Anacreon Era III Discussion Thread

[--Imperator--]

Generally the Era 3 changes were meant to encourage more varied fleet compositions instead of mindlessly spamming a single unit type. Most of these changes were discussed at length here and subsequently implemented by George in the big update. Overall it seems the changes were at least moderately successful in creating a "rock-paper-scissors" system rather than have the infamous Eldritch/Gorgos duo for offense/defense that was so popular in the past. From my personal experience, mixing ship types does indeed lead to much better results.

All of your points are correct, Wayward Device. Undines are good overall, but useless against ships with missile defense like the Eldritch and Gorgos. It would be preferable to combine them with another unit which counters these. The Minotaur isn't as trashy is it seems, in fact they are the staple unit of the Imperial Legionary Fleets. I used them to great effect to win many wars, including one against yourself, if you recall They're effective against small numbers of powerful ships like starfrigates. They are indeed countered by Undines but as you know Undines are an offensive unit and players are unlikely to pile them up at capitals like they do with Gorgos/Megatheres.

[Accelerando]

Well, that was certainly fun. I have a thing I have to drive to out of state tomorrow, so I can't really attend to the game for some time. If I return and people have conquered me in the meantime, I suppose there's nothing I can do about it, but I do ask that people respect my sovereignty and that of Pandastan, who is also withdrawing from combat and the game generally. In that regard, my declaration was true: I have always intended only to return to my historic neutrality. Pandastan is my personal friend, but I will not be upholding any alliances, so any attacks on either of us by Imperator will not be retaliated by either of us.

Peace has been brokered with the Terran Imperium, with the Imperator who was quite unexpectedly gracious about the whole thing once we dropped the in-character charade of constant @#$!-talking. Had this not been the case I had planned to make war on the Imperium as much as I could as quickly as possible tonight, but without the element of surprise and with our friendly exchange that has been rendered a moot point. I have withdrawn all military units to my space. I'll be around in the forums, but as for the game, see you all in... a week or two maybe. Or longer, if people conquer my ass to death.

[--Imperator--]

A report of very recent events, for the general entertainment of fellow players:

"The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting." -- Sun Tzu

Today, the GCN-Pandastan alliance broke their so-called "treaty" and launched a surprise attack on the Imperium in an attempt to curb its growing power, after a lengthy forum post describing their casus belli, which I'm sure was prepared well in advance (hint: it was planned all along).

At 23:00 hours Anacreon time, I logged in just in time to notice joint GCN-Pandastan fleets heading towards all of my newly established sector capitals. Multiple Pandastan jumpfleets were in the middle of assaulting the Thaumiel Gate, in response I quickly redesignated it from a sector capital to prevent any defections from occuring.

I scrambled fleets to defend. Thaumiel Gate did NOT fall.

Another Pandastan fleet headed towards the SC Caelestia. Again, I was forced to redesignate. The enemy would gain no ground. A small Imperial fleet distracted Pandastan by sending fleets against their unprotected sector capital, forcing them to pull back their doomstack to defend. I sacrificed this attacking fleet to gain time.

At the same time, GCN's Fleet Kalinin (read: jumpship doomstack) advanced on Terra. Withdrawing all defending Minotaurs instead of making a doomed last stand like last time, I allowed said doomstack to destroy Terra's planetary defenses. At the same time, I sent a jumpfleet to capture the jumpbeacon they originated from. This mistake of GCN's was the turning point of the war.

They had sent no transports with ground troops to invade Terra. By removing their access route, a significantly more powerful fleet had been rendered helpless against an inferior enemy force. To their credit, GCN's leader Accelandro then expressed a need to attend to IRL matters, and decided not to continue fighting in what would undoubtedly derail into a long drawn-out stalemate.

They have agreed to withdraw from the war and return to their previous policy of noninvolvement in Imperial affairs. I truly had (and still have) no quarrel with them despite their first attack on my capital that started this mess. Which was actually my fault as I did not think to confirm the existence of any alliances Pandastan might have had before so eagerly invading.

As for Pandastan... well, without GCN's protection their fleets cannot hope to stand against the replenished Imperial forces. The dismantling of their empire will occur over the course of the next several days. It will be a slow, but ultimately inevitable process. They may attempt to resist, as will be expected, but Imperial dominion is already secure in all but name within the North.

Ad victoriam!

[Ilkay]

So some one sent me an vary long in game message right as i was getting off for the night, and it seems to have disappear in to the aether. if you are on the forum whoever you are, can you resend.

[L.W., Windsor]

I..... I? I. ....I


I!

I declare the Windsor Project. I am issuing a decree for the industrialization of the near by galactic area in order to harness the power of hexacarbide in the Distant Colonization Protocol 1.

The Windsor Project will oversee the creation of the Hexacarbide Industrial Complex

Within Protocol 1 the acquisition of hexacarbide is Priority 1. The Protection of hexacarbide industrial complex is Priority 2.

The destruction of the HIC will result in the loss of valuables.

Windsor is a humble empire which seeks to extract the valuable hexacarbide and understand it's secrets.

This is the Windsor Project Proclamation.

L.W., Windsor

[Finnian]

I..... I? I. ....I


I!

I declare the Windsor Project. I am issuing a decree for the industrialization of the near by galactic area in order to harness the power of hexacarbide in the Distant Colonization Protocol 1.

The Windsor Project will oversee the creation of the Hexacarbide Industrial Complex

Within Protocol 1 the acquisition of hexacarbide is Priority 1. The Protection of hexacarbide industrial complex is Priority 2.

The destruction of the HIC will result in the loss of valuables.

Windsor is a humble empire which seeks to extract the valuable hexacarbide and understand it's secrets.

This is the Windsor Project Proclamation.

L.W., Windsor

You are the spiritual heir of a Galaxy tradition. There was an empire named Hexacarbide Brotherhood in ancient time that had your same mission! Very good

[Wayward Device]

All of your points are correct, Wayward Device. Undines are good overall, but useless against ships with missile defense like the Eldritch and Gorgos. It would be preferable to combine them with another unit which counters these. The Minotaur isn't as trashy is it seems, in fact they are the staple unit of the Imperial Legionary Fleets. I used them to great effect to win many wars, including one against yourself, if you recall They're effective against small numbers of powerful ships like starfrigates. They are indeed countered by Undines but as you know Undines are an offensive unit and players are unlikely to pile them up at capitals like they do with Gorgos/Megatheres.

I should have been more clear, I meant this in the context of defending worlds. I've seen the enhanced usefulness of gunships in Era 3 wars, especially with regard to beacons. What I was really looking for was some rough numbers of what beats what. Back in Era 2 we learned from experiments that 1 Gorgos could beat anything up to 33 Eldritch and would only go down to a 10:1 kill ratio if outnumbered by more than 100:1. But I guess we'll have to wait until you turn your legions South in 10 or 20 cycles for some real Era 3 data. I should have a fully implemented new starship defense theory ready to test by then.

Speaking of which, following your recent successes in the North and future industrial base, the Auroran Hegemony will have to consider any exo galactic gunship fleets with "totally normal expeditionary transports" passing through the South East as an act of war.

I..... I? I. ....I


I!

I declare the Windsor Project. I am issuing a decree for the industrialization of the near by galactic area in order to harness the power of hexacarbide in the Distant Colonization Protocol 1.

The Windsor Project will oversee the creation of the Hexacarbide Industrial Complex

Within Protocol 1 the acquisition of hexacarbide is Priority 1. The Protection of hexacarbide industrial complex is Priority 2.

The destruction of the HIC will result in the loss of valuables.

Windsor is a humble empire which seeks to extract the valuable hexacarbide and understand it's secrets.

This is the Windsor Project Proclamation.

L.W., Windsor

Hear the words of the Auroran Hegemony:

Although not aligned with the most vigorous interpretation, these words are nevertheless in accordance with the One Truth. The Hegemony will not oppose Windsor by word or deed. For now.

humble empire

This does not stand in the light of the One Truth. As recent events have shown, empires that are not in accordance with the One Truth inevitably fall and trillions of sentients die as their economies collapse. Consider the example of the Gospel of a New Century with their Communism, or Pandastan with it's adorable Panda cuteness. Neither of these stood in the light of the One Truth and soon they will be gone.

Here end the words of the Hegemony.

[gc2]

Not going to make a new thread for this:
How do you import stuff to your capital when under the T&E doctrine? There isn't a button for "import".

[--Imperator--]

Does selecting the capital, then right-clicking on the world to which you want to import from/export to work? I don't use the "Import from" button. It's the same for trade hubs, which T&E capitals are, so I imagine it would work the same.

[gc2]

Oh, that works, thanks

[--Imperator--]

Wayward Device: I just remembered actually the combat calculations are slightly more complex. Units aren't destroyed when they receive damage == armorRating or armorRating + 1 despite this being the intuitive case, I also thought this at first. Rather, each shot received has a CHANCE of destroying the unit outright, based on the defending unit's armor and the attacker's damage.

I was searching for this old thread which had the sauce to back this up: The formula was revealed by George some time ago here, it is:

kill chance = 1 - (0.8)^(A/D)

Where A = attack (damage) and D = defense (armor).

Then we do kill chance * number of shots which gives the maximum number of units killed per "tick".

For example, if we have 1000 Minotaurs vs 100 Gorgos, each Minotaur has A:64 D:160 and each Gorgos A:128 D:300. Each combat tick the probability of a Gorgos and Minotaur death is 4.65% and 16.35% respectively. The maximum number of Gorgos and Minotaurs that can be killed each tick is 46 and 163 respectively (rounding down).

So however unlikely it may be, a Megathere may be one-shotted by a Stinger (critical hit!), while a Gorgos might hit an Eldritch 10 times before it dies. Pray to the RNG gods for success in battle. In all seriousness, the probability of these scenarios occurring are so infinitesimally low (<0.1%) they can effectively be treated as 0%. Although I still have flashbacks of missing 99% shots in XCOM.

Edit: little bit more math...

If you want to find out "how many shots" it takes to kill something, I think we can use expected value (E=P*n) so:

number of shots required = expected value (1.0 for a guaranteed kill) / kill chance (above)

So for the scenario above 1/0.0465 = 21.5 shots on AVERAGE required for a Minotaur to kill one Gorgos, in contrast with the 6.11 shots required for the inverse. This is probably mitigated by the fact that there are many more Minotaurs than Gorgos. Also, each unit may receive fire from multiple others in a single tick, with each separate shot contributing to this probability. Fleet combat isn't strictly 1:1.

What might be an interesting idea to be implemented in future Eras is an "evasion" stat of sorts, to replace the current armor system, which will probably be more representative of how combat is handled via probabilities. Armor could then be used in the original and intuitive fashion of protecting a ship against damage less than or equal to its armor rating. Starships could have heavy armor but low evasion, and vice versa for jumpships.

--

Missiles also have area of effect damage, similar to Transcendence, which compensates for their shortcomings (slow speed) over cannons. Note: this isn't disclosed by the game anywhere (it probably should be).

Area is an area of effect. From the point where the missile hit, out to 1/5 the area of effect radius, any ships in the area take full damage. After that, damage decreases at inverse-square rate. I.e., at 2/5th radius, ships take quarter damage; at 3/5th radius they take 1/9th damage, etc.

There is definitely a visual effect too, if you zoom into a battle the missiles "explode" with a nice little yellow circle sprite that scales in size based on their AOE damage attribute, higher values producing a bigger circle. Ships within this radius take damage as described by George above.

[L.W., Windsor]

Oh that is good news. How does the galactic community feel about the establishment of Galactic Hyperspace Rout Jedi for the free and untroubled paths of the People of Windsor? After a recent successful prospective expedition, there are bountiful abundants of Hexacarbide in the Western Galactic Rim that would look most nicely as a Monument in Little Windsor Square, Central Distract of Little Windsor, just south of the Capital Complex.

Does the Galactic Community concur this is a viable action?

The location of the GHRJ is to be decided at a later date.

[Watch TV, Do Nothing]

Missiles also have area of effect damage, similar to Transcendence, which compensates for their shortcomings (slow speed) over cannons. Note: this isn't disclosed by the game anywhere (it probably should be).

Area is an area of effect. From the point where the missile hit, out to 1/5 the area of effect radius, any ships in the area take full damage. After that, damage decreases at inverse-square rate. I.e., at 2/5th radius, ships take quarter damage; at 3/5th radius they take 1/9th damage, etc.

There is definitely a visual effect too, if you zoom into a battle the missiles "explode" with a nice little yellow circle sprite that scales in size based on their AOE damage attribute, higher values producing a bigger circle. Ships within this radius take damage as described by George above.

There is a visual effect but I have not seen any convincing evidence that AoE damage as it is currently implemented has a meaningful effect in combat.

[Watch TV, Do Nothing]

I had a few ideas concerning game changes.

Anything game change suggested by the Bug King merits consideration.

Extra-galactic movements:

Instead of changing the entire game, I though it would be easier to code for a deletion of any fleet that travels through the empty space beyond the galaxy with a message reading "Fleet destroyed due to heavy quantum fluctuations."

It would be even easier to just put a single rift zone polygon around the entire galactic periphery, just outside the edge of the map. This would block movement and not require any additional code. If it had a crenellated edge (like \/\/\/\/) it could potentially improve fleet pathing near map edges since it would provide additional vertices for the pathfinding algorithm (not totally sure if that is a true statement, just a guess).

Stars:

Another idea I had, much more coding intensive and potentially buggy, is to redo the stars.
Give the stars type classifications with varying attributes, much like the planets. Mechanics could something like: certain stars could give you a boost of some resource or a cluster of stars in a certain proximity could give a boost to their planets in production of that resource. For example if a string of Chromium planets all had the same type of star their would be a production boost for chromium manufacturing. Or if there were a group of two or more stars with Earth-like worlds there could be a high production boost etc.

Also, stars could age or be susceptible to certain risks. If there were types of stars that are Super Giants they could give a huge boost in resources for the world, but could be susceptible to going super nova or going or black hole which would sterilize the surrounding worlds by making them go back to pre-industrial and deleting all the population on those affected planets.

I like the idea of stars playing some role in the game. I would prefer to keep planet and star effects separate and have them be mechanically distinct, with star effects being rare. I don't like the idea of unpredictable death effects.

My pet idea for this would be to have planet type affects the stuff it currently does (resources, population, etc.) and star type affect ship movement and certain structures' availability. For example, a binary star could that delay jumpship arrival and departure at the planet by 10 watches since the gravity effects "make jump calculation more difficult". A pulsar could conceal all units stationed on its planet from detection. This would add a strategic component to fleet and yards placement.

Nebula:

Since the bug exists where the nebula changes on occasion, why not make that a feature once it is discovered in the code? Every so often the nebula would fluctuate in extant. This would go nicely with the different kinds of stars. The nebula cold be concentrated on young stars that have not many Earth-like worlds and also super giants, but be rich in resource worlds that are required for productions.

This is a fun idea. The fluctuation would have to be slow.

Planets:

Perhaps with these changes it would make sense to make more water/cave/earth-like worlds in the clear space? These could be where the majority of a population resides and production happens. If production is increased around these types of planets due to the stars boosting, and the resources where boosted because of the nebula stars. This way our fleets make much more sense instead of just needing them for invading all the time.

The way I take it is that the Megathere and Gorgos are world defenders and Minotaurs and Jumpships are the attackers, same with the nebula ships. But right now there just isn't much reason to protect things, still.

I don't know, I would have to think about this some more.

What are your guys thoughts? If you like that or some version how can we get George to remember us and implement them?????

I don't know.

[TheBugKing]

I am happy to see that you read my ideas and thought about them. They are quite rough and not really viable, but they are good starting points I think.


It is enteresting to see the new sudden influx of players and ambition and talent into the game though. Maybe this will encourage our friend. A thought though that I find interesting is that we are very much creating the game we want even though he has not changed very much. Also, a lot of new players are turned off by the complexity of this game. So my question is how do we make what we are doing innate to the new player without much learning curve?

What I have noticed about this game and it's players is that you either want to play this game or not. If you discover it and play out of only curiosity, you will not play long, or strive to understand it. So another question is: how do we get people to want to delve into this world?