Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

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1993 days, 2 hours, 53 minutes ago

Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships).

In this thread http://play.planets.nu/#/activity/1230026, MJS suggested a planets limit ships system as an alternative to the ship limit/pbp system, and wrote several great posts describing what gameplay could be like under such a system. MJS also eloquently argued that such a system would have a positive impact on player retention.

The basic idea of the system is this: instead of the normal ship limit, a player can have 1 ship slot for each planet he or she controls, with a minimum number of ship slots for each player (e.g. 50). So if the player controls 35 planets, he can have 50 ships. If the player controls 120 planets, he can have 120 ships.

This idea is not new. Apparently, there was an addon based on similar ideas in the 1990's that worked with VGA Planets 3.x. However, since no one seems to remember any details about this addon, I'll attempt to flesh out the design details for the "Nu PLS" addon in this thread.

1993 days, 2 hours, 52 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

proposed "Nu PLS" addon design details

A. What happens when you have more ships than your limit?

You have exceeded your empire's capacity to maintain its fleet, and this has the following consequences:
1. You can't build more ships, of course.
2. You can't repair or fix your ships (but cyborg self repair still works).
3. You can't tow capture, force surrender, or receive ships by gsX.
4. However, you can still capture ships in combat.

If you have more ships than your limit, you are faced with some interesting choices. Should you recycle ships? Send ships on kamikaze missions? Win back some planets quickly? Or continue operating a large but decaying fleet?

B. What happens when your number of ships equals your limit?

In this case, you can fix or repair your ships, but you can't build, tow capture, force surrender, or receive ships by gsX to gain additional ships.

I imagine that some players would choose to maintain a fleet size that is just under their ship limit, so that they do not suddenly find themselves unable to repair their ships after combat.

1993 days, 2 hours, 52 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

proposed "Nu PLS" addon design details

C. What are the mathematical constraints on the minimum number of ship slots for each player?

In case a maximum ship limit of 999 needs to stay in place (to avoid introducing bugs into the Host, for example), the minimum ships number could be contingent on the number of players and planets:

min_ships = TRUNC([999 - n_planets + n_players - 1]/[n_players - 1])

where n_planets and n_players are the number of planets and players, respectively. For an 11-player, 500 planet game, this would be 50 ships. For a 30 player, 500 planet melee game, this would be 18 ships.

For example, consider the extreme situation in an 11 player game where 10 players have 1 planet and 50 ships each, and the 11th player has 490 ships and planets. Total ships = 990.

Now if it is possible to capture ships in combat beyond your limit, then there is still a theoretical possibility of there being more than 999 ships in the game. So it may still be necessary to enforce a hard ship limit of 999 (in order to avoid host errors), but it would be highly unlikely that this limit would ever be approached.

The number of ships at the end of a typical game might look something like this: The winning alliance has 260 ships between them, two contenders have 80 ships each, five other players have 50 ships each, and two dead positions have 0 ships. Total ships = 670.

1993 days, 2 hours, 52 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

proposed "Nu PLS" addon design details

D. How is this related to host order?

The host calculates your planet and ship totals after ground combat, but before gsX. If your ship total equals or exceeds your limit, you cannot receive ships by gsX. If your ship total exceeds your limit, your starbases cannot fix your ships.

The host calculates your planet and ship totals again after starbase recycle. If your ship total equals or exceeds your limit, you cannot build ships, clone, tow capture, or force surrender. If your ship total exceeds your limit, you cannot repair with supplies for the remainder of the turn.

1993 days, 2 hours, 51 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

proposed "Nu PLS" addon design details

E. What controls the order in which ships are built?

The pbX friendly codes still work to determine the order in which bases build, except that there are no pbp's to consume. Other than that, builds happen in order of planet id.

For example, you have builds planned at starbases 56, 111, 151, 197, and 355. Starbases 111 and 197 have fcodes set to pb1 and pb2, respectively. The next turn, you gain three ship slots. Builds occur at starbaes 56, 111, and 197.

F. How does this work with cloning?

Exactly the same as a regular game. Clones happen if there are available ship slots after all regular build orders are filled.

1993 days, 2 hours, 51 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

proposed "Nu PLS" addon design details

G. What modifications are needed in the user interface?

Game description:

The minimum ship slots number needs to be given.

For example: "Minimum ship slots for each player: 50"

For a regular game without this addon, its "Minimum ship slots for each player: 0"

Report:

If you have more ships than your limit, you get a report under the starbase category:

"We have more ships than we have the capacity to maintain. We can no longer repair our ships!"

Scoreboard:

The priority points column is replace with a "ships/available" column. This reports the number of ships each player has, and the number of ship slots. If ships slots, the data appears red.

For example, if you have 97 ships and 94 slots, the data appears as "97/94" in red.

1993 days, 2 hours, 51 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

I've tried to provide a fairly complete design for the addon, so that we have something concrete to discuss. Have I overlooked anything?

1993 days, 2 hours, 48 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

appreciate the effort!

1993 days, 2 hours, 36 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Amazing! +1 to you

1993 days, 2 hours, 33 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

@Robodoc, I'm a pretty constant voice of negativity on "PBP/Ship Limit" changes; so I want to state publically that I think you've offered (and built on) a well thought out change to the PBP/Ship dynamic.

I might hypothesize that this sort of game wouldn't be as appealing as a classic due to unbalancing against torp races; but were Joshua to allow an add on with this sort of functionality, I think that'd be a good thing for people to have the option to play.

1993 days, 2 hours, 29 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Some text is missing for item G, second to last paragraph:

if ships greater than slots, data is red
if ships equals slots, data is yellow
if ships less than slots, data is green

1993 days, 2 hours, 4 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

@J-Zan, Thanks for the mostly non-pessimistic comment. :)

Yeah, I think this would almost certainly affect balance to some degree. But it's hard to predict how without playing it.

Fortunately, this addon is much simpler than stellar cartography, campaign games, or hiatus! ;)

1992 days, 14 hours, 37 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Not off radar

1992 days, 9 hours, 18 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Upon reflection, I still much prefer the 100 ship minimum. The small races need to play "small ball." 50 is too much of a constraint.

The small guys need tons of small ships to threaten the big guys. The big guys need to be worried the fascist has 2-3 10-saber/Nef nuclear wolfpacks lurking around. The birdman need tons of cheap, easily replaceable swift hearts to change fcodes. 50 is way too small for the lizard and their hissers or the Privateers and their Meteors.

The beauty of VGAP is not that we get to line up battleships, like at Jutland, and fire away. The beauty is the asymmetric warfare aspect of it. Heck, we should probably take away some of the big ships of the small races, the Vickies, T-Rexs, Madonzillas, Blood Fangs, Dark Wings, Crystal Thunders, Diamond Flames, etc. and force those races to play the way they were meant to be.

Too many players lose and whine when their battle plan to line up their big ships against the big guys big ships doesn't work. The best players with the small races have learned that you don't win by going toe-to-toe with the big races, you win by harassing them to death with your small ships.

As far as the Feds are concerned, I would simply reduce the terraformers by 5 pts and Nebula by 10 pt. Then, the Feds can swap Super Refit for Starbase Money Transfer. Probably should add increase Fed taxing to 250% for 20 points, also.

1992 days, 5 hours, 30 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

A few potential issues with the 100 ship minimum:

1. You could easily have 1300+ ships in a game under these conditions. Would that be too radical a change from standard gameplay?

2. 999 ships seems to be the maximum that NuHost can handle at the moment. It might be too much programming work to change this for an experimental addon.

3. Would having such a high minimum make it too difficult to win? If you have 125 planets, you are limited to 125 ships. But your opponent with 25 planets can still have 100 ships?

On the other hand, I can see the appeal of what you propose. Being able to build the fleet you want without constantly bumping into a limit could be fun. And still there would be no danger of becoming too successful and having to manage 250 ships.

1991 days, 16 hours, 12 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

I think this is an awesome suggestion and I would like to see this played.

Even with 100 ship minimum some races would hit this limit faster than others but that would be balanced by the types of ship in the various shiplists.

I think this opens the various races to play more to the style they are designed for than the limited way we use them inside the contraints of the shiplimit/pbp model.

Can you set this up as a suggestion on the uservoice petition signing thing? user voice was it?

1991 days, 5 hours, 58 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

OK. I set this up as a suggestion at
http://planets.uservoice.com/forums/136520-general/suggestions/5579406-implement-the-proposed-nu-pls-planets-limit-shi

If you want to play with this addon, stop by and give it a vote. :)

1991 days, 4 hours, 46 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Robodoc; You have done an amazing job trying to work this out. It is endeavors like this that makes the NU community great. This would definitely be an experiment worth trying out.
With that said, I will state that the Lizards would ALWAYS lose with all the suggestions. I usually have 50 hissers and freighters before even battleships. And MJS's suggestion about them being just a harassing race, although true, is a sure fire way of them losing in the end. ( If he was my brother I would smack him. Where is he!) But you can still have fun I guess, which is the purpose of the game. Sure we can go in and destroy the enemies economy. I live for that. Sure we can take back any planet they take from us. A sound defense. A Lizard never stands toe-to-toe when he can avoid it and he must learn to give way to packs of big ships and then float in around them to destroy them later on. But losing all your SB's (your main defense) and giving away all ground and having no way to take on the big ships when you need to, well, it's a recipe for losing. Eventually, a Lizard has to have spots that are defensible, front line, death-zones that the enemy fears. Otherwise they are just a bunch of cloakers floating around in space creating havoc but with no place to call home, no safe place to repair ships, build 200+ torps at a time, Sb's with fighters on board, and lots of natives to Hissss. It takes time to build up an economy, that's why we destroy them. But it also takes time to build up your own economy. Saying we can just pop up an economy is not the case. Lizards MUST control the PBP's if they want to win. Some think we win by fighting, and we must fight. But we really win by controlling our's and others economy. And you CAN'T take away our big ships, what are like other's small ships ;-).
Lizards must have a minimum of 200 ships. Yes, I know if we have 200 planets, then we will have the ability of 200 ships. But there is no way to have 200 planets if packs of Carriers move in and we only have LCC's to defend with and they sweep all our mines along the way. Forget about offensive.

In the end. Keep up the good work. Although I do not think it is good for the smaller races, I DO THINK it is this type of creative thinking that makes the game better in the long run. I know it's hard work and you even think about it when you are sleeping at times (or in the middle of a board meeting ;-). Carry on. I will not say anything more to stop the flow of conversation because I am interested to see where this leads. Just wanted to voice another view from someone who has played one or two games as a non-big ship race. I wonder is very low mins to start the game with would help at all? Oh boy, now you got me thinking about it? See what you did!

With deepest respect; -=The DragonDejhi=-

1991 days, 3 hours, 34 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

@Dragondejhi, thanks for contributing to the discussion. :)

It's interesting to ponder what effects this addon might have on balance and gameplay. On the one hand, the big races get the same number of ship slots, but bigger ships. On the other hand, the smaller races can replace their ships easier, and are generally better at disrupting the enemy economy. I'm imagining the fun of sending cloakers in to harass a big carrier production center without having to be concerned about losing ship slots or the pbp balance, and just doing what makes military and economic sense.

1989 days, 11 hours, 38 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

This suggeation wouldn't tip the balance too much, the lizards would still have their economic advantage and have their 100 shipslots filled before others. Allowing them to take the fight to their enemies earlier and sustain the pressure with the ability to keep their shipslots filled.

It's races like EE and Birds who would still struggle due to no economic advantage in both cases. Expensive ships in EE case and weak ships in bird case.

Fascists and Feds would probably increase in win percentage a bit, Borg might fall a bit due to stronger early game races.

The races I see having a problem will be Crystals and Privs due to their advantages being centered around capturing other races ships. If they can't capture after their limit they might suffer.

Most of us are used to having stockpiled minerals and MCs in the late game due to not building ships as often as we want or would if shipslots were available. Having a stockpile will be a less common event in a game where we are throwing ships at SBs since we won't have to fear the loss of a shipslot to someone else by losing those ships.

I think this will make the game more dynamic and much more enjoyable.

1950 days, 21 hours, 11 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Voted and I like the idea very much, being a player of both privateers and EE I don't see it as a big problem, because if the queue is limited to YOURSELF (you have your own limit based on planets), I would build as much ships as I can, and as soon as I need to build better ships I would either scrap the oldest one or send them to suicide run to soften enemy before my main assault ship.
That way I free slots and buy more.

I would really like to play this style of game as an alternative to normal PBP queue!

For the LIzards, actually I think if you have a better economy (and you have) and churn out T-Rex, you can suicide your T-Rex to take down enemy carriers, and while you loose 3 ships for one of them, you have 3 new gleaming ships ready where maybe his economy would not let him do the same.

An alternative to balance any smaller or weaker race could be to give them more initial resources and/or an extra freighter ship to let them expand a bit more aggressively earlier.
Maybe too much, I don't know :D

1950 days, 20 hours, 31 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

I agree with giving the lizards an extra freighter at the start to allow for more aggressive expansion >.<

1950 days, 20 hours, 27 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

2 things.

1 - I would suggest changing from unable to repair when past the limit to being unable to use the starbase repair mission while past the limit. You could still repair (hull damage only) via supplies. This would be a way to reflect not having the facilities to do repairs, so all repairs are done by crew.

2 - even without the repair, there is a exploit waiting to happen:

Player A and B team up, but don't ally fully. Each is at the ship limit. Player A sends his ships, without any ordinance (just beams) to player B via combat capture, and rebuilds an entire new force. If in a campaign setting, with radiation, it's even easier (he sens his ships to a star cluster, the crew dies, player B goes in, beams over 1 crew, and fights / captures the ship)

Drawn out and time consuming? yes, but you just gave a 2 player team unlimited ships (or limited only by minerals... )

1950 days, 20 hours, 15 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Good point Erebus regarding Lizard suicide. When I played the Lizard, I had so much MCs and minerals and nothing to do with it.

As I ponder this, I wonder if a player that is really good at economics would have an advantage playing a Race that can build a huge number of big fighter ships. And with cloning, perhaps that is almost every race....

1950 days, 18 hours, 33 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

I *really* like the core idea here. There are some serious problems but none that can't be resolved with some experimenting.

It's well established that some races need more ships in order to do what they do well. Because of this I think that the limit should be calculated differently for different races. Something like 1.2 ships per planet for Privs and Lizards, as one example (numbers pulled out of thin air).

Races other than Crystal and Priv should not be able to capture ships at all when they reach their limit. This will mitigate the exploit noted by a previous poster. Not sure how to deal with this for Crystals and Privs since that's they're life blood. Perhaps for other races allowing one of your shipd to get captured reduces your ship limit by one until you destroy a ship from the race that stole yours? Not sure how to deal with this...

Also, the traditional limit on cloning is VERY important. Think about the Lizard race that can just clone Gorbies without limit late in the game when they have basically unlimited resources. Recycle a SDSF, clone a Gorbie... Eek! Talk about a game unbalancer. Cloning needs to stay basically impossible after a certain mid-game point.

1950 days, 18 hours, 27 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

@Chaos1357 Sure, there will always be ways to go over your limit. That's why there are penalties (such as not being able to repair your ships with supplies) for going over your limit.

As designed, the situations you describe in #2 are not exploits, but valid strategic decisions. The recipient of the extra ships will have to live with the fact that those ships cannot be repaired or recrewed, and that the penalties apply to his entire fleet. Perhaps there are special cases where temporarily going over your limit will be advantageous, but I think that generally players will choose to stay under their limits.

1950 days, 18 hours, 22 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

There was mini games here once if we could get the players we could try a test game.

1950 days, 18 hours, 9 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

I also really like the core idea, and would be interested in playing some games to try it out.

This will significantly change the game balance, of course, but it is hard to predict how. The Lizards need more ships, but they are also one of the best races to take territory from the neighbor and gain more ship slots. Also, as Erebus pointed out, the better economy will let them replace ships easier.

I would even suggested a lower ship limit, but instead of max(min_ships, planets) have it be (min_ships + planets), so you literally make every planet count. With min ships of 20 or so, you can starve a race from ship slots by taking their planets, if they fail to defend them.

1950 days, 16 hours, 51 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

@Robodoc I COMPLETELY disagree that players would rather stay under their ship limit rather than produce an unlimited number of their ally's best ships. Repairing ships is a vital tactic when you can't easily replace them, but much less so when you can just blunder ahead until it's gone and replace it right away. Being able to simply replace each ship as it's lost makes repairing them MUCH less attractive. Why worry about repairs when I can just replace the whole ship when it blows up?? Which would you rather have; 100 perfectly crewed ships that you have to maintain, or 500 disposable ships on a conveyor belt like shark's teeth? The old 500 ship limit makes replacing lost ships hard, and therefor repairing them an important commodity. By taking away the difficulty of replacing a ship you also take away the incentive to repair it.

Either way I'm hopeful that we can play some games like this and see how it goes.

1950 days, 14 hours, 36 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Try my 999 ship limit game.

:)

1950 days, 6 hours, 58 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Interesting ideas for a mod/add-on to the basic game. I notice we have people thinking that equal number of ships gives the big hitting races an advantage, and people realising that if the small-ship races have extra ship slots they could gain an advantage by cloning captured/gifted big ships. I wonder if we could mitigate both these issues by limiting fleet size based not on number of ships but on the total PBP cost of the ships. Or the total tonnage, but PBP costs are a rough and ready measure of tonnage.

1950 days, 6 hours, 14 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

@Sibirak Your suggestion of a (min_ships + planets) alternative is interesting, and I'm curious about what others think of this. With a min-ships of 20, ship numbers would still be similar to a regular game. For example, if min_ships is 20, you could have 80 ships if you control 60 planets, or 140 ships if you control 120 planets.

For the max(min_ships,planets) design that I proposed above, I recommend a min_ships value of 50, since that will lead to fleet sizes similar to a regular game. Hence this would be a less radical departure than having a min_ships value of 100, which could lead to twice as many ships as a regular game. (100 may indeed work just fine, but I think 50 is a good place to start for the first experimental games).

@Lazygun Your idea about limiting pbp's is interesting, but is a little more complex. I recommend keeping the design as simple possible unless we know that the additional complexity is necessary.

1950 days, 5 hours, 9 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

@Marklein Remember that if you are over your limit, you can't replace your ship when it blows up. If you don't want to repair your ships, that's a valid choice.

If you are losing planets and want to keep fighting with all your ships, then I don't see a problem with that either.

Ships obtained by capture in combat, or ghost ship capture will be of limited usefulness if they can't be repaired. Also, the prohibition of the capture of ghost ships (if a player is over his limit) could be added to the design if needed.

1950 days, 4 hours, 56 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

@Robodoc No, no. I'm talking about the "exploit" of capturing ships via combat from an ally. One doesn't need to replace his own ship when it blows up because his ALLY will replace it for him! This allows a team to produce a virtually unlimited amount of ships and consequently ignore the need to repair old ones.

Example scenario: Robots and Privs agree to cooperate. Robots produce empty Golems, Privs capture them via combat (not tow-capture), leaving Robot queue free to build MORE Golems. Lather, rinse, repeat. Privs end up with a virtually unlimited supply of Golems by which they can tow into battle with Gravitonic speed. Need to repair some ships? The Robot's build queue is NOT maxed out so you can just give one (or more) back to the Robots to be repaired!

I can say that this will be high on my list of things to try if we ever convince NU to implement this add-on.

1950 days, 4 hours, 20 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

@Marklein I'm not sure it's possible for privateers to capture a fully-crewed golem in combat. But if it was, I would argue that this is a valid tactic, and not an exploit. The captured ship will be damaged and have low crew, and can't be repaired or re-crewed. It can still fight, but it's crippled and may be easily captured. If a player can make this work for him, then I don't see a problem with it.

1950 days, 3 hours, 42 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

I like the 20+ planets idea. With a higher minimum it opens up more exploits with very small "slave" empires who can then provide large benefits to a larger empire with only one planet.

1950 days, 3 hours, 42 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

I like the idea, but I don't understand the motivation to limit the ability to fix one's own ships. If you are over your ship limit, this seems punitive rather than a motivation to claim more planets. I would think the want / need to build would be motivation enough. Plus the inability to GSx takes into account a work-around the system, so why kill an inborn ability of all races to fix their own ships?

1950 days, 3 hours, 23 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

centurionprime makes a good point. What is the repair limit designed to address? Seem like a punishment for success in combat.

1950 days, 2 hours, 26 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Like anything else in RL, resources + production = output. Someone may have a small number of resource rich planets putting out high tier ships, while another has mega planets putting out lesser ships. This is a serious imbalance in the game. Quality vrs Quantity. Therefore I think each race should have a ship limit and dead races divide up their limits among the rest of the players.

1950 days, 2 hours, 12 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

@Garth Vader I agree. With a minimum of 50 or 100, one could use a slave empire for massive ship storage or something ugly like that. The 20+ idea seems to fix that for the most part.

@Centurioprime The prohibition against repair above your ship limit is designed to prevent possible "exploits" (like Chaos1357 and Marklein mentioned in this thread) from being a problem.

And it should be reasonably believable (hopefully). With a given number of planets, you can maintain a certain number of ships. If you have enough planets to maintain your fleet, then you can fix and repair your ships all you want. If you have more ships than you can maintain, then you have difficulty maintaining them. This is very simplistic, but at least it has some basis in realism.

If you have more ships than you can maintain, then send the least useful of them on suicide missions, recycle or scuttle them, give them away or sell them, or learn to live with a decaying and under-manned fleet. That's what real navies do.

@Marklein If success in combat results in you controlling more planets, then you are rewarded by being able to maintain more ships. But capturing ships you can't maintain places a burden on your fleet. It's up to the commander to decide if that burden is worth bearing, or if those captured ships should be scuttled.

1949 days, 23 hours, 21 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

@Marklein You mentioned cloning under these rules as a possible game unbalancer. But isn't the situation essentially the same in campaign games for races that have advanced cloning?

1949 days, 16 hours, 49 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

To better understand how a PLS limit will affect game balance, I hacked kedalion's amazing History Graphs script

http://planets.nu/discussion/utility-script-extended-plots-for-game-page to add a tab for "planets minus ships".
I then used it to look at the championship games. I am posting screenshots, but I am not posting the script, since its

99% kedalion's.

So, #planets-#ships for the following:
Scorpius http://s4.postimg.org/5dgyw9yd9/scorpius.png Limit turn 25, winner Crystal(spacesquad)
Taurus http://s29.postimg.org/txz8eoi13/taurus.png Limit turn 23, winner Cyborg(dungeonmaster)
Saggitarius http://s10.postimg.org/qucimpznt/sagittarius.png Limit turn 23, winner Colonies(mentar)
Aries http://s27.postimg.org/gtgszcrcz/aries.png Limit turn 23, likely winner Lizard(emork the lizard king)
Capricorn http://s3.postimg.org/nkje8kjur/capricorn.png Limit turn 30, winner ?

Some observations, in regards to my planets+20 suggestion.

Summary: Cyborg, Fed, Lizard, and Privateer often drop below -20. Also, the winners are often below -20 at the ship limit, as they rush to take up slots. Except for some tiny dips here and there, Robots, Birds, Crystals, EE, Rebels, and Colonies (with exception of mentar in Saggitarius) stay clear from the 20+planets line, as other races take over the ship slots faster.

1949 days, 16 hours, 49 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Scorpius war:
EE and Crystal go below 20 for a short time. The Fed stays negative for much longer. Privateer has many more ships than planets for most of the game. The winner is below -20 between turns 23 and 26, as he was pumping out (cheap?) ships before the limit hit.

Taurus:
Quite messy. Lizard heavily goes negative at the ship limit. The Cyborg goes quite negative after producing a large number of ships, but then takes planets and is positive. Privateer is heavily negative.

Saggitarius:
The winner, Colonies, is negative between about turn 20 and 32, with the lowest of -28, but stays high after that as he captures planets. Note how the Fed keeps going down, as he stays on approximately even planets, while increasing ship numbers for most of the game.

Capricorn War:

Rebel dropped below -20 for turn 34 and bounced back.
Lizard was below -20 from turn 27 to 33, with a minimum of -26.
Cyborg dove below -20 on turn 28 down to -35 and until turn 42, as he kept capturing planets.
Amazingly, at turn 52, every race is above -20, with the rebels the lowest at -19 and Cyborg at 0, as he keeps

capturing planets.
Cyborg and Lizard were obviously rushing to pump out ships just before the limit.

Hopefully, this can stimulate a more informed discussion.

1949 days, 16 hours, 40 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Forgot the Aries War:

It is clearly an outlier, as Emork has successfully denied all other races from building ships as has not been done before or after in championship games.

1949 days, 16 hours, 9 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

@robodoc No, because in a traditional game the player is still at the mercy of the regular build queue over which he has very limited control. With PLS one can be assured of being able to clone at any time regardless of outside pressures because the player controls his own queue.

@sibiryak Nice work. :thumbsup:

1949 days, 15 hours, 53 minutes ago

ace rimmer

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

You could also do PLS ship Minimums based on Race
Feds 60 ships
Birdmen 60 ships
Fascists 60 ships
Lizards 60 ships
Crystals 60 ships
Pirates 70 ships
Cyborg 50 ships
Robots 50 ships
Evil Empire 55 ships
Rebels 50 ships
Colonies 50 ships

1949 days, 15 hours, 52 minutes ago

ace rimmer

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

I would propose that a player who has lost his HW should have his PLS Ship minimum reduced to 15. Cause the loss of a Homeworld should be devastating. The Borg should maybe get a pass on that one and have theirs be if they have less than 5-10 planets their PLS Ship minimum goes down to 15.

Ace

1949 days, 0 hours, 45 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

I see how unlimited cloning would be unbalancing. If it needs to be restricted, then a quick and dirty way to do it (but surely there are many others): add a rule that stops cloning when the total number of ships is above X. And X is, say, 500.

1949 days, 0 hours, 34 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Sibiryak :So then this is going to un-campaign games. As for some races like the robots that is the only thing they get that is useful. Could place a limit of 50% of fleet.

1948 days, 20 hours, 24 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

I like where this thread is going. I like Sibirak and Ace's ideas about min_ships + Planets. I would add to this line of thought that for a planet to be counted it should of a minimum number of colonist (100-ish clan)

I do have some concerns about this tipping the game in favor of the big carrier races more. Given similar size empires of the carrier race will have one carrier of one battleship of the torp race and it typically takes 2-3 battleships to bring down a big carrier. This could be a game breaker.

Lindy

1948 days, 20 hours, 14 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Regarding losing one's homeworld... I don't see the point in extra penalization. Isn't it ALREADY bad enough that you've lost your homeworld?? ;-)

1948 days, 18 hours, 49 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Marklein, losing your homeworld is not necessarily bad enough. By mid game it is usual mined out and you should have plenty of natives to tax. The main function of the HW at this point is a colonist farm and one of many starbases. Losing it is not necessarily a game breaker.

Lindy

1948 days, 16 hours, 0 minutes ago

ace rimmer

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

I concede the point of the HW maybe the rule should be that if a player has less than >5-10 planets then his PLS ship minimum is reduced to 15. So in the early game you need to colonize 10 planets quickly to get your 50-60 ship que. The reason for reducing the ship minimum would be to prevent players who are basically eliminated but have one star base in enemy territory cranking out ships and keeping them in their name until they max out at 50 ships lets say and then WAMMO they gift them all to there ally! According to MJS's idea a player cannot gift once their Ship Cap is hit but if they stayed under it by a couple of ships then this scenario could go down. I would still happen with a reduced que but would be harder.

Ace

1948 days, 15 hours, 48 minutes ago

ace rimmer

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Lindy I think this is a great system for the Torp Races who I love to play (Peter Madsen is my alter ego and I love to play dirty with Fascists.) The thing I hate when playing the Fascists because without 2x lasers in a classic game I need the 2 glory bomb plus 1to2 battleships to take out a carrier, is that if it goes bad and the carrier survives then I don't get enough PBP to build back the ships lost. In this system when you are on the defensive you can build the lost ships and make your carrier assaulting neighbor's life a living hell. But I do think that Torp Races should have higher ship minimums than the Carrier Races I stated this earlier and I think a +10 advantage for all but Pirates who should have a +20 over regular ship minimum is enough to make it more competitive. I gave the Empire a +5 because they can't build fighters in Space and need the extra slots for gunboats maybe they should be a +10 too not sure on that one.

Ace/Pete

1948 days, 15 hours, 30 minutes ago

ace rimmer

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

My math is 50-60 ship minimum per race plus planets owned < 50.
I assuming Sibiryak math is 20 ship minimum + all planets owned. Correct me if I'm wrong Sibiryak.

Under mine a player with 100 planets would have a 100-110 ship que while under Sibiryaks it would be 120. I think his idea is great too because you don't need the home world loss reduction rule it's built in. Less complicated I would just suggest that Torp races get a +10 advantage Pirates +20. Maybe reduce it to Planets+10 for Carrier Races then Torp Races get +20, Pirates +30 and the Empire +15or+20.

Cloning needs to be limited at some point and I think Marklein's idea about turning cloning off after total ships reaches 500 is a very reasonable limit. Cause not only could the Lizard recycle all their ships for super carriers with 150% damage. The Fascists could recycle all their ships for 2x Laser Gorbies or Virgo's or any Super Carrier then it's GAME OVER!

I love this Thread!

Ace

1948 days, 15 hours, 25 minutes ago

ace rimmer

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

You could just get rid of cloning all together making ship trading and alliances more important. Or you could do the opposite and turn off gifting ships in a PLS game making the only way you could clone is by capturing an enemy ship but that could be abused. Turning off Cloning would solve the problem and any possible abuse.

Ace

Ok I'm done I've got GAMES TO PLAY! LOL

1948 days, 12 hours, 55 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

I rather like Sibaryik's suggestion on cloning, only... well, it could be a proportional factor of one's own limit.

Perhaps for the earliest test games it could be turned off, but I don't see how it's any more unbalancing.

What of a tonnage limit instead of a ship number, or in addition to? This would normalize the small-ship races. Indeed, as-stated, this proposed system would cause the Privateers and the Crystals a deal of trouble; their main advantage in a game is eliminated entirely.

1948 days, 10 hours, 54 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

If did not allow trading would would mean torp races could not get carriers but many of the small ships that the carrier races want could be captured that could make for in balance in the game as well.
Cloning does not unbalance the game as a Birman player has to pay for fighters for 20-50 carriers.

1947 days, 23 hours, 29 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

@Regicide What you say makes sense to me. I remain skeptical about the idea that easy cloning would be unbalancing, especially since I don't recall reading any complaints about advanced cloning being overpowering or unbalancing (unlike 2X beams, for example). Building and arming all those cloned lizard gorbies would cost a huge amount of resources, after all.

Also, you make a good point that this addon, if used with the campaign addon, would make advanced cloning a useless advantage. I don't see that as necessarily a problem, since one could just turn it off and use a different advantage. Perhaps the robots do need some more interesting campaign advantages, though. ;)

1947 days, 22 hours, 58 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

@robodoc I don't think it will either. But many people do. And the robots do need more campaign options. All races should have money transfer.

Could also limit mass of ship build at starbase by total tech level so to build a 1000kt ship would need to be tech 10 all .or there is 36 total tech upgrades have each one worth 25-30kt and base can build up to 100kt at tech 1 for being tech 1.
Having at30 would mean EE would not need to fully max out a star base for a gorbie which I think is good only issue with this is the Borg stargate is around 2000kt.
but adding both at once may cause issues.

1946 days, 4 hours, 41 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

O.K., the info on the new PLS game is up. You can find it at:

http://planets.nu/discussion/2014-classic-qualifying-game-pls-70

For those not rated at least Commander, Mule is also running a PLS game (see activity feed)

So, you have 2 choices - you can't complain anymore until you try one of them (grin).

1946 days, 4 hours, 10 minutes ago

mule

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

OR... For Commanders and above that would rather buy than bid for a race, come try my game! :)

Seriously, MJS and I are not in competition on this. We are just offering choice.

1945 days, 6 hours, 37 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

I suggest that the "planets+20" limit be considered in these experimental games as an alternative to "minimum 70." This method would make it less likely that a player would have an extremely disproportionate ratio of ships to planets.

There is a thread discussing how vassal races can have disproportionate effects on the game. Well how about a vassal race with one planet and 70 ships? This seems like something just begging to be abused.

Compared to "minimum 70," "planets+20" would let you have more ships if you have greater than 50 planets, but fewer if you have less than 50.

Both methods would lead to somewhat higher ship totals than for a standard game (approximately 700 for "planets+20," and maybe 700-900's for "minimum 70"). A "minimum 50" rule would lead to ship totals closer to a standard game. Substantially different ship totals could affect game balance by changing the ratios of ships/fuel, etc.

1945 days, 5 hours, 32 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

You may very well be right. Or, you may be wrong. Planets+20 is a good idea to try, too. The important thing is that we try a few of these to check for unintended consequences. Frankly, until we try a few games with each variant, no one really knows.

Like other proposals, mine is only an educated guess. I have designed and I sell variants to wargames, so I do have some experience with making game variants. But, in the end, it is all a guess.

However, I do KNOW this. I have been in multiple games where people said good-bye, that they were leaving the game because they have not built anything in 20 turns. I look at their profile and, after being in 4-6 games, they leave the site permanently. We need to try something, NOW.

Now, as to your particular point, you may be right. That is one reason I have, in my game, Max Allies = 0 and Minimum Rank = Commander with a turn limit of 100. My hope/belief is that we will have a real donnybrook and people will be working for themselves. I know that if you give me, say as the Feds, 70 Gorbies, I will soon have my own empire, sorry about yours.

On the other hand, I foresee problems with Planets+20. This will be a smaller number for a cap and, while the bigger races will build big ships slower, they will eventually catch up.

My thoughts on PLS-70 is this: With a minimum of 70 ships, each races can develop strategies knowing any small losses can be easily replaced.

Fascists: Send all the Gorbies you want - 10 Nefarious will destroy any fleet you send if you bunch them up. If you spread them out, my cloakers, glory devices, and Vickies will destroy you piecemeal.

Privateers: Just build minefields and you will be protected, right? After all, every Meteor killed in a minefield is a ship slot lost forever. Not now. Privateers can build groups of cheap W7 Meteors and risk losing a few to mines. Every time you see a Meteor blow up in your minefield, you have to think, "Did 1 or 2 or 10 others get through the minefield?"

Fascists and Lizards: Unless you are building those SB's for these 2, you better have a zillion clans on them; or, cheap, expendable packs of Coldpains/LCC's will come calling, hopefully sending you a thank you note after moving into the SB you built for them.

The point is, for the smaller races, they need a certain constant minimum number of ships to work with so they can develop and perfect strategies, counter strategies, and general mayhem.

I could go on and on with strategies that may (or may not) work. Well, maybe except for the Feds. Any PLS system may hurt them. Oops, there I go being negative (grin). They do seem to have an obscene amount of money in my limited experience. With the SB cash transfer system of the Campaign system, maybe their benefit could be that they can always build at the exact point of necessity. "They're attacking in the north. Quick, wire 100,000 MC for minefields, stiffening SB's, and building ships at that spot." "We are making progress in the south and just built a new SB in captured territory. Quick, send 100,000 MC to defend the SB and build replacement ships."

I hope we have multiple hosts trying different PLS configurations. Only then will we have a better idea what works.

I am hosting a PLS-70 Qualifying game with minimum rank of Commander:

http://planets.nu/discussion/2014-classic-qualifying-game-pls-70

Mule is hosting a PLS-70 game with no minimum rank.

I hope someone hosts some other configurations, including Planets+20.

I know what won't work:

"This is better."
"No, this is better"
"No, this is better"
"No, this is better"
"No, this is better"
(3 years later)
"No, this is better"
"No, this is better"
"No, this is better"
"No, this is better"

and so on.

1945 days, 1 hours, 51 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

@MJS I agree on all points, and I applaud you for organizing this test game. :)

That said, I think that a thorough discussion of all the implications of the various design details will be helpful for whoever it is deciding whether or not to implement this addon. But of course we don't need to discuss it to death before beginning some tests. ;)

By the way, thanks to all of you that have contributed to this thread so far! Your comments, questions, concerns, and analyses are all valuable. We have design details worked out, a growing body of discussion and analysis, and will soon have some test game results. I think all of these makes this proposal stronger. :)

1774 days, 3 hours, 55 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

PLS games in progress (with voluntary rules):

http://play.planets.nu/#/sector/101007
http://play.planets.nu/#/sector/100282

1771 days, 6 hours, 1 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Voluntary PLS Rule Sets

Since no built-in PLS addon exists at this moment, any PLS games that we play must have a rule set that is implemented on a voluntary basis. For example,
http://planets.nu/discussion/2014-classic-qualifying-game-pls-70

The following voluntary PLS rule sets are designed so that they can be "enforced" on a voluntary basis by a userscript. Thus, if the userscript finds that your turn conforms to the rules, then your turn is legal. If the script finds rule violations, then the player's orders should be fixed before the turn is submitted.

One advantage of using a script to interpret the rules is that the interpretation is very explicit. There is no "spirit" of the rules, and no room for conflicting interpretations.

Rule Sets:

Short Rule Set
This rule set is designed for simplicity in games where max-allies = 0.
1. If your ship total equals or exceeds your number of ship slots, then you cannot build or clone any new ships.
2. The total number of ships you build or clone in a turn cannot exceed your available ship slots.
3. If another player is at or above his ship limit, you cannot have a matching gsX friendly code on any of your ships.

Long Rule Set
This is a slightly more elaborate rule set designed for games where allies are permitted. This includes all of the 'Short' rule set, plus the following:
4. If your ship total equals or exceeds your number of ship slots, then you cannot use the 'force a surrender' mission at any of your starbases.
5. If your race is Privateer or Crystal and your ship total equals or exceeds your number of ship slots, then you cannot tow an alien ship without using the 'NBR' friendly code.
6. If your ship total *exceeds* your number of ship slots, then you cannot use starbase 'fix' on any of your ships.

Discussion:

The "Short" rule set is based on the rules designed by @Mjs68508 and described in the link above. This rule set is designed to keep things as simple as possible. This set is designed for games where max allies = 0, and thus does not not include some of the rules designed to keep allies from "super-sizing" each other's fleets.

The "Short" rule set is an interpretation of MJS's rules designed to be "enforced" by a userscript. Because other interpretations are possible, the "Short" rule set should not necessarily be considered strictly identical to MJS's rule set.

The "Long" rule set includes rules designed to prevent some "exploits" that cooperating players might use to maintain effective fleets beyond their ship limits.

Rule #4 prevents a player from receiving ships from another player by starbase force surrender if he is at or above his ship limit.

Rule #5 prevents a player from receiving ships from another player by tow capture if he is at or above his ship limit.

Rule #6 prevents a player from re-crewing his ships if he is above his ship limit. This makes purposefully maintaining a "super-sized" fleet less practical, and makes friendly transfer of ships by combat capture less practical.

[I have the userscript already written, and will release it after allowing some time for discussion of these rule sets. The script checks for conformance to the rules, and provides easy links for correcting rule violations.]

1771 days, 5 hours, 29 minutes ago

lordlancelot

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Very nice !

1771 days, 5 hours, 26 minutes ago

mule

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

As a host of one of the current PLS-70 games and a player in both, I take exception to Robo's Long Rule Set.

Even after reading over the published rules at http://planets.nu/discussion/2014-classic-qualifying-game-pls-70 I just don't see them there. Maybe it was something discussed in the feed thread, but unless it is posted in our agreed rules that I am not aware of... ???

My understanding of our PLS-70 rules is that you may not BUILD more ships than 70 or your number of planets. Nothing else. If you go over due to captures, no matter what your race, you just may not BUILD any more. We don't need to get any more complex than that.

We had an overage in my hosted game, partially due to some captures, I notified the player, he immediately took action and quickly got legal. The over condition was handled so quickly there was no possibility they effected play.

Now, if there is some kind of collusion between players to use this give/capture possibility to allow someone to legally exceed our voluntary maximum, that would be against the voluntary "spirit" of the game and something I would call a cheat.

Lastly, I certainly do not agree with any stipulation against fixing a damaged ship.

So... where is this coming from?

1771 days, 4 hours, 44 minutes ago

mule

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

To continue:

If we are going to revisit the rules of PLS-70 or expand them, I think it would be good to keep our eye on the goal.

The standard PBP (and even the PQ) model can be very restrictive when the ship limit is reached and it can be manipulated such that the game losses it's appeal to everyone but the manipulators and the Die Hards and has lost the games and the site players out of pure boredom and frustration. Not because they are losing, as some have suggested, but because there is just very little they can do.

PLS-70, or any other PLS variation, gives ALL players a reason to keep playing. If they have the necessities to build ships they may do so, even if it means having to recycle something first.

I do not believe the intent is to make the game more restrictive, which is what stopping Pirates and Crystals from using their biggest advantage would be. Nor does banning repairs make any sense to me. In fact, I think it goes counter to the objective of giving us positive things to do. No repairs could take us back to avoiding combat.

If Robo or anyone else is willing to write a script that stops building past the agreed limit of the game without imposing other restrictions then I am all for it. I hope it would also be variable enough to accomodate PLS-50 or some of the other PLS games that have been proposed.

Now, if such a script also lit a warming light for the host to look in to when it detects suspect activities such as ship gifts past the limit or questionable captures, I would be cool with that. :)

1771 days, 4 hours, 26 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Mule, this was mentioned in another thread and all of the Long Rules set looks OK to me.

Its just another way of making it harder for you if you get over your set limit.

If a privateer or Crystal are over their limit I see it is fair that they cannot tow capture. They can tow the ship and decide if they want to take it when they get below their limit. If the privateer or Crystal just tows it into deep space and leaves it I may consider it a dead ship which will be discussed through the various players (we could do with an abandon ship friendly code to bail out hostage ships).

Force surrender and repair ship would be sensible too. If you are above your ship limit that means you don't have the "industry" to support extra ships or repair damaged ones until you are back below the limit.

I wish this could be put into the host program for PLS-X games so you don't have to have at the end of the game when one of these rules was broken in secret and it may have some effect on who won.

A simple "you are above your ship limit so the following routes to gaining more ships or maintaining damaged ships now no longer work".

1771 days, 3 hours, 55 minutes ago

mule

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

One thing I do not like about the proposed P/C "no capture" rule is it sets up hostage ships. I don't think this is within the intent of the game. This would also be solving a problem that simply does not exist and then we would have to counter that by another addition of something like abandon ship.

We have 2 PLS games going to test the concept and I have yet to see any need for this change. I bought into PLS because of it's simplicity and intent. Muddy the waters unnecessarily and I'll be walking away from it just as fast.

The best way to handle rules broken in secret is not to have any that are not visible in the first place. I can see ship count and planet count. That's all I need. If I see someone suspiciously go over his/her limit I can start asking questions on the activity feed. Someone will know that they had a ship(s) captured. If there is still any doubt, the host can pause the game until it gets resolved. No need to go researching after the game ends!

I subscribe to the KISS principle. Just give us a script that can count ships and planets and stop builds past the individual limit. Period.

1771 days, 3 hours, 53 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

@Mule. The "Short" rule set is equivalent to the rules used in the game you are hosting. However, there are slight differences. For example, under the "Short" rule set, you cannot use the "gs2" friendly code on any of your ships if player #2 is at or above his limit. Under MJS's rules, I think you could use the "gs2" fcode as long as it didn't result in the transfer of a ship to player #2. So there is a slight difference. The script would ban all use of gs2 in this case because, as far as it knows, one of player #2's cloakers could be present at the current location of your ship.

Regarding ship building, under MJS's rules, "a player may build as many ships as they want as long as they don't exceed their voluntary ship limit. Examples... 85 planets, 60 ships, recycling 3 ships, colonizing 2 ships: Player may build 30 ships this turn." (example is for PLS-70)

Under the "Short" rule set, a player could only build 25 ships that turn in that example, because recycle and colonize are not considered in the determination of available ship slots. This is because the script cannot be 100% sure that orders to recycle or colonize will be successful (the starbase could be captured by ground combat before recyle, or the planet to be colonized on could be captured).

1771 days, 3 hours, 51 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

That's why it would be simpler to have the host look after everything. But is that ever going to happen?

1771 days, 3 hours, 35 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

@Mule. The "Long" rule set is equivalent to the rules for the original PLS addon that I proposed at the top of this thread (with the removal of the repair with supplies restriction - see my post from 3 days ago).

So the "Long" rule set is not a change to the rules, but an older rule set that was proposed before the two PLS-70 games where started.

In an allies-permitted or team game, I think additional restrictions on "giving" ships are necessary. Under MJS's rules (or the "Short" rule set), you cannot use gsX to give ships to another player who is at or above his limit, but you can "give" ships by force surrender, tow capture, or combat capture. The "Long" rule set is designed to address those loopholes.

The script has a handy summary table showing ship totals, planet total, available ship slots, changes in ship and planet numbers, etc., for every race. Races at their limit are highlighted in yellow, and races above their limit are highlighted in red. This should make it relatively easy to monitor the PLS-relevant activities of each player.

The script runs in the player's client, and thus cannot inform the host of any rule violations. Conformance to the rules is still entirely voluntary - the script just makes it easier and less confusing.

1771 days, 3 hours, 18 minutes ago

mule

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Robo: OK, I see it was an older "proposed" rule set that was not adopted, and for what I believe are good reasons.

If I continue hosting PLS games it will be with MJS's rules (what you call the short rules) and NOT with these proposed changes to our current games. Of course, anyone else can set up games using any rules they like. Then the players can choose which they prefer. If everyone else likes your changes, that is less work for me. But, I will not be playing them.

That said, if your script first detects if there is an alliance and then adds some kind of ship transfer restrictions ONLY on that alliance, I can see that.

---

MJS: Are you going to change your future game rules as Robo proposes?

1771 days, 3 hours, 14 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

@Mule I'm not suggesting that you change the rules of your games. The players agreed to a certain set of rules when they joined, and should stick with them.

Regarding the muddying of the waters, this is what my script attempts to address.

For example, look at the PLS-70 and NQ-PLS-70 games. These two games are using an identical set of rules, but I suspect that the two hosts of these games have interpretations of the rules that are very different. I wonder if any two players in these games have the same interpretation of the rules in mind.

1771 days, 2 hours, 18 minutes ago

mule

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

So, you DO want to encourage hostage ships? This makes ship slots (what we are getting away from) more valuable than ships. It introduces a different mind set which I do not agree with and do not think we need.

I do understand you are not proposing we change games already in progress. You are proposing NEW rules for future games. I simple do not agree with them.

I do not think the scenario you describe is very likely. You assume we need some kind of protection against a player going over limit by being in collusion with another player. If we just say this is not allowed, at the very least we would have to have 2 players agreeing to cheat. In my experience, only one person can keep a secret and that's not guaranteed. Can you imagine the conversation? "I know it's against the rules, but let's do this..."

The remedy is worse than the thing you are worried about. We may never have such a scenario in which 2 players agree to cheat AND actually get away with it, but we certainly would (under your proposed rules) make the game more difficult for everyone else. We would be removing force surrender - which is a valid tactic and removing race specific skills on the off chance we have 2 cheaters we need to guard against.

As far as not fixing damaged ships... what conceivable cheat or reason are we guarding against with this one?

We have 2 games going on right now with MJS's rule set that I think are (so far) complete successes. I do not want to fix something not broken.

I appreciate your work on a script to make monitoring that games easier. REALLY! I just want you to restrict it to the rules we already have and not use the script as a lever to change the rules many of us have already agreed upon.

1771 days, 1 hours, 12 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

@Mule Yes, the script is designed to "enforce" the rules that you already have (with minor adjustment so that the script can understand).

The script offers a choice of "Short" vs. "Long" rule sets, and PLS-70 vs. PLS-50 vs. PLS+20. So the host actually has six possibilities to choose from.

---

The Long rule set does not get rid of force surrender or tow-capture. It's just that you can't use these to get more ships if you are already at or above your limit. I'm not sure what your objection is.

The Long rule set does not get rid of starbase fix. It's just that you can't use this if you are above your limit. This rule prevents ships from being re-crewed while you are over your limit. Even with the Long rule set, you can still legally transfer ships to another player player beyond his limit by combat capture or ghost ship capture, but those ships will have low crew.

Repairing ships with supplies is always legal. It would be impossible to enforce a voluntary rule against this.

---

In PLS-70 (http://play.planets.nu/#/sector/101007) at turn 46 and NQ-PLS-70 (http://play.planets.nu/#/sector/100282) at turn 45, none of the players are at or above their limit, so none would be affected by the additional rules of the Long set.

---

The Long set was not meant to encourage the taking of hostage ships. But of course, tactics will be adapted to any rule set. So the crystal could leave a bunch of your ships stuck in his webs, and you can't build replacements. Sucks for you, huh? ;)

1770 days, 19 hours, 21 minutes ago

mule

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Robo, Yes, this PLS is different from Pinky's SOSS, but has several of the same components. I think I actually like this one better. Especially the gsX / rsX codes. :)

I don't mind the destroying a ship to get back under limit but don't like the ID # method. I think a player's ships should have a code similar to a base PBX code, that identifies which ship should be destroyed first. If a player didn't use the code, bad luck for him - use ID#. Maybe KMX (Kill Me 1, and Kill Me 2) that could be used instead. I personally would set this on a few less important ships as a "just in case" because my lowest ID ship might just be very important to me.

Destruction of over limit ships would seem to solve our impasse on banning surrender/capture/fix though. At least it's something I could live with if there were a script to make it happen.

1770 days, 7 hours, 13 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

@Mule Well, if you think having your extra ships automatically destroyed is more convenient than temporarily doing without starbase fix and force surrender for a turn or two, then we'll just have to disagree. ;)

This is why the script offers two different rule sets - to give the host a choice. I'm not trying to argue that everyone should use one particular rule set. PLS on Nu is still in the experimental stage, so we need to try some things and see what works and what is fun.

"... as long as it is explained what is a cheat or unacceptable exploit and what is not."

This is one of the main things that I'm trying to address with this script. Having a vague set of rules that no one really understands and everyone has a different interpretation of is a problem. MJS's rules are a good example. They look straightforward enough at first glance, but become confusing when you think about the fine points. We had a conversation about this recently: there was confusion about what exactly constitutes a "capture" or constitutes "giving" a ship. And some people were more interested in following the "spirit" of the rules and some more interested in following the letter of the rules. This is a mess. We really don't want to have to use a human judge for this game if a disagreement between players arises.

If you say "colluding with another player to go above your ship limit" is illegal, then that is even more confusing. What exactly constitutes "colluding?" So going above your limit is legal, but cooperating with another player to go above your limit is illegal? Does that even make sense?

When the rules are interpreted by userscript, though, there is no possibility of conflicting interpretations of the rules. If the script says you are legal, you are legal. If not, you are not. This, of course, isn't as good as having the rules enforced by NuHost, but it is an improvement in my opinion.

1770 days, 6 hours, 40 minutes ago

mule

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Robo: Although we disagree on your proposed game restrictions, I have listened to your concerns. I just have no interest in playing or hosting such a capture, surrender, or repair restricted game.

I will add the following to the rule set in any future PLS games that I host:

The ship limit is a voluntary agreement between players. Any attempt to circumvent this ship count limit by two or more players using any combination of gsX, captures, or base surrenders is a cheat. Such players may be banned from all further PLS play, their names may be published as cheats, and the Host may take whatever action he deems necessary to protect the integrety of the game. Don't be a cheat!

If your script is modifiable to the original MJS rules, then I will use it with thanks.

1770 days, 6 hours, 20 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

"The ship limit is a voluntary agreement between players. Any attempt to circumvent this ship count limit by two or more players using any combination of gsX, captures, or base surrenders is a cheat."

@Mule. I'm not trying to be argumentative, but this rule is not clear to me. What is meant by "circumvent this ship count limit?" Do you mean that you expect all players to voluntarily stay under their limits?

1770 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes ago

mule

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Not clear? Really? Then I will make sure it is clear to anyone that asks.

Do I expect players to voluntarily stay under their limits? > When it is explained in the rules, yes I do. I hosted a number of Micro Games where such self-policing (along with watchful eyes by other players and the host) and never had a problem with player integrity staying within the rules. I expect the current PLS games to show the same.

IF I am shown to be wrong, I will admit it. But, I do not want to change the game rules to make it a significantly different game (especially for Pirates and Crystals) without evidence to the contrary.

1770 days, 6 hours, 0 minutes ago

mule

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

And let me add....
I DO appreciate Robo working on this script.

But, to any players interested in the PLS format, please do not let this disagreement between Robo and I scare you away from future PLS games.

Within the games themselves, there have been none of this. Even without a script to enforce the rules, we know what they are and have followed them. Thus far the games have progressed exactly as MJS envisioned when he proposed these rules.

The other reason (I believe) he just went ahead and published the rules and hosted his original game, and which I joined as the second host, was to avoid just these sort of Feed arguments that often will never be resolved by discussion.

Design the game - host the game - play the game - and see if it works. That is what he / we did and it works just fine. :)

1770 days, 5 hours, 59 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

@Mule This is why I am confused:

MJS's rules (after clarification from MJS in another thread) explicitly allow you to go over your limit through combat capture, tow capture, force surrender or loss of planets, but not through gsX, ship building or ship cloning.

You seem to have a different expectation: that players should always stay within their limits. Is this correct?

1770 days, 5 hours, 44 minutes ago

mule

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Robo: You seem to expect cheaters and I expect honesty.

In my game description, I start out with:
see http://planets.nu/discussion/2014-classic-qualifying-game-pls-70 for rules but ignore qualifying references. Summary: Voluntary ship limit not to build more ships (past 70) than planets held.

In MJS's referenced rules it says:
Players may not give ships to other players if they are at or over their limit...

The only ways a person may go over their limit is by capturing ships or losing planets. If this happens, a player may not build ships until they are under the limit, again.
-----------
That's it, and it has worked fine!

If MJS (or I) want to change the rules on any games we are hosting, it needs to be in some addition or re-posting of new rules and certainly not in some feed note which we all know disappears as fast as it is posted and which we all post thoughts that occasionally change.

I say again...
The games and rules as posted work. We have only had one player exceed his voluntary limit and when the host (me) pointed it out he immediately corrected the situation before any game play was effected.

If you want to host a PLS game that restricts captures, surrenders, and ship repairs such as you have proposed - by all means - do so. But, I will not.

1770 days, 5 hours, 38 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Think of it this way:

No going over the limit via Economics/Diplomacy (gsX, ship building, ship cloning)

You can go over the limit via War (combat capture, tow capture, force surrender, loss of planets)

The purpose is to allow as many ships as you can build without letting a person build more than he can handle.

So, the limit is placed on the Economic/Diplomatic part of the game, while allowing all war tactics, which is what this version is meant to emphasize. This way you can fight without worrying about whether it will effect your builds, instead of whether it is good strategy at this moment.

"The other reason (I believe) he just went ahead and published the rules and hosted his original game, and which I joined as the second host, was to avoid just these sort of Feed arguments that often will never be resolved by discussion. "

What Mule said here is correct. There are a lot of good players here with a lot of good ideas. There are many "right" ways to play this game. And, this game is so complicated that 10 different players with 10 different good ideas can make 10 different ways to play the game, all of them significantly different.

The best solution is for the host to simply decide on a set of rules and host the game. If the host waits until all the players agree on a common set of rules, the game will never start.

1770 days, 5 hours, 22 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Thanks for chiming in, MJS. I think Mule and I are looking at the same set of rules, but seeing different things. :P

@MJS68508 the only potential problem I see with your rule set (other than problems/disagreements/confusion with interpretation - see the discussion above between Mule and I as an example) is that force surrender and tow capture can also fall under the Economics/Diplomacy category.

This is essentially the difference between the Short and Long rule sets: Short considers force surrender and tow capture to be strictly hostile, and Long considers that force surrender and tow capture could be either friendly or hostile.

My script offers both sets. I'm not trying to push one or the other.

1769 days, 1 hours, 1 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

I have posted an announcement of the PLSCheck userscript in its own thread:

http://planets.nu/#/activity/1579795 :)

1766 days, 21 hours, 42 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

The source code of the original PLS addon (i.e., the one that works with PHost) is located here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/phost-contrib/

The author is Javier Sedano. The code is licensed under the Gnu GPL and was last updated in 2010.

Interesting quote from the FAQ:

"Stop crying for the rules and start thinking on a good strategy for these rules."

;)

1755 days, 2 hours, 32 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

After reading more on QVS on old forums, it seems that if you went over your individual ship limit, then the addon would cause the extra ship to temporarily disappear. If you went under your limit, then the extra ships would re-appear. I'm still not sure about the exact game mechanics.

---

The SOSS addon that Mule mentioned apparently was only used at RCWorld, and the docs no longer appear to be available anywhere online.

But, from reading the old forums (search the RCWorld forums for "SOSS" to find them), it looks like SOSS would destroy your extra ships after you go over your limit. But unlike the original PLS, it would delay the destruction for several turns to give you a chance to get rid of the ships voluntarily.

1745 days, 4 hours, 3 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Some recent parallel discussion of PLS can be found here:
http://planets.nu/#/activity/1607817

In this thread, Martinr expressed interest in team games where teams are subjected to team limits rather than individual limits. The one old PLS-like addon that had support for team limits was the "VGAPlanets Ship Limits Addon" mentioned above. In that addon, the ship limit for a team was based on the number of planets owned by the team.

1743 days, 0 hours, 12 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

As mentioned before, the original PLS addon would destroy extra ships immediately after you go over your limit. But there was an option where this feature could be turned off. Then the only PLS restriction would be that you cannot build new ships beyond your limit. If you could go above your limit by other means (e.g., by tow capture, force surrender, combat capture, etc.), and stay there happily, that was allowed by the addon.

This no-destruction option for the original PLS addon is similar to MJS's rule set (and my userscript adaptation, "Short"), where the only PLS restriction is on ship building (other than gsX). This is a very "laissez faire" (anything goes) approach. Minimal rules and maximum freedom certainly has its appeal.

At the other extreme, the default behavior original PLS addon would treat individual ship limits as "hard" limits (by immediately destroying the extra ships).

Intermediate between these two extremes are the "Ship Limits," QVS and SOSS addons, that treat the individual limits as "soft" limits while still enforcing the limits more rigorously than original-PLS-no-destruction, MJS, or "Short." I believe that the "Long" rule set that I proposed would fall into this category. The goal the "Long" set is to have some flexibility around the individual limits without leaving the door wide open to abuse. This rule set was designed for players that don't like the idea of other players finding sneaky ways to gain an advantage by staying over their ship limits.

[And as Mule has hinted at, you could also have an agreement between players to stay within their limits at all times, with a host/referee available to make sure that everyone is clear on the expectations. This could certainly work, and may be the best approach for special experimental games where the rules cannot be easily translated into game mechanics. This thread, however, is intended to examine rules that can be enforced with game mechanics, with the goal leading to a possible NuHost addon.]

1742 days, 23 hours, 29 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Why not make it simple, each player, at a Starbase, can recycle ships, then build a ship as he has the mass to build it. Once the ship limit is reached why cant you recycle, say three small ships, to build a medium ship ?

1742 days, 23 hours, 27 minutes ago

mule

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Robo,

I dislike rules that hamper the special skills of either Pirates or Crystals to capture. Especially when there is no equivalent reduction on other races' skills. I feel the limitation should be on ship "builds" which affect all races more or less equally. So, that is the interpretation of PLS I plan to maintain in any games I host.

I would ask if you think it is within the capability of your planned script to actually destroy ships. This would be very important to know before installing it for players planning to play in one of my games. Naturally, you can make your script any way you like and it will be left to the rest of us to use it or not. Just as it is always the player's choice to select games with rules they find acceptable.

Still, I am not blind to the fact that some players cheat/exploit. I wish they didn't. But, as in using multiple ID in the same game, I think the question is how far are we willing to go to prevent it? Actually changing game dynamics because of the possibility?

1742 days, 23 hours, 25 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Not loosing your ability in the Que to build. Yes people will say that only makes the game a war of big ships, yes in a way,they are right, but it will increase the advantages of races who don't have big ships. Therefore big may not be better.

1742 days, 23 hours, 22 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Tell that to your wife or GF :)

1742 days, 23 hours, 12 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Mule, but the new game format is limit the ships to a certain number based on planets.

Is this an exception for Privateers and Crystaline?

They are allowed to build to their max planet limit and then rob and take fueless ships until the ship max is reached at the expense of the other players?

In the no further capture they can tow fueless ships to a safer point. Get rid of a ship they don't want and replace it with a better one. Or take and recycle it so the other player has to expand resources replacing it.

Why should Crystalines and Privateers have a ship advantage in a game where ships are limited by planets?

1742 days, 22 hours, 50 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

@Martinr understands the point of the Long rule set well. It makes sure that all 11 races are equally constrained by their ship limits.

And no, the script cannot self destruct your ships. It can't do anything that a player could not do.

1742 days, 22 hours, 13 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

I like the options of the script.

And would like it set up in the host options as I run IE and the scripts do not work in IE.

I have also have heard of horror stories of add-ons accidently over taxing several planets and seriously messing up games!

:-)

So in my games I would have to keep to a manual method of me keep track of ships and asking people to keep to a set of rules to not tow capture ships when over the limit. Or accidently building at every star base when over the limit.

1742 days, 22 hours, 3 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

The purpose of this thread is to support a possible NuHost addon for Nu PLS. The goal is to not only ask for an addon, but to provide design details, analysis and discussion to support the proposal and to make implementation of the addon by the site owners as easy as possible. Of course, the owners of planets.nu (who would be the ones to do the programming work for the addon) are free to accept or reject any design details suggested here as they see fit.

My goal for working on the "Short" and "Long" voluntary rule sets is to make the relationship between the rules and game mechanics as explicitly clear as possible, so rules that may appear in a Nu Host addon can be play tested in voluntary PLS games.

Other than the three site rules, there are no "spirit of the rules" in NuHost games - there are only game mechanics. By making the game mechanics of the rules as clear as possible, I hope that players will test these rules by pushing them to their limits and seeing what they can get away with. Indeed, this is what we expect of players in regular NuHost games. By doing this, we will get a good sense of how well the rules perform.

1742 days, 22 hours, 1 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Here are some proposed tweaks to my proposed voluntary Nu PLS rule sets. Original designs are detailed several posts above.

Modification to the "Short" Rule set:
For every starbase that has recycle orders, subtract one from your ship total for the purpose of determining available ship slots.
Example: Your ship limit is 70, and you have 68 ships and 2 recycle orders. You can build 4 ships this turn.

Rationale:
1. Unlike "Land and Disassemble," recycle orders are highly unlikely to fail.
2. Unlike "Land and Disassemble," it would be very difficult to fool the system using fake recycle orders.
3. This makes the set one step closer to being identical to MJS's rule set.
4. Under these conditions, all ship builds in a voluntary PLS game should occur during the first build phase, before movement. Because recycle occurs prior to this, a ship slot will be freed up before the shipbuilding occurs. "Land and Disassemble," however, does not occur until after movement.

Modification to the "Long" Rule set:
Prohibitions on force surrender and tow capture do not take effect unless you are ABOVE your ship limit.

Rationale:
1. This may be easier to understand and seem more "fair" to some players. "I don't have to worry about the additional restrictions in the Long rule set unless I am ABOVE my limit."

1742 days, 20 hours, 49 minutes ago

mule

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

As it happens I am playing Crystals in one of the current PLS games. Last turn I captured ships that made me go over my allotted 70 ships. So, what did this mean to me?

1. I posted a note to the activity feed that explained I was aware of the problem and why it happened.

2. I sent orders to recycle a couple of not so important ships to get back to my max. I didn't have to, but until I did I could not build for ANY reason. Such as recycling a ship in favor of building a better ship. I could not make ship trades because gsX is now disallowed to me. If I lost a ship in battle (very likely right now) I am stuck with what I have left and will have to scramble to do SOMETHING to improve my fleet anyway. Ship count is far less important than exactly what ships I do have.

The bottom line is there is no Armageddon about to strike the game because the Crystal temporarily has exceeded his max. I do not have some insurmountable advantage. Matter of fact, I would happily trade several of the ships I have for just one of those big cubes baring down on me.

I am not saying a simple set of rules like I advocate will balance the game or stop all cheats. They won't. But, neither will any other set of rules I have seen. Lets remember this PLS "ship count" thing is a very rough control mechanism that keeps us out of queue control land. I do not believe it was ever intended to provide a fine control for game balance.

1742 days, 19 hours, 54 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Regarding the tow capture for the Priv and Crys - I definitely think there needs to at least be temporary exceptions built into the PLS ship limit. For instance, say you are in the later stages of the game and you've got 70 great and useful ships. You now happen upon a better ship that you have the chance to capture. Capturing ships is not a sure thing - especially with skilled opponents. It is unfair that the Priv/Crys player should have to get under XX ships before they do that tow capture - what if they don't end up capturing the ship? The option should be to give them an opportunity to get below once they've secured their prey.

1742 days, 13 hours, 42 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

So you allow PLS +2 for Crystal and Priv?

Or they have to wait until they are below their limit.

Robbed ship has no fuel. It can be towed to a more secure location. The Priv has tow lock on it and has limited movement and chance to escape. He has the ship but does not control it yet.

Same for the Crystaline. Out of fuel has tow lock but currently no boarding.

1742 days, 6 hours, 49 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Hi Mule. I agree that it's not a problem if a player temporarily goes over his limit (as long as no rules are broken, of course). And I agree that we are not trying to achieve a fine control over game balance with these rules.

None of these rules are designed to stop cheats. If something is allowed by the rules, then it's not cheating. The rules specify what is allowed and what is not.

The extra rules of the Long set are designed to make it hard to go permanently over your limit. Going above your limit and staying there is not cheating, but there are rules that limit what you can do when you get there.

Lord Firefall, as I see it there are at least three options for addressing this issue.
1. Play a game with the Short/MJS rule set. Then there are no limitations at all on how many ships you can tow capture. You could theoretically have 999 ships if you capture everyone else's ships. ;)
2. Use the Long set, but stay within your limit at all times. Then you will always be able to tow capture.
3. Use the Long set, and (as @Martinr suggested), keep the fuel-less enemy ship under tow lock (or stuck in a web) until you are ready to tow capture. That nice fuel-less Gorbie that you just robbed can't even move without fuel, so just tow it to a place where it can't be rescued, and then capture it at your leisure.

@Martinr, with the "tweaked" Long set, you can tow capture as many ships as you want as long as you are not OVER your limit. So you could have 70 ships, and a limit of 70, and still tow capture 10 ships during the current turn. But the following turn, you would not be able to tow capture more ships. Once you are no longer OVER your limit, you can tow capture again. My thinking is that this rule would be a little more easy to understand and follow than the original Long set rule.

1740 days, 1 hours, 48 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

In a regular game, capturing a ship from an enemy (or a friend) deprives him of a ship slot. But this is not the case under PLS because those ships can be replaced if the other player has the resources to do so.

So capturing a fuel-less enemy ship is not necessarily the best thing to do in PLS. An alternative is to leave the ship helpless and under your control. In this case you ARE depriving your enemy of a ship slot, because ships rendered helpless in this way (by the Crystal or Privateer, for example) cannot be replaced unless the are rescued.

The author of the SOSS addon was so concerned that this would unfairly strengthen the Crystals and Privateers that he included a mechanism that would allow you to self-destruct your own ships after a time delay.

I'm skeptical about this being an overpowering advantage, but I do see how it could be advantageous. Anyway, I think this is an interesting example of how tactics under PLS could be different that in a regular game.

1740 days, 1 hours, 44 minutes ago

mule

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

I would like the delayed self-destruct. :)

1733 days, 5 hours, 29 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

There are five methods of transferring ships from player to player. Any of the five can be used for either hostile or friendly ship transfer.

1. gsX
2. force surrender
3. tow capture
4. ghost ship capture
5. combat capture

For friendly transfers, both gsX and force surrender are convenient and easy, and involve no loss of crew. Tow capture and ghost ship capture involve a loss of crew in the transferred ship. Combat capture involves both a loss of crew and damage to the ship, and only works for ships with relatively low crew/mass ratios.

--

One difficulty that I think should be addressed in allies or team games is that the above methods for friendly ship transfer need to be limited to prevent abuse. Consider the following:

Player A is at his limit and is providing shipbuilding resources to Player B.
Player B transfers 10 ships to Player A by force surrender.
Player B builds 10 replacement ships.
Player B transfers 10 more ships, etc.

If this cycle continues for 10 turns, then Player A will be 100 ships above his limit. This is legal under the Short or MJS rule sets. This could also work using tow capture or ghost ship capture.

So I believe that this loophole should be closed for games where allies will be working together.

--

When I was thinking about how the Long set closes the ghost ship capture loophole, it occurred to me that the restriction on re-crewing ships with starbase fix above the limit might be adequate to close the tow capture loophole as well. So the restriction on tow capture above the limit may not be necessary for this purpose.

So a Privateer or Crystal could legally keep acquiring ships by tow capture above his limit, but would not be able to re-crew those ships as long as he is above his limit. A Privateer that chooses to stay permanently above his limit would have a crippled, low-crew fleet. I think that may provide enough dis-incentive to going permanently above the limit.

So if the tow capture restriction was removed from the Long set (so that the only restrictions affecting ship transfer to a player above his limit would be for gsX, force surrender, and starbase fix), would it still be adequate to prevent abuse?

1733 days, 3 hours, 20 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Well that would work in a host moderated game. In a person moderated game I would say that was a blatant abuse of the rules and ban that player from all my hosted games.

1733 days, 2 hours, 9 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

An abuse, yes, but still legal according to the letter of the rules. I would be reluctant to punish or think poorly of a player who was simply trying to maximize his advantage within the context of the rules.

1733 days, 1 hours, 36 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Well it depends on the wording of the rules you use when setting up the game (if it cannot be controlled by the host as anyone can "forget" to turn on your addon).

If you state that its against the rules to deliberately give ships to your ally or even worse to a "neutral party" to take them over their ship limit and keep doing it.

If a person did that in a PSL game I would definitely not want to play with that person again.

The whole concept of PLS games is to have a limit and you should not plan to go over it. And if you go over it you should not have the capacity to increase it and you should try your best to get back to within your limit.

Because if their are games that allow you to give ships to a player for ever it is totally against the concept of the game.

But if you have that loop hole you will have people ruining games for other people by abusing that rule. Like you have people using multiple accounts of prearranged teams of 5 in 11 player games.

In fact it will be the cheaters who will join these games to "accidentally" give all their ships to one player so they can win.

That is why I want this host moderated with all the limits set in place or backed up by a privately run game with a long list or rules that players sign up to it.

As your external addon cannot stop blatant cheaters as they just don't use it.

1733 days, 1 hours, 28 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

I strongly feel that any rules must be part of the mechanics of the host run. Playing here I have learned that even if it is against the stated rules, even if all players agree to honor the stated rules if there is a way that something can be done, even if the players have agreed to not do it, there are some players here that will do it.
Overall however I really like the concept of PSL.

1733 days, 1 hours, 18 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

The addon will be a useful tool to help honest players to keep from accidentally going over their limit. But will not stop cheaters ruining games for other people. So as Baer says a list of rules for the game would have to be agreed before the game starts.

1733 days, 1 hours, 16 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

While I don't play PLS at present, I would agree absolutely with RoboDoc's last post. It is for the designers to make the rules properly, not for the players to intuitively discern the moral plan underlying them and rely on other players to do so as well.

I would, however, venture to ask whether such a plan qualifies as abuse. After all, Privateers and Crystals in particular (and Lizards, Birds, classic Fascists, and Feds to a lesser extent) rely for victory on their ability to control more ships than other players. Why would it be unreasonable for them to attempt to do so?

Personally, I'd suggest a "hard" limit that should exist over the "soft" PLS limit rather than instituting punishments. If nothing else, decisions should be made by those who have successfully played the races in question.

1733 days, 0 hours, 58 minutes ago

warhound

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

I'd just weight in say I'd all for having another game type to test out and see what people think of it. Just need some other people to stepup and help Joshua with the programming

1732 days, 23 hours, 57 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Gnerphk. It depends on the level of abuse. 11 player game 70 PLS limit. Three players join and decide to feed all to one player.

So they all reach the 70 limit and have FC's to pass ships around. Two players give 70 ships to one player. So they have one player with 210 ships! The other two players build up to 70 ships and give them over to player one to 350 ships. So if that is a loop hole it should be stopped.

I think no one should be able to transfer ships / capture / tow capture after the limit. With a 70 ship limit and more if you have a more planets you have a lot of flexibility.

If a race goes over the limit will have crew less ships / fueless ships or ships that can be given after they are below the ship limit.

In a privately hosted game the rules can be agreed before hand and some flexibility can be granted on specific.

Remember this is a totally different game style.

Instead of the normal game of who can get the best ships out in a short as time as possible.

This is now who can get the best ships out in a controlled manner and use them the most efficiently.

With 70 ships slots to fill with what ever you want it will come down to economy, strategy and skill.

The lizards can still churn out hissers early on and when they hit the 70 limit they can recycle the hissers and replace them with what ever their economy can support.

Privateers can churn out warp 7 MCBR's early on and replace them with Warp 9 Heavy Disruptor Torp 8 later on. The slot is theirs to fill to a level of the economy.

Lose a ship and replace it if you have the economy to rebuild it.

So its not a game of filling ship slots but having the economy to keep those ship slots filled with the best ships.

So you need to kill ships and economy.

A different play style. But not too different.

1732 days, 23 hours, 51 minutes ago

mule

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

There is no doubt that it would be better to be able to control a PLS game from NU programming rather than anything volunteer. However, if we waited for that none of these alternate games would happen at all. I think it would require sufficient players committed to playing them before Joshua would deem the work worth it. Without having enough voluntary "test" games to
prove the concept we will never have sufficient committed players.

As far as exactly what the rules are or should be, assuming a player host that is paying attention and perhaps using Robo's script, I think it would be easy enough for the host to keep everyone playing by the agreed rules.

The host could just halt the game and start asking questions of the involved players. Both the players and the host also have the activity thread when things don't look right. And this is a custom game that the rules should have been made clear to all players before the game started.

1732 days, 22 hours, 1 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

I agree that there needs to be something in the rules that prevents an extreme level of abuse.

And for voluntary play, I think the rules should be as easy to follow as possible, so that the added burden of adhering to the rules does not interfere with the fun of playing the game (Indeed, I developed the PLSCheck userscript to help ease this burden).

Beyond that, I think that how "hard" or "soft" the individual limits are is largely a matter of the preferences of the designer. I believe that gameplay will be very similar regardless of what the specific rules end up being. Basically you have an individual ship limit, you stick to it, and most of the gameplay dynamics stem from this simple concept.

1732 days, 1 hours, 54 minutes ago

RE: Proposed "Nu PLS" addon (planets limit ships). In this...

Because some players have expressed interest or a preference for a "hard" individual ship limit, I will flesh out an example here.

--

Alternative "Hard Limit" Proposal for a Nu PLS Addon:

* NuHost will keep track of your ship and planet totals at all times during the host order.

* If you are at (or above) your ship limit, then
1. ship building and cloning orders will fail.
2. gsX, force surrender, tow capture, and ghost ship capture will fail.
3. combat capture will fail. If you kill the crew of an enemy ship in ship-to-ship combat, then it will become a ghost ship.

* If, at the end of the turn, you have more ships than your limit due to planet loss, extra ships will lose their crew and become ghost ships. For every ship you have above your limit, a ship will be selected at random to lose its crew.

Under this system, it will be impossible to end a turn with more ships than your limit.

(Unfortunately, we cannot do this on a voluntary basis.)