Re: Galaxy Playing (was Re: Galaxy Turn Format)

From: bampton@cs.utk.edu (Howard J. Bampton)

Date: Fri, 08 Jan 1993 05:56:42 +0000

In article <1ii5rfINNc2q@darkstar.UCSC.EDU> sutin@ra.UCSC.EDU (Brian Sutin) writes:
>
>What would be more useful would be a dumb program to make orders for
>dropouts and hopeless positions.  Right now, entire empires just grind
>to a halt at finals week.  Not very realistic.  The program would not
>have to be very smart, just make up things for ships and planets to do.
>

As both a GM of a game where this has happened to ~8 players, as well
as a player in a game where a healthy empire was left to rot for the
last 8-10 turns of a game, I'd say this is an excelent idea. With
Clarke I am doing this manually at the moment (much to the annoyance
of one player who has 10 turns of cannon fodder to kill...). Having a
program that could concentrate on filling in for me on this task on
most turns would be a godsend.

In Spiral, I was quite annoyed to learn that the last empire left to
kill had been running on automatic pilot for the last 8+ turns of the
game. 100 light years to get to him, and then he dies without even
putting up a passible defense [we are talking about systems left on
CAP production for 5 turns after they maxed out, and others left on
shield production. Even a program that built static defenses at each
system, rather than a coherent defense strategy would have been
better].

--
Howard Bampton             Internet: bampton@cs.utk.edu
Labstaff, UT Knoxville, Tennessee
Even the walls of Jericho fell.....
And when they fell...

References

Re: Galaxy Playing (was Re: Galaxy Turn Format)
amead@s.psych.uiuc.edu (Alan Mead)
Thu, 07 Jan 1993 06:01:24 +0000
Re: Galaxy Playing (was Re: Galaxy Turn Format)
desj@ccr-p.ida.org (David desJardins)
Thu, 07 Jan 1993 20:21:19 +0000
Re: Galaxy Playing (was Re: Galaxy Turn Format)
sutin@ra.UCSC.EDU (Brian Sutin)
Thu, 07 Jan 1993 21:03:43 +0000