@ Robert

I see it like coyote when you allowed as host the Players du build SB cheap you give some races big advantage/benefit(dont know the korrect word)
When I think of an IT in a big univers who send at the start some smal fleets away to kolonize 500lj away and have then (if the planet isn't colonized) 2 years later a OO/300 gate there .

If you want that your race can do this you have to build the race like this , not us some bugs .

what race do you play normal IT ?

ccmaster
King of the Traders

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Robert wrote on Thu, 14 November 2002 13:36

beamers beat chaff? not really, you can put shields to chaff to make them harder for beamers to destroy, or even great shields on them, so beamers will target other beamers first, not chaff...

Beamers beat chaffe. Look at the amount of sheilding on chaffe versus firepower of opposing beamers and you will find that the beamers will blow away chaffe without really noticing it, particularly if you use gatling type weapons in one slot.
Additionally proper use of battle orders can negate sheilded chaffe...

Nice thing about Stars! There ain't no one gauranteed strategy that wins on the battle board

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I take always 4 sappers in my battleships , helps a lot


ccmaster

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ok... several things...

first of all it of course always depends on enemy designs.
there is never a perfect design, and i never said this is
the ultimate trick!

and i _did_ say this is a nice trick, but it usually works
only once, didnt i?

and the rocketship with 4 sappers is for example not in range
of shielded chaff for 2 turns... so you need to have fast
sappers somewhere... and many people just dont have that.

and maybe i was misunderstood:
it _is_ possible to let enemy beamers fire at your beamers
first, at least for one round, and your chaff survive the
beamers... this might only be useful for the first shot,
and it might not turn the whole battle, but can _in some cases_
help, for example if you are hopelessly weaker and just want
to get that one shot for his bombers/frighters before being
destroyed...

i would never build only shielded chaff, but when i realize
enemy designs are weak and vulnerable for this, i will always
concider it.
also i play stars for having fun, and prefere trying strange
tricks to beat the mighty enemy and have some fun with it to
create the best monster and crush all weak races with pure
masses... i think it is the greatest fun to beat someone with
much less force than he has by some smart action...
the victory is much sweeter this way...

and i am not mr it!
actuylly i never played it, i think... and if your enemy is
so stupid to let an it keep a planet for 2 round with some
peoples there, well.... you remember mass driver become also
very cheap with cheap starbases?
so how does an it (especially an it) want to keep a planet
in enemy space with only 5K people there???
the trick brings the it-advantage, but also the defender gets
the possibility to counter that... i dont see the problem...

and i play in 2 games (longway and crossroads) where the trick
is allowed, both huge universes with 16 players,
and in one game there is not
a single it, and the other is a very special rules game, where
it becomes even more powerful, and still there are only 2
it players there... (or 3???)...
so it might not be concidered that powerful it seems...

ok... now something different...

we were talking about cheats and i would like to introduce one which has not been mentioned before

i never tried it, but it was something about letting the minerals
vanishing from the surface vanishing while being bombed...
i have the description somewhere in my mails, deep digged in,
but maybe someone knows and can explain better how this could
be used? it was something like loading minerals to enemy ships
(non frighters) and the engine would forget that minerals existed
or so... can someone help out? (barrie, are you here?)

robert

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" "

What do you think on using the SS pop steal as a trading tool? If the other side agree to sell some population, is it still a cheat?

If it is not specifically allowed in the game it would be considered a cheat.

"DON'T DO IT, your right leg will get shorter!"

Don't Steal! The government doesn't like competition!

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EDog wrote on Fri, 15 November 2002 15:43

Yes, it makes sense for the SS to be able to do this.

I do not understand what you mean with the above statement? It does not make sense for one race to be able to steal another race's population unless everyone in the game is playing the same race. OR are you suggesting that the SuperStealth have the ability to interbreed with all the other races in the universe?

If it makes sense that SuperStealth can steal someone else's population and make it their own than allied races shoud all be able to colonize the same worlds (with reduced population limits and growth rates of course).

FurFuznel

[Updated on: Fri, 15 November 2002 16:16]

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Quote:

OR are you suggesting that the SuperStealth have the ability to interbreed with all the other races in the universe?

The oracles say the SS race has evolved into a superior race that is able to breed with anything anytime anywhere. This is referred to as the "AAA" effect and is a side effect of a virus or bug introduced by a series of antidotes known as the "JRC series". JRCs were originally know as the "Jeff Repairs Cheats antidote" for several bugs, but became so corrupted in themselves that they were reduced to simply JRCs and declassified as plagues. Rumor has it that only a Supernova event can cure this the galaxies.

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err... maybe I wasn't clear enough:
The SS pop steal as a WEAPON IS unbalanced and too strong, I agree. And true, it wasn't ment to happen, it's a bug.

BUT, so is chaff, and it's fun and people play it, because although it's a bug, it won't unbalance metters.

So, SS pop steal as a weapon is bad, but what if it's used as a trading tool? while pop stealing from enemy planets would remind banned, pop stealing from other players acorrding to a pact would not unbalance anything. It's a trading tool. The SS has the ability to buy and sell colonists, becoming the slave trader of the game .

And the breeding part is irrelevent, it works, so yeah, I guess SS can do it . Besides, population is treated by the thousends in Stars!, so the slaves only breed among themselves, there are certianly enough to do so.

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SS Pop steal

All aguments you told are "funny" , BUT it is a gug , and so it isent allowed to use it .
If you allowed it , it makes the SS to powerful (If you us it as weapon or "slave trader " )
Because the HE are powerfull because of there *2 grow . If you allowed trading Pop for SS you have a SS Race with
Imun ALL
pop grow 3%
MAX REscource by Population (1Res for 700)
Faktories 10 15 res ect
mines max
tech all 50 % lower cost
ECT

You only need a ally to give you some pop after getting scaners.
what will be fast with 50 % lesser research .

So if you have at gamestart a ally with grow 18-20 % ands some years time ( 30 years or so ) nowone can stop you , because
you have planets with 1,1 mill max population and more then 4k res , have maximum minerals for there konzentrations , have max tech ( all50%less coast ) ,and big fleets with 75% steals .

So no race can beat them now . And the game will make no fun now .


ccmaster
King of the Traders

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@ Apelord
Someone who understands me

@ Wayne

Try to assimilate the traders you have no chance to do



ccmaster
King of the Traders

[Updated on: Mon, 18 November 2002 20:45]

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Absolutely this is cheating. It is a blatant abuse of the in-game computations. Transferring ships to "dead" players in order to gain an advantage clearly goes against the spirit of the game and I would ban any player caught using this tactic in a game I was hosting.

This reeks to me of the type of cheat that falls along the lines of N/S/E/W minefield travel or SS pop-stealing; it's an exploitation of the limitations of the game engine or a bug in the code. Why then is chaff generally considered not to be a cheat? Well, for one thing none of the patches have "fixed" it, so it has become a generally acceptable strategy. You don't get something for nothing from chaff - they cost resources and minerals to build. Using dead player fleet bombers _is_ getting something for nothing - increased bombing efficiency (although you do lose the ships in the process, so I guess I'm way off here). Still, there's something fishy in Denmark about this tactic and I think it should go on the list of known cheats.

EDog

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Greetings all,

Ok now for some insight into the "features" and "cheats" of Stars.

Transfer to Dead players only works if the player was an enemy to your target. So in other words if you transfer the ship to a friend then it would work, though if you transfer to an enemy the bombing fleet will automatically be targeted. Usually if I am ready to die I set EVERYBODY to enemy, and therefore makes it imposible for players to further take advantage of my race. Takes care of that problem.

Chaff: Rather than thinking about being in a gunfight and using thumb tacks, those guns would be the same as beams in Stars as it is close combat, in otherwords Chaff isn't used for that. Now if you have a guy a couple hundred yards away and you have a missle launcher, using flares to distract that heat seaking missle would be an example of the chaff, or using real world _chaff_ to distract radar guided missles. As far as AR races, if you are playing an AR and you don't have enough frieghters around your border worlds to do a quick evacuate you are playing the race wrong. Sure Kill starbase is a killer for AR starbases but that implies that you leave your colonists still in tact. Also keep in mind AR have not only a tech advantage but an extremely powerful ability to mass produce ships. So in other words build ships that are light weight and can be gated anywhere and have frieghters around your planets just to be safe. The thing is you should have them orbiting your planets in the first place regardless of your PRT as it is highly likely that your neighbor has a Mass Driver close by.

Split Fleet Dodge: People who consider this a cheat are those who missunderstand Battle Tactics. If your enemy is doing split fleet dodge then he is trying to cover something in the first place, his planet. If someone uses a full laden Frieghter that would imply he is around a planet. The majority of the time I have seen players use this is when I have lead them to believe I am after his fleet (Mahan Style Warfare) when indeed I am forcing him to move his fleet towards his reinforcement while I advance and take over his week planets. Once he has gathered a large enough fleet to conquer me I split MY fleet and further disorient my enemy. This is NOT a cheat but rather a style of warfare that is comonly practiced.

Minefield Imunities: In real world situation this isn't possible, so I agree this is a cheat.

SS Pop Steal: Could be considered a "feature" but keep in mind that you have to set a WAYPOINT task to do this, in other words it is a manipulation of the source code and an overlook of programing. Though not ment to be this could be used as a RP tool in that the SS are similar to the Mystery Trader (being able to spy on other races and the ability to be a super tech monger in the late games...), but that is still oversight and a manipulation. If it is ever alowed, keep you eye out and make sure to have a good back up fleet all along your border with scouts all over the place if possible (and keep them minefields up!).

Hacks of Any Sort:

Cheap Starbases: IMHO This is a cheat, though there is no possible way to really stop it. In real life it is impossible to say I am going to build a car with no interior and at the last minute change your mind just as it is finished and have the engine pop there wihtout a problem. In fact it would cost you EXTRA to get all the suplies rushed to you view next year mail and god knows the cost of man power it would take, and cost, resource wise to get it done sooner. Since Next year mail isn't available in Stars, I highly doubt this was ment to be...

Other than that if there are other cheats I belive to try and think of it in real life terms how each "feature" would be used in real life, or if it is a shortcut around the old fashion way. If there is any way of getting something out of the program that originally ment to be and can't be seen as a use that is used in actual warfare, then it is a cheat.

Then again how many MP games have I been in...?

Than

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All
Here's an interesting one...especially for SS races
An MD10 fires a 10KT packet at a reasonably developed enemy planet say 200Ly away. First turn it travels 50Ly, second turn it has travelled 150Ly, on the third turn it hits, with very low damage, and nobodys really hurt...big deal, would you dodge 10KT at w10?
Unfortunately there is a large 98% cloaked galleon fleet between the two planets at say 140Ly from the firing planet. On turn one, the packet is visible to all parties, on turn 2, the galleon fleet intercepts the packet at warp4 and unloads his entire mineral cargo into the packet, pick a number say 10,000KT, on turn 3 enemy planet is hit and dead.
The victim has no idea how a 10KT packet can wipe out his planet, and probably calls "Cheat"
According to Apelord's 3 rules this is definately under Rule 3, and the only law this is breaking is the laws of physics ie. Conservation of momentum.
The problem is it looks like a cheat, particularly if you did this simultaneously at numerous positions as a precursor to an invasion, and without giving away the details, it's difficult to prove it's not cheating.
Fun though

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