PlanetsCentral

Hello, It never happened to me before: EchoView tells me the max ammount of clans I can land in a planet with bad temperature, but the clans are deading and eating supplies. Do I have to make some setting in the EchoView to update this game in particular?

EchoView tells me the max ammount of clans I can land in a planet with bad temperature, but the clans are deading and eating supplies. Do I have to make some setting in the EchoView to update this game in particular?

The default PHost configuration value for MaxColTempSlope is 1000 and that gives similar (but not identical) max population on "normal temperature" planets (15<=temp<85) but the max population is about half or less on extreme-temperature (hot or cold) planets. You can see the numbers for both here: https://www.vgaplanets.ca/vga-planets-calculator/#growth_table change the dropdown from "TimHost" to "PHost" and that should match the behavior you see in the game.

I'm not familiar with EchoView (I use VPA), perhaps there is a configuration setting to switch it to PHost mode?

Hello, It never happened to me before: EchoView tells me the max ammount of clans I can land in a planet with bad temperature, but the clans are deading and eating supplies. Do I have to make some setting in the EchoView to update this game in particular?

Hi Akhenaton,

I guess the values showed in EchoView for max population are the TimHost values. PHost uses different formulas/charts for that. You can check the right values for PHost at:

https://www.vgaplanets.ca/vga-planets-calculator#tax_happy

Just make sure you select PHost instead of TimHost/Planets.nu in the drop-down list above the population charts.

Hope this helps!

Thank you guys!

Yes, I also use this page you told me a lot, but I always trust EchoView because (I think) it autoconfigures itself when it loads the game files.

I have used EchoView with games in all the hosts I have played:

The Last Domain

Planets Server

High Command

Circus Maximus

and never had this problem before. Weird...

https://www.vgaplanets.ca/vga-planets-calculator/#growth_table change the dropdown from "TimHost" to "PHost" and that should match the behavior you see in the game.

You are right, TimHost and EchoView tells me my planet with 11 degrees can support 223 clans, but Phost says 113, that's why these silly millenials keep eating my supplies!

I have used EchoView with games in all the hosts I have played: and never had this problem before.

I'm not certain, but it's likely all of the above used TimHost, and (at least in part) because of that they're no longer running. Thanks to Stefan and PHost this site is still running

I'm not sure why PHost creators decided to have break so drastically from THost behavior on extreme-climate planets, in everything else they made efforts to emulate THost behavior pretty closely.

I'm not sure why PHost creators decided to have break so drastically from THost behavior on extreme-climate planets, in everything else they made efforts to emulate THost behavior pretty closely.

Could be that the exact behaviour of Tim's host was unknown at the time. As I understand it, its behaviour also changed over time.

PHost's formulas are pretty intuitive for my taste. Climate-Death-Rate = X% means: if there's overpopulation X% die until we're at the limit again.

Now, in THost, Climate-Death-Rate = X% means the population limit increases by (100-X)% of the actual population, which effectively increases the population limit by a factor of (100/X). PCC shows this value as "won't die until" in the planet overview. PHost authors probably saw that their formulas do not match what THost does, so they added the MaxColTempSlope option.

Overpopulation-eats-supplies means: 40 clans eat one supply, period. As far as I can tell this applies to both hosts. My memory says that this also is the original definition (but I cannot find any reference to that now), and also that I already saw different formulas in disassembly (but cannot find a reference to those either).

Back to the original problem, I would assume that EchoView supports PHost formulas. It boasted extensive PHost support for as long as I know it. So it could be that it just didn't detect the configuration correctly.

Games at PlanetsCentral use shortened configuration files. In particular, they don't contain MaxColTempSlope. Try adding a line "MaxColTempSlope = 1000" to your pconfig.src. If that helps (or if you find any other config modification that helps) I'll gladly add these to the server-side copy for the future.

--Stefan

Try adding a line "MaxColTempSlope = 1000" to your pconfig.src. If that helps (or if you find any other config modification that helps) I'll gladly add these to the server-side copy for the future.

--Stefan

It seems you know a little bit, don't you???

I added the line, I'm sharing screenshots of both before/after info of the same planet:

It worked... you are a genius! Thank you !!

Hi,

starting next turn, the pconfig.src files produced by the host will contain the MaxColTempSlope = 1000 setting.

--Stefan

Games at PlanetsCentral use shortened configuration files. In particular, they don't contain MaxColTempSlope.

starting next turn, the pconfig.src files produced by the host will contain the MaxColTempSlope = 1000 setting.

Is there any particular advantage to the abbreviated pconfig.src? Other than a handful of extra bytes, is there any disadvantage of sending the full pconfig.src?

streu in Re: EchoView discrepancy:

starting next turn, the pconfig.src files produced by the host will contain the MaxColTempSlope = 1000 setting.

Is there any particular advantage to the abbreviated pconfig.src? Other than a handful of extra bytes, is there any disadvantage of sending the full pconfig.src?

This was intended to increase user-friendliness. When reviewing the config file, you have to ask yourself "does this concern me?" only 200 times, not 400 times. This is why PHost 4 started recommending to start with a "simple.src" config file, which is what I did in PlanetsCentral.

There are a large number of options nobody ever touches, and/or that have only historical significance (GravityWellRange? AllowAlchemyShips? AllowInterceptAttack?).

I would consider MaxColTempSlope such an option that nobody ever touches. Its default value has always been 1000. It is a bug in EchoView to use a different default. However, older PHost versions did not list the defaults in the documentation, so this is probably why EV got it wrong.

--Stefan