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Hi guys,

now that the game is quite advanced, and probably some battles happened, I'd like to ask: do you have any comments on FLAK? Did it work like you expect? Did it surprise you? Did you notice it positively or negatively? What else did you notice in this game?

I had some smaller fights that went like expected, so nothing to complain about the battle engine.

I got the most negative impression from the presence of ion storms (which, honestly, were an unintended mistake when setting up the game). Because the Lord punishes little sins immediately, my entire empire was covered in ion storms for the first few dozen turns, which negates the Lizard's cloaking ability.

--Stefan

Hi Stefan! Same here, the Ion storms hit me mid-game, a nasty one turned two times, circling my whole territory for like half the game. No decloaking of course, but lost a few ships. But then again, that's what Ion storms do, eh? So much for that. As already mentioned, the explore map addon combined with terribly large gaps in between clusters was holding me back quite a lot. When I know that even a small fleet of minor ships can butcher a large attack vessel, of course I wont send it into the unknown right away. And sending a whole fleet instead? Sure, I could have done it, but first large fleets are not available like bugs on a dirt pile, and seconds at some point I couldnt even see a destination, no planet in sight. So I waited for someone to come around, and luckily the Cyborg asked for it. Then at least I had a direction where to look. Maybe that was also slowing down everyone else a bit, who knows. I had one major fleet battle among lots of smaller ones which surprised me, there was no way to calculate it for me since it was a surprise attack, maybe my enemies can help out here later. I think that loss was pretty cool, since an alliance of smaller (score) players could beat an alliance of stronger players with almost no loss, stopping the destruction of their empires immediatly. Such options are rare in other games. So thumbs up here! A bit sad is the lacking compatability with EchoView, I am oldfashioned and still using that. Enemy ships which have been in battle dont show their stats there, so I needed to make notes. But ok, thats just a minor thing. I would like to try it again, but maybe without explore map then

Hi guys,

now that the game is quite advanced, and probably some battles happened, I'd like to ask: do you have any comments on FLAK? Did it work like you expect? Did it surprise you? Did you notice it positively or negatively? What else did you notice in this game?

I had some smaller fights that went like expected, so nothing to complain about the battle engine.

I got the most negative impression from the presence of ion storms (which, honestly, were an unintended mistake when setting up the game). Because the Lord punishes little sins immediately, my entire empire was covered in ion storms for the first few dozen turns, which negates the Lizard's cloaking ability.

--Stefan

I like the setup and would be interested to try once more in a another game. The explore map feature slows definitely down but that is not necessarily a bad thing if your neighbor is not immediately at your throat. I experienced the devastating potential of a smartly compiled fleet - that almost wiped me out. However with allied support I also managed to stop the enemy with lots of smaller ships. Downside is the battle engine is not embedded in my vpa. I have not yet found a way to save and revisit battle information from previous turns conveniently other than restoring old turn data which is a bt cumbersome.

Cheers Terraner

Downside is the battle engine is not embedded in my vpa. I have not yet found a way to save and revisit battle information from previous turns conveniently other than restoring old turn data which is a bt cumbersome.

I have spent quite some commutes now pondering how to embed it in VPA, then it came to me:

You need not restore entire old turns. All you need to keep separately is the flakX.dat files, e.g. renamed to flak8-78.dat or so. You can then run PlayVCR on them (e.g. drag it on the exe file, enter command "playvcr path/to/flak8-78.dat"). All that matters is that the correct ship list file is available, it need not match the result/turn unpacked next to it.

With the DOS version it should be "ccbsim path\to\game /f path\to\game\flak8-78.dat", but I haven't tried that now.

Actually *embedding* it in VPA will probably be out of question; the DOS version is playing quite some dirty tricks with VGA registers to get full-screen animation. Having VPA start it like it does for PVCR might be possible.

--Stefan

Once I took part in the game with TKF addon. It was funny. As far as I understood, the FLAK is almost the same. So, this type of games must go on!

The only think I would suggest is obligatory mixing FLAK with no-alliance mode. If the fleet A is two times greater than fleet B, after the battle the fleet B will be destroyed totally as well as half of fleet A. In FLAK game fleet B will be destoyed, but fleet A has a good chances to finish without loses. This thing provocates preset alliances - the more participants the best. This has nothing similar to fair-play. That's it.

Neat. Is this gonna get me into trouble? This is the result after your visit on my Starbase, Stefan

Neat. Is this gonna get me into trouble? This is the result after your visit on my Starbase, Stefan

Interesting...

Officially, PHost should be able to deal with that and eventually trim it down. However, if you're transferring those fighters around, this trimming will get the universe out of balance and accuse you of cheating.

Do not transfer fighters from that starbase this turn! (But the turn checker will tell you that)

The turn afterwards, fighter count will be reset to normal, and you can use the fighters normally.

Congratulations, good find That'll take a few moments to fix.

--Stefan

My guts told me to not touch anything there, and I already submitted my turn - it's green. So I guess I will be fine. Echoview shows the fighters too. They must have appeared out of thin air, since my carrier shows the regular amount after the battle. Must be some weird bug I guess

snouka in Re: Remarks on FLAK?:

Neat. Is this gonna get me into trouble? This is the result after your visit on my Starbase, Stefan

Interesting...

Officially, PHost should be able to deal with that and eventually trim it down. However, if you're transferring those fighters around, this trimming will get the universe out of balance and accuse you of cheating.

Do not transfer fighters from that starbase this turn! (But the turn checker will tell you that)

The turn afterwards, fighter count will be reset to normal, and you can use the fighters normally.

Congratulations, good find That'll take a few moments to fix.

--Stefan

Starbase is back to normal, as you predicted. Thanks Stefan!

Starbase is back to normal, as you predicted. Thanks Stefan!

I have now finally also uploaded a version of FLAK that fixes this bug.

Basically, if you lost 15 fighters on your starbase, FLAK would have given you 15 instead. Stupid sign error.

--Stefan

found some more nonsense, and again we are involved - a second time planet Remus is involved You captured my Virgo there this turn, however the planet is set to NUK and didnt join the fight! Something is not right there! Stefan, give me back my ship!

found some more nonsense, and again we are involved - a second time planet Remus is involved You captured my Virgo there this turn, however the planet is set to NUK and didnt join the fight! Something is not right there! Stefan, give me back my ship!

If I see this correctly, my ship was cloaked with primary enemy (this was actually a mistake on my part). Thus, my ship could attack yours, so both took part in the fight. However, cloaked ships cannot attack planets, and planets cannot attack cloaked ships, thus, the planet does not take part in the fight.

--Stefan

alright, that was the one thing I ruled out, because I could not imagine that you would place a cloaked ship with PE set above there, after what happened a few turns before guess there is always room for human mistakes now I need to get serious

snouka in Re: Remarks on FLAK?:

found some more nonsense, and again we are involved - a second time planet Remus is involved You captured my Virgo there this turn, however the planet is set to NUK and didnt join the fight! Something is not right there! Stefan, give me back my ship!

If I see this correctly, my ship was cloaked with primary enemy (this was actually a mistake on my part). Thus, my ship could attack yours, so both took part in the fight. However, cloaked ships cannot attack planets, and planets cannot attack cloaked ships, thus, the planet does not take part in the fight.

--Stefan

Hey

Now that the game is over I'm throwing in my two cents...

In my mind explore map does not interfere that much with the FLAK setup. It's always a risk to send ships into the unknown, no matter if you see your destination or not. Explore map requires more scouting which should always be done with small and/or cheap ships which ain't a great loss.

What does rather concern me is the tremendous change into the balance of the races. It was not visible in FLAK1, probably because the setup was so new that most players kept their usual strategies and tactics. But now after first experience has been gained I expect certain races to extremely benefit from FLAK. Cloaker races, especially those with cloaking battleships (PList) are able to affect the outcome of battles in their favour:

• Opponents are completely unable to calculate the battle result since they do not know about the strength of the cloaked fleet. In a regular battle you are able to predict that one carrier X will take down 2 cloakers Y before it gets knocked out on its own. Now all 3 cloakers will probably survive the fight and remain a threat.
• Cloakers are able to break up enemy fleets by towing away and destroying single ships without suffering any loss.
• Even without towing fleets apart cloakers are able to take out individual ships with intercept attack. 3 cloakers A fighting carrier X, 3 cloakers B fighting carrier Y and after intercept attack 6 cloakers A+B fight the remainder of the fleet (untested).
• The need to form big fleets plays to the Fascist self destructors. You can imagine the effect of D19s on a fleet of carriers which must stick together since they would be easy prey alone.
• The Pirate's main drawback was his ships' weakness against bases and big battleships. Now 3-4 of his bigger ships are able to take out each of them without any loss.

Don't get me wrong, I'm greatly thrilled by fleet combat and I'll be glad to join more games of this kind. However I believe that the next setups need to be adjusted, i.e. strengthening bases (tubes?) and carriers (strikes per fighter, bay recharge rate?).

Cheers,
Mike

Hi,

Opponents are completely unable to calculate the battle result since they do not know about the strength of the cloaked fleet. In a regular battle you are able to predict that one carrier X will take down 2 cloakers Y before it gets knocked out on its own. Now all 3 cloakers will probably survive the fight and remain a threat.

I don't think that is vastly different from 1:1 combat; even there, the cloaker race could have many more ships at the end of the battle order. The difference with fleet combat is that you actually SEE them which I actually consider sort-of a (slight) advantage for the opponent. If your battleship is destroyed by two cloakers in 1:1 combat, you don't know whether that was all, or whether there are five more waiting. Thus, you can get quite good intel by sacrificing a probe or freighter, which you cannot in 1:1 combat.

Or am I missing anything?

Cloakers are able to break up enemy fleets by towing away and destroying single ships without suffering any loss.

Even without towing fleets apart cloakers are able to take out individual ships with intercept attack. 3 cloakers A fighting carrier X, 3 cloakers B fighting carrier Y and after intercept attack 6 cloakers A+B fight the remainder of the fleet (untested).

The need to form big fleets plays to the Fascist self destructors. You can imagine the effect of D19s on a fleet of carriers which must stick together since they would be easy prey alone.

But that's not a (big) difference to 1:1 combat, is it?

The Pirate's main drawback was his ships' weakness against bases and big battleships. Now 3-4 of his bigger ships are able to take out each of them without any loss.

If I understand your argument correctly, that is a conceptual problem:

All ship lists that we have are designed for 1:1 combat. Building five RAVAGER CLASS CUBE is cheaper than building an EXTERMINATOR CLASS CUBE, although the five Ravagers have better fighting power in FLAK. In PHost 1:1 combat, the Exterminator usually wins.

This argument also came up when we initially designed FLAK (but quite late in the process), and lead to the "Compensation Cheat". Essentially, the smaller fleet (fewer ships) gets a bonus when firing at an enemy ship. This cancels the non-linearity somehow.

To further level it out, we'd need a new ship list. Feel free to make one

--Stefan

Hey

Hi,

Dahoudaboudadoudawou in Re: Remarks on FLAK?:

Opponents are completely unable to calculate the battle result since they do not know about the strength of the cloaked fleet. In a regular battle you are able to predict that one carrier X will take down 2 cloakers Y before it gets knocked out on its own. Now all 3 cloakers will probably survive the fight and remain a threat.

I don't think that is vastly different from 1:1 combat; even there, the cloaker race could have many more ships at the end of the battle order. The difference with fleet combat is that you actually SEE them which I actually consider sort-of a (slight) advantage for the opponent. If your battleship is destroyed by two cloakers in 1:1 combat, you don't know whether that was all, or whether there are five more waiting. Thus, you can get quite good intel by sacrificing a probe or freighter, which you cannot in 1:1 combat.

Or am I missing anything?

I agree, this I did not take into account. It's true that a scout is able to trigger and unveil the entire fleet - unless not all cloakers join the battle in order to avoid being scouted

Cloakers are able to break up enemy fleets by towing away and destroying single ships without suffering any loss.

Even without towing fleets apart cloakers are able to take out individual ships with intercept attack. 3 cloakers A fighting carrier X, 3 cloakers B fighting carrier Y and after intercept attack 6 cloakers A+B fight the remainder of the fleet (untested).

The need to form big fleets plays to the Fascist self destructors. You can imagine the effect of D19s on a fleet of carriers which must stick together since they would be easy prey alone.

But that's not a (big) difference to 1:1 combat, is it?

My first 3 points do actually all refer to the same issue: Races possessing cloaked battleships are able to deal with enemy fleets without own losses vs. regular battle where 2-3 Darkwings are being destroyed before the carrier is down. Which IS a pretty big difference to 1:1 combat

The Fascist advantage based on his self destructors is not that increased vs. regular battle, I agree. Also there players tend to keep their ships together in order to transfer cargo and to win battles. I'd estimate the higher efficiency to no more than 10%.

The Pirate's main drawback was his ships' weakness against bases and big battleships. Now 3-4 of his bigger ships are able to take out each of them without any loss.

If I understand your argument correctly, that is a conceptual problem:

All ship lists that we have are designed for 1:1 combat. Building five RAVAGER CLASS CUBE is cheaper than building an EXTERMINATOR CLASS CUBE, although the five Ravagers have better fighting power in FLAK. In PHost 1:1 combat, the Exterminator usually wins.

This argument also came up when we initially designed FLAK (but quite late in the process), and lead to the "Compensation Cheat". Essentially, the smaller fleet (fewer ships) gets a bonus when firing at an enemy ship. This cancels the non-linearity somehow.

To further level it out, we'd need a new ship list. Feel free to make one

I'd be happy to add my gameplay experience if anybody with ship list creation experience is willing to take over the project management

Cheers,
Mike