But what if the attacking ship's delay is longer than the retreating ship's move delay? This puts the advantage on the ship stats and not on your connection, reflexes or whether you're using a bot.

Anyone surprised that I'm not getting an answer to the question "what did I do to break your game"? Kinda hard to fix it if I don't even know what I did to chase all these players away.

You did not break it, I think it runs better than before. You forced people to change and IMO the ones complaining the most probably can't fix the scripts that they are having an issue with. I have not found many scripts that actually need fixing, MOMbot needed a few minor tweaks that get fixed usually within a couple hours after be notified. I for one find the game better off without them. Maybe we could get the word out that some of the problem's have moved on giving other players the opportunity a chance at having a fun game. I am actually enjoying playing the HHT without having the turn Fed / SS off from all the trash talk.

That was actually the first or second game I joined after coming back from an eight-year hiatus. As I recall, you had about a week's lead on me and you were the only active player in the game. (Fun, huh?) You weren't always online when I joined, which is one of the reasons I joined, but after a day or two you started staying on 24/7. I assumed you were AFK the whole time because you never responded to any of my fedcom greetings, either.

Think about it... if I weren't an old-timer, if I were some newbie who just heard about TW, I probably would have quit right then and there. Is that what you want?




I've explained why both of those features are essential. You haven't explained (beyond your personal preference) why either of those settings is a hindrance to anything but AFK kill scripts. In particular, nobody's explained why delays are a special burden to reds. (I've already said I'd consider removing the rob delay... which I did not turn on; it's on by default.)




Again, that's exactly the kind of thing I want to eliminate. I know you want to do it, but it's something that I and at least some (maybe many, maybe even most) other players think ruins the game. Bot vs. bot would be a fun programming exercise. Human vs. human would be a fun game. Bot vs. human is no fun at all. Good news, though: humans can play turn games, and bots can play unlims, and everyone can be happy.

edit: double posted somehow

There is a repetitious obsession lately with catering to scripters. Why?

Who cares if a change screws up their robots/afkers?

If TW is intended to be a game CPU v CPU, okie dokey, lets go for it that way. If it is not then, ....

In case it needs saying, I write and use scripts. Have done for a long time.

Two things about that. First of all, don't ship movement delays put you in limbo? You instantly warp out of one sector, you are nowhere for the duration of the delay, and then you reappear in another sector. (And if I am wrong about that, JP, take it as a suggestion!)

Second, there is the option of weapon power-up delays. I haven't really thought about that feature at all because I can just imagine how some people would scream. But do you think that might be useful?

I went back through my ancient posts from 2002 and found JP's comment that I've often referred to in categorizing scripts. This is where he originally broke them down as automation, reactive, and polling. Then, as now, it's the reactive kind that most "anti-script" players have a problem with.

Comet, do you have anything useful to offer? Or are you going to just make baseless claims and then laugh at me for actually trying to figure out what you want? I'm sure it is hilarious, but considering how much work I've done to keep the game intact for players like you, I really do want to know how I've broken the game.

T0yman and I did some head to head attack testing on the beta server.

If my macro is ay1^May1^May1^May1^May1^May1^May10000^M

You are spammed, unable to do anything. You cannot move attack or retreat. So to be doubly deadly, spam single fig hits of 1000, then do a surround, and final kill, get the ship and the pod.

The key is to have the capability to retreat before the attacks start, and having a ship delay on makes that difficult to do.

That's why I'm experimenting with some of the emulation settings. I've slowed game P input down to 28.8k, output is still 1 mps and even though I am running buydown scripts, I'm not noticing a discernable slow down.

I did a bit of experimentation with that kind of thing myself recently, and I did change the way attacks are processed in a way that kept one player from being able to lock up another player with repeated attacks. I pulled that back out because I was concerned about how it might effect combat in general, but I agree that it's a major issue and I'd be interested in exploring how that change might effect these tests. If it works like it seemed to work in my tests, then the player being attacked will be able to issue commands as if no attack was being made.

Because for the most part, scripters have kept the game
going in its current public incarnation for years. The vast
majority of public scripts started out as private, or at best
commercially available scripts; CK's for example, and TWX
itself was once only available for purchase. Now all these
scripts are free, publicly available and many have the source
code available as well. So the tools are there for everyone.

Kav, you're just snippy about the TWX users because they
use the public scripts without knowing how to script themselves.
Ever get tired of being so salty? Have a beer.

I think JP is being 'bend-over-backward' nice to keep an
open ear for those changes that break scripts. He really
should just change TWGS and let the public fix their own
scripts. But then, that would give a huge advantage to
those of us who can modify and fix our own scripts.

To try to once again drag this thread back to topic, I see
the call for play testers. I saw that Mongoose was wondering
aloud why no Red corp came by to test. My position is that
it is hard to get a 'serious' red corp with these settings. Why
not make the TWA available and we'll just test it privately?

I don't understand this. What immobilizes you? Is it a result of the bug that drops you to the command prompt when there's activity in the sector? I thought that was going to be fixed in 2.13. And where does online auto-flee figure into this?

I thought about this problem a lot when I was designing my own game, before discovering that JP is actively working on TWGS. I am not sure that a good solution exists. Because if human players can always escape combat, then so can scripts. And if human players can always force combat, then so can scripts.

Here's the problem in a nutshell. The outcome of combat must be one or more of the following: deterministic, dependent on non-game factors like latency, or random. There's nothing on that list that gives humans an advantage. At best, humans and scripts are equal if combat is 100% random.

By random I don't just mean how much damage is done by 1000 fighters. Say that if two players are in the same sector, the game starts processing 1 command from each player every second. Player A is in a sector and player B warps in. If player B powers up weapons and player A moves, player A always escapes. That's no fun. Add in ship delays and power-up delays, and the outcome is deterministic; if player A is in a ship that moves faster than the power-up delay, player A escapes. That's slightly more interesting, but not much. What if there's no power-up delay, and the order in which the commands are processed is random. Sometimes player A escapes, other times player B attacks. If player A survives the attack, he warps out of the sector. What happens next depends on ship delays. IMO, that might be the most interesting solution.

But the idea of processing 1 command each tick has plenty of problems. Does it kick in only when players are in the same sector? If you add in other scenarios, it gets messy fast.




Precisely why I insist on movement delays. Say you're in a sector with 3 warps, and someone comes in with a CF on 1/3 s/t delay. It'll take them a full 4 seconds to surround you and kill you (assuming they already figged the sector they came in from) as opposed to practically instantly without ship delays.

Cruncher and I tested this on 2.07 so I am not sure if it is still the same or not. I believe JP was going to fix it, I just have never tested it.