Re: Galaxy PBeM - cargo calc question

From: bampton@interlego.cs.utk.edu (Howard the Energizer)

Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 00:00:00 +0000

In article <19970720155200.LAA01076@ladder02.news.aol.com> panzerpete@aol.com (PanzerPete) writes:
>I am making an extensive and complete set of computerized Galaxy PBeM game
>tools for general ftp.  I have a question about the calculation of mass
>for ships either loaded or empty of cargo.  According to the standard
>galaxy rules my calculations agree with the examples given in the rules.
>But I still have some doubts since the rules are known to have some
>errors.

This one place the rules are 100% correct. One can verify this with
the source.

Several tools exist to do what you are doing, among them Goggle and
GalaxyTV. Versions of them (but in GalaxyTV's case not the newest one)
can be found at

ftp://cs.utk.edu/pub/bampton/tools

>Making the simplifying assumptions that all tech levels are equal to 1.0
>and a ship has only one attack, then as I understand it a ship's mass when
>NOT loaded with cargo is:

>#1 Unloaded mass = D + W + S + C

Yes.

>A ship's mass when loaded with cargo is:

>#2 Loaded mass = D + W + S + C + [C + (C^2)/10]

yes.

>Equation #2, above, (again, assuming all tech levels = 1.0 and the ship
>has one attack) gives me the correct speeds and "amount of cargo carried"
>according to the examples given in the standard galaxy rules.  But it
>seems to me that in the  above equation #2 C is being added in twice.  The
>rules say that the expression in the [] is the "amount of cargo a ship can
>carry" and everything else (i.e., D + W + S + C) is the mass of the ship
>excluding carried cargo.  Is this correct or is C being added in once too
>many times?

No. A size 1 cargo bay can hold 1.1 units of cargo. This is a change
from the galaxy V2 code (and games based off that code), were it was a
1 to 1 ratio.

If it is a 1 to 1 ratio, there is little value to large cargo ships.
With the C + (C^2)/10 factoring, you can gets lots of flexibility with
small cargo ships, or massive capacity with fewer large ones.

Howard
--
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Howard Bampton   bampton@cs.utk.edu        http://www.cs.utk.edu/~bampton/
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References

Galaxy PBeM - cargo calc question
panzerpete@aol.com (PanzerPete)
Sun, 20 Jul 1997 00:00:00 +0000