PlanetsCentral

What is FLAK?

Fleet Action Kombat, or FLAK for short, is a multi-ship combat engine. You can find documentation and software here.

The main problem with standard one-on-one combat is that small ships cannot team up against a big ship. In FLAK, they can. For each fight, your ships will form fleets; each fleet will attack an enemy. This way, a group of medium-sized ships does have a chance against a top battleship, even if that top battleship would normally just defeat each of them one by one.

FLAK is intended to be "plug-compatible" with existing ship lists. In 1:1 combat, it attempts to mimic PVCR as close as possible. It was designed to be easy to use, for players and hosts.

Why now?

FLAK was designed several years ago, in a joint venture of the PHost, Planetsserver, Blutmagie and Vagabond people. You may remember the last three as high-quality hosts of the past.

Unfortunately, it mostly laid dormant until now. I think some hosts tried hosting one or another game with it, but nothing big. I finally found the time to revive it, which was much less work than I had feared for, and more fun than I thought. In particular, the PCC2 Web Battle Simulator now has an awesome FLAK mode: set the mode to FLAK, add some ships, sit back and watch.

What's in this game?

This is the second game I'll be hosting with FLAK (the first one was, well, long ago). I hope to find the remaining bugs (and I hope that they're not too plenty), and maybe tweak one or another bit of the engine. If everything goes well, FLAK could be a new standard game series on this site.

For now, the game uses PList 2.4 because FLAK doesn't yet support 100% of PList 3.2. Cleaning that up would be a task for the near future. For example, FLAK doesn't yet support FullWeaponry - all ships have it, always. So, let's discuss whether that makes sense for multi-ship combat.

I'd like to play as well if you don't protest too heavily, but you get first picks of the race.

--Stefan

Hi,

welcome everybody on board, let's go.

First bugs have already been found (and fixed):

(a) next turn, you will get a (probably) empty "flakX.dat" file with your player files. If you're using batch files, make sure to unpack this into your game directory along with the result file, so you can watch battles when they happen.

(b) next turn, you will find the FLAK configuration file (flak.src) among the player files. Until then, you can retrieve it through the Host Software List. This file is not needed for playing battles, but for simulating.

--Stefan

Greetinx!

First of all thank you Stefan for setting up this new game version. It looks very promising and I am sure it will be lots of fun

One question in regards to viewing VCRs: I am using a DOS client (VPA) and a DOS user interface (VPLRead) in order to access all my add-ons. It seems that PlayVCR is not able to run under DOS? But instead I could use CCBSim (/f X) in order to view my VCRs? And CCBSim (alone) in order to simulate battles as usual?

Thank you for your help.

Cheers,
Mike

One question in regards to viewing VCRs: I am using a DOS client (VPA) and a DOS user interface (VPLRead) in order to access all my add-ons. It seems that PlayVCR is not able to run under DOS? But instead I could use CCBSim (/f X) in order to view my VCRs? And CCBSim (alone) in order to simulate battles as usual?

Correct. CCBSim must be the latest version (1.1.21); previous versions do not have FLAK support built in.

Simply put, CCBSim is a 16-bit application, and PlayVCR is the 32-bit version of it.

--Stefan

Hey

Today I have received my first VCR and I was able to watch it as described above.

However there is one thing which made it a little unconfortable: The total length was 398:39 time units which took me about 15 minutes to watch it until the end. This was the best I was able to achieve by pressing "+" for the highest speed available. It seems that CCBSim is going through the whole battle in real-time whereas PVCR (and VPA) is "jumping" from action to action.

Is there a way to jump to a certain point of time? For battles of this length I'd prefer to go to the end of the battle in order to see the outcome only and find out about damage and remaining ammo of the surviving fleet.

Thanks & Cheers,
Mike

However there is one thing which made it a little unconfortable: The total length was 398:39 time units which took me about 15 minutes to watch it until the end. This was the best I was able to achieve by pressing "+" for the highest speed available. It seems that CCBSim is going through the whole battle in real-time whereas PVCR (and VPA) is "jumping" from action to action.

You probably saw a weak planet vs. weak ship? (for example, Deadalus-with-Kill-o-Zap vs. Planet-with-1-defense). Those fights take ages to resolve with AllowAlternativeCombat=Yes (in PVCR and FLAK). Because the weapons are so weak, they only do very little damage and need many shots; to add to that, they also recharge slowly.

CCBSim has a fast-forward-to-end function (Ctrl+Right), so if you know it's gonna be boring, you can use that to just see the result. It still takes a while to compute in a DOS emulator.

In the 32-bit version (PlayVCR/PCC2), Ctrl+Right forwards in 20s increments.

As far as I know, PVCR does not behave different here, but it might be that the DOS emulator treats it a little friendlier because it has much simpler user interface.

VPA only supports Tim-Host combat which (a) resolves much faster because each hit does at least 1 damage, and (b) is time-limited to 2000 ticks. It will therefore sure appear faster, but produce totally different results.

--Stefan

CCBSim has a fast-forward-to-end function (Ctrl+Right), so if you know it's gonna be boring, you can use that to just see the result. It still takes a while to compute in a DOS emulator.

Perfect, thanks Stefan

Hi again,

I have noticed that I don't receive allied VCRs with my flak10.dat. Also there seem to be no distress calls from other players' battles.

Do I have to flip a switch or is this just not yet implemented?

Cheers,
Mike

I have noticed that I don't receive allied VCRs with my flak10.dat.

This should work: if your ally offers you vision, combat, and ship (+v +c +s) level alliance, you see their combat.

As far as I can tell, this is the same rule as in PHost.

Also there seem to be no distress calls from other players' battles.

This ("distress call and explosion detected...") does indeed not yet exist.

--Stefan

Dahoudaboudadoudawou in Re: Welcome to FLAK!:

I have noticed that I don't receive allied VCRs with my flak10.dat.

This should work: if your ally offers you vision, combat, and ship (+v +c +s) level alliance, you see their combat.

As far as I can tell, this is the same rule as in PHost.

I have now tested this, and it works.

One pitfall I stumbled across when setting up the test case: both allies need to accept the alliance ("allies add") for the alliance levels to have any effect. Them just offering +v +c +s to you does nothing until you offer an alliance (no matter what levels). OK, in a regular game this probably is less relevant than when setting up a minimal test case.

Also there seem to be no distress calls from other players' battles.

This ("distress call and explosion detected...") does indeed not yet exist.

The version I just uploaded now sends "distress call and explosion detected" messages, as well as appropriate util.dat records, in the same way PHost does: if a ship explodes, everyone except for victor and victim gets a distress call, and everyone gets an explosion util.dat record.

--Stefan

One pitfall I stumbled across when setting up the test case: both allies need to accept the alliance ("allies add") for the alliance levels to have any effect. Them just offering +v +c +s to you does nothing until you offer an alliance (no matter what levels). OK, in a regular game this probably is less relevant than when setting up a minimal test case.

Apparently the alliance has to be confirmed by +v +c +s from both sides. I usually a c my alliances with ~ which did not work out in this case.

Cheers,
Mike

streu in Re: Welcome to FLAK!:

One pitfall I stumbled across when setting up the test case: both allies need to accept the alliance ("allies add") for the alliance levels to have any effect. Them just offering +v +c +s to you does nothing until you offer an alliance (no matter what levels). OK, in a regular game this probably is less relevant than when setting up a minimal test case.

Apparently the alliance has to be confirmed by +v +c +s from both sides. I usually a c my alliances with ~ which did not work out in this case.

Sorry, I cannot reproduce such a restriction.

I have used

• player 1 commands "a a 3" and "a c 3 +s +c +v"
• player 3 commands "a a 1"

Thus, player 3 sees player 1's fights. Same thing with

• player 1 commands "a a 3" and "a c 3 ~s ~c ~v"
• player 3 commands "a a 1" and "a c 1 ~s ~c ~v"

Or did you only use ~s, without your ally offering ~s back? Then, that would be precisely the "conditional" logic: if they do not offer back, it is not effective.

--Stefan

Sorry, I cannot reproduce such a restriction.

I have used

• player 1 commands "a a 3" and "a c 3 +s +c +v"
• player 3 commands "a a 1"

Thus, player 3 sees player 1's fights. Same thing with

• player 1 commands "a a 3" and "a c 3 ~s ~c ~v"
• player 3 commands "a a 1" and "a c 1 ~s ~c ~v"

Or did you only use ~s, without your ally offering ~s back? Then, that would be precisely the "conditional" logic: if they do not offer back, it is not effective.

--Stefan

My ally confirmed the alliance with "+" for all parameters from the very beginning. I confirmed the alliance with "~" for all parameters and we did not see each other's battles until I changed to "+" for all parameters.

Is it possible though that my ally did not encounter any battles yet (guess I should ask him ) and he did not see mine due to the ~...?