Rules and Strategy for our beloved game

[Posting] Federation wanted
Thread opener
Posted Sun, 2017-12-10 11:31 GMT

In case you haven't noticed:

We're looking for someone interested in playing Federation in North Star 4. Do you want, or you you know someone who does? Unfortunately, the original player resigned at the last possible instant.

--Stefan

[Posting] Re: Federation wanted
Posted Sun, 2017-12-10 12:47 GMT

I will send the turn tomorrow.

Ygg

[Posting] Re: Federation wanted
Thread opener
Posted Mon, 2017-12-11 05:27 GMT

I will send the turn tomorrow.

Great!

I will re-enable the scheduler (and thus run host) when it's there.

Stefan

[Posting] Re: Federation wanted
Posted Mon, 2017-12-11 09:32 GMT

Btw Stefan I think you need to work a bit to improve amaster. I have 25 planets total in 331ly (4 turn flight) circle around my HW.

I checked last game I was playing ( I had over 50).

So how a player with 25 planets is supposed to fight a player with 50 planets? :smile:

[Posting] Re: Federation wanted
Posted Mon, 2017-12-11 09:54 GMT, edited Mon, 2017-12-11 09:58 GMT

Btw Stefan I think you need to work a bit to improve amaster. I have 25 planets total in 331ly (4 turn flight) circle around my HW.

I checked last game I was playing ( I had over 50).

So how a player with 25 planets is supposed to fight a player with 50 planets? :smile:

Here is my topic about that problem. Amaster's settings definetly must be changed. It is really frustrating when you cant win a game just because of a random generator and your skills don't matter.

Stefan, can you activate North Star 4. The Game's page shows that it is stopped.

[Posting] Re: Federation wanted
Thread opener
Posted Mon, 2017-12-11 19:50 GMT

Btw Stefan I think you need to work a bit to improve amaster. I have 25 planets total in 331ly (4 turn flight) circle around my HW.

I checked last game I was playing ( I had over 50).

So how a player with 25 planets is supposed to fight a player with 50 planets? :smile:

Here is my topic about that problem. Amaster's settings definetly must be changed. It is really frustrating when you cant win a game just because of a random generator and your skills don't matter.

Math says the average should be 43, which means you were lucky last time, not so lucky this time :smile:

vcnc, I must admit your topic "fell over" a little during the many PlanetsCentral topics. However, we were talking about two hops (165 ly range), and tightening these rules does not guarantee similar situations in 4 hops. Actually, even the classic Echo Cluster has areas where you have like 2 planets in range; in Titan 6 I'm sitting in such an area.

The reason I did not immediately tighten the settings was concerns about processor consumption (I don't want the server to get into an infinite loop when given too tight restrictions). Good news is that I'll be able to script and measure such effects soon.

Stefan, can you activate North Star 4. The Game's page shows that it is stopped.

Done. I prefer doing that from home, not from a commuter train (where I wrote the previous post). Expect most maintenance in central-european evenings.

--Stefan

[Posting] Re: Federation wanted
Posted Mon, 2017-12-11 22:33 GMT

vcnc, I must admit your topic "fell over" a little during the many PlanetsCentral topics. However, we were talking about two hops (165 ly range), and tightening these rules does not guarantee similar situations in 4 hops. Actually, even the classic Echo Cluster has areas where you have like 2 planets in range; in Titan 6 I'm sitting in such an area.

Any colonization beyond 3 hops involves the contested territory and combat actions. That is the point where player's skills come into play. But the core planets are another story. They should support at least the initial decent fleet for an interesting gameplay in the first half of the game.

The reason I did not immediately tighten the settings was concerns about processor consumption (I don't want the server to get into an infinite loop when given too tight restrictions). Good news is that I'll be able to script and measure such effects soon.

I have tested some variants of settings.

FarPlanetsNo = 10, 15

With this there is no significant increase in the generation time, so you can use them right away.

FarPlanetsNo = 12, 16 HomeworldsRadius = 486

These settings are much more cpu intensive but also much more fair.

Anyway the decision on how to address the problem is yours. I just hope that this will happen someday.

[Posting] Re: Federation wanted
Thread opener
Posted Wed, 2017-12-13 19:39 GMT

The reason I did not immediately tighten the settings was concerns about processor consumption (I don't want the server to get into an infinite loop when given too tight restrictions). Good news is that I'll be able to script and measure such effects soon.

I have tested some variants of settings.

FarPlanetsNo = 10, 15

With this there is no significant increase in the generation time, so you can use them right away.

FarPlanetsNo = 12, 16 HomeworldsRadius = 486

These settings are much more cpu intensive but also much more fair.

Anyway the decision on how to address the problem is yours. I just hope that this will happen someday.

Those results do not surprise me: the average is pi*165²/8000 = 10.7 planets. 12-16 is outside that range and takes a lot of luck to obtain. The question is how far we can tighten the limit. 9-12 is even more fair than 10-15.

--Stefan

[Posting] Re: Federation wanted
Posted Thu, 2017-12-14 13:33 GMT, edited Thu, 2017-12-14 13:37 GMT

Those results do not surprise me: the average is pi*165²/8000 = 10.7 planets. 12-16 is outside that range and takes a lot of luck to obtain. The question is how far we can tighten the limit. 9-12 is even more fair than 10-15.

I dont know how much CPU resources your host has. The "10-15" setting removes very bad starting condition. That is enough for me.

Also please consider changing HomeworldsRadius to at least 486 (I recommend 500 but it takes around 3 min to generate a map on my laptop).

Look at the typical result for HomeworldsRadius = 450

Some races have to fight early. Other races can colonize a large territory without confrontaion.

With HomeworldsRadius = 500 the result is much better.

[Posting] Re: Federation wanted
Thread opener
Posted Sat, 2017-12-16 23:08 GMT

Those results do not surprise me: the average is pi*165²/8000 = 10.7 planets. 12-16 is outside that range and takes a lot of luck to obtain. The question is how far we can tighten the limit. 9-12 is even more fair than 10-15.

I dont know how much CPU resources your host has. The "10-15" setting removes very bad starting condition. That is enough for me.

Also please consider changing HomeworldsRadius to at least 486 (I recommend 500 but it takes around 3 min to generate a map on my laptop).

I didn't plan to spend multiple minutes on a host run. However, the maximum time I observed so far was 5 seconds, so there's still some room for improvements.

Thanks for this visualisations!

--Stefan