skoormit wrote on Sun, 20 April 2014 12:17

neilhoward wrote on Sun, 20 April 2014 14:02

Adding chaff to a DD is not cheaper than using 5x DD.

Huh? How is one DD plus one chaff not cheaper than 5 DD?

Construction cost vs Sweeping capacity, micromanagement, longevity, reusability, resources and minerals lost with use, maximum fleet capacity, etc.

If mine damage dodge is allowed, the chaff-DD combo can be useful for very specific applications, making specific sweeping/interdiction tasks cheaper/easier. When fighting an SD, the usefulness of this tactic increases, but the application narrows. Similarly if mine damage allocation is allowed, the FF-DD combo has specific applications (eg long range/longe duration) where usefulness makes up for increased cost per sweeping capacity. Using chaff for crash sweeping is by far the most expensive way to sweep a field, but works great for when the package needs to get there on time

The 1xChaff-1xDD combo is like reactive armour: single use disposable.
The 1xFF-4xDD combo is like ablative armour: multi use disposable or reusable.

Stars! AutoHost standard rules (proposed)

Permissible race designs
- Races with the primary racial trait "Claim Adjuster" must take immunity to at least two environmental variables.
- Races with the primary racial trait "Jack of All Trades" must not take the lesser racial trait "No Advanced Scanners".
- In games not using the game option "Accelerated BBS Start", races with the primary racial trait "Hyper-Expansion" must take a listed colonist growth rate of 10% or less.

False Public Player Scores - Permitted
- You may use the waypoint-1 task "Load Colonists" and the waypoint-0 task "Unload Colonists".

Warp 10.04 - Permitted
- You may set waypoints in such a manner that a ship travels more distance than the listed maximum of its warp number.

Battle board overload - Soft-banned
- If a token under your control is excluded from a battle due to the 256-token limit, you must immediately scrap the fleet containing that token.

0.2% minimum damage - Banned
- You may not assemble a collection of fleets at a single location that is capable of firing more than 100 torpedo/missile salvos per round of battle.

Mine damage dodge - Banned
- You may not arrange your ship designs in such a manner that fleets can survive hitting a mine while taking less damage than the mine type's listed "Min damage done to fleet".

The point of this list is not to constrain, but to simplify

Permissible race designs
- Races with the primary racial trait "Claim Adjuster" must take immunity to at least two environmental variables.
- Races with the primary racial trait "Jack of All Trades" must not take the lesser racial trait "No Advanced Scanners".
- In games not using the game option "Accelerated BBS Start", races with the primary racial trait "Hyper-Expansion" must take a listed colonist growth rate of 10% or less.

Chaff - Permitted
- You may use large numbers of weak ships to draw missile fire.

Split fleet dodge - Permitted
- You may subdivide a fleet, and redirect the subfleets to different waypoints, even if the fleet is under pursuit.

Repair after gating - Permitted
- You may give a fleet orders to move at warp "Use Stargate" with the waypoint task "Merge into Fleet".

False Public Player Scores - Permitted
- You may use the waypoint-1 task "Load Colonists" and the waypoint-0 task "Unload Colonists".

Warp 10.04 - Permitted
- You may set waypoints in such a manner that a ship travels more distance than the listed maximum of its warp number.

Improved Starbases trumps Interstellar Traveller gate-scanning - Permitted
- You may take the lesser racial trait "Improved Starbases".

Exploding minefield dodge - Banned with exceptions
- If your race has the primary racial trait "Space Demolition", you should not move ships with the "Mini Mine Layer" or "Super Mine Layer" hulls to a location that you know to be in a) one of your exploding Standard minefields and also in b) a Standard minefield of an opposing "Space Demolition" race with a higher player number than your own. If you believe you have a valid reason to give such an order, contact the game's host; their decision is final.

0.2% minimum damage - Banned
- You may not assemble a collection of fleets at a single location that is capable of firing more than 100 torpedo/missile salvos per round of battle.

magic9mushroom wrote on Thu, 22 May 2014 13:32

Stars! AutoHost standard rules (proposed)

A pretty good try, mostly, I'd say.

Quote:

Permissible race designs
- Races with the primary racial trait "Claim Adjuster" must take immunity to at least two environmental variables.
- Races with the primary racial trait "Jack of All Trades" must not take the lesser racial trait "No Advanced Scanners".
- In games not using the game option "Accelerated BBS Start", races with the primary racial trait "Hyper-Expansion" must take a listed colonist growth rate of 10% or less.

This has no business inside the "Standard". It isn't even close to any average "racial restrictions" used in most games.

Quote:

False Public Player Scores - Permitted
- You may use the waypoint-1 task "Load Colonists" and the waypoint-0 task "Unload Colonists".

Same as above.

Quote:

Warp 10.04 - Permitted
- You may set waypoints in such a manner that a ship travels more distance than the listed maximum of its warp number.

And now we'll go around creating "new" cheats out of simplest game mechanics?

Quote:

Battle board overload - Soft-banned
- If a token under your control is excluded from a battle due to the 256-token limit, you must immediately scrap the fleet containing that token.

And then everybody will be wondering why their game hard-crashed irrecoverably a few turns later.

Quote:

0.2% minimum damage - Banned
- You may not assemble a collection of fleets at a single location that is capable of firing more than 100 torpedo/missile salvos per round of battle.

Whoa! And that's supposed to cover most cases with big fleets and large empires gating/gathering defenders?

Quote:

Mine damage dodge - Banned
- You may not arrange your ship designs in such a manner that fleets can survive hitting a mine while taking less damage than the mine type's listed "Min damage done to fleet".

And this is supposed to cover all cases of so-called "tanking" too? Or will "tanks" be "soft-banned"? Or perhaps not banned at all?

May I comment on some of your ideas?

You have clearly written:
magic9mushroom wrote on Thu, 22 May 2014 13:32

The point of this list is not to constrain, but to simplify

In the light of the above, I must say I disagree with the following:
magic9mushroom wrote on Thu, 22 May 2014 13:32

Permissible race designs
- Races with the primary racial trait "Claim Adjuster" must take immunity to at least two environmental variables.
- Races with the primary racial trait "Jack of All Trades" must not take the lesser racial trait "No Advanced Scanners".
- In games not using the game option "Accelerated BBS Start", races with the primary

Altruist wrote on Thu, 20 February 2014 19:34

[*] 1.1 Chaff

Not exactly a bug, as the Jeffs explicitly said it was a feature of the battle engine they didn't consider a problem.

m.a@stars wrote on Thu, 20 February 2014 22:19

Altruist wrote on Thu, 20 February 2014 19:34

[*] 1.1 Chaff

Not exactly a bug, as the Jeffs explicitly said it was a feature of the battle engine they didn't consider a problem.

At least one of the Jeffs said the same about the 1/512 min damage bug...

XAPBob wrote on Fri, 23 May 2014 11:18

m.a@stars wrote on Thu, 20 February 2014 22:19

Altruist wrote on Thu, 20 February 2014 19:34

[*] 1.1 Chaff

Not exactly a bug, as the Jeffs explicitly said it was a feature of the battle engine they didn't consider a problem.

At least one of the Jeffs said the same about the 1/512 min damage bug...

URL? IIRC, they did consider min damage a problem, but one that was too hard to fix.

Blue Turbit noted:
Jeff McBride -Oct 4 2000, 2:00 am on r.g.c.s.:
This is *not* a bug and will not change for 2.7k. It is part of the architecture of the original Stars! battle engine. If you don't want 500 alpha torpedoes to be able to destroy 30,000 Nubians, don't put your 30,000 Nubians all in one fleet.

This is *not* a bug and will not change for 2.7k. It is part of the
architecture of the original Stars! battle engine. If you don't want 500
alpha torpedoes to be able to destroy 30,000 Nubians, don't put your 30,000
Nubians all in one fleet.

Note: There are no similar limitations or arbitrary damage values in Stars!
Supernova Genesis. The battle engine is all new.

Jeff

Standard is CA Banned JoAT may not take NAS, I know. But I don't see the harm in allowing bi-immune CA; it enriches the game by unbanning as much stuff as possible while keeping the ubermonster CAs out.

Supergrowth HE has been proven to be overpowered in a non-AccBBS setup.

Well, the problem here is that the exploit literally consists of those orders. If you use those orders, you are using the exploit. Banning the exploit is the same as banning those orders.

We've been over this. "max = 81" implies a check for "=< 81", whereas the check is in fact "< 82". It's definitely an unintuitive "feature", but it's considered commonplace and permissible. Sticking it in the list can't hurt.

Quote:

And then everybody will be wondering why their game hard-crashed irrecoverably a few turns later.

???

Yeah, this one was a kludge. But I'm honestly not sure where else to draw the line.

Not covering that. If you want it added to the rules of games you play, go ahead. But since none of us even understand what you're talking about, I can't exactly write it up into my proposal, can I?

I believe you are misunderstanding. I'm saying that these should be the standard bans (the current most popular is, I believe, "CA Banned, JoaT may not take NAS"), but any game can of course modify them.

As I said, the entire list is optional. The point of having a standard list is that you only need to list changes from it instead of listing every single rule.

The point of the list is to attempt to codify "community consensus", so you don't have to write out "repair after gating permitted" in every game description.

I guess? IDK, I'd like to hear a little more discussion about this. The guarantee of (256/#players) tokens does mean that you're not going to see this unless you yourself have a vast number of tokens in the battle.

This is the most concise specification of the proscribed behaviour. It can theoretically be done with components other than engines (miniaturisation - if one player has vastly higher tech than the other, then the low-tech pla

Quote:

Chaff sweeping can trigger this bug. I know, because I accidentally did it myself in Tenderfoot (I chaffswept Nmid's minefield with ~180 fleets, but most survived, causing my main fleet to become untargetable). The proper way to chaffsweep without running afoul of the bug (or this restriction) is to send most of the chaff to points a couple of lightyears past the target planet

Which also avoids the "BattleBoard Overload".

This is *not* a bug and will not change for 2.7k. It is part of the
architecture of the original Stars! battle engine. If you don't want 500
alpha torpedoes to be able to destroy 30,000 Nubians, don't put your 30,000
Nubians all in one fleet.

Note: There are no similar limitations or arbitrary damage values in Stars!
Supernova Genesis. The battle engine is all new.

Jeff

Unless the person targetted the fleet, which of course then got split, so they target a chaff and arrive with all the chaff at some random point.

Quote:

This is *not* a bug and will not change for 2.7k. It is part of the
architecture of the original Stars! battle engine. If you don't want 500
alpha torpedoes to be able to destroy 30,000 Nubians, don't put your 30,000
Nubians all in one fleet.

Note: There are no similar limitations or arbitrary damage values in Stars!
Supernova Genesis. The battle engine is all new.

Jeff

I could have sworn the Jeffs had at some point elaborated more on the issue. Certainly the original wording is quite strong. Makes one wonder if they were actually happy that something existed to keep humongous unbeatable tokens in check.

I believe you are misunderstanding. I'm saying that these should be the standard bans (the current most popular is, I believe, "CA Banned, JoaT may not take NAS"), but any game can of course modify them.
(...)
As I said, the entire list is optional. The point of having a standard list is that you only need to list changes from it instead of listing every single rule.
(...)
The point of the list is to attempt to codify "community consensus", so you don't have to write out "repair after gating permitted" in every game description.

You misunderstand the bug. The gates used by the ISB player are irrelevant. It's the IT player's own 150/600 gates and any/800 gates that cannot gatescan opposing ISB gates (of any sort).

It is often tactically necessary for a minelayer to duck into its own exploding minefield to kill pursuers. If the entire area is covered in an opposing SD's minefield, the bug is unavoidable without unfairly compromising the options of the lower-number SD. I agree that the exploit is unfair, but allowing the higher-number SD to push the lower-number one around with the threat of the exploit is also unfair.

You can't see all enemy minefields. Going due North/South in a warzone, even if you can't see the minefields that are potentially there, is still clearly an issue. Probably should add an exception for targetting fleets, though - as fleets move, the exploit can't be used deliberately when pursuing fleets.

I guess? IDK, I'd like to hear a little more discussi

To try and wrench this thread back to its intended purpose, I have the following rules proposal. I propose these only as standard rules; if somebody wants to play by MA's preferred rules, they can. The point of this list is not to constrain, but to simplify: the use of this list means you only have to list the differences between a game's proposed rules and the list rather than listing the full set of bans.

Are you going to topple over your game simply because every once a while, a weapon will deal more damage than it should? Anyway - usually, these things happen without deliberate intent of players involved, and they don't change the outcome that much. A host is responsible for identifying situations that constitute blatant abuse of this programming oddity.

My rule serves to discourage players who might want to use the simplest weapons in order to exploit this, thereby creating a completely unrealistic effect of "spears killing tanks", and paying too little in minerals and resources for a big gain in damage inflicted.

The second reason: the increased armor damage from many small groups of ships attacking one huge crowd of ships is actually a thing that can be reasonably explained. Since the Stars! battle board is two-dimensional, we have learned to view the battles as such. This is not the case, as the space is really three-dimensional. One can imagine ...

Yes, you're right. I mixed up whose gates trigger this bug. All the more a reason not to block it - a conscious IT player would just need to remember to put up at least one stargate other than these two types, for gate-scanning purposes. If one can work around it, why ban it?

Been there, done that myself. By the way - chaffsweeping won't work with the method I thought of. Splitting chaff, sending one into the field, and have the rest follow and merge it will... surprise! - result in a WP0 merge of all chaff, and hitting the field en masse, resulting in all chaff dead, and minimal dent in the field.

Isn't 1 salvo considered as (0-...) torps per slot per token?
Token = 1 separate token on the batleboard..
slot = weapon slot on the ship design.

So considering the 6 BB are individual tokens, it would only be 5 slots per BB * 6 BBs = 30 salvos in total...
As I understand it, the number of torpedoes/missiles doesn't matter.. only the slots do.
I think that's why DDs with a possible 3 tokens each are better than BBs in this case?

In that case I agree. 34 DD's still limiting. Was there a reason to ban all classes of torpedoes/missles? If applied to only alpha and beta torps then that would bring more on board.

0.2% minimum damage - Banned
- You may not assemble a collection of fleets at a single location that is capable of firing more than 100 torpedo/missile salvos per round of battle.

Thus you need 167 DDs + spare change to take care of any inaccuracies to fully destroy a stack.