PlanetsCentral

Greetings to all, I would have liked to be brief because I write this with the help of a translator and I do not want there to be misunderstandings for the translation, but it will be impossible for me to have a short text, so I apologize to those who stay to read until the end.

On the second turn of the first game I played here (Pleiades 12) a player offered me an alliance and I told him that I preferred to wait because it was too early and I had not even seen my neighbors yet. In his next message he wished me luck and warned me that I would regret not having accepted it, because the others were going to become allies very soon. About 20 turns later, I wrote to him again to agree with him and asked him if it was always like that, he told me that always except in the "North Star" games, but don't get my hopes up, because even in those games it was played collaboratively.

I have been playing vgaplanets since 1995 and in all the games I have seen more or less powerful alliances with more or less possibilities to fight, even if I was going to defend against them, but there was always some way to continue playing. I have also made allies, exchanged ships and played as a team, but what I have seen in Titan 14 seems to me directly an alliance impossible to combat with the Titan configuration. The definition that comes to my mind is: the biggest and most twisted prostitution of the rules of the game that I have seen in 25 years.

It is clear that I am not the only one around here who have read the Phost documentation, or who knows how to interpret at least the most important parameters of the pconfig.src.

A Pirate-Colonial alliance that has Imperial and Borg as neighbors, easy victims because they do not have lokis. We see virgos doing mine sweep towed by meteors, so there is no way to intercept them, by remotely eliminating the mines they give free passage to the rest of the pirate fleet to steal ships. As a neighbor of the imperial warns me of that alliance and I understand that after ending the empire they will come after me (rebel), that I do not have lokis either, so I become their ally and begin to negotiate with the lizard to make a base and that he builds 12 lokis, which I then dealt with the empire and the borg.

While the base is being built and the lokis arrive, the empire and the borg do not stop retreating. But as soon as they reach the fine area that remains of empire and my territory they find a line of planets with enough combat ships and lokis. At that point the joyous advance stops.

A few turns later, meteors crystal and web minefields begin to appear in the former imperial zone… we did not plan to attack at the moment, at least as long as I do not forget that to bring out a loki in sight is to sentence her to death, victim of an intercept- attack. Even so, I had come up with a way to remove them and protect them that I will put into practice in some other game, because what happened next nullified my plan: the meteor birds.

They then turned their attention to the lizard zone, with the firecloud stolen from the borg (obviously towed by meteors) going to the bird zone, which was being harassed by the lizard, and sending a fleet of virgos and meteors. But this time they take advantage of the bird immunity to the loki to put themselves in the same position to tow and destroy them (the lokis). At all times it was done with dark wings bird, so I told the lizard that in its situation I would put an intercept fighter ship to the loki to destroy the dark wing, but that would not work many times.

So far so good, I also put some rush to intercept my own lokis, but what has come to me is a meteor bird, and this time it has moved less than 81 ly, so my rush has been able to destroy the minus one virgo, but the next ones would move 84 ly or 162 ly and out of my reach.

So with Phost rules and pconfig.src in hand I have come to the conclusion that:

- The option to defend yourself is: not being able to mine or avoid it thanks to the colonial virgos in mine sweep and towed by pirate meteors, whom you will never intercept. Losing the lokis dragged by meteors bird that you will never intercept, the next turn that virgos without fuel are put on the planet that you will never attack (and if it does the base with NUK will lose) and that the next turn they will receive 1kt of fuel from some bird ship in cloack to steal your ships.

The option to attack is: If you take the lokis out into the open, they die with an intercept-attack, assuming that they do not have to cross a web minefield, even if you manage to save them and reach the enemy planet, you will soon find in one of them several pirate virgo without fuel that you will not be able to attack, and although you attack the planet and win, it is useless because in the same position a cloack bird ship (surely a meteor) will pass 1kt of fuel to the virgos to steal your ships.

So what they want is to steal, steal, steal and steal, and that the rest of the player-races of the game have nothing to do against that alliance. What bothers me the most is the precious time I have lost looking at the host phases, the documentation, simulating the overlord and the combat simulator, writing messages to my allies in the translator, calculating the mineral and the mc's in detail ... time I have lost (because I have not learned anything new) for the game to end in a robbery... of time.

I know that it is not the first time that someone complains about alliances, until now I thought they were exaggerating, but now I think that they should be limited to 1 ally per game (pleiades, titan, phoenix), and in any case if you want to play with more than a team game setup is done, it's just an idea, but since I know that nothing will change what I have decided is to steal your time in exchange for my time.

So what I have thought is to put all my ships in colonize, at the time of writing this: 24 rush, 9 ldsf, 4 tranquility, 4 gemini, 4 merlin, 3 falcon, 2 neutronic refiner and 4 more minor ships, distribute all the ships that have not been built by me among my allies by proximity (if they do not destroy them along the way), cancel all the ships in queue of construction, set all taxes to 0 (happiness above all), remove codes attack, give combat alliance, mines and planets to those who were my enemies, and from here report that any planet they want to just ask, that they get on top and I kindly make a give planet: take advantage of their overwhelming victory . If what they wanted was to steal my ships in any way they will not succeed (except for those who stole the last turn), I have wasted my time and now I am making you lose yours.

And now I notice that it is nothing personal, I respect them and they seem to me great players, but I think that their desire to win at any price has made their alliance get out of hand, and I do not think they need it, with the level they have would win the same, and we would all have a better time. It would have been easier to resist 20 turns but this is the best way that has occurred to me to protest against this way of doing and I do not rule out doing it again in the future, if the prostitution of the rules does not leave me any other way out, anything goes to win ... and to lose.

Keep going, it makes it very attractive to play, I hope that someday you will ask yourself why people abandoned this game.

Good luck to all.

Carlos Montoro

That's why I am only playing NS games. They are not perfect but at least playable. I see you joined one. See you there.

This is my first Titan game, and to be honest, it disappointed me. It was positioned by Stefan as an analogue of the host settings, but apart from the standard list of ships, it has nothing in common with the host. Fighting is completely different, which takes a long time to get used to. I was especially surprised that the most strengthened base does not pose a threat to heavy carriers and is only capable of removing the shield from them.

I was also surprised that we are again playing on a standard map, which is very unbalanced, and Stefan promised not to use it again.

In general, if there are no changes in the combat system and it does not approach the host system, I see no reason for myself to continue playing in this format.

Hi,

I must admit that this Titan was totally different from what I expected, too. I came to test some software and go down fast, and ended up in a web of alliance offers, with some misunderstandings making me end up on both sides for some time. I didn't have that before...

In general, if there are no changes in the combat system and it does not approach the host system, I see no reason for myself to continue playing in this format.

Can you be more specific to what exactly differs for you? I'm probably a little ignorant here - I cannot remember formulas, which is why I am adding tons of predictions and simulations to my clients - but I had considered formulas to be close to the original, i.e. beams doing minimum of 1 damage etc.

--Stefan

I might have made some suggestions, but I don’t understand how to test combat situations in bsim using non-standard settings. Can I load my own pconfig.src into the simulator?

I do not know what needs to be changed in the settings so that you can capture Falcon in the phost using Disruptors. In the host, you can capture Falcon with any number of beams. In phost only if you have 2 beams, and then Falcon will receive 99% of damage, in all other cases it will be destroyed. A base with 60 fighters, 200 defense posts and 100 planet dp has a 31% chance of destroying a heavy carrier, and in the phost, this chance is 0. It is possible to use torpedo tubes somehow to accumulate this difference, or perhaps you need to change some other settings related to combat characteristics of fighters. I dont know.

If you want, I can try to figure it out, but I need to understand how to work with bsim.

I might have made some suggestions, but I don’t understand how to test combat situations in bsim using non-standard settings. Can I load my own pconfig.src into the simulator?

In CCBSim (DOS version) you can use Ctrl+L to load pconfig.src fragments when in PHost mode.

I do not know what needs to be changed in the settings so that you can capture Falcon in the phost using Disruptors. In the host, you can capture Falcon with any number of beams. In phost only if you have 2 beams, and then Falcon will receive 99% of damage, in all other cases it will be destroyed.

If I see that correctly, this is because PHost is prorating weapon power: the second beam hit will drop shields to 0%, and use its remaining power to do some damage. PHost will also only use the remaining power to kill crew whereas Tim-Host will use the full power.

That's a good point, I wasn't aware of this difference (and that it can be so clearly visible) before.

--Stefan