Home » Stars! 2.6/7 » The Bar » Unofficial patch...
| Re: Unofficial patch... |
Sat, 18 February 2006 21:22   |
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 Madman |
 | Officer Cadet 1st Year |
Messages: 228
Registered: November 2003
Location: New Zealand | |
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| multilis wrote on Sun, 19 February 2006 11:15 |
We seem to have 2 main factions, those who want only points out of race wizard, and those who want both instaforming and OA ships adjusted, an option is a compromise where each faction gets something.
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I'd say if you can't get fairly broad agreement on any changes (this doesn't need to be an agreement that they are the _best_ changes, just that they are better than the current version), then it's not a good idea to try and change it. When the Jeffs changed something, they were doing it from a position of authority, and everyone followed. A patch from someone else that doesn't have wide backing will either fail to be used, or split the player base.
Someone also needs to check that the versioning stuff can be done cleanly (i.e that if someone tries to open a race or game with the wrong version of Stars!, sensible error messages are returned), or there's no point trying to do an unoffical patch in the first place.
[Updated on: Sat, 18 February 2006 21:24] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Unofficial patch... |
Mon, 20 February 2006 04:07 |
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not to mention alliance bombing...1st player retro's them to -1% then the next players regular(or smart) bombs are devastating.
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| Re: Unofficial patch... |
Thu, 02 March 2006 13:51 |
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As a compromise between those who want no instaforming and more expensive/heavier OA ships and those who want race more expensive in wizard...
perhaps CA keeps instaforming, OA ships become heavier and/or more expensive, and CA loses points in race design wizard.
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| Re: Unofficial patch... |
Thu, 02 March 2006 21:17 |
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| c64k |
 | Petty Officer 3rd Class |
Messages: 42
Registered: March 2006
Location: .us | |
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Just revert CA back to the original CA. The original CA, introduced many years ago in v2.5, was fairly balanced, IMHO (50% terraforming cost). The CA balance broken mostly when instaforming was added some time afterwards. Since this is the way things used to be, there is the advantage of precedent...
[Updated on: Thu, 02 March 2006 21:19] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Unofficial patch... |
Fri, 03 March 2006 01:31 |
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My 
CA
My personal opinion (and I've played the game since version 1.1) is that the instaforming should go. Leave the OA's alone and adjust the CA prt base cost a little - say selecting CA causes the race to start at -38 points instead of 0. This would balance the CA making it much more even with the other PRT's.
Sadly, the retro bomb really is a waste of a toy slot - I have NEVER seen a retro bomber built (and I've played hundreds of games). The problem is that the original intent of the retro bomb was to do what the OA does to enemy planets. So, the solution for being fair to the CA is to get rid of the retro bomb altogether and replace it with somethig else that already exists in the game. For instance, give the CA an anti matter generator with slightly inferior capabilities to the IT anti-matter generator (or any other part that might make sense). Adjusting the cost & weight of the OA module might be the only other thing worth considering. The OA should be gateable through a 300/500 gate IF there is only one on a ship. However, I certainly don't think that giving it a massive weight or a very high cost would be the right thing to do.
JOAT
Yes, I agree that taking NAS should cost the JOAT. However, given the complexities of the race wizard I would suggest that it may not be wise to try to fiddle too much with it. The solution is simple - adjust the starting points for the JOAT - since it is too strong as is, selecting JOAT starts with -94 points instead of +25. I think you'd find that would probably reduce the potential of JOATS sufficiently. By doing this you negate the point advantage of NAS altogether and make the PRT cost instead of being so advantageous.
IT and SD
These PRT's are already pretty well balanced and I don't really see the point in taking away infinity gates - that's what makes IT an IT as well as it's ability to gate cargo. In order to balance the PRT's - again, change the base cost. IT's already starts with -57 points, make it start with -68 or so. You'd be surprised how a small change will make a big difference. The SD also should not be starting in positive territory. Reduce it's starting cost to something like -20.
As for the rest, IS perhaps should start with +25, WM with +15 or so and AR with around 0.
These types of changes are easy to test also. Create test races with the appropriate left over points, use the same universe for each test - say a tiny packed - and just change the race then play it for 50 years to see the best you can get out of it. If you end up with all the races very close in resource counts using the same hab and economy values, then you have balanced races. Only the HE and the AR would really need some different attention to verify that that are equally good but not better or weaker.
Ptolemy
[Updated on: Fri, 03 March 2006 01:33]
Though we often ask how and why, we must also do to get the answers to the questions.Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Unofficial patch... |
Fri, 03 March 2006 22:40 |
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| Madman |
| Officer Cadet 1st Year |
Messages: 228
Registered: November 2003
Location: New Zealand | |
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| c64k wrote on Fri, 03 March 2006 15:17 |
Just revert CA back to the original CA. The original CA, introduced many years ago in v2.5, was fairly balanced, IMHO (50% terraforming cost). The CA balance broken mostly when instaforming was added some time afterwards. Since this is the way things used to be, there is the advantage of precedent...
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Thanks for that - that's useful information.
I have one follow-up question for anyone that was around at the time - if CA was balanced, why was it made so much stronger, and was that the only improvement made? They obviously over-did it, so I'd guess making the CA pay 50% terraforming cost with no other RW or OA changes would be more balanced than the current situation.
I'd support either of:
(1) CA pays 50% terraforming cost and OA and RW points stay the same, or
(2) Leave the instaforming, but a big RW cost increase, and somehow make TT more expensive for CA.
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| Re: Unofficial patch... |
Fri, 03 March 2006 23:31 |
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The solutions I have proposed are based on the simple facts that the the original code is not available to us in the player community. However, Prickly Pear has dissected some of the actual program and was able to turn the instaforming off.
Adjusting it to provide one click per turn would certainly be a major original code change but, changing the starting point values of races apparently is fairly easy. Replacing the retro bomb can be done in StarsEd. If Prickly Pear helps, I would certainly be willing to help get some of the grunt work done to make a 'unofficial' patch and then I would go the extra step of asking the Jeff's and Empire Interactive (if I can get an answer from them) to provide the player community of Stars! with a legal indemnitie on paper disclaiming any copywright infringement problems. In this same context, if it is possible, serial number checking could be disabled which would effectively turn the game into freeware and new players would be able to play - and AH could legally use the new version.
Ptolemy
Though we often ask how and why, we must also do to get the answers to the questions.Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Unofficial patch... |
Sat, 04 March 2006 01:16 |
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Well, I won't know until I ask.
Basically, the game is so old now that it is possible that we can get freeware status assigned to it. Then, we can make the unofficial patch and the game will live on until such time as the FreeStars project is playable. Granted, I don't know what the responses will be, but I will ask.
Ptolemy
[Updated on: Sat, 04 March 2006 01:19]
Though we often ask how and why, we must also do to get the answers to the questions.Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Unofficial patch... |
Sat, 04 March 2006 02:09 |
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I don't see much difference between an unoffical patch and pirate lord tools and the vml section on autohost. I personally didn't plan to get to stage of asking Ron, etc. till we had something solid... hard to talk about vaporware.
IMO we need to find a set of improvements that large majority prefer over current version to make it fly... which will mean compromises.
[Updated on: Sat, 04 March 2006 02:11] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Unofficial patch... |
Sat, 04 March 2006 02:40 |
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And the changes to be made must be doable. There is no point in suggesting changes that require fundamental original re-coding since the source code will not be available - i.e. making gates available to HE for instance.
First we get an agreement on what should be done within the limits of the possibilities (and the willingness of probably PricklyPea). Then, we ask Ron to agree to use it if - and only if - we get the necessary permissions from Empire and the Jeffs.
Ptolemy
Though we often ask how and why, we must also do to get the answers to the questions.Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Unofficial patch... |
Sat, 04 March 2006 09:55 |
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| Madman |
| Officer Cadet 1st Year |
Messages: 228
Registered: November 2003
Location: New Zealand | |
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| multilis wrote on Sat, 04 March 2006 20:09 |
I don't see much difference between an unoffical patch and pirate lord tools and the vml section on autohost. I personally didn't plan to get to stage of asking Ron, etc. till we had something solid... hard to talk about vaporware.
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The point is that AH didn't host VML games as far as I'm aware (although that was at least partly because there was no VML 'standard').
My idea wasn't to tell Ron we were going to do this, and this etc., but to get some idea under what conditions he'd consider running a patch, so we make sure we do our best to meet those conditions. Of course, Ron might not have thought about that yet.
I imagine minimal conditions would be:
(1) Changes are doable and tested (both for non-bugginess and balance),
(2) There is relatively wide agreement on the changes (here is where the compromises come in),
(3) That we get the versioning sorted out, so he can run 'jrc4' patch games and 'k' patch games with Stars reporting an error if the wrong files are run with the wrong version,
(4) That there is no likelihood of legal problems. It's up to Ron whether he'd settle for it being under the radar (which is where trying to get permission from Empire might be a problem if they say no), an informal assurance that it was not a problem, or something formally in writing. I think as long as we left the serial# stuff intact (we'd definitely need permission to disable that), things should be OK.
Once Freestars is going, we'll have to consider the same issues (except the legal ones, unless Empire are real ratbags and try to shut down Freestars), because we'll certainly want something that can be run on AH.
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| Re: Unofficial patch... |
Sat, 04 March 2006 21:17 |
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| c64k |
| Petty Officer 3rd Class |
Messages: 42
Registered: March 2006
Location: .us | |
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| Madman wrote on Fri, 03 March 2006 22:40 |
I have one follow-up question for anyone that was around at the time - if CA was balanced, why was it made so much stronger, and was that the only improvement made? They obviously over-did it, so I'd guess making the CA pay 50% terraforming cost with no other RW or OA changes would be more balanced than the current situation.
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Well, CA was added as a brand new PRT with the May 5, 1996 release (v2.5). CA was granted instaforming a mere four months later in the September 9 release that same year (v2.6). Considering that most games last than four months, considering that CA was a brand new PRT that many players were not as familiar with using efficiently, and considering how other many things were being changed in the game at the time (according to the changelog there were over 20 "new features" in 2.5a->2.6, and that's not including the "tweaks" and "bugfixes" and the changes from 2.5->2.5a), my best guess explanation would be "it looked like a good idea at the time, but hindsight is 20/20".
[Updated on: Sat, 04 March 2006 21:19] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Unofficial patch... |
Mon, 06 March 2006 11:59 |
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| Madman |
| Officer Cadet 1st Year |
Messages: 228
Registered: November 2003
Location: New Zealand | |
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| c64k wrote on Sun, 05 March 2006 15:17 |
Well, CA was added as a brand new PRT with the May 5, 1996 release (v2.5). CA was granted instaforming a mere four months later in the September 9 release that same year (v2.6). Considering that most games last than four months, considering that CA was a brand new PRT that many players were not as familiar with using efficiently, and considering how other many things were being changed in the game at the time (according to the changelog there were over 20 "new features" in 2.5a->2.6, and that's not including the "tweaks" and "bugfixes" and the changes from 2.5->2.5a), my best guess explanation would be "it looked like a good idea at the time, but hindsight is 20/20".
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OK, I'm sold on the idea of CA getting 50% terraforming cost and (initially) no other changes. One other thing that would have changed since 1996 is the number crunchers have been at the game long enough that the econ races (of which CA would still be one) now have an advantage anyway.
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| Re: Unofficial patch... |
Mon, 06 March 2006 16:49 |
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| mlaub |
 | Lieutenant |
Messages: 744
Registered: November 2003
Location: MN, USA | |
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| PricklyPea wrote on Mon, 06 March 2006 11:32 |
A previous incarnation of my mod had CA with 50% terraform cost. With TT that equates to 35 res and is more or less the same as insta-forming.
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Well, not quite instaforming, but close. So, why not make it a base of ~70 res for normal terra, and 50 res for TT, or some other cheaper costs? Well, for one thing, with the OA's, it won't matter much. So, OA's would have to be reworked too. Actually, I like the idea of limiting the OA's potential to 1 or 2 clicks a turn. Let the De-terraformers be unlimited, and hey...they are suddenly useful.
Something missing here, is that instaforming is temporary. "Whenever a Claim Adjuster abandons a planet (either voluntarily involuntarily) the environment will revert to the underlying "natural" stats." Meaning, if you take a CA world, it goes back to the original hab. If you lose instaforming, and make them pay for it, the terraformed hab would stay. This is actually bad for a CA. It was one of the things that made the race "weaker". They become a target via already terraformed planets, vs being a monster or threat.
As a alternate balance to limiting the instaforming, doubling the chance of a permanent hab change could help things on the balance sheet.
-Matt
Global Warming - A climatic change eagerly awaited by most Minnesotans.
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