FreeOrion

Since this is about star lanes, I was just curious if features like destroying and creating star lanes like is in Space Empire IV would be doable. How they did it to make it fare was that it was a later game Tech and Very very expensive. Sometime 40 turns for even your best planet. But it is a cool feature. I really think that Game could be used as a model on what things could be added.

So how are things like space aliens, terrain effects, galaxy specials, fleet interception, radar radius of incoming fleets, if any, all being handled? I would imagine them all being a coordinate in the matrix which are assigned a value number based on a formula that includes ETA which takes into starlane effects. And not vice versa: going from starlane effects, then calc ETA, then... going up to the bigger picture.

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I'm not sure I see the comparison.

Starlanes vs. no starlanes as an AI issue has to do with strategic planning more than pathfinding. Obviously, pathfinding is not a huge problem in a game like this; 'get me the nearest route to X world' is not difficult for the AI. Figuring out what X world should be is.

A coordinate matrix is probably a piece of it, but Starlanes are more important than simply an effect on ETA.

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Surprise and Terror! I am greeted by the smooth and hostile face of our old enemy, the Hootmans! No... the Huge-glands, no, I remember, the Hunams!

I think we'll probably use some values to assign strategic planning. That was what I meant by assigning a value. Of course, ETA is part of it. The way I would go about programming is use a matrix that has all the revelant coordinates of all systems, specials, fleets... Each coordinate would recieve some strategic value and effects like starlane would influence the value. But there are several features that we can incorporate into the game that would probably use a different algorithm w/o starlane effects in determing the values. One feature might be fleet interception; in that case, I don't see the difference between sending a fleet to intercepting another fleet or going offroad to attack an enemy's star system from AI's perspective.

Getting to world x is not as simple as you may think. You face the moo3 problem with ppl building large defense at choke points. Surely the AI would probably aim for a rich planet deep into your territory, but if the shortest way is via starlanes that include going into your heavy defenses, then you got a problem. One alternative that AI may do is going off road, but that's the same mechanism as if starlanes don't exist.

I am not sure what you mean by starlanes have effects other than ETA. I thought starlane just decrease travel time?

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True dat.

If your AI cant deal with off-road travel, then youre better off banning it altogether - otherwise you'll end up with the same problem as Moo3, the player has access to a strategic option that the AI doesnt.

I can only recommend playing Ascendancy, a space tactic game that bases solely on starlanes. This game shows that the exploration and strategy factor of such a game is in no way inferior to an "open space" game like MoO2. Although I think a combination of both makes for the greatest array of possible strategies - if the AI also can handle it.

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"Lift with the legs, Rogar, not the back." · [The Gamers]

just wanted to add what most might consider a pretty minor idea to the starlanes debate, but i think could make a big difference in-game. starlanes are a pretty good addition to a space game because it provides an empire with something of a "border" that can be controlled.

every proposal for starlanes though, suggests few (i.e. <= 3) starlanes per star on average, and it's to any(ish) star. this seems to be a bit of a weakness by severy limiting routes. having a border around your stars to protect is one thing, having just 3 - 4 points from which you can be attacked is quite another.

my suggestion here is to start from the basis of connecting every star to every other nearby/adjacent star, and then making minor random changes (delete the odd starlane, make some long ones).

in this way, you could almost think of stars as positions on a board, so that you can move from any point to any adjacent point - and only an adjacent point, so you'd have borders, choke points and strategies. it would almost be like tiles in say Civ3, but instead of square or hex they'd be irregular. and like civ, instead of protecting 3 points of your empire, you'd actually have to deploy all over the border and monitor all of it.

from what i've read so far the starlane generating algorithm may well be able to do exactly this, but it's not clear. this sounds like a more interesting game though, it could at least be an option aye?

Having such a scheme would make the game very similar to removing all the starlanes and reinserting fuel ranges (with the standard variety of movement blocking and assisting anomalies such as wormholes): all the ships can jump a certain distance to a nearby star but to get to a farther star, a ship would typically need to make several jumps between intermediate stars.

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"All glory to the hypnotoad!"

with the exception that a ship cannot go from A -> C. It has to go via B, no matter what engines or tech it has. Better, say, engines, would only make it go A -> B -> C quicker. Unless you're off-roading off course (which i'm not sure has been decided on or not, and i'm not fussed either way). It would be like having very many, very short starlanes.

You may have meant this, but i thought i'd make it clear. I'm not suggesting we get rid of starlanes, and having the option of having fewer 'lanes would be good too. But having just a handfull of points from which to attack/defend borders may be something to design against?

I think as long as travel through normal space is not prohibitively high and the AI is programmed to know the utility of occasionally travelling through normal space to avoid large fleets positioned at starlane chokepoints, the option of bypassing chokepoints is always possible (and perhaps even feasible).

I don't remember if there was a golden ratio between spacelane travel and normal space travel, but it was high enough in the beginning that one would almost never consider travelling through normal space. Unfortunately, I also don't remember how much technology boosted one's ability to travel through normal space.

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"All glory to the hypnotoad!"

[quote="Aquitaine"]I highly reccommend that you read the design document before passing judgement on anything. I hate to say 'I don't have time for you,' but put yourself in my place: if I stopped and re-argued every single thing we've argued already every time a new person showed up and question our decision, we would never get anything done.

Where is the design document on your website? The nearest I could find was "passed features," which gave me no information about why decisions were made, or the game storyline/history. I'm sure many people besides myself could really use a very detailed "about FreeOrion" section. Just a button to push on the homepage to go to a brief descriptionof FO, and a "more detail" button there to get the full story.

But still you could have both ond choose by picking techs.
Starlanes are always faster but you have to use them with the starlanedrive.
Hyperspace-drive is slower but starlane indipendent.
maybe ships coudl have both drives

But thats design and if it's passed, so what. It will be fun anyway.

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Dieser Text basiert ausschließlich auf frei erfundener Interpunktion und Orthographie. Jegliche Uebereinstimmungen mit geltenden Regelungen sind rein zufaellig und wurden nicht beabsichtigt.

Here's an idea...

A criticism of the starlane camp is that players could heavily defend chokepoints - a classic A -> B -> C, and the AI would have to plow through system B, taking massive casulaties in order to attack system C.

Why not have a type of ship that can slip through system defences. Perhaps small, corvette sized ships. They wouldn't hold up versus a well-defended fleet, and you wouldn't want to use them to attack a well defended planet.. but they would be perfect for hit-and-run sabotage attacks. Once they attack something, they warp back to your home system (they run out of supplies, ammo, and this is to prevent people from abusing them).

To give the defender a chance, each time a raiding fleet passes though system B, there is a 20% chance of detection (as opposed to 100% for any regular fleet).

That way, you may not be able to inflict damage upon system B directly, but like all strategy games, if you can destroy your opponens means of production, you will cripple them from the inside out.

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There are three kinds of people in this world - those who can count, and those who can't.

this is why i suggested buildings that allow to open new starlanes. get building, open starlane to system C, launch surprise attack i also think we should have cloaked ships, so you could use an armada of cloaked ships to do hit & run attacks if the enemy hasn´t proper detectors.

I think one of the goal of starlanes IS getting stratagic points which have to be well defended. if you allow people to sneak around you might have to defend ALL your planets. I really favor starlanes and the introduced key systems as a part of strategic planing. First is saw this on moo3 and dislike it because i wasn't used to it, but after awhile i liked it.