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AR Limitations

Sun, 29 February 2004 17:16

Inquisitor80

Warrant Officer

Messages: 115
Registered: February 2004
Location: The dark places in betwee...

I have only been playing stars for a short time now. I like the AR race but it seems to have some flaws.

Why can my miners only stack up to 1200k per mine group?
It seems a inconvenience only. I can have multiple stacks so why is this in there. The AR seems to need a bunch of micro management as is why increase the effort by having to deal with all these fleets?

Please if somebody has a good answer please let me know.

Also is there a why I can change this? I tried the StarEd program but it said it was missing a file.

Please Help.

-Inquisitor80

- Inquisitor80
___________________________________
We must move forwards not backwards, upwards not forwards, and always twirling, twirling, twirling toward freedom.

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Re: AR Limitations

Sun, 29 February 2004 17:44

overworked

Lt. Junior Grade

Messages: 403
Registered: November 2002
Location: Pittsburgh, PA

Inquisitor80 wrote on Sun, 29 February 2004 17:16

The limit you mention affects any race remote mining, not just AR races.

The limit was put in around the H or I version of Stars to prevent large fleets of remote miners from strip-mining a planet and getting immense amounts of minerals out before any check occurred to reduce mineral concentrations.

Since the check occurs between fleets a non-HW concentration will decrease quickly if it is heavily remote mined since the concentration can decrease from fleet to fleet during the turn.

I doubt that StarEd can adjust this.

- Kurt

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Re: AR Limitations

Sun, 29 February 2004 19:10

Inquisitor80

Warrant Officer

Messages: 115
Registered: February 2004
Location: The dark places in betwee...

Thanks that helps with at lease the reason that they did that. Do you know of any way of changing it?

I don't play multi play and i am not looking to cheat i just want to have 1 fleet for my mineral fountain instead of 20.

Any help would be great

Inquisitor80

- Inquisitor80
___________________________________
We must move forwards not backwards, upwards not forwards, and always twirling, twirling, twirling toward freedom.

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Re: AR Limitations

Mon, 01 March 2004 05:53

Madman

Officer Cadet 1st Year

Messages: 228
Registered: November 2003
Location: New Zealand

Inquisitor80 wrote on Mon, 01 March 2004 13:10

i just want to have 1 fleet for my mineral fountain instead of 20.

Well, given the amount of management required to be successful at Stars! anyway, this is a pretty minor inconvenience.

It can be annoying however to realize that one of your fleets has been mining with 4000 mine equivalents, so some of it is not doing anything Sad

In a fantasy world where I had the source code to Stars! and could release a patch, I'd be inclined to handle large fleets by either:

mine up to 1000 (or whatever number) mine units, do depletion, mine the next 1000, do depletion, until done, move onto next fleet and do the same.

or, even better:

for all mines, including planetary, treat the depletion as happening continuously, so you get exactly the same amount of minerals for a given amount of depletion (assuming a particular mining efficiency) however fast you mine it, whether 10 mines or 10000 .

but given that there haven't been any patches for a long time, and the current system is not actually broken, this isn't going to happen.

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Re: AR Limitations

Mon, 01 March 2004 07:22

Kotk

Commander

Messages: 1227
Registered: May 2003

Inquisitor80 wrote on Mon, 01 March 2004 02:10

I don't play multi play and i am not looking to cheat i just want to have 1 fleet for my mineral fountain instead of 20.

There are no way to make them to look as 1 fleet.

Why you need it? People in pbem games run into 512 fleet limit quite often and some 20 fleets is usually no problem for them.

Are they on your way visually? With some splitting and merging you can increase fleet numbers (just split them all up and merge to 20 fleets with greatest #) to make the miner fleets occur after the rest of fleets on HW orbit visually. You can also rename the complete 4000 mine fleets into something other so you know not to touch them. Other than that i know no tricks.

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Re: AR Limitations

Mon, 01 March 2004 11:03

Inquisitor80

Warrant Officer

Messages: 115
Registered: February 2004
Location: The dark places in betwee...

Well it is not so much that but also then you have freighters going this way and that because you are funding your war machine. I have 20 fleets of Miners named something then i have at least 10 sets of freighters at the HW at any given point. I diverted the routing to another planet so i don't have that congestion. But i also have the Larger freighters that go to other mineral dump worlds for other freighters.

You can see how the fleets stack up and it can get confusing and just plain annoying. I mean maybe it is unreasonable to ask for all in 1 fleet but how about 5000k in 1 mining fleet.

As a side question does anybody know why the highest auto set amount for transportation is 4000k?

-Inquisitor80

- Inquisitor80
___________________________________
We must move forwards not backwards, upwards not forwards, and always twirling, twirling, twirling toward freedom.

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Re: AR Limitations

Mon, 01 March 2004 11:16

LEit

Lt. Commander

Messages: 879
Registered: April 2003
Location: CT

It doesn't matter if it is reasonable or not, because no one is changing it.

I have no idea what the 4k limit is for. You can get around it some by loading % fills, say 40% iron, 25% bora, 35% germ. That also helps with sending the appropiate amounts to the production centers.

Also, you should try playing against people, it's much more interesting then the AI.

- LEit

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Re: AR Limitations

Mon, 01 March 2004 12:31

Inquisitor80

Warrant Officer

Messages: 115
Registered: February 2004
Location: The dark places in betwee...

i would like to but my free time is random and inconsistent.

plus i don't think i have worked out a good enough race to make even a decent showing...

-Inquisitor80

- Inquisitor80
___________________________________
We must move forwards not backwards, upwards not forwards, and always twirling, twirling, twirling toward freedom.

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Re: AR Limitations

Mon, 01 March 2004 14:05

Kotk

Commander

Messages: 1227
Registered: May 2003

Over 10 sets of freighters carrying minerals from only 20 miner fleets per turn? Rolling Eyes

It means the trouble is no miners but freighters. You are overmicromanaging. Nod

20 fleets mine enough maybe for 50-60 large freighters. That makes your average freighter fleet is 5-6 freighters.

Carrying 6 to some place over 3 years away from HW you may need to start next trip before previous had arrived to keep the planet busy building.

I have found it quite tiresome to carry less than 20 freighters per trip to somewhere. That makes about 3 fleets per year carrying from 20 fleet fountain. Wink

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Re: AR Limitations

Mon, 01 March 2004 15:38

Inquisitor80

Warrant Officer

Messages: 115
Registered: February 2004
Location: The dark places in betwee...

I'm sorry if i gave you the wrong impression. the numbers i posted where just random numbers they weren't specific.

I usually make sure a producing world gets 2000k of each mineral each turn using the set waypoint to option.

The problem i have is that a each planet has a set of freighters and each planet within 2 turns is sourced straight from the HW. So if i have 12 planets within 2 turns of HW then there are always 12 freighter fleets in orbit of the HW. Add this to the 20 or so Mine fleets plus defenders... You see the problem. Maybe i am MM the wrong way but this is the way that seemed simplest.

If you have suggestions on MM then that would be great as well.

Like i said before i am just starting and may no know the best way of doing things.

-Inquisitor80

-sorry edited for spelling-

Also i have heard of a edit that changes starbases to armed ship status. Does anybody know where i can get this?

[Updated on: Mon, 01 March 2004 18:38]

- Inquisitor80
___________________________________
We must move forwards not backwards, upwards not forwards, and always twirling, twirling, twirling toward freedom.

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Re: AR Limitations

Wed, 03 March 2004 07:16

Kotk

Commander

Messages: 1227
Registered: May 2003

Inquisitor80 wrote on Mon, 01 March 2004 22:38

If you have suggestions on MM then that would be great as well.

I can only suggest mineral and shipbuilding MM with fountain era AR what i do in game:

1) Send manually fleet of 20-25 large freighters of minerals to planet that will otherwise run out and where you have no minerals going yet. If needed fuel then colony-hop. Send smaller fleets (only about 10 freighters) if the destination is low value planet (below 50%) or to some war zone. Optionally you may note it down where you sent minerals... I had notepad file with my 50 planets sorted by name for mineral bookkeeping, there i took such notes.

2) Repeat 1) until you have no minerals lying on HW floor for one more trip to somewhere or you have no freighters around HW or you have no planets that will run out of minerals.

3) If you still have significant amount of minerals you do not need and you have ally, send them to nearest ally planet ... its his business to deal with them further.

4) When mineral fleet reached its destination drop minerals and fill queue with warships you build in the way that all minerals on ground are used up. Optionally you may note down when you need to send next portion of minerals there. Gate the freighter fleet home.

5) Repeat 4) until you have no freighter fleets that reached their destination.

6) Generally done yearly production MM ... optionally you may eyeball the situation with your freighters... (are they in danger, may they hit enemy minefields etc.) and correct their trajectories if needed. Also you may eyeball the situation with you planets... if you are out of minerals somewhere... change the queues (for example when you are out of iron build minelayers, when no germ build miners).

Despite maybe lenghty and complex description such MM actually means you send up to 5 fleets out per year in 50 planet empire and also up to 5 fleets reach their destinations per year (so you update productions there). The MM level is quite low ... it takes about 10 minutes per turn with some skill of using the ingame messages together with your own notes to set up all the production. Skirmishing and fighting takes usually lot more.

It is not worth trying automating such MM because the period of mineral distribution to one planet is over 10 years in average. I would say with competent playing it takes 20-30 years of shipbuilding when your PBEM opponents start to give up. Wink

As for playing against AI-s ... AI-s are dead meat anyway whatever stupid things you do. Nod

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