| Min Damage Rule Clarification |
Wed, 18 April 2012 19:52  |
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 ManicLurch |
 | Lt. Junior Grade |
Messages: 462
Registered: May 2009 | |
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We just had a situation in SAS6 where we had the min damage bug come up. The situation was I gated in beta DD ships to help defend another players planets. I sent in one large stack and 4 other smaller stacks.
It was unintentional, but it appears that the min damage bug did help win that battle.
So I am looking for suggestions on a good rule set for min damage for games like SAS series where it is likely to have many battles using beta torps.
I have never seen this issue actually come up in a game before, but most games don't have many beta torp battles, if any.
One suggestion so far is missiles have to be in one stack. This can create problems with newly created ships, so maybe a limit of 2 stacks would be more manageable. This would mean an extra step with using missile ships. It also create issues with surprise attacks.
Another option was defining the minimum number for a stack.
Any good suggestions would be helpful.
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| Re: Min Damage Rule Clarification |
Thu, 19 April 2012 09:29  |
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| Orange |
 | Officer Cadet 1st Year |
Messages: 215
Registered: November 2005
Location: TO, ONT, CA | |
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A thought: workaround for this bug
Ban armed frigates until w9 or w10 tech are generally available (i.e. a date like 2450) when frigate chaff may want to be used.
Everyone fights using DDs until then. DDs have less of an issue with this min. dmg where it is not intentional or it is unavoidable.
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| Suggestion |
Thu, 19 April 2012 13:24 |
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Concerning the torp min dam bug/loophole, so far we have come up with 4 suggestions:
1) Live with it.
2) Only 2 small stacks of torp-ships are allowed, all other stacks of torp-ships need to consist of at least 20 ships. (suggestion by Rolf/Altruist)
3) Maximum stack size of 100 ships until after 2450. Maximum of 3 stacks of same Torpedo/Missle ship design per player at any location. Minimum of 4 Torpedos in a starbase slot. (Alfred)
4) Ban armed frigates until w9 or w10 tech are generally available (i.e. a date like 2450) when frigate chaff may want to be used. (Orange)
[Updated on: Thu, 19 April 2012 13:55] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Min Damage Rule Clarification |
Thu, 19 April 2012 14:47 |
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I think it's because of the nature of the game.. A stone age game would have a lot of low level tech and have a lot of instances where this would crop up.
I would go for a case by case basis, where in the years it does happen, a regen with split orders given by a 3rd party to ensure that the battle happens without the min damage bug coming into play.
Not 100% sure how effective it is, but it would be fair.. especially in the case stated in the OP where the battle has already happened and all parties agree that it was an unintended action and it effected the result of the battle.
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| Re: Min Damage Rule Clarification |
Thu, 19 April 2012 15:01 |
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| Eagle of Fire wrote on Thu, 19 April 2012 20:29 |
So... What's the real problem here? I fail to understand.
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Example:
6 stacks of each 3 DDs equipped with 3 beta torps and 1 comp, altogether 18 slots of torps. Calculated damage would be a meagre 3*10.08dm to armour.
Nevertheless due to the min dam loophole those can not kill just 1 shielded frigate in 3 rounds but any stack of shielded frigates (wether 20 or 500) in about 3 battle rounds. Against croby-FFs it would need 9-10 battle rounds to kill any stack.
| Eagle of Fire wrote on Thu, 19 April 2012 20:29 |
Split your Frigates in stacks of 40
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An option but a very poor one. In above calculation it would be efficient, damagewise, to split your frigates in stacks of 10 with all the problems coming with small stacks.
CONCLUSION:
I knew of this min dam problem but never before I have made myself realize the true impact it can have. This is as bad or worse than the "discovery" of chaff. It will change the way we play Stars perhaps even more than chaff.
What a mess...
This will change the usage of frigates a lot. Makig the WM even weaker and taking quite the fun out of croby-FFs.
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| Re: Min Damage Rule Clarification |
Thu, 19 April 2012 15:15 |
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| Altruist wrote on Fri, 20 April 2012 00:31 |
CONCLUSION:
I knew of this min dam problem but never before I have made myself realize the true impact it can have. This is as bad or worse than the "discovery" of chaff. It will change the way we play Stars perhaps even more than chaff.
What a mess...
This will change the usage of frigates a lot. Makig the WM even weaker and taking quite the fun out of croby-FFs.
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I think my lack of coffee is affecting my understanding or connection abilities.
Is this the same 'bug/feature' that is on the bug/feature list?
If so, then I don't quite get why it would change the way we play stars.
This would come into play only when a deliberate action is taken into getting this into play.. and almost all non-stone age games will easily evade this problem.
It's only stone age games, imo, that will have a long time frame when alpha/beta/delta torp dds will be actively and aggressively used.
Am I missing something. It could be very possible, with the day I'm having so far.
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| Re: Min Damage Rule Clarification |
Thu, 19 April 2012 15:45 |
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| Orange |
| Officer Cadet 1st Year |
Messages: 215
Registered: November 2005
Location: TO, ONT, CA | |
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| nmid wrote on Thu, 19 April 2012 15:15 |
Is this the same 'bug/feature' that is on the bug/feature list?
If so, then I don't quite get why it would change the way we play stars.
This would come into play only when a deliberate action is taken into getting this into play.. and almost all non-stone age games will easily evade this problem.
It's only stone age games, imo, that will have a long time frame when alpha/beta/delta torp dds will be actively and aggressively used.
Am I missing something. It could be very possible, with the day I'm having so far.
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The problem as shown in one round of battle against
193 Yak FFs
by Starbase Shield 141 Armour 565 -- we can't do anything about the Starbase
shield armour # of Beta DDs (2 Betas, shield & comp)
10 ....... 193 .... 2
97 ....... 419 .... 13
12 ....... 395 .... 1
278 ...... 390 .... 32
27 ....... 182 .... 6
Total Shield dmg by DDs = 424
Total Armour dmg by DDs = 1579
The total shield dmg is effectively the actual beta torp damage against armour
The armour damage from the bug far outnumber Beta Torps by a factor of over 2x. Just to be clear, the bug caused over 2/3 of the dmg against the ships. I think you have to agree that this is a big problem.
This means that Frigate can't be used in large stacks - they get too easy countered using this bug.
[Updated on: Thu, 19 April 2012 15:48] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Min Damage Rule Clarification |
Thu, 19 April 2012 16:42 |
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| nmid wrote on Thu, 19 April 2012 21:15 |
I think my lack of coffee is affecting my understanding or connection abilities.
Is this the same 'bug/feature' that is on the bug/feature list?
If so, then I don't quite get why it would change the way we play stars.
This would come into play only when a deliberate action is taken into getting this into play.. and almost all non-stone age games will easily evade this problem.
It's only stone age games, imo, that will have a long time frame when alpha/beta/delta torp dds will be actively and aggressively used.
Am I missing something. It could be very possible, with the day I'm having so far.
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I think (not 100% sure), we are talking about the 0.2% damage bug mentioned in the thread Known Bugs (JRC3) - Player Exploitable Bugs / "Features".
But I'd call it a variant because the example given in the list is late game and mentions numbers of several hundret shots.
In our game (but it's true for all Stars-games), we realized what a devasting effect it has against stacks of frigates, even DDs. And that it doesn't need hundrets of slots but just so lousy few to be devasting.
In the example I have given above there were only 6 stacks of 3 beta-DDs involved shreddering any number of stacked frigates. It's difficult and mostly also not right to call the presence of 6 different stacks of torp-ships cheating. It happens all the time when you gather your fleet to attack or defend.
And it seems very difficult to come up with a solution:
* Allow too less a number of stacks and it becomes unpractical.
* Allow too many (which is as low as 3 or 4 plus a station) and you have saved the croby-FFs but made sure that standard shielded FFs can be easily killed at a shocking low cost.
And after realizing this, I made the bold statement that it will change tactics in Stars for the first 30-40 years as much as chaff has changed the missile era.
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| Re: Min Damage Rule Clarification |
Thu, 19 April 2012 17:45 |
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| LittleEddie |
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Messages: 517
Registered: February 2011
Location: Delaware | |
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I had this happen to me in SAS V
It's not a problem really, it's that the battle display can't display fractions.
From an e-mail back then
| Quote: |
That's the fun of using Beta's, we don't normally use them. If you do the math on it, it's one dp for each ship in the fleet * the number of missiles that hit, so if 1 missile hits 218 ships it comes up as 12 damage to shields and 218 to armor, but that's only in the battle display I think, as when the battle is over the total damage done to a token that survives is correct. I can't find something I read on this a while back, but each ship in the token get's like 0.00? damage but the display rounds it up.
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Edit:I did a testbed on it back then, don't have it anymore, and it worked out.
So the question is did you loose the ships that 218 damage points would have cost? or was it just the display ie.
Round one 13 damage to shields and 218 to armor.
Round two, the damage would be 218 damaged at ? percent.
So look at the battle and see if the percent of damage adds up right.
Ed
[Updated on: Thu, 19 April 2012 17:51] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Min Damage Rule Clarification |
Thu, 19 April 2012 17:50 |
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| LittleEddie wrote on Fri, 20 April 2012 03:15 |
I had this happen to me in SAS V
It's not a problem really, it's that the battle display can't display fractions.
From an e-mail back then
| Quote: |
That's the fun of using Beta's, we don't normally use them. If you do the math on it, it's one dp for each ship in the fleet * the number of missiles that hit, so if 1 missile hits 218 ships it comes up as 12 damage to shields and 218 to armor, but that's only in the battle display I think, as when the battle is over the total damage done to a token that survives is correct. I can't find something I read on this a while back, but each ship in the token get's like 0.00? damage but the display rounds it up.
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wait, what you are saying is that they are taking no damage at all?
That's not what the test beds are allegedly showing.
If they were taking 0.00 (or 0.01), then they would survive long enough to kill the dds. However the dds are killing the stack, before the stack can kill the dd.
Something's not tallying.
I know my minefields.. but I'm a chaff sweeper.
I used to curse when I got stuck in traffic... till I realised I AM traffic.Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Min Damage Rule Clarification |
Thu, 19 April 2012 18:42 |
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Try it with the same settings altruist did?
6 stacks with 5 dd each, as ur dd have 2 torps, instead of three.
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| Re: Min Damage Rule Clarification |
Thu, 19 April 2012 18:50 |
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It's certainly not a display error. Just to make sure, I just checked.
What you might be referring to is the combination of:
* min dam loophole
* 1 torp or missible can kill only 1 ship
edit: added this addon
This also implies that my above given example of 6 DD with each 3 torp, can't really make a total kill once they have each frigate in the stack down to 1 armor. They can kill only a max of 18 frigates (6*3 torps). For the final kill a station with lowly alpha-torps comes in handy.
[Updated on: Thu, 19 April 2012 18:54] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Suggestion |
Fri, 20 April 2012 02:40 |
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| iztok |
 | Commander |
Messages: 1206
Registered: April 2003
Location: Slovenia, Europe | |
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Hi!
| Altruist wrote on Thu, 19 April 2012 19:24 |
Concerning the torp min dam bug/loophole, so far we have come up with 4 suggestions:
1) Live with it.
2) Only 2 small stacks of torp-ships are allowed, all other stacks of torp-ships need to consist of at least 20 ships. (suggestion by Rolf/Altruist)
3) Maximum stack size of 100 ships until after 2450. Maximum of 3 stacks of same Torpedo/Missle ship design per player at any location. Minimum of 4 Torpedos in a starbase slot. (Alfred)
4) Ban armed frigates until w9 or w10 tech are generally available (i.e. a date like 2450) when frigate chaff may want to be used. (Orange)
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IMO those suggestions are a bit too radical. I'd add only one rule:
- all missile ships, where the "1/512 min damage rule" could apply, must be always stacked in one token.
This would prevent misusing this "rule" on attack. On defense, where attacker could meet newly-produced and just gathered missile ships, is this just another known risk. Live with it, and let game host deal with excessive usage.
BR, Iztok
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| Re: Suggestion |
Fri, 20 April 2012 09:44 |
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| Orange |
| Officer Cadet 1st Year |
Messages: 215
Registered: November 2005
Location: TO, ONT, CA | |
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| iztok wrote on Fri, 20 April 2012 02:40 |
IMO those suggestions are a bit too radical. I'd add only one rule:
- all missile ships, where the "1/512 min damage rule" could apply, must be always stacked in one token.
This would prevent misusing this "rule" on attack. On defense, where attacker could meet newly-produced and just gathered missile ships, is this just another known risk. Live with it, and let game host deal with excessive usage.
BR, Iztok
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So what is "excessive" usage? Can I produce Beta DDs on all of my colonies and send in just before battle to group? - this is what usually happens now, but this also effectively kills large regular FF stacks and even croby FF stack if there are enough colonies and allied colonies.
"Live with it" means that FFs can't used to attack anymore - you are talking about just 5-7 Beta DDs in single stacks killing any size stack of FFs.
There is no way around the fact that Beta Torps (& Alpha Torps) cause most of their damage against large stacks due to a Stars bug. If left unchecked, the FF's (not croby FFs) can't be used any more to attack in major battles (defense is ok as you have a rule that that attacking Beta/Alpha DDs have to be in a single stack).
I think the easiest, and least effect on game play, solution is to banned Alpha and Beta torps.
[Updated on: Fri, 20 April 2012 09:46] Report message to a moderator
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