IIRC 
regards,
mch
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| Re: AR How Do You Build Up Your Defenses? |
Mon, 03 February 2003 03:12 |
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Cheat - gain without any cost.
Bug - gain with some form of cost.
By transferring say scouts to other players to turn a battle to your advantage... well the gain is obvious.
The cost?
Well firstly there's the scouts - very low cost.
Second you not only give away a position of one of your worlds but you also give away ship design, starbase design, defenses PRT etc... - fairly high cost.
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| Re: AR How Do You Build Up Your Defenses? |
Mon, 03 February 2003 04:55 |
|
 Robert |
 | Lt. Junior Grade |
Messages: 393
Registered: November 2002
Location: Dortmund, Germany | |
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so you consider this cheating...
what do you think chaff is???
chaff is also a way to (ab)use the game mechanics, may it be
in battle or with chaff-sweeping.
you sacrifice some very cheap ships to make the game engine
fire at these first and your good ships are invulnerable.
this was not ment to happen by the programmer, i am sure...
using the game mechanics to alter the starting positions
is quite the same i think. you sacrifice some minor value
ships and give away information to make most of the situation.
so why is chaff so widely accepted and this is not?
maybe because people think there are ways around chaff,
but there are also with BBSP (battle board starting positions).
you can give your chaff min-dam-to self orders and dont send
in beamers, you can invite your own allies, you can build
ships with higher initiative... etc...
lots of possibilities...
i think this kind of play is much more honorable and fair
than chaff. it requires much more MM and team play than just
building stupid chaff and hiding behind it.
chaff is the reason that starbases are so weak, and this is
just the counter to it. i would love to play in a game with
"attack highest value ships first" orders, and without
"kill starbase first" orders, but it isnt!
i believe that a defender who has allies and gets the cooperation
done so well, has earned this advantage, while the attacker can,
if he has allies, too, the same possibilities (he can come in
range with gattling to the station and everthing close, see
posting below). if the attacker does not have such allies and
not the ability to coordinate so well, he does not have earnded
it.
this is very difficult to coordinate - chaff is sooo easy and
there is no honour in sending in 20.000 chaff and winning by
this!
but i have a variant, which might put some more fire into
the discussion:
what if not the ally sends in ships. what if the players gives
a ship to "dead" players, who set him to neutral or friend and
then dropped out?
then it is no more a victory of an alliance... it is (ab)use of
dead players, who have been given some ships...
still not a cheat, but maybe an evil bug???
dont get me wrong:
i also like to play without cheating, and i would never do it
and fight everybody who did it (e.g. the cheap starbase trick,
which IS a cheat IMHO)... and i like to meet people who think
the same way.
but i just dont think this is more of a cheat then chaff or
chaffsweeping....
2b v !2b -> ?Report message to a moderator
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| Re: AR How Do You Build Up Your Defenses? |
Mon, 03 February 2003 05:56 |
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| Micha |
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Messages: 2342
Registered: November 2002
Location: Belgium GMT +1 | |
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| Quote: |
dont get me wrong:
i also like to play without cheating, and i would never do it
and fight everybody who did it (e.g. the cheap starbase trick,
which IS a cheat IMHO)... and i like to meet people who think
the same way.
but i just dont think this is more of a cheat then chaff or
chaffsweeping....
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I also like to play without cheating (except for chaff, which I consider to be a feature), what's the fun in winning when you have gained victory in an unfair way???
Just a remark: you might consider chaff a bug (and abusing it a cheat), but you can't call chaffsweeping a cheat, it's not the same thing, you can "chaffsweep" with other ships too, I'd rather call it "crash sweep".
An example, one of my allies didn't had enough chaff to crash sweep into an enemy planet, however he had a bunch of old SFX in his fleet, he just started building a new SFX design, so he used these old SFXs to crash into the minefield Worked perfect!
It's a legit tactic IMO, ships hitting a minefield make mines detonate, so the field gets smaller, so multiple ships and hits make the field disappear completely, nothing wrong with that ...
regards,
mch
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| Re: AR How Do You Build Up Your Defenses? |
Mon, 03 February 2003 16:14 |
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| regiss |
 | Petty Officer 1st Class |
Messages: 65
Registered: November 2002 | |
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| Quote: |
It's a legit tactic IMO, ships hitting a minefield make mines
detonate, so the field gets smaller, so multiple ships and hits
make the field disappear completely, nothing wrong with that ...
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"Chaff sweeping" is meant not to simply sweep minefields. It's
used along with "Fleet # trick" which is, IMHO, the real
problem. Simply becouse of that I would call "Chaff sweeping" a
cheat.
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| Re: AR How Do You Build Up Your Defenses? |
Mon, 03 February 2003 17:09 |
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Windows Xp I think has solved the fleet # selection trick. When I get so many fleets that the bar goes all the way up and down on my screen, Xp allows me to scroll.....
Email me as ----jeffimix@----yahoo.com----
(remove dashes)
The spamatron! run!!!Report message to a moderator
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| Re: AR How Do You Build Up Your Defenses? |
Mon, 03 February 2003 19:37 |
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| zoid |
 | Ensign |
Messages: 348
Registered: December 2002
Location: Murray, KY - USA | |
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The comparison to chaff as a cheat is ridiculous. Making 20 thousand chaff has a very significant cost- Thousands of times the cost of giving away a cheapo scout to someone who has no use for it and hasn't asked for it just to rearrange the game board which has the affect of changing a sure defeat into a sure victory. Rationalize it however you want. The information somebody gets from gaining one of your chaff ships is insignificant. Yeah, they know where one of your planets is now, but at least you still have the planet, whereas without your huge sacrifice of a couple scouts you'd lose that world entirely. I can see how someone would consider this cost so high, that it just might not be worth it.  Yeah, RIGHT!  If the "COST" associated with this tactic is so insignificant, it's still a cheat IMO.
I've never argued chaff is a cheat. Chaff has a HIGH cost, and enhances the game in my opinion by making beamers more useful. The addition of chaff into the game necessitates a "combined arms" concept. You can see it coming, and it's not an uncertain factor thrown in at the last minute that someone can't see coming, like this tactic. All this gameboard positioning tactic does is always insure the cheater has the advantage.
Freakyboy, that "cost" argument is the weakest I've seen from you ever. I'm surprised. The cost that you referred to is like me bemoaning the loss of a booger after I flick it at you.
I'M NOT AN EXPERT AND I'M OFTEN PROVEN WRONG. TAKE THAT INTO CONSIDERATION WHEN YOU READ MY POSTS.
Math?  Ummm, sure!  I do FREESTYLE math.Report message to a moderator
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| Re: AR How Do You Build Up Your Defenses? |
Tue, 04 February 2003 02:35 |
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AR races can have great difficulty with enemies invading. I mean it's easy to take out an AR planet and a war means you can usually get some tech from battles since ARs have good tech.
Now imagine that you just gave away your position to several other players - bad idea.
You also gave away your fleet design - bad idea. Knowing your enemies fleet allows you to counter design much more easily.
There are other things to consider as well...
If your enemy also switches some ships to another team this will disrupt your plans and could easily leave you high and dry AND still give away ship design etc...
Also chaff (in enough numbers) will guarantee that your beamers are ignored by the enemy missile ships.
Bringing your enemies ships closer to your starbase, which no doubt they are targetting, doesn't guarantee a victory by ANY means. All it does do is allow your starbase to shoot first, then beamers and then their missile craft that would normally rip you apart fire. It all an attempt to balance the killstarbase. I mean lets give the AR a chance. Normally a battle would consist of missile ships move into range, take 1 hit from 1 starbase and then return fire annihilating the base and a fair chunk of defensive ships. At least this way around the starbases are given a fighting chance.
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| Re: AR How Do You Build Up Your Defenses? |
Tue, 04 February 2003 03:38 |
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| Micha |
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Messages: 2342
Registered: November 2002
Location: Belgium GMT +1 | |
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| freakyboy wrote on Tue, 04 February 2003 02:35 |
AR races can have great difficulty with enemies invading. I mean it's easy to take out an AR planet and a war means you can usually get some tech from battles since ARs have good tech.
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Which means that the ship you transfer need to survive, so the attacking enemy can't attack it ...
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Now imagine that you just gave away your position to several other players - bad idea.
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I don't think that's so bad ....
| Quote: |
You also gave away your fleet design - bad idea. Knowing your enemies fleet allows you to counter design much more easily.
There are other things to consider as well...
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True, giving away ship design is bad, and you are also giving away what your tech levels are
| Quote: |
If your enemy also switches some ships to another team this will disrupt your plans and could easily leave you high and dry AND still give away ship design etc...
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True, you _can_ counter the tactic, like I said earlier, there can be a lots of "if"s ...
However you won't see this used a lot, the transferring ships I mean, you have to keep in mind you just can't use any race for this, player number is important here!! That player needs to have free slots, he can't have you set to enemy (else he won't accept your ship gift), if you and your enemy have him set to friend he won't be on the battle board! Etcetera.
But it's used even less since when you want another player on the board you'll need to have the goodwill of that player (so it will be your teammate or ally, not just anybody, which makes it normal for the ship to be there). Afterall you have to transfer the ship not the year before the battle, but _the_year_before_that_! One turn before the battle is too late since transfer happens _after_ battles in the Order of Events (or is using your knowledge about the Order of Events a cheat too?!?) 
And if I suddenly get a ship transferred from a race without notice and at a planet where I have no business being at, than I get the hell out of there! Or simply delete the design ...
regards,
mch
[Updated on: Tue, 04 February 2003 03:44] Report message to a moderator
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REALLY hate it. I liked this game far better in 1996 before everyone noticed all the mechanical warts and began thinking of ways to exploit them. *sigh*
I've won battles this way with _leaving_out_ large stacks of teammates!