I have a game running 3 aliens, Ferrengi, Alien Traders, Overlord. Ferrengi and Alien Traders started out on day 1 of the game but I set the Overlord to 21 days until race appears. I have the Overlord set to have its own planet and sectors just like the Ferrengi and Aliens. Problem occured on day 21, Overlord came into the game, no planet, no home sector area as it was set for and he just wanders the game blindly without even trading. I only have it set to have 1 Overlord in the game at a time because he is set to be pretty nasty. I had him boxed into a dead end and created his planet and sectors manually but there is no option in the planet or sector editor to make ownership of the planet to a Gold alien. You can do it with fighters and mines but not planets. Even with him boxed in he will not claim the planet or even try to land on it, didnt make a citadel yet so he could claim it. I need to find out how to create a planet and sectors for him without trashing the existing game. Any help from anyone would be great. Without the planet he will not trade, rob, and steal and therefore once his fighters are used up he is too easy to cap and has no way to replenish them.

quote:Originally posted by Shorty

I have a game running 3 aliens, Ferrengi, Alien Traders, Overlord. Ferrengi and Alien Traders started out on day 1 of the game but I set the Overlord to 21 days until race appears. I have the Overlord set to have its own planet and sectors just like the Ferrengi and Aliens. Problem occured on day 21, Overlord came into the game, no planet, no home sector area as it was set for and he just wanders the game blindly without even trading. I only have it set to have 1 Overlord in the game at a time because he is set to be pretty nasty. I had him boxed into a dead end and created his planet and sectors manually but there is no option in the planet or sector editor to make ownership of the planet to a Gold alien. You can do it with fighters and mines but not planets. Even with him boxed in he will not claim the planet or even try to land on it, didnt make a citadel yet so he could claim it. I need to find out how to create a planet and sectors for him without trashing the existing game. Any help from anyone would be great. Without the planet he will not trade, rob, and steal and therefore once his fighters are used up he is too easy to cap and has no way to replenish them.

I'm not terribly experienced with gold aliens, but do you have "Maintain Home Sector" set to Yes? It's alien race editor (1) settings, option L.

Yes it is set to yes. I sent the archive file to JP for him to look at but he is moving and it might be a while. From everything I can tell its all set up correctly and should have worked. JP suggested taking that race out of the game and putting them back in again and see if that worked. I will play with it more later today and see what I can find out.

quote:Originally posted by Shorty

Yes it is set to yes. I sent the archive file to JP for him to look at but he is moving and it might be a while. From everything I can tell its all set up correctly and should have worked. JP suggested taking that race out of the game and putting them back in again and see if that worked. I will play with it more later today and see what I can find out.

If you figure out what went wrong or how to make it work, be sure to let us know. If you're having the problem, others probably will/have also

First make the planet the Overlord will keep and name it for the Overlord. Go into the race editor, if you have maintain a homeworld marked yes, go to #4, select D for planet type then when it gives you the list, select the planet you made for the Overlord. This should give the Overlord his planet. You will then have to edit that planet after you bang the game. From then on, it SHOULD come into any subsequent game you bang with the settings you gave it.

Yeah, the problem is he should have let the overlord spawn on day 1, but not let him reach full strengh until day 21. *This solves almost all the issues your describing*

Some tips I learned running my TWGS:
If you make a planet just for the certian race, you can have the planet not goto level 1 or whatever you want within 21 days, or have it start as level 3, and 21 days to L4, this will also limit the race.

If you make max power 21 days, it will be a formitable foe at around 10-12 days, which is usually enough time *in a low, low turn game* for teams and individuals to build a decent enough door.

I'm sorry I can't be of more help, good luck!

What I have found out on this is that you cannot set them to enter the game on a particular day, the aliens will enter but will have no home sectors or a planet if you set it that way and therefore they will not trade and rob they will just wander around aimlessly. You have to manually add the race on the day you want them to show up in the game and all is ok. So in short the setting that says number of days until race appears does not fuction as intended and needs to be fixed.
The big pain in my butt that as many times as I have tried will not work correctly is when you tell the planet what its supposed to start out with and it starts out with little or nothing. For instance if I make Ferrengal and set its initial values to 500k ore 20k equip 400k fighters and a level 5 planet it will come into the game with 1200 ore 500 equip 1k fighters and level 2...this means that at every rebang I have to start the game to get the planets to spawn and then manually edit all the alien planets to whatever level I want them. So why is the initial values setup even there if I have to do it all over again once I rebang the game? That is the most frustrating part of it, the part about putting a new alien race into the game is something I can live with since it only takes a second to do but having to manually edit everything after its already been setup sucks.

Someone needs to write a manual on this stuff because I've seen A LOT of sysops who don't know how to properly create gold aliens. They are either 2 powerful 2 early and completly ruin the game by dropping 50k off figs everywhere. Or like what is being described here, they are setup completly wrong, do nothing and add nothing to the game.

Heh

"How to be a good twgs sysop"

1. Don't **** with the aliens unless you know what your doing.
2. Even if you do know what your doing with the aliens, don't **** up.
3. If all else fails, see rule 1.

One of my rules would be no more then 3 alien races in a game. Don't games with 6 alien races or so put a lot of load the the server?

Yeah, I accually prefer 1 race, that doesn't trade too much of a %, but robs and steals, I'm sick of those empty ports. Also, turn limitations for aliens would be nice, but we'll never see it =\

[quote]Originally posted by Survey_Says

They are either 2 powerful 2 early and completly ruin the game by dropping 50k off figs everywhere.

I agree, the game on Goosemoose.com is like this with aliens dumping 50k fighters in every sector and you cant even move without getting killed.

[quote]Originally posted by Survey_Says

Or like what is being described here, they are setup completly wrong, do nothing and add nothing to the game.

The fact is they are set up exactly like it should be but there is a problem with the coding in the software that doesnt allow it to function like it is supposed to. Like I said in a previous post in this thread...JP has a copy of the files I had problems with and is supposed to be fixing it so it works like it is supposed to. The days until race appears is supposed to add them as if it was day 1 with sectors, planets, and aliens. The planets are supposed to be spawned into the game with what is set for initial values in the editor. Neither one of these functions works like it is supposed to, it is not set up wrong.

As for the alien races, yes it puts a huge load on the server for each race depending on how many aliens you asign to that race. The alien server has to be able to track and control the actions of every individual alien in the game so you also have to consider how many games you have running and the total number of alien races between them. You can assign as many as 1000 aliens per game, split it up however you like between races but its a max of 1000 per game. I have run mine with as many as 10 races between all games and it ran just fine but I have a 3200 processor with 1 Gig of 400 MHz ram. The slower systems out there prolly shouldnt run more than 1-2 alien races per game if at all if they are going to run more than a couple games at a time.

My point was not to make the distinction between dumb sysops and bad coding.. my point was there should be a manual that covers the proper creation of gold aliens.

If this nuance of the game had been documented somewhere then your alien race would have functioned the way you had intended.

I'm sure there are many more problems such as this that many new (and veteran) sysops also run into, and they would probably benefit from some sort of getting started guide, common pitfalls, etc.

I just want the overlord to shoot photons again, that's all... I miss hellcat =\