Reply from Jeff McBride re: Stars! Battle problems
John Reynolds
From Jeff_M...@msn.com Sun Aug 18 15:43:02 1996
Date: Sun, 18 Aug 96 18:18:28 UT
From: Jeff McBride <Jeff_M...@msn.com>
To: dol...@qew.cs, y000...@ws.rz.tu-bs.de, John <reyn...@ln.nimh.nih.gov>
Cc: st...@webmap.com
Subject: RE: Stars! Battle problems
Hi John, Thorsten and David,
My responses are below... Feel free to post any or all of this to the
newsgroup. I should have access to it in another week or so but don't at this
time.
----------
From: John
Sent: Saturday, August 17, 1996 10:53 AM
To: Jeff McBride
Jeff,
First off, thanks for this wonderful game. I've stopped buying and
playing other computer games during the last several months since I
started playing Stars!
### Just remember to take time out to eat and sleep. We've had some problems
in this area with other customers. :^D
I wanted to bring to your attention a possible bug in 2.5. When in
battle, the orders "minimize damage to self" don't seem to work.
Sometimes I find ships which stay JUST WITHIN enemy firing range, and get
destroyed! Even if they don't have long enough range to hit the enemy
who is shooting them! I've seen one ship just sit there, getting
pummelled, and never moving for several turns!
### We know what is going on here. I'd bet that your ship's range is 2 less
than your opponent's range. You get just within their range and then determine
that getting one square closer would cause you to take MORE damage than where
you currently are but you would still be out of range. As the scoring
algorithm we use to find the ideal square for you to move to takes only the
amount of damage you are going to receive into account for this particular
tactic the ship gets stuck. It wants to get into range but it has to pass
through a "worse" condition than it is currently in to achieve this. It will
be fixed for version 2.6 which we will be releasing before the end of Sept.
I am sorry but I didn't save the game files, but next time I see this,
I'll send them to you. I'm running vanilla ver. 2.5, but one player
below has applied the 2.5a patch and says he's seeing the same thing.
### That's okay, we won't need them.
Here are some articles from the news group from people who have seen
this and some similar problems.
Thanks,
John
In article <4und24$p...@ra.ibr.cs.tu-bs.de>, y000...@ws.rz.tu-bs.de (Thorsten
Bischoff) wrote:
>Because my wappon range was greater, I decided to give the tactic 'minimize
>damage to self', but my fleet put itself into fire range of my enemy. I think
>this is not the behavior you expect, isn't it?
>I had the same initiative but more move than my enemy (better engine)!
>What was wrong then?
### This should not happen even with some of the known problems we've been
fixing. Do you have game files demonstrating this? Hopefully with the backup
data from the previous year as well.
I've had the same problem but worse - using default orders, my ship with +2
range advantage, same move/initiative (not sure about mass) completely
wasted it's advantage.
### This is definitely fixed for 2.6.
It seems the AI figured it might be cute to try and
work around the enemy ships!? Oh well, at least I've less MM!
PS. Noticed how your ships don't 'know' about each other in battle - can be a
real pain when they groups up stupidly...
### This is a hard problem. Group coordination will most likely have to wait
for version 3.
From: dol...@qew.cs (David Dolson)
Subject: Odd Battle Behaviour
Sometimes in battle, I notice that my ships never get a shot off, even
when in range (I think). Why is this the case? Is it something to do
with battle plans? (optimizing distance from target, etc.?)
### This will be fixed by version 2.6.
Also, I wish that ships with "Chicken" orders would still fire if the
enemy caught them. Does anyone know how to do this? Then even if they
are destroyed, they at least go down fighting.
Thanks,
David.
### Hmm. I believe that if you change the battle plan to pick a target such as
Armed Ships or Any and leave the Tactic as Disengage it will take pot shots at
things in range while it is leaving. I'll try this today and if it does not
work it will for version 2.6.
Jeff
Teral Acorn
reyn...@kenmore.bu.edu (John Reynolds) writes:
>In article <4und24$p...@ra.ibr.cs.tu-bs.de>, y000...@ws.rz.tu-bs.de (Thorsten
>Bischoff) wrote:
>>Because my wappon range was greater, I decided to give the tactic 'minimize
>>damage to self', but my fleet put itself into fire range of my enemy. I think
>>this is not the behavior you expect, isn't it?
>>I had the same initiative but more move than my enemy (better engine)!
>>What was wrong then?
>### This should not happen even with some of the known problems we've been
>fixing. Do you have game files demonstrating this? Hopefully with the backup
>data from the previous year as well.
I've noticed heavy ships not taking into account that the enemy'll get the
last move, and moving 1 out of range even if they're fast enough to get 2 out
of range (so they'd actually escape). Or ships with range 1 staying 1 away
from a lighter ship (which moves away, and they don't get to fire). It's
extremely frustrating to have a faster ship never get a shot off because it
refuses to move close enough.
I seem to recall 'maximize damage to enemy' not working either, although I
don't remember why. Maybe I was trying to use range 0 weapons or something.
==
Aaron
Rick Stockley
Has there been any thing said about if 2.5a games will play under 2.6? I plan
on starting several games next month, but might want to hold some and wait for
2.6.
Thanks
Rick
http://www.ezl.com/~rickyj/central.html
Stars! Central