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| Re: Minimum Damage Cheat |
Thu, 12 January 2012 10:58   |
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| Eagle of Fire | 
 | Lt. Commander |
Messages: 809
Registered: December 2008
Location: GMT -5 | |
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This is not a bug and has been known for very, very, very long. It is actually well documented on the Wiki if I remember well.
It is however banned by default in standard games because you could in theory build a very big fleet of ships equiped only with alpha or beta torpedoes and still manage to easily down opposing capital ships with them.
All this because the minimum damage that STARS! calculate is a percentage of the target hull instead of a fixed amount of hull. Even if every single hit should be a harmless sting STAR! end up removing 0.01% (if I remember well) of the target armour, which mean that you always require a fixed amount of hits on the target regardless of the hull point the ship or the whole fleet possess.
Since beta torpedoes cost practically nothing to produce en masse in the late game... It could turn the game into an horribly boring game of numbers while at the same time rendering high end technology like late weapons and late hulls (nubians) completely useless and obsolete.
[Updated on: Thu, 12 January 2012 11:00]
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| Re: Minimum Damage Cheat |
Thu, 12 January 2012 13:00 |
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 iztok |
 | Commander |
Messages: 1206
Registered: April 2003
Location: Slovenia, Europe | |
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Hi!
| Eagle of Fire wrote on Thu, 12 January 2012 16:58 |
All this because the minimum damage that STARS! calculate is a percentage of the target hull instead of a fixed amount of hull. Even if every single hit should be a harmless sting STAR! end up removing 0.01% (if I remember well) of the target armour, which mean that you always require a fixed amount of hits on the target regardless of the hull point the ship or the whole fleet possess.
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Min damage Stars can handle is 1/512th part of ship's armor, or ~0.2%. The real caveat is, this min damage is applied to a WHOLE STACK, not a single ship in a stack. So in theory 512 single-slotted beta torps could destroy a max stack of 32000 Nubians in a single round of combat.
The counter to this is gattling weapons. To get to 512 single Beta torps one needs to split his torpedo ships into lots of sigle ship fleets, what's an ideal target for gattlings.
BR, Iztok
[Updated on: Thu, 12 January 2012 13:09] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Minimum Damage Cheat |
Thu, 12 January 2012 22:26 |
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| LittleEddie |
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Messages: 517
Registered: February 2011
Location: Delaware | |
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I have it bookmarked:
http://starsautohost.org/sahforum/index.php?t=msg&th=238 7&start=0&rid=1480&S=dc86f127326d1911af1983aacdf b2430
This also effect Stone Age games where you have battles with large numbers of Beta Torpedos. The battle board sometimes shows a lot more damage then it should because of the 1/512ths rounding.
| Quote: |
0.2% Minimum Damage:
Stars records damage to armour in a fleet/stack as in 1/512ths (0.2%). Any shots in combat (that do armour damage) will be rounded up to the next 1/512th of the total armour in the stack. Normally this isn't an issue, but can be abused. By Building 100+ DDs or nubs with alpha/beta torps, and splitting them into individual fleets just before combat, you will fire a very large amount of slavos (100 fleets of nubs with 9 slots each with beta torps = 900 salvos). Normally these would only do a little bit of damage, but because they are all individual salvos they will each do 0.2% damage, and with 900 slavos that is 180% damage. Which would kill one enemy token/stack outright and damage another by 80%, and this is per round of shooting. The number of missiles per slot won't increase the damage, but having 2 or 3 in the slot will give you a second or third chance to make that salvo hit (missed missiles don't damage armour). Note that shields aren't calculated this way. And the 0.2% rule doesn't override the one missile = one kill rule, so when the stack is at 99% damage you will still need one missile per ship to do the killing blow. The best counter tactics for this are first to split up your fleet into several smaller tokens (thus it will only kill part of your fleet), and to have gatling armed beam ships (as they do damage to each token in range).
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| Re: Minimum Damage Cheat |
Mon, 16 July 2012 00:52 |
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| neilhoward | 
| Commander |
Messages: 1112
Registered: April 2008
Location: SW3 & 10023 | |
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jscoble wrote on Mon, 23 April 2012 03:21So let me get this straight - if one side has a stack of 512 ships, a single missile hitting will do at least one ship's worth of damage?
So throwing 1000 nubians at someone who is gating in forces to defend, and won't have had time to group them all together, is not a good strategy?
(In that scenario, even a Jihad BB would be inflicting way more damage than it should, since every missile slot that hits at all will do 10,000dp damage.)
I think it is 500 rather than 512.
neilhoward wrote on Thu, 12 January 2012 21:43Quote:m.as tars wrote on Thu, 12 January 2012 03:53]neilhoward wrote on Thu, 12 January 2012 05:47without a doubt. There is an interview with him concerning this and other exploits. It is easy enough to counter in any right.
I've heard about that interview. URL?
It might take a while to find, but I will get it for you.
Thanks Blue Turbit
http://wiki.starsautohost.org/wiki/Known_Bugs#0.2.25_Minimum _Damage
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| Re: Minimum Damage Cheat |
Mon, 16 July 2012 10:50 |
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As much pain as the min dam loophole can be, there are quite some counters to it which rather add to the depth of battles and tact & strat.- armour becomes more important again
- battlespeed becomes more important
- gattling guns are very very deadly vs lots of single token torp-ships
- chaff vs torps works different than vs missiles but the usage of chaff is possible (but might be of completly different designs and expensive in comparison to missile chaff)
- splitting your fleets, possibly also with different battle orders, is also quite interesting
Everybody must be very much aware of the battleboard overload (maximum of 256 tokens) and it might be wise to introduce a general rule that no player may show up in a battle with more tokens than:- 256/(number of players)
- allied players can swap their share of tokens between each other provided they communicate well enough to do so
For the side trying to use the min dam loopholes there are quite some risks involved. It's not that there are only advantages:- the above mentioned gattlings are a real killer
- when deploying your torp ships in single tokens, you loose all the advantages coming with stacked shields
- especially in battles with 3 or more sides, you never really know where your torp ships might move to and what ships they'll really attack
- targetting chaff or the right design but wrong token, basically wastes your torp ships
So as a side effect, when allowing the usage of the min dam loophole, battles become a lot more complicated and unpredictable, sometimes rather a gamble, especially with more than 2 players on the battle board. Especially the unpredictability I found a two-edged thing: while most of us probably tend to value the mathematical and predictable side of Stars, a really good tact & strat game should also involve a random factor (as phrased nicely in "Player of Games" by Iain M. Banks, btw a superb Sci-Fi author).
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| Re: Minimum Damage Cheat |
Mon, 16 July 2012 14:18 |
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Eagle of Fire wrote on Tue, 17 July 2012 01:57Quote:chaff vs torps works different than vs missiles but the usage of chaff is possible (but might be of completly different designs and expensive in comparison to missile chaff)
Care to explain why chaff would work differently against torp than against missiles? I always use my chaff against both and I never noticed a difference. Except that you practically never see a horde of beta ships in any game, I mean.
Also, I am yet to participate in a game in which chaff is not used or unimportant. Why do I get the feeling many people participating in this thread instead take for granted that people are not aware of this?
Check the attractiveness of chaff for missiles vs torps.
Probably, in certain cases, the difference caused will result in your chaff not being the #1 target for torpedoes.
Further explanation >
Torps generally find regular chaff half as attractive as missiles at the same accuracy (and no jamming).
For eg, a 8 res, 2 bor scout chaff has an attractiveness of .9 (missiles) vs .45 (torps) at an accuracy of 90%.
If we consider the glacier game setup, then torps have better accuracy as missiles don't have nexi (and only comps) to use as crutches.
The point is even though this (the difference in attractiveness) will be replicated for all classes of target ships, it will probably mess up the order of targets and your chaff might not be the #1 target for enemy torps/missiles.
ps - Thanks for reminding me of this fact. I didn't remember to factor this in one of my games I'm currently playing, where upsilon BBs have started making an appearance.
edit - I checked a couple of egs. nubians and chaff vs missiles/torps but the order remains the same so far. Perhaps it might change when I check on my bombers and freighter chaff (?)...
Anyways, you would be better off checking it at the glacier level DDs and alpha-jihad level ships with the chaff still not getting the miniaturization benefits.
[Updated on: Mon, 16 July 2012 14:23]
I know my minefields.. but I'm a chaff sweeper.
I used to curse when I got stuck in traffic... till I realised I AM traffic.Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Minimum Damage Cheat |
Tue, 17 July 2012 02:58 |
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| neilhoward |
| Commander |
Messages: 1112
Registered: April 2008
Location: SW3 & 10023 | |
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There are a several issues with chaff to be accounted for, including attractiveness, cost, and miniaturization. Miniaturization affects cost. Miniaturization and cost both effect attractiveness.
Standard beams, sappers, gatlings, range zero beams, torps, and missiles deal with attractiveness differently because they deal damage differently.
Cost is important. E.g. if both sides are still using jihads, and attack SB orders are allowed, then it is generally cheaper to just build more main line ships (only allocating leftover res and minerals to chaff).
If min dmg is allowed, the cost of more expensive chaff is offset by the potential cost of ships that would otherwise be lost.
In late game (when all planets are dry and tech is maxed) the functional cost of chaff is increased, and the attractiveness of FM FF chaff plummets.
Min Dmg makes small freighter chaff and shielded chaff more viable, and more valuable.
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