Re: VGA Planets -- Players needed

From: rmg53668@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Ryan M. Grant)

Date: Wed, 03 Feb 1993 06:29:13 +0000

C. Patrick Simons writes:

>In article <C1u3ou.BBo@news.cso.uiuc.edu> rmg53668@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Ryan M. Grant) writes:
>>thamilto@fnugget.intel.com (Tony Hamilton) writes:
>>>I'm still waiting to hear from someone what the TRANSPORTATION, DEFENSE, and
>>>PATROL missions do, in game terms.
>>
>>Useless.  It may be convienent to keep track of what ships are assigned what
>>roles, but there are no documented uses for any of these.  Transportation
>>can be accomplished on Exploration missions, and Defense and Patrol are
>>unnecessary since if you run into someone you will fight them regardless.

>Nope. Sorry.  I gotta argue on this one.  You can set things up so if a
>convoy get's intercepted, the warship will fight first, not the freightor.

>What you do is set the destination of the warship, and give it the mission
>of Defend.  You then take a freightor, loaded such that it will travel
>at the same speed as the warship, and give it the mission Intercept.
>This will cause the cargo ship to stay with the warship, and the warship
>will intercept all those nasty small picket ships that keep trying to pick
>off your cargo's.

Even if this works, it would work whether or not the warship had a defend
mission or not.  Those three missions are useless, although you can set up
similar things manually.

This example, however, also goes against something else I had heard, which
is that ships meet each other in order of ID numbers.  If you have a warship
and a transport in the same spot after the moves and someone intercepts you,
there will be (according to my understanding of the procedures) three ships
in one space when battles are begun.  If a battle is in order I heard that
the ships fight by lowest IDs.  If you're lucky the warship will fight first.
As far as I understand HOW those ships got there makes no difference.  This
lack of control is why the ship order feature in V3 is such a big deal.
If my information is correct, you have until now simply been lucky - using
old warships with low IDs and new freighters with high IDs.

Two things could change my understanding of this:  Being told by someone
who knows that ship ID is not the factor, or learning that not all movement
occurs before combat. If the first case were true, maybe the defend mission
had a factor (very doubtful).  If the second case were true, the fight occurs
before the freighter gets there, which does not go against something I have
heard from a reliable soure, but which does not seem to be the case when
I look at the turn-oriented host.exe screen output.

One more thing to support my current understanding of ship movement (and
something that may be of strategic interest)  is that I once played the
Borg in a game and had an unarmed transport intercepted by the Empire...
Well as we all know, the borg are #6 and go before the Empire #8.  He and I
were both at W9, and three possible intersections could have occured.  Of
course, only one did, and by looking at this I think I can gain valuable
insight to how the game handles movement and combat.  What happened was that
instead of him intercepting me before I could move, and instead of us meeting
after 1/2 move each, I apparantly moved to my destination first, and he then
intercepted me there.  Because of this I got to have my Starbase "Unload
All Freighters" before he came along, and then he toasted the freighter BUT
had to deal with the Starbase!  Hah, I flambeed a Super Star Destroyer for
the loss of a Large Transport, without mineral (all Molybdenum) loss.  This
all happened because of the way the turn was handled (which I suspected) and
the fact that he thought I was _leaving_ the starbase, oh well :)

So I gather that all movements happen IN ORDER, and then conflicts ar resolved
later.  It wouldn't matter how you got there or what the mission was once the
bolts started flying.

I don't think I am wrong here, but if someone proves otherwise I will have
to respect that.  Check your warship ID, Patrick, you can support my
estimates if the warship ID is less then that of the Freighter, or you can
shoot my whole argument to shit if it's greater.  Then I'd have to do some
thinking on the subject, for sure.

- Ryan Grant

References

Re: VGA Planets -- Players needed
rmg53668@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Ryan M. Grant)
Tue, 02 Feb 1993 18:36:30 +0000
Re: VGA Planets -- Players needed
simons@plains.NoDak.edu (C. Patrick Simons)
Wed, 03 Feb 1993 01:07:56 +0000
Re: VGA Planets -- Players needed
wws@sunray.att.com (Bill Stoll)
Mon, 01 Feb 1993 19:39:00 +0000
Re: VGA Planets -- Players needed
thamilto@fnugget.intel.com (Tony Hamilton)
Tue, 02 Feb 1993 16:41:37 +0000