Dogthinkers wrote on Fri, 24 March 2006 17:40

PricklyPea has to withdraw the race he had submitted, as it needs modification. This means you've now got a bit more than a week to work on your races, enjoy the extra time

I'm back and will submit a race this weekend. I'm trying desperately to get it start up quick enough to hold out against a OWW W14 IT neighbour

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race is in. beware any W14 QS IT OWW

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PricklyPea wrote on Fri, 07 April 2006 02:02

race is in. beware any W14 QS IT OWW

And any non-QS 1WW probably has enough to worry about whoever their PRT, neighbour, and starting tech is

Good timing, though; I'll be able to set up the techs on the weekend, if dogthinker can get me the HST, XY and initial M files to change (no need to change the XY of course, but checking that everything worked is difficult without it )

EDIT: Oh, just noticed dogthinker's post that you aren't the only one whose race was out... Well, get on with it people, you've had more than a week

[Updated on: Fri, 07 April 2006 03:53]

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Just to be picky - its a weap 13 race you are worrying about not a weap 14.
Once all the races are in I will tell you what I am frightened of. Not telling you now as it is so evil somone will do it and they will be next to me and I will suffer horribly

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look forward to hearing it i have others i fear

[Updated on: Fri, 07 April 2006 13:29]

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You should have really sent out e-mails. Some of us don't check this thread very often

Fear the evil HW killing packets of doom.

[Updated on: Fri, 07 April 2006 15:13]

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BackBlast wrote on Fri, 07 April 2006 14:54

Fear the evil HW killing packets of doom.

yes. that was one of them

omg. i have to grow fast. research weap to defend against w13, research en to build drivers to defend and con to build freighters to catch the packets.

anyone want a pre-game alliance?

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Shhhh. The admin is listening

[Updated on: Fri, 07 April 2006 19:59]

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I have races in from all players. One is corrupt so I am waiting on a resend.

A few of you said you were thinking of updating your races... Well, if you still do wish to do so then you must do it soon! As soon as I have a full set of uncorrupted race files then I will gen the initial game files.

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The last file came through quickly. Game has been genned. HW Germ concentration in the 50-70 range as promised in the game description. Positions are about as balanced as they ever are without moving planets (i.e. not very balanced, but everybody has some unoccupied space in at least one direction.)

Files have gone to Wumpus for modding.

If anyone has some last minute racefile changes... If I get them before Wumpus starts modifying the startup files then I'll try to regen with your changes and resend it, but no promises on that count.

[Updated on: Sun, 09 April 2006 18:53]

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Dogthinkers wrote on Mon, 10 April 2006 00:53

Files have gone to Wumpus for modding. If anyone has some last minute racefile changes... If I get them before Wumpus starts modifying the startup files then I'll try to regen with your changes and resend it, but no promises on that count.

I'll be doing it tonight if I get the time (which is, for a change, quite likely)... IE around 19:00 CEST (+0200 GMT)

So if you want changes in, let Dogthinker know ASAP so he can re-do his part and/or tell me to wait before doing mine!

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wumpus wrote on Mon, 10 April 2006 08:13

I'll be doing it tonight if I get the time (which is, for a change, quite likely)... IE around 19:00 CEST (+0200 GMT)

Done, and files are on their way back to DogThinker.

To check that everything "stuck", I opened each of the turns, whipped up a quick ship with a nice, high-tech item in the relevant field, and genned once to see if stars yowled and/or reset the techs or something.

This did not happend in any of the cases, so at least at cursory examination the changes are fine.

I've mailed Dogthinker the 2400 turns, I guess he'll distribute the M files to each of you and send to Ron (I don't know who owns which race myself).

So... have fun! There are very interesting race designs there!


DogThinker: If you could set a one-day delay after the first gen, so that I can grab the 2401 files and check if anything untoward happend that may be readily apparent when looking inside the files, but may not necessarily be visible to the players, that'd be cool.

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Now that the races are in. What were the monster race designs you were all fearing? I'm hoping the Energy winner chose AR instead of PP

[Updated on: Mon, 10 April 2006 18:04]

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wumpus wrote on Tue, 11 April 2006 04:48

wumpus wrote on Mon, 10 April 2006 08:13 I'll be doing it tonight if I get the time (which is, for a change, quite likely)... IE around 19:00 CEST (+0200 GMT) Done, and files are on their way back to DogThinker. To check that everything "stuck", I opened each of the turns, whipped up a quick ship with a nice, high-tech item in the relevant field, and genned once to see if stars yowled and/or reset the techs or something. This did not happend in any of the cases, so at least at cursory examination the changes are fine. I've mailed Dogthinker the 2400 turns, I guess he'll distribute the M files to each of you and send to Ron (I don't know who owns which race myself). So... have fun! There are very interesting race designs there! DogThinker: If you could set a one-day delay after the first gen, so that I can grab the 2401 files and check if anything untoward happend that may be readily apparent when looking inside the files, but may not necessarily be visible to the players, that'd be cool.

Thanks Wumpus. I ran a test gen myself as well (before I read your post) and it looked fine. Game has been submitted to Autohost. Individual .m files have been distributed to the players along with the .xy so they can prepare their first turn.

Regarding delaying after the first gen... I'll definately try to get a set of files to you for checking, but I don't think we'll need to actually halt the game while you do so. At that extreme early stage of the game it'd be trivial to roll back a year to fix something, in the unlikely event a problem was detected.

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>It certainly makes an AR race more playable.

Or maybe less unplayable

>Though feeding them minerals and even *building* them is somewhat challenging initially. A warp 11 driver is ~500 resources.

I'm guessing we'll see only W8 packets to begin with. Also, with the distances involved, I suspect packet attacks would only come much later.

>What will be interesting is what becomes of electronics (SS?)

I'm sure it will be SS (possibly JOAT).

>Prop (IT?)

Goes with anything. I thought might be interesting with SD to send some initial harrassing MMLs out at W10

>Bio (SD? IS? JOAT?)

SD the likely candidate, IS also but maybe we'll see something completely different

What I'm thinking is that if WEAP doesn't kill CON quickly, then CON should win the nubian race and the game.

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PricklyPea wrote on Mon, 10 April 2006 23:58

Now that the races are in. What were the monster race designs you were all fearing? I'm hoping the Energy winner chose AR instead of PP

One thing that may be worth considering in all this: Starting with one very high tech has (at least) one downside... namely that your early techs are substantially more expensive than they would otherwise be.

Consider getting from con 0 to con 4 with, say, 19ish more tech levels than usual (that's the "average" boosted tech level, more or less... without taking into account what the various PRTs would have started with anyway, mind you).

At normal research costs, that'll be 4 * 19 * 10 = 760 more res than "usual"... or, around about double the cost a start-at-con-0 race would normally face to get there (exact ratios depending on what other starting techs the PRT and other race wizard choices give you).

So I hope people took that kind of thing into account when pondering race designs It effects the other early techs too ofc, but con (with the very handy privateers at con4) is the one that seems most likely to be an issue, paticularly since the "extra cost due to research so far" fades into insignificance once you get past level 7 or so.

EDIT: Incidentally, there's nothing I could have done about this when "fixing" the starting techs; Stars! calculates the cost-to-advance based purely on your current, actual techs, not based on some hidden additional information. The best that could have been done to counteract the effect is to grant some small amount of "tech progress" in all of the "low" starting fields, but that's a dubious solution at best.

[Updated on: Tue, 11 April 2006 16:28]

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PricklyPea wrote on Wed, 12 April 2006 06:37

I did factor this into the race design and one option to get around it would be to have an option of WHEN you get your techs. e.g. get it in year 10.

Nice idea. A bit more work for host/modder/Ron as hst will have to be downloaded/modified/uploaded each time, but if you limited the dates available it shouldn't be too bad... (i.e. 2400, 2410, 2420, 2430 only) Will definately consider this for the next run.

I'm curious to see how much trading (intentional or otherwise) takes place. It could get very amusing watching QJ5 warships *trying* to catch prop23 ships for tech.

[Updated on: Tue, 11 April 2006 17:53]

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Dogthinkers wrote on Tue, 11 April 2006 14:53

I'm curious to see how much trading (intentional or otherwise) takes place. It could get very amusing watching QJ5 warships *trying* to catch prop23 ships for tech.

That ain't happening prior to cruisers.

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