Hvy Plastic
Markus Armbruster
Metallica, Council, BlackCompany, Wales, Contra, beep, toadnt, Rocinate,
and Acetone. Council was first to break sanctuary.
Markus Armbruster
far.
Council was first to break sanctuary. Sailors from taodnt found the
first land, with beep, Council and Wales to follow.
A few weaponsmiths are rumored to work on a fancy device for lobbing
projectiles over a distance.
- = [ Empire Power Report ] = -
as of Fri Mar 20 21:00:57 2009
sects eff civ mil shell gun pet iron dust oil pln ship unit money
Acetone 55 55% 18K 100 0 0 0 2.1K 2.2K 200 0 3 0 20K
beep 60 68% 17K 550 0 0 0 2.0K 950 200 0 10 0 15K
Metallica 55 64% 18K 50 0 0 0 3.2K 2.5K 1.4K 0 2 0 20K
taodnt 60 45% 17K 250 0 0 0 2.5K 2.2K 350 0 6 0 20K
Wales 60 56% 17K 400 0 0 0 2.8K 1.1K 650 0 8 0 20K
Thistle 55 64% 17K 500 0 0 0 2.8K 1.2K 300 0 10 0 20K
Belltower 55 47% 17K 200 0 0 0 3.3K 3.6K 50 0 9 0 30K
Rocinate 55 61% 17K 250 0 0 0 3.5K 250 1.8K 0 4 0 20K
Contra 55 46% 17K 300 0 0 0 2.3K 4.5K 400 0 10 0 25K
Council 60 57% 17K 100 0 0 0 2.5K 2.2K 1.9K 0 10 0 30K
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
worldwide 580 56% 172K 2.7K 0 0 0 27K 21K 7.2K 0 80 0 215K
Hvy Plastic is running at empire.stdio.com, port 6665. Check out
http://www.pond.sub.org/~armbru/empire/hvy-plastic.html
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Thu Mar 12 20:40:23 2009
Since this game is so heavily customized, here are a few hints. If
youre a veteran, it may well be all old news for you. Or not, who
knows.
In case you brought your early game cookie cutter, take good care of
it, you may need it in your next game.
In case you played the blitz, be warned that a few details could have
changed.
If you played Hvy Metal II, many things will be familiar. But dont
be sad, we got a few surprises for you as well.
Read info Hvy-Plastic. Then read these hints, slowly. If you dont
understand something, ask the deities. Were not going to play the
game for you, but were happy to explain its rules.
You start with quite a few people. You want to put all your people to
work on something immediately useful. Your mobility should suffice to
do that, if you use it wisely. It takes an efficient sector 40 mob to
move 1000c to an adjacent 0% sector. An inefficient sector (<60%)
takes ten times as much mobility for moving civilians. Its quite
easy to get a big pile of people stuck in an awkward place.
Think about the merits of just-in-time production, and how to apply it
to Empire.
Because tech yield is highly non-linear in investment, you really want
to make it steadily, starting as early as possible. Figure out what
you need for that, and how to produce it.
Non-renewable resources (gold, oil, uran) are not nearly as scarce as
you might think. Each point of gold represents five times as much
dust as usual. 2.5 times for ocontents, and 4/7 times for uranium.
Your start island is good for a bit less than 7500o. Keep that in
mind when gearing up your economy. You might find more oil out there.
There is some free land out there. To grab it, you have to get there
before your neighbor. Frigates are good early explorers.
Having military costs you a fortune. Not having military costs you a
kingdom. Adapt expense to the threat. Military reserves are your
friend. Military payroll savings recoup demobilization expense in
just one update.
If your enemy brings fireworks to the party, and you dont, you die.
Watch the power report. If everybody except you got something, think
about why that might be so, and whether its a good thing.
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Sat Mar 14 03:34:04 2009
if acetone breaks does he immediately dissolve?
> Announcement from Thistle, (#1) dated Sat Mar 14 14:50:16 2009
So, my Saturday morning project was making a
path to my sailboat thru the "blanket algae".
Damn stuff is like green attic insulation mixed
with rotten cotton candy. You pull on one end
and this large wet blanket follows me. Drag up to
dock and leave it til it drys out.
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Sun Mar 15 08:43:04 2009
A player asked what a "nugget" is. Let's have a look:
[0:640] Command : show se c
Printing for tech level '1000'
sector type product p.e.
^ mountain nuggets 100%
[...]
This tells us that mountains make a "nuggets" product, whatever that
is.
[0:640] Command : show pro
product cost raw materials reso dep level p.e.
iron i $0 min 0 1.0
dust d $0 gold 4 1.0
[...]
nuggets d $0 gold 0 1.0
This says that making "nuggets" produces commodity "d" (gold dust), at
no cost. Production depends on the gold resource, which is *not*
depleted. Compare to iron, which also doesn't deplete, and to dust,
which depletes.
The whole nuggets thing is just a trick to give you a constant trickle
of gold even after you depleted all your ordinary gold mines. As long
as that suffices for production needs, you don't have to grind up bars
every update.
> Announcement from Contra, (#6) dated Mon Mar 16 08:09:13 2009
wow, this is great.
so i downloaded and installed latest version of winace.
i'm with stupid. everything has 9999 or 999. can anyone
explain this?
> Announcement from Contra, (#6) dated Mon Mar 16 08:10:06 2009
guess i just have to go old school and play manual
with empire.exe?
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Mon Mar 16 09:31:32 2009
Telex Hanuman or e-mail arm...@pond.sub.org if you need help.
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Mon Mar 16 12:34:14 2009
i think that auto-corrects itself after a few logins, cen #'s, etc.
> Announcement from Contra, (#6) dated Mon Mar 16 15:47:59 2009
yea, relogging seemed to work.
> Announcement from taodnt, (#8) dated Mon Mar 16 19:39:05 2009
OK......from rec.games.empire
Hvy Plastic started today. Ten nations are competing: Thistle,
Metallica, Council, BlackCompany, Wales, Contra, beep, toadnt, Rocinate,
and Acetone. Council was first to break sanctuary.
From report....
1 Unknown Active Thistle
2 Unknown Active Metallica
3 Unknown Sanctuary Council
4 Unknown Active BlackCompany
5 Unknown Active Wales
6 Unknown Active Contra
7 Unknown Active beep
8 Now logged on Active taodnt
9 Unknown Active Rocinate
10 Unknown Active Acetone
so did Council break? was he allowed back into sanctuary?
a curious mind wants to know? :)
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Mon Mar 16 19:55:34 2009
Council's bank failed the stress test; it got nationalized.
> Announcement from Contra, (#6) dated Mon Mar 16 20:01:31 2009
ahhh, the anticpation. I haven't seen an update for
more than half a year.
Long Live The Empire!
> Announcement from Contra, (#6) dated Mon Mar 16 20:02:09 2009
There's even time to go down to the local and tell them about
this crazy game
> Announcement from visitor, (#11) dated Mon Mar 16 20:56:04 2009
dear god, replacement player here. Please check email.
> Announcement from visitor, (#11) dated Mon Mar 16 20:59:45 2009
sorry god... I needed to convert to damn UCT time...
I am available.
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Mon Mar 16 21:00:39 2009
nothing like leaving things to the last minute...
looks like someone else will need a bailout from the
deities of last resort.
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Mon Mar 16 23:01:09 2009
An unfortunate e-mail accident led me to believe that Council can't
play. I put the country back into sanctuary before the update, and
disabled the login. That turned out to be premature. So I rolled
back the country, and edited in the update. A typo affected
Metallica, but was corrected swiftly. Your power report is still
missing the line for Council, in position 3:
sects eff civ mil shell gun pet iron dust oil pln ship unit money
BlackComp 55 12% 6.0K 100 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 25K
Thistle 55 12% 6.1K 47 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 25K
Council 55 12% 6.2K 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 25K
[...]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
worldwide 560 12% 61K 150 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 245K
My apologies...
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Mon Mar 16 23:06:47 2009
...and Council is first in line to recieve help from DARP, the Deity
Assistance and Recovery Plan. just make sure there's some DARP money
left for the rest of us.
i want some DARP
they're givin' civs away for free
i want some DARP
save a little bit for me
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGfQk9XXm24
> Announcement from Contra, (#6) dated Mon Mar 16 23:24:55 2009
so the fix is in for metallica already?
"let's kill 'em all"
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Tue Mar 17 04:51:04 2009
--- At the Capitol City Kill 'em All ---
TheDeathAngel looks over utterly lost.
OMGWTFBBQ?!?
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Tue Mar 17 06:55:01 2009
? OMGWTFBBQ?!?
Oh My God, What The Fuck, Bar-B-Que?!? the citizen leader has been blessed
with living in God's country (the South) all his life, but, _come_ _on_
people... decent bar-b-que ain't exactly hard to come by.
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Wed Mar 18 05:20:05 2009
you'd think not in Sunny Atlanta...
but nooo
it's all utter crap.
if anyone knows a good BBQ place
(and Hooters does not count despite the fantastic... breasts)
I'll be happy to check it out.
heck I'll even blog about it.
the word blog is evil and should be banned
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Wed Mar 18 05:52:26 2009
I'm trying to teach a friend how to play empire
and she has a ... Vista machine...
We got a compiled vista Binary handy?
and does anyone know how to set environment variables
in Visa?
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Wed Mar 18 06:50:21 2009
Before you try anything else, run telnet empire.stdio.com 6665 (or
however Vista does that). If you get "2 Empire server ready", go find
a real client. If not, something is screwing with your networking.
We provide a Windows binary of the client[*].
Happily, my DOS/Windows knowledge pretty much ends with autoexec.bat
(does that still work?). I'd expect you can click together an icon to
launch the client, and set environment variables there.
Your friend might be more comfortable with WinACE[**].
[*] http://downloads.sourceforge.net/empserver/empire-client-4.3.20-i386-win32.zip?use_mirror=garr
[**] https://sourceforge.net/projects/winace
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Thu Mar 19 20:49:43 2009
The player of BlackCompany had to bow out of the game due to
persistent networking trouble. His decaying country was ripped out of
the world, and the bustling nation of Belltower transplanted to fill
its place.
For the curious, I let Belltower play the first three updates on a
special server. Then I copied his stuff to the real server with the
empdump utility (don't try this at home, kids).
Better luck next time, BlackCompany, and welcome Belltower!
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Thu Mar 19 20:52:40 2009
Frow the sweeping heights of Bellweather downs, the gleaming
white Belltower-Lighthouse overlooks the vast ocean waiting for
the majestic bronzed men of Belltower. Virile and strapping
the seas splashes their long brown hair. Bastian peers through the
crude lenses and thinks he sees land.
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Thu Mar 19 20:53:29 2009
The power report still shows the decaying BlackCompany. It'll fix
itself at the update.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Thu Mar 19 20:58:22 2009
Damn, Bastian realizes he does see land but it is the cliffs of
Belltower. "Torgrin! Did you go and move the N our our compass again?"
Torgrin snickers to Rasterlin "When will he 'er figure out that North is where
the damn needle points?"
Aye Sir!
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Thu Mar 19 21:01:53 2009
did Bastian have to agree to no executive bonuses before getting a DARP bailout?
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Thu Mar 19 21:05:14 2009
an no-one hits land? ahhh...
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Thu Mar 19 21:08:04 2009
tao and beep rectify that problem...the Natives might become restless.
> Announcement from taodnt, (#8) dated Thu Mar 19 21:09:18 2009
It's the luck of the draw...I'm 2 for 4...
> Announcement from Contra, (#6) dated Thu Mar 19 22:28:49 2009
I've heard lots of nasty rumours but i'm not saying anything.
> Announcement from Contra, (#6) dated Fri Mar 20 10:18:35 2009
so nobody feels like making these gods laugh?
(besides them looking at your sectors)
so if I make the gods laugh 10x a day does that mean
I get 50 bars everyday?
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Fri Mar 20 12:43:17 2009
like all deities, these are scum. they only smile when someone's
lovingly cared-for country is being ripped apart by barbarians
from overseas.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Fri Mar 20 13:56:57 2009
W.R.T. Belltower being 'allowed' to use a special-server. Bastien
has never, will never! 'perhaps we He is 60 and desiring a 16 year fresh
body,' ever made use of SPECIAL SERVERS! All services rendered the
to the Plutocrates of Belltower are always provided by standardly vetted
properly approved, specially scented, appropriated proportioned and tastely
lingerie'd illegal immigrants.
most of course from the largest southern province of Belltower: Contra.
seems that there are substantial economic difficulties with our neighbors to the
south.
Ragerline's brother Chupame Heuvos has been sent south to advise.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Fri Mar 20 13:59:06 2009
How come when I push the skull and cross bones on my client
I get a f*&&^ing KORN song instead of Nirvanna?
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Fri Mar 20 18:27:32 2009
Someone may have mentioned this prior but since I didn't get
all those lovely, quaint, whitty comments you all did within the first couple
of updates I thought I would point out that it appears that at most 100avail
rolls over per update. FYI. (waste not, want Contra)
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Fri Mar 20 18:32:56 2009
You can read old announcements, witty or not, with "wire 999".
Announcements never expire in this game.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Fri Mar 20 18:47:13 2009
wire 666 works also.
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Fri Mar 20 19:32:36 2009
why does a train have a zero attack multiplier? haven't any
of you bozo's seen what happens on TV when some genius in his
big suv thinks he can dance with a train and come out on top?
> Announcement from Contra, (#6) dated Fri Mar 20 19:54:16 2009
does anyone even build trains?
It sure is fun as h3ll to run one tho.
Markus Armbruster
frigates, and free land is diminishing fast. Skirmishes have been
reported between Contra and beep, Contra and taodnt, Thistle and
Council. There were several shocking cases of piracy, with Council
seadogs setting the precedent. The telegraph wires are heating up as
nations are scrambling for a diplomatic edge. The novel concept of an
"all-big-gun ship" has made waves in naval circles.
- = [ Empire Power Report ] = -
as of Fri Mar 27 21:03:55 2009
sects eff civ mil shell gun pet iron dust oil pln ship unit money
Acetone 75 74% 48K 1.4K 12 0 0 3.4K 250 1.7K 0 40 8 35K
beep 100 56% 46K 1.4K 50 10 0 3.6K 450 2.2K 0 40 0 15K
Thistle 90 63% 46K 1.9K 0 0 0 2.8K 450 1.9K 0 40 0 30K
taodnt 95 61% 47K 1.4K 50 10 0 2.9K 2.6K 2.2K 0 30 1 25K
Wales 80 70% 47K 950 0 4 0 3.5K 1.1K 1.8K 0 20 2 20K
Belltower 95 61% 47K 1.9K 50 10 0 3.5K 1.9K 1.3K 0 40 8 10K
Metallica 65 85% 48K 700 75 15 0 3.6K 2.2K 2.6K 0 5 0 35K
Contra 65 78% 46K 1.8K 0 0 0 2.6K 4.3K 2.2K 0 30 0 4.5K
Rocinate 75 74% 47K 1.6K 0 0 0 4.2K 750 4.2K 0 20 10 15K
Council 55 98% 47K 2.1K 0 0 0 2.8K 4.2K 2.6K 0 30 0 45K
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
worldwide 800 70% 471K 15K 275 45 0 33K 18K 23K 0 280 30 225K
Hvy Plastic is running at empire.stdio.com, port 6665. Check out
http://www.pond.sub.org/~armbru/empire/hvy-plastic.html
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Sat Mar 21 18:53:03 2009
I modified the update schedule to slow down after Wednesday. Use
"show updates" to see it.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Sat Mar 21 18:55:59 2009
"slowed down...modified.."
once again, those with power outright abuse it!
Is this server not based in Amerika?
don't we vote!
I think he even removed zdone!
bastard!
power corrupts.
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Sun Mar 22 06:54:16 2009
you know you're getting old when...
searching for porn on the internet just doesn't seem worth
the time.
> Announcement from Contra, (#6) dated Sun Mar 22 15:29:32 2009
porn always evolves and keeps getting better.
stop watching the gay stuff (disguised as straight stuff)
incase you are gay of course. not that there's anything
wrong with that.
there are always more hungry girls and women wanting to
entertain us.
in these econ downtimes, i expect porn to get even
more hardcore because some of these people can't
do anything else.
> Announcement from Contra, (#6) dated Sun Mar 22 15:33:08 2009
one time I will tell you about the day I became a lesbian.
at that pt I was so fed up with the insidiousness of gay porn
disguising itself at straight pron, that I didn't want to see
any more movies with dudes in it.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Sun Mar 22 15:35:30 2009
ummm....
ahh....
hmm...
me thinks Contra has some issues.
Bastien can fix her/him.
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Sun Mar 22 15:51:43 2009
Sunday is bars-from-heaven-day!
beep and Belltower each win five bars of gold for entertaining
announcements.
Note that only announcements made before Friday's update competed this
time.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Sun Mar 22 15:56:56 2009
whoo hooo..
yee...haww...
f.... yeah.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Sun Mar 22 16:08:12 2009
Grave but wonderfull news! Prayers to
Leicester our great Ancestor founder of
Belltower. Have proved far more prosperous than
the norm. Just hours after a small pagan rite of
Invictus Virgineous Proclamus (Virgins who fathers
have decided that they no longer need to remain virgins.)
Mostly this proclamation is actually done post-virgineous as to
keep family honor intact with non-intact virginity. But I regress...
Drinking had begun heavily in the smithy's home since he had triplet
daughters proclaimed when Willisten, age 21, was struck and maimed by several
large pieces of gold that fell from the heavens.
The damage to the pub's roof was minimal. And of course, now the gold has been
laid at the altar of our ancestors for 1 week in celebration.
Guenter Roegerstein, the smithy decided that Hannah the oldest would be allowed to
comfort Willisten during his recovery. Gerhard (Willesten) quipped that the jr. son
may actually recover rather slowly.
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Sun Mar 22 18:46:37 2009
this just in on the AP wire: topless dancers at ritzy clubs can
make up to $300,000 in tips a year. i might have to make a trip
to the Rick's Caberet in Miami just to see what a young lady does
to earn that kind of green... probably can't even afford the door
charge to get in, tho.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Mon Mar 23 01:37:43 2009
can we talk?
> Announcement from Contra, (#6) dated Mon Mar 23 04:02:56 2009
Do I have permission to speak freely?
I have to raise several concerns that are part of the reason
some people don't play this game anymore.
everything beep says is funny. he is a natural comedian
and a cool dude, besides the fact that the citizen leader
is a copperhead
but.
some people think the fix is in. so the people dieties
who arbitrarily give away bars to whatever there sense of humor
is makes no sense whatsoever and is unfair.
some people think you are just giving away bars to your
friends whenever they make an announcement.
we entertain each other and don't need extra bars to make the game fun.
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Mon Mar 23 04:23:29 2009
the reason no one plays Empire anymore is because
the learning curve is supendously steep
and because everyone wants something graphical and
shiny. People could give a rats ass about A deity
giving 5 gold bars to someone because the Deity was
entertained.
What we need are people who will take the time to
show people the game, explain to them the basics of the
game and let them learn and be entertained by the game.
I decided to play again because really, I figure
I can be amused and entertained while playing 30 minutes
a day.
I try to post amusing things, but I know most of my
crap is meh. But I don't care. if I get a good zinger
off 1 out of 10 times then it's worth it.
I'm trying to find people to play the game, but
it takes a certain breed of people to play this crazy game
and when competing against WoW or Starcraft then
yeah, we have a problem attracting new people.
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Mon Mar 23 04:25:27 2009
what I'd suggest is taking the time to
get a presence known. Empire doesn't need a lot
of people to be self sustaining, just a few hundred
semi regulars.
but we need to spread the word to get to that point.
Now the tricky question is, how do we evangalize for
Empire?
> Announcement from Rocinate, (#9) dated Mon Mar 23 05:12:15 2009
Forgive me if I digress, but I have tossed back a few tonight.
Humor is in the eye of the beholder. I enjoy many of the posts,
but don't always see the humor. I am more of a Monty Python type
and find that unless you get the cultural reference, by into the
imaginary mythos, suspend your belief, enjoy the odd historical link,
etc. that you may miss the point.
POGO, or whatever he goes by these days is an example.
Who the hell is Hanuman anyway?
I just don't get it. This Sunday bars from heaven thing sounds
too close many organized religions and you don't want to get me
started on seperation of church and state!
I just noticed that I don't have any spell check going on here
so again, appolgies for any mis-speeling.
Now what the hell was I going to go on about....
Oh yeah. What the hell is porn doing in empire?
Now if you had thrown some discussion of sheep I would think
that Bungie was sneaking in a game, but all this talk of porn
masking as gay porn (not that this is any thing wrong with that)
confuses the whole issue of does or does not belong in an empire
missive. I mean anything that gets you hot and bothered could
be considered porn and whatever wets your willy is fine by me as
long as I get to vote on if I want to be involved.
I have become a sporatic empire player mostly due to the unforgiving
nature of messing up, or missing an update or two. The micro management
is a pain and I would prefer a more strategic game, though WinACE (I know
that is the cheap way out) does make some of that easier.
I have fallen into the WOW trap but haven't played in a couple of months
due to not wanting to loose my job in real life after a SAN melt down and
pending a merging of 4 units into 1. In any case back to porn, one of my
guildies is a nice young lady who makes her living taking her clothes of
for pay. I figure if we can break the gender barrier and get a few strippers
to play and share samples of their wares with fellow players we would see
an increase in numbers if not in the quality of players.
So if any can tell me who Captain Lee is I would be very happy as I forget
at this point in time.
Captain Lee
PS I also enjoy the themed games.
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Mon Mar 23 08:15:53 2009
this is a recurrent theme, don't really remember where i've stood in
the past... probably multiple inconsistent positions. that being
said:
the learning curve in empire is not steep. empire is complicated,
which means that you can easily make a mistake at the beginning of
the game that puts you way behind, but the basics have not changed
in two decades: first update you make iron; second update you make
lcms; third update you make edu; fourth update you make tech.
depending on the setup you will want to throw the production of
mil/ships/bars/units in there somewhere. being competent at
empire is easy; being brilliant seems to require an expertise
with which i am not familiar.
> Announcement from Contra, (#6) dated Mon Mar 23 08:56:39 2009
I am paranoid.
I think there is a huge money laundering scheme going around
and the vast conspiracy is at it again.
arbitrarily giving someone bars (allegedly only 5)
is highly suspect. how do we know you aren't giving them 500 bars
or 5000. just based upon what you claim to think is funny
> Announcement from Contra, (#6) dated Mon Mar 23 09:03:07 2009
that being said, i trust all the so-called dieties in this game
if i didn't i wouldn't play.
that being said.
some people may not remember this but back in the day
there was one of the most highly controversial incidents in empire history
luckily lots of players have honor and somebody told us exactly what
happened.
one dude was playing and he was getting rolled.
so he freaked out and went and unplugged the server
I don't want to exxaggerate but i think they were right next to
his cap and his bank and bombing. this was waaaaay f'd up because of
course there were several other battles going on too.
He pretty much went into if "I can't win nobody can play" mode.
his friend had honor and told us what happened
> Announcement from Contra, (#6) dated Mon Mar 23 09:04:14 2009
I think that is one of the reasons why nowadays they dieties say
"the diety is not playing"
> Announcement from Contra, (#6) dated Mon Mar 23 09:07:34 2009
empire is the most hardcore game in the world. we know this.
soon i will have been playing for 20 years and some of you for longer
than that.
> Announcement from Contra, (#6) dated Mon Mar 23 09:08:45 2009
i can't recruit people because they are too soft for this game.
people have no strategy, little tactics and just want immediate gratification.
remember when the chainsaw code first came out?
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Mon Mar 23 14:32:58 2009
Here is my 2.3141596 cents worth.
Someone should write a little piece of code
that allows your country to run in 'auto-mode'
pre-update processing would attempt to achieve
your pre-declared goals. Like you might set
each concept at a specific level. say 1-10. a priority
list. One would toggle auto-mode on and off.
there could also be a 'dumb-f^&K' error mode so that
if you forget to fix some specific parameters you
specify it will do it during auto-mode also. like
1200 civs in a sector or starvation.
NOW newbies would have both dumbf = 1 and auto-mode = 1
and get a log of how the program analyses, comments and fixed their countries goals for them.
NOW the concept of CONTINOUS access to mobiliy and
goods needs to be looked at so that we meet the new
young players desire of NON-turn based fun.
A group of people should be able to figure it out!
A nice graphical interface would be cool for spies
boats, battles and planes!
Let's face it. the technie side requires the geek mode to
attracked to this game.
The lack of lustre precludes many young players from trying it.
the turn based scheme is old-fashioned
lack of music... sucks. hell I want to sneak up on
metallatica and hear his guys in the barracks listening to
Supertramp or ABBA. eheheh
Would love to see global commands possible.
Attack Area=1 Armies=1,3,5 forts=1,2,3 Air=1,2
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Mon Mar 23 17:26:53 2009
silly contra, there is no conspiracy. we have to make our bars from
the dust of our 9 100% gold sectors just like everyone else. (thought
the diety said only the mountains don't deplete; must be a bug...)
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Mon Mar 23 17:28:22 2009
used to be such a quite, peaceful donut.
*sigh*
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Mon Mar 23 17:32:49 2009
Deities have the power to tilt the board in countless ways, some
obvious to everyone, some too subtle to be noticed even by the
beneficiaries.
Because of that, the game cannot work without the players' trust. You
need to trust me that I drop five bars and not 500, just as you need
to trust me that the placement of players on the map was not rigged to
make sure player X gets the best access to fodder. If you don't trust
a game's deity, then playing the game is a bad idea.
Maintaining the players' trust must be every deity's first priority.
Different deities approach this duty in different ways. One way is
"hands off": do not interfere with the game at all if you can help it.
That's an excellent way to deity. My own attitude towards
non-interference is less rigid, but I do stick to another maxim
religiously: transparency. Every time I mess with the game, you all
get to know it. And you all get to complain about it as much as you
like.
I heard the story of the player/deity pulling the server's plug
(literally) because he was losing his precious country from someone
who was there. Playing the game as a deity undermines the other
players' trust, and is therefore a Really Bad Idea.
Let me put bars from heaven into perspective. Unless my notes betray
me, seven players of Hvy Metal II won some through entertaining
announcements. Only one (beep) won twice. Slightly more bars were
earned through useful bug reports. In the end, bars from heaven
accounted for less than 0.3% of the world's gold.
We have deities besides POGO in our games because we strongly prefer
giving each deity his own login. That way, we can freely log in
whenever we want, without having to bother with software like the
Empire hub to share a single connection. And everybody always knows
whom of us is talking, which reduces confusion and improves
accountability.
If you'd like to know who the hell Hanuman is, Wikipedia is not the
worst place to start.
Empire is not for everyone. In fact, it's only for a tiny minority.
A tiny fraction of a tiny minority of the world's gamer population is
still a respectable number. But we need to reach them. This is not
something that happens by itself. It happens because players like you
spread the word. Talk to friends. Link from your web sites. Blog
about it. Teach it. Every little thing helps.
If you'd like to get more involved than that, there's lots of stuff to
do. For starters, we need a new web master. Wikipedia mentions
Empire, but only in passing[*]; somebody should write a proper,
scholarly article there. We need a Wiki, and put the info pages
there. We could really use playable tutorials (code name "Empire
Bootcamp"; got ideas, haven't gotten around trying them). There's no
shortage of bugs to fix or ideas to try in the code. Resuming the
Empire News would be nice. We could use a few more people running
games.
Empire is now more than thirty years old. Its continued survival
depends on people like you doing their bit.
Hanuman, regular Empire code monkey, not so regular Empire deity
[*] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_Classic_(computer_game)
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Mon Mar 23 20:21:47 2009
my idea on continual flow:
If a sector is > 59% then every 15 minutes is produces something. Creates
a 'package' and it get shipped to a sector that can use it. The package enters
into a 'delivery mode' and begins it march to the destination sector. You can see where
stuff is with some command but each 15 minutes it 'moves' a certain amount. Now it will
obviously move on 'best routes' options but once it is sent it can't really
be diverted unless some bombing or attacks take place. Somethings could even continue
their march to delivery under enemy conquered sectors, say 'dust delivery' but
have a chance of getting discovered.
If a 'iron package' discovers there is No sector that can use it (plus some buffer amount)
it then diverts to a warehouse and if no warehouse it diverts Back home. No back home
(your getting run over) then it is delivered in the sector it is and can be sent
by the conquerer or you later by command.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Mon Mar 23 20:23:03 2009
this way substantially reduced micro-management. m's make iron that go
out to the nearest sector of demand.
Production inquires will show 'inroute amounts' 'producing' 'demand' and one
can adjust sector numbers appropriately.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Mon Mar 23 20:28:45 2009
one could then also remove empire time units from player consideration.
diety sets rates and players can then inquire as to rates/day or hour that
a sector produces stuff.
4m's makeing 300 ir/hour
2j's using 140 ir/hour
2 k's using 140 ir/hour
and one could see you are producing an excess of 20 per hour to buffer up.
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Mon Mar 23 20:44:59 2009
heh. FPL's power plants warm the water, and draw manatees north
of their normal wintering locales. now when FPL remodels a plant,
they have to install heaters to keep the lagoons warm enough for
the manatees.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Mon Mar 23 20:50:31 2009
Florida Power and Light?
> Announcement from taodnt, (#8) dated Mon Mar 23 20:55:48 2009
(to borrow from an old expression)
Nuke the gay manatee's for Jesus
> Announcement from taodnt, (#8) dated Mon Mar 23 20:59:22 2009
aologies for the poor grammar, I got a telemarketing call just as I was typing it, should have been "mantees" (no apostrophe)
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Mon Mar 23 21:16:41 2009
Piss off one person: fun
Contra navy secures a beachhead on Acetone territory
Piss off two:
Contra sailors take a coastal sector from taodnt
perhaps a war.
:)
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Mon Mar 23 21:23:37 2009
you peoples ain't spending money fast enough; at this
rate the first citizen may need to apply for a DARP
bailout of his own.
citizen leader, beep - the tiny little nation of happy,
industrious people
> Announcement from taodnt, (#8) dated Mon Mar 23 21:42:02 2009
my my, beep has entered the 80's...that's right, he no longer
uses a teletype machine and has found the shift key on
his keyboard...
did he write "DARP"?
omg
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Tue Mar 24 04:18:04 2009
30 Updates until the game ends
> Announcement from taodnt, (#8) dated Tue Mar 24 12:31:35 2009
I always wondered how that was done. Reading the "help" certainly
makes it easier...(hostile declaration for those keeping score at home).
I've been playing empire for over 10 years and its the first time I
typed "declare hostile *"
lol
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Tue Mar 24 13:47:59 2009
damn young whippersnappers and their "high level" programming
language skills. back when empire was played using assembly
language commands you couldn't get away with that kind of crap.
next thing you know wolfpack is going to add DO-loops to the
command set.
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Tue Mar 24 13:59:38 2009
executing a scripted attack meant knocking out multiple stacks
of the commands on the key punch, and then hogging the card
reader at the time of the update! kids got it too easy, these days.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Tue Mar 24 14:19:17 2009
beepster...i don't recall any stories of having to punch card your
empire commands! I is old also.
wrt to decl * hos.
this as far as I can tell has little effect other than diplomatic...
perhaps I have spoiled relationship but me thinks based on the very small
amount of chatter (beep and I excluded, both have mouth diarehahea(sp)) but
I am preferring to negotiate friendly relations (like hitting on a chick)
rather than assume. (like going to a whore house with $500.00 in my hands)
:)
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Tue Mar 24 16:11:02 2009
...of course, before i even started playing there was the golden
age of empire: when a computer was an entire building full of
vacuum tubes, and the original hall of fame members would enter
their commands with toggle switches and a spider work of giant
banana plug cabling.
> Announcement from visitor, (#11) dated Tue Mar 24 16:36:32 2009
... a Wiki, a tutorial , a "bootcamp".....
phewwww
I want to watch it on Youtube!
> Announcement from Contra, (#6) dated Tue Mar 24 18:04:02 2009
I know that it is just a matter of time before I become
separated from my bars, but I love this game. We die with our boots on.
Sometimes I get lucky and have a chance to win, but that rarely happens.
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Tue Mar 24 18:53:03 2009
... the output came out on ticker tape! if you wanted
a fancy-schmancy 2-d map you needed a pair of scissors
and shitload of scotch tape.
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Tue Mar 24 21:23:00 2009
pardon me, boy
is that the chattanooga choo choo?
> Announcement from taodnt, (#8) dated Tue Mar 24 21:34:37 2009
One day Roy Rodgers rode into town and bought some new boots.
When he got home he polished them up and put them on the back porch to
dry. He then rode Trigger out to the back 40 to check on part of his herd.
When he returned, Dale Evans told him that a mountain lion walked
up to the porch and took the new cowboy boots and ran back into the hills.
Roy was so mad that he went inside to get his rifle, and he rode off
in search of the mountain lion.
He later returned with the dead mountain lion on the back of his horse.
When Dale saw this she called out,
"Parden me Roy, is that the cat that chewed your new shoes?"
> Announcement from Rocinate, (#9) dated Tue Mar 24 22:25:02 2009
A pun that bad deserves -5 bars!
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Wed Mar 25 03:24:56 2009
arghh miss an update.... life gets screwed....
so screw back.
> Announcement from taodnt, (#8) dated Wed Mar 25 03:26:48 2009
"Rollover" said the King.
"I'll be fucked if I do", said the Queen.
"You'll be cornholed if you don't".
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Wed Mar 25 04:10:52 2009
Devilgod noun; evil prone god, temptor. Example of use: "The devilgod Hanuman, kept
tradeships, for 1.7K on the ship list, but disabled tradeships trade in the game."
Now if a trade ship could carry 5k civs I might build one.
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Wed Mar 25 07:59:16 2009
A player asked how population limits affect production.
Each sector type has a population limit (last column in show sect s).
Big cities complicate the limit, but they are disabled in this game.
The limit applies separately to civilians, military and uw.
Only people up to the population limit work. If you stuff in more,
they do nothing. The update kills civilians and uw above the limit,
but that's separate from production.
Example: a bridge span as maximum population 100. If you stuff it
with 200c 200m 200u, then 100c 100m 100u will work, and 100c 100u will
be killed at the update, leaving 100c 200m 100u there.
> Announcement from Contra, (#6) dated Wed Mar 25 19:30:16 2009
whatever happened to shakespeare? wasn't he the dude
who used to spend all of his money every single update?
> Announcement from Contra, (#6) dated Wed Mar 25 21:44:43 2009
beeps cap is one sector away from the coast.
> Announcement from Contra, (#6) dated Wed Mar 25 21:48:04 2009
xx,xx c 7 7 100 0 1 0 1000 50 0 0 0 0 0
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Wed Mar 25 21:59:32 2009
I hate missing updates.
> Announcement from taodnt, (#8) dated Wed Mar 25 22:01:06 2009
Some of us have day jobs...
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Thu Mar 26 15:22:15 2009
A vast conspiracy. Updates disappearing. Did Bastien
not point out that we should VOTE on this! I find any god-lands
and they are toast. Skipped updates are for weannies.
Now I need to find cheese to go with that.
Ragerstline
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Thu Mar 26 17:09:46 2009
For those of you needing a diversion:
http://membres.lycos.fr/petitsingly/
The men of Belltower's connection to the 'sein de femme'
is long standing. Women's features are well respected
by all Belltower men. But none more highly than
'la sein' or 'mamelon'. With the advent of this amazing
french site Belltower is now searching for a hallographic
machine akin to 'Prof. Moriarties escape from Star Trek'
to helps us enjoy this product.
Ragarstline
> Announcement from Contra, (#6) dated Thu Mar 26 17:29:29 2009
there is definitely a vast conspiracy and huge
money laundering scheme going on.
I don't know what is up with the constant threat of getting
rid of the update command. If there is some logic behind
it then it must be explained to me. i don't see why it can't
be kept and then whoever wants to use the show updates can use that
instead.
What is empire without an update?
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Fri Mar 27 00:37:36 2009
Command: show god
Usage: show <TYPE> <"build"|"stats"|"cap"> [<tech>]
show <bridge|item|news|product|tower>
show updates [<NUM>]>
hmm.... ok
show god stats
Printing for tech level '42'
s v s r f l p h x
p i p n i n l e p
def d s y g r d n l l
dty god 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99
show god cap
Printing for tech level '42'
capabilities
dty god light, assault, omniscient, sheep-lover
show beep cap
-102,38
Damn good command! didn't know about that one.
;0
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Fri Mar 27 03:58:06 2009
in all our years, we have been proud of our record of never, ever being the
first to initiate hostilities against another nation. it seems our record
will remain intact.
> Announcement from Contra, (#6) dated Fri Mar 27 10:43:39 2009
it's common knowledge that the citizen leader is the master
of propaganda, lies, and deceit.
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Fri Mar 27 14:25:33 2009
*blush*
no pillow talk allowed, please.
> Announcement from Contra, (#6) dated Fri Mar 27 20:36:07 2009
i'm not the one who could have gotten sacked already.
you're lucky i showed you mercy.
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Fri Mar 27 20:40:13 2009
one frigate's mil could take a 100% cap with 50 mil in it...
yeah, that's likely, but if you want to waste a mine sector
to move your cap farther inland we won't object.
> Announcement from taodnt, (#8) dated Fri Mar 27 20:43:04 2009
To sack a cap with 60 mil would take a lucky roll from the RNG (random
number god for the uninitiated). a 100% cap as a 2.00 defense factor
> Announcement from Contra, (#6) dated Fri Mar 27 20:46:44 2009
all i will say is that i know where the citizen leader is.
now he will have to move to an undiclosed location.
> Announcement from Contra, (#6) dated Fri Mar 27 20:47:32 2009
he might even have to hole up in the mountains
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Fri Mar 27 20:47:53 2009
the binomial formula says that the probility is bounded above by 1 x 10^-16
so i think he's safe just now.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Fri Mar 27 20:57:41 2009
my simulator with 14 attacking at .5 multipler vs 60mil with 2 multiplier averages
.46 mil lose per campaign (until frigate had no mil usable)
with 1 multiplier for the frig.
the average was .56 mil lost in the cap per frigate campaign.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Fri Mar 27 20:58:51 2009
so a frigate would lose its entire attackable complement and the capitol MAYBE 1.
> Announcement from Contra, (#6) dated Fri Mar 27 21:01:42 2009
i still want the gods to explain to me why the update command
will become obsolete. i fail to see the logic in it.
why can't we keep both commands?
> Announcement from Contra, (#6) dated Fri Mar 27 21:02:30 2009
the gods act like government and just do things arbitrarily
and change the rules and say sorry, i guess you didn't read the memo
Markus Armbruster
been discovered since the last report. The Belltower / Rocinate
alliance made headlines. Elsewhere, diplomatic relations have been
strained, and the arms race is heating up. Actual hostilities, however,
have been limited to a few skirmishes, at sea as well as on land. A few
reckless individuals from Acetone and beep are reportedly attempting to
defy gravity in suspicious-looking contraptions of wood, cloth and wire.
They call them "aeroplanes".
- = [ Empire Power Report ] = -
as of Fri Apr 3 21:02:06 2009
sects eff civ mil shell gun pet iron dust oil pln ship unit money
beep 105 85% 71K 3.8K 150 40 100 4.3K 150 2.8K 1 60 40 20K
Acetone 75 97% 64K 4.8K 75 10 150 4.7K 50 2.0K 10 80 40 25K
Thistle 100 83% 66K 3.9K 300 35 0 4.5K 100 2.3K 0 50 20 50K
Belltower 95 96% 71K 3.0K 450 50 0 4.0K 200 1.5K 0 50 30 15K
taodnt 105 78% 71K 3.8K 325 55 0 4.0K 1.2K 2.6K 0 60 20 25K
Wales 80 85% 61K 1.6K 475 30 0 3.6K 800 2.6K 0 30 20 45K
Metallica 65 99% 58K 1.4K 150 45 0 4.8K 1.1K 2.8K 0 9 40 55K
Rocinate 85 84% 62K 2.9K 375 75 0 4.2K 200 4.7K 0 30 20 1.8K
Contra 70 90% 57K 3.8K 350 25 0 3.2K 3.0K 2.5K 0 20 20 15K
Council 60 97% 53K 4.0K 100 20 0 4.0K 3.9K 2.8K 0 30 20 15K
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
worldwide 835 88% 636K 33K 2.7K 385 250 41K 11K 26K 10 400 260 270K
Hvy Plastic is running at empire.stdio.com, port 6665. Check out
http://www.pond.sub.org/~armbru/empire/hvy-plastic.html
> Announcement from taodnt, (#8) dated Fri Mar 27 21:33:31 2009
thats 3 updates ina row work has interefered with.... :(
> Announcement from Contra, (#6) dated Fri Mar 27 21:39:13 2009
hey, you're just lucky there aren't 4 or more updates a day anymore.
> Announcement from Contra, (#6) dated Fri Mar 27 21:39:40 2009
I work for a living too, but i conveniently schedule my time around
updates
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Fri Mar 27 21:49:11 2009
Ragerstline would like to apologize to any sailors lost to our
boardings defending our great Bellhelm inland sea. Any ship accidently
entering may face boarding parties but as per our well filed 'Plastically Toridal Naval
Registration': "...Any foreign ships within 8 nautical miles of Belltower may/will
face boarding. Under the Belltower foreign compensation plan, ships will be returned
to the vicinity the foreign nationals request and complete return of said boarded
vessels, less lost sailors, will be facilitated. If ship fire or hostilities damage
said vessel reparations will be offered. Ussaully in the form of surrendered guns
and shells aboard the returned vessel.
;-0
> Announcement from Contra, (#6) dated Fri Mar 27 21:56:43 2009
our explorers who have been lost at sea and were sent to rest
in davy jones' locker realized the risks they were taking when they signed
up.
on behalf of our government, our citizens, and our armed forces
we sincerely apologize for leaving international waters and unknowingly
entering sovereign waters of another nation of peaceful people who
were minding their own business.
unfortunately some mothers' sons and daughters are gone now, but these things happen.
we hold no ill will for our mistakes.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Fri Mar 27 23:20:05 2009
Reminds me of one of the BEST EVER Monty Python skits
Please! Please! This is supposed to be a happy occasion! Let's not bicker and argue about who killed who. We are here today to witness the union of two young people in the joyful bond of the holy wedlock. Unfortunately, one of them, my son Herbert, has just fallen to his death.
Absolutely hilarious.
:_)
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Mon Mar 30 02:55:34 2009
Now is the time so see who still grows in pop...
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Mon Mar 30 06:55:01 2009
and god said be fruity, and multi-plex
> Announcement from Wales, (#5) dated Mon Mar 30 16:59:15 2009
I'd rather grow in alcohol than pop.
BTW, why does a 'b' represent a bank? If the gods knew what
was wanted in the world, they would make it a brewery!
We could get rid of parks and get a much faster rise in
happiness by converting food (corn) to alcohol and then
distributing it to all sectors.
Invading mil. which take over a sector with lots of booze,
would get drunk (being unused to the local brew) and have
no defensive ability as they use up the local booze. Military
on ships would be more resilitent to boarding as long as they
had a ration of grog. Population would increase at a faster rate
as drunk civilians coupled more often (even I look good if my
mate has had enough to drink.
All in all, even if none of the side effects were added, we would
at least have booze.
> Announcement from taodnt, (#8) dated Mon Mar 30 17:14:04 2009
Drinking some "Brains" are we?
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Mon Mar 30 22:22:53 2009
Quiet way too quiet.
you can hear someone messing with sheep over the hill.
Have to go look.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Tue Mar 31 02:54:18 2009
I heard that Acetone's 1 gun is really big...
But also he doesn't know quite how to use it...
then came along beep
who showed him the sheep.
Since then Acetone has really been diverted.
> Announcement from Thistle, (#1) dated Tue Mar 31 15:29:22 2009
=== The High Seas ===
Tue Mar 31 15:27 Council ships sunk by marauding Thistle torpedo-boats
Tue Mar 31 15:28 Thistle seadogs board one of Council's ships
One of our highly trained underwater Seal teams.
> Announcement from Wales, (#5) dated Tue Mar 31 22:14:17 2009
Of course their high training shows through in the following news item
Tue Mar 31 15:30 Thistle pirates prove inept at boarding Councils ships
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Wed Apr 1 07:56:09 2009
board first, sink later. makes it a lot easier.
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Wed Apr 1 08:06:20 2009
A player asked what happened to the lrange command. The short answer
is buried in info Empire4:
Changes to Empire 4.3.20 - Fri Feb 20 18:14:20 UTC 2009
* Land units now react only when on a reserve mission. The lrange
command is gone.
Experienced players may wish to peruse the changelog for other
"surprises".
Long answer: land unit reaction was a complicated mess, because we had
two different concepts controlling it: reaction radius (set with
lrange, queried with land) and reserve mission (set and queried with
mission). You had to deal with both to set up or query reactions.
Setting just the reaction range gave you non-mission reaction.
Additionally setting reserve mission gave you a reaction radius bonus.
Missions get reset by many commands, including march and attack, but
the reaction range was "sticky". Resetting the mission changed the
effective reaction radius through loss of the mission bonus. Icing on
the cake: if you had a land unit with maximum reaction radius 1, you
could set radius 0 (lrange 0), 1 (lrange 1) and 3 (lrange 1 &
mission), but not 2 (short of building headquarters under it).
This was a total embarrassment to explain.
To simplify, I gave reserve missions an op area. and removed the
non-mission reaction. This loses the "sticky reactions" feature.
If it should turn out we want it, we can create sticky missions.
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Wed Apr 1 08:11:22 2009
Here's a few recent changes with surprise potential:
* Air defense is no longer separate from interception. Putting a
plane on air defense now merely changes where it intercepts.
Separate air defense added too much pointless complexity. Its
implementation violated design assumptions of the intercept code.
Because of that, the same plane could intercept both an air defense
mission and the planes that triggered it, and the damage it
received in the first interception was wiped out.
* Intercept the same all along the flight path. In each sector, any
country owning the sector, a surface ship or a land unit there gets
to intercept. Before, only the sector owner got to intercept,
except for the assembly point and the target sector. In the target
sector, any country owning surface ships or land units got to
intercept in addition to the sector owner. Thus, a sector owner
with surface ships or land units there got to intercept twice. The
sector owner did not get to intercept at the assembly point,
even when it was the target sector.
* Reserve and escort missions now have an op-area, like all the other
missions.
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Wed Apr 1 15:25:01 2009
arrrrrrrrr.....brain hurtz! brain hurtz!
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Fri Apr 3 16:35:40 2009
In a vast beligerent move, the country of Wales
has sunk the fair ship WeatherRound. A peaceful moving weatherstation
used to chart global temperature trends. Clearly, the waters are
hotter near this small island community. Large plumes of smoke can
be seen rising in the distance as they have not yet gotten past the
use of sulfur coal in their industry.
It may be necessary for Belltower ecological investigators to pay
this small island a visit and correct some of these deficiencies.
Of course Wales will be forced to pay a high World Eco Tax Towards- Shelter, Health
Individual Retirement and Toilets. Checks can be addressed WET-T-SHIRT c/o
Belltower Investigative forces.
Ragerstline
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Fri Apr 3 16:40:48 2009
Obviously the creators of Empire
have a unuuusual definition of calm:
Fri Apr 3 16:37:32 2009
Relative calm prevails.
eight times Thistle shells a ship owned by Council
Belltower ships sunk by marauding Wales
two times Contra ships torpedoed by taodnt
Only 200 lives lost 3-11 altercations
and only 6 countries involved in hostilities.
A calm day.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Fri Apr 3 16:41:35 2009
actually my attack makes it look like the sea has hostile
sea life.
"ship sunk by whales"
> Announcement from visitor, (#11) dated Fri Apr 3 17:34:56 2009
Please be advised that Resvon has assumed ownership of the visitor
nation. You are on notice that Mr. Ed is coming for you.
No, beep. Not in the "porn" way either.
How I'm going to do this with no army, navy or air force or
even any commands that allow me to carry out aggressive
negotiations remains to be seen. But I will figure it out!!
Mr. Ed
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Fri Apr 3 18:26:43 2009
I don't think there is available to the visitor ann -visitor -ignore
but WE CAN!
Bastien
p.s. All of my sheep have been converted to genetically raised lamb chops.
Starts with a little t-cell and grows to nice side of 6 ribs and meat
nothing else. Tastes sweet, no nervous system, no worries about neighbors like
Mr. Wandering into my flocks and defrocking them.
The new world order.
> Announcement from Wales, (#5) dated Fri Apr 3 21:00:18 2009
The peace loving citizens of Wales take no enjoyment over the acts performed by their over-vigilant, relentless, citizen, army (orca). Those of us who strive for peas (and carrots) have rallied long for better relations with our neighbours. We find it sad that, simply because some nation has declared itself to be hostile towards us, that our leaders feel they must attack all representatives of that country. If only they could have seen beyond the agreessive facade of Belltowers frigate. Alas, I but one voice in the wilderness.
Markus Armbruster
week. Acetone invaded Contra, and gained a solid beachhead, weathering
Contra's counter-attacks. beep took a few sectors as well. Thistle
mounted the most successful attack so far, on Council. Few spectators
believe that the non-belligerents' frantic armaments are of a purely
defensive nature.
- = [ Empire Power Report ] = -
as of Wed Apr 8 21:01:09 2009
sects eff civ mil shell gun pet iron dust oil pln ship unit money
beep 115 86% 85K 4.6K 75 85 350 5.2K 100 2.9K 10 70 50 15K
Thistle 115 87% 81K 5.5K 375 80 400 4.7K 50 2.2K 5 70 40 55K
Belltower 95 97% 85K 5.8K 750 100 450 4.4K 150 1.8K 9 50 50 10K
Acetone 85 93% 73K 5.0K 100 25 350 5.6K 43 2.1K 10 80 40 10K
taodnt 105 88% 79K 7.0K 475 105 350 4.2K 50 2.5K 4 60 20 20K
Wales 90 90% 65K 3.4K 900 80 650 3.8K 650 2.6K 0 30 20 60K
Rocinate 85 94% 67K 3.2K 800 125 300 3.5K 1.3K 4.8K 5 50 40 5.0K
Metallica 65 100% 61K 1.7K 125 60 50 3.8K 950 2.7K 0 10 40 80K
Contra 50 84% 36K 3.8K 325 5 0 3.5K 1.8K 2.4K 0 20 10 2.1K
Council 45 88% 34K 2.8K 200 1 0 2.1K 2.0K 1.4K 0 8 3 2.5K
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
worldwide 845 91% 666K 43K 4.1K 670 2.9K 41K 7.1K 26K 40 440 320 260K
Hvy Plastic is running at empire.stdio.com, port 6665. Check out
http://www.pond.sub.org/~armbru/empire/hvy-plastic.html
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Fri Apr 3 21:18:12 2009
Once again, the peace-loving men and women of Belltower wish all
to know that the international waters cease by the Toroidal Convention of
UT 2102, specify all countries may declare water within nautical miles
from any land of greater than 20 sectors is Territorial Waters of that country.
Any country may defend its territorial waters with any means they feel
are justified and adequate.
Obviously any wild life, such as whales, would not be the responsibilty of
any government, but other actions may be taken but should provide
reasonable recompense.
Ragerstline of Belltower.
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Fri Apr 3 21:18:59 2009
woah... I feel like I'm in the Matrix
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Sun Apr 5 21:02:09 2009
Sunday is bars-from-heaven-day! Well, if I feel like it, that is.
Only announcements before Friday's updated competed.
beep and Belltower have been pretty consistently amusing again. But
they got a prize already, which raises the bar for them. Instead, I
decided to give five bars of gold to Contra, 1. because his ranting
and railing against the diety [sic] was amusing, and 2. because I can.
If earning interest for these bars violates deeply held convictions
too much, I recommend moving them onto a suitable highway.
Enjoy!
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Sun Apr 5 21:06:05 2009
said in a south afrikan boorish accent'
achh... u be just b bi-himn off ya wanker.
is hopn' fer sum re-cumpants or such.
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Mon Apr 6 00:06:05 2009
well, we were wondering if we really wanted to go to the
trouble of trying to invade Contra's home island, but if
the streets are going to paved with gold...
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Mon Apr 6 20:49:10 2009
i think i have the solution to the terrorist problem: arm the women.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Mon Apr 6 20:59:33 2009
suspenseful
waiting
quietly
NOT
thoughtfully
provoked
In the style of
E
E
Cummings
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Mon Apr 6 21:01:32 2009
that's e.e. cummings, one of our great heroes.
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Mon Apr 6 21:43:02 2009
if anyone else is playing via raw telnet
We can commiserate together :D
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Tue Apr 7 04:38:30 2009
hope
tedium
hope
desperation
hope
a chance!
a slim chance
a chance!
a dirty vessel
cold iron all around
*thump*thump*thump*
the bowels of the
steal beast sound
hour after hour
day after day
until
until
until
a place
not a place a dream!
not a dream a paradise!
no more hope is needed
when joy is in abundance
no more drudgery can be seen
when freedom lifts the spirits of all
and the hearts of the people are filled.
look!look!look!
new friends come!
we will walk down to the white sands
we will welcome our new friends
with the fruits of our paradise.
we prepare the festival grounds
we wait for the crews of the black ships
bright sparks flash from the black ships!
is this their celebration?!?
are they joing in our joy?
whistles scream through the sky
the citizens clasp hands and gasp in wonder
what do the black ships wish to share with us
as the scream of the shells gets louder,
and louder, and louder*louder*LOUDER*LOUDERRR*
*MURDER*
MURDER
murder
deathdeathdeathdeath
sorrowsorrowsorrowsorrow
darkness descending
darkness
descending
dark...
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Tue Apr 7 21:02:54 2009
sheez...I thought you were going to
take out a corsage and prance around a fire
singing songs of joy and warm fuzzing feellings
between men and men beep!
thanks god you descended into the appropriate war
chants and death.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Tue Apr 7 21:06:09 2009
Damn beep that was actually not bad.
YOu could become a performance poetry reading artist in New York
and get a real following amongst the educated elite beatniks.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Wed Apr 8 01:13:23 2009
does anyone have a link to a tool for an update simulationor
that gives me back mobility and commodoities in each sector?
> Announcement from Acetone, (#10) dated Wed Apr 8 01:25:23 2009
The best simulation is to run a local server and run the update.
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Wed Apr 8 01:28:04 2009
we are all getting old, Belltower, loss of back mobility and
the need to always have new commodoities on hand is just to
be expected, but, quite frankly, i don't want to know what a
simulationer is...
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Wed Apr 8 01:50:33 2009
just f9&^% you all.
like i am going to download a server.
compile the country with the resources = my country
set the same parameters. edit the world to have the data
my country has and fricking then run an update!
i just need ron to write a fricking simulator code.
I mean he has like 15 tools already. but the one i need today
ain't there.
i will now take a cheese cake with my wine.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Wed Apr 8 20:59:26 2009
and so the update comes and black ships will continue to land on
beeps coast.
Contrarian wars will rage.
Council will need to find a good military council.
Wales may need internation protection
and Metallica parties on!
Dude.
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Wed Apr 8 21:17:23 2009
Reminder: there is no update on Good Friday. Use "show updates" to
see the update schedule.
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Wed Apr 8 23:35:47 2009
no update on friday, eh? that is very upsetting... very, very
upsetting. all i can say is that if something bad happens to
my neighbor's cat now, i am _not_ going to be held responsible
for it.
she really loves that cat, too.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Wed Apr 8 23:48:36 2009
Let's just think about this.
Good Friday.
a MAJOR Christian holiday.
Now what IS this holiday?
It is the celebration of the death/crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth.
In addition, EARLIER in celebration of passover, Pilate release the
murderous Barabbas, to the great pleasure of the people!
So let's summarize. 1.) a crucifixion, 2.) releasing of a murderer as a celebration
and one of these events takes place at "Skull Hill" "Golgotha"
and legend has it there was an earthquake, great dark stormclouds, wailling of women
women, (not as Sir Gwain, of Wales refers to waling of women!) partial
destruction of religous temples, and general mayhem..
and our puny deity skips this joyous EMPIRE like day!
what part of celebrating Good Friday in the proper manner didn't he get?
sheezz.....once again DID WE VOTE!?
no! Omnipotent unilateral imposing of calmness on our toroid.
unacceptable.
> Announcement from Wales, (#5) dated Thu Apr 9 02:48:06 2009
Well...If we must take friday off from the game, to celebrate the
crucification of a god...Let us do it properly and renew the
celebration with the crucifiction of our god...We all meet at
Markus' house friday morning...Bring planks, we need to build a cross...
Hopefully for Markus, there will be a hill nearby so he doesn't have to
carry that cross to far...We can make it a toga party, dress appropriately.
Given the expected results, he should be back by monday to continue the
game...If he isn't, THEN HE SHOULDN'T HAVE CANCELLED THE FRIDAY UPDATE!
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Thu Apr 9 03:40:05 2009
watching Bruce Almighty. One good quote: 'Smite me oh mighty Smiter."
> Announcement from Plundaria, (#13) dated Thu Apr 9 16:19:09 2009
Plundarian Survey
=========================
If you are really needing something to do to fill the gaps
opened by the no update Friday.
Let us see what kind of dictators we have in this game.
***Warning, sorta like science content***
Take the survey here:
http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm
and telegram/email me your results. I'll annoymize them and
present the results after we get plenty of results.
As an act of good faith, I will reveal that the tests
placed me in the INTJ catagory.
Why I am an interger declaration of a variable j
I may never know.
:)
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Thu Apr 9 19:44:14 2009
56 62 38 1
ENFJ
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Thu Apr 9 19:45:12 2009
btw, I am a teacher!
interesting.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Thu Apr 9 19:47:22 2009
did anyone figure out why you have to log in like 3 times on a new machine
before all the data finally is no longer 9999,9999, etc..?
Just curious.
> Announcement from Plundaria, (#13) dated Thu Apr 9 20:40:30 2009
}btw, I am a teacher!
}interesting.
I found that the associated career choices with my
personality type was dead on. Either I was working in
that field or had considered it.
Now is it causal or predictive?
getting results in already, they are very interesting. Thanks!
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Thu Apr 9 21:05:39 2009
Only 95hours 54minutes before the next update.
THANKS GOD!
> Announcement from Thistle, (#1) dated Thu Apr 9 23:49:12 2009
INTJ
% 89 12 100 78
I am a CPA
have always known this one.
> Announcement from Rocinate, (#9) dated Fri Apr 10 00:09:28 2009
ENFJ 1/25/12/33
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Fri Apr 10 06:45:02 2009
A player inquired about sonar detection range. Unfortunately, info
isn't of much help there.
Sonar can detect ships up to distance vis/10 * r/2, where r is the max
range printed by the sonar command, and vis is the ship's visibility.
For sonar purposes, visibility is at least 10.
r ranges from 0 to 7, depending on sonar tech, spy (show ship s) and
efficiency. Efficient low-tech sonar has range 3.
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Fri Apr 10 20:46:35 2009
Said player pestered me for how to predict the parameter r in the
sonar range formula. It's
r = min(7, floor(3.5 * floor(tf * spy) * eff))
where tf is the ship's tech factor. If you think that's almost as
ugly as Barsoom's reputation, well, you're right.
Markus Armbruster
Council is almost complete. beep, Acetone and taodnt carved up Contra.
But last week's headlines were dominated by another conflict: Belltower
attacked Acetone! The Belltower propaganda machine is claiming ringing
success there. News report ongoing heavy fighting.
- = [ Empire Power Report ] = -
as of Fri Apr 17 21:03:24 2009
sects eff civ mil shell gun pet iron dust oil pln ship unit money
Thistle 155 92% 122K 6.8K 1.0K 140 1.6K 6.6K 2.0K 3.0K 40 80 50 20K
beep 135 91% 106K 7.5K 375 185 1.0K 6.7K 350 3.3K 40 80 60 10K
Belltower 110 96% 104K 6.2K 350 100 1.1K 8.4K 100 2.0K 20 50 40 326
taodnt 120 97% 94K 8.1K 800 195 550 5.5K 47 2.5K 4 60 20 25K
Rocinate 90 98% 81K 4.0K 1.6K 185 300 4.3K 1.1K 5.0K 10 50 50 30K
Wales 90 98% 75K 5.2K 1.5K 100 1.4K 4.7K 250 2.8K 60 40 30 40K
Acetone 80 89% 66K 2.6K 575 60 350 4.6K 150 1.8K 4 80 20 5.0K
Metallica 65 100% 64K 3.0K 750 80 350 3.6K 150 2.4K 50 10 70 90K
Contra 4 96% 4.9K 700 25 5 0 0 1 0 0 10 5 -4.8K
Council 5 100% 5.0K 300 0 0 0 600 0 0 0 4 0 -13K
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
worldwide 850 95% 722K 44K 7.0K 1.0K 6.7K 45K 4.2K 23K 230 470 330 205K
Hvy Plastic is running at empire.stdio.com, port 6665. Check out
http://www.pond.sub.org/~armbru/empire/hvy-plastic.html
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Sat Apr 11 00:56:30 2009
BARsooooomm!!!!!!
may his reputation rot in an algerian gay bar!
may his children marry bolivian street whores.
may his grandchildren attend jr. college.
BARsooommmmm come play a game again and meet thine maker.
> Announcement from visitor, (#11) dated Sat Apr 11 06:23:43 2009
meep meep
> Announcement from Wales, (#5) dated Sun Apr 12 21:13:36 2009
23 hours and 55 mintues till the next update.
This empire jones is weighing heavy on my back.
Has anyone noticed if our god (Markus) has come back
to life today. If there is no movement from him, I suggest
we look for another deity, one that is more amenable to
more updates. I'll offer myself for that position, if the
rest of you would be willing to fight it out for sencond place. :)
> Announcement from Contra, (#6) dated Mon Apr 13 11:20:06 2009
So by some arbitrary decision that makes no sense to me,
today is a holiday, but there is an update.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Mon Apr 13 15:58:00 2009
today is a holiday and I am celebrating playing empire.
> Announcement from taodnt, (#8) dated Mon Apr 13 16:15:45 2009
Who cares??
33 88 38 33
I have no idea what this means, and most of the questions were ambiguous.
enjoy the numbers
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Mon Apr 13 17:21:12 2009
wow taodnt
sound like my teenage daughters
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Mon Apr 13 17:23:09 2009
interesting... single quotes in anno kill everything between
didn't know that.
Ok here goes again.
Wow toadnt
sounds like my teenage daughters
"who cares"
"whatever"
"ambiguous"
"asshole"
that nearly covers 75% of the responses I get.
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Mon Apr 13 18:33:08 2009
Real Empire players don't need updates
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Mon Apr 13 21:29:33 2009
Command: rad 85
frg frigate (#85) at -x,y efficiency 100%, max range 1
. $
. 0 .
. .
sunken treasure!!!! need to get a cargo sub down there...
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Tue Apr 14 01:54:59 2009
shattered buildings... the long lines of new slaves shuffling into
the holds of the freighters... what's that smell? oh, the acrid smell
left by high explosives mixed with the stench of rotting corpses, how
wonderful... an entire country totally ruined... lying helpless and
prostate under your boot...
some days are better than others.
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Wed Apr 15 05:46:03 2009
question:
high back micro-fiber heavy use at $185 (it's so soft and snuggly),
or high back mesh extreme use at $400? i'm tempted to the mesh
because: (1) i'm a geek, and i like geeky stuff. (2) in addition
to enjoyment of pulling my nose hairs out, i like to fart; it seems
to me the mesh seat of the expensive chair would be less likely to
retain the essence of the joy of flatulation (as opposed to the
fabric and padding of the micro-fiber chair).
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Wed Apr 15 20:05:38 2009
remind me never to sit in your chair
though it may burn better with all the trapped chemicals
;)
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Wed Apr 15 20:24:25 2009
we need 4 updates a day at 16ETUs
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Wed Apr 15 20:56:53 2009
Before we can do that we need to make distribution smarter.
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Wed Apr 15 21:04:13 2009
either make the micro-update idea workable, or just leave it as
it is. micro-updates is more like how many RTS games work, and as
such may be the preferred way to attract new people.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Wed Apr 15 21:25:15 2009
< Music: The world is a changing>
This message is brought to you by the hard of hearing committee
due to the massive shell damages done in the fierce explosions that occurred
the Acetone production factory.
The blast was so massive that a large bank facilty was leveled to 25%
Rather devasting explosions.
But no fears.
Belltower engineers are on sight managing the situation well.
Our reporter in the field reports that Many Acetone troops moved their
breast plate shields to the buttocks in a clear sign that if they
did protect their asses from people like Ragerstline. They
would not be happy campers tomorrow!
:)
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Wed Apr 15 21:52:22 2009
it takes some work to have 2 ships hit by 3 mines in
the same sector...
I didn't know it was possible?
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Wed Apr 15 22:00:11 2009
Turns out a minesweeper can hit mines twice when entering a sector:
once for sweeping, and once for moving. It takes half damage, though.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Thu Apr 16 01:48:37 2009
Miles from the polluted shores of Acetone
Belltower's most elite sit back and enjoy the
amazing short women of Acetone.
There is a strong smell of perfume, attempting
to cover the deep pervasive odor of chemical solutions.
Bastien and Ragerstline are enjoying some sort of
strange fruit. Tart but a bit stringy, the only
type of fruit that can grow on this polluted landscape.
Thorstine enters walking sharply.
"Sirs! Air cover is complete. The entire island is
mapped. All planes, we believe are accounted for.
We lost none but our diversion fleet did suffer
substantial damages and losses.
Almost 1100 mil perished in the ensuing battles
but the feint worked. The enemy committed all
his forces to the feint and was subsequently
eliminated. I have order the men to keep their posts.
Watches are in effect. We do not expect an
easy time for the mop up sir but it will be finished
none the less.
The understand that since so many men are now off the
payroll we might have a bit of raise?"
Ragerstline chuckles. "Pillage Thorstine Pillage
that is the proper reward for honorable solders!
But take that cargo ship full of good wine and
distribute quickly. The men must recover in 1 day!"
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Thu Apr 16 11:30:13 2009
I fixed a bug in supply that caused the following problems:
- Ships with just two shells could fire a torpedo to return fire or
interdict. This happened exactly once. The lucky player got one
shell for free.
- Land units were considered in supply even when they had not quite
enough supplies (in this game: shells). Such land units could
defend without penalty, attack and react. You might want to check
whether the fix put any of your land units out of supply.
You can find the current server patch at
http://www.pond.sub.org/~armbru/empire/hvy-plastic.html
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Thu Apr 16 15:52:36 2009
A player inquired whether a gold mine with just one point of gold left
will continue to produce dust forever. The answer is no. Resource
depletion is randomly rounded at the update. Eventually, the one will
be rounded to zero.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Thu Apr 16 18:12:15 2009
ah ha! The geometric distribution comes into play.
let A = { (x,y) | reso x,y ?gold=1 }
P(|A| at update n > |A| at update n+1 ) is controlled by the geometric
distribution! Which means if some one keep track of how much dust came
out a a gold mine at a specific reso level and what reso level it ended at.
Without knowing the code we can calculate the p, in the problem a mine producing
its 6 dust per 769 civs (no uw's).
I love when theoretical mathematics comes into play, in my 'real life
fanstasy game!
> Announcement from Thistle, (#1) dated Thu Apr 16 18:52:44 2009
beep , could you translate what Belltower
just said ?
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Thu Apr 16 19:17:28 2009
assuming the scumbag server coders didn't make it needlessly
complicated, 1% of gold represents 25 dust in this game. since
you produce 6 dust with 1000 workers, you have a 6/25 chance of
the randomizer deciding to deduct that last percentage point of
gold from the sector reserves, or slightly less than a 1 in 4
chance.
if my fossilizing brain can remember correctly, then the
probability of that sector zeroing out sometime in the next n
updates is 6/25 + (6/25)*(19/25) + (6/25)*(19/25)**2 + ...
... + (6/25)*(19/25)**(n-1).
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Thu Apr 16 19:52:10 2009
amazing....I am a native english, well american, speaker. Born and raised in the Midwest
yet the beepmeister did a FAR better job of presenting the material, since one again, he
choose to actaully calculate the necessary values to clarify the situation while I was
totally happy with abstraction.
Conclusion...
I need to take another sector from Acetone...
")
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Thu Apr 16 19:58:59 2009
So with that beautiful calculation, by the beepmeister provided for you all,
a.) is he right?
b.) what is the expected number of turns before a given gold min at 1 gold
will be exhausted?
c.) Given 3 gold mines running simultanesously what is the expected number of
turns before
i.) one of them goes empty?
ii.) all of them go empty?
d.) can you draw a graph of the outcomes where each node represents the state of the sector
and each edge represents the transition is states from state to state via an update?
e.) and Lastly, perhaps the hardest to answer. Since several updates have occurred for
many of you with just 1 gold in a gold mine. Does that mean answer b. or c.i.) or c.ii)
have to be change to reflect was HAS already occurred?
Something to gnaw on while we wait for the update.
> Announcement from Thistle, (#1) dated Thu Apr 16 20:01:37 2009
I think I'll gnaw on a good Cohiba instead.
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Thu Apr 16 20:07:09 2009
I think I'll listen to some Amon Amarth instead
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Thu Apr 16 20:21:55 2009
random useless idea that won't get coded but would still be cool
if you board a ship, you should have access to the path the ship
has taken over the last 2 updates and have that added to your
bmap.
oh, and a game with no land units
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Fri Apr 17 04:44:23 2009
If we take away the land units
then tedrick will come back and
kill us all!
Hmm... perhaps not bad.
or is he going by
^^^
now(last decade)?
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Fri Apr 17 06:36:00 2009
the biggest issue I have with land units
is that they make the game feel like
an ascii based starcraft game.
and really, I love starcraft, but do we need
empire to be a Real Time Tactical game?
it's suppose to be Strategy
and say what you will about all the awesome
clients that are out there. There shouldn't
be such a penalty for playing with the basic
client that only the suicidal or insane use it
with that being said, I'm going to head back
and tell the kids to get off my lawn...
:)
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Fri Apr 17 06:47:01 2009
fu*^&jking hard ass, homeowner with long hair and strange
aluminum foil on the windows!
korn, the used, slip knot playing may 13th in my hometown
and my daughter 17, wants to go. so. metal head you can't come
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Fri Apr 17 16:32:46 2009
A communique from the Acetone Front:
Acetone frigate #33 "Your A.S.S." has been seen
navigating towards southern Belltower seas.
This order is in immediate affect:
Move Your A.S.S. to a more appropriate postion
either by firing on Your A.S.S.
boarding Your A.S.S
or perhaps the most effect;
Bomb Your A.S.S.
But no matter what if you can not effect
immediate above hostile acts on Your A.S.S.
Then you better watch Your A.S.S. until further
notice!
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Fri Apr 17 17:43:55 2009
Eh, Nu Metal isn't really my thing.
I actually went Goth/Industrial/Dark Wave in the late 90s
So, I'd be more inclined to go to see The Birthday Massacre
or Mindless Self Indulgence or Freezepop than most
metal bands.
Now mind you, there's some really good metal out there
Amon AMarth, Cradle of Filth, Dark Tranquility, Dimmu Borgir
Old Mans Child etc etc
But Slipknot? meh
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Fri Apr 17 18:09:50 2009
my guilty pleasure is late 80's synth-pop bands. i need to
get my car rigged up with those humongous speaker systems so
i can annoy the hell out of people by driving around while
blasting out book of love tunes at max volume...
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Fri Apr 17 18:11:51 2009
then go check out Freezepop if you haven't already www.freezepop.net
they're a fun band. and I believe they have some mp3s of their stuff
along with a few videos available for download and viewing
> Announcement from Acetone, (#10) dated Fri Apr 17 20:32:53 2009
The simpler solution is move all your northern elements
to secure your southern A.S.S.
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Fri Apr 17 20:33:52 2009
but what do you do when your A.S.S. is in the middle
of no where?
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Fri Apr 17 20:41:01 2009
anyone have an over/under for the Victory Declaration Date?
I say the game will have a winner May 20th
Markus Armbruster
Thistle finished mopping up Council. The Council capital had been
fallen the week before already, which last week's report neglected to
mention.
beep, Acetone and taodnt finished the conquest of Contra. The capital
fell to beep.
The Belltower war machine has conquered about half of Acetone. Quite a
few Belltower ships have been fallen victim to enemy wolfpacks, however.
Thistle undertook what looks like a limited attack on Metallica.
Metallica and Wales exchanged a couple of blows on the high seas.
Technology has been advancing at a stiff pace. Jet engines have been
spotted on some drawing boards.
- = [ Empire Power Report ] = -
as of Fri Apr 24 21:02:16 2009
sects eff civ mil shell gun pet iron dust oil pln ship unit money
Thistle 170 96% 146K 7.7K 2.1K 260 4.0K 9.1K 900 2.2K 110 110 60 10K
beep 140 100% 123K 8.3K 1.2K 285 2.8K 7.8K 450 3.3K 50 90 60 3.1K
Belltower 150 85% 114K 5.8K 400 175 800 10K 50 2.1K 40 50 40 5.0K
taodnt 120 100% 104K 9.2K 1.5K 295 1.4K 7.7K 50 2.3K 8 70 20 25K
Rocinate 85 99% 86K 6.8K 2.4K 240 1.6K 5.5K 400 4.8K 50 70 80 30K
Wales 90 100% 83K 6.0K 2.2K 155 1.8K 5.5K 350 2.8K 70 60 30 15K
Metallica 60 97% 55K 2.2K 1.4K 100 1.1K 4.8K 700 1.5K 90 20 60 35K
Acetone 40 99% 37K 2.2K 575 45 100 1.6K 50 650 1 50 10 10K
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
worldwide 855 96% 747K 48K 12K 1.6K 14K 52K 3.0K 20K 410 520 360 110K
Hvy Plastic is running at empire.stdio.com, port 6665. Check out
http://www.pond.sub.org/~armbru/empire/hvy-plastic.html
> Announcement from Rocinate, (#9) dated Fri Apr 17 21:12:38 2009
What's wrong with a little Rush?
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Fri Apr 17 21:46:59 2009
man, this is a big world
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Fri Apr 17 21:53:38 2009
random thought for the day
Fortresses and Mountains should go up in mobility cost to attack
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Sat Apr 18 07:26:35 2009
A player inquired whether the tend command works for subs. Yes, it
does.
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Sun Apr 19 06:04:45 2009
A player inquired about how to figure out where return fire came from.
Turns out to be difficult. The way return fire is coded, it can't
tell you what fired, only how much damage you took.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Sun Apr 19 18:52:38 2009
so does that mean when subs return fire it is just added int
and that one doesn't have a clue if a sub or a set of ships
often unseen and or a set of units often unseen just all add up together.
i suspose an artillery and a ship fire bombing your ass from afar could be
viewed as 'different' but me thinks that a damage report like
incoming from land sir!
incoming! from straight way up in the sky sir!
explosion! under the water line sir...
should be PARTIALLY available so that SOME info comes in.
But can anyone answer these questions:
do sub return fire with torps INTO harbors?
do units/ships seemingly get 100% return if they are within
say range 1.5 and the distance it 2 it seems that it does NOT fail
50% of the time but they round up. (could be wrong.)
It appears to me during return fire damaged ships damages are not
not reduced by their effeciency but that could be me bein paranoid.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Mon Apr 20 20:47:03 2009
Why does one type a letter to ann, in order to talk to everyone?
Perhaps it should be a dear john letter.
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Tue Apr 21 20:51:06 2009
Sunday is bars-from-heaven-day! Except when I don't feel like it, or
when I forget.
Only announcements before Friday's update competed. As usual, the
winners receive five bars of gold.
The bar for announcers who already won a prize is much higher. No
obstacle for beep. three cheers for beep, poet laureate of hvy
plastic!
But my favourite announcement so far was the Welsh proposal for the
proper celebration of a Good Friday without an update. Bravo!
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Wed Apr 22 16:04:11 2009
--- At the Capitol City, Kill 'em All ---
TheDeathAngel held a press conference today to discuss the
recent sightings of strange airplanes off the coast:
"We've been performing recent training exercise with the
sorta country Wales, Evidently their fighter pilots
had been out of practice and felt like playing with our flyboys
so we gave a demonstration on why you don't use our fishing boats
as target practice."
When Reporters explained that fishing boats could be used for piracy
and that there aren't even fishing boats in this particular universe
TheDeathAngel shruged, "Look when I say fishing boat, I mean that
any ship flying the flag of Metallica are obviously on humanitarian
missions and should be left to sail the world in peace!"
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Wed Apr 22 16:09:15 2009
--- At the Capitol City, Kill 'em All ---
TheDeatAngel continued on, "Obviously Wales has an inferiority complex
after all, they're not even a real country. I mean come on, they've
had more people land on them in the last 2000 years than a $20 truck
stop whore who comes up to your window offering handjobs for crack.
So they're still groping for some way to feel good about themselves.
And don't ask how I know what you can get for $20 bucks with a
truck stop whore. I was young and needed the money!"
"Right, You didn't hear me say that."
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Wed Apr 22 21:34:05 2009
now it is time for the GOOD planes.
hehe
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Wed Apr 22 21:35:42 2009
But you have to look at how GOOOD those welsh are educated.
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Wed Apr 22 21:41:52 2009
I feel particularly dumb because I thought f2s were light
durrrr
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Wed Apr 22 21:42:19 2009
even dumber.. I thought they WEREN'T light
not as bad as scuttle pl * ?eff>40 but...
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Wed Apr 22 23:44:56 2009
they still haven't changed the situtation where you go on a bombing run
and either abort or can't succeed in your mission but somehow
your captain always jettisons his bombs just to piss off the sargent at arms
at home....
;(
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Wed Apr 22 23:55:13 2009
years ago my father explained that there are 3 levels of dumb:
level 1: You do something stupid, and just AS you do it your realize
and hope no-one saw or understood how stupid you just were.
level 2: You do something stupid, and someone goes "Ah.. your know that's
stupid." and bingo your realize. "Oh shit that was stupid."
level 3: You do something stupid, and someone goes "Ahh.. you know that's
stupid." and you go "Huhh???"
But last summer I found a new level.
Hold a board in your hand and take out a hand saw. Think real stupidly
that you can hold it and just saw a small groove in it. Give it a good
push and watch the board pop out of your hand and the saw cut a good deep
cut in your bare-ass hand with no leather glove on, and think, stupid stupid
stupid. But then as your hand pulls back on the saw to finish the cut
and nearly takes out 3 tendons... you realize that you just sunk one level
stupider than you thought you could go.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Thu Apr 23 00:51:13 2009
Ragerstline enters the
shambles of a room. Carrying a small
sack. Bastien is roaming the room fiddling
and pickup up various items...
"SIR! Mop up is complete. Not one solute-soldier
remains on the mainland. 59 sectors controlled and resourced. But I am sorry to report
the spoils were mostly short dark skinned women,
many with bad skin from the amount of solvents in
the enviroment and these few bars of gold. The
unfortunate single day the financial sector had
functionality a vast amount of gold was removed
and we fear what did not leave the island we
blew to pieces."
Bastion quipped, 'S'ok...I've heard rumors of such
since the men have been a bit saddened by the lack of
gold and silver trinkets. But since the island seems to
have mostly surviving women, with those Solute's
having put every
male child in sight in a uniform at least they
should make a good selection for the men for several days.
Be sure to cart around for at least a week, a nice collection of clean women and clean furs for
the men so that they
can feel satisfied. And make sure that damn
Helgarstone, bible-beater gets sent back home to tell all
the wifes the men have behaved well, before you select
these women! I don't want the in-experience soldiers
to face the wrath of their young wives when they get home.
I have seen what they do with those few teenagers at home
now! Those wives are not saints!"
Bastien grabbed the telescope and viewed the
ships in the distance that still carried that
Acetone flag. Long range bombers will work he thinks
yes...long range bombers.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Thu Apr 23 02:35:54 2009
I am sad.
Acetone never once tele me. never communicated once I had attacked.
that of course is like beating up a deaf old woman and trying to find
pleasure in it. Now i know metal head finds that fun but I was looking fo
r at least a slight beligerence. or perhaps some boasting!
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Thu Apr 23 02:39:29 2009
ugh, nothing like putting your fighters on
interdiction missions by accident
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Thu Apr 23 03:08:48 2009
why would you want your fighters to interdict accidents?
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Thu Apr 23 19:59:16 2009
I am sooo excited about the jets...
:)
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Thu Apr 23 20:08:42 2009
fyi DeathAngel city ruler... Fighters are best for air-defense, mb for
naval defense/offense and
Def Leppard for the mood.
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Thu Apr 23 21:08:30 2009
A player grumbled about how hard it is to bomb submarines, and
inquired about the details.
To bomb ships, you fly a pinpoint bombing run to the target sector.
Once there, your planes look for ships. They see all surface ships,
but they see a submarine only with a probability equal to the chance
of hitting it.
Then you get to pick a target for each bomber, and the bomber tries to
hit it. Its chance to hit is printed. The rules to compute it are in
info Hitchance.
If a bomber has a nominal 20% chance to hit a submarine (printed right
before it drops bombs on it), the actual chance is 20% * 20% = 4%,
because it has to hit it twice: first to find it, then again to hit
it.
I'm not claiming this makes sense.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Thu Apr 23 21:23:31 2009
I did not Grumble...I whined...
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Fri Apr 24 00:58:29 2009
dish network on the show TIME WARP decided it would be
cool to have Metallica, (really) to play their heavy metal
and film it in ultra fast video to see how they do what they do.
should be interesting.
but i like watching bullets pass through things at ultra high
speed and watch the fake dummies head blow up (out the back)
more.
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Fri Apr 24 14:47:01 2009
Good lord, what is this, the shoot first and ask questions later
diplomacy game?
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Fri Apr 24 15:12:38 2009
Forts?
how lame
> Announcement from Wales, (#5) dated Fri Apr 24 20:57:48 2009
If one shoots first and asks questions later,
there is little need to ask questions at all.
Since I don't want to be lied to,
I prefer not to ask questions
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Fri Apr 24 21:00:03 2009
i prefer to be lied to; that makes it easier work up a fit
of righteous indignation to get me off my lazy butt and
fight.
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Fri Apr 24 21:00:25 2009
I don't lie
:)
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Fri Apr 24 21:00:35 2009
at least not in empire ;)
Markus Armbruster
Plastic (compensated or not) got it off. Hence, we only reached update
22 this week.
The Belltower onslaught on Acetone continued, and Acetone resistance has
been weakening. beep intervened, and sacked the Acetonian capital.
Metallica duked it out on the sea and in the air with Thistle and Wales
all week.
Submarines again scored in the tonnage war. Belltower shipping suffered
the most.
Wales found another hideout of the Natives. Is there still more
unclaimed land out there?
- = [ Empire Power Report ] = -
as of Wed Apr 29 21:05:04 2009
sects eff civ mil shell gun pet iron dust oil pln ship unit money
Thistle 175 98% 159K 7.9K 3.4K 340 4.5K 11K 350 1.8K 140 110 60 5.0K
beep 140 100% 133K 8.4K 2.1K 390 4.1K 8.1K 550 3.0K 80 100 70 2.1K
Belltower 160 91% 121K 6.3K 925 220 1.6K 11K 200 1.6K 60 70 40 15K
taodnt 120 100% 109K 9.8K 2.1K 365 1.7K 8.4K 200 2.0K 20 70 30 25K
Rocinate 85 100% 86K 8.2K 3.0K 295 2.0K 7.4K 300 4.7K 60 70 80 20K
Wales 90 99% 86K 6.3K 3.0K 185 1.7K 6.2K 200 2.6K 70 70 40 15K
Metallica 55 100% 54K 2.7K 900 75 1.1K 4.7K 400 1.1K 80 10 60 30K
Acetone 30 100% 28K 2.2K 625 50 50 2.5K 43 700 1 40 10 5.0K
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
worldwide 855 98% 777K 52K 16K 1.9K 17K 59K 2.3K 17K 490 540 390 90K
Hvy Plastic is running at empire.stdio.com, port 6665. Check out
http://www.pond.sub.org/~armbru/empire/hvy-plastic.html
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Fri Apr 24 21:12:21 2009
either someone has really fast reflexes or someone isn't using raw telnet
> Announcement from Plundaria, (#13) dated Tue Apr 28 00:39:04 2009
I like the way the pengiuns of Madagascar think...
skipper: kowalski, reason with him!
kowalski: ahhh...reason...
skipper: i find reason tedious and boring. we use FORCE!
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Tue Apr 28 22:13:09 2009
May the jet turbine engine embrace you.
May the engine give you peace.
In the name of kerosine its fuel.
Go in peace.
serve the war.
> Announcement from visitor, (#11) dated Wed Apr 29 23:14:22 2009
I vote that tomorrow is National Pound Cake Day. Why tomorrow?
Well, that just dove tails in nicely with the posting of this anno.
Anyway, anybody that has watched more than 5 minutes of the
Food Network can tell you that at its origin pound cake got its
name because it is made with a pound of butter, a pound of sugar,
and a pound of flour.
We here in the Empire community have some slightly different
recipes. So let's get right to the cook book.
Hanuman Cake - Made with a pound of butter, sugar, and flour.
and a pound of beer. You can't go wrong with beer. Ever. Beer
is such a great invention that we are willing to forgive those Germans
for some of their other minor mis-steps like Adolf Hitler, sauerkraut,
and Siegfried and Roy. Those Germans do get some positive credit
though for producing the likes of Jeri Ryan, who we would all like to
have a pound or two of.
beep cake - A pound of this, that, and the other. But we will never know.
beep will never share it as he believes co-eating a cake with someone
else is unclean.
Bungy cake - A pound of sugar, flour, butter, and a pound of wool.
Of course he gleans the wool from his pubic hairs. But he insists
that he always cleans it before cooking.
Mr. Ed cake - What makes this cake special is not only the pound
of Jack Daniels, but is also the fact that that is the only ingredient.
Sometimes the simple things are the best.
Metallica's Horse Semen Surprise - Well, we can all guess what the
secret ingredient is here. But to quote from Metalhead's own cook
book "With a well stocked corral, you can make enough dessert for
all the in-laws."
Plundaria's Weight Watchers Chocolate Pound Cake - Guaranteed
to take the weight off. But that is probably due to the pound of
chocolate flavored Ex-lax.
CCCP's Nostalgic Leningrad Pound Cake - These guys just can't
get the old memories out of their brains. They still have fond
thoughts of the early 40s and making cake with a pound of
sawdust.
Barsoom cake - before being carted off to prison, Barsoom was
famous for his pound cake. It featured a pound of sugar, flour,
butter, and a pound of little boys underwear. Oh and don't forget
the frosting. A lot of frosting.
Doorbell cake - The cake itself is fairly straight forward. Flour,
sugar, butter, and a dash of vanilla. But this is a special occasion
cake and opening the cake is done by the guest of honor. Doorbell
never does a good job of explaining how to get all the batter into the
condom though.
And finally we have Thistle's pimple juice cake - This cake takes
all day to prepare as Thistle has to spend a lot of time standing
in front of the bathroom mirror. If you see him eating chocolate
coated french fry pizza at night, you know there is going to be a real
treat tomorrow.
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Thu Apr 30 00:09:58 2009
gaahhh!!! that s.o.b. is pre-empting two of my favorite shows
for a news conference _again_. geeze-louise, you're there for
at least four years, pal; give it frakking rest already...
> Announcement from Plundaria, (#13) dated Thu Apr 30 00:39:46 2009
}> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Thu Apr 30 00:09:58 2009
}gaahhh!!! that s.o.b. is pre-empting two of my favorite shows
}for a news conference _again_. geeze-louise, you're there for
}at least four years, pal; give it frakking rest already...
Telepromper warranty is only 120 days, he is determined not to
was a minute of it...
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Thu Apr 30 01:03:51 2009
man, he cut that awfully close... if he cut into "Lost" time
there would have been hell to pay.
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Thu Apr 30 11:08:40 2009
Reminder: there is no update on Friday, May 1st.
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Thu Apr 30 14:19:06 2009
Swine flu gets a holiday?
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Thu Apr 30 14:44:43 2009
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Workers'_Day
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Thu Apr 30 15:36:59 2009
bah, they're UWs
They don't need no steenkin' holiday!
> Announcement from visitor, (#11) dated Thu Apr 30 17:12:16 2009
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Thu Apr 30 18:15:28 2009
a skulking Acetone submarine
I always liked a sided newspaper.
:)
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Thu Apr 30 19:38:08 2009
people still celebrate commie holidays? damn pinkos... they'll
be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Thu Apr 30 20:04:27 2009
We know why Hanuman has no update today.
Has to go out and put his
May baskets on the doorsteps of all
the women he wants to kiss.
He's suppose to put the basket on the doorstep
ring the Doorbell and run.
But he just sulks there and hopes for the best.
Will Hanuman get kissed tomorrow.
Me thinks not.
Well, if he stops at beeps or bungies house
he may get kissed in a special way but...
that is for Mr. Ed. to extrapolate on.
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Fri May 1 12:35:55 2009
A player pointed me to a difference between web site and in-game
information. If double-checked the web site and corrected two errors:
there's no aa cruiser in this game, and the mountain defense bonus is
only 4.
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Fri May 1 14:43:47 2009
Frakking headlines are misleading
> Announcement from Plundaria, (#13) dated Fri May 1 15:10:06 2009
}> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Fri May 1 14:43:47 2009
}Frakking headlines are misleading
Frelling NBSG fan.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Fri May 1 16:26:24 2009
Bastien was looking at a model of a new type of
plane. Seems to have no propellors but still flies.
Reportedly many new ideas are coming out of his
strange universities and defensive budget.
Ragerstline enters:
Sir! Acetone no longer exists. Seems that the last
remaining pieces of real estate were gobbled up by one
beepster. We have Edvard Wiles on station watching these
going on. We anticpate no further hostilies of any
real substance. Guess the few troops in the area
think General E. Wiley has the it taken care of.
They call him the Coyote sir.
Excellent! Ragerstline, Excellent. Did you finally
get rid of that solvent smell on all things Acetone?
Well we brought in Dutch earth ovens. Not quite like
Dutch ovens sir, seems one dumps in about 100 cubic yards of soil at one end and about 2 hours later it comes out oil/solvent free but about 200 degrees and microbe dead.
So it now has a bit of a brewers yeast smell to it as
our biologists have been introducing several forms of soil bacteria, yeasts, worms etc...
But the yeast smell has the men drinking a bit more than
normal. We've allowed some foreign firm to open
Mr. Ed's House of Ale-repute, specializes in drunk whores.
Quite popular right now.
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Fri May 1 17:14:28 2009
frelling farscape lovers
Get of my Gorram Lawn or I'll have River Tam kick everyones Ass!
Markus Armbruster
server machine ran out of disk space, which auto-cancelled Friday's
update.
Our extensive logging and bug trapping take a lot of space. The backups
included the logs, which multiplied their disk space use. On Friday,
the automatic backup ran out of space after a blitz running on the same
machine had a crash-dumping fit. The failed backup duly cancelled the
update. Unfortunately, this crippled, but did not kill the server.
Players encountered various failures until the underlying disk space
problem was fixed on Sunday.
We should have watched disk space more closely. Sincere apologies to
the players.
In other, and much more fun news, Thistle invaded Metallica (sweeping
plenty of seamines the hard & painful way), and Belltower attacked
taodnt.
- = [ Empire Power Report ] = -
as of Wed May 6 21:03:51 2009
sects eff civ mil shell gun pet iron dust oil pln ship unit money
Thistle 180 97% 162K 8.8K 4.2K 430 4.6K 13K 250 1.4K 150 120 70 10K
beep 160 98% 146K 8.7K 3.4K 530 4.4K 9.1K 300 5.2K 90 100 70 4.1K
Belltower 180 93% 140K 7.0K 1.1K 275 1.7K 14K 200 1.4K 80 80 50 5.0K
taodnt 110 100% 103K 8.6K 2.6K 435 950 9.8K 150 1.9K 30 80 30 30K
Rocinate 90 100% 89K 8.1K 4.0K 360 4.2K 7.4K 250 3.9K 70 60 80 10K
Wales 90 100% 88K 5.8K 3.9K 230 2.0K 6.2K 200 2.2K 70 80 40 10K
Metallica 50 67% 36K 2.4K 700 65 400 4.0K 200 750 20 6 50 10K
Acetone 1 100% 1.0K 100 50 5 0 0 0 0 0 10 0 1.3K
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
worldwide 855 95% 766K 49K 20K 2.3K 18K 63K 1.6K 17K 500 530 380 50K
Hvy Plastic is running at empire.stdio.com, port 6665. Check out
http://www.pond.sub.org/~armbru/empire/hvy-plastic.html
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Fri May 1 22:43:34 2009
now that we know she's a cyborg, all the ass-kicking makes sense.
> Announcement from Plundaria, (#13) dated Sat May 2 00:12:31 2009
}Get of my Gorram Lawn or I'll have River Tam kick everyones Ass!
Ahh yes, another perfectly good sci-fi series killed by twits
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Sat May 2 18:30:40 2009
anyone know how to get rid of erroneous bmap/intellegence info in winace
i have a sea sector that somehow thinks it is a gold mine.
i have cleared the intellegence. bdes'd the sector to sea so now
i get no info on the sector tabs as to when i gathered the info.
BUT the map still shows it as a sector only it is now colored like the sea
but has the g from the player color still there.
can't git rid of the sector LETTER!
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Sat May 2 18:34:01 2009
I have triedt he following.
a. clear intell.
b. bdes it to various states; sea, X , " "
c.) repeat above.
but when I clear intell and bdes it blank. then bingo it comes back
to the old player color and sector type. anything without a sector type
the old sector type reoccurs.
i think this happened when i import intell from one machine to another and some
offset acccidently got used. But i can't get rid of the stuff..
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Mon May 4 18:33:00 2009
I want to apologize to anyone where I may have
responder oddly or simply ignored a telegram.
I work on several machines but one of my machines at work
has a quirk, it overheats and reboots at random times
usually 3 times a week. Since I have it set up to
relaunch all programs turns out it autoread several
telegrams that I never saw because when I logged in at home
I just killed the connection.
So my apologizes. I might be annoying but I have not
intentionally ignored any telegrams.
Ding
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Mon May 4 18:34:10 2009
again any help on how to clear bad data in the winace database? or
do I have to just start fiddleing?
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Mon May 4 18:43:32 2009
use telnet
> Announcement from Thistle, (#1) dated Mon May 4 19:21:43 2009
Overheats and reboots 3 times per week,
hopefully at 5pm : mon wed and fri
> Announcement from Wales, (#5) dated Mon May 4 20:54:12 2009
Thinking back to last friday's missed update.
Was I the only one with a vision of Markus spending
his day resting up against a Maypole while nubile
young women danced around him in a circle, slowly
entwinning colored ribbons until he was completely
ensnared.
After which they placed wooden offerings at his feet...
and then burned him like the witch/warlock he is?
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Mon May 4 21:01:31 2009
damn I bet this group could write one nasty group sci-fi fanstasy book by passing it section by section
between people. Violence, sex, buggery (Bungie), drunkedness (Mostly everyone but Mr. Ed. specificallY0
alternative weird music, etc....
have ronkendrick and marcus edit it. (electronically) would not want to get pages back from Marcus.
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Mon May 4 21:13:44 2009
who's got the boom boom?
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Mon May 4 21:19:20 2009
Mon May 4 21:13 Wales ship hits a mine five times
there are more efficient ways to minesweep ;)
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Mon May 4 21:45:35 2009
anyone ever see it this high?
Che: mil:110 che:76
opps typo.
Che: mil 100, che:56
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Mon May 4 21:47:24 2009
I've seen Che in the 200's before
but it may have been buggy code
> Announcement from Plundaria, (#13) dated Mon May 4 22:06:51 2009
CHE can become huge with proper farming...
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Mon May 4 22:07:56 2009
do nukes reduce che?
or are those buggers just that cool?
> Announcement from Plundaria, (#13) dated Mon May 4 22:08:13 2009
}> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Mon May 4 21:01:31 2009
}damn I bet this group could write one nasty group sci-fi fanstasy book by passin
No bet there. It is a sure thing.
> Announcement from Plundaria, (#13) dated Mon May 4 22:10:33 2009
nukes encourage che. Haven't you seen the hulk? Any 50's monster movie?
get off my lawn!
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Mon May 4 22:14:20 2009
--- At the Capital City, Kill 'em All ---
TheDeathAngel, after 2 weeks of nonstop war fare has announced
new cost cutting plans to help both improve army morale and
the bottom line.
"Today, We've begun a new plan to pay the Army in Ramen noodles.
After all, if they're good enough for broke College Students,
surely they'll be good enough to keep the Army happy."
Despite Rumors that the war isn't going well, TheDeathAngel
claims that his new secret weapon will carry the day.
"It's a simple cost benefit analysis, Their ships are worth
$X, and the secret weapon only cost $X/4"
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Tue May 5 14:44:15 2009
the game is borken
utterly and completely borken
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Tue May 5 14:47:07 2009
I'm perfectly ok with getting slaughtered
it's a part of the game :)
but I think the idea that you can take a landing ship
drop some engineers into a sector
increase the eff
and then navigate your fleet in and drop units off
with full mobility is utterly and completely broken
whoever put the idea into the game should be taken out
and beaten
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Tue May 5 15:52:00 2009
but those Enggenneers are so good. Gotta love em.
Smart little shits that can build tons of shit under duress
and make things work real good fast.
but me personally thinks that since mobility is NOT really time
associated and BUILDing should be time associated. (note everything in
empire builds to 100% only during a time associated event)
that the engineers building should cause AT LEAST an interdiction
for every 5 % deconstruction and every 1 % construction.
But if engineers are building a harbor or airport I think there should be
at least somesort of real time delay and a tele go out.
Telegram to DeathAngel: 12:12:43 Thistle engineers seen deconstructing a
sector. 6 hours before it reaches 0%.
Or
Telegram to DeathAngel: 18:12:43 Thistle engineers completely deconstructed
-34,-10 it appears they are constructing a harbor. It will reach 2% in 6 hours.
now these instantenous assaults get 'real-timed'
my 7 cents.
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Tue May 5 18:22:49 2009
the real problem IMO is that empire has been
driven from a Strategic game to a tactical game
a few changes that would help redirect game play
1) Dump land units totally. they're a purely tactical
creature that has very little game benefit
Second, Dump all missions except air superiority
third, rebalance air combat to make more sense
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Tue May 5 19:56:35 2009
I'll be out of town until Sunday. Plundaria will watch you.
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Tue May 5 20:29:37 2009
better make sure all the blinds are securely closed then...
> Announcement from PNN, (#14) dated Tue May 5 20:38:06 2009
PNN Headline News
Breaking news
The heavens parted and thus spoke Hauman
} > Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Tue May 5 19:56:35 2009
} I'll be out of town until Sunday. Plundaria will watch you.
The panic was immediate and total
-=[ EMPIRE NEWS ]=-
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
! "All the news that fits, we print." !
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Tue May 5 20:17:38 2009
The details of Empire news since Mon May 4 22:11:04 2009
=== Foreign Affairs ===
hvy_plastic endures lawless rioting several times
=== The Home Front ===
Tue May 5 19:57 Thistle endures lawless rioting several times
Tue May 5 19:57 Beep endures lawless rioting several times
Tue May 5 19:57 Metallica endures lawless rioting several times
Tue May 5 19:57 Acetone endures lawless rioting one time
Tue Ma
Thousands of voices cried out, why Hanuman, why have you abandoned us!
> Announcement from PNN, (#14) dated Tue May 5 20:39:31 2009
Tue May 5 19:57 Wales endures lawless rioting several times
Tue May 5 19:57 taodnt endures lawless rioting several times
Tue May 5 19:57 Belltower endures lawless rioting several times
Tue May 5 19:58 Natives are restless several times
Thousands of voices cried out, why Hanuman, why have you abandoned us!.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Wed May 6 01:29:23 2009
since I don't think most of you are any kind of stalker. Here a link
on my youngest daughter: Athlete of the week, new Notre Dame track scholarship
and soon D1 track star... *(perhaps)*
www.kdlt.com
click on athlete of the week.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Wed May 6 01:30:28 2009
wrt to lawless rioting....Acetone had ONE sector and it rioted..
heheh
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Wed May 6 01:36:28 2009
} do nukes reduce che?
No.
} or are those buggers just that cool?
Yes.
Insomnia, on the other hand, isn't.
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Wed May 6 02:25:58 2009
} the real problem IMO is that empire has been
} driven from a Strategic game to a tactical game
} a few changes that would help redirect game play
} 1) Dump land units totally. they're a purely tactical
} creature that has very little game benefit
}
} Second, Dump all missions except air superiority
} third, rebalance air combat to make more sense
I played *one* game without land units (Retro, 2004). Doesn't exactly
make me an authority on what the game was / would be without land
units.
For what it's worth, Retro was an educational experience, but not one
I'm too keen to repeat. I found small islands hard to conquer, and
large islands impossible. Could have been my incompetence at this
kind of game, but I doubt I remained *that* incompetent for all of its
50-something updates.
In my opinion, Retro was strongly biased towards conventional
stalemate. And prolongued conventional stalemate isn't what I'm
looking for in a game. I want a bit more fluidity. I readily admit
that current Empire without mods has too much of it. The Hvy Metal
family of games is an attempt to figure out how to correct that, among
other things.
In Retro, I spent all game fighting one neighbor. I eventually
bruised his economic backbone together with a friend. I reduced him
to having to designate parts of his country 0% fortress to keep my
paras away, and to receiving SAMs from his friend wholesale. I
*still* couldn't hold any sectors on his start island.
I believe some other players had comparable "successes" against
competent enemies.
Retro wasn't really non-tactical. It just had fewer tactical options.
They pretty much boiled down to "shell to deity and explore", until
transport planes added "strip air defense and paradrop" to the mix.
It ended in a nuke fest. That part was allright.
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Wed May 6 02:43:31 2009
metalhead is, however, correct that a tactical exploit like
the engineer thing is questionable. interdiction missions are
supposed to prevent the need to baby-sit your country 24-7
because your enemy might "do stuff" while you were offline.
interdiction of moving 10 civs around, while ignoring the
much more important "stuff being done" by the engineers is,
as Spock would say, illogical.
> Announcement from Plundaria, (#13) dated Wed May 6 11:22:27 2009
perhaps interdiction or return fire should be called whenever
the work command is used.
Heh, would make an engineers life rough.. Improve 10%, *BOOM* take
50 damage to sector.
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Wed May 6 14:26:28 2009
the biggest thing about a retro game is
ensuring an area that is relatively vulnerable
particularly by taking small islands 2 sectors from the start island
and enabling easy bridging, so you take a small offshore island
and work your way in.
a non land unit game lends itself to continant play where
you have fronts and the concept of a static battleline makes sense
you also have to look at plane ranges, ship movement and
decide how small the world is going to be.
for example the world is much smaller if fighters have
range 14+ rather than range 10
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Wed May 6 14:27:19 2009
the work command is an abberation and an abomination and
should be taken out back and shot
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Wed May 6 14:33:41 2009
but yes, non land unit games are about grinding things down
bombing banks, capitals, tech centers, killing civilians
at the early level, deitying sectors and walking mil in
(f1s used to have the drop ability and were available at tech 40
so you could paradrop from f1s, who remembers that?)
another issue is how fast civs/mil/ everything grows
1 update every 2 days at 60 ETUs is a VERY different game
than 2 24 ETU updates every day.
empire wasn't really designed for 60 ETU updates
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Wed May 6 16:31:30 2009
and that's another rather inane aspect of missions.
you have one shot weather it's 1 unit or 10 units
one ship or ten ships
if you're going to have an interdiction it should fire at everyone
not simply average it over multiple ships or units.
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Wed May 6 20:58:34 2009
moving Iron will trip interdiction???
WTF
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Wed May 6 22:12:22 2009
ok, so a battleship does 105 damage and my hart returns fire for 29?
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Wed May 6 22:31:06 2009
you've gotten too soft-harted in your dotage.
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Wed May 6 22:34:20 2009
*sigh* I thought we got meaner in old age
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Wed May 6 23:56:06 2009
Hey metal You have to learn to exploit weird as shit.
from way far away a sector of lots of mobility take 20 iron and move it
within range of the bb's they interdict and blow up some iron.
you lose 15 iron and he losses a pair of shells.
repeat this 70 times and his battleship has no shells.
same with lameass plane interdiction.
costs you iron and mobility in worthless sectors.
interdiction long ago needed the option /units+ship+mil-com+bars
and then it would have worked correctly.
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Thu May 7 06:02:13 2009
except that it works erratically not consistantly
I'll move 20 iron it gets blown up
I move 50 iron and no one cares
100 mil, no big deal,
50 mil 3 sectors away? BLAM!
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Fri May 8 20:04:18 2009
how odd
one of my sectors is damaged but I have no
telegrams of when it was shelled
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Fri May 8 20:26:27 2009
I have been trying to get ahold of marcus, but me thinks
he has logs that can provide you with missing info.
I had winace xdump fail during an update and it had autoread on
and I lost my prodcution report. Sucks to have missing info.
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Fri May 8 20:48:31 2009
and that's another thing
ships should not be able to fire from a less than 60%
harbor. that's gamey as hell
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Fri May 8 21:01:28 2009
ahh the variable update
another crappy thing to screw defenders over
LOL
Markus Armbruster
out to be rotten from within: it collapsed quickly under Belltower's
onslaught. Well-informed sourced claim Thistle rendered assistance to
taodnt, and was handsomely rewarded for it.
Thistle continued his advance into the heartland of Metallica, and
TheDeathAngel finally asked for terms.
Wales shifted his aim from Metallica to Belltower. The rumors that this
happened because Welsh sailors flatly refused to enter Metallican
minefields ever again are entirely unfounded.
Why still no nukes, the world wonders.
- = [ Empire Power Report ] = -
as of Fri May 15 21:02:51 2009
sects eff civ mil shell gun pet iron dust oil pln ship unit money
Thistle 220 93% 181K 9.4K 6.1K 560 4.6K 12K 150 3.5K 180 140 80 20K
Belltower 225 84% 169K 6.2K 2.4K 475 2.5K 11K 100 4.0K 110 130 40 2.2K
beep 160 100% 155K 7.5K 5.1K 725 5.2K 17K 100 5.6K 110 90 80 20K
Rocinate 90 100% 90K 7.0K 5.3K 335 4.3K 7.4K 200 3.5K 80 60 60 10K
Wales 90 97% 88K 5.7K 5.0K 300 3.3K 6.8K 100 1.4K 60 80 40 10K
taodnt 50 98% 49K 6.0K 325 50 550 3.0K 35 600 20 40 0 -660
Metallica 20 81% 18K 650 850 65 1.1K 300 1 450 6 5 20 517
Acetone 0 0% 1 100 50 5 0 0 0 0 0 7 0 -3.2K
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
worldwide 855 93% 751K 43K 25K 2.5K 22K 58K 700 19K 550 550 310 30K
Hvy Plastic is running at empire.stdio.com, port 6665. Check out
http://www.pond.sub.org/~armbru/empire/hvy-plastic.html
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Fri May 8 21:04:03 2009
what i never understand is why deities can't find a machine
that has the correct time.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Fri May 8 21:06:30 2009
where is the update?
./
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Fri May 8 21:06:44 2009
it's cancelled for mothers day
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Fri May 8 21:07:12 2009
are you serious that it was not tioday?
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Fri May 8 21:07:39 2009
I love how my light infantry takes 14 but no idea why
LOL
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Fri May 8 21:08:06 2009
haha not at all
but I bet the deities forgot to reschedule friday
> Announcement from taodnt, (#8) dated Fri May 8 21:09:02 2009
why world he have to "reschedule"?
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Fri May 8 21:09:05 2009
I think the update borked actually
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Fri May 8 21:10:15 2009
so what is his rule on missed updates?
..
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Fri May 8 21:13:28 2009
weird I just annoed and it died.
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Sat May 9 02:07:57 2009
hanuman promised plundaria would watch over us.
"my gods, my gods, why hast thou forsaken us?"
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Sat May 9 03:14:39 2009
I have tried 4 annos and they all failed.. is hanumans log files full
?
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Sat May 9 03:15:42 2009
OK repeat of my last failed anno.
I am taking 56 bar bets that beep
has already seen the new Star Trek.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Sat May 9 03:16:13 2009
4 line anno failed how about just 2 line
56 bar bets beep has already seen Star Trek.
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Sat May 9 04:47:35 2009
}> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Sat May 9 03:16:13 2009
}4 line anno failed how about just 2 line
}56 bar bets beep has already seen Star Trek.
you lose. i want my fucking bars, assjack; pay me,
or else i take my payment in whatever manner i see
fit to. since i'm a nice guy i'll even give you more
than 42 seconds respond
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Sat May 9 06:17:56 2009
poor machine, couldn't take it?
> Announcement from PNN, (#14) dated Sun May 10 01:55:16 2009
PNN Headline News
On high, other lands
The masses looked up and cried for help. The sought
hanuman and hanuman was silent.
Hesitantly a few dared to invoke Plundaria...
"help us! grant us this update. Let us prosper!"
An d a voice whispered in their nightmares for
the next ten updates...
"No"
-=[ EMPIRE NEWS ]=-
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
! "All the news that fits, we print." !
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Sun May 10 01:52:36 2009
Sun May 10 01:50:12 2009 Plundaria frowns upon hvy plastic several times
> Announcement from Plundaria, (#13) dated Sun May 10 02:03:40 2009
Looks like something tickled a bunch of issues and
ran the system short of disk space and I was too slow
to read the alert and fix it in reasonable time.
I have resolved the low disk space issue for now.
We collect a large number of core files for Hanuman
to do unnatural things too. These eat up lots of space
but cause nasty bugs to be fixed sooner.
So as to the update I will do
nothing.
Next update is on as scheduled. If we hit problems other
than what I thing stopped the last one I will reconsider
things.
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Sun May 10 06:26:42 2009
i love this game, but sometimes i am not proud of the way i
react, especially after i have been drinking because i tend
to be a mean drunk asshole. so i wish to apologize for my
somewhat bizarre actions towards Belltower; they were so
weird that even now i cannot comprehend how i managed to
justify them.
nothing assuages a guilty conscience like stomping some
jackass into the dirt. gonna have to start looking...
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Sun May 10 16:11:24 2009
Friday's pre-update backup ran out of disk space and failed, which
cancelled the update. As far as I can see, disk space troubles
persisted until Sun May 10 01:57:54 2009.
The server doesn't like running out of disk space at all. I'm still
examining the evidence to figure out what damage that caused, and I'll
report result when I have them. If you think you got hurt, please
mail me details.
We should have been more careful. I apologize.
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Sun May 10 18:54:23 2009
It's hard to assess damage reliably, because running out of disk space
also cripples the log files.
When the disk is full, the server can't extend files, e.g. to create
new game objects. It can still update files, e.g. to update existing
game objects.
Many kinds of game objects are in preallocated files, and should thus
be okay: sectors, power, nation, bmap, realms.
I can't find any evidence of lost ships, planes, land units or nukes.
New lost items, news, treaties, telegrams, bulletins and announcements
could have well been lost.
I might be able to find out more if you send me your log files for the
time between the failed update and Sun May 10 01:57:54 2009.
I'm working on improved procedures and tools to avoid such disasters
in the future. In particular, the server clearly needs work to deal
with full disks more robustely.
Please accept my sincere apologies.
> Announcement from Wales, (#5) dated Sun May 10 20:39:58 2009
I lost a 40 sector island connectd to my mainland by a 2
sector bridge. It still had all of its oil resources and
5 sectors of 100 gold as well as 100 min. There were 180
planes, 50 jf1, 50 jl, 10 np, 20 jt, 20 tc, and 30 jhb.
The ships included 3 car, 15 dd @ 150 tech, 4 lc, 8 bb,
and 15 sb all with their full complement of guns and shells.
I would appreciate it if you could restore the 40 sectors
with full population. before the next update!
thanks
Wales
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Mon May 11 01:12:23 2009
I'm of the opinion that we should roll back to prior
to the update or to the last good save.
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Mon May 11 11:39:43 2009
} ok, so a battleship does 105 damage and my hart returns fire for 29?
Hvy artillery is a bunch of 155mm howitzers, firing shells that weigh
40-something kg. Battleship guns have more than twice the caliber,
and their shells weigh more than a ton each. I think the game gives
you a rather generous break by letting your hat do damage to bb at
all.
Besides, the raw numbers are misleading. The hat fires its 29 damage
straight at the ship. It gets reduced for ship armor. The bb fires
its 105 damage at the sector. It's first reduced by sector defense.
Just 30% of the reduced damage spill over to land units in the sector.
Only to be reduced again by land unit vulnerability.
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Mon May 11 11:40:49 2009
} except that it works erratically not consistantly
} I'll move 20 iron it gets blown up
} I move 50 iron and no one cares
} 100 mil, no big deal,
} 50 mil 3 sectors away? BLAM!
Interdiction of commodities is somewhat random. Chance depends on
weight.
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Mon May 11 11:41:54 2009
} ahh the variable update
} another crappy thing to screw defenders over
If you mean the update window, that was put in to give defenders a
fighting chance against scripted around-the-update attacks.
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Mon May 11 11:44:35 2009
Catching up on the announcement conversation...
I agree that instant-harbors are problematic. Perhaps we can try
something there next game.
Distances, plane ranges, firing range, mobility use, update pacing and
much more need to be considered together to create a good game. This
requires care and discipline.
We have a set of parameters that has become common over a long time.
It's far from perfect, but it's playable. If we mess with all the
variables at once, we very likely end up with a differently broken
game, and precious little insight on what change worked and what
didn't. Not the way you set up useful experiments.
I think we messed plenty in Hvy Metal. We intend to mess some more,
but first we need to learn what we can from the mess we already made.
The automatic defenses are pretty simple. It's always tempting to
make them smarter. But we need to mind the cost in game complexity
and implementation complexity.
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Mon May 11 14:28:58 2009
A player wondered why BTUs aren't increasing.
You gain BTUs when the Empire clock ticks. The Empire clock counts
ETUs, i.e. it ticks precisely 60 times between updates. It ticked at
its regular pace until the last scheduled update. When that update
didn't fire, it stopped, because it had already ticked 60 times.
It'll resume ticking at the next update.
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Mon May 11 19:40:48 2009
the only reason scripted update attacks are so damaging is
because:
1) Tools that make scripting attacks easy
2) Land units do a ton more damage pre update
The only script I've used in empire was to fire at
a sector to deity the sucker as I was too bored
to constantly type fire 12,4 15,5 100 times
:)
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Mon May 11 19:55:59 2009
it's a generous break only in the sense that without fortress firing
having no land arts firing would mean that a battleship could
waste an entire island without repercussions...
which it can do now simply by out ranging the HAT
Poor Malta, Those costal batteries just didn't stand a chance
against those Italian Battleships ;)
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Mon May 11 20:06:21 2009
and while one could argue that reality would be a boring wargame
I disagree vehemently. Wars are the best guide for a wargame
and some Verisimilitude in a wargame would be nice.
Honestly, the best way to set things would be to simply increase the
number of sectors on the home island. then reduce the amount of
money generated by bars and civillians.
land units shrink the world. and you create a very odd situation
where full mobility units simply can't make it to the front line because
the sectors have been shelled down, even though the
land units started with full mobility and were walking on roads.
so, the idea of having a reserve set of land units failed miserably
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Mon May 11 20:35:54 2009
hat are not coastal batteries. For reasons already explained, coastal
batteries do not exist in this game. Deal with it.
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Mon May 11 20:44:50 2009
I *am* dealing with it
last time I checked dying was a valid means of dealing with it :p
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Mon May 11 21:19:22 2009
Fair enough ;)
> Announcement from Acetone, (#10) dated Tue May 12 02:15:08 2009
How about linking Engineers to ETUs to solve the instant harbor problem? x%/etu., and the telegram, and the interdiction.
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Tue May 12 14:24:15 2009
If you start letting things like that happen between updates
then you may as well run a normal multi update per day game
and just run with it.
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Tue May 12 17:51:58 2009
A player inquired about interdiction, in particular how damage is
applied to whatever triggered the interdiction.
To interdict, fortresses, surface ships and artillery units in range
fire, submarines torpedo, bombers fly to the target sector and bomb.
Missiles are separate, and not covered here. Damage is simply added
up. Call it d.
Collateral damage is computed from d and applied to the target sector.
This also damages what triggered the interdiction. Except for
commodity movement, because that's coded in a weird way.
Finally, the damage d is applied to whatever triggered the
interdiction.
When interdicting commodities, 100*d / (d + 100) percent of them are
destroyed.
When interdicting n transported planes, each plane takes d / n percent
damage. Interdiction of transported nukes is not implemented.
When interdicting n moving ships or land units, each ship takes d / n
percent damage, modified by ship armor or land unit vulnerability.
Interdicting ships is very similar to firing at them. The other cases
are quite unlike normal fire. The most striking difference is for
land units. Normal fire can only target the sector. Only a part of
the damage spills over to land units there, but it affects all of them
there simultaneously. Interdiction fire targets the moving land
units. It is spread between them. Only collateral damage affects the
sector.
A small group of land units will take much more damage from
interdiction than from normal fire. The opposite is true for a
sufficiently large group.
If you think this makes no sense, it's because it makes no sense.
> Announcement from taodnt, (#8) dated Wed May 13 19:37:49 2009
Lag-gy today
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Wed May 13 20:44:55 2009
Pretty nasty packet loss.
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Wed May 13 21:05:03 2009
nothing like having lag, then the fastest update ever LOL
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Thu May 14 03:37:34 2009
--- At the Capital City, Kill 'Em All ---
TheDeathAngel Returns to his Deleriously happy
and somewhat reduced civilian population
"I return with victory!" He shouts to the
roar of the crowd. "By merely giving up
another 1/3rd of our country I have ensured
that we will be able to return the (reduced)
lands of Metallica to peace and prosperity"
When pointed out that the Peace Treaty also
entailed giving up all his banks, TheDeathAngel
shruged, "So? We still have the glorious
Ski Resort of Ride the Lightning to help entertain
our glorious new islandmates of Thistle!"
> Announcement from taodnt, (#8) dated Thu May 14 10:22:37 2009
So, when did it become unpopular for mountains to be used as spare capitals?
> Announcement from Wales, (#5) dated Thu May 14 12:05:50 2009
Judging by the new server time...when was it moved to England?
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Thu May 14 16:33:31 2009
I'm mildly shocked we haven't seen a nuke tossed yet
But then again, those nuclear plants are crazy expensive.
Who's going to be the first?
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Thu May 14 17:41:14 2009
Prior news:
Mon May 11 21:21 Thistle sacks taodnt capital
Thu May 14 07:01 Belltower captures and pillages taodnt's capital
Now one of these was done 'properly' with war and carnage attacking,
maiming of citizens and graphic bloody violence.
The other was an arrangement. Kinda of like a ritual dance in a primitive
culuture. At the end of it some spurned suitor is killed. But in this
dance a MASSIVE DOWERY is disposed of in the dance.
Simply handed away to the 'victorious suitor'.
Metal may be pissed about landing ships.
But I am annoyed at the '0 interest, 0 repayment loan' feature inherent in
capital sacks. The fix? No real good idea. But would think that perhaps the awarding
of cash would be defered, say for a couple of updates, so that some minimal amount
of warfare has to occur. Would make coastal cap's safer wrt to cash if you had it
on the coast and it gets sacked and no real war occurs then cash doesn't get lost.
The frigate invaders that put 5 mil in a cap isn't enough, since they get kicked out
immediately and how is a frigate suppose to haul away the cash?
anyway Party on all.
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Thu May 14 20:12:19 2009
Ahh, for the good old days of Loan and Market and Trade
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Fri May 15 00:12:11 2009
Hey guys, I'm a friend of Metallica.
I'm going to try to learn how to play. Wow, I'm doomed.
Mr. Ed
>> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Sun May 10 06:26:42 2009
>
> i love this game, but sometimes i am not proud of the way i
> react, especially after i have been drinking because i tend
> to be a mean drunk asshole.
It's not only when you drink. :)
>> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Tue May 5 14:47:07 2009
>
> but I think the idea that you can take a landing ship
> drop some engineers into a sector
> increase the eff
> and then navigate your fleet in and drop units off
> with full mobility is utterly and completely broken
Totally agree. But, as has been noted, I believe it was an attempt to
break deadlock situations. I still don't like it though.
>> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Wed May 6 02:25:58 2009
>
> Retro wasn't really non-tactical. It just had fewer tactical options.
> They pretty much boiled down to "shell to deity and explore", until
> transport planes added "strip air defense and paradrop" to the mix.
Anyone experimented with removing the shell to diety "feature"?
Perhaps coupled with removing forts (or at least their immunity to air
assault)? I never really liked this particular lawnmower approach to
invasions which was a favorite of the MIT crew of 80s/90s.
Mr. Ed - Tea Totaller of Resvon
empd...@gmail.com
> A couple of comments on recent announcements from Hvy Metal:
>
> >> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Sun May 10 06:26:42 2009
>
> > i love this game, but sometimes i am not proud of the way i
> > react, especially after i have been drinking because i tend
> > to be a mean drunk asshole.
>
> It's not only when you drink. :)
When is he not drinking? According to the "4 Rules of beep to live
by", #3: if you want to drink all day you have to stat first thing in
the morning. The other rules, I think, have something to do with not
using a co-ruler, never take home a fat chick, and if you want to be
perceived as well hung, stand next to the asian guys.
>
> >> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Tue May 5 14:47:07 2009
>
> > but I think the idea that you can take a landing ship
> > drop some engineers into a sector
> > increase the eff
> > and then navigate your fleet in and drop units off
> > with full mobility is utterly and completely broken
>
> Totally agree. But, as has been noted, I believe it was an attempt to
> break deadlock situations. I still don't like it though.
It's just another tool, like anything else. It is no different than
waiting until tech 45 to get your transport planes and then dropping
in on the neighbor. It just provides the same functionality in a
different way. I prefer to remember it for every enemy harbor set up
on my shores, there have been at least 10 Port Overlords or foriegn
soil.
>
> >> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Wed May 6 02:25:58 2009
>
> > Retro wasn't really non-tactical. It just had fewer tactical options.
> > They pretty much boiled down to "shell to deity and explore", until
> > transport planes added "strip air defense and paradrop" to the mix.
>
> Anyone experimented with removing the shell to diety "feature"?
> Perhaps coupled with removing forts (or at least their immunity to air
> assault)? I never really liked this particular lawnmower approach to
> invasions which was a favorite of the MIT crew of 80s/90s.
>
> Mr. Ed - Tea Totaller of Resvon
The Chainsaw mods originally tried the "can't shell out that last
dude" option. Not really too much of a hinderance except that you
could not para-drop on the forts, caps, and mountians. I really hated
it until I realized that after shelling a 100% fort down to one craven
coward, there isn't anything the poor slob can do. That being said, I
never liked the option.
There is a constant "polite discussion" that Empire is too tactical
and is loosing the strategic aspect. But a lot of the people making
that argument also like the "you should only be able to take one row
of sectors per update and give the defender a chance to counter
attack". To me, that method of design reeks of tactics. In my senile
opinion, you need to have that fear in you that in an instant you
could loose a major island. that drives you to dress up your defenses.
Mr. Ed
> The Chainsaw mods originally tried the "can't shell out that last
> dude" option. Not really too much of a hinderance except that you
> could not para-drop on the forts, caps, and mountians. I really hated
> it until I realized that after shelling a 100% fort down to one craven
> coward, there isn't anything the poor slob can do. That being said, I
> never liked the option.
A follow-up, then: what's the deal with sucking mobility when you
shell a sector down? I've always wondered (and been annoyed) about
this. Were it not for this mob sapping, that poor slob could do
something.
Mr. Ed
Gregory E. Garland
news:46bc2901-2f3a-4c95...@o5g2000prh.googlegroups.com...
>A couple of comments on recent announcements from Hvy Metal:
>
>>> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Sun May 10 06:26:42 2009
>>
>> i love this game, but sometimes i am not proud of the way i
>> react, especially after i have been drinking because i tend
>> to be a mean drunk asshole.
>
> It's not only when you drink. :)
>
yeah, but when i haven't been drinking i can usually fake like
i actually have consideration for other people's feelings.
Markus Armbruster
record time, and now has the most sectors. Thistle picked a few sectors
as well. Wales continued to battle Belltower, beep and Metallica.
Rocinate attacked Wales to help his ally Belltower, only to discover a
non-agression treatment at the bottom of a dusty drawer. Apologies and
reparations followed.
Several countries are suspected to have quietly acquired the ability to
build nuclear weapons.
- = [ Empire Power Report ] = -
as of Fri May 22 21:03:33 2009
sects eff civ mil shell gun pet iron dust oil pln ship unit money
Thistle 230 99% 208K 9.7K 8.7K 685 4.7K 15K 700 6.5K 240 160 80 65K
Belltower 260 87% 192K 9.3K 3.4K 620 3.7K 15K 150 3.5K 200 140 40 15K
beep 160 100% 155K 8.6K 7.2K 895 5.3K 14K 100 5.0K 160 100 80 20K
Rocinate 90 100% 90K 6.7K 6.4K 390 4.3K 7.4K 150 3.1K 110 60 60 20K
Wales 90 95% 86K 4.9K 5.5K 325 3.1K 7.5K 100 1.6K 50 60 50 3.6K
Metallica 25 94% 21K 500 550 65 750 1.8K 33 350 8 6 20 785
taodnt 0 0% 0 200 50 10 0 0 0 0 0 20 0 -16K
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
worldwide 855 95% 752K 40K 32K 3.0K 22K 60K 1.2K 20K 770 540 320 80K
Hvy Plastic is running at empire.stdio.com, port 6665. Check out
http://www.pond.sub.org/~armbru/empire/hvy-plastic.html
> Announcement from taodnt, (#8) dated Fri May 15 22:01:48 2009
Here's where art imitates life
Sector Type Production Cost
Ship maintenance 34 ships 1092
Plane maintenance 15 planes 1686
Unit maintenance 1 unit 45
Military payroll 5027 mil, 761 res 25517
Total expenses.....................................................28340
Income from taxes 42199 civs, 6289 uws +21770
Total income......................................................+21770
Balance forward -10762
Estimated delta -6570
Estimated new treasury............................................-17332
After processsing sectors, you will be broke!
Sectors will not produce, distribute, or deliver!
multiply by 40000000 and it looks similar to the us budget
and if this wins the 5 gold bars, give them to thistle ;)
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Sat May 16 03:43:00 2009
From a newly made parking lot in the former land of Tao-didn't make it.
Bastien looks at the remains of P51 fighter with some purple looking
round flower.
Reminded him of the bullthistles that likes to grow in the cowpies back home.
Hmmm.... wonder why just one plane had that unique marking he mutters.
None the less...more land for the ever burgeoning population.
Those short dark Acetone women breed well. Too bad the tao-ist were pretty
much annihalated. Haven't had a decent shag in a week he thinks.
At least the cargo ships are coming full of settlers.
ahh....
In the background he hears a couple of troops playing their favorite
Queen song: "Another one bites the dust!
and another ones gone,
another ones gone,
Another one bitesss..... the dust!!!!!!!!"
Outta the doorway the bullets rip,
to the sound of the beat."
Damn wierd young soldiers, he thinks.
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Sat May 16 07:05:16 2009
} Judging by the new server time...when was it moved to England?
The server runs on UTC. Saves us the trouble of having to deal with
that DST nonsense.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utc
> Announcement from taodnt, (#8) dated Sat May 16 18:10:38 2009
Thank you , Sir!
May I have another?
> Announcement from Wales, (#5) dated Mon May 18 16:33:14 2009
Be it known that Rocinate has broken a 4 update rolling agreement, giving NO notice.
> Announcement from Wales, (#5) dated Mon May 18 19:06:35 2009
Do any of the other players in this game know of and/or
expect a specific set rules/responses to the breaking of
an NA. I am in unfamiliar territroy here and may be
hampered by information I received when I started playing
again a few years ago.
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Mon May 18 19:07:21 2009
kick their ass in the next game
honestly, that's the way I've seen work best
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Mon May 18 19:13:01 2009
Longer Answer:
If you're under attack, don't expect a non ally to stay off the fence
Don't give a person juicy targets to take down
and be strong enough to enforce and punish any treaty breakers
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Mon May 18 19:20:28 2009
anno
*** Bug alert, please read carfully ***
I discovered bugs in uranium mines. They produce too much, and
resource depletion is wrong.
Because the production command doesn't have the bug, its predictions
do not match actual production.
In more detail: mining a depletable resource should yield roughly the
same amount of ore no matter how many updates it takes you. Because
of the bug, uranium mines yield more the faster you mine.
Additionally, uranium depletes too quickly.
Here's what I'm going to do to keep the board as level as I can.
I set the uranium extraction baseline as follows: redesignate a fully
populated 100% sector to u. This mines using 1075 work, plus a bit
from military, and fully depletes the sector.
If you mined a sector and got less rads than you would have with
baseline extraction, I will put the difference back into the ground by
increasing the sector's uranium resource. You'll get a telegram from
me if you're affected.
Everybody gets to exploit the bug freely. I recommend you populate
your uranium mines fully. Throwing in extra mil will extract even
more rads, but it's expensive: 1000m will make less than 60r even in a
perfect mine. You can also play games with sector construction: build
the mine only to 59%, then populate it fully. I figure that should
net you about 13% more rads.
The production command will continue to mispredict your rad
production. Use budget for an accurate prediction.
I'm sorry I didn't catch this in time, and I hope my response is fair
to everyone.
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Mon May 18 19:35:57 2009
did u mean they produce too much? or too little?
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Mon May 18 19:52:55 2009
I designed them to extract rads more slowly than they do. The total
amount of rads is also wrong. Neither problem spoils the game I had
in mind.
The real problem is that your rad yield depends on how you mine them.
That's never been the case (except for p.e. from tech, but that's
negligible here), and therefore players could reasonably expect that
it's not the case in this game.
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Mon May 18 19:58:28 2009
again? too much total rads, or too little? i can't remember the
last game i played in where you _didn't_ deplete a uranium mine
in one update and where i was left scratching my head at the
amount of rads you got.
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Mon May 18 20:24:24 2009
it sounds like you can either produce too many rads
or not enough rads, depending on how you mine it
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Mon May 18 20:27:21 2009
The question "too much total rads, or too little" makes only sense if
you have an amount to compare to. For what it's worth, I wanted 5r
per point of uranium. We got about half as much, assuming baseline
extraction.
The fact that you can't remember a game where uranium mines didn't
deplete quickly can't stop me from making them deplete more slowly.
But bugs can do that.
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Mon May 18 20:28:25 2009
rad production should generate fallout :)
> Announcement from Wales, (#5) dated Mon May 18 20:32:10 2009
Metallica;
Kicking their ass the next game, only works if you
know who it is that broke the treaty. With the annonymity
of the game, only the deity knows the real players in
any game, so unless their names are posted in both the
last game and the next one, there is no way to carry
forward the mistrust!
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Mon May 18 20:34:56 2009
you know what game I'd want to play?
a world map game, with all mobility on land ships and planes reduced
by 1/3rd, along with all ranges reduced by 1/3rd as well
(firing, speed, etc)
it my be a bit much to chew, but with some good bots floating around
it could be a fascinating game
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Mon May 18 20:36:23 2009
Valid point
I suppose I'm used to people using the same Country name from
Game to game.
Do people change country names a lot now?
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Mon May 18 20:36:50 2009
god we can ALL be confusing!
I will just wait and see what god does...
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Mon May 18 20:41:47 2009
You Drink from the fountain -- more --
you've released a water demon -- more --
The water Demon is grateful for his release and grants you a wish -- more --
Your wish? I wish for a 7 sector island in the south pacific with
a 1000 bar bank and a fully built nuclear plant and another 100 tech
The water demon says "I cannot give you that" -- more ---
the Water demon gives you an item and leaves -- more --
i
a - a +0 Uncursed Longsword named Island
# pray
You feel that Hanuman is pleased. Your Stomach feels content.
:(
I want another island! this one is broken!
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Mon May 18 20:47:34 2009
you dip your longsword into the fountain -more-
a hand reaches up to bless the longsword -more-
you now hold 10kt fission nuke! -more-
you are overburdened and cannot move.
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Mon May 18 20:48:26 2009
25 strength to throw the nuke?
> Announcement from Rocinate, (#9) dated Mon May 18 20:49:48 2009
Well sorry for violating my NA with Wales.
It totally was out of my mind when I stepped into help my ally.
I did not intend to break any agreement and was only thinking
that he and my ally were fighting and I should help my ally.
However I agree back at the beginning of April to a rolling
4 turn non-agression pact and it made no mention of allied entaglements.
I will work to appease Wales for my transgression.
Capt. Lee
> Announcement from Wales, (#5) dated Mon May 18 20:51:28 2009
I have accepted Rociante's apology and reasoning.
Now to extract a pound of flesh! :)
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Tue May 19 02:16:11 2009
you know those annoying ribbons people are always putting on
their cars? support this, fight that... finally saw one i can
really get into. it was dollar-bill green and said "support
strippers"; now that's a cause to believe in. the same car also
had a pink ribbon that, instead of saying "find a cure", said
"save the ta-tas". i was tempted to revert to stalker mode and
follow that car all over town.
> Announcement from Contra, (#6) dated Wed May 20 06:03:15 2009
good to see the game is still going on. good luck and good fortune
long live the empire!
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Wed May 20 21:04:44 2009
late update?
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Thu May 21 20:40:30 2009
I just noticed that the Norwegians are having a large 'fisheries' meet.
The second item on the agenda is Waling....
exactly how many Wales can be hunted per season.
Which species of Wales should be available to hunt.
Which parts of the Wales can be sold outside of Norway.
I just happen to find that interesting...
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Fri May 22 02:45:32 2009
they're hunting Wales?
Man, the UK is going to be pissed!
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Fri May 22 05:35:10 2009
whoooaaa way slow connectivity but not at my or our near end....
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Fri May 22 16:50:15 2009
do you know how wierdly satifying it is to see a game reach
nuke tech and still not have a clear winner?
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Fri May 22 21:00:39 2009
and the holy hand-grenade shall be thrown.
NOt with the left hand but with the right hand.
One should count to 3
not 2
not 1
but one doth count to 3 and doth toss the holy hand-grenade
not with left hand
but with the right...
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Fri May 22 21:03:16 2009
we actually have an update on monday.
Markus Armbruster
beep opened the thermonuclear tango minutes after the 30th update by
delivering a 1mt warhead to Wales, avenging the loss of a four-sector
island 17 updates ago. beep later destroyed said four-sector island
with two tac-nukes in order to liberate it.
Thistle joined the dance by lobbing three 1mt warheads at two Belltower
main islands, evaporating half of Belltower's bars and a third of his
people. Thistle's suicide squads then moved in to occupy some of the
radiating rubble. Belltower capitulated.
On update 31, a small band of ragged Acetonian loyalists managed to
overthrow their Belltower oppressors. The Acetonian treasury is looking
forward to become solvent in some 43 updates.
Thistle declared victory a few hours before the 31st update. beep
conceded right before the update, but that didn't stop him from spending
his savings on fireworks right after: Thistle got 1mt on a main island,
Rocinate got 5kt on a small island, and Wales got another 1mt, which
obliterated his capital.
- = [ Empire Power Report ] = -
as of Wed May 27 18:14:54 2009
sects eff civ mil shell gun pet iron dust oil pln ship unit money
Thistle 279 80% 208K 9.7K 9.4K 670 5.0K 15K 350 6.8K 229 156 82 46K
14950.08
beep 165 94% 152K 8.7K 8.2K 1.0K 5.0K 14K 73 5.4K 149 99 75 1.9K
11236.13
Belltower 188 92% 137K 5.6K 4.7K 505 3.3K 8.0K 29 2.1K 182 132 32 7.2K
8951.78
Rocinate 80 97% 81K 6.6K 7.1K 467 4.6K 7.4K 142 2.5K 108 59 60 19K
6770.73
Wales 79 60% 37K 1.7K 2.3K 114 1.9K 1.6K 25 411 19 19 32 -2.5K
2198.15
Metallica 24 97% 21K 370 506 67 639 2.2K 34 297 17 4 17 9.0K
1084.18
Acetone 1 100% 1.0K 67 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 -5.6K
15.53
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
worldwide 816 86% 637K 33K 32K 2.9K 20K 48K 653 17K 704 486 298 31K
See the appended announcements for the final tech levels, deity awards,
and more.
Check out http://www.pond.sub.org/~armbru/empire/hvy-plastic.html
> Announcement from Wales, (#5) dated Fri May 22 21:07:07 2009
First bleeder!!
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Fri May 22 21:07:24 2009
vengeance is a dish best served hot... very, very hot.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Fri May 22 21:27:27 2009
damn... a nuke strike.
bloooeei..
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Fri May 22 21:29:55 2009
Fri May 22 21:06 forty-six times beep explodes a nuclear device damaging Wales
dang nabbit...rabbit holes might protect citizens.
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Fri May 22 23:20:28 2009
Ok people. thats game in my mind. took 50% of my bars and 30% of the population
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Fri May 22 23:28:19 2009
we are shocked... shocked _and_ appalled that someone would
resort to using nukes. why kind of game are you people playing,
anyway?
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Fri May 22 23:29:04 2009
The peacefull nation of Belltower AKA doorbell
hereby grants all propriety and short dark women of acetone
to the powers of the purple thisle.
We offer capitulence to the thorny leader...
Ding
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Sat May 23 02:06:26 2009
man
can't even go up to the mountains for memorial day
LOL
> Announcement from Belltower, (#4) dated Sat May 23 03:39:39 2009
Hope everyone has a nice summer.
Gotta say it was fun.
If beep wants to fight thistle for power he is welcome.
Nothing like a few nukes to make one have less hostile abitions
good game Everyone my hat to Thistle.
Thanks marcus for the work.
Ding
> Announcement from Thistle, (#1) dated Mon May 25 14:39:02 2009
We have shelled, bombed, destroyed, mangled,
torped, nuked, pillaged, and killed.
Thistle declares a win, in hopes of bringing
peace to this Heavy Plastic world.
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Mon May 25 15:31:50 2009
*** Attention, please ***
A victory declaration has been made. Viable countries have 24 hours
to oppose it.
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Mon May 25 21:01:23 2009
we accept the win declaration by Thistle. if we had a chance at
hitting his home island sometime soon we would fight on, but
we don't before he will be able to hit us.
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Mon May 25 21:10:17 2009
but we're gonna drop a nuke on him anyway :-)
everyone deserves a nuke... except us, we're too
pretty to nuke
> Announcement from Thistle, (#1) dated Mon May 25 21:11:37 2009
Thanks beep , I needed that
Warms my soul.
> Announcement from beep, (#7) dated Mon May 25 21:16:10 2009
rosy deserves a nuke, just because.
wales deserves extra because we have discovered that
he is not just evil, but evil incarnate. that's right,
wales is the anti-christ
> Announcement from Wales, (#5) dated Mon May 25 22:09:12 2009
I am not just anti-christ, I am also anti-buddha, anti-yahweh, and anti-allah, to name a few. But since everyone should have a belief, I believe I'll have another drink.
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Tue May 26 07:01:05 2009
Updates on Memorial day....
urk
and I have Jury Duty in 4 hours after being in the mountains
all weekend
> Announcement from Metallica, (#2) dated Tue May 26 07:23:58 2009
Oh, and well played Thistle I certainly have no
objections to your victory declaration
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Wed May 27 18:14:27 2009
*** Hvy Plastic is over ***
Congratulations to Thistle for winning solo!
Updates are now disabled.
- = [ Empire Power Report ] = -
as of Mon May 25 21:04:08 2009
sects eff civ mil shell gun pet iron dust oil pln ship unit money
Thistle 269 89% 220K 10K 9.0K 710 4.6K 15K 532 6.7K 239 162 85 18K
15239.96
beep 161 96% 151K 8.5K 7.8K 950 4.6K 15K 102 5.7K 152 93 75 11K
10666.63
Belltower 222 74% 152K 5.9K 4.0K 477 3.3K 8.3K 38 2.2K 182 132 33 232
9458.89
Rocinate 88 100% 91K 6.7K 6.7K 429 5.7K 7.4K 142 2.6K 108 59 60 13K
6847.13
Wales 89 66% 58K 2.8K 3.7K 211 2.5K 4.4K 40 699 39 48 34 7.3K
3735.61
Metallica 24 95% 21K 372 420 61 647 2.0K 31 333 5 4 17 4.2K
1009.87
Acetone 0 0% 0 82 36 3 0 0 0 0 0 4 0 -5.2K
-6.64
taodnt 0 0% 0 209 39 8 0 0 0 0 0 18 0 -18K
-10.04
Council 0 0% 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 -12K
-20.30
Contra 0 0% 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 -12K
-25.84
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
worldwide 853 85% 694K 35K 32K 2.8K 21K 52K 885 18K 725 520 304 6.7K
# name tech research education happiness capital
1 Thistle 204.83 0.00 19.89 3.92 78,4
2 Metallica 165.83 0.00 18.98 0.00 76,44
3 Council 85.72 0.00 0.14 0.00 -60,22
4 Belltower 196.52 0.00 14.20 0.00 10,-18
5 Wales 188.26 0.00 24.00 0.00 29,11
6 Contra 105.01 0.00 0.23 0.00 -22,-6
7 beep 196.15 0.00 18.48 0.00 -7,25
8 taodnt 154.38 0.00 4.04 0.20 -64,-20
9 Rocinate 185.48 0.00 31.62 6.81 30,-40
10 Acetone 128.43 0.00 0.80 0.00 -6,42
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Wed May 27 18:15:53 2009
- = [ Empire Power Report ] = -
as of Wed May 27 18:14:54 2009
sects eff civ mil shell gun pet iron dust oil pln ship unit money
Thistle 279 80% 208K 9.7K 9.4K 670 5.0K 15K 350 6.8K 229 156 82 46K
14950.08
beep 165 94% 152K 8.7K 8.2K 1.0K 5.0K 14K 73 5.4K 149 99 75 1.9K
11236.13
Belltower 188 92% 137K 5.6K 4.7K 505 3.3K 8.0K 29 2.1K 182 132 32 7.2K
8951.78
Rocinate 80 97% 81K 6.6K 7.1K 467 4.6K 7.4K 142 2.5K 108 59 60 19K
6770.73
Wales 79 60% 37K 1.7K 2.3K 114 1.9K 1.6K 25 411 19 19 32 -2.5K
2198.15
Metallica 24 97% 21K 370 506 67 639 2.2K 34 297 17 4 17 9.0K
1084.18
Acetone 1 100% 1.0K 67 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 -5.6K
15.53
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
worldwide 816 86% 637K 33K 32K 2.9K 20K 48K 653 17K 704 486 298 31K
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Sun May 31 19:32:36 2009
Sunday is bars-from-heaven-day! Except when I don't feel like it, or
when I forget. Which I seem to do a lot. Sorry about that.
Only announcements before the official game end competed. And because
the game's already over, the winner gets the honor but not the gold.
I enjoyed Belltower's "3 levels of dumb", Wales' idyllic Maypole
vision, beep's "we're too pretty to nuke", and other announcements
from these guys, but they all won before, and it takes a lot to win
again.
Metallica wins the honors for paying his Army in Ramen noodles, and
other funny announcements.
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Mon Jun 1 20:27:39 2009
Deity Awards
The "Chuckling Deities" Award
GOLD beep for winning chuckle bars two times
Silver Wales for winning once, with my favourite announcement
Bronze Belltower, Contra, Metallica
for winning once
The "Talkative Tyrant" Award
GOLD Belltower for making 110 out of 338 player announcements
Silver Metallica for 85
Bronze beep for 61
The "Scatterbrained Strategist" Award
GOLD Rocinate NA? What NA? Remembering how to invade is hard
enough!
The "Show me the Money" Award
GOLD beep, Belltower for sacking a hostile capital and obliterating
another one
Silver Thistle for sacking one
The "Plundarian TweeterTwit" Award
GOLD Belltower for 1673 shellings in all forms
Silver Thistle for 1263
The "Lawnmower" Award
GOLD Belltower for 331 violent sector takeovers
Silver Thistle for 255
Bronze beep for 156
The "Silent Hunter" Award
GOLD Acetone for firing 133 submarine torpedos
Silver (not awarded)
Bronze Wales for 40
The "Exploding Porcupine" Award
GOLD Metallica for laying well over 2000 seamines
The "Damn the Torpedoes" Award
GOLD Thistle for sweeping 82 seamines the painful way
Silver Wales for 77
The "Jolly Roger" Award
GOLD Belltower for boarding 54 ships
Silver Thistle for 34
Bronze beep for 26
The "Top Gun" Award
GOLD Belltower for 394 aerial victories and bombing runs
Silver (not awarded)
Bronze Thistle, Wales for 98
The "Armageddon" Award
TRITIUM beep for delivering 6 nuclear devices
Plutonium Thistle for 3
> Announcement from Hanuman, (#12) dated Mon Jun 1 20:35:35 2009
Technical trivia: we had 31 updates, 12 server oopses, one failed
update (deity's fault), more than 400,000 player commands, generating
more than 12,500 telexes (some 2.8MiB total), and 216MiB of log files.