The standard tholian is useless. People do make upgraded
sentinels, but the problem there is they tend to result
in stalemate. I can have a 2nd corpie lift-refill the
sentinel (assuming it can't land after the upgrade), and
nobody will ever get past it. You just can't beat that
kind of defensive edge, so the game stales out. That leads
to edits w/o sentinels.

I don't know how to fix that.

Finding bases... well, there's a lot of tactics. A large
uni and no eprobes will help, but that's not everything.
CIM reports is one way, but again, there are others. You
can't really fight that war, you can make it tougher, but
a skilled hunter will find their way. A 60k uni would
help, however, if that's ever a possibility.

Still, the difference is between 2 days and 5 days, not
2 days and a month. Inside of a week or two, you'll find
most bases, so slow planets just don't survive.

As for why it's easy to find a small grid, well, think
about it. If I walk around the universe and I find their
figs, I can use a map to create an efficient exploration
pattern, then nail out all DEs and tunnels near the area.
Avoid areas that aren't figged, continually refine the
search, you can easily hone in one someone's core grid and
find stuff. Having a large grid, thousands of sectors,
scattered around the topology of the map makes it much
more difficult.

I had an enemy team a while back that used a line-based
passive gridder to drop all their figs. That's fine, except
they also upgraded many of those ports. So I literally just
went from port to port, following the line of figs, ended
up taking out nearly a dozen upgraded ports. Truth is, some
of it is just instinct. Sometimes I just get a feeling about
a particular sector and it turns out to be an enemy base.
Happens with shocking regularity these days.

There are no backwater tunnels, really.

I actually don't think defensive gridding has turned people
off, I think the time commitment and difficulty of movement
has turned people off. While similar, they have different
core solutions.

Yeah, maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree. It's hard to say from my perspective. The general sense that I get is that the game is just too locked down too early for many players, and I hear about how this or that tactic has spoiled the game for them. While I definitely get that one man's "spoiled" is another man's "interesting", I'd just like to find a way, if possible, to support both flavors.

Ok, so how important is having a fully mapped out universe to many of these tactics? You said something about using a map to create a search pattern. I assume this was a ztm generated map? One of the tools we have here is controlling both the pace and cost of Eprobes, but currently there is no way to balance ztm. We've discussed that a bit before. And my understanding is that a map is generated using free CIM data, correct? So it's not only cost free in terms of turns, but in terms of credits as well? I did experiment with a way to allow gameops to disable ztm. If it is possible to disable ztm, how would that effect one's ability to hunt early in the game?

Oh, and the other thing about this is, I assume that many of the tactics you're discussing are for unlimited turn games. I think it's probably impossible to overcome some of these issues in unlimited turn games. Just that one setting, unlimited turns, changes the balance of the game so much. I don't know if there's any sense in trying to balance any of these proposed options under unlimited turns. Turns are an important tool for balancing the game.

Its Math John and it was always easy. The smaller the grid the easier it gets. Probes..free movement ...Scans....Cims....Knowing your opponent and there likes and dislikes. Script error's..errant fig hits...human nature... Peeps build in DE's tunnels and bubbles a lot.

All these things narrow the subset. A large grid PREVENTS the Hunter from finding you.
IT narrows the free movement of the enemy.

People LOVE there grid!
What they don't like is having to plow through the Comp's grid.
Failing and ending up torped/in a pod/ dead. This is what they don't like.


Like I said before grid decay can help to a degree but its another tool for scripting and it only helps the elites in the long run.

Personally Stopping the grid at a reasonable point is a possible solution if that can be put in the game easily. 20 or 25% max grid per corp gives plenty of protection and free movement and port access.

A 2 corp game would have max 40 to 50% grid that way...Plenty of free movement to a point.

If you want to continue looking at grid decay then adjust the rate based on warpcount with 6 warpers decaying at a much faster rate than DE's...De's don't restrict movement but well placed figs in 6 and 5 warp sectors are more effective at closing movement down.

Grid limiting would force the corp to grid selectively. But be warned. Any of the above schemes will raise the bar on skill level. End game gridding will still bring movement to a halt even at 50% because of tunnel blocking and clearing and/or bubble grid relocation schemes.


Getting rid of bubbles would help as would DE's tunnels deeper than 2 or 3. But it only prolongs the pain.A good hunter will find you.



Paying for CIm's or ZTM's?

So your idea is to have everyone log into a game and PPT to get ZTM cash and not play for 3 days?
This is fun and will bring new players? Better for the sysop to post the Ztm for everyone instead so the Builders can find Low traffic non DE areas or some other harder to find spot and lay out an good grid to defend there base.

Better Corp will merge map data and reduce the cost while newer players will be at a disadvantage.

ANd there we are with Scripts giving even more of an Advantage.


Unlim's wont be effected by ZTM..I rarely even bother for first few days in an unlim.
Turns games are limited by turns to initial grid.

Or to find a base near fed and build so I can find them in 20 minutes tommorrow?

Lack of a ztm would change quite a bit, yes.

But it's not as easy as it sounds. You'd have to
disable CF plotting for it to work, and that would
break a lot of things. I mean how can you get to
dock if you can't plot the course? You would have
to lock down any plots from sectors other than your
own. But that would also make it impossible to find
bubbles, sectors to use for cashing, sectors to colo,
etc.

The tactics I outlined above happened in a turns game.
ZTMs aren't used in unlim startups since you can just
grid out the game directly.

If you remove eprobes, not so much. You're CIM
hunting a moving target then. And constantly
regridding isn't an option given the turn cost.



A % based approach in a 2-corp game makes it
trivially easy to find the opponent. That doesn't
help the situation.



That will just result in people gridding out DEs
more aggressively.

But yes, a good hunter will find you.

Granted you can Prolong END GAME in a Turns game.

I thought the thought was in reducing the effect of grid early on.



A % based approach in a 2-corp game makes it
trivially easy to find the opponent. That doesn't
help the situation.



That will just result in people gridding out DEs
more aggressively.

But yes, a good hunter will find you.[/quote]

Well the net effect is it would make it easier to GRID.
And a little harder to restrict Movement.

John..you need to decide if people want an easier to grid(move) enviroment.

Or if you want there Static Bases to be harder to find early game.

You cannot have both imo.

You could reduce the effects of grid early on w/
a decay rate since single fig lays would decay
down. This would make it easier to find bases,
naturally, but I think it could be done with a
minimum of trade-off if the edit were balanced
correctly.

Granted, a bad edit would turn this into a shooting
match.

Starting w/ grid decay off, then turning it on, would
prolong mid-game too. Would still be difficult to move
early on, tho. But the grid isn't usually locked that
early, so that's less of an issue.



Yep. That's the question of this discussion. The
easier we make movement, the easier bases will
be found. There's a trade-off there, for sure.

True somewhat on the ZTM for unlims, but when I played on a corp, someone always ran one since they weren't cashing or coloing AFK (non-truce). I seldom run a ZTM as a solo because I really can't protect myself well with it running. I could modify the ZTM I guess to allow that though. In the truce game setup, a ZTM should be helpful by allowing targeted gridding during "gridwars" at truce end.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

Ok, so the proposed option to limit ZTM would be to mask unvisited sector numbers from warp path displays. So for example if you enter sector #192, StarDock, from sector #1, today you'd get a warp path like

1> (2) > (8) > (169) > (59) > (98) > (182)

And from this plot, you have a lot of information. Do enough of these and you begin to build lists of warps for sectors and the structure of the universe comes into focus. But what if you don't get to see anything that you don't already know? You can see your warps out from 1, so the (2) is visible, even if it isn't yet visited. And the StarDock sector, 182, is known because it's visible in the game. So here's what you'd see:

1 > (2) > (*) > (*) > (*) > (*) > (182)

From this you know that the destination is 6 hops away through 5 unvisited sectors, but you don't gain any new information from this course plot. Now suppose you plot to a random sector, sector 48. Today, that would show up like

1 > (5) > (174) > (11) > 162 > 97 > (69) > (48)

where 162 and 97 have been visited. Again, you gain a lot of new info from this plot. But why do you need to know those sector numbers in between where you haven't visited? That's new information that you didn't possess before you entered the course, and that's the crux of the issue for ztm. By masking unknown sectors, this would look like

1 > (5) > (*) > (*) > 162 > 97 > (*) > (48)

And you'd know how many hops and which sectors you've visited before, but nothing more.

Unless I'm mistaken in my understanding (certainly possible because these are complex tactics), this would make ztm impossible without hindering other gameplay.

As to Parrothead's point about whether it would be desirable to avoid having ZTM, I think that's up to the gameop. You could provide everyone with a full map view of the galaxy (just make all sectors known at start of game) and save a ton of CPU cycles and time, or keep the map hidden and force players to explore before beginning the other phases of the game. For some people, exploration is an important part of the game, and ztm removes that aspect from the game. The point is taking control of the tactic and making it optional rather than having everyone be forced to deal with it because there's no way around it.

Well, people can run them if they're bored, but it's
a waste of time when they should be gridding or
cashing. Either way, you don't need a ztm in an
unlim. It's trivial to grid out a 20k uni in a day of
just mowing around. No map needed.

Why target gridding? People rarely move their bases.
Find them during truce, invade them at truce end.

Except if you do that, you break lawnmower scripts
and make grid defense that much more powerful.
You have to know where you're going several sectors
ahead before you can mow there.

Edit: This makes grid defense very very powerful since
the only way to grid thru would be to explore the area.
Stalemate city.

Additionally, once someone gets a map, it becomes
impossible to break into the game if they're defending.

Additionally, if you can do distance, I suspect there's a
way to still ZTM as long as you can CF plot to unknown
sectors. It would take more time, but I think I could
still do it w/o having to plot from 1-SECTORS to
1-SECTORS (which would take too long).

Edit: On second thought, I know exactly how I could do
this. It would strongly favor corp play over solo play, too.

Well getting the Distance from a Plock or Twarp lock would feed you information on distance for free.

I think the ZTM idea is a non starter John.
We don't play 200 turns a day anymore.
TO hide requires 40k - 60k sectors then the Warp paths are SO long that searching these sectors for a few groups of planets becomes a serious drain on turns. A limited grid could make Probing a longer more expensive process. As the days go by the grids get bigger and at some point probes are worthless. Searching becomes turn expensive.

This would get u closer to the "old school" long build game you desire. But to tell you the truth I don't really remember EVER having too hard a time finding the other guy. And I stated with 1200 Baud.

If planets go mobile before truce is up, I know my base gets moved to a different location. Those that don't move their bases generally seem to log off at truce end. The non-truce games we played against corps like DU didn't allow for AFK gridding w/o ending up in a pod/SD, unless you did passive gridding. The targeted gridding would allow selecting sectors to focus on at grid end - either DEs or bubbles where people might want to move their bases to. DEs are not the best of places for a base, but sometimes they work depending on who you are against.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

Yeh, yours might. Most will not. If we immediately start
a limpet gridder dropping 50 limps per sector to all of our
grid, then invade everything that hasn't moved, finding
the rest isn't that tough.

I have to say, I have never found it difficult to find the
enemy in an unlim. And I almost never run a map. It's
just not that hard when turns aren't a factor.

Except exploration is not removed by a ZTM. All you know is sector 123 -> sector 134 from a plot. If you do enough plots, you will know that sector 123 might have 5 warps and 134 is a dead end. You will not know if it has a port that could be used, or if there is an enemy fighter in sector 123 or a base in 134.

One of the best things for a scripter to write is a ZTM because of the challenge of hitting 100% in a reasonable time.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."