Supporting continuing development for Empyrean Challenge / Cluster Wars
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I'll stay with the 30x30x30 light year volume of space for now, though in the future we should make this something to be changed from game to game.
I believe Vern had an algorithm that set up local clusters around each starting position, but you had to advance your HEN tech to be able to jump far enough to reach another player's local neighborhood. I think you needed HEN-4. Anyone else remember anything about this?
There was a chance for each star to be a double, triple, or even quadruple star system. At least I remember a "quad" system in EC. And each star in such a system had its own local orbits (which could contain planets), but they all shared the same "orbit 11". Do I have that right?
A star had up to 10 orbital slots which could hold a planet, and these were randomly assigned, right? Some orbits were empty? Some were gas giants, some were asteroids, and some were rocky planets?
Each planet had 0-40 mining deposits, randomly assigned? I might want to work on this -- gas giants could have mostly fuel deposits, for instance, and asteroids could have high-yield MET/NMT deposits. Rocky worlds would have lower yield deposits, but would have the possibility for HAB. Was there any difference in game-play between rocky worlds, gas giants, and asteroids? Thoughts?
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You are correct that the star systems all have one orbit 11 and if there were multiple stars they can have up to 10 orbits with up to 10 planets. The gas giants were rich with fuel and the asteroids were rich in metals and nonmetals. The terrestrial planets (which you call Rocky) were the ones that were general purpose that had the possibility for HAB
I believe every home system had exactly the same resources but can offer no guidance on the local clusters. In CWT2 I built a utility for my Mac which integrated all the turn data from all of my viceroys. When Jay gets back to me his turn data from that game I can integrate those scans and surveys as well. By taking the earliest surveys, we can get a pretty good look at exactly how that game was generated. I will forward this information to you as soon as I get A chance to put them into the database. If you have a Mac, I can also send you the utility to look at the data directly in table views
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This brings up a few issues:
1. Where and how to host -- on a server? VM? Cloud? We might keep this scoped down enough to fit within the "free tier" that some of the cloud hosts provide. And our data is pretty small compared to a typical media-heavy application.
2. How to share files and code? We could use google drive or something. Open a Git repository. Someplace to share .csv files until we get a database up and running
3. Should we have a new section of the forum focused on development?
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you had unlimiterd pits on the home world and on a few out system planets-as I recall the 40 deposits were done away with
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Hochler.com is hosted on go daddy and I also have access to mySQL databases.
Currently I am trying to learn some more JavaScript as well as node JS and using the react library for the views.
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I don't have an exact memory. In the old days, every planet had 40 deposits. In CW, there were a variable number of deposits, and some of were "bottomless", but with a lower yield. I'm not sure if the bottomless deposits existed ONLY on the home worlds.
I propose this:
Every planet has 3 "bottomless" deposits (METS, NMTS, FUEL). They are all low-yield (1-10%). All players with a colony on the planet can put mines on those deposits -- they aren't limited to one player's mine-group.
In addition, there are 0-40 "special" deposits, which are limited, and which offer higher yields. The probabilities will make it so deep mines will have lower yields, and shallow mines (ie: smaller total minerals) will have higher yields. These can be claimed by a player's mine-group.
This will give players an incentive to get to planets and extract surface resources quickly, while eliminating the game-exploit where players could block everyone else from mining a planet. It is also good in terms of theme -- it would be practically impossible to empty a planet of all resources -- there will always be more to extract, it will just be progressively more expensive to do so.
Any thoughts?
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Your memory was essentially correct.
The game was originally played on a 30 x 30 x 30 grid.
In its last incarnation the grid was used, but Vern had an algorithm or formula for keeping systems out of the corners, resulting in a spherical looking universe.
You did indeed need a higher tech hyper engine in order to reach your nearest neighbors. I would mention that with the old geometrical progression of hyper engine ability everything was too close, and almost everything could be reached in two or three jumps once you got past tech 10. To remedy this problem I believe we used the TL squared divided by 1.5 .
As to your question about the home world's, It Was Vern's successful Intention to make every home world exactly equal, with three unlimited deposits, and for every home system to have an additional 3 unlimited deposits scattered throughout, Also every home system was to have an additional Hab planet ( containing one of the 3 additional unlimited deposits). What he unintentionally failed to do was to make all the home systems identical. The preceding accounted for 4 planets, the remaining six planets were randomly created. This resulted in different HW systems being relatively rich (or poor) in either Mets Nonmetals or Fuel
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We can also solve the problem of having everything reachable in 2-3 jumps with HEN-10 by just expanding the size of the cluster. We can still restrict the number of stars to whatever we want -- just make the distances longer. That increases the importance of investing in HEN tech, and makes it easy enough to keep players isolated until some point -- maybe HEN-4? We could use a 50LY cube, or even a 100LY cube.
What about the idea of having 3 unlimited very-low-yield deposits on every planet?
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