Re: Empyrean Challenge Players?

From: David desJardins <desj@math.berkeley.edu>

Date: Thu, 21 May 1998 00:00:00 +0000

Edmund C. Hack <echack@crl.crl.com> writes:
> When I last played it, 6-8 years ago, DragonByte was doing a lot of
> things to improve it, including standing orders, pre-defined ship and
> colony designs, etc.

I don't think that predesigned or fixed designs are really the right
solution for the game---to me, the point of the complexity of the model
is to allow you to design a ship or colony for each application or
circumstance.  Besides, once I have fixed designs, it's not particularly
hard for me to field a bunch of them by myself---just a matter of cut
and paste.

What's more complicated is to want to build a bunch of essentially
identical ships, but with some differences.  For example, some are going
farther distances and some going shorter distances.  So ship 1 can use
those old JMP-4 you have lying around, ship 2 needs the new JMP-6, ship
3 is going farther so needs extra fuel, ship 4 is attacking a known land
colony so needs extra troops, etc. etc.  Because changing the size and
mass of one element has so many cascading effects, everything needs to
be recalculated.  If the game engine could do this for you somehow, that
would be a significant improvement in my view.

> Again, some of that was being done for you with the new orders. The
> pre-defined ships were a big step, as, IIRC, you got a mock printout for
> the ship, which would tell you if there were problems with the design.

In today's online world, I would want a turn forecaster which could
email back to me the projected results of my orders, and let me detect
and correct any problems.

> Yeah, although the CNW usage prevented you from instantly building
> huge fleets from stockpiles.

I can't ever remember actually being CNW-limited in many (realtime)
years of game play.  It was just a detail you had to keep track of, and
sometimes you might forget to put enough on your ships and then you'd
have problems setting up colonies etc.  But at home, you could always
convert pop to CNW and back, and the number of CNW needed was never
large compared to my total population.  And I did a lot of
unassembling-assembling of factories, because that was generally more
efficient than retooling.

> I concur. There were some attempts to do that. I had some spreadsheets,
> no doubt long lost, or for Lotus 1-2-3 for Dos 2.0, that would automate
> a lot of the design problems.

My programs were in Turbo Pascal.  Essentially a mini game simulator.
My understanding is that John Ess's involvement grew out of him doing
the same thing, and his ended up growing to the point where he had a
complete game engine, which he then decided to use to moderate the game.

>> P.S. I don't suppose he would honor the lifetime game I paid for in
>> 1986?
>
> Did you get it from DragonByte? Write and ask.

No, 1986 was long before Dragonbyte.  Vern Holford (?) was still running
EC when I last played, in 1988 or so.

David desJardins

References

Empyrean Challenge Players?
echack@crl.crl.com (Edmund C. Hack)
Mon, 18 May 1998 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Empyrean Challenge Players?
David desJardins <desj@math.berkeley.edu>
Mon, 18 May 1998 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Empyrean Challenge Players?
echack@crl.crl.com (Edmund C. Hack)
Tue, 19 May 1998 00:00:00 +0000