I have an interesting observation from a Borg commander. ...

« Back

1520 days, 13 hours, 18 minutes ago

I have an interesting observation from a Borg commander. ...

I have an interesting observation from a Borg commander. This is my first game with Sphere enabled, and I noticed that after I have set my chunnel and switched to a different ship or planet, two chunnel lines appear originating from the same ship but on different sides of the map pointing towards the same ship on one side of the map. That description I wrote sounded awful so let me try and describe it a different way. (Big Beefer or Joshua, if you are able to log in and view my current turn you'll see what I'm talking about.)

Ship A is the Firecloud opening the chunnel
Ship B is the Firecloud target receiving the chunnel

These ships are on the edge of the map which gets duplicated on both sides of the game map by Sphere.

I'll call Ship A (west) the ship on the west, Ship A (east) the ship in the east. Same for Ship B.

With the chunnel set, I see a dotted chunnel line from Ship A (west) to Ship B (west) which I would expect to see. I also see a dotted chunnel line from Ship A (east) to Ship B (west), which looks weird because it stretches across the entire game map. I would expect the second chunnel line, if any, to appear from Ship A (east) to Ship B (east).

Right now it's early enough in the game to not be a big problem or add much confusion, but as it goes on and I get 15 or 20 chunnels going each turn this could make an already difficult task incredibly confusing. Sphere already presents enough challenges to a Borg Commander that I could do without the additional handicap. I have tested it with and without add-ons enabled and it does not appear to be a problem with an add-on script.

Should I not be eliminated within the next 5 turns or so, there is a possibility that I will at some point conquer star systems which Sphere will duplicate not only on the east and west of the map, but also on the top and bottom edges of the map. To extend this behavior to its logical conclusion, this could produce not only Ship A (east) and Ship A (west) but also Ship A (east-up) and Ship A (west-up) and give me as many as 3 ghost chunnels to keep track of in addition to the real ones. At that point my brain might explode and the other races could swoop in to gather up all of my planets because I would be in a catatonic state from which I may never recover.

Please help!

Cheers,
DB

1520 days, 13 hours, 4 minutes ago

RE: I have an interesting observation from a Borg commander. ...

that makes me thing of another point. If the borg are limited to only make chunnels of greater than 100 LY. In a sphere environment there is always a path that is greater than 100 LYs. So is it possible to have 2 fireclouds 1 LY apart and successfully chunnel?

1520 days, 12 hours, 57 minutes ago

RE: I have an interesting observation from a Borg commander. ...

@DB - you can modify the duplication distance (350 by default) in the Settings screen. Even down to 0.

Maybe that would help?

1520 days, 12 hours, 50 minutes ago

RE: I have an interesting observation from a Borg commander. ...

Thank you RSK; I hadn't noticed that setting. Reducing it removed the duplicate ships and duplicate chunnel line, but it seems more like sweeping the problem under the sofa than actually cleaning up the mess. While it did make the line go away, it also deprived me of the advantage of seeing both sides of the map in relation to everything else.

1520 days, 12 hours, 17 minutes ago

RE: I have an interesting observation from a Borg commander. ...

Yeah, and we have to quit game and reload to make it stick. If we could change it on the fly that would be a little easier.

I guess it would be nice if there were some logic to display ONLY the actual route the chunnel would take.

1520 days, 12 hours, 0 minutes ago

mule

RE: I have an interesting observation from a Borg commander. ...

It seems to be a display glitch rather than an actual error. When I have been confused by this problem I have just ignored it, knowing which was correct, or I have changed the overlap.

Admittedly, it would be nice if this were solved, but I would place it somewhat lower on the list of priorities BB and Joshua need to deal with.

1520 days, 11 hours, 59 minutes ago

RE: I have an interesting observation from a Borg commander. ...

We are aware of this issue, and I'm considering some different fixes. We could choose to not show the chunnel line from duplicated objects. But then I think we would hear just the opposite complaint, ie "I moved my fleet to a planet and didn't realize that there was a chunnel leaving from there because it wasn't drawn." What I'm thinking about doing is showing chunnels from duplicates in a less bright or more transparent color, so you can still tell they are there, but they'll be more in the background. Kind of like the sphere border. It's there when you need to see it, but it doesn't grab your attention.

1520 days, 11 hours, 48 minutes ago

RE: I have an interesting observation from a Borg commander. ...

Thank you for considering the options. I am not a programmer so I have no idea about the actual complexities involved in fixing the issue. If possible, it seems like a check of "are both chunnel origin and chunnel target mirrored and if so, draw line between chunnel mirrored origin to mirrored target" would work. "If they are not, only display chunnel line in the original starmap."

1520 days, 9 hours, 10 minutes ago

drbeardz

RE: I have an interesting observation from a Borg commander. ...

HMMM...I Have yet to play a sphere game.

Curious, I assume the two paths are there to measure both paths that the ship could chunnel by. And I assume both paths must be over 100ly?.....hypothetically, you could set a chunnel course that is under 100ly away by traveling off the edge and around the world / taking a route that is over 100ly

1520 days, 0 hours, 29 minutes ago

RE: I have an interesting observation from a Borg commander. ...

OK, I made some changes and would love feedback from those who have been having problems with this. First, I "dimmed" chunnel lines from mirrored fireclouds as I mentioned above. Second, I now draw the chunnel to the closest copy, which works well in Darth Balls's case, and hopefully in others as well. Anyways, for those interested, take a look on http://test.planets.nu and let me know what you think. If it's well received I'll release it to the main site.

Also, to answer the questions regarding minimum distance. The shortest possible path has to be above the minimum distance, so no you can't avoid the 100 ly minimum by working strange things over the sphere border.

1520 days, 0 hours, 9 minutes ago

RE: I have an interesting observation from a Borg commander. ...

I can confirm that it *has* resolved the issue I was having with the second confusing chunnel line in this specific situation. Additionally, of the ten user scripts I'm currently using in Firefox to enhance gameplay and the display, the only one that does not work with this fix is "Color Coding for Planets.nu" by dtolman v2.2. With color coding enabled, none of the changes made to the test site appear to do anything at all.

Thank you for the prompt fix!

DB

1389 days, 10 hours, 23 minutes ago

RE: I have an interesting observation from a Borg commander. ...

This is a very special thanks to dtolman for updating his Colors script to version 2.24 which works well with Sphere and fixes the chunnel problem. That works astonishingly better now and allies me to focus my energies on tactics rather than geography!

DB