Home » Stars! 2.6/7 » The Bar » Possible new utility for creating testbeds
| Re: trying to use it... |
Tue, 24 February 2009 13:34   |
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| PaulCr |
 | Chief Warrant Officer 3
Stars! V.I.P
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Messages: 187
Registered: February 2007
Location: An Island that kinda look... | |
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| Altruist wrote on Tue, 24 February 2009 18:14 |
Hi Paul,
I've tried to use the tool but I am not sure how to.
GameData.xml
* I've changed the path and filenames to fit with the game I am playing in, eg:<MFile file="c:\games\stars\sas1\hst\sas1.m3"/>
although I am not sure what to do with <HSTFile file="c:\games\stars\sas1\hst\g.hst"/> Will the hst-file be created because I, of course, haven't got the hst-file for the game?
* I've created some race-files and filled in the tech levels
* I've left the ship data as they are to see first what it looks like before experimenting further
* there are 2 more games mentioned which puzzles me (can the tool operate several games at the same time?)
I am saving the changes and start: DatasetEditor.exe
The program starts and I get an empty screen, mmh, am I supposed to manually load the xml-file?
Ok, so I choose FILE > OPEN: GameData.xml
which results in an error message: "could not find file". There are details about the error but they are quite long...
What now?
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The app can handle multiple games at the same time, you get a drop down box allowing you to select the one you want.
The app reads in the xy, m and h files from the locations you specify and creates a .hst and m files for each player whereever you specify the hst file to be placed.
The xy, m, h and any race files must exist at the locations you specify, the hst doesn't but the folder it will be stored in does.
The minimum config would be
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Games>
<Game name="SAS 1">
<XYFile file="c:\games\stars\sas1\sas1.xy"/>
<HFile file="c:\games\stars\sas1\sas1.h3"/>
<MFile file="c:\games\stars\sas1\sas1.m3"/>
<HSTFile file="c:\games\stars\sas1\hst\g.hst"/>
</Game>
</Games>
The above will read the sas1.xy, sas1.h3 and sas1.m3 files from c:\games\stars\sas1 and save g.hst and g.m1, g.m2 etc in c:\games\stars\sas1\hst which will need creating if it doesn't already exist. You can save the result anywhere with any name, it is better though to put them in a different folder then your actual game and give them a different name to avoid mixing them up. You will also need to copy sas1.xy into the same folder and give it the same name, ie g.xy
The .exe to run is the Stars Hst Creator.exe file, the dataset editor is for editing the ItemCost.xml file so that you can see the categoryID and Item ID of all the stars components if you want to modify a ship or starbase design, if you're not going to want to change anybodies design then you can ignore it.
[Updated on: Tue, 24 February 2009 13:41] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: trying to use it... |
Tue, 24 February 2009 14:15 |
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| PaulCr wrote on Tue, 24 February 2009 19:34 |
The .exe to run is the Stars Hst Creator.exe file
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Aaah, I've tried the wrong exe. Works now. Thanks.
Now I still need ot figure out how to give the planets some minerals to build a station and so on... but no more time today... tomorrow.
Information gathered from penetrating scanners isn't used, is it? At least it looks like all ships I see orbiting planets due to pen-scans are skipped/not shown.
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| Re: trying to use it... |
Tue, 24 February 2009 14:35 |
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| PaulCr |
| Chief Warrant Officer 3
Stars! V.I.P
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Messages: 187
Registered: February 2007
Location: An Island that kinda look... | |
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All ships you can see are included in the .hst, the m files produced initially though don't include enemy ships or any minefields but you will see them if you generate a turn, I'm going to modify the next version to output everything to the initial m files, put around 10000kt of minerals on enemy planets and 4000 mines, factories and 100 defenses, since installations are not known setting them to the worst case scenario seems better than setting them to almost nothing. If you bring enough bombers to bomb a max installation planet then you can safely assume they will work in the real game.
I've already added cargo to your own ships in the version I have since I needed that for my testbed so that will appear as well. I now also know from testing that, that if you have an x file that tries to unload cargo from a ship that has none then stars will claim the x file is corrupt rather than carrying out the order, should therefore allow the x file generator to be able to do unload orders although I'll do further checking before adding it when I write it.
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| Re: Possible new utility for creating testbeds |
Tue, 24 February 2009 17:39 |
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| PaulCr |
| Chief Warrant Officer 3
Stars! V.I.P
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Messages: 187
Registered: February 2007
Location: An Island that kinda look... | |
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I've added a zip file to my server containing an xml dump of my m file for Fledgling Admirals 2 from last year along with a script for grabbing the battle plans from it and saving then into a csv file.
The file is 35kb in size, the xml unzipped is 543kb, the original m file was 18kb so the zipped size isn't bad given it has the same information but now it can be read by anybody, the url to get it is http://stars.atlantissoftware.co.uk/admiral2.zip
I have not decoded some types yet and a few others I've not got round to creating xml files for yet.
Looking at the Admiral2.m3.xml file the missing types are
0 - File Terminator and checksum if 2 bytes long, a quick look previously looks like it is an OR of each 2 bytes in the file, although I've note checked if it includes the 2 byte block headers or what happend on odd sized blocks
12 - Stars Messages (ie built x factories but not player communications which are type 40)
14 - Partial Planet info, Type 13 file should work for that
17 - Partial Fleet info, Type 16 file should work for that
19 - Waypoint task, partially decoded
31 - Battles - undecoded (type 39 seems somehow related has well)
43 - Minefields, wormholes, Packets and salvage, I've decoded these but I've got to write an xml structure file that can chandle the all in the same file.
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| Re: Possible new utility for creating testbeds |
Tue, 24 February 2009 19:11 |
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| PaulCr wrote on Tue, 24 February 2009 23:39 |
The file is 35kb in size, the xml unzipped is 543kb, the original m file was 18kb so the zipped size isn't bad given it has the same information but now it can be read by anybody, the url to get it is http://stars.atlantissoftware.co.uk/admiral2.zip
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What the heck do you mean by "now it can be read by anybody"?
Completly bewildered by the ignorance of some about the ignorance of others *grin
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| Re: Possible new utility for creating testbeds |
Tue, 24 February 2009 19:55 |
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| PaulCr |
| Chief Warrant Officer 3
Stars! V.I.P
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Messages: 187
Registered: February 2007
Location: An Island that kinda look... | |
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| Altruist wrote on Wed, 25 February 2009 00:11 |
| PaulCr wrote on Tue, 24 February 2009 23:39 |
The file is 35kb in size, the xml unzipped is 543kb, the original m file was 18kb so the zipped size isn't bad given it has the same information but now it can be read by anybody, the url to get it is http://stars.atlantissoftware.co.uk/admiral2.zip
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What the heck do you mean by "now it can be read by anybody"?
Completly bewildered by the ignorance of some about the ignorance of others *grin
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I didn't say it would be easy but if you want to know whats in the file the info is there, try reading the original stars files, reading xml will seems like childs play in comparison.
It does help if you load it into something that formats it so that you can collapse of expand elements, IE and Firefox can manage it but they don't have a collapse all which is annoying given you might have to collapse 100s of elements or go scroll through 1000s of lines to find the bit your looking for. I'll probably also modify the dumper to remove unused elements, ie anything where the bytes attribute is 0 such as all the race settings from races you've met that just show has 0 because they aren't actually in the files and I'll probably add the description attribute back to the output so you'll see something like <Structure13 description="Full Planetary Information"> rather than <Structure13>
I'll probably also write a proper viewer for it at some point, it'll probably also have the ability to select a set of objects and dump the contents to a csv file.
I might even add the ability to create CSV or TSV files into the xml dumper app, I'm currently imagining something along the lines of having config files named Structure13.csv which would have 2 lines in it along the lines of
PlanetID,OwnerID,StarbaseID,Report Age,Population ...
[PlanetID],[OwnerID],[StarbaseID],0,[Population] ....
That could probably be used as the equivelent of a .px file although the planets names would show as 0,1,2 etc as would the races and starbase names.
Edit: People who play stars are generally intelligent and computer knowledgable, it they weren't they stick to tvs and xboxes. I probably do assume to much though, I have the same problem playing poker, I tend to assume the other players know what they are doing which a lot of them on the site I play obviously don't given they call big raises with K3o
[Updated on: Tue, 24 February 2009 20:01] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Possible new utility for creating testbeds |
Wed, 25 February 2009 06:17 |
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| PaulCr |
| Chief Warrant Officer 3
Stars! V.I.P
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Messages: 187
Registered: February 2007
Location: An Island that kinda look... | |
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| m.a@stars wrote on Wed, 25 February 2009 10:42 |
| PaulCr wrote on Tue, 24 February 2009 23:39 |
12 - Stars Messages (ie built x factories but not player communications which are type 40)
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Hey, those would be cool to have, as the message filtering options in Stars itself are a bit too simple. 
And a record of player comms would be cool too. 
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Decoding the type 40 for player comms is easy, I've done it before, I actually used it in the planet mover to place a message in peoples m files, I just need to set up a controlled testbed mainly to post multiple messages to see if they appear in 1 bock or multiple block since I can't remember that. Type 12 is harder since from memory it is just a message no followed by parameters to insert into it, followed by more of the same in the same block and if I remember correctly the number of parameters aren't actually specified and depend on the message no, if so then it is unlikely the xml dumper will be able to decode it but I'll have to take a proper look at it again.
| m.a@stars wrote on Wed, 25 February 2009 10:42 |
| Quote: |
31 - Battles - undecoded (type 39 seems somehow related has well)
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I think the server might not be feeding the whole battle "video" to the client, instead just telling the result and other relevant info (such as damage, or perhaps the random seed) and letting the client fill the gaps. 
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The battle reports are pretty long and differ by some margin, in last years glacier2 I had a tiny one (72 bytes) that ended immediately with no fighting and a fairly big one (971 bytes) with about 20 tokens from memory and I think the big one is even bigger since it is followed by 2 type 39 blocks which I think are battle continuation blocks since blocks are limited to 1024 bytes, one of 1022 bytes and the other of 230, if the full battle wasn't being sent then I'd be surprised at it needing 2223 bytes.
I was also surprised at the battle order, I read somewhere it was based on the lowest player id and fleet id in the battle which being player 1 should mean my battles go 1,2,3,4 instead they went 1,2,3,23
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| Re: Possible new utility for creating testbeds |
Wed, 25 February 2009 10:38 |
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| PaulCr |
| Chief Warrant Officer 3
Stars! V.I.P
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Messages: 187
Registered: February 2007
Location: An Island that kinda look... | |
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Not sure where to post this so I guess I may as well post it here, I've been trying to think of a way to build a base with gate the same year you colonise, ie if you use a cloaked fleet to colonise a planet in your enemies space, if he has pen scans he sees it before you can put a base up with gate to bring in reinforcements and can therefore send a fleet to stop you building a base, I want the base to go up at the same time so the base is up when he sees the planet allowing you to gate a fleet in before he can respond.
That obviously means colonising as a WP0 task but that doesn't allow you to change the queue before production and you can't put a starbase in the default queue through the stars interface so that can't work.
The default queue is stored in the stars.ini under ZipOrdersP1 and having searched autohost for that and ZipOrders nothing showed up so I'm guessing nobody has looked into it.
The letters represent the hex digits 0-F, A being 0, B being 1 etc up to P for F(15)
The first 2 tell you how many items are in the queue, it looks decimal although I haven't tried a queue of more than 9 items to be certain, this is then followed by 4 hex digits for each item, ie a 16 bit number, the hex digits are in reverse order, ie 1CEF(bmop in the ini) is FEC1 or 65217
10 of these are used for the amount leaving 6 which could give 32 possible queue items however after testing it is impossible to get anything other than the 7 autobuild items. The 16 bit number represents the following
Bits
0-5 Autobuild Item(0-6) as Mines,Factories, Defenses, Alchemy, Min Terra, Max Terra and Packets, any thing else shows up as mines
6-15 Count
To get the values for the bmop above, convert it to hex (1CEF), load calc and put in scientific mode, click the hex circle, type the hex in reverse (FEC1), click the dec circle, divide by 64 and you get the count and a fraction (1019.015625), subtract the whole number (leaving 0.015625) and multiply by 64 (1) and you get type. In the example you get 1019 Factories(1).
I can't think of a use for it given you can make the changes in the stars interface but maybe somebody else does.
That still leaves be wondering if the build starbase same turn can be done, it now looks like I'll have to look at the x file to do it, the default queue has to be put into it when changed since the server needs to know it, and it is probably stored as a normal queue (type 29), probably with a planet ID of 1023(FFF), if so then editing that will hopefully work.
Edit: Just taken a look at the x file produced when default queue is changed, it uses a Type 46 structure which is identical to the hex from the Zip orders with what looks like the addition of the player number.
I guess the last remaining thing to try is to create an x file where I am colonising the planet as a wp0 order and add a production queue for the planet id I'm colonising after the colonisation order and see whether it gets applied or not
[Updated on: Wed, 25 February 2009 11:03] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Possible new utility for creating testbeds |
Wed, 25 February 2009 15:04 |
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 m.a@stars |
 | Commander |
Messages: 2765
Registered: October 2004
Location: Third star to the left | |
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| PaulCr wrote on Wed, 25 February 2009 12:17 |
Type 12 is harder since from memory it is just a message no followed by parameters to insert into it, followed by more of the same in the same block and if I remember correctly the number of parameters aren't actually specified and depend on the message no, if so then it is unlikely the xml dumper will be able to decode it but I'll have to take a proper look at it again.
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Ouch. That rings a bell. Quite likely the bodies (and printf-style wildcards) for the messages themselves are hidden in the exe. 
| Quote: |
The battle reports are pretty long and differ by some margin, in last years glacier2 I had a tiny one (72 bytes) that ended immediately with no fighting and a fairly big one (971 bytes) with about 20 tokens from memory and I think the big one is even bigger since it is followed by 2 type 39 blocks which I think are battle continuation blocks since blocks are limited to 1024 bytes, one of 1022 bytes and the other of 230, if the full battle wasn't being sent then I'd be surprised at it needing 2223 bytes.
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Makes sense, though if I recall correctly you can watch a battle report a bunch of times and at least some times have it play differently, even if the end result if the same. 
It might have been a hallucination due to a near phaser miss, though. 
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I was also surprised at the battle order, I read somewhere it was based on the lowest player id and fleet id in the battle which being player 1 should mean my battles go 1,2,3,4 instead they went 1,2,3,23
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I don't quite understand what you're trying to say. Care to elaborate?
So many Stars, so few Missiles!
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| Re: Possible new utility for creating testbeds |
Wed, 25 February 2009 15:24 |
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| m.a@stars |
| Commander |
Messages: 2765
Registered: October 2004
Location: Third star to the left | |
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| PaulCr wrote on Wed, 25 February 2009 16:38 |
Not sure where to post this so I guess I may as well post it here, I've been trying to think of a way to build a base with gate the same year you colonise, ie if you use a cloaked fleet to colonise a planet in your enemies space, if he has pen scans he sees it before you can put a base up with gate to bring in reinforcements and can therefore send a fleet to stop you building a base, I want the base to go up at the same time so the base is up when he sees the planet allowing you to gate a fleet in before he can respond.
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If you're fast (got enough res and mins) your Base will go up at the same time their fleet arrives, giving it a chance to fight for survival. After all, you have your fleet too, haven't you? 
Then you got to survive the 10000kT inbound packet without Defenses (since you spent the 1st turn building the base) 
Defense 101. 
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The default queue is stored in the stars.ini under ZipOrdersP1 and having searched autohost for that and ZipOrders nothing showed up so I'm guessing nobody has looked into it.
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Somebody might have, but these Qs are just for Autobuilds.
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I can't think of a use for it given you can make the changes in the stars interface but maybe somebody else does.
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Writing your own external Planetary Advisor to manage the Qs? Massmanage big empires? Avoid mistakes and drudgery? 
Lots of people would love to be able to use Q templates to, for example, order their 10 best planets to build 15 frigates each. Or order any planet with a Type1 base to build a Type2 base. The possibilities are endless...
Can you say Advanced Micromanagement 201?
That's just the kind of thing that could revitalise Stars! into a new Golden Era. 
| Quote: |
if so then editing that will hopefully work.
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Gosh, I hope not. It would be not only a massive can of worms, but also a radical departure from classical offensive/defensive building tactics.
So many Stars, so few Missiles!
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| Re: Possible new utility for creating testbeds |
Wed, 25 February 2009 15:34 |
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| PaulCr |
| Chief Warrant Officer 3
Stars! V.I.P
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Messages: 187
Registered: February 2007
Location: An Island that kinda look... | |
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| m.a@stars wrote on Wed, 25 February 2009 20:04 |
| Quote: |
I was also surprised at the battle order, I read somewhere it was based on the lowest player id and fleet id in the battle which being player 1 should mean my battles go 1,2,3,4 instead they went 1,2,3,23
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I don't quite understand what you're trying to say. Care to elaborate?
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I've read a few days ago on autohost that someone had tested in what order the battles occur, don't know why but that the order was based on the lowest player number present and then the lowest fleet number which seems logical.
Being Player 1 it is impossible for any battle I'm not part off to have a lower player number involved, therefore if what I read is correct my battles should have been numbered 1,2,3 and 4, instead they were numbered 1,2,3 and 35 (23h)
I'm kind of surprised since it does look like when it is creating battles stars starts with the very first fleet and then goes through all the other fleets in order and creates a battle for if any take place involving the fleet it is looking at but skips any that were involved in an earlier battle.
It is completely logical it would behave that way but it seems to have skipped one of my fleets as though it wasn't expecting a battle to take place but then dragged my fleet into a later battle.
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| Re: Possible new utility for creating testbeds |
Wed, 25 February 2009 16:02 |
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| PaulCr |
| Chief Warrant Officer 3
Stars! V.I.P
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Messages: 187
Registered: February 2007
Location: An Island that kinda look... | |
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You can't colonise and build a base the same turn, ie say your enemy has pen scans covering his entire territory, you get a cloaked fleet in and colonise a planet, no matter what you do he will see that the planet has been colonised before you can get a gate up, if you colonise has a WP0 order it will do production from the autoqueue so you could get defenses up but you can't change the queue until you get the turn file back, your enemy will see that you've sneaked in a coloniser, will expect you to be putting a gate up and will send a fleet to knock it down before you are able to gate in reinforcements since the reinforcements can only gate in the turn after the base is up.
If you colonise as a WP1 order the same happens except you don't do any production at all so you can't even get defenses up.
What I would like to be able to do is get a cloaked coloniser in with 1,100,000 colonist and minerals, giving 1100 resources for a 1 in 10, colonise as a wp0 order but have a queue along the lines of
OF100/150
Auto build Defenses 100
The fort cost say 150 resources leaving 950 to build 63 defenses.
You both then get your turns back, your opponent goes, holy #### xxx has colonised that planet, I'd better send this fleet to knock it out. In your turn you set your fleet to gate into the planet since the gate is now up and kill anything he sends.
What is important is that you do not need to wait for the turn after you colonise to set the queue up otherwise your opponent can bring along a small fleet to kill the starbase before you can gate in. The first your opponent even knows that the planet has been colonised is when it already has a gate and defenses because it was able to do that production before the opponent got his turn back showing the colonised planet.
ie
2500, cloaked fleet arrives at Earth, you get your turn and your opponent get his showing the planet is empty, you set your orders to colonise this turn with the above queue, your opponent does whatever he does, happily ignoring your fleet at Earth because he is unware of it and Earth is showing has uninhabited.
2501 you both get your turns, your opponent sees Earth is now colonised and sends a fleet in to wipe it out, in your turn you gate in your fleet to reinforce it because the base was built from the above queue
2502 Your fleet wipes out your opponents fleet he sent to kill the planet and you can now go rampaging around his inner core as well as continue bringing in reinforcements.
With just the normal auto queue it goes
2500, cloaked fleet arrives at earth, you get your turn and your opponent get his showing the planet is empty, you set your orders to colonise this turn with auto defenses only, your opponent does whatever he does, happily ignoring your fleet at earth because he is unware of it
2501 you both get your turns, your opponent see Earth is now colonised and sends a fleet in to wipe it out, you set the planet to build a gate
2502 You both get your turns back, your gate has been built but was immediately blown out of the sky by your opponents fleet.
If you can tell me a way of doing the first one then I would certainly be grateful, I can't come up with a way of doing it from the standard stars interface.
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| Re: Possible new utility for creating testbeds |
Wed, 25 February 2009 16:23 |
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| PaulCr |
| Chief Warrant Officer 3
Stars! V.I.P
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Messages: 187
Registered: February 2007
Location: An Island that kinda look... | |
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Getting back to the original topic of this post.
I'm going to be putting an improved interface onto the testbed creator that basically allow you to add or update games without having to edit the xml.
There'll be an extra button next to the Create .hst button to add a new game which will ask you for the game name.
Underneath the current message it will have a proper interface to edit the current game selected from the dropdown above along with a Save button to save the config back to xml.
It'll Basically have Textboxes for
XY File Location
M File Location
H File Location
HST File Location
A dropdown box to select a player
A text box to enter a race file for the selected player
Text boxes to enter tech levels for the selected player
A dropdown box to select a design slot
A dropdown box to select a hull to use in that design slot
A dropdown box to select a item slot in that hull
A dropdown box to select the category of item in the selected item slot
A drop down box to select the item to put in the selected item slot
A button to save the updated config file.
The Design editor is still not as friendly has the one stars uses, but it will be a lot easier then modifying the xml file with numbers that need looking up and will allow me to get rid of most of the extra files that are currently in the zip file.
I'm expecting to do this sometime before the weekend, I'll do another post when it's ready and has been posted on the server.
If someone can think of an even easier way before then to edit the config file then let me know and I'll see if it easy enough to code.
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| Re: Possible new utility for creating testbeds |
Wed, 25 February 2009 16:41 |
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| craebild wrote on Thu, 26 February 2009 10:26 |
It is just my opinion, but I would say that using an utility to do something that cannot be done with the standard Stars! interface would be cheating, unless all players have agreed that using that utility is legal, and all players have access to that utility.
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I'm uneasy about this as well. I'm not against the idea, but being dependent on third party tools to keep the game fair doesn't seem right. Perhaps if there was some way to know if such a tool has been used(in game message to all would be simple), or if we want to be especially paranoid, for the game to be tagged somehow by the host to explicitly allow their use(ie the tools refuse to work without the tag)...we'd just have to trust Paul  .
[Updated on: Wed, 25 February 2009 16:42] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Possible new utility for creating testbeds |
Wed, 25 February 2009 16:46 |
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| PaulCr |
| Chief Warrant Officer 3
Stars! V.I.P
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Messages: 187
Registered: February 2007
Location: An Island that kinda look... | |
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| craebild wrote on Wed, 25 February 2009 21:26 |
It is just my opinion, but I would say that using an utility to do something that cannot be done with the standard Stars! interface would be cheating, unless all players have agreed that using that utility is legal, and all players have access to that utility.
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That is why I made the testbed creator available to everybody since it makes battle simulations at awful lot easier to create, it's the reason I'll be making it easier to use, I have no problems editing the xml config file but some people may. With any other utility I write that makes things easier I'll be making thost available too if I'm going to want to use them.
I doubt it's even possible to do what I want since I suspect that stars will process the queues in the x file before the planet is colonised, even if you colonise as a waypoint 0 order.
I suspect it will update the planet queue as soon as it meets them in the turn file before any turn generation at all has taken place and will complain that the x file is corrupt or will ignore it completely. I know that's what I did in when I started looking at a turn generator.
Trying it out though to see whether it works or not is likely to lead to an app that lets you edit your queues which will be useful as m.a@stars mentions above.
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| Re: Possible new utility for creating testbeds |
Wed, 25 February 2009 17:01 |
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| PaulCr |
| Chief Warrant Officer 3
Stars! V.I.P
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Messages: 187
Registered: February 2007
Location: An Island that kinda look... | |
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| gible wrote on Wed, 25 February 2009 21:41 |
| craebild wrote on Thu, 26 February 2009 10:26 |
It is just my opinion, but I would say that using an utility to do something that cannot be done with the standard Stars! interface would be cheating, unless all players have agreed that using that utility is legal, and all players have access to that utility.
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I'm uneasy about this as well. I'm not against the idea, but being dependent on third party tools to keep the game fair doesn't seem right. Perhaps if there was some way to know if such a tool has been used(in game message to all would be simple), or if we want to be especially paranoid, for the game to be tagged somehow by the host to explicitly allow their use(ie the tools refuse to work without the tag)...we'd just have to trust Paul .
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It would be possible to have to utility post a message to a webserver giving details of the game that has been edited and the player number doing the editing and only saving the file after that as taken place. You couldn't really place the message in somebodies x file since they could open it and take it out.
It could be possible to make it only work with particular GameIDs, however the GameID byte locations are easy to get old off so somebody could easily use an hex editor to change the game id to one the util can edit and then change it back.
I think that using the Race name might be an option, ie only allowing x files to be produced if the race name has (ai) at the end for example but it would be possible to get round that although it would be a lot more difficult.
The only real secure way I can come up with would be to have a webserver to do the actual editing and for it to keep a log which is publicly available.
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| Re: Possible new utility for creating testbeds |
Wed, 25 February 2009 18:42 |
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| m.a@stars |
| Commander |
Messages: 2765
Registered: October 2004
Location: Third star to the left | |
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| PaulCr wrote on Wed, 25 February 2009 21:34 |
if what I read is correct my battles should have been numbered 1,2,3 and 4, instead they were numbered 1,2,3 and 35 (23h)
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But, what are these numbers? Message # numbers?
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I'm kind of surprised since it does look like when it is creating battles stars starts with the very first fleet and then goes through all the other fleets in order and creates a battle for if any take place involving the fleet it is looking at but skips any that were involved in an earlier battle.
It is completely logical it would behave that way but it seems to have skipped one of my fleets as though it wasn't expecting a battle to take place but then dragged my fleet into a later battle.
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There's some evidence (bug reports) that Stars! processes fleets in several steps, with the easy cases 1st, and the more complex cases, like those dependent on other fleets, afterwards, if at all.
So many Stars, so few Missiles!
In space no one can hear you scheme! Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Possible new utility for creating testbeds |
Wed, 25 February 2009 18:52 |
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| m.a@stars |
| Commander |
Messages: 2765
Registered: October 2004
Location: Third star to the left | |
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| PaulCr wrote on Wed, 25 February 2009 22:02 |
What I would like to be able to do is get a cloaked coloniser in with 1,100,000 colonist and minerals, giving 1100 resources for a 1 in 10, colonise as a wp0 order but have a queue along the lines of
OF100/150
Auto build Defenses 100
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Can't and shouldn't be done in Stars!, period.
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In your turn you set your fleet to gate into the planet since the gate is now up and kill anything he sends.
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Don't send an unescorted colonizer to setup a beachhead. Send the colonizer plus a sizable fleet. Plus extra colonizers and freighters to dodge packets. Plus minelayers and minesweepers and spyships and fuel xports. In other words, work for it, goshdarnit. 
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What is important is that you do not need to wait for the turn after you colonise to set the queue up otherwise your opponent can bring along a small fleet to kill the starbase before you can gate in.
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But it IS important that you have to wait, otherwise IT races would be utterly unstoppable, HE races would never have a chance, and the whole game would be different. 
So many Stars, so few Missiles!
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