Space Opera - Test Games

[GrumpyMel]

Turn 6 complete and sent on.... a few more turns and I'll start posting an AAR.

[Casus_Belli]

I may well be missing something, but I don't seem to be able to build landers at either my starbase or ground production centre, even though I have researched assault landers. Otherwise it's looking very interesting, now that I'm beginning to figure it out a bit. I wouldn't mind starting again.

[Casus_Belli]

I'd leave the supply system in, though.

[GrumpyMel]

Casus, make sure you have enough Isotopes. If you don't have the minimum required it won't even show the SFT to build em. Landers and Assault Landers should be produceable at your ground production centers.

[sapper32]

Turn sent to grumpymel

[GrumpyMel]

Turn 7 done and sent to Romanovs

[sapper32]

Turn 7 sent on

[Bombur]

Idiot question: I noticed that units use no supply, so there is point in producing supplies. Is that correct?

[GrumpyMel]

Bombur,
 
That's correct. In the final version I'll go ahead and remove supply altogether so it can't be produced to avoid confusion. I'll also trim the unused portions of the map and do a bunch of other "clean-up" work. I just didn't want to hit too much of the polishing work before I had gotten some play-testing done...and decided whether any major changes needed to be made.

[Casus_Belli]

The lander problem was not a problem; they show when there are resources to make them.
But now I have another problem. My home city is producing nobles, but they are not going to my HQ, even though other units produced there do, so it can't be that I've got it assigned to the wrong HQ.
The scen is looking more and more interesting to me, but again I would strongly recommend leaving the supply system in [&o]. It's one of the really great features of AT, IMO, and it would be a shame to leave it out.

[GrumpyMel]

Hmm,  that's strange....the nobles I produce are going to my HQ's. What does it show in the production screens for the one you try to produce.... are they in the LFT columm for your capital city..... does it show up as having produced in the Production Summary stats?
 
 

[Casus_Belli]

I'll answer these questions when I've got the turn.[8D]

[GrumpyMel]

Turn 10 sent on

[autarkis1967]

GrumpyMel, could you post that really nice writeup you did as a post to this thread as part of the introduction to the scenerio (when you are polishing it). I just spent most of the evening trying to figure out how the landing stuff worked in the scenerio. I finally looked here to find that great write up. I had found your AAR first which prompted me to get the scenerio. 

[autarkis1967]

Also did you pull these ideas from Emperor of the Fading sun? Which is a roleplaying game as well as a computer game that came out probably 12-15 years ago. Loved that game but the AI was stupid. Would love to see the Imperial Eye put in the scenerio and maybe Imperial Fleet. I would also like to see the rebels actually gain in strength if not dealt with as well as maybe cards that can be played on them to give them additional units in a specific planet if a warlord is present. These could come up to other noble houses randomly possibly if they have no presence on the planet. This would represent gun running to dissidents. I have only played a little of the scenerio but really like it. Oh also a warp point between Avalon and Grail should be put in. Cadwell has it a little to easy in my opinion. One fleet on the warp point and they are pretty much protected. I am ambivalent about supply. I don't think it would add anything to the scenario and it would be fiddley if implemented. Great job though.

[Casus_Belli]

Oh yeah, fantastic scenario.
Last turn my home city, Andalusia, made two tanks and 2.2 landers. At the beginning of last turn I had fourteen nobles in the lft column. I now have two tanks and one lander in my DeCastillo HQ, which the prod. overview shows as the assigned HQ. The fourteen nobles are still in the lft column of the city production screen. Strangest of all, there are now 1.2 landers also in the lft column. So it seems that, of two tanks and 2.2 landers produced, two tanks and one lander went to the HQ, and meanwhile the nobles stayed in the city lft column where they were all along. I'm afraid I forgot to look at the production summary.

[GrumpyMel]

Casus,

Well I think that tells me what's going on. You need Nobles in your resource pool (same as with Knights) in order to build them as units. You can see this in the same area as your other resources You only get 1 every 6 months or so... so you wouldn't have been able to build more. The reason you have them in your lft column is because the game is waiting for you to get the appropriate resources in order to build that unit (probably the same thing is happening with the other lander). From the engines perspective, everything is working properly.

It seems a little quirk of the AT engine, that if you are building a unit that requires a resource to complete and you lack sufficient resources.... it will still allow you to schedule that resource for Production....as long as you were previously producing it and don't switch away from that unit in that slot. However, if you play an Action Card...it seems like it recalculates your available production and will close down any lines for which you lack resource (Gives a message something along the lines of "x Production Lines Closed"). Not sure why it does that, but that is the way the engine works.

Sorry if the test game is being a little rough so far. The scenerio uses alot of things that aren't in a standard AT game... so it's going to have some rough edges. I appreciate you sticking with it....as it will help me figure out what i might need to modify or at least document better when I finalize it.

[sapper32]

Im also having a couple of small problems working things out,it took me a few turns to work out how to land troops on a new planet but got that one now im beginning to understand the scenario and enjoying it very much,i await the next turn.

Regards Ian

[Tufkal2]

Actually I think the reason for this is the following:
In the Item Types you set both RegimeSlot required and RegimeSlotCost and you set both to the same value.
Now the first value (line 8) says that a Regime Slot must have a minimum value or this item will be removed from the list of buildable items and I think is the cause of what is happening.
The second value (line 13) says a certain number of Regime Slot points will be deducted when a certain item is build. If the RegimeSlot value is not high enough the item will still be queued but production not finished till the regimeslot value is high enough again. But the queue will stay regardless of what you do.

Also enjoying the scenario and looking forward to some first encounters with my neighbours...

[GrumpyMel]

Autarkis,

Thanks, yes....I got the idea for this game from Emperor of the Fading Suns...which remains my 2nd favorate computer game (behind Advanced Tactics [:)]) of all time.

I agree that I need to document the scenerio better....as it plays very different from a standard AT game. It's a real testament to the flexibility of Vic's engine that it's able to handle this. Probably what I'll do is put a readme.txt document in with the scenerio and reference it in the intro. There is ALOT of material that needs to be explained....and probably it might get a little lost if it's just in the intro.

I do have some concerns that the Houses might not be completey balanced. Which will be one of the things I'll be looking for in play-testing. Giving Cadwall a link between Grail and Avalon I think will make it easier for them rather then harder. The deal is that the planet Cadwall has a direct link to now, Vigil, is a pretty poor planet in terms of resources/production...whereas Avalon is a good one... putting a link between Avalon and Grail will reduce the number of jumps Cadwall needs in order to expand there from 3 to 1...making it easier/quicker for them to expand without really hurting thier defence much....since they'll still be able to cordon off the entire upper left quadrant by holding the jumpgates between Solstice/Baba Yaga and Heimdall/Circe.

Part of the balancing factor is that even though Cadwall has a very defenseable position, they are slower to expand. Now, I could establish links between Sanctus-Avalon AND Avalon-Grail to give Cadwall a little more competition and less defence....or I could look at adding a Planet or 2 to some of the other Houses to give them a little bit more of a secure base to start.

It's definately something I'm going to need to look at carefully in play-testing.