STARWEB EMAIL DISCUSSION GROUP (THE SEDG) (Sponsored by Flying Moose Technologies' Starweb Analyzer - http://www.flyingmoose.ca) VOLUME 77, January 2004 CONTENTS Feature Article – SW-X1330 The Private Email Handicapped Starweb Game By Elliot Hudes and Ken Cassady Questions – Black Box Communications SEDG Web Page URL The Swap Corner FEATURE ARTICLE SW-X1330 The Private Email Handicapped Starweb Game Guys – this was a great game. There are many games of Starweb out there that for reasons beyond your control are dull, lackluster and plain boring. Low VPT and early games, multiple dropouts and grand alliances (that exterminate the small guy) can contribute to a game you would rather not have played. This game had none of that. We had 15 dedicated gamers that eventually fell into 7 camps. That's right – 7 camps. There was an alliance of 5 players, one of 4 players, an alliance of 2 players and four independents (two of which played the whole game bashing each other to bits unmolested by the rest of the game). But I get ahead of myself. I want to show you how this game unfolded and why it was so darn interesting and entertaining. It wasn't until the final turn that we knew who would triumph as two Apostles vied for the win. My intent was to let a representative of each of the larger alliances talk about the game from their perspective. Below is an account from the alliance of 2 (written by the winning player) and my account from the alliance of 5. As of this write up I am still awaiting the account from MAUDDIB the representative of the gang of 4 (The ABE/MOOSE/LOCKE/MAUDDIB ALLIANCE) and our chief opponents in the game. It was interesting to see that each alliance never totally saw what was going on in the universe. Perhaps next issue I shall have the viewpoint from MAUDDIB to entertain you with. Here is the premise set for the game so you get an idea about the particular set of physical laws that governed the laws of the SW-X1330 universe. Dear Starwebbers: As you may know, from time to time, I organize a private Starweb game. This ensures quality players who tend not to miss turns AND variations that we can control. I want to start another one. This will be an Email Handicapped SW variant. If you are interested - send me your name, character type and FBI Account number. DO NOT TRY TO SIGN UP WITH FBI. Once I have enough players I will submit the list to FBI. Here are more details about the game I envision. I like a game with a healthy amount of warfare (that means lots :-) and I don't like the predictable merchant or berserker run at the victory score. With this in mind I would like to start a game similar to one I did previously where we handicapped the various character types scoring. I remember that I was a merchant racing to beat an Apostle, which made it very interesting. All player types were equally capable of winning the game making the strategy much more interesting. Were you going to play a pirate trying to grab vast territory to plunder? Would you have to battle a player just to slow his scoring down since he needed only half your value? HANDICAPPING - Each character type will have it's own Victory score in keeping with the character's usual ability to score. Some additional handicapping will occur if you are the sole character of this type in the game. Similarly a couple of the characters will get a break in their VPT if there are many players signed up for the same position. See the Chart below. PENALTIES/BONUSES - If you are the only person playing a particular character type you will be subject to a 20% increase (A Penalty) in Victory Score required (due to the lack of competition). For example if you decided to play the Merchant and sadly there are no other merchants in the game - the Victory score will rise from 20,000 to 24,000 for you. Also, for some characters there is a built in penalty for having too many of them in the game e.g. Art Collectors. There just isn't enough art, worlds etc. to go around. There shall be a break granted if there are too many of certain characters - see chart below. VICTORY HANDICAP CHART CHARACTER BASIC SOLE CHARACTER TOO MANY CHARACTERS EB 10,000 12,000 8000 (for 5 or more) PIRATE 7,500 9,000 XXXXX MERCHANT 20,000 24,000 XXXXX BERSERKER 25,000 29,000 XXXXX ART 10,000 12,000 8000(>/= 3) APOSTLE 7,500 9,000 XXXXX ART COLLECTORS/MUSEUMS Art collectors will have museums counted after somebody hits Victory conditions as usual. The museums will be of value for winning or TIE BREAKERS. TIE BREAKERS - if two players tell FBI they are going to achieve Victory on the next printout (or if an Art bonus pushes another player over their Victory Condition) then we must determine who has surpassed their victory conditions by the biggest percentage to declare a winner. The following formulas will be used. Score/Personal Victory score - This Ratio will determine whether you are the winner and how you rank. Not the absolute score. For example if two players declare Victory for the next printout and they are an Art Collector with 1100 points and an Apostle with 9000 points their ratios are Art 1100/10000 = 1.1 Apostle 9000/7500 = 1.2 The Apostle has won the game. Similarly all players will be given ranks (second, third, fourth etc) based on the same ratio of score to THEIR Victory conditions. DETERMINING VICTORY CONDITIONS - FBI cannot track this so it is the responsibility of each player to inform FBI if they will achieve victory on the next printout. Then FBI will forward the next list of scores to me to confirm the win. IF the win was achieved they will supply the "The Game is over" sign and the Victory listings at the end. I will supply all players with a list of players, email addresses and character types. This will ensure that I don't have an advantage since I will be collecting this information. As usual FBI does not provide pins nor include your ranking in their ratings for private games. But the results will be published in FBQ. In response to this I received 30 players and we actually started 2 games). Here is the field for the present game: Please note - only one position is solitary - Art Collector. Andy Budning (PHACO) had to achieve 12,000 points to win. 1) Elliot Hudes SLUMBER the Empire Builder 2) Sean Corrigal LOCKE the Pirate 3) Ken Cassady WIZOR the Apostle 4) Jeff Smurthwaite NUANCE the Pirate 5) Phil Boyd TREDHEAD the Berserker 6) Jay Hudes Greyjay the Pirate 7) Keith Hummel MAUDDIB the Apostle 8) William Dewing CETUS the Apostle 9) David Newman DUST the berserker 10) Mike McCaffrey ZULE the Merchant 11) Mike Wulkan MOOSE the Merchant 12) Walter Loy KEERO the Empire Builder 13) Andy Budning PHACO the Art Collector 14) Paul Balsamo POPEHEIME the Apostle 15) Randy Carr ABE the Berserker Tally Apostles - 4 Pirates - 3 Berserkers - 3 Merchants - 2 EBs - 2 Art Coll - 1 Now onto the WIZOR/DUST Alliance Perspective by WIZOR - Ken Cassady An Apostle in X1330 I ran in to several characters early in the game and all were very useful. First was GreyJay the pirate Then Dust the Berserker and Zule the Merchant GreyJay started out as a good ally and did a bit of communication but after awhile I stopped getting messages and map and anything. Finally I got a bounce on his email so I just gave up. I did not move against him but I did not send him any more fleets I promised either which I was fully prepared to do if we kept working together. I had contracted to colonize his planets for sending him about half of my ship production. I had started making deliveries when the communication collapsed. GreyJay got into a war with Phaco. I think I saw GreyJay take his HW. I sent a fleet out to Phaco to dump plastic artifact and then I kept moving around spying on this war. Surprisingly I never lost this fleet even though I flew through several battles. Zule did not write much but was a good ally any way. I called him my ATM merchant. The first half of the game I would write out the orders that Zule should do and he would carry them out. It worked great for me. After that Zule just did his moves and the metal keep coming. Waiting for confirmation to convert his worlds took to long so I just told him what I was up to and went ahead and did it. I think I had only a handful of responses from Zule and got no info from the outside world from him. Dust was my true ally in this game and we worked very well together. This was the alliance. Zule hauled for both of us and we knew he hauled for others but no idea how much. I did bump into other in the game. KEERO the EB who we could never work out a trade deal for art. I think he became confused of who owned what. It was not much are so we gave up. CETUS who only wanted to keep tabs on the Jones (me) for VP. This went well for most of the game but then he started sending fleet in to spy and we did not like that so we stopped sending the info. Met MOOSE who was hauling for GrayJay and set him to ally so I would not interfere with his hauling. Ran into Slumber's planets but left him alone (Elliot and I have allied in to many game recently so I choose to ignore him. Besides EB and Apostle do not mix well. POPEHEIME convert another part of Zule's territory but I think I got the bigger half. SLUMBER got a few worlds later on that were not claimed. I saw LOCKE as I was about done capturing planets in Zule territory but we ignored each other. The rest of the characters in the game I never saw them once. So in our quiet part of this universe we set out to win the game. I took an aggressive conversion plan. For the first 6 or 7 turns I did not ally myself to my allies but set myself to at peace Order Z so I would not ambush any one and kept all my fleets active so they would not hurt anyone either. I went through GrayJay area partly, part of Zule territory, most Dust territory I went around capturing planets. Then Dust started shooting pop on the planets to get my converts growing faster. At this point I did not need my fleets once I captured all the planets that I could. So started gifting all of my fleets to Dust. I had a good number of fleets, 24 – 26, so to unload them quicker I would move them all to one planet and transfer the fleet to the world or a ship and gift that to Dust. I think I had 2 fleets left at the end of the game. Dust move to the border of our planets and began robitizing them. I do not think he had one built the whole game. It really took only one turn to do this and the next turn Dust need to reposition all the fleets to do another robot attack. So we floated over the final score with just a few minor adjustments on the last turn. If it were to go to another turn we would have had another major bounce in points. The points were so high for Dust to win and so low for Wizor to win that it just became obvious to push Wizor over. So in the StarWeb in the era of grand alliances this one little alliance slipped past them unnoticed. It was so quiet in our part of the Universe that we only heard the rumbling of a war going on but not once did we know what was actually going on. So that was are game. No great battles fought, no tricky alliances. Just a plan to convert the most pop and then kill them all. (Well we did not kill them all but it was in the plan) It would have been interesting if the Apostle points were higher to see if the falling back plan would have worked if the other player would race in and try to stop Dust from killing the rest of my pop. Ken Cassady The POPEHEIME/SLUMBER/TREDHEAD/ZULE/NUANCE Alliance by Slumber/Elliot Hudes T4 Might as well start at turn 4. Everyone in the game is a veteran and obviously the first 3 turns were ones of vigorous expansion. I have met MAUDDIB (Apostle), Popeheime (Apostle), NUANCE (Pirate) and LOCKE (Pirate), which is an interesting two pair poker hand. I figure I will only be able to ally with two of them (unless the Apostles can work together) and send out friendly notes to them all. Locke didn't put down homefleet on two ring 2 worlds which I capture so I secretly hope he becomes my opponent cuzz a quick probe this turn will yield his HW number to me. Immediately I secure POPEHEIME and NUANCE as allies. The POPE (as we called him) brings in to the alliance TREDHEAD (berserker), which makes sense cuzz they can work pop kills together. The interesting thing here is that my three new allies have two different merchants and POPE/TREDHEAD are contracting with ZULE while NUANCE is using MOOSE. I think at this early juncture we decided to just use the merchants as our contractual hauling force and not as allies. This will explain why ZULE winds up hauling for the winning WIZOR/DUST team while eventually joining in our alliance later. T4 also marks the turn where I make a huge gaffe. I sent the following note to my alliance: >> The usual strategy - we take out somebody (Locke is my vote) and then supply you with PBBs while you and Popeheime destroy Slumber worlds in Jihad (include Mauddib if he's allied). This means while we are building up and fighting all good EB scoring alliance worlds go to me so the Apostles have 1 target to Jihad. So - how do Popeheime/Nuance feel about inducting Mauddib? El Slumber<< The only problem is I click onto the wrong distribution list and send this note to all the players in the game ?. That's right! Even Locke my intended target receives my note outlining his destruction. I happen to notice when my email was going out that the distribution list was a lot larger than my 2 allies and I opened my records of outbound mail and realized what I had done. Immediately I received an email from MAUDDIB declining membership in my nacent alliance. He cited that he didn't want to be in an alliance of 5. So he quickly ran and joined with ABE/LOCKE/MOOSE making their opposing alliance 4. I guess Keith has a soft spot for the underdog and I think he wanted the odds to be more even. Truthfully at this point we didn't have 5 players in our alliance only 4. We had different alliance members using the services of both merchants – MOOSE and ZULE for hauling. Despite MOOSE being in the other alliance he was the only merchant close to NUANCE and he agreed to haul for him before any hostilities broke out and they had both agreed to keep NUANCE information from the other alliance. This arrangement continued until it broke down on T8 with the invasion by our opponents of the NUANCE territory. What did I do? Well, it was my mess and I figured that it wasn't fair on turn 4 to drag my allies into a battle because of my big mouth. Especially since at least one of our alliance wanted to win the game(The POPE). So I sent a letter of resignation to my alliance and the whole game and publicly absorbed all the blame. It makes interesting reading and isn't something you see in Starweb often so I repeat it here. >>By now everyone has received my note to my allies on my ideas for the game - including stuff I didn't want to advertise. I hit the wrong distribution list. If you received it and haven't read it - then destroy it :-). I must now do what politicians do when they screw up. 1) My comments have nothing to do with the policies of my alliance group. They were my ideas and my ideas alone. 2) Apologies to Locke and I fully expect an invasion force from you soon :-). Our T4 border negotiations are not affected by my screw up and I will honor giving you back your ring 2 worlds in return for what we discussed. 3) I hang my head in shame and resign my position in my alliance. I acted alone and don't hold you to certain aftermath of my actions. 4) Anyone out there want to ally with an EB screwup? I think I'm toast . El Slumber<< I don't know if the rest of the gamers or the Opposing alliance believed me but I was perfectly willing to go the route of the loner. I didn't have any other borders to gather allies from so I would have gone down in flames while my ex-allies had time to prepare. This generated a slew of email from my alliance discussing my offer of resignation. In the end the consensus was that nobody would believe me and since we were going to hit the other alliance anyway this didn't change much (except for forewarning them). T4-7 These turns were the usual furious race to get our merchants hauling, the HWs to full production and finish mapping our borders. As it turns out the POPE has a KEERO border and TREDHEAD borders WIZOR. Thankfully, these borders remain quiet for the entire game. KEERO was one of those loner Apostles that I never had inkling as to his game plan. NUANCE also had a border with CETUS a loner Apostle. T8 This was my alliances projected launch date for invasion of the LOCKE Empire. Two of our empires were at full production and the other two were at more than half (building 38 ships). But it was too late – Our opponents landed in force in a surprising location – NUANCE. Actually it made some sense since NUANCE bordered their whole alliance (all 4 of them) while my empire only had access for 3 of them. From the MAUDDIB/MOOSE empires they poured over to 3 worlds mostly in MAUDDIB and LOCKE ships – a force of 74 ships on 9 keys. From the other side of NUANCE's empire there were 34 ships on 4 keys at 3 worlds. Nuance lost a ring 2 and 3 world in the initial invasion. We now have to scramble for damage control and this turn we do several things. NUANCE finds out that MOOSE is firmly in the other alliance and supplying arms. He dissolves his hauling agreements with him and asks for his ships back. NUANCE offers alliance and asks for help from CETUS who remained unaligned the whole game. He declined. Since the rest of our alliance is using ZULE to haul I make the overture that he joins our alliance as a full member joining in on the war (he had a LOCKE border) and turnsheet trade. ZULE had ties to WIZOR/DUST and he joined on the condition that he continue hauling for them and that he could edit his turnsheet to remove WIZOR/DUST data. This was acceptable to us (what choice did we have) and it also gave us a second potential 'push' player to propel to the win. Remember, it's important for my alliance to not only excel in battle but also supply the game with its winning player. Now the real discussion begins. Do we send all our forces, some of our forces or none of them to defend NUANCE. We all recognized that SW is a difficult game to play defensively. It's not impossible but the consensus in our group was that we wanted to start a front in enemy territory. It looked like the OPPONENTS had committed every ship available (save their hauling fleets) to this offensive. In the end NUANCE bravely offers to hold off the enemy as long as possible by himself while the rest of us get to full production and start an incursion into enemy territory. We decide to try a two-pronged approach and invade LOCKE and MAUDDIB simultaneously. This was the riskier plan since the enemy would be building up defenses while we traveled in and could conceivably fight us off since we were dividing our forces. We didn't know where the MAUDDIB HW was yet but we had triangulated where LOCKE's was by putting a small ship down on the ring 1 world. We thought that ultimately we would have the military advantage if we could silence two of their 4 HWs while they only took 1 of ours (leaving 4 since now we were truly a 5 player alliance). T9 The battles: NUANCE AREA LOCKE/ABE land at the NUANCE HW with 2 keys and 30 ships. NUANCE has 6 keys with 10 ships and metal along with 11 homefleet and 30 builds. The HW is safe and able to fend off the attackers. Moose honors his agreement by just dropping his ships to the ground wherever they happen to be and letting his keys go neutral. Remember boys and girls – if you decide that you want to be able to fire your merchant that your initial agreement covers this aspect of dissolving the relationship. This would have been much better if the merchant keys had done so at the HW and dropped metal as well. The enemy has swarmed NUANCE and is at 7 worlds with a total of 177 ships on 13 keys. NUANCE has managed to get a lot of his keys out to safe worlds for metal. It looks like it will be the loss of his territory followed by a grand battle at the HW and NUANCE is trying to build up as much as possible for this rather than engage the enemy at individual worlds. LOCKE EMPIRE The good guys have landed – Thank goodness for ZULE – he manages to bring 57 ships on 4 keys to a ring 2 world while we have another 40 ships on 4 keys at different ring 2 and 3 worlds. It's not as impressive as the hit on NUANCE but it's a start. Meanwhile we have another front. MAUDDIB TERRITORY We have an awesome 33 ships in TREDHEAD's name at a ring 2 world. Meanwhile NUANCE sits at my HW with my builds waiting for another build to make his pirate fleet a little more intimidating (or did we forget to fly the key out – memory fails me :-). I know which side appears to be doing better! T10 NUANCE At the HW – Nuance protects his industry from an AI attack. LOCKE keeps 29 of the ships while ABE loses his key. All of NUANCE's firepower was aimed at the berserker to prevent potential robotization. This turn NUANCE has 20 builds, 30 metal in the air, 86 ships on 17 keys and is able to kill LOCKE, haul and keep his HW defended. The outer empire doesn't look as good. Three more uncontested worlds fall and they are at 5 more. They have 196 ships on 15 keys, which is only 20 more ships than last turn. It appears we may have gotten their attention and they are turning to defend themselves. LOCKE We are not strong enough for a HW push either so we nibble at the outer empire at 6 worlds with 151 ships/11 keys mostly in ZULE/NUANCE's name. MAUDDIB TREDHEAD misses his turn and sits at the MAUDDIB ring 2 world. Nobody comes to contest him. NUANCE lands at another ring 2 world with 61 ships. Nothing interesting seen here also. Other news – my son tells me that he (GREYJAY) has started pounding on PHACO. T11 NUANCE In anticipation of the invasion of the HW Nuance doesn't go out for metal but sits tight (pounding the LOCKE key which fails to destroy the industry yet again). Unfortunately they hit hard enough to suppress industry. The forces are primarily in LOCKE's name and I think they are disappointed that he couldn't three to one pirate capture. Enemy forces are 173 ships on 10 keys (168 are in Locke's name but 3 keys with 5 ships are in ABE's berserker hands making things tricky). NUANCE has 92 ships on 17 keys. Although we have half the ships we have twice the keys. Perhaps the enemy can't damage us too badly if they hit a lot of small keys. Equally true, even if they hit nothing and we made full hits we could only destroy 46 ships and they would still outgun us next turn plus there is the threat of robot attack and more reinforcements. The writing is on the wall. LOCKE NUANCE moves to the HW with two keys and 34 ships. LOCKE is waiting with 112 ships. The only thing that prevents us from being pirate captured is the MOOSE hauling fleet of 7. They definitely have us at a disadvantage here. In the outer empire we continue to take worlds and have a presence at 8 worlds. Our forces seem to be winning here as LOCKE has hunkered down to save his HW. We have about 180 ships on a dozen keys. MAUDDIB The push has started – we land at Ring 1 with 91 ships on 3 keys of NUANCE and our berserker TREDHEAD. We know where the HW is. The ring 2 worlds are attacked and we have 72 ships on 4 keys here. Little resistance so it's likely we will meet MAUDDIB at the HW well entrenched. T12 NUANCE – the battle for the HW is lost. We decided to prevent robotization. To this end every shot fired was at the three ABE keys. It wasn't enough – we destroy 2 of them but the third one successfully plants a robot. Interestingly, they must have thought that we would torch the industry this turn (after protecting it for 2 turns) and they dropped 47 additional I ships to protect. Luckily I fired my lowly half shot at an ABE key and got the firepower of 24 ships in the air from their donation before they recapture their ships. Interesting game. They have 108 ships and Moose shows up with 14 obviously to start hauling. There are 36 metal on the ground but they can only build one ship this turn. NUANCE has lost 6 keys and only has 76 ships left. It's a losing battle but he decides to fight to the last ship to try and pin as many forces down as possible. Once they are free to roam they will obviously target me (SLUMBER) next. To be free to continue our other campaigns we need to keep further incursions from happening. Meanwhile at this lost HW it seems that the enemy would likely fight as hard as we have to get the industry going so NUANCE decides that firing at the industry would be wasted and targets the population instead. We hope to destroy the ships dropped to the ground as robots. In the outer empire – SLUMBER owns (as the EB) all the ring 1 worlds and many of the ring 2 worlds as the enemy forces had all disappeared to attack the HW. MOOSE hovers over a couple of my worlds and I expect him to take them so he can load up the metal. LOCKE The HW – NUANCE loses his two keys, which fired on the industry unsuccessfully. We rush the HW and the forces present are – allied = 153 ships on 7 keys and the enemy has 228 ships on 17 keys. We aren't too impressive here are we? We continue to take peripheral worlds as our opponents have decided the main battle will occur at the HW. MUADDIB The two ring 2 worlds and the ring 1 worlds are under our control uncontested. We have 103 ships on 4 keys there while we jumped to the HW with 153 ships and 5 keys. We meet their defending force of 212 ships on 12 keys and a fully building HW. My prediction is correct that they built up their HWs as soon as we started the counter invasion. The NUANCE area didn't need reinforcements and our invasions served to prevent further empires on our side from invasion. Obviously our two invasions have not been overwhelmingly successful. Other news – PHACO and GREYJAY are still duking it out. CETUS declares that he is rescinding the NONAGRESSION PACT he signed with NUANCE. And we notice that WIZOR the Apostle has the lead score at 2400 which is a 900 point lead on the second place player our buddy the POPE! Obviously he is taking advantage of our war (which is tying up 9 players) to make a play for the win. We discuss our options and feel that perhaps ZULE as merchant might contest this and that giving the POPE ships for PBB and giving ground in the war could give him the win. T13 – we had an awesome turn. NUANCE The HW gambit succeeds. We torch the only ABE ship and destroy population. The HW is neutral and cannot build. MOOSE has given ABE another key, which can try to robotize again. Forces - Enemy - 117 ships/8keys. Us - 43 ships/4 keys. If they really want this HW to function perhaps they will keep these forces here and engage us. This is our hope and so far none of the original invasion has left this area to harass us. LOCKE We targeted the industry. Results - Industry – DEAD! Enemy 249 ships/18 keys Us - 132 ships/9keys Reinforcements W188 - 33ships/2keys W23 - 33 ships/3keys MAUDDIB We did the same and with similar results!! Mauddib HW W207 Industry – DEAD! Enemy - 267 ships/17keys Us - 143 ships/6keys Reinforcements W45 - 47 ships/1key I realize that without LOCKE and MAUDDIB HWs to defend a lot of enemy ships are likely going to look for a new target and I was right between them. Other news – ZULE sends his HW builds towards WIZOR/DUST area instead of to the LOCKE front. I notice that I haven't gotten readout of any ZULE ring 1 worlds from his turnsheet. I decide to probe his ring 1 worlds since I owned the HW. POPEHEIME starts planning for a PBB blitz to catch up with WIZOR and win the game. This means that even though we have 4 HWs to their 2 we won't be launching any new offensives. T14 NUANCE They really wanted that HW functioning badly. They rerobotized, dropped metal and had a full build ready. They manage to pirate capture the last 3 NUANCE keys with 9 ships on them. They have 21 neutral keys overhead, 77 ships on 10 keys and 39 homefleet. I know where they will be going next. So far there is no counter invasion on my printout. LOCKE and MAUDDIB The enemy enjoys a firefight in the sky. Why not – they had overwhelming force at both sites. We decide to engage them despite the fact that we cannot prevail. Why not? We have decided that we are now going to supply The POPE with the ships he requires to win the game and even if I'm invaded I will give ground rather than waste ships in defense. At LOCKE we have neutralized 16 keys. We have 50 ships left to their 180 ships and we stand and fight! In MAUDDIB we have 100 ships and they have twice that. We fight. At this point WIZOR has a 1500 point lead on POPEHEIME and is halfway to his personal VPT of 7500. Other news – my probing of the ring 1 ZULE worlds reveal they are now all owned by WIZOR. He has been quietly capturing and converting them. Whether ZULE intended to give him ships for further Jihad is moot as ZULE misses his turn and his 30 ships from last turn do nothing. THE CETUS PLAN As I peruse the turnsheet I notice that CETUS has moved into many NUANCE worlds that I presently own. I have a 2 and 3 industry world with 44 ground ships that have been ignored while the war raged at the NUANCE HW. Since I don't particularly like this scavenging apostle who declined to help NUANCE in his hour of need I look for a deal. I contact MOOSE who is happily shuttling metal in our old empire. He has had a fairly boring game of mostly hauling and I offer to upload these ships to his keys if he will take them into the CETUS Empire to rattle his cage. I ask that he not involve his allies. He happily agrees. T15 The counter invasion starts and the Slumber Empire is hit with 107 ships at ring 2 and 3 from the NUANCE area. An ABE key with 46 ships arrives from the LOCKE area and 77 ships on many keys flow into my area from the MAUDDIB regime. I'm hit from 3 sides but I ignore them and continue to build my ships to POPEHEIME keys. We lose our forces at the LOCKE HW but my alliance owns most LOCKE worlds save for the ring 1 worlds. At MAUDDIB HW we still have 55 ships fighting forces 3 times larger. The POPE – starts making his move and his score jumps by 600 points but WIZOR is still 1600 points ahead. WIZOR's score seems to advance in a range of 500-700 points. The POPE announces that if we siphon our resources to him he can hit his VPT of 7500 points in 3 turns before WIZOR can. This is our focus. CETUS plan Moose arrives at the CETUS border with 34 ships and I can transfer 26 to him and at the other world MOOSE arrives with 3 ships. I refuse to give him the ships on the ground cuzz he has brought our mortal enemy LOCKE also. LOCKE wanted the world to capture and can't unless I upload my ships to MOOSE. CETUS also arrived with a key of 1. We come to a compromise where I give my ships to MOOSE and LOCKE fires on CETUS. Everyone is happy. T16 SLUMBER The enemy is everywhere on 3 sides of my HW but haven't hit the HW yet. We robotized the HW for the points. I don't engage and my ships flee the only direction open to give what I can to The POPE. The POPE has risen 1400 points. He is at 4155 and although he still trails WIZOR by 900 points. WIZOR, the leader, is still plodding along at 700 points per turn. The POPE announces his plan that will get him to 7507 points in 2 moves if we execute it as ordered. It ends on T18. Other news – my son (GREYJAY) tells me that he has spent the whole game bashing PHACO most of it at his HW. CETUS MOOSE moves in 74 ships into two CETUS worlds. We see no opposition yet. T17 We are so desperate for ships we don't even leave one at my HW. It's captured by ABE as he lands there. MAUDDIB is arriving in my area with PBBS. Looks like ABE and MAUDDIB are starting their scoring run but it's a little late. DISASTER – The POPE fails to fire with a key and misses getting 216 points. He is scrambling to scrape up more points but we notice that WIZOR has also jumped more than his usual 700 points. He has jumped by 2000 points to 7099. The POPE managed to jump 1200 points to 5306 and says he can still trip the 7500 but if WIZOR can repeat this performance he will leave us in the dust. T18 Yah – MAUDDIB is trying to score – forgoing shooting at us at some worlds in favor of doing an AP with POPEHEIME and TREDHEAD. The final result – WIZOR didn't have another huge load of points waiting but he made it to 7782, which was 104% of his VPT. The POPE made it to 7578 or 101% of his VPT. WIZOR was the winner but look carefully at the gap between them. It was 204 points. If we hadn't fouled up one firing order we could have scored another 216 points and won the game. It all hinged on one order. Well, talk about an exciting game – we were biting our fingernails until the final printout. In retrospect since the 4 Apostles managed to get the top 4 ranks I should have made their VPT handicap even higher. Perhaps in this ranking they should have reached for 12,500 points. Maybe in my next private game. The CETUS plan :-) – MOOSE eventually found the HW on T18 with 58 ships and CETUS had enough firepower to blow him away. We never capture a world (all converted) nor harmed a fly. Oh well! GREYJAY and PHACO fought each other until the end. I hear PHACO lost his HW as GREYJAY finally bested him. And KEERO – I have no idea what he did the entire game. Elliot And the rankings were: Final Results -- Victory-point limit was Handicapped. Results reported as a percentage of your VPT VICTORY HANDICAP CHART CHARACTER BASIC SOLE CHARACTER TOO MANY CHARACTERS EB 10,000 12,000 8000 (for 5 or more) PIRATE 7,500 9,000 XXXXX MERCHANT 20,000 24,000 XXXXX BERSERKER 25,000 29,000 XXXXX ART 10,000 12,000 8000 (for 3 or more) APOSTLE 7,500 9,000 XXXXX (1) Ken Cassady - VPT 104% [WIZOR]: Apostle (Score=7782,Worlds=30,Ships=44,Industry=35,Mines=115, People=630,Converts=1688,Artifacts=1) (2) Paul Balsamo - VPT 101% [POPEHEIME]: Apostle (Score=7578,Worlds=23,Keys=15,Ships=152,Industry=39, Mines=94,People=58,Converts=1585,Artifacts=6) (3) Keith Hummel - VPT 72.8% [MAUDDIB]: Apostle (Score=5463,Worlds=32,Keys=14,Ships=221,Industry=18, Mines=159,People=702,Converts=1976,Artifacts=15) (4) William Dewing - VPT 58.0% [CETUS]: Apostle (Score=4349,Worlds=30,Keys=10,Ships=412,Industry=26, Mines=133,People=380,Converts=1916,Artifacts=11) (5) Elliot Hudes - VPT 57.5% [SLUMBER]: Empire-Builder (Score=5746,Worlds=10,Ships=40,Industry=7, Mines=39,People=563,Artifacts=3) (6) Walter Loy - VPT 50.5% [KEERO]: Empire-Builder (Score=3788,Worlds=21,Keys=17,Ships=389, Industry=41,Mines=94,People=1681,Artifacts=7) (7) Mike McCaffrey - VPT 44.5% [ZULE]: Merchant (Score=11136,Keys=15,Ships=134,Artifacts=2) (8) Mike Wulkan - VPT 40.9% [MOOSE]: Merchant (Score=8178,Worlds=16,Keys=16,Ships=189,Industry=3, Mines=72,People=1258,Artifacts=6) (9) Sean Corrigal - VPT 31.8% [LOCKE]: Pirate (Score=2386,Worlds=24,Keys=58,Ships=591,Industry=1, Mines=81,People=1620,Artifacts=9) (10) David Newman - VPT 25.1% [DUST]: Berserker (Score=6267,Worlds=20,Keys=32,Ships=337,Industry=32, Mines=77,Robots=73,Artifacts=12) (11) Jeff Smurthwaite - VPT 21.5% [NUANCE]: Pirate (Score=1612,Worlds=1,Keys=1,Ships=41,Mines=6,People=51) (12) Phil Boyd - VPT 15.5% [TREDHEAD]: Berserker (Score=3885,Worlds=8,Keys=12,Ships=125,Industry=62, Mines=29,Robots=148,Artifacts=10) (13) Andy Budning - VPT 15.3% [PHACO]: Artifact-Collector (Score=1230,Worlds=3,Keys=3,Ships=35, Industry=1,Mines=13,People=335,Artifacts=1) (14) Jay Hudes - VPT 9.3% [GREYJAY]: Pirate (Score=701,Worlds=5,Keys=5,Ships=128,Industry=33, Mines=23,People=411) (15) Randy Carr - VPT 7.9% [ABE]: Berserker (Score=1969,Worlds=5,Keys=29,Ships=23,Industry=91, Mines=20,People=102,Robots=105,Artifacts=8 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- QUESTIONS - Can anyone answer these? I am still waiting to hear if anyone has the answer to: Has anyone been in a game where the Black Box communicates? If so, what sort of information would it give out or respond to? Since I haven't heard back from anyone on this matter I will presume that this hasn't actually happened despite the rumors that you can send and receive DIPLOs to the Black Box. Here's a new question. Who wants to take bragging rights to: 1) Largest ambush executed. 2) Largest pirate capture. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 SWAP CORNER STARWEB ANALYZER V1.5 - It's on the web site and it's no longer a Beta! Go get it! As before - registered clients of any previous V1.x version can upgrade for free. www.flyingmoose.ca The Starweb Analyzer V2.0 (written under the .Net Framework). Mike has been busy recreating the analyzer and upgrading it. It's almost ready for beta testing. One more feature I would like to tease you with - ANIMATED GRAPHICS. Now it is possible to see fleet icons firing at each other or the world below. PBB bombs are shown with beautiful mushroom clouds emanating from afflicted worlds. As soon as it progresses a little further we shall invite some of you to beta test it. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Well, that's it for Volume 77. 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