STARWEB EMAIL DISCUSSION GROUP (THE SEDG) (Sponsored by Flying Moose Technologies' Starweb Analyzer - http://flyingmoose.cjb.net) VOLUME 41 October 2, 2000 ANNOUNCEMENT I am coming close to the end of my stash of Starweb articles. So to ensure that we enjoy the SEDG for a little longer I am going to take the newsletter to a monthly interval. What I would really like is for players to write some interesting articles and submit them. Elliot CONTENTS Feature Article - Game's End and Communication by John Shannonhouse Questions - The Pop limit order and Ambush orders SEDG Web Page URL The Captain's Log The Swap Corner - Troubleshooting - Errors reported in the processing window Correspondence FEATURE ARTICLE Game's End and Communication by John Shannonhouse WHEN IS THE GAME GOING TO END? When should you make that big push to win the game? Your Alliance members are all growing at different rates. Where do you want to meet to keep them as close as possible by the end of the game so everyone can get a good score? This requires knowledge of the Victory Point Limit. The Victory Point limit is the average of everyone's choice of an ending score. As soon as anyone passes this limit the game is over. Estimating the Victory Point Limit of a game is not the most important part of the game for a new player. Diplomacy and learning the rules takes first priority. For a more experienced player this information becomes more critical. It is much easier to do than you may think. A beginner can work it out as easily as an old pro. Getting the exact Victory Point Limit is impossible without knowing the choices of all of the players, but you can get an estimate of the most likely range in which the final result will fall, normally between 6,500 and 8,400. The actual winning score is higher by hundreds of points. Of course your game may be one that has an unusual number of people choosing an ending score of 1,000 or 10,000. One person choosing an ending score of 1,000 does not mean the game will end at 5,000. One person's choice has a relatively small effect on the overall average. He can change the average by only one fourteenth of the difference between his score and the average of the other players. For every 1500 points of difference from the average, the average will change by 100 points. Notice that each time you make the additional ending score choice the difference between the normal high and normal low also decreases. Once you know all fifteen scores the high and low ranges will be the same, and will in fact be the Victory-point limit. That assumes no one lied to you about the choice of ending score. In general Pirates like low ending scores because they can gain the lead quickly, but they get smaller return on each world for multiple plunders so they slow up towards the end. Berserkers are the opposite extreme. They like high ending scores so they can have plenty of time to build and position their PBBs. In general a Pirate should automatically choose an ending score of 1,000 and the Berserker should automatically choose an ending score of 10,000. If they always did this it would be easy to plug in those choices for each player type, but not everyone chooses an ending score based only upon those considerations. Nonetheless if your game is top heavy in Pirates or Berserkers you may want to take that into consideration. I hope this tip might be helpful in determining your own choice for an ending score as well. If you want to surprise people, it is easier to do so by choosing a low score. One player can have a 500-point effect on the Victory-point limit by choosing an ending score of 1,000, but may only make a 100 or 200 point change by choosing 10,000. COMMUNICATION The single most important factor in a STARWEB game is communication. You have to make strong allies you can trust and keep in touch every turn. The best strategy is an Alliance strategy rather than an individual strategy. Most character types need to expand in order to get a decent score. That means someone has to be attacked. Players prefer to attack someone who is not communicating for two excellent reasons. First if they are not talking then they may be plotting an attack themselves. Second a player who does not communicate does not have allies to protect him. Only a suicidal player would attack a player who is known to belong to a strong alliance. It is also virtually impossible to work out completely point-neutral deals. It is much easier for all members of the alliance to jointly help out whichever players need it most and strive towards a close alliance win instead of an individual win. An alliance can also make use of the skills of several different players. For example, I am an excellent mapper. I can usually work out overall map patterns while most people are still trying to untangle their own home areas. Another player may excel at battle tactics. Another may be able to do a lot of phoning to keep everyone up to date and coordinated. Another may be good at coordinating everyone's scores and keeping all the members from being paranoid about each other. That is very important because distrust can destroy an alliance in a minute. Ideally any alliance should work towards a result as close together as possible. If you do work with an alliance and plan to play more STARWEB games in the future, it is important not to backstab anyone in the alliance. It is very easy to take advantage of an alliance and push yourself into a win at the expense of the other members. But you might wind up playing with the same player in another game. People are willing to forgive their enemies. When in direct confrontation you fight it out and the best man wins. Your bitterest opponent in one game may be your staunchest ally in another as long as you know he keeps his promises. If an ally stabs you in the back that is a very different story. If you meet him in another game you have a guaranteed enemy who will do his best to wipe you out as fast as possible. John Shannonhouse ---------------------------------------------------------------------- QUESTIONS - Can anyone answer these? >Last issue I asked if anyone had the opportunity to use the raise the >Population limit of a world order. > Rick Loomis replied: I meant to reply to this last time. Wasting the metal so the berserker won't capture it with a robot attack is one use, and in a LONG game or a BITTER END game someone might use it to play around with. But it CAN be used for valid reasons. (1) We used to have in the world mix, a couple worlds with more total industry and metal production than population limit. I think at the time we thought Berserkers would have a hard time winning, and these worlds were intended for them. (If a non-berserker owned it, if you built with the industry, then that turn the world would not produce metal. So you'd get a build every other turn.) (2) if you MIGRATE population to a world to make it more than it's limit, that population survives for one turn -long enough to build something. It would be very expensive, but a world that has been PBB'd can be revived by increasing the population limit from 0 to 1. Editor: OK – speaking of rarely used orders. 'Z' will prevent you from ambushing anyone anywhere. Has anyone needed to use this? Why? And speaking of ambush – Znnn stops you from ambushing at world nnn. I presume this includes your fleets there as well as your homefleet. Can anyone confirm that? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 001001.1224?4 By Walt Schmidt walts@dorsai.org "The game's afoot." - King Henry V, act 3, sc. 1 "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers." - King Henry V, act 4, sc. 3. - William Shakespeare Thanks to Elliot Hudes, Herb Diehr, John Muije, Ken Cassady, Mic Hammerschmitt, Sharon Wyatt, and myself - there is a good old-fashion, seven player, anything and everything goes game starting soon. We're all going to control two characters - a private multi-game if you will. And as my last few logs have been - so will this one take yet another look at this private game. Being a private game - and if they all agree - once we're at a turn where the known world encompass the bulk of the mapped territory, and without giving away too much, I'll write about the game itself. Until then - some background. The game is comprised of four Merchants, three Berserkers, three Pirates, two Artifact Collectors, one Apostle, and one Empire Builder. We are paired as two sets of Berserker-Merchants, two sets of Pirate-Merchants, and one set each of the combinations Pirate- Berserker, Apostle-Artifact Collector, and Empire Builder-Artifact Collector. In case you've never played in a multi-game, which are usually three characters each, for victory purposes the lowest of your characters' scores is your official score for the game. The game ends when at least one player's lowest score equals or exceeds the victory point limit. Then, the player whose low score is greater than anyone else's low score is the winner. As we few, we happy few, have decided that anything goes, I expect the diplomacy to be set on high - along with the (anonymous) trash-talking. [AND I have it on good authority that Nemo is up to a good old-fashion free-for-all] [Hi Alter!] [GOOD GAMING Nemo] [Considering who is playing, Alter, I'm sure it will be a good one!] Which brings me to one last point. Clearly, we who play Star Web do so not because of the superb graphics, its real-time interactions, or the cheat-codes we've just downloaded from the Internet. Rather, we do so because of the overall game-character-opponent interactions. What better way to ensure you get the most for your time - than putting together a private game. I'm even thinking of putting together an anonymous multi private game - but that's another story for another day. 'Til next log - Shai Dorsai ! Nemo ----------------------------------------------------------------------- FEATURE - THE SWAP CORNER Troubleshooting - Errors reported in the processing window The processing window reports errors inside the turns. Usually a typo results in an unrecognized attribute error. In this case you should review this turn to see if you can correct it and then rerun the analyzer. A fatal error will stop the turnsheet from being processed. The Analyzer will tell you which turnsheet had trouble and the line number of the offending line. You will need to review the turn sheets fed in for the error. Basically you must remember that a turnsheet must resemble closely the FBI Starweb Turnsheet. Line noise, garbage information, inappropriate quoting, missing information will result in error flags. Even abnormal spacing can be a problem. There must be a blank line after each world's information (so the program knows to move onto a new world and store the info in it's database). Another new problem I have noticed are turnsheets with world information but no fleet information. This occurred because the offending turnsheet had two different quotestyles. The lines with the worlds had a simple > quote. E.g. >W134 (23,25,133) etc. The fleets usually start on a new line after 3 empty spaces (column 4). But here they were at column 6 (should be 5 after including the quote). E.g. >W134 (23,25,133) etc. > F44 The analyzer can tolerate 3 quotestyles but they must be the same on every line. They are '>', '> ' and '>>'. Other quotestyles can be done also with special instructions but not a style that changes line by line. Another error message one will get is that the turn was found but there was no data found. It then gives instructions about how to handle those alternate quotestyles in case this was the cause. The problem is usually not how the turnsheet was quoted as the internet is getting quite uniform in this regard. Most commonly your ally when sending the turn has excluded the Game Identification line. The Analyzer must find this line as it designates where the data starts. This is the way we can ignore all that extra internet routing garbage at the top of a turnsheet sent by email. If this line is not found then the Analyzer figures you have no data ?. The line looks like this. Game SW-L/30, Turn 12, [BAKU] The final message in the processing window is a comment on whether the map file was processed. The following are common causes: o Check for unsupported email generated quote marks (only '>', '>>' and '> ' are supported) o information wrapping to a new line incorrectly o garbage information/typos. Turns reported as not found in the processing window (Despite your knowledge that you own the turn sheets). Check the following: o Have you named the turnsheet properly? o Have you placed the turnsheet in the correct directory designated in the Edit Game Profile Window? Turns not processed and not reported in the processing window. Have you added the player's name to the player list under Edit Game Profile? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- CORRESPONDENCE Rick Loomis said: >STARWEB EMAIL DISCUSSION GROUP (THE SEDG) Snipped from last issue. >FEATURE ARTICLE > >Octagon by Fred Saberhagen > >. What many people don't know is that over 20 years ago Fred >Saberhagen himself played the game under the character name of >Octagon. I'm not sure what position he played but the big metallic >monster would be a good guess. Rick: Fred did play a Berserker, but as I remember it, that was back in the old, old, days when the maximum number of letters in a code name was 6. "Octagon" was at the time not a legal Starweb name! I don't remember the code name he used. I gave him a free game since he graciously allowed me to use the Berserkers in the game. After it was over, he asked me if he could write a book about the game (oh, yeah, twist my arm). He came to visit our offices and I noticed a lot of little things in the book that he obviously took from his visit. However I've never had long hair. (At least not what anyone today would call long. Fred is even older than I am - maybe my hair seemed long to him). I think maybe his character of Ike was a composite of me and one or two other FBI employees (it's also been a very long time since anyone could describe me as "lean" unfortunately.) >I was able to track down this out of print novel copyright 1981 at >Amazon.com and reread it. When this was reprinted by Tor books, we ordered 20 or 30 copies to give to our customers as prizes. I think we still have half a dozen. How much did you pay Amazon.com for yours? Maybe I should sell these for $10 each? Elliot: As I recall I was charged about $10.00 plus a shipping charge. >And then the set of little plastic bins, used by Tartaglia to hold >supplies of the various counters, bits of wood and plastic recruited >from other games, that Tartaglia was using on the map to represent his >fleets and industries and populations and sources of raw material." I suspect this is a reference to the RISK pieces that Chuck uses when he sets up BP and FL games. (He has a program that arranges maps for SW). Editor: Here is what I like. When players start taking issue with events publicly here in the SEDG. C'mon - put on the gloves. Lee Knirko said: > Lee said: >> Here's another example of a megaalliance in B/28. We had > a solid alliance of 4 players, and Bob started a rumor that we were > "taking over the web". He convinced 8 others to attack us, resulting > in 9 against our 4. Sean destroyed almost all the Industry on his HW, > and the rest of us are under massive attack. Maybe that's the way > Bitter End is supposed to work:). Couldn't even convince my old pal > Ted Miller (Portangel) the ridiculous case Bob presented, and offered > for him and Fergus to join us. He waffled some, but in the end > joined in the attack. I guess the lesson is to ally with every > neighbor that you meet. Which would probably result in a mega > alliance! << John Gault responded: Lee: As one of the 8 players attacking you, I'll tell you two things: I've never been allied with 7 players (indeed most of my neighbors haven't said much beyond the usual early border negotiations); and I never paid much attention to Bob's rumor. Our alliance chose you as first target because you didn't say a word to any of us, or to anyone we talked to, for about the first 7 turns; and also because you are a Big Name Player and we felt you were dangerous. It's still early, but my feeling is that this game is going to work a lot like Diplomacy or Survivor, with alliances shifting until the end because In The End, There Can Be Only One (burp). Regards, John (BLUEBEARD in B/28) And Robert Easton jumped in with: I feel it is only fair that I respond to this charge. There is no mega-alliance in SW B/28. And I am not the main leader of the alliance that I am in. That is Bob Mc Lain. Though I may take such a lead as the game goes on. On top of that we are losing the war from our perspective. There is nobody more opposed to mega-alliances than me. Just ask Elliot. If there was one, I would attack it. If I was part of it, I would back stab it. I did not start that rumour. Maybe Lee did. I did some very good diplomacy. Obviously, as I am not being attacked yet. Much to my surprise, I find out that Lee had formed a prearranged alliance with his friends before that game. They have two merchants with a 4 player close alliance. Now that I call a threat in a bitter end game. I am a member of a loosely organized 5 player alliance centered around the only other merchant in the game. If he has been attacked by 9 players as he claims, it is not due to anything more than opportunistic players trying to get a piece of the action or his own failings with his diplomacy. I admit Mega Alliances have become a problem. But it is a problem that we players have created for ourselves. We can fix it ourselves. It is not e-mail's fault. It is purely our own desires to win as players that has created this problem. I myself will never join a mega-alliance again after what I have witnessed it has done to the game. Thus a 5 player alliance is the limit I would join. I would prefer to not see alliances bigger than 4. I think doing this will bring more balance to the game. We all have to decide for ourselves what is our limits that we want to play within. I understand Lee's limits. I respect him more than he knows. I do not advocate rules changes. They will destroy the game in ways that we cannot foresee. I advocate wisdom in the way we play. If we do not want the merchants to win all the games than we don't let them haul all the metal all the time. Balance. Balance is the key. We all make decisions in the game. Sometimes we say "I cannot win". My best chance is to force the end of the game early. Maybe by supporting a merchant for the win (as I did in my last game and the tactic failed due to poor implementation). Sometimes alliances will still be attacked by a bunch of players like in SW B/28. It not always due to a mega-alliance. Sometimes 2 or 3 alliances will just pick the same target. That is what is happening in SW B/28. Nothing more. He still has a good chance of winning with skillful fighting and good diplomacy. I am the one that does not have any chance of winning SW B/28 but I promise you all a rip roaring fight. Robert Easton/Protos/Cylon/Startreky/etc Well, that's it for Volume 41. 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