A bunch of us here at Electronic Arts have let this game suck several years of our lives away , so we figure its time we tested our mettle against the rest of the world.



We formally challenge any other well organized clan (if there are any) to a full-out battle for bragging rights . Also, as an incentive (and because we are uber-confident ), if your clan can beat us, I will personally send each member of your team a copy of an EA game of their choice (of the selection of games that EA is selling at that point only please ).



Note that we are still in the process of finishing up an internal match, so this will not start for a month or so - time for you to practice up. We are mostly looking to see if there is interest.

We warn any challengers that we are quite skilled at the game and have excellent teamwork and communication, so intermediate or advanced players who have good communication with each other only please. Game settings will be:

Number of players: Equal team sizes up to eight each depending on available challengers.

Huge, sparse universe
jrc4 gens
Slower tech
Accelerated BBS
No random events (no mystery traders)
No starting public player scores (scores will be set to go public at turn 100)
No galaxy clumping
Distant start (see below)
No race limitations

Cheats worthy of having your auto-host upload priviledges revoked for the game:
Fleet-split before battle
Hex editing sliders (no inf minerals/pop)
Abusing battle token maximums
Pop stealing
Minefield walkthroughs (chaff sweep is okay)
I'm undecided on the fleet dodge...comments?
(Did I miss any obvious ones?)

PS: Chaff isn't cheating. I will happily do my best to shut down any argument against that statement.

Turn generation will be:
Turn 1-40: Mon through Fri, 3am (pst)
Turn 41-70: Mon, Wed, Fri, 3am (pst)
Turn 71+: Tue, Fri, 3am (pst)
Holidays will not alter the schedule - get your teammates to play for you if you cannot.

If a team needs more time for a valid reason, these schedules can be changed.

Winning condition: Inhabit three enemy homeworlds at the end of each of three contiguous rounds. (Or make the other team cry uncle... ) Note that this allows you to lose a world as a waypoint zero order but take it back as a waypoint one order and still keep the clock going.

The universe will be set up such that it will be a top vs bottom scenario -- each team will move their homeworlds and secondary worlds to their space. There will be a 300 ly no-mans-land zone horizontally across the middle of the universe for starting planets (so you won't start closer than 300 lys to the enemy, however you may cross it as soon as the game starts).

A neutral party (Ron?) will move the homeworlds/secondaries so the homeworld identities are hidden. If no one can be found that both sides can agree on, I will move them and the names of all the homeworlds and secondary worlds will be public to both teams. If anyone has any questions about how this works, I will happily give the details. Yes, it's possible for the other team to start without knowing your homeworlds (although I'm sure they won't stay hidden long...

If I've missed any details, they'll be filled in closer to the start date.

PS: A special challenge to any Stars! players from Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Acclaim, Take-two, Radical, Relic, Konami, or any other game companies out there...bring it!

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[Updated on: Sun, 08 February 2004 13:52]

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Ettane wrote on Sun, 08 February 2004 01:21

PS: A special challenge to any Stars! players from Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Acclaim, Take-two, Radical, Relic, Konami, or any other game companies out there...bring it!

There are two players in current games that have microsoft.com email addresses. I'm not aware of any others in the other companies you mentioned.

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Just curious - is Sanguine on your team? (I remember him saying he worked at EA...

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LEit and friends: I'll talk to the test of my team and see how soon we can set the game up.

Some of us have joined some games here on AH, but we pretty much just deal with internal games.

Just to make sure, your roster is eight:
LEit
Alien
overworked(AKA OWK)
Alric
Heinz
Sotek
Xdude
Orca

LEit: Send me an email and we'll hammer out the nitty-gritty details (or msn if you have it) dhumphrey@ea.com

PS: Orca: I don't remember anyone here with the handle 'Sanguine'. What was his real name? (Or if that *was* his real name, then he doesn't show up in our email list...)

PPS: Yes, totally forgot about the insta-starbase trick -- its banned too.

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I had to look it up, but Scott Hartley is his name.

And your player roster is correct.

[Updated on: Mon, 09 February 2004 02:15]

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Ettane wrote on Mon, 09 February 2004 01:44

LEit and friends: I'll talk to the test of my team and see how soon we can set the game up.

No massive hurry from my point of view. We can use the organization time. And it will also allow a few AH games that I'm hosting/observing in run their course.

- Kurt

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Ettane wrote on Sun, 08 February 2004 00:21

A bunch of us here at Electronic Arts have let this game suck several years of our lives away , so we figure its time we tested our mettle against the rest of the world.

I may be able to talk some of my fellow co-workers (and a couple of ex-coworkers) into a game like this. Skill level wouldn't be a problem...Number of players may. What's the minimum number? With the number of responses, it also looks like this could fit nicely into a tournament. Or a 4 x 4 team game could be fun, too. Interested in something along these lines?

-Matt

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Basically, it works like this.

1) Everyone will send their race files to a neutral party (let's randomly pick a name and call that person 'Ron' .

2) Ron will then generate the universe with the conditions specified.

3) Ron will take two snapshots of the universe as tga's or bmp's (or whatever picture format he chooses). For each team, he will take one of the pictures and erase the enemy homeworlds and the other half of the universe, so each team can only see their homeworlds (and secondary worlds), and the planets in their starting section of the universe (and the neutral zone). These will want to be as high a res as possible (up to 2000 by 2000 if possible).

4) Each team will confer with its members and decide where they would like their worlds to be (vertically of course), then mark that on the picture, and send it back to Ron (along with any special placement notes, such as "make sure this planet is within 81.99 ly of this planet here). Note that you will not know any planet names at this point, and you will only be able to see planets in your space and the neutral zone. Also, you are not allowed to position a planet on top of another planet (and I'd recommend not placing them within 3 lys of another planet otherwise the other team will know where one of your worlds is right off the bat).

5) Ron will do his best to position the planets as best as possible to each team's specifications.

6) Ron will then set the game up on the Autohost, and kick it off.


My team will then proceed to tech to the 'win' device and deploy it.

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Its easy. Takes thirty seconds per race. Sure you don't want to learn -- you just load the universe up, then for each planet you want to move, you just click on it, then click where you want it to go.

(Its going to be hard to find another 3rd party called Ron if you don't...

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Ettane wrote on Wed, 11 February 2004 17:41

(Its going to be hard to find another 3rd party called Ron if you don't...

What program?

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Universe Creator. I use version 1.2 and it works great (albeit the interface could be better...)

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donjon is good at moving planets around (and one of those trustworthy souls) and i think he's even Canadian (although he lives in Central America) should Ron not have enuf time...


Ash

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Colour code them with a text file describing which colour belongs to which person (or just write into the picture). Not forgetting to mention which are the secondary worlds of which person.

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LEit wrote on Thu, 12 February 2004 10:43

Sounds good. Donjon would be an acceptable 3rd party for us (Hmm, is it OK to capitalize his name?)

Nope, capitalization is for eqotists (one of my peeves with aatraders)

Anyway, I am open to universe editing

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Groovy.

Re capitalization: what if your name is the first word in the sentence?

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