Topic: Classic War (experimental/fun server)

[Bonk]

Classic War Webmap
[/color][/glow]


No internal shipyard. Two hex movement, one hex draft radius, cheap ships and parts. F&E map, DV shifts by 2, standard alliances.

Requires OP+3.4 and EEK2.2.

This is just to fill the gap a bit, and help force me to work out the details of an OoB interface on an SQL server.  I'm also trying to get settings to give missions only when enemies are present. (may need to remove AI from the db...). It is experimental on a number of fronts so any feedback or assistance is muchly appreciated.

[FireSoul]

Minds giving us more details as to what you're testing?

[Bonk]

Um, like a buncha stuf... lol,

MySQL on QNX, apache and PHP on QNX, the serverkit on a remote MySQL db, draft radius effects, the main settings to note though are:

[ScreenForMatch]
BonusForNearbyForeignCharacters      =100
EnemyHexBonus                  =0   // bonus for a mission in enemy territory
NeutralHexBonus                  =0      // bonus chance in neutral hexes for a mission
ChanceMove                     =0      // (30) base chance for a mission on move (increase for more missions in home territory)
ChanceLogon                     =0
...

from missionsmatching.gf. (missions rare unless enemy character nearby, no hex munching mostly PvP, thus high starting PP.)

Also, a disabled internal shipyard, purchases from the webmap only. - looking for feedback on possible admininstration interfaces.. etc. And are any of the webmap generated ships bugged in any way?  (I kind of have a plan to dole out PP to RM accounts to purchase builds for their race, among other ideas but not implemented yet...have yet to limit the webmap shipyard to the server era...-next on my to do list...)

Oh, and some fancy new installer features...

[Lepton]

You are forging ahead yet again, Bonk.  Web-based shipyard worked fine for me, but its format is clumsy.  Perhaps a simple dropdown list with a bid and view button would uncomplicate things.  Additionally, the view button leading to the substantial text in the shiplist record is a bit much.  Images of the vessel library views of the ships would be more familiar but most likely quite labor and bandwidth intensive.  If the information on the ships could be distilled to the type of info presented in the vessel library, that would be simple and ideal.  Still text but less of it.

I seem to be getting missions wherever I go, so if the server settings are meant not to generate missions, that has not been my experience.  Cool stuff, so far.  Looking forward to seeing how all this comes out.

[Dizzy]

Looked it all over and WOW! Bonk this is good stuff!

I agree with Lepton about the too much text ship info. All we need is the basic ship edit summary with a few more details. A ship graphic or UI layout would help, but not necessary.

I got missions only in a few varied hexes of my own space (Rom). None in Fed space. I'd like to see more mission choices... Especially in Neutral and enemy space. (assuming Fed is enemy)

Can you not have a 'Credit' ship in the yard? A bank account per say, so you can trade in your ship on it and then use those trade in funds from your old ship to purchase a better more expensive one?

I also agree with Lepton about the shipyard presentation. Would not a drop down menu or multiple pages seperating ships by class or something make it more organized, neat, and easier to browse? Or something. It does seem clumsy. But it is functional and I am nit picking. You wanted feedback.

All of this is pretty damned cool. The webmap is f*cking awesome, bro. The reports, roster, all that is just f*cking awesome.

I'd like to see more players test.

So, whats the deal with Rom missions not showing in Fed space? (havent tried anywhere else)

[Bonk]

You are forging ahead yet again, Bonk.  Web-based shipyard worked fine for me, but its format is clumsy.  Perhaps a simple dropdown list with a bid and view button would uncomplicate things.  Additionally, the view button leading to the substantial text in the shiplist record is a bit much.  Images of the vessel library views of the ships would be more familiar but most likely quite labor and bandwidth intensive.  If the information on the ships could be distilled to the type of info presented in the vessel library, that would be simple and ideal.  Still text but less of it.

My thoughts exactly on format Lepton, lol. I'm going for function first, then looks. I intend to format the individual ship data nicely (graphically?) eventually. Hmm, a single form with dropdown for the ships and one bid button... maybe, I currently use the "Find in this page" feature of Mozilla to locate desired ships in the list. Maybe a treeview - nah - requires javascript... I'll look at form and usability as I go, thanks for the input!

I seem to be getting missions wherever I go, so if the server settings are meant not to generate missions, that has not been my experience.  Cool stuff, so far.  Looking forward to seeing how all this comes out.

I have it set so missions are rare except when enemy characters are present. Was there a lot of AI on the map in your area? (Note range 1 draft radius - base missions seem to be coming up next to base AIs) How was the mission frequency? I may not be able to eliminate AI missions but make them so rare as to take AI battle hex-flipping out of the game. drb and I tested last night and got very few missions in empty areas and got missions when near each other (hydran/klingon). I may fiddle some more with settings to improve this depending on input and divine inspiration in gf editing.

Looked it all over and WOW! Bonk this is good stuff!

I agree with Lepton about the too much text ship info. All we need is the basic ship edit summary with a few more details. A ship graphic or UI layout would help, but not necessary

Thanks Dizzy, and the form will come in time, I've been lazy enough about getting back to improving function / building framework.

I got missions only in a few varied hexes of my own space (Rom). None in Fed space. I'd like to see more mission choices... Especially in Neutral and enemy space. (assuming Fed is enemy)

Missions should be rare except when enemy characters are present. I have noticed a lack of variety in the offered AI missions too. I have not evaluated the variety of PvP missions yet... Again, I may fiddle with the settings more, based on this sort of feedback.

Can you not have a 'Credit' ship in the yard? A bank account per say, so you can trade in your ship on it and then use those trade in funds from your old ship to purchase a better more expensive one?

Hmm, not exactly sure what you mean... I had started a "Garage", but I still need to work out the magic of the shipcachevector to get it working. I had thought of adding a simple "casino" to the webmap... Can you clarify the trade-in bit? (You can still trade in ships normally once you have purchased a second one...) I am thinking of starting a script/mechanism to populate the shipyard now. I have set the maximum age of ships in eceonomy.gf to 2016 turns (one week on this server) so once I put some in the yards they will stay there up to a week unless purchased. The real question is how to go about populating the shipyard? Allow RM's to build the ships for their race? Create a single OoB admin interface? (ugh! work... I like the first idea... )

I also agree with Lepton about the shipyard presentation. Would not a drop down menu or multiple pages seperating ships by class or something make it more organized, neat, and easier to browse? Or something. It does seem clumsy. But it is functional and I am nit picking. You wanted feedback.

All of this is pretty damned cool. The webmap is f*cking awesome, bro. The reports, roster, all that is just f*cking awesome.

I'd like to see more players test.

So, whats the deal with Rom missions not showing in Fed space? (havent tried anywhere else)

Definitely I agree, the format needs work, and I definitely appreciate the feedback. Also I'd like to see more players test, to stress the SQL setup, internet connection and webmap shipyard... but any help I get is cool!    Again, wrt to missions not showing up: try with enemy characters present within range 1...

[Bonk]

It occurs to me that with the internal shipyard disabled and rare AI missions that there is no motivation to take territory... Perhaps I should base the build points awarded to RMs for ship building on their empire's economy - makes sense... VCs should factor in too.

It is clear that VCs are necessary.
So for now, weekly VCs (the timescale for this whole server is about one week):
Captured Bases held: 5 VC points.
Captured Planets held: 10 VC points.
(1 hex LOS required for both)
Confirmed PvP kills: 10 VC points. (aided by the destroyed ships record on the webmap)
Map at start.

So to help myself review, I need:
1) era sensitive webmap shipyard edit: done! (made obsolete by #2?)
2) an "RM shipwright's page" with builds available based on era, economy and VCs (limiting use and incorporating VCs will be tough) to populate the shipyard, I can then leave out the limited availability ships column on player the webmap shipyard or leave the player webmap shipyard out altogether later, then the only ships available on the server will be those built on the "RM shipwright's page"... to be distributed by the RM on the server (man I need that shipcachevector...) anyway I ramble and get a bit ambitious here, but these are the ideas I want to explore.
3) better format (dropdown shiplist?)

[RazalYllib]

Is this a good candidate Bonk for another stab at stress the SQL kit.

Is the DB running on your linux box?  If so, it might be an opportunity to test that configuration under higher player load...what do you think?

[Bonk]

Is this a good candidate Bonk for another stab at stress the SQL kit.

Is the DB running on your linux box?  If so, it might be an opportunity to test that configuration under higher player load...what do you think?

For sure!  This is a good opportunity if there's enough people around... I've been getting uploads up to 800Kbit lately. The db is running on MySQL 4.0.18max on QNX Momentics 6.3.0 (so is the webserver - apache 2.0.50/PHP 5.0.0), with tweaks to the ODBC connector used on the XP pro box the serverkit runs on. The serverkit is also using the newer smartheap library from the SFC3 serverkit. (the chat server runs on the XP box too for now...) These server settings will provide a little extra stress too (range two movement, range one draft radius, mission rarity).

Lets try and hit it at 2:00PM, 6:00PM and 10:00PM ADT.

[Capt_Bearslayer_XC]

K, got on and flew around the map... um...  no missions are showing up.... 

[Bonk]

K, got on and flew around the map... um...  no missions are showing up.... 

Exactly, an enemy player needs to be present! 
http://www.dynaverse.net/forum/index.php/topic,163345903.msg1122436176.html#msg1122436176
(I'll be on most of the afternoon.)

[Capt_Bearslayer_XC]

Kind of hard to build up PP then, ain't it?

Can you make missions available in homespace?

[Bonk]

Yup, it will be tough to build PP. (I want to try a go at getting away from AI battle PP banking games...)

Missions are available without an enemy player, just rare. I just finished two. An ambush which I won and a Convoy Raid that I should have won, Karnak if you see this - I killed both the escorts for the convoy raid and the mission ended with a defeat, what gives? Also, what the heck is this thing? - in the foreground - I've never seen one before that I recall...

It's intended to be a PvP server as discussed with high penalties and VCs for PvP and little to no AI battles (and webmap shipyard test / OoB development start), thus the high starting PP and cheap ships. We just need to get a few people on there and away we go...

[Corbomite]

That "thing" is a wormhole and won't affect you unless scripted to. The "thing" in the background is a Space Fissure. Same deal there.

[Bonk]

That "thing" is a wormhole and won't affect you unless scripted to. The "thing" in the background is a Space Fissure. Same deal there.

Cool, thanks! I recognised the space fissure but not the wormhole.

[Lepton]

I have to admit I only ran one mission and it was only in neutral space, but I am pretty sure I saw missions available wherever I went in friendly space and neutral space.  I'll check back in on the server and see if I was misreading things.

[Bonk]

They are pretty rare for me and others, so it seems to be mostly working as intended. Co-op (Klingon/Rom) works nicely, though Skirmish Patrol crashed on us when a ship blew up after a "Host Left" message once.

The webmap shipyard is now sensitive to the server year. Let me know if any ships off OP+3.4 are missing or present when they should not be...

[Dizzy]

Ya, well Bonk, I'm glad you tested and confirmed the fact that you can make a server dole out the majority of missions only when in a PvP element, but can you find a 50-50 balance? The server population is not high, and I'd like to build up some pp. There is not much point in a dyna to peruse the map and do nothing else. It's just too hard to 'catch' someone on. To make matters even more puzzling, is the fact that in PvP... the 2x players wouldnt likely agree on which hex the battle would take place. Unless of course the map is extremely small.

Granted, while missions do show in friendly space from time to time, they do not show up enough. At least to speen much time on the server. In addition the stress test you want to happen wont happen unless we are getting frequent missions.

Now as far as the 'bank account' ship... If you want to swap out your ship for another, I thought it would be easy and faster to have a cheap ship in the shipyard you can bid on and then trade your current expensive ship in so that you now have banked the prestiuge of the expensive ship so you can go buy a better one on the webmap. Essentially you could do this using only the webmap, but in order to do it, you'd need to go to the webmap, buy the ship, logon the server, trade you lod one, log out, buy the one u really want but previously didnt have the cash for, then logon and trade the transition ship in for the ship you wanted.

Kinda confusing. And gosh Im sure someone else could explain it in fewer than 20 words, but thats what I mean. Hrmmm. NM!

[Lepton]

Hehe.  Are we all playing on the same server??  I am getting missions almost wherever I go and I am getting pp for the missions I take.  Just got 500pp for a convoy raid.  Is there something I am missing here?  I've played enemy sweep, hold the line, ambush action, and more.  So the missions are showing up.  Am I not getting pp for them??  As far as I can tell I am.  DV shifts are fine.  I flipped a hex.  What am I missing here??

[Dizzy]

Lepton, what race r u playing and what enemy space is giving u missions?