Home » Stars! 2.6/7 » The Bar » Which bugs should be banned?
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Re: Which bugs should be banned? |
Thu, 18 March 2010 13:43 |
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mlaub | | Lieutenant | Messages: 744
Registered: November 2003 Location: MN, USA | |
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vonKreedon wrote on Thu, 18 March 2010 10:06 | Why the votes against allowing False Public Player Scores?
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I consider it a manipulation of the limitations of the Stars code. Meaning, you are fooling people because they trust the actual Stars program's integrity.
Hence, IMO this tactic is on par with the pop hack, as that is also manipulation of the limitations of the Stars code.
I disallow this cheat for public, and "no" public player scores in all my games. You can't turn off personal scores, so you always know your "place" in the universe. If I can't turn it off, I want it to be an accurate representation of my score, and everyone else.
Quote: | To pull this off involves a significant amount of MM, a significant loss of resources/turn and through building significantly more freighters, and is discoverable by intelligent recon analysis since the freighters have to move off-planet and then back in relays.
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I believe it can be done without significant chance of discovery (no, I won't go into detail). I know this from experience.
-Matt
Global Warming - A climatic change eagerly awaited by most Minnesotans.
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Re: Which bugs should be banned? |
Thu, 18 March 2010 13:59 |
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mlaub | | Lieutenant | Messages: 744
Registered: November 2003 Location: MN, USA | |
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vonKreedon wrote on Thu, 18 March 2010 10:12 | The Target Overload
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Target Overload can be avoided, for the most part. Don't select a planet as the end point for a chaff sweep. There, that takes care of 99.99999999999999999999999999% of the incidents that show up.
For the rest, select "merge with fleet" if you are jumping in warships.
Quote: | and the Exploding Minefield Dodge IMO both need to be allowed because it is just too difficult and onerous to avoid them.
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Maybe.
Quote: | To avoid the Target Overload you have to never use crash sweeping
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Doubtful that the subject would ever come up if it was just chaff, in space. At a planet, its an issue.
Quote: | or forget to merge on arrival those 300 Nubs in 105 fleets you gated to the concentration point.
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Rarely does that ever happen. People usually gate to a rally point, and if they don't, it is even rarer to ever have that many ships gate to a planet under attack.
Usually it is just someone who wants to be a jerk. I also point at this and say it is a manipulation of the limitations of the Stars code. Hence, banned!
Quote: | That's just too onerous to play for an already MM challenging SD race.
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When did SD become difficult MM? That's backwards, SD forces MM on everyone else.
I get Player #1 slot.
-Matt
Global Warming - A climatic change eagerly awaited by most Minnesotans.
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Re: Which bugs should be banned? |
Fri, 19 March 2010 10:17 |
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vonKreedon | | Lieutenant | Messages: 610
Registered: March 2003 Location: Seattle, WA USA | |
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To be clear, I'm not arguing for Battle Board Overload. I am arguing for allowing players to have more than 100 fleets at any one location because it forces other players to go the Other Fleets Report to actually see fleets #100+N.
I may not understand the Pub Ranking trick; I almost never play in PPS games and have never attempted to use the trick. My understanding is that one has to pull enough pop off planet as a Waypoint 1 order to significantly drop my resources and so score as published by the game. But, if I can drop that same amount of population as a Waypoint 0 order I can actually use the resources from the pop to do stuff like produce BBs and research while appearing to not have so much capacity.
Further, my understanding is that to effect a Waypoint 1 order I have to have moved from a Waypoint 0 to a Waypoint 1 with the population. So, finally, my understanding is that I must have a lot of population traveling from 0 to 1 each year. Now some of this will be between planets that are one year away, and this is probably the key now that I think this through in writing; if your high-value planets that you are pulling pop from are in circuits of 81ly or less then you don't have to ever have pop in space at the end of the turn.
Ok, I think I understand the issue better since it will often, probably most often, be the case that you can at least pair up such worlds and shuttle back and forth. Please consider me convinced and change my vote from allow to ban.
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Re: Which bugs should be banned? |
Fri, 19 March 2010 10:56 |
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Micha | | | Messages: 2342
Registered: November 2002 Location: Belgium GMT +1 | |
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vonKreedon wrote on Fri, 19 March 2010 15:17 | To be clear, I'm not arguing for Battle Board Overload. I am arguing for allowing players to have more than 100 fleets at any one location because it forces other players to go the Other Fleets Report to actually see fleets #100+N.
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The thing with Target List Overload is not that you have to use the Other Fleets Report (which BTW does *not* show all enemy fleets!) but that you can not *target* fleets 100+ with any of your ships ... They get a free pass the following turn!
Of course Split Fleet Dodge would probably mess that up anyway.
Quote: | I may not understand the Pub Ranking trick; I almost never play in PPS games and have never attempted to use the trick. My understanding is that one has to pull enough pop off planet as a Waypoint 1 order to significantly drop my resources and so score as published by the game. But, if I can drop that same amount of population as a Waypoint 0 order I can actually use the resources from the pop to do stuff like produce BBs and research while appearing to not have so much capacity.
Further, my understanding is that to effect a Waypoint 1 order I have to have moved from a Waypoint 0 to a Waypoint 1 with the population. So, finally, my understanding is that I must have a lot of population traveling from 0 to 1 each year. Now some of this will be between planets that are one year away, and this is probably the key now that I think this through in writing; if your high-value planets that you are pulling pop from are in circuits of 81ly or less then you don't have to ever have pop in space at the end of the turn.
Ok, I think I understand the issue better since it will often, probably most often, be the case that you can at least pair up such worlds and shuttle back and forth. Please consider me convinced and change my vote from allow to ban.
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Not quite there yet. Your pop does *not* move around, it never leaves the planet (or orbit of that planet). You have *empty* freighters arriving at a planet with WP1 load orders at the end of the turn and at the start of the turn you drop that pop WP0 ... The only resources you lose are having the empty LFs out off orbit to do the WP1 loads.
Next to that: don't trust PPS. For starters it doesn't show minerals and we all know how important those are, especially the longer the game gets.
There are also other ways to fake it than the method above, even unintended like an IS colonizing all reds, those count towards planet score. But you can also build FFs or DDs (forgot what the minimum is, something like AMP FFs) worthless in battle that get classified as capital ships.
With PPS off you might think you are in first with 30k but there could be someone with 40k who has a bit less cap ships and planets ...
mch
[Updated on: Fri, 19 March 2010 10:56] Report message to a moderator
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Re: Which bugs should be banned? |
Wed, 23 June 2010 23:25 |
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magic9mushroom | | Commander | Messages: 1361
Registered: May 2008 | |
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Whoever said that chaff is "not a bug" is a fool. It is; you're exploiting a hole in the targeting algorithm that forgets to account for one missile - one kill.
Split Fleet Dodge is likewise an abuse of the game's simultaneous turns - you can't give your fleet orders to "split if they split, don't split if they don't".
Also, the one with the gaps above the one that has Ban Chaff and Split Fleet should be ignored or deleted - that was my mouse hand accidentally pushing the Enter button.
[Updated on: Wed, 23 June 2010 23:26] Report message to a moderator
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Re: Which bugs should be banned? |
Sun, 27 June 2010 14:00 |
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m.a@stars | | Commander | Messages: 2765
Registered: October 2004 Location: Third star to the left | |
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magic9mushroom wrote on Thu, 24 June 2010 05:25 | Whoever said that chaff is "not a bug" is a fool. It is; you're exploiting a hole in the targeting algorithm that forgets to account for one missile - one kill.
Split Fleet Dodge is likewise an abuse of the game's simultaneous turns - you can't give your fleet orders to "split if they split, don't split if they don't".
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Amazingly, when you list these two "bugs" together, the really huge difference between the two stands out:
the Jeffs tried several times and across several versions to fix "split fleet dodge", which is a nasty weakness of the fleet targeting algorithms.
the Jeffs never tried to "fix" chaff, which is widely acknowledged as a neat counter to missile power. Further, if you think about it, you'll realize that however you tweak the battle algorithms, there'll always be some cheap contraption that'll attract more firepower than it should.
So many Stars, so few Missiles!
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Re: Which bugs should be banned? |
Mon, 28 June 2010 05:11 |
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magic9mushroom | | Commander | Messages: 1361
Registered: May 2008 | |
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Chaff is still an exploit. It makes utterly no sense that your ship captains would be that utterly STUPID.
There doesn't have to be "something which attracts more firepower than it should". If the targeting algorithm for torpedoes and missiles merely replaced "ship armour" with "MAX(ship armour, torpedo/missile damage)" then chaff would disappear.
Also, I'm not sure when the JRC series of patches were. Were they after the discovery and widespread adoption of chaff?
[Updated on: Mon, 28 June 2010 05:15] Report message to a moderator
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Re: Which bugs should be banned? |
Mon, 28 June 2010 07:50 |
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m.a@stars | | Commander | Messages: 2765
Registered: October 2004 Location: Third star to the left | |
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magic9mushroom wrote on Mon, 28 June 2010 11:11 | Chaff is still an exploit. It makes utterly no sense that your ship captains would be that utterly STUPID.
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Yeah, it is an exploit. As many others, an useful one. The only way to fix it is to add a lot more brains, and more guesswork, to the targeting algorithms. And even so, elaborate "ruses" might still exist.
Quote: | There doesn't have to be "something which attracts more firepower than it should".
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Bright confetti that confuses radar. Hot flares. Minuscule sources of radioactivity. Laser pointers blinding sensors. Big balloons coated in radar-reflective paint. Dummy torpedoes that make lots of noise. Whales. Waves crashing on reefs. Kids with toy guns. You name it. The world is full of things that confuse automatic targeting. Learn to live with it. Or you won't live long.
Quote: | If the targeting algorithm for torpedoes and missiles merely replaced "ship armour" with "MAX(ship armour, torpedo/missile damage)" then chaff would disappear.
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Most likely it would just change. To empty CCs or perhaps Nubs.
Quote: | Also, I'm not sure when the JRC series of patches were. Were they after the discovery and widespread adoption of chaff?
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Yup.
[Updated on: Wed, 30 June 2010 09:00]
So many Stars, so few Missiles!
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Re: Which bugs should be banned? |
Wed, 30 June 2010 12:41 |
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I've had a couple of games that banned split fleet... The rule used was something like 'no fleets can be split unless in orbit of your own world'. It's an awkward thing to try to remove from the game.
Fleets that scatter away are effectively out of the game for a couple of turns - more if you knock out the nearby gates, so it comes at a price. Also, as vonKreedon says, if you pursue with multiple fleets, it will try to pursue as many as possible. It's risky though, as if your opponent knows you will do this they can take advantage of this to ambush a smaller part of your fleet. It's also rather imperfect - I've chased a fleet of 10 with 10 seperate fleets, only to find some of the splits pursued by more than one, and some by none. I think multiple splits and merges by the target(s) can really mess it up badly.
For sure, it would be nice to be able to put some logic into your orders, like: 'Pursuit order. Split behavior: split fleet proportionally according to presence of enemy design x in each fleet fragment'. Something for Nova, or any other clones that pop up
Chaff depends on a simple flaw in attractiveness algorithm (as pointed out, it'd not be hard to fix it for missiles,) but I'd say this is a flaw that adds richness to the tactics - just look at all the long threads on chaff, anti-chaff, anti-anti-chaff, shielded chaff, damaged chaff, freighter chaff, chaff vs jammers, etc etc etc.
IMO, it's quite reasonable for chaff and split fleet to be allowed in most games. It's also nice to see either/both excluded for a change of pace sometimes. I like cake.
[Updated on: Wed, 30 June 2010 12:54] Report message to a moderator
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Re: Which bugs should be banned? |
Thu, 01 July 2010 03:57 |
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Micha | | | Messages: 2342
Registered: November 2002 Location: Belgium GMT +1 | |
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Dogthinkers wrote on Wed, 30 June 2010 18:41 | Fleets that scatter away are effectively out of the game for a couple of turns - more if you knock out the nearby gates, so it comes at a price. Also, as vonKreedon says, if you pursue with multiple fleets, it will try to pursue as many as possible. It's risky though, as if your opponent knows you will do this they can take advantage of this to ambush a smaller part of your fleet. It's also rather imperfect - I've chased a fleet of 10 with 10 seperate fleets, only to find some of the splits pursued by more than one, and some by none. I think multiple splits and merges by the target(s) can really mess it up badly.
For sure, it would be nice to be able to put some logic into your orders, like: 'Pursuit order. Split behavior: split fleet proportionally according to presence of enemy design x in each fleet fragment'. Something for Nova, or any other clones that pop up
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Whatever targetting algorithm it is, it's totally messed up.
I've targetted fleet#'s that still existed the following turn and they weren't chased. I've targetted one fleet of MMLs with dozens of separate hunters and they all went for one MML after that fleet split ...
But the best part happened few years ago where the enemy targetted a fleet that I split up in several smaller ones and they ended up at the same spot as my *unseen* and *not targetted* cloaked AR HW killer fleet that was on the same location (and not merged!) as the other fleet in the turn that was targetted.
Quote: | Chaff depends on a simple flaw in attractiveness algorithm (as pointed out, it'd not be hard to fix it for missiles,) but I'd say this is a flaw that adds richness to the tactics - just look at all the long threads on chaff, anti-chaff, anti-anti-chaff, shielded chaff, damaged chaff, freighter chaff, chaff vs jammers, etc etc etc.
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Yup, chaff is good.
mch
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Re: Which bugs should be banned? |
Thu, 01 July 2010 18:34 |
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Tabini | | Crewman 2nd Class | Messages: 19
Registered: June 2010 Location: Shejidan | |
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Micha wrote on Thu, 01 July 2010 03:57 |
Dogthinkers wrote on Wed, 30 June 2010 18:41 |
Chaff depends on a simple flaw in attractiveness algorithm (as pointed out, it'd not be hard to fix it for missiles,) but I'd say this is a flaw that adds richness to the tactics - just look at all the long threads on chaff, anti-chaff, anti-anti-chaff, shielded chaff, damaged chaff, freighter chaff, chaff vs jammers, etc etc etc.
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Yup, chaff is good.
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Better if it wasn't inconsistent. Starbases could use that protection.
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