STARWEB EMAIL DISCUSSION GROUP (THE SEDG) (Sponsored by Flying Moose Technologies' Starweb Analyzer - http://flyingmoose.cjb.net) VOL. 37 July 3, 2000 CONTENTS Anouncement - Summer Slowdown Feature Article - Anonymous Starweb Games Questions - Building a PBB and getting ambushed - answered: Robot attack and key capture SEDG Web Page URL The Captain's Log - A Challenge The Swap Corner - Sharing Maps Correspondence - Private Games ANNOUNCEMENT The Summer Slow Down. I am enjoying putting the SEDG together IMMENSELY and I hope you have enjoyed reading them. I find that due to my very busy summer schedule (I've saved up all my vacation time :-) I will be putting the SEDG on a monthly basis until September. The publishing dates will be August 7th and September 4rth and then we shall go biweekly again. My backlog of articles is starting to get thin and I find I have about 10 left. This will get us thru until December. I realize that there is a limit to what you can say about 1 game but I am hoping that the SEDG when/if it finishes it's run will be the complete bible of Starweb. I would be pleased to accept any articles on various Starweb Variants as well as narratives on specific games if they were unique or exciting. FEATURE ARTICLE Anonymous Starweb Games I am by no means the right person to talk about this style of game. Currently I am in my first Anonymous game. Why did I join one finally after so many years? Well, to be honest I've played every position in the game already and have played to win and just for combat. Frankly, I was looking for something new. So the first thing I sat down to do was a little thinking. What character did I want to play? Well, as with any Starweb game there is the decision whether you wish to score well, fight a lot or both. Here is what I came up with (and it's all my own darn opinion). Merchant - Well, they certainly score well. And in games where you have a lot of allies they become boring unless you are active doing the strategy and diplomacy. For an anonymous game I figured you would have a lot less allies and the scoring inequality wouldn't be so bad. But did I want to just haul metal for those few players who could figure out what I was? This didn't have much appeal. Apostle - In a regular game they are hard put to compete without a large infusion of ships and a friendly Jihad against an ally. In an Anonymous game I figure you had half a chance to score if you could find a friendly berserker to martyr your converts. But I know the key to Apostle success tends to be via Jihad over martyrs. Besides, here again your success would be gauged by how well you did recruiting an ally to help you. Empire Builder - they bore me in regular games. I guess you would have a lot more ships to use to build up industry since you wouldn't have to give them all to your allies for war BUT what if you are attacked. Using your resources for defense would certainly blunt your scoring. Militarily you have no advantages over such creatures as Pirates and Berserkers. Art Collector - This position seemed the most hopeless. How would you be able to show anyone what you are? Unless you flew around with two keys and passed art back and forth between them. Considering the shortage of keys one has while expanding I didn't place much hope in this behavior. So, you would be dependent on players trying to shift art to your key. Again, I don't like my position in the game relying on how bright my neighbors are. Berserker - Well, if you saved up all your ships you might be able to compete for the win in a final all out PBB drop. And it shouldn't be hard to show anyone what you are - just do an R attack. If combat is your style this character has unique abilities and is very good versus Apostles. This position appealed to me. I'll bet the Anonymous games have a lot of Berserkers in them. Pirate - Scoring is rarely their forte so let's forget about this. It would be easy to show players what you are if you manage to plunder border worlds. I figure the limitation of cooperation will mean that your capture abilities are just as good as in a regular game. Sure you can't put together an armada as large but neither can your opponent. In the end I wanted the best game possible for my first anonymous game. So I have chosen the Pirate. Presently I am on turn 8. I have met my neighbors and I am attempting to ally with some and figure out whom to target. Here are some things I've learned. 1) I met 2 merchants on T4/5 and they both dropped CGs to bring in those 10 points and to point out what they are. With their low scores they were either merchants or Berserkers who were lying. Hey, if you want to gain an advantage you could drop a CG and pretend to be a merchant so that you are invited into the Players Empire. In short order you could surprise him with a Robot attack at the HW. Is this a Backstab? Gee, I don't know - it's supposed to be an anonymous game so you don't really have any agreements. With this in mind, I declared both the players ally/loaders. I gifted each a small key at my HW. But when it came time to build ships onto their keys I made sure I had some I ships to prevent capture of the HW (or loss of industry) and the keys were not over 5 ships each (so they couldn't depopulate the HW). Each of these guys did an out/in/out to figure out as much of my territory as possible. This is like this F10.W1.HW.W2 to allow them to go out from the HW, back to the HW and to another new world. It helps them map and get metal/mine information. I also plundered worlds so they could see it. One merchant instantly answered by gifting me rocks. I am still trying to figure out how to tell him I want keys with ships! Both merchants bring in keys of their own to haul - Cool! They are obviously experienced anonymous players. I meet a pirate (his border plundered) and I back off. I am not interested in fighting another pirate for his overly plundered rocks. I hope the feeling is mutual. I meet an Apostle. Hmmm, without securing a berserker to help what is the point of attacking him? I guess it could be for the fun of capturing his ships and pushing him out of the game. But getting control of his HW and surrounding worlds to feed metal is more work than it is worth. I gift a border world to him that I already plundered. You have to be careful what you gift, as I didn't want an interior world with homefleet to wind up ambushing my merchants. No homefleet is possible but doesn't allow you to defend the world. I hope this gift will signal my good intentions. Will he give me ships? Time will tell. I am very carefully tracking scores. Now that I've identified the merchants and Apostle I have been able to isolate their scores. I've met 3 others. One has a very low score and I'm wondering about berserker as he hasn't dropped any CGs. Another had a score that was a multiple of 15. I try to transfer art to him but it doesn't work. He is likely and EB as his score is high. The last score is also a multiple of 15 with an even lower score - an even better candidate for Art Collector. At the border world with him I captured the world. I plan to gift him my key of 1 ship and to drop my art on the world. Next turn I can try to load the art to him. Will he be smart enough to see why I gave him my key instead of his world back? We'll see. As to targets. Well, I would prefer to leave the pirate and apostle alone. I would love to get help from the Berserker if I can manage to show him what I want. HOW THE HECK DO YOU EXPLAIN TO SOMEONE YOU WANT HELP FROM HIM MILITARILY? I'm not even sure he has a border with my intended targets. The simplest thing to do would be to gift him a key along side of a large armada I have inside enemy territory. This should convey the idea that - Hey, I'm invading and I want you to help - and it would identify the target since I will be in his space. But this plan suffers from the fact that I don't know if the berserker will come in with ships of his own. And when I do get to the HW will he be smart enough to do an R attack. Perhaps he will he attack me if he is more friendly with my intended victim! I figure that I will go after the EB because I have hopes of getting the AC on my side. And I figure Art Collectors having the hardest time recruiting allies should be very grateful. With my luck he will give me worlds to plunder :-(. Meanwhile I have been using small keys to fly over every border - and there are a lot of them. When I hit worlds that are owned I try to probe. If it's one of the players I am making nice with I try to do a couple things. I try to fly through a world with homefleet. This has confirmed that both merchants have declared me an ally (No ambush). I also try to load metal to see if I'm a loader. On the EB border I sent in a couple keys to run about mapping. This ought to bother him and who knows he may invade me :-). But it will give me the added mapping knowledge to make a strike more successful. Now, being a pirate with out added ally's resources (ships) I have to think about what would be the best battle tactics. To rush a HW without overwhelming ships would eliminate the possibility of pirate capture. I might be successful but I have taken away my best ability. Perhaps invading and just trying to take worlds and disrupt hauling might allow me to capture enough ships to make a HW capture more successful. The other thought I had was to really annoy the EB border by taking worlds with small keys. If he could be enticed into invading me early when he won't have more than 30 ships/wave I might be able to give ground until I have an armada that can go and trap his leading wave and capture it. That would be fun too! I am hopeful that my neighbors might gift me keys in their territories and guide me to some front they have. Or better yet, allow me to use the ships for my own purposes. For now I study my turnsheet carefully looking for subtle clues and try to learn as much as I can about this silent Starweb Variant. ADDENDUM: Well, it's been 4 turns since I've written this particular article and I have a little more to report. Without giving away anything that might identify my game and position - I managed to correctly identify the Art Collector so I immediately gifted him a key of one ship at peace at my HW where I congregated my art. Each turn I plan on transferring 1 art to his key. If he gets the picture and gives me stuff then I will certainly give him more. If not, I will take them back. He can't possibly escape my empire with a key of 1 so I'm hoping for cooperation. The turn I was to invade the Empire Builder I put my armada on the border and gifted the world to one of my allies. He should see my huge fleet invade and hopefully give me ships or help out. What happens is that the Pirate lands on one of my borders with an intermediate size fleet. Am I invaded? I didn't know so I immediately turned my invasion around for defense. So much for that brilliant move :-). I also gifted a world that I plundered once and had recovered to this Pirate. The message here was - "Hey, I'm a pirate too and want to be friendly to you". The next turn the Pirate was gone. I figure he was just checking out a border or was lost. The next turn I find out where he was going as one of my allies gifts me a world where he is under attack by this pirate. Unfortunately my big fleets are now on the EB border again and too far to help. Besides this 'ally' has been hauling for me but hasn't given me a thing!! He has gotten all the rewards of our relationship and it has been one sided. I'm afraid he is on his own for now. Nothing vindictive here - he is still free to haul for me. Meanwhile the other merchant has gifted me his HW (for the points) and I dutifully build to him until I can get keys to his HW. I figure he won't mind if I take some ships and go to my Target EB - that is only 2 turns away. I continue to give worlds to the Apostle and Pirate on my border to indicate good intentions. I only have one hostile on my border and the resources of two empires. This is the kind of fight a Pirate can sink his teeth into AND the time and effort I spent making nice with neighbors (rather than ignore them) has resulted in worlds for plunder. I appear to be in second place from what I can see. All in all it's been a blast. I'm sure there is a lot more that can be said about Anonymous games - why not write them down and sent them in. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- QUESTIONS - Can anyone answer these? Last issue Paul Balsamo posed this question and I didn't get a response. I assume that it's because nobody knows the answer (it couldn't be that SEDG readers are too lazy to email me could it :-). Here is Paul's question and his answer. Thanks Paul. Q) If you order a PBB built and fly thru an ambush that would reduce the key to less than the 25 ships what do you get? A neutral key with a PBB or perhaps a fleet that fails to build a PBB. A) A 26 ship key that builds a PBB on the same turn that it gets ambushed for 1 ship while moving is not destroyed. It will be a 25 ship key at its destination (without a PBB of course). How do I know? Been there, done that. ************************************** Here is a question posed by Jack Fulmer. The situation is: 1) ABLE is a berserker. 2) BAKER is not a berserker. 3) W123 (1, 100, 200) [BAKER] (Industry=2, Metal=6, Mines=3, Population=35, Limit=35,Turns=4, I-ships=20) F255[ABLE]=20/0 F1[ ]=0 Clearly ABLE can and probably should robotize the world. Look at all those lovely I-ships to replace the ships he uses from F255 plus more! Question: Assume ABLE does F255R14 and no other keys not at peace arrive at W123. He will own the world next turn and its I-ships but will he own the neutral key or have to wait another turn to capture it? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- STARWEB EMAIL DISCUSSION GROUP - is now available on the web. Look for our new MAPPER'S SECTION on the SEDG Web Page. http://www.accessv.com/~somnos/sedg.htm ----------------------------------------------------------------------- FEATURE - THE CAPTAIN'S LOG 000703.2355?4 By Walt Schmidt walts@dorsai.org I Task Thee - Be Thee Up To It? "You need an infinite stretch of time ahead of you to start to think, (and) infinite energy to make the smallest decision." - Jean Baudrillard We're now on a monthly run - no more bi-weeklies, at least for the summer. And while Elliot kicked-off the summer with a goodly-length discussion on anonymous games, I'm going to keep this log short and to the point. Unfortunately, as I write this - I'm not too sure of the specific direction I want it to take. Well, that's not entirely true. [AH ha, do I detect the smell of mendacity in the air, Nemo?] [No Alter, you don't - nor are you either Paul Newman or Burl Ives, and this isn't A Cat On A Hit Tin Roof]. What isn't entirely true is that while I do know the direction I want this log to take, it's the how in "successfully" getting there of which I'm not too sure. So when in doubt, I go the direct route... Seeing how the summer just started and I've got [And before you start up again, Alter, yes it's that AOL thing, again] an itch that needs scratching, what I need is half a dozen or so good men [NEMO!], er, good people, to join Elliot and I in a private game. I'm thinking of is a weekly, email, dual-multi, 20,000 victory point game. The dual-multi is my way of saying that each of us will play two characters [NEMO, does that mean] [Yes, Alter - you and I against the rest of the known universe!]. All communications are allowed, and the only other requirements or rules are there ain't any - other than those printed in the Starweb Rules booklet. Folks - here's your chance to keep busy during the summer months, while at the same time test the mettle of your "characters" against others of us who read or write SEDG. And with all apologies to Stan Lee - the winner of this proposed game would be the recipient of the First-Ever Captain Nemo Fabulous No- Prize, get special mention in a special edition of SEDG, and, receive a specially designed Winners No-Prize certificate - designed by himself and suitable for framing or any other use the winner can think of... So, as I task thee - be thee up to it?!! Shai Dorsai ! Nemo ----------------------------------------------------------------------- FEATURE - THE SWAP CORNER Sharing Maps Well, There are presently two scenarios to consider. One, your ally doesn't own a Flying Moose Technologies Starweb Analyzer (shame on him ). The second is that your ally is an Analyzer user also. Well, assuming you know how to create the map here goes: 1) Ally is a poor cousin without a Starweb Analyzer. When you click File->Export map you will be given options to create a graphic file that contains the map. You can create a bitmap or a Gif. Only choose Gif if you are operating at 256 colors or less otherwise this option will not work. You are also given some choices about the map. a) Invert colors - this is a good idea if you will be printing the map instead of viewing it on a computer. The background of the SW Analyzer map is black and you will quickly run out of ink if printed. A white background is preferred for hardcopies. b) Include filtered out worlds - As you know, any filters you use will be highlighted on the map. If you want to send a map to a buddy that only includes your area - you can filter out all worlds within ring 4 of your HW then export it and send it. But if you include all filtered out worlds then your total map is used. c) Include historical worlds - this includes worlds you don't presently see but were seen on previous printouts. d) Show owners - You can display the worlds by number alone or by number with the first 3 letters of the owner's name. By numbers alone will fit more of the map onto one screen/page. e) Display by Team - You can display your alliance and any others in one color for easy viewing of territories controlled by each team. Once this map has been saved you can open it in any graphic program such as Microsoft Paint or any web browser such as Netscape or Internet Explorer and these programs can print them to paper. Sorry, the SWAP doesn't support printing out the map directly - we are striving for the paperless online experience :-). If you wish to send the map to an ally just pop it into the snail mail OR file attach it for email. Bitmaps tend to be very large so you may wish to use a graphic program to compress it to a JPG format or even Winzip it to a smaller size. 2) Your Ally has the SWAP This is the easiest way to share maps. The SWAP saves its map information as a simple text file, which just records the coordinates for each world. The SWAP handles creating the connections and labeling the owner from your turnsheets. All you have to do is update your map, save it then send the map file to your ally. Unless you have relabeled the map file it will be a file in your game folder named for the game. E.g game.map or for SW-1200 it would be sw- 1200.map. The map file just has to be put into your allies game folder and voila - when he processes the turn your map will show up (Caution: He must have the same game turns as you to get an identical map). The map file must be in a certain format - starting with line 1 looking like this. Version:1 So if you send the file as text email you must delete all the internet routing information that is put at the top of the file so the file is cleaned up. If you send it as a file attachment there will not be any extra text put on the file. Here is an example of a map file in the SWAP. This was part of SW-Z1300.map. Version:1 W1(7,13) W2(4,15) W3(4,7) W4(9,4) W5(5,27) W6(7,3) W7(6,9) W8(4,34) W9(4,3) Enjoy your maps! ----------------------------------------------------------------------- CORRESPONDENCE Ken Cassady said: It is a good idea to put game listings in the SEDG. Make it a section of it own. I do not have a partner. Do we know who are partners are before the game? Will work with anyone and will play any position except Art. If you have someone that would like to play and no partner let him contact me, if we are allowed to before the game. Ken Cassady << Sorry Ken - I should have proof read the SEDG more carefully. I wrote that article a while ago. The Private partner game started and is on turn 5 already. But I agree with you that listing Private games people would like to start to advertise for players is a good idea. I have done this in the past and if anyone wants to post a premise for a private game they would like to start just send it to me. Remember, if you are organizing the game you must get the list of players, their Acct numbers, character types and submit the request for the whole group to FBI. If you want to use Game Setup Coupons you will have to send them with a written request for the game (rather than by email). At present I'm in enough SW games (and would have hoped some would have ended before the summer). But by the fall I will be ready to join in again for some gaming. El Well, that's it for Volume 37. Don't be afraid to submit articles or suggestions. They don't have to be long. Address your correspondence to Elliot Hudes at somnos@compuserve.com