Weblog
Jun 29, 2012 - 10:45 pmSince the middle 1990's playing Tradewars, Star Control 2 and several other titles (including AAT!), I have always watched for Space games that have an emphasis on exploring and trade.
Seeing as most people around here are likely like minded
this one looks promising:
Endless Space
http://endless-space.amplitude-studios.com/Features
Coming out Summer 2012! May 4, 2009 - 2:12 pmMay the 4th be with you.
*snicker* Mar 24, 2009 - 1:50 pmAcademies
With PJ's mention of smarter fighters (SD and ship carried) through research... I started mulling over what a research tree would look like to get to this item.
My initial thought down this stream of consciousness led me to the point of Wait! What about training up one of those uber new fighters in an Academy and making it part of a crew slot on the ships. Of course to open up crew slots you would have to research that... but still...
Crew Slots
Research Tree to get crew slots on ships:
Base Planet -> Level 20 -> Research University -> Research Engineering -> Research Crew Slots
Each ship can have crew slots. Depending on its hull size it can have 1 - 6 crew slots. Crew slots must be built into the ship at the time that the ship is built. They can not be added to the ship later after the ship has been built. This is what is known as in the gaming industry as a money sink. It could be optional (and likely a good idea) to color code the crew slots so that you can only have 2 blue, 2 reds, and 2 yellows at any given time. This will keep people from loading up on reds, more on that in a second!
So what do these crew slots do? Well, not much by themselves. They need crew members to fill the slots and that is where Academies come in.
Building the Academy
Research Tree to get Academies on ships:
Base Planet -> Level 25 -> Research University ->
-> Research Academy.
Once you have an Academy you will need to research items within it.
Inside the Research Academy
Research Military -> Enhanced Ship Based Fighters
Research Military -> Enhanced Sector Defense Fighters
Once those two are accomplished we get into:
Research Red Crew Members (Military)
Lt. Dan (Red Crew Member) - Adds 5% more power to lasers. Can be researched up to 5 levels.
Lt. Fifi (Red Crew Member) - Targeting system officer. 20% chance to hit. Can be researched up to 5 levels.
Lt. Worf (Red Crew Member) - Shield strength raised 5%. Can be researched up to 5 levels.
Research Yellow Crew Members (Engineering)
Warrant Officer Checkov - Hull size increased 5%. Can be researched up to 5 levels.
Warrant Officer Scottie - Engines increased 5%. Can be researched up to 5 levels.
Warrant Officer Sulu - Scanning increased 5%. Can be researched up to 5 levels.
Research Blue Crew Members (Operations)
Comrade Smirnov - Cloak increased 5%. Can be researched up to 5 levels.
Comrade Stallin - Spy's are 5% more effective. Can be researched up to 5 levels.
Comrade DeepThroat - Information gathered by the enemy has a 5% chance of being incorrect. Can be researched up to 5 levels.
Comrade Overseer - 20% reduction to Dignitaries taking the embezzler role of dignitary. Can be researched up to 5 levels and a requires a ship with a Blue Crew Slot to be stored on the planet.
Research Green Crew Members (Environment)
Druid Archadia - Population balance maintained. No overpopulation. Requires 5 levels of research and a ship with a Green Crew Slot to be stored on the planet.
Overseer Bjork - 1% more efficient workers. Can be researched up to 5 levels and a requires a ship with a Green Crew Slot to be stored on the planet.
Misc
Once a Crew Slot is filled that Crew Member can not be used on any other ship. You can replace the crew member that is in the slot but it will destroy the current crew member (back to that money sink again!).
Blogs of Note:
-
Dignitary Overview - Updated Sept 7th 2004 - Still pretty accurate!
-
Top 5 AAT Administrator "No-No's"
-
Labeling your planets
Entry Edited 5 times - Edited on Mar 24, 2009 - 2:29 pm
Dec 28, 2008 - 10:24 amJust typed this up in Tarnus's blog comment.
It was a decent idea so I wanted to capture it.
---------------------------
Alf said, the game is not tuned for people who casually want to play the game and manage a few planets.
I hope one day that the game can be both things. The Fed Homestead idea could help that along. 5 untouchable planets that will allow folks who just want to PvE in peace.
And/Or the newer idea, the Space Hub a home for mid-sized hull traders... these people could own and supply ports and trade and basically be left alone (unless of course they get caught zipping around when they are online).
It would almost be like creating 4 distinct roles/classes in the game each with benefits and limitiations, Homesteaders, Traders, Attackers and Builders.
Homesteaders - Only get 1 sector of up to 5 planets in Fed Space. Hull size is limited to Fed Space rules.
Saftey: 5/5
Score Potential: 1/5
Traders - Can own ports, can dock at the Space Hub for overnight saftey but the best trades are in open space and thus the riskest.
Saftey: 3/5
Score Potential: 2/5
Attackers - Tradional seek and destroy. Slash and burn. Owning massive amounts of planets optional but owning a big bad ship is required.
Saftey: 1/5
Score Potential: 4/5
Builders - Build those planets. The more the better. 1 lair isn't enough. Nah! You need more than that if you want to be on the top page!
Saftey: 2/5
Score Potential: 5/5 Dec 20, 2008 - 4:33 pmPvE (Player vs Environment) -- Space Hubs
With Tanrus hinting at improved trading and research coming along and I would like to make a proposal for dealing with craft size and FedSpace: Introducing the SPACE HUB.
The following is a direct advertisement from
Space Hub - Your Home away from Home
Hello space trader! Space Hub would like to tell you about our services. We will be an area where players can dock thier mid-sized trading vessel and not need to worry about being kicked out into lawless space. Unlike Sol using one of the various Space Hubs around the universe will NOT be free and you must meet certain hull size requirements. Too small and the docking clamps can't engage... too big and well you won't fit into one of the Space Hub's berths.
Space Hubs will require a daily monitary credit payment. Afterall it does cost money to ensure your trading ships saftey! You can pay in advance, authorize direct withdrawl from IGB, or even just pay day by day. But beware... when you stop paying, the Space Hub's security forces will tow you to Sol... and well once in Sol... That's not our problem anymore is it?
There are some fine print items that you can review in the Docking Agreement. A few items include: You can not be in ownership of more than 1 sector (Fed Homestead or otherwise) and you can not own a ship larger than the ship you are docking... (sorry! the Feds don't want us harboring fugitives or war dodgers). But leave the rest to the lawyers!
Come to Space Hub! We are your Home away from Home.
----------- Reposts Below so to get all PvE ideas into one place -------
Original PvE (Player vs Environment) -- REPOST
It was mentioned in Tanrus' blog that we should use Fed Space as a PvE learning area.
I agree! Using fed space as a "full scale" training ground would be a wonderful idea.
You can build in no more than 1 sector of fed space. Perhaps 1 level of SG's so that people can see how they work. Certain fed space sectors will remain off-limits to planet building (those near Sol) so that new players won't get shut out.
You can deploy mines, sd and all the rest but while in Fed Space but instead of killing the opponent the mines and sd will "escort" the other player out (if they get caught!).
Spies still work in Fed Space homesteads, however, no spies will ever jump to a ship. This allows players to see how they can be deployed and how they work. The spy however will NEVER convert a Fed Spaced homestead PvE player planet to their own.
Finally, ship to ship combat IS ALLOWED. However, the consequences are nothing more than a note: "Player X simulated an attack on you and won! You would have been destroyed!" The same message could occur when a player hits SD that "escorts" them out.
I think the above would cover letting players learn the ropes while in a non-threatening environment.
There should be a few drawbacks to FedSpace Homesteads... perhaps the Feds collect a 25% tax on all earnings (trades, planet income, etc...) in order to pay for the saftey that a FedSpace Homesteader enjoys.
Title: More Fed Space Training Academy
Make a Fed Space a training academy:
-- A place where new people can make a limited number of planets (say no more than 5)
-- With no more than 1 level deep of an SG (so new folks can see what an SG does)
-- No worries about being attacked while in Fed Space (UNLESS you get a bounty -- then ships and planets are fair game)
-- If the player dies in Real Space the planets will be there upon return (training purposes -- so you don't start from scratch with a mistake)
-- If the players die/suicide and don't recreate an account in 5 days the Feds take back the planets and put them up as target practice.
-- Target practice planets, make no money, make no new population, make no new resources, make no new defenses, and can not be captured. They are there for training purposes so new folks can see how the attack system works and people can see how the spy system works. Once the planet is defeated it is destroyed. No credits can be gained from target practice planets.
-- Attacks from ship to ship are possible in Fed Space but they are only SIMULATED attacks. No kill count is awarded. No damage is actually done. A note will be sent to the "defeated" ship about losing the simulated attack.
The above ideas will allow New Folks to see what the game is about and have a basic understanding of playing the game before they are forced into the big black where all the real action takes place.
Blogs of Note:
-
Dignitary Overview - Updated Sept 7th 2004 - Still pretty accurate!
-
Top 5 AAT Administrator "No-No's"
-
Labeling your planets
Entry Edited 4 times - Edited on Dec 20, 2008 - 10:23 pm
Dec 2, 2008 - 11:39 pmNot too bad... I climbed up to 15th place with over 12M in score with just 5 planets.
Finally someone found me and had at my nice planets (which were around level 281).
I can't wait until the SD gets "smarter" - I had level 350+ SD cloak, defense and scanners but it didn't seem to do squat against a player that IGB loaned his way to victory.
Still... fun stuff.
Notes
1) Autotrade needs to have a place in this game even after planets get beyond 240-250 in level.
2) SD really does need to be "smarter". IGB A&R runs are just too powerful. It took me a month to build sector defense levels up... it took an attacker just 21 minutes to tear it all down.
3) Research! OMG. Where is it!
Blogs of Note:
-
Dignitary Overview - Updated Sept 7th 2004 - Still pretty accurate!
-
Top 5 AAT Administrator "No-No's"
-
Labeling your planets
Entry Edited 2 times - Edited on Dec 2, 2008 - 11:41 pm
Nov 1, 2008 - 10:38 pmTrying out a new challenge for myself.
I am decided to only allow myself to trade and to make a max of 5 planets.
I am having a blast with autotrades... lots of good deals to be had out there. But, as I use the system I see there are a couple of interesting questions that need to be raised.
When your planet is at 100% cash. Where does the cash earned from the autotrade go? I think the answer is *POOF*. But that hardly makes sense. What should occur is that the autotrade ship should cease to run until the cash cap is cleared. Or perhaps the cash can be put directly into the players IGB?
Still. Fun to be had! Personally I never had planets much above level 33-35 before. So I am hoping to grow these 5 very very big.
Just to do it. =)
Blogs of Note:
-
Dignitary Overview - Updated Sept 7th 2004 - Still pretty accurate!
-
Top 5 AAT Administrator "No-No's"
-
Labeling your planets
Entry Edited 1 time - Edited on Nov 1, 2008 - 10:40 pm
Sep 19, 2008 - 10:15 amMake a Fed Space a training academy:
-- A place where new people can make a limited number of planets (say no more than 5)
-- With no more than 1 level deep of an SG (so new folks can see what an SG does)
-- No worries about being attacked while in Fed Space (UNLESS you get a bounty -- then ships and planets are fair game)
-- If the player dies in Real Space the planets will be there upon return (training purposes -- so you don't start from scratch with a mistake)
-- If the players die/suicide and don't recreate an account in 5 days the Feds take back the planets and put them up as target practice.
-- Target practice planets, make no money, make no new population, make no new resources, make no new defenses, and can not be captured. They are there for training purposes so new folks can see how the attack system works and people can see how the spy system works. Once the planet is defeated it is destroyed. No credits can be gained from target practice planets.
-- Attacks from ship to ship are possible in Fed Space but they are only SIMULATED attacks. No kill count is awarded. No damage is actually done. A note will be sent to the "defeated" ship about losing the simulated attack.
The above ideas will allow New Folks to see what the game is about and have a basic understanding of playing the game before they are forced into the big black where all the real action takes place. Apr 29, 2008 - 5:20 pmPvE -Fed Space Training Ground
I said it in the blog and I will say it here:
While the game has traditionally been about "total domination" that fact in itself is flawed. Often the top players know of loophole (to be kind) that allowed them to get a leg up. The History of AAT changes have shown this to be a fact. I have certainly voiced my opinion about this before as those who have the most to lose (in a dominance sense) always lobby the hardest for things to not change.
Frankly, it has killed the game.
It's time for a radical shift in AAT. It's time for PvE and PvP distinctions to be drawn.
Also, there needs to be "fair play" rules put in place.
As PJ said in another thread, when will a 5B player every be able to defend against a 35B player? Never. So why does AAT still allow this kind of brutal behavior to occur?
PvE (Player vs Environment) --
It was mentioned in Tanrus' blog that we should use Fed Space as a PvE learning area.
I agree! Using fed space as a "full scale" training ground would be a wonderful idea.
You can build in no more than 1 sector of fed space. Perhaps 1 level of SG's so that people can see how they work. Certain fed space sectors will remain off-limits to planet building (those near Sol) so that new players won't get shut out.
You can deploy mines, sd and all the rest but while in Fed Space but instead of killing the opponent the mines and sd will "escort" the other player out (if they get caught!).
Spies still work in Fed Space homesteads, however, no spies will ever jump to a ship. This allows players to see how they can be deployed and how they work. The spy however will NEVER convert a Fed Spaced homestead PvE player planet to their own.
Finally, ship to ship combat IS ALLOWED. However, the consequences are nothing more than a note: "Player X simulated an attack on you and won! You would have been destroyed!" The same message could occur when a player hits SD that "escorts" them out.
I think the above would cover letting players learn the ropes while in a non-threatening environment.
There should be a few drawbacks to FedSpace Homesteads... perhaps the Feds collect a 25% tax on all earnings (trades, planet income, etc...) in order to pay for the saftey that a FedSpace Homesteader enjoys.
Entry Edited 2 times - Edited on Apr 29, 2008 - 5:24 pm
Nov 10, 2007 - 12:07 pm** New Rule ** No Blogs until 48 hours after being destroyed.
But read the below notes from my more sane writtings!
Blogs of Note:
-
Dignitary Overview - Updated Sept 7th 2004
-
Top 5 AAT Administrator "No-No's"
-
Labeling your planets
Entry Edited 3 times - Edited on Jan 16, 2008 - 12:00 pm
May 23, 2007 - 11:37 amThe following is a proposed idea which has been presented in the AAT 1.00 Forum.
http://www.aatraders.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=3002
Planetary "Commerce" level
I propose a Planetary "Commerce" level. Or perhaps call it a Planetary Banking level.
Solution.
Planetary Commerce/Banking level. The game has broken out SG defense levels out of the generalized planetary levels and the it's time to put the max credit level into the hands of the players as well.
You want a level 300 planet with level 250 commerce? You got it.
You want a level 100 planet with a level 350 commerce? *snicker* GO FOR IT!
Why?
Because for awhile now it is clear that players prefer smaller sized planets (220-250 level) in order to manufacture credits at a good rate while not having too many credits on any given planets. However, it has become clear that in order to compete at a high level you really need hundreds of these types of planets in order to maintain a top end empire. But, 100's of planets per person starts to affect the performance of the game. Not to mention the self-inflicted nightmare of the newer "touch your planets daily" feature <*shudder*>.
If smaller planets are not the answer then why not larger planets? Larger planets contain a HUGE amount of credits and are just too risky. And as the max credit amounts scale too quickly as the planetary levels go up you kill your credit earning productivitiy as it requires a person to keep credit levels at 90% or better to get maximum efficiency. Players just can not risk having 100's of trillions on one planet.
Think about it -
Why in the days of yore did people put 1 trillion sector defense down? Because the planets couldn't defend themselves.
Why couldn't the planets defend themselves? Because you had to keep the defense levels low in order to maximize credit production.
Where was the credit production sweet spot? Levels 210-250 (or 21-25 for old schoolers)
How many credits did a level 210-250 hold? Oh about 250 million to 1 trillion...
How many credits does it take to upgrade one ship level? Several trillion to dozens of trillions
How many planets does it take running at 90% credits (maximized credit production) to upgrade a ship component at higher levels? 100-200...
And that is how we got to where we are today... Players needing 100's of planets to enchance thier empire.
What will this really do?
This will be a significant change in the way that the game in played.
Self scaling of the max credit level makes this game customizable to the individual preference...
Hopefully, this will allow for fewer better credit stocked, better defended, planets.
No more busting into an SG, just to find a bunch of level 23 planets with a measly pittance of cash per planet.
No more having to choose undefending a planet just so that it will produce credits at a good rate.
No more massive amounts of SD needed as the planetary defenses can actually be at a legitimate level.
No more need for 100's if not 1000's of planets per player.
A "Planetary Commerce" level is the answer.
Blogs of Note:
-
Dignitary Overview - Updated Sept 7th 2004
-
Top 5 AAT Administrator "No-No's"
-
Labeling your planets
Entry Edited 4 times - Edited on May 23, 2007 - 11:41 am
Nov 26, 2006 - 1:20 amI had my first five indies in 5 months of game play. And I am not happy about the code mechanism that is used to force me to keep my planets.
I purposely have had under 50 planets so I didn't have to deal with Indies. Now all of a sudden the code gets changed so that I have to time stamp my planets as being visited or else they decide that they are better off without me after unprecidented peace and prosperity.
The new code frankly needs to be rethought. Adding busy work to keep a planet from going Indy is the WRONG way to approach this issue.
Perhaps, if you have a small amount of planets you don't need to run around timestamping them?
-Oh-
And there is a work around for the "No, IGB Planet Transfer" for when your you lose control of your sector. Admins, check my transaction logs in the game to see what I did so that it can be fixed. Jul 30, 2006 - 10:27 pmMythos Age 4 Starting
http://www.mythicwars.com/
Come give this game a shot guys. It only takes a few minutes a day of your time and you can certainly work it in after your AAT turns are done for the day. =)
I came in 70th out of 1750 players and it was my first full round of playing. I came in 9th place for my goddess (Athena) and 15th place for all Priest classes. http://www.mythicwars.com/mythos/ageless.asp?id=957
I still believe that AAT players can pick this thing up pretty fast. We are very used to the concepts of Defense vs Offense, building infrastructure, spying and alliances. Don't be intimidated that the game centers around Greey Mythology instead of Space. The guide for this game is well written and lends itself to an instant understanding of the premise of the game.
Last age, I got Max and Alf into the game. Both did pretty dern well for thier first time out. I know that Alf is hooked and will be playing again.
This age I will be trying a new patron...
APHRODITE - +40% maximum population, -20% offensive power, -15% defensive power, +20% population growth rate. +5% maximum population per 1,000 god power.
God Troop: Sirens - Cost: 1,200 dra., 150 ore
1.5 defence, 5 offence, sirens convince some enemy toxotes and hippikons to join your army if you successfully attack
AAT Spy Overhaul
I have also been doing some thinking. The art of spying in AAT has taken a serious drop off as of late. I have been mulling over several ideas but the biggest change is this:
No Bounty Range
There is NO bounty range for placing spies on a planet; but spies will ONLY attempt to report data and commit espionage on planets that are in the bounty range.
This allows people to get spies onto lower level planets which will then HOP off onto the lower level players ship who then unknowingly becomes your agent for spreading your network of deciet and destruction.
I want to say again - WHILE your spy is on ship or a planet that is under bounty range he will NOT be able to report any data other than where he is (planet name only). This will allow for you, the larger player, to know your spies are still alive but NOT where until they get to a planet or ship that is in your bounty range.
Sleeper Cells
Furthermore, this allows for you to plant - Sleeper Cells. That fast rising star of the galaxy might not be in your bounty range yet... but plant a few spies on his planets and when he finally does grow into your range, the Sleeper Cells come online and start to report the data!
I have a few more ideas about spies but they are not fleshed out yet...
Blogs of Note:
-
Dignitary Overview - Updated Sept 7th 2004
-
Top 5 AAT Administrator "No-No's"
-
Labeling your planets
Entry Edited 1 time - Edited on Jul 31, 2006 - 3:16 pm
Jun 9, 2006 - 1:18 pmThe Age 3 (40 days) of Mythos has started. And the race is on! Both AAT players (Max and Myself) and doing pretty dern well. We were randomly inserted into Kingdoms (teams) all the way across the world from each other. Personally, I lead networth for all followers of my Diety, and my quick start got me voted as a council member (a leader of our kingdom). Not bad for only playing this game through half of age 2 before.
But, I think AAT players already have a solid mentallity going into Mythos of how to empire build, prepare defenses and attack and how to do so in both a solo approach and through teaming.
If you think it is too late to join Mythos - think again! All newcomers are protected by the God of thier choice for 50-72 hours which gives you alot of time to cultivate your population, get some troops trained for war and your spy network in place.
Entry Edited 3 times - Edited on Jun 9, 2006 - 1:20 pm
Jun 8, 2006 - 8:38 amMythos is starting its next 40 day "Age" within 24 hours. Take a peek. I promise it is a decent little game that won't suck up too much time.
The game also randomizes who is in your kingdom (built-in teammates) so you end up with a great mix of experienced players and new people. The folks that play the game are pretty friendly too!
See ya there!
Hero Name: NovaBlazer (Priest of Athena)
City Name: Emerald City (Forest Climate)
ATHENA - -5% maximum population, +10% defensive power, -25% battle casualties, hero begins with Level 2 Learning skill (Level 4 if hero is a priest). +5% defensive power per 1,000 god power.
God Troop: Scholars - Cost: 750 dra., 50 ore
2 defence, 1 offence, every 5 scholars sent on an attack get you 1 more experience if the attack was successful (to a maximum of a 50% increase in the amount of experience you get on the attack)
Entry Edited 1 time - Edited on Jun 8, 2006 - 8:39 am
Jun 6, 2006 - 12:40 pmMythos is a fun little game. I enjoyed playing in Age 2 and did fairly well for starting at day 20 of 40. They are starting Age 3 in a few days.
You start Mythos by picking a Patron God, a Hero Class, a Random kingdom, and then Climate. The different combos are just astounding. For example, last age I played a Artemis Priest in a Mountain Kingdom. Being in the Mountains gave me 5% to defense, being a priest gave me another boost to defense, and following Artemis (Patron God) reduced my battle casualties by 12+%. And since Artemis followers get a special troop (all Gods have one) of a Hunter, I was rolling in the food so I didn't have to waste much land growing food and could use it for commerce.
The game has spies, and different troop types you can build, specialized customization of your "Hero" and lots more. Go to &read the guide first and decide on a combo that you like.
The last thing that I will sell you on is that actions in the game of Mythos each take a certain amount of "time". For example: to train up 1000 defensive archers it takes 8 real world hours. So you can pretty much play this game for 10-15 minutes a day and then set it aside until all your actions finish up. This will leave you plenty of time to continue to play your first Web Game love of AAT. *wink*
Mythos - The free online RPG/strategy game based around Greek mythology
Entry Edited 3 times - Edited on Jun 6, 2006 - 3:20 pm
Jan 1, 2006 - 9:44 pmIt was announced that the .30 forums would be cleaned. Which is really disheartening as alot of thought goes into several of the suggestions that I and others made there....
This a suggestion that I wanted to make sure didn't get wiped as it was asked by the dev team for us to come up with commodity ideas...
=====================================================
++ Work In Progress ++
GEMS and METALS OF THE GALAXY
Tier 1 Gems can be sold at any port buying "Tier 1 Gems/Metals"
Tier 2 Gems can be sold at any port buying "Tier 2 Gems/Metals"
Gems and Metals are not purchasable from ports.
Gems and Metals must be mined from player owned planets.
Mining Gems and Metals on a planet will result in the base faction adjustment (as listed next to each Gem or Metal).
Researching different levels of Gems and Metal mining and useage will result in an increased faction adjustment of 20% of the base faction per level researched (in those gems that can be researched). So a planet with a level 5 Gold Mine on its planet will change the faction to Good 62.208%. (See Math at the bottom)
Good
Tier 1 Gems/Metals
Topaz - Good 1%
Alexandrite - Good 2%
Citrine - Good 3%
Opal - Good 4%
Amethyst - Good 5%
Tier 2 Gems/Metals
Turquoise - Good 10%
Jade - Good - 15%
Research Items from Jade:
- Jammer Boost - 5, 10, 15, 20% at Jade Research levels 1-4
- Sensor Boost - 5, 10, 15, 20% to not be "Jammed" at Jade Research levels 5-8
Gold - Good 25%
Research Items from Gold:
- Credit Boost - 5, 10, 15, 20% at Gold Research levels 1-4
- Decrease chance of planetary revolt - 5, 10, 15, 20% at Gold Research levels 5-8
Emerald - Good 50%
Research Items from Emerald:
- Shield Boost - 3, 6, 19, 12% at Emerald Research levels 1-4
- Armor Boost - 3, 6, 9, 12% at Emerald Research levels 5-8
Evil
Tier 1 Gems/Metals
Peridot - Evil 1%
Sapphire - Evil 2%
Ruby - Evil 3%
Tanzanite - Evil 4%
Garnet - Evil 5%
Tier 2 Gems/Metals
Pearls - Evil 10%
Onyx - Evil 15%
Research Items from Onyx:
- Enhanced ECM - 5, 10, 15, 20% at Onyx Research Levels 1-4
- Enhanced Cloak - 5, 10, 15, 20% at Onyx Research Levels 5-8
Diamond - Evil 25%
Research Items from Diamond:
- Tipped warheads - 3, 6, 9, 12% more torp damage at Diamond research levels 1 through 4.
- Diamond Focused lasers - 3, 6, 9, 12% more damage at Diamond research levels 5 through 8.
Imperialite - Evil 50%
Research Items from Imperialite:
- Faster Degrading Warp Trails - 10, 20, 30, 40% at Imperialite research levels 1 through 4.
- False Warp Trails - 10, 20, 30, 40% at Imperialite research levels 5 through 8.
Notes:
Faction Math for Research Levels
Faction Change for:
Gold @ 25% Good + 20% per research level increased.
Base Level = 25
Level 1 = 25 x 1.20 = 30%
Level 2 = 30 x 1.20 = 36%
Level 3 = 36 x 1.20 = 43.2%
Level 4 = 43.2 x 1,20 = 51.84%
Level 5 = 51.84 x 1.20 = 62.208%
Level 6 = 62.208 x 1.20 = 74.6496%
Level 7 = 74.6496 x 1.20 = 89.57952%
Level 8 = 89.57952% x 1.20 = 107.495424%
---------------------------------------------------------------
Research "Boost" Clarification
When it is said that a "boost" of 5% will be granted per that research level it is meant to be 5% WITHIN that level.
So if Ship A is 20th level and can fire 30,000 torps max
And Ship B is 20th level and can fire 30,000 torps max + has a 5% research bump then Ship B can actually fire 31,500 torps max.
This may seem like small potatoes but at level 29 when one is firing over 1M torps a 5% bump is worth 50,000 more torps and a 20% boost is worth another 200,000 torps which is nearly a full level more fire power.
Entry Edited 2 times - Edited on Jan 1, 2006 - 9:46 pm
Nov 3, 2005 - 9:43 amSector Nova Changes
-------------------------------------------------------
Finally! Yes! And let's add a "Woohoo" in there too. As reported by Tarnus here:, Sector Nova's no longer longer damage planets! So no more "7 Novas 4 teh Winz" strategy as I discussed many moons ago here.
Variable Production
--------------------------------------------------------
Variable planetary production is certainly a fun subgame in its own. The other day I got a planet that could produce 130% Energy which is great for maintaining SD. And in the same sector I got another planet that could do 115% Organics! WOOT! That means I can assign 11% to Organic production and have that planet making credits at 89% rate.
This feature needs to go 2 steps further though and allow for Variable Production of Fighters, Torps, Research, Build, and maybe even Credits! Or better yet, have increases to those items be researchable.
Sector Fighters react to planetary attacks
--------------------------------------------------------
In another case of "I mentioned this over a year ago", SD finally won't just sit around and watch the planets they are guarding just get blown away. Per Tarnus these fighters will now attack the aggressor. So! No more cloaking into a sector and picking off the planets!
No autotrade
--------------------------------------------------------
Oddly enough. The game is fun even without autotrade. Those that are willing to manually trade and manually move colonists to planets are rewarded for thier efforts. Not having autotrade certainly lends itself well to those who are slow builders. I think I will be sad to see this "missing feature" go.
Overall
--------------------------------------------------------
The rough edges are noticable now. However, this sneak peek version of AAT .30 shows promise. While all the bells and whistle items are not ready yet, I find myself looking forward to SG management with the new planetary autotrade system, trading in the enhanced commodities, and growing my own research items.
Blogs of Note:
-
Dignitary Overview - Updated Sept 7th 2004
-
Top 5 AAT Administrator "No-No's"
-
Labeling your planets
Entry Edited 4 times - Edited on Nov 3, 2005 - 10:47 am
Oct 10, 2005 - 9:39 pmDare I breathe, lest I wake.
AAT .30? Well! I certainly will be there with bells on as soon as I wake up in the morning! =)
----
Note: When you say Midnight Monday that equals 00:00 Monday. Not Monday 23:59:59 +1 second because that equals Midnight Tuesday. *wink*
Blogs of Note:
Dignitary Overview - Updated Sept 7th 2004
Entry Edited 1 time - Edited on Oct 10, 2005 - 9:39 pm
Sep 9, 2005 - 10:10 amNearly 1 year after the birth of my second child AAT has announced that it will release a new version and SET A DATE. Oooooooo.
This of course is a huge milestone as it was announced nearly 2 years ago that AAT would have a sweeping version change, I think that while the initial release will be fun, the things that will happen with the game later will make it worth the wait.
No pressure guys. =)
Blogs of Note:
Dignitary Overview - Updated Sept 7th 2004
May 27, 2005 - 5:02 pmWell I built my little heart out. Came in 3rd place on my 3rd place team.
Looking forward to AAT .3x Its going to fun rediscovering new strategies.
Blogs of Note:
Dignitary Overview - Updated Sept 7th 2004
Entry Edited 1 time - Edited on Jun 6, 2005 - 10:17 am
May 16, 2005 - 5:29 pmUm yeah. The tourney is a complete runaway right now. It all went south for us right after the truce was broken 26 hours into a 1 week truce.
In the future... if you have no intention of honoring a truce, tell your captian so in advance. People who break truces put others with honor in a difficult position.
But, with that aside, I think I personally have lost the most planets in the game than anyone. Doesn't matter where I put my lair (trust me - I tried some strange stuff) they all get sniffed out in about 1-6 hours. Of course that brings us to our next point...
Attackers just wait for people to log off so that they can take over a SG with little or no risk. If this is the common place tactic then SG defensive ability needs to be increased. Right now in AAT .2x you can have level 40 planets, and 1 billion SD which costs you 1000's of TRILLIONS of credits to make. But a lone attacker can make it ALL come crumbling down with just 7 Nova Bombs at the cost of 70B credits. Hardly equitable.
From what I have seen AAT .3x will take steps to alleviate the attacker vs. defender desparity. So until then...
Entry Edited 1 time - Edited on May 16, 2005 - 6:05 pm
May 11, 2005 - 1:18 amDay 1 - Not going to go into depth just yet, but I like what I see from this team. Lots of teamwork, and a leader who is taking a role by directing the team toward goals. Very promising indeed. And it is always a nice morale boost being out in the lead early with the LEAST of amount of players on the team. We did 20% more revenue with 20% less people than the 2nd place team. Whee!
Team Stats:
-----------
Oakman's Coterie 12 2,646,325
The Dirty Dozen+ 15 2,102,758
Ogur 16 1,872,143
The Dragons of Blood 14 1,212,089
Personally - I did ok trading. I was a middle of the road snowball who immediately paid back his debtors, thanks Revenge! So I can't expect to have the big score. But 6th place isn't too bad =) My only regret is not making more planets. We will see if it bites the team or not.
Personal Stats:
---------------
1 469,957 SaniTAR Oakman's Coterie
2 449,208 DarkSoul Oakman's Coterie
3 430,855 Shesshomaru Ogur
4 405,626 Scorpio The Dragons of Blood
5 399,969 Thunderball Ogur
6 377,371 Graviton Oakman's Coterie
7 361,366 Wraith Ogur
8 330,999 Oakman Oakman's Coterie
9 324,931 YoYo Online The Dirty Dozen+
10 307,060 MArksmAN Ogur
Link from 2 tourneys ago - Ah! The memories. Came in 8th in my first tourney. =)
http://www.bubnick.com/AAT/aat_trn1.htm
Entry Edited 5 times - Edited on May 11, 2005 - 10:02 am
May 7, 2005 - 1:07 pmI was a first round draft pick onto Oakman's team in the tourney hosted by Alf at http://aatrade22.websnz.com/.
Personally I think I may have been a waste of a 1st round draft pick as builders are a dime-a-dozen but I will do my best to make sure the team has a good secure place to log out at night and perhaps turn a few trillion credits or two too! =)
The tourney starts up today and while my role won't really start taking off until Monday, I wish everyone on my team good luck and good hunting! Apr 22, 2005 - 12:34 amI keep hitting self inflicted road blocks which are slowing down my planet rearing.
First - I am not used to a server that only allows 2 SG links. It really makes lair production tedious and EXPENSIVE.
Second - There was this chunk of debris sitting in my home sector for DAYS. So finally I broke down and clicked on it. *BOOM*! Nothing like a self-pod to make a builder/tender grumble.
Third - The server seems to hit periods where it doesn't respond well. It really ticks me off having to wait 10-15 seconds for a screen return. Sometimes it gets so bad that you can't do anything... So I end up floating out in space hoping that no one else can get on and whack me before I can move to saftey.
Lastly - Langel gave her PW to the team. Brave and trusting is the person who lets others run around with her ship. Personally, I was tempted to sign in and do some planet population with her high level hulled ship, but I didn't because of the Third reason I stated above. I would feel REALLY bad if I dropped connection and left her ship floating in the middle of no where!
================
In other news - Softball started again! Got a sac fly, triple and a single that scored two runs! But we lost in the end. Oh well! Plenty more games to come.
Entry Edited 1 time - Edited on Apr 22, 2005 - 12:52 am
Apr 12, 2005 - 12:33 pmAfter I started this game about 2 months late, I managed to climb up to #3 of 60+ people by merely creating an SG, climbing in, and NEVER coming out.
I was really surprised that no one ever found me, and that my 70 planets were able to compete vs people who had 500+ built and 300+ captured.
Welp - UE is over now. Fantaz started a new game. I went out and found a different server to play on and met up with Langel. It has a Star Trek theme going on so some of the graphics are redone. And it has 30 people playing right now with only a week into the game.
A new adventure!
Blogs of Note:
Dignitary Overview - Updated Sept 7th 2004
Mar 23, 2005 - 2:31 pmClimbed up to #5 by just tending my little lair. Since I have started this lair I have NEVER left. Most the battles that are occuring on the server are over sectors in realspace that have lairs hanging off of them. Mine is well hidden.
Either people that play on this server don't know the methods of searching for non-realspace lairs or they just don't care to try.
Yawn! I am only playing on this server to get used to what AAT .25 will be like.
Blogs of Note:
Dignitary Overview - Updated Sept 7th 2004
Feb 28, 2005 - 8:35 amFinally climbed up the charts on this server to #9 after starting this game months behind everyone else. Doing a pretty casual lair expansion as I am the only one in the top 15 who has not destroyed a ship or had a ship destroyed.
There certainly is something to be said about crawling in a hole early and NEVER coming out.
Been chatting a little with a newer player to AAT about tactics. She is a little spitfire attacker that swears that she wants to become a builder. I think she would be much happier learning from Big. The gal must take over 40 planets every night! Ms. Big? Hmmm... Feb 18, 2005 - 1:44 amSlowly rising into the top 10 on this server...
I haven't left my lair so I will just keep digging and digging. =)
If you haven't checked out this game you should. The number 1 reason you should is because the upgrade cost to planets is significantly reduced. So it is pretty common to come across level 35 planets. This makes for a very interesting game... and quite likely a game that will closely resemble how AAT .25 will play.
Entry Edited 1 time - Edited on Feb 18, 2005 - 1:46 am
Jan 29, 2005 - 12:21 amI guess someone needed more time. The timer mysteriously went from 1hr left to 23hrs left.
I bet if Silent Hill was uninstalled that the timer would have counted down properly. Jan 21, 2005 - 8:09 pmI am starting to wonder if PJ had a little error in his time calculations as Phase 1 of his master plan is set to start at 9pm pst (which makes it midnight est). I mean what crazy person implements a plan at 9p/midnight?
Jan 14, 2005 - 10:29 amWhat is the big ol' timer on the main aat page? I sure hope it is the release time for the next version! =)
In other news - my refamiliarization (big word!) with AAT is going well. I am on a nice slow server with lots of time to build a little hole with a b-gillion sectors and planets... Now if I could only remember all the little tricks I used in dog fighting.
Lastly - Moonraker put up a nice blog about how he goes about naming his planets inside a cluster. It certainly is a better than no system at all so I encourage people to look at it. However, I use a system that I find mildly superior to his write up. When I make new sector area behind spurs I label them with a different sector identifier like Moonraker but I also note a connecting sector indetifier. For example...
Real Space Sector
Planet 1 = KZ-A-1
Planet 2 = KZ-A-2
When you are playing on a team people will know that KZ = Kwae Zar's planets.... A = Base Identifier and after the dash is the planet in that sector in this case planet 1 and planet 2.
Now lets say I drill down a bit... I then like to use the last three digits of the sector identifier in my planet names.
SG planet 1 = KZ-A-073-1
SG planet 2 = KZ-A-073-2
Planets behind 073 look like:
SG planet 1 = KZ-A-073/084-1
SG planet 2 = KZ-A-073/084-2
KZ = Kwae Zar
A = Base Identifier
073 = the spur or parent sector
084 = where the planets are located
1 = 1st planet in that sector
This keeps things nice and neat in your planetary reports too. So if I build a planet behind 084 it would look like this:
KZ-A-084/111-1
So I now can look in my planetary report and see that my indie planet is in 111 which is attached to 084 I then look up the list to find what 084 is attached to and see 073. I then know exactly what path to navigate down to bring my indie planet back under the caring fold of the KZ empire.
Blogs of Note:
Dignitary Overview - Updated Sept 7th 2004
Entry Edited 1 time - Edited on Jan 18, 2005 - 4:29 pm
Dec 28, 2004 - 3:55 pmWelp! I was going to try and wait for the new version of AAT to come out before I got back into it again but I decided to anonymously join a game in progress and get back up to speed.
Oddly enough - I find myself asking myself - "How did I start this game effectively?". I guess it is possible to get a little rusty when it comes to AAT.
Blogs of Note:
Dignitary Overview - Updated Sept 7th 2004
Oct 6, 2004 - 10:37 amWell dern it! I am gonna have to sit out this tourney. Our 2nd baby is due in 10 days and that puts the date right smack in the middle of the tourney.
Good luck to all who participate! And enjoy what might very well be the last tourney of AAT .22.
Blogs of Note:
Dignitary Overview - Updated Sept 7th 2004
Sep 20, 2004 - 8:51 amTop 5 AAT Administrator "No-No's"
Nothing irks me more than the following things done by an admin when I am playing in AAT.
1) Don't change the settings after the game is in progress
This by far is the most irritating thing I have seen admins do. Things I have seen admins do after a game is already in progress have been as simple as changing the prices at a port, to something as large as turning off Nova backfires.
There is nothing worse than believing the rule set is established and creating a strategy around that rule set only to find out that on a whim some admin increases credit production, turns off EWD functionality, or raises the IGB cap to infinity.
Changing the rules in the middle of a game just is not right.
2) Changing the rules and not telling the players about it
Coming in a close second is another source of admin irritation for me. It really burns me up when an admin makes a change to the game and then doesn't tell anyone about it. Mid-Game changes themselves should sparingly (if ever) be done. But the admin should ALWAYS announce those changes IN THE GAME.
Admins should not assume that people read (or care to comment) on their bulletin boards. All game changes should be placed as HTML bullets on the login screen AND announced in chat.
3) Using the Fed ships as scouting devices
Admins have every right to play the game that they are hosting. However, they really need to do such a thing in a fair fashion.
Just recently I was playing in a game where every real space sector I owned (indie take overs) was visited by the Federation ship. Usually you will only see the federation ship once or twice in an entire game, so I thought that it was a little odd. Well low and behold, the next day the team that the admin was part of attacked nearly all of those sectors.
It's almost "head-shakenly" humorous that the admin doesn't think I noticed.
4) Registering Federation ship as a team
C'mon. What is the point of signing in with the Fed, making him his own team, then running around Fed space making planets? It's not like this is a test server. It is one of the top 10 most active AAT servers.
So now no team can win because some silly admin registered the Fed ship as a team with 1.6 Gigajillion points.
5) Don't change the settings after the game is in progress
Deja Vu? I think not. This is such an important bullet, that it should be mentioned twice. Even the smallest of changes can have large ramifications and may cause a substantial power shift in the game.
I understand that it is "your server" and that you can do what you want. But, as a player I just invested a whole bunch of time in playing a game where I expect a rule set to remain STATIC.
As a player I am less likely to return to your server to play again if I don't like the way that they game was handled from the admins end of things. If enough players start to feel the way that I do about these situations then soon, your player base will dwindle and no one will visit your server.
Blogs of Note:
Dignitary Overview - Updated Sept 7th 2004
Entry Edited 6 times - Edited on Sep 24, 2004 - 2:22 pm
Sep 10, 2004 - 3:21 pmI really like what the Universe Empire Admin did concerning the display of the game settings on his AAT server http://aat.paisums.lv
All the settings are disclosed to the players so we all can be on equal footing as far as knowing Nova Detonation rates, Credit Production "Steps", Tech Level Upgrade colonists limits, Warp Trail degradation, etc...
I encourage more admins to follow this lead and make a link off of the sign-on page that shows the games detailed settings. It would be super easy to do really... just export the settings file to an text file, add a few html headers, and volia!
You can take a look at what the Universe Empires Admin did here - http://aatrade.paisums.lv/?aatrade|aatset. Mind you it is a little more fancy than the steps I listed above but it will give you an idea of what players would like to see. Sep 8, 2004 - 5:18 pmI agree with Tempest. The next version of AAT should be introduced to public play via a Tourney.
| Quote: |
Tempest said here:
I have a proposition for the next version of the game.. I think that the first game using the new code should be played in a two week tourney before the code is made public, so that everyone has to learn all at the same time about it. It would make things more interesting, as people who run their own server to try / test things, or people who look at the code to figure out how things work would be in the same boat as everyone else.
|
Even Tarnus agrees with Tempest due to the fact that he said the best tourney he ever played in was one where everyone was on the same footing due to the newness of the game.
| Quote: |
Tarnus said here:
The best tourney I played in was the first one by far, the majority of players were fairly new players. I have never seen a team of players come together and work in a very coherent way as I did in that tourney.
|
Welp! No better way to take a pool of experience players and have them on nearly the same footing as some newer players than to make sure the new version of AAT is firstly played in a tourney setting.
Entry Edited 1 time - Edited on Sep 8, 2004 - 5:19 pm
Sep 7, 2004 - 11:33 amI updated my ever growing Dignitary Overview with two new sections. Look for the new material in the "Jump Starting Your Planets" & "Embezzler Check #3" sections.
Blogs of Note:
Dignitary Overview - Updated Sept 7th 2004
Sep 1, 2004 - 3:33 pmThe lists
Aw! I appreciate the mentions in the lists that are being created by various players; Bovine and Big come to mind.
I never made a post thanking my teammates from the last tourney but I was really impressed with some of the new people and how quickly they learned. I was also happy with my more "senior" teammates as they continued to divulge "best practice" information and engage daily in information exchanges. I would play with any of them again in a heartbeat.
Future of AAT
I just wanted to drop a thought about AAT .25 and beyond. I think that the path PJ is going on looks promising. It really will change the face of the game if we have higher level planets and researchable Nova's.
The attacker slant that is currently in place will really be toned down and force people to become a little more thoughtful in planning. If you can't just buy 50 nova's at a devices port during an SG raid but rather you have to "grow" them on your research planets, a new depth of planning emerge from the game.
The proposed future changes will also allow for specialized team play. Especially the alien races part where some races get builder bonuses and other races get attacker bonues or defensive bonuses. This will be a HUGE step forward to diversifying tourney play as you may have some one do nothing but build planets and "grow" research items for the "team", while someone else who gets a sector defense bonus fortifies, etc...
Blogs of Note:
Dignitary Overview - Updated Aug 26th 2004
Entry Edited 4 times - Edited on Sep 1, 2004 - 7:35 pm
Aug 30, 2004 - 9:45 amTHE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Thank heavens I learned English as a child.
Reasons why the English language is so hard to learn:
1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to
present the present.
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.
We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham. If
the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth?
One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?
If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a
recital?
Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down,
in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which an alarm goes off by going on.
English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race (which, of course, isn't a race at all). That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.
Aug 27, 2004 - 2:12 pm| Quote: | Bottom Gun wrote:
this is from one of my logs
You Recieved Embezzled Credits! August 26 2004 09:45
Dignitary on planet GN1-5 embezzled 1,376,845,500 credits and donated to you!
You Recieved Embezzled Credits! August 26 2004 15:30
Dignitary on planet GN1-5 embezzled 2,065,268,250 credits and donated to you!
You Recieved Embezzled Credits! August 27 2004 07:55
Dignitary on planet GN1-5 embezzled 748,837,004 credits and donated to you! |
Well right off the top of my head I would say that there are multiple dignitaries on that planet that have taken on the embezzler role.
Each dignitary will work on its own embezzler scheduale.
Whoever owns GN1-5 really has a nest of liars and theives!
Blogs of Note:
Dignitary Overview - Posted: Jul 16, 2004 - 3:18pm
Aug 26, 2004 - 4:56 pmI learned a few things from the last tourney and I saw a few good suggestions from other players too concerning dignitaries. Before the knowledge flits away like the last leaves of fall, I thought I should get them documented in my Dignitary Overview blog entree.
Click here to read the Dignitary Overview.
The section that was added was given the header "Team Play, Tournaments, and Dignitaries".
I also found out another neat way to detect embezzlers. I will update the blog once again when I have formulated a way to convey to you (the reader) on how to successfully apply my new idea.
Entry Edited 1 time - Edited on Aug 26, 2004 - 5:06 pm
Aug 24, 2004 - 2:14 pmWell nothing I did made the speadsheet look good while it was text in the blog. So! Here is a text only screen shot. Open up those browsers nice and big!
HTML Based Number Crunching Output <--- Click that for the output
Some thoughts. If Experience is going to factor into the final score in future version of AAT, I don't see the reason to gimp builders by only allowing 50 planets before indies start occuring ALOT more often.
If a builder is going to do nothing but hide in future versions and breed 200 planets, thier experience will be so low that thier score will be adversly effected. Those people that took a more balanced approach would have much nicer scores.
Blogs of Note:
Dignitary Overview - Updated Aug 26th 2004
Entry Edited 19 times - Edited on Sep 1, 2004 - 3:36 pm
Aug 19, 2004 - 2:18 pmTourney News
Team Scores
Darigaaz Dragons Darigaaz 42,978,499
Blue Rabbit's Band CSimplex 36,683,724
Dogs of War Satman 33,680,529
Alf's Angels Alf 18,106,360
Individual Scores Top 10
1 10,819,620 Diablo Darigaaz Dragons
2 10,734,436 Satman Dogs of War
3 9,603,809 Tempest Blue Rabbit's Band
4 8,237,643 Moonraker Dogs of War
5 8,134,835 Smalls Blue Rabbit's Band
6 7,964,748 Kwae Zar Blue Rabbit's Band
7 7,894,852 Lucy Darigaaz Dragons
8 7,807,655 Thunderball Darigaaz Dragons
9 7,381,543 Count_dooku Darigaaz Dragons
10 6,848,611 CSimplex Blue Rabbit's Band
News
Builders Gone Wild
Thwarted from our building early on in the game (thanks Big!) the Blue Rabbits were forced to get rabid. The Rabid Rabbits have the most Kills and Captures in the game. Our blind lust and equal opportunity killing has contributed to this tourney being one of the closest team matches in recent memory.
The Rabid Rabbits will work hard to ensure that the quality of destruction continues right up until the final gun is sounded.
The Donald story correction
The Donald sent me a PM asking for a correction concerning his death. Turns out I had hit some mines that he planted which alerted him to my location. He was not following spy data. Thanks for the correction The Donald.
Blogs of Note:
Dignitary Overview - Posted: Jul 16, 2004 - 3:18pm
Entry Edited 1 time - Edited on Aug 19, 2004 - 5:53 pm
Aug 17, 2004 - 6:14 pmTourney News
Team Scores
Darigaaz Dragons Darigaaz 37,392,531
Dogs of War Satman 33,234,667
Blue Rabbit's Band CSimplex 32,083,459
Alf's Angels Alf 15,481,689
Individual Scores Top 10
1 9,577,290 Satman Dogs of War
2 9,174,166 Diablo Darigaaz Dragons
3 8,811,961 Tempest Blue Rabbit's Band
4 8,202,605 Smalls Blue Rabbit's Band
5 7,929,686 Count_dooku Darigaaz Dragons
6 7,341,828 Moonraker Dogs of War
7 6,605,880 Thunderball Darigaaz Dragons
8 6,482,100 Kwae Zar Blue Rabbit's Band
9 6,307,599 Lucy Darigaaz Dragons
10 5,300,072 Nobody Dogs of War
News
The Donald (aka - The first captian to die)
Donald logged in to valiantly attempt to save his SG area which I had just started Nova Bombing and finally broke into. I took a few of his planets and didn't bother to clean the spies off of my ship knowing that if I lose my Endevor that it wouldn't be a big deal, but if I pop Donald in the rump with a Nova it would.
So sure enough - the game of cat and mouse ensues. I wanted to make sure he was following spy data and not my trail so I jumped to sol and then an upgrade sector. I waited there for a refresh then moved one sector off of the Upgrade sector. Bingo - here comes Donald. I refresh the screen, press the Nova button, and WHACK! Not missing a beat - I jump into the Upgrade sector - switch to my Voyager (hey! Why risk the Excel!) and attack him. A long screen of information comes up, I scroll to the bottom and I won!
I immediately jumped to Sol and then to make sure I didn't take damage I went to Sector 4 (SpaceDock). Well guess who is sitting there in a Pio. Yeeup! The Donald. 3, 2, 1, SOL BUMP! I head back to sector 4 find where he was bumped to and pressed the Attack button. The words "Your Fired!" flashed across The Donald's screen and I immediately get a message from Satman asking me to confirm what The Donald thought happened which was Perma Death.
Not to be left out of the fun Thuderball tracked me from Sector 4 and WHACKED me while in my Razor. I guess I should ALWAYS warp to SOL to read messages!
Darigaaz - The other captian to feel my wrath!
I was doing some high risk spulunking in an enemy sector. They had back doors galore and lots of deep deep holes. So I was working it over with my Endevor and my 2nd Razor (thanks Thunderball! - see above). I got several trillion out of the hole before I see Fruit Pie Jones minding his own business in his stealth. Of course I had to whack him.
About 30 minutes later I see a little stealth running around again. I give chase in my Endevor and run RIGHT in Darigaaz and his mean mean machine. We play cat and mouse for a long time when finally he just happened across a link behind me when I was actively scanning.
I got a nova off on his ship, then moved in, switched to my Voyager, and attacked. I scrolled to the bottom of the screen and sure enough. I got him. Darigaaz dropped 66% in score and made this game CLOSE again.
Fruit Pie Jones - Never piss off a Pie
FPJ reequipts and comes at me in an Excel. Just when I was deciding whether or not to pull the Nova trigger, I refresh the screen one more time. Damn IE went to a spinning world.
I refresh again - nothing. I close the browser and reopen. DOH! Sol. That damn Cherry Pie got me. Oh, well I think. I got through the door to a new area just before he did that.
So I bring out Razor #2 (thanks again Thunderball), and go diving back into the lair. About 6 or 7 planet takes overs later - the world starts spinning in the upper right corner of my browser again.
Of course the REAL heart attack was dying and coming back to Sol with 1 second on the clock. I was kicked out to no where with NO pod. After 15 minutes of warp link searching, I found an upgrade port and crawled to saftey.
Rebuying my Razor and my Endevor left me with nearly NO turns. Turns that my team needed badly. So in his own way while FPJ didn't kill my score he certainly crippled not only my own chances at success but those of my team.
Well done FPJ.
Blogs of Note:
Dignitary Overview - Posted: Jul 16, 2004 - 3:18pm
Entry Edited 3 times - Edited on Aug 18, 2004 - 9:44 am
Aug 12, 2004 - 11:11 amTourney News
Team Scores
Blue Rabbit's Band CSimplex (CPT) 11,765,047
Dogs of War The Donald (CPT) 11,066,235
Darigaaz Dragons Darigaaz (CPT) 7,403,841
Alf's Angels Alf (CPT) 5,072,025
Individual Scores Top 10
1 3,648,195 Smalls Blue Rabbit's Band
2 3,397,402 Satman Dogs of War
3 2,988,561 Tempest Blue Rabbit's Band
4 2,833,769 Moonraker Dogs of War
5 1,818,593 Kwae Zar Blue Rabbit's Band
6 1,707,631 Thunderball Darigaaz Dragons
7 1,479,373 Diablo Darigaaz Dragons
8 1,283,513 ZZ Top Darigaaz Dragons
9 1,259,689 Uncas Alf's Angels
10 1,095,041 The Donald Dogs of War
News
My team retains the top spot again as we overcame a few Big attacks which reduced our score. Our builders did a great job of raising the score back up overnight and we ended back up in a small lead.
I have a feeling that the sparks are really going to fly this weekend.
I had a fun attack run with Bovine. He wanted a Nova guy while he watched our backs. Bovine and I tore through 4 or 5 sectors with ease. Tempest then jumps on the server and joins in the fun. The very last sector we had on our hit-list was ZZTOP (Big).
I throw down a few Nova's and Tempest and Bovine bust into the sector. Not wanting to be left out of the fun, I jump in my Razor which was configured for laying SD which will later bite me. Bovine grabbed the first planet in the sector and Tempest called for dibs on the second planet. So that left me the third planet. Without scanning multiple times, I laid into the planet. Boom. I am dead (my shields were only like 15!). Bovine then scans the planet and sees Big sitting on it in his Voyager. Bovine unleashes a Nova and hits the planet. Big's ship is floating in space, and Tempest comes in and finishes the job.
There isn't a server that I have played on yet where I haven't done something stupid while attacking!
Blogs of Note:
Dignitary Overview - Posted: Jul 16, 2004 - 3:18pm
Entry Edited 2 times - Edited on Aug 12, 2004 - 12:51 pm
Aug 10, 2004 - 12:53 pmTourney News
Team Scores
Blue Rabbit's Band CSimplex (CPT) 6,306,234
Dogs of War The Donald (CPT) 5,134,468
Darigaaz Dragons Darigaaz (CPT) 4,742,456
Alf's Angels Alf (CPT) 3,226,766
Team BRB took the early lead and thus was the target for an early hit. We dropped in score to the #2 slot when one of our stronger members took the brunt of the attack. However, the team was well diversified and quickly bounced back with a scathing round of attacks of our own causing the opposing teams to drop in score as much as 25%. Team BRB now holds a marginal lead of a 20% higher score than DOW who is in 2nd place. Of course the game is in its early phases and things can (and do!) change quickly.
Individual Scores Top 10
1 2,146,941 Smalls Blue Rabbit's Band
2 1,737,548 Satman Dogs of War
3 1,612,150 ZZ Top Darigaaz Dragons
4 1,191,951 Moonraker Dogs of War
5 1,138,661 Tempest Blue Rabbit's Band
6 1,045,701 DarkSoul Alf's Angels
7 1,012,043 Kwae Zar Blue Rabbit's Band
8 998,689 Diablo Darigaaz Dragons
9 686,176 Darigaaz Darigaaz Dragons
10 650,228 Uncas Alf's Angels
7th place! Not to bad for my 1st tourney. Personally - I was VERY reckless in the opening minutes burning tons of turns in an attempt to snowball my teammates. I am just now recovering from those actions and accumulating enough turns to either expand my current burrow or create a new one. As one of the teams builder/tenders - I feel that I should have a considerable amount of turns at the ready at any given time so as to recover quickly from possible attacks.
After an hour of parsing logs and figuring out funds - I figured out that 220B credits passed through my team planet. Of which 94B was produced by my colonists and given to teammates. Not too bad for a few days work! I guess I could have paid the rumored 75B credit trade fee for Team BRB to get me. Aug 5, 2004 - 9:58 am| Quote: | DarkSoul:
A little riddle I always liked, wonder if anyone can solve it.
"The 8 of us go forth not back to protect our King from our foes attack." |
Answer: Pawns on a chessboard
Tourney
I am a little miffed about the decision to NOT discuss trades and initial team rosters openly.
I was really looking forward to seeing the transactions between captains and correlating that information to how the tourney turned out. I liken the interest to monitoring ones favorite professional sport; the trades, transactions, contracts, etc...
A good portion of the success of a team is the building of the team and I merely wanted to see that drama unfold before my eyes.
Maybe next tourney I will volunteer to function as the draft reporter.
The "Big" list
I am honored that such a high caliber player would consider me good enough to be placed on his list of top players in any category. Even more so I am honored to be on his list of dream team players.
It appears that Big put a good amount of thought into his list as he listed some very valid reason for picking the people that he did. One reason that I never thought about before is Time Zone. The ability to always have a team member in the game is invaluable.
My role in the "Big Dream Team" would be as a SG builder, defender, and information gatherer. I could easily provide a support role in other areas as the team needed it.
I am a little surprised that Tempest wasn't listed in my place. He has considerable more experience to draw upon not to mention still being the premire builder in the game. Plus, he converts well into other roles; attacker, tracker, etc...
While I have been exposed to many a rouse, and tricky tactic, I personally feel vulnerable whenever I log into a game. Perhaps being alert to the fact that I am still not a highly experienced player will keep me alive. Maybe. 
Blogs of Note:
Dignitary Overview - Posted: Jul 16, 2004 - 3:18pm
Entry Edited 2 times - Edited on Aug 5, 2004 - 10:58 am
Aug 3, 2004 - 11:16 amSuccess = Skill + Time
| Quote: | Big:
If you have got no skills you don't get success, even if U got all time in the world.
|
Agreed. You can spend all day long on AAT but if you don't know what you are doing chances are you are gonna end up as floating debris.
| Quote: | Big:
But if you got skills and not got all the time in the world you might be successfully.
|
I Disagree. Skill and Time go hand in hand. To get "Skill" you have to have had "Time" to develop it. Once you have "Skill" you have to have "Time" to utilize it. Without "Time" to play the game "Skill" is worthless.
What Bovine, and thusly myself, are trying to say is that with all things being equal, or nearly so, in the Skill department, TIME spent in the game is the next greatest factor to determining success. In many instances you can be lacking Skill and just spend more Time in the game and achieve the same results as someone who is highly Skilled and spends a mediocre amount of Time in the game.
AAT Autopage
AAT Autopager is a program that sits on a server, monitors the Rankings Page, and the FNN News and then reports back on desired variable changes and trigger events. It sends an email to an email box, pager, or a cell phone service provider (as long as you have text messaging) that tells you about your trigger events.
I have had a moderate amount of feedback about the "legality" of such a program and I have yet to see any reason not to use this program. The most interesting aspect about this WHO reacts HOW to this program.
I am finding quite clearly that players who tend to spend a fair amount of time in the game DO NOT LIKE that others can monitor for activity. I guess they prefer to keep their attacking to when they are online by themselves.
On the flip side, players that don't spend as much time in game LOVE the idea of being able to walk away from the game and not have to worry about being caught offline to those players that spend day and night in the game.
But - I can't take all the credit for the idea behind AAT Autopage:
http://www.aatraders.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1929&highlight=monitor
This shows where the idea came from plus the non-comment about the legality from the developers about the idea of a program that can monitor the game.
| Quote: | Big:
All this summed up: First he is against that some players use more of the ressource available to all players...Time = UNFAIR, then he thinks it is fair that some scripting-programs should give him/his team a advantage. A ressource there is not available to all the players.
|
How much game play time a person can spend in the game isn't a resource that all players can draw upon equally. My program helps even the playing field. Spending all day logged off but refreshing the rankings screen will now be an automated task. Heck - if it works well I see no reason that it can't be either made public or included as an add-on to the AAT code.
As for a resource that is not available to all players, what about players that have alternate methods of logging into the internet from any location they desire via other technology methods such as Bluetooth PDA, or a Blackberry, or a 3rd generation Digital Cell Phone or a Wireless Phone Card for their laptops or even the ability to be in front of a screen all day long at work and/or at home. How is that anymore "fair" than a program that watches the ranking page for you?
AAT Autopage is basically a great equilizer. No more will aggressive players be able to log in at non-peak hours and run away with the game by executing devistating unchecked rampages. Now the possibility that someone will be paged to the game will always exist, at anytime someone can jump on and catch that aggressive player "in the act".
AAT Autopage has a great potential of changing the game to make it much more player vs player instead of player vs non-intelligent static defenses. It certainly would be a true test of "skills".
AAT Universe Autologger
AAT Universe Autologger was going to keep track of spy information, digi's, planets, indies, ports, upgrades, enemy sectors and more in a nice neat little database that would print out to an excel file for easy searching and reading.
However, this program will never see the light of day, as it essentially would be a script that gathered data about the universe while the player was in the game. This quite clearly is something that I now believe to be contrary to the spirit of the game. Thanks to all those who sent messages and chatted in room and "enlightened" me.
Blogs of Note:
Dignitary Overview - Posted: Jul 16, 2004 - 3:18pm
Entry Edited 8 times - Edited on Aug 4, 2004 - 10:25 am
Jul 31, 2004 - 11:49 pmKitty Matrix
I know. I know! I said I was done playing. But I just had to log in one last time. And of course upon checking my log I found some "bait" which would draw me out of my hole and into the game again.
Nambia had taken one of my Indie captures, picked up a spy, and then proceeded to visit EVERY ONE of his planets. Of course this type of invitation can not go ignored - especially just 12 hours before the game reset.
So, I pulled my funds, invested in level 37 torps and phasers, upped my cloak level to 33 and went out on the war path. Some 45 sectors, and 200+ planets later of successful raiding I ended up in a situation that proved deadly.
I took over the Real Space door and all of its planets, as I did in many earlier situations, I left the 1.5B fighters and then started working on the subsectors. Upon a visit back to the realspace sector - I got a battle message. Of course I was SMOKED.
Odd, SD takes on the sensor level of the highest planet in the sector. Since I left the planets I took over at their damaged levels the only thing I can assume is that the SD KEEPS the last sensor level that it had before the planets were taken over.
But things get even wierder. My score dropped from 5th place to 30th! I found myself with a score of -1,811,596!
I had the second most experience in the game (perhaps important in future versions of AAT) numerous captures, and planet builds and the HIGHEST good rating at over 150,000 - yet here I find myself at -1.8M
Nothing left to do but buy a new cargo ship without a pod and fly into a boat load of Sector Defense.
Blogs of Note:
Dignitary Overview - Posted: Jul 16, 2004 - 3:18pm
Entry Edited 5 times - Edited on Aug 7, 2004 - 1:33 am
Jul 27, 2004 - 11:20 pmOk - time for a break from AAT until the next tournament.
Dark Elves
Dark Elves wraps up with a fun run and lots of action towards the end. Several ship to ship battles occured at the end between Spoiler (Queen Amidala) and Oatmeal (Phaser) and I. However, it is kind of pointless to continue in a game where the players that mater are all running around at 35+ in tech level.
But the big thing that kills it for me is that SG clusters can't be defended no mater WHAT level the planets are at because 7 to 10 Nova's = a succesful entree. And what took someone 2 months to create and fortify comes crumbling down in 30 minutes. Hardly equitable.
Personally I believe that Sector launched Nova's should NOT damage the planets at all if the planetary shields are above X level (level 35 for example). Now before you start screaming about it - just think... It still takes out the sector D... 10 rounds of Nova's can theoretically take down 5 TRILLION fighters. It is just too powerful of a weapon to be allowed to do TRILLIONS of dollars of damage to planets too.
The end game is much too much slanted towards offense. I do hope PJ's alien ideas remedy this issue.
Kitty Matrix
After some early set back team Space Trash stormed to the top of this server. Nambia tried to make a late go of it but just couldn't stand up to a team that had too much time on its hands.
And as Bovine stated in his Blog - TIME = Success.
Very true. It isn't about turns usually. Usually after the first 3 days of game play I can't even use all the turns alloted.
But just merely having the ability to constantly be online, just watch players like Big and how much online time he will spend early in the tourney, allows for a player to monitor enemy attacks, keep a general eye out for points of intrest and increase the possibility of being involved in some sort of activity.
I think it would be interesting to log people off after so many hours a day logged into the game. Let people accumulate minutes of gameplay instead of turns. =)
Upcoming Tourney
Two projects I have been working on will GREATLY benefit the team that I am allowed to be on.
AAT Autopage - No more waking up to find that you planets have been raided. I have designed an interface that monitors your game and watches for attacks ALL WITHOUT BEING LOGGED INTO THE SERVER. I have been able to get the system to sucessfully send a text mail to Sprint and Verizon phones that basically reads "You just lost a planet at $timestamp". I also got it to work with a few alphanumeric pagers (Mobilecomm and Skypage). So - leave that phone on and no more surprises!
The issues I am having is getting the script to tell the difference between losing a planet to an indie instead of another player. It kinda sucks waking up at 3am for an indie.
AAT Universe Autologger - Ever wonder where you just were 15 turns ago? Ever wonder what the prices were at those last few sectors you just checked? Always scratching your head trying to remember where that last blue port was or wish you had been keeping track of indie planets? Well! How about a program that does that for you? In its very early stages, AAT Universe Autologger can keep track of spy information, digi's, planets, indies, ports, upgrades, enemy sectors and more... And you can even make a handy dandy report print out that you can study offline.
Currently AAT Universe Autologger is Vaporware in effort to finish AAT Autopager.
Blogs of Note:
Dignitary Overview - Posted: Jul 16, 2004 - 3:18pm
Entry Edited 8 times - Edited on Aug 7, 2004 - 1:33 am
Jul 20, 2004 - 11:47 pmDark Elves
Things are getting really quiet this week. I accidently came across an Oatmeal cluster. Oatmeal did everything right; he dug down 5 layers deep in SG links, he maxed out his SG links, he doubled down with two layers of defending planets, he raised his sensors, shields, fighter bays, etc... However with 30 minutes of work I brought it all down.
I find it disconcerting how little effort someone can put into launching 7 nova's and then cleaning up 50 planets. Perhaps this game needs the +5 base bonus back or some kind of bonus to the planetary shield levels to deflect Nova damage. Seriously - I put 100B into offense and I end up with 10T out of the deal. Just doesn't seem right. AAT is hugely slanted toward the offensive past 30th level.
Kitty Matrix
Space Trash has really upped the offensive strikes. Bovine continues to coordinate scanning efforts and strikes. Count_Dooku, Lucy, and Rennigade are also finding and beating down relocation sectors that the enemy keeps poping up in. Evil Traders has lost a few players and they will continue to be hounded until the reset 2 weeks hence.
I guess the lesson is that once you get the upper hand you should show no mercy until the deed is done.
The funniest thing you will see this week
http://www.jibjab.com/thisland.html
Seriously worth the streaming download!
It will crack you up as the presidental candidates go head-to-head in a "This Land is your Land" brag fest!
Blogs of Note:
Dignitary Overview - Posted: Jul 16, 2004 - 3:18pm
Entry Edited 3 times - Edited on Aug 7, 2004 - 1:34 am
Jul 16, 2004 - 3:18 pmDignitaries Overview
Dignitaries can have both great benefits and pitfalls. The following write-up will help you mitigate risk while maximizing intent.
Dignitaries in a Nutshell
Dignitaries enhance the planets performance by fulfilling certain roles. You can place up to 10 Dignitaries on a planet. Once placed on the planet your dignitaries will report as "Awaiting" in the dignitary screen. They will automatically begin selecting jobs to do on the planet. Sometimes it take a few hours to have all your dignitaries select jobs and sometimes it takes days. There is nothing you can do (as of AAT version .22) that will force your dignitary to choose a job or a specific job role. Finally, if you lose control of a planet with dignitaries stationed on it, the dignitaries on that planet are all killed.
Dignitary Job Roles
Dignitaries when placed on a planet will take up 1 of 6 roles. However you will only ever be able to see 5 classifications as the 6th classification (Embezzler) is hidden from you by falsely putting on a different title. It will be up to you to root out embezzlers (this will be discussed later).
Dignitaries jobs roles are as follows:
Birthrate Increaser - Increases colonists birthrates by a percentage of what the natural birthrate would have been. One of Colonists favorite past times is to "make" new colonists (babies!). You can think of this Dignitary as the guy who goes around making sure no one is using birth control, passes out lots of Viagra and gives away gift certificates for romantic dinners.
Birthrate Decreaser - Decreases colonist birthrates. This is actually accomplished by "killing" off a percentage of colonists after the birthrate is applied. So it is very possible that if you have too many Birthrate Decreasers your population will steadily be going down. Depending on the birthrate variable on a server if you have one Birthrate Decreaser for every 250M colonists you will have a chance at a very small increase or small decline in the planets colonists population.
Credit Booster - Increases the amount of credits colonists produce by a small percentage per game "tick". The percentage of the boost is randomly picked by the Dignitary and is generally .01% to .06%. Considering your all allowed 10 dignitaries on a planet you have a good chance of seeing a good boost to your planets credit production.
Production Builders - Increases planet production. When these Dignitaries first take up the job of Production Booster you can check in your log to see that they produce a small amount of fighters or torpedos or energy, etc? They continue to function in that capacity as they sit on your planet.
Spy Hunter - This Dignitary runs around your planet looking for enemy spies that may have been placed on your planet by a highly cloaked ship. If he finds an enemy spy he will kill it.
Embezzler (Hidden!) - . An important caveat about dignitaries is that sometimes they embezzle credits off of the planet. These stolen credits will be donated to a random player that has more than 10,000 turns used in the game. If there are no players with more than 10,000 turns used in the game yet then embezzled credits are turned into Debris.
The percentage chance that a dignitary will become an embezzler is an admin defined value. The percentage of money that is embezzled when the dignitary steals from you is also an admin defined max percentage where the actual value will be a random percentage between 0% and the max value. Embezzlers attempt to steal money from the planet every 1.5 to 3 days.
Catching embezzlers requires that you place spies on your own planets. The spies will monitor the dignitaries and report an embezzler to your spy log if they see one of your dignitaries taking money from you. I suggest ALWAYS having 10 spies on your planet whether using dignitaries or not. Another strategy from handling embezzlers will be discussed a little later.
Once a Dignitary has selected a non-embezzling job role they will not change into an embezzler.
http://www.aatraders.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1873&highlight=dignitaries
Dignitary Management
Embezzler Check #1 - Logs
One of the first things you want to do when you log into the game server is check your log. In the log there is a special spy and dignitary section. Check the spy log and look for reports that your spies spotted a dignitary embezzling funds. If you see such a report note the dignitaries id number, leave the log and then jump into the dignitary menu and dismiss them. This will force the dignitary back to the "await" state where they will once again pick a new job. It is important to note that they very well could choose to become an embezzler again!
Embezzler Check #2 - Level Method
Another way of watching for embezzlers is what I like to call the "Level" method. At the end of the my gameplay and just before I log out I like to use the IGB (the Bank) to set my planets to a certain credit level. This gives me a base point to work off of. If all my planets are sitting near 60% of max credits (as viewed in the planetary overview screen) I now have a reference to self detect embezzlers. So tomorrow when I log in if ALL my planets are at 95% of max credits but one is sitting at 71% or even something lower than my reference point of 60% then I know that planet has at least one embezzler. If the spy log doesn't show that they found a specific embezzler and there wasn't a planetary revolt that could have reduced my credits, then I jump into the dignitary screen and dismiss all dignitaries on that planet.
Embezzler Check #3 - You shouldn't be there
A recent method I came across of finding embezzlers is a "You shouldn't be there" check. As of AAT .22 dignitaries react to assignments on planets based on the game DEFAULT settings and not to the settings that the admins have set. This means that dignitaries assign themselves based on 100M colonists limit for a non-based planet. Armed with this knowledge you can weed out embezzler dignitaries.
At about 75M-85M colonists Birth Rate Reducers start to show up in your dignitary assignments. Conversely, Birth Rate Increasers STOP showing up. So if you have a new planet that has grown to a population of 10M and all of a sudden you see a BRR in your list; he is an embezzler! On the other hand if you have a planet with over 200M colonists on it and all of a sudden a new BRI on the planet you can be assured you have spotted an embezzler.
Team Play, Tournaments and Dignitaries
Special Note: Thanks to Max Griswald for a few ideas to put into this section.
Good Practices
Do create a topic in your team forum and paste "Recieved Embezzled Credit" messages that you find in your Dignitary Log into the forum. If you uniquely name your planets you should have no issue picking out Embezzled funds notices that another player on your team found in his/her log and pasted into the team forum. Note the embezzler ID number and when you go into your dignitary screen SORT the screen by ID by clicking on the ID header. Your Dignitary numbers will then be in numerical order and you can just go down the list dismissing dignitaries.
Do put enemy embezzler messages as well as teammate embezzled messages into the log. Putting enemy embezzle messages in the log may help other players on your team. First off all the amount of credits embezzled is often a sign of the wealth that can be found on that planet. Secondly, you or a teammate can sometimes get lucky and use your Nav Computer to locate enemy planets with the information in the embezzler log.
Bad Practices
Don't put dignitaries on your team banks or money transfer planets. It only takes a split second for an embezzler dignitary to grab half of your team funds and whisk them away to the enemy.
Don't put full sector numbers in the name of your planet if you are going to use Dignitaries. One embezzler from a planet with your sector number in it will tip off the enemy to exactly where your planet is if you are in Real Space. And even if you are deep in a Sector Genesis lair an opponent may search you out with a good Nav Computer (which is your Fighter tech) level.
Managing for Intent
Your dignitaries will only produce results for the field they are working in - So it does you little good to have a production boosting dignitary on a planet that is strictly making credits. However, it is extremely useful to have a production boosting dignitary on a planet that is acting as a defense mechanism (aka door or gateway). The extra energy that gets produced by such dignitaries can allow for 15-20% more sector defense than without.
So what do we do? Once you have let your dignitaries sit for several days and you are finally no longer seeing indications of embezzlers its time to start the firing and hiring process all over. If you are looking for only credit boosting dignitaries on a certain set of planets then fire all the production dignitaries on those planets. Wait for these guys to pick new jobs and then watch again for embezzlers. Once you feel confident that you are clean then let the next round of dismissals begin!
It takes a little time (about a week) but you usually can get exactly what you want your dignitaries to do if you just keep at it.
Jump Starting Your Planets
Once you have a few planets built up through the traditional methods (see past Tempest's Blog entries) then you are ready to jump start some new planets. But how do you maximize the planets colonists level while retaining turns? The solution is to encourage the game to give you Birth Rate Increasers.
I like to force the game to give me BRI's by keeping the initial colonists level LOW. Keeping your colonist level between 4 million and 10 million will get the game to spit out BRI's left and right. What I like to do is make about 20 planets, throw 10 dignitaries on each. Then go back and put 4 million colonists on each planet. Leave the planets alone for 12-24 hours and when you come back to them you will notice that you most likely will have 5-6 BRI's on each planet. (Note: As mentioned earlier in Embezzler Check #3 section - if you see a Birth Rate Reducer on a planet with under 75M colonists it is an embezzler!). Now go back to those planets and put 20M - 100M colonists on those planets and watch your colonist breed like little rabbits. In just a few days you will have maxxed out populations on those 20 planets without having to waste a bunch of turns moving colonists around.
Personal Practices
Credit Making Planet:
1 Spy Hunter
2 Birth Rate Increasers
7 Credit Boosters
Defense Planets
1 Spy Hunter
1 Birth Rate Increaser
5 Production Booster
4 whatever
I personally fire all Birth Rate Reducers in AAT .22 (that strategy WILL change for .25) as they are pretty useless. In this version of AAT you just want your planets to recover as quickly as possible after a Planetary Revolt due to over-population rather than try to spend time preventing it.
Doing your own research
I highly suggest that people do some forum rummaging about Dignitaries (aka Digi's or Digi) as this is where I mainly found information to augment what I learned from personal experience.
http://www.aatraders.com/phpBB2/search.php
Last Edit: Wrote up "Jump Starting Your Planets" & "Embezzler Check #3" sections
Future Add: Info about Digi's self selecting
http://forums.aatraders.com/viewtopic.php?t=3513
Entry Edited 21 times - Edited on Jul 24, 2009 - 5:56 pm
Jul 13, 2004 - 12:11 pmDark Elves
Not too much activity on the Dark Elves server right now. The top players are sitting back and either smiling or licking their wounds depending on where Tempest's wrath fell.
The only thing of note is that Big was whacking on one of my SG doors when I logged in to do some planet tending. Fortunately for me I built that specific SG deep into a tunnel which makes for great way to sneak in behind attackers and give them a little scare. After several minutes of a cat and mouse game, I finally got to smack Big. It wasn't a great victory as I was running around in a 34 Excel and him in just a little tiny Endeavor. Not to mention that his internet browser allegedly crashed during the chase. I do believe him because the way that I caught him was tracking him down through the course of three consecutive EWD's. And anyone who was actively in control of their ship would have headed to Sol to clear their warp trail.
Kitty Matrix
I think I am about the worlds WORST attacker.
Universal (Bovine), Max and I logged on together and collected up all the intel we had about the Evil Traders. Bovine made up a target priority list, dedicated our grouping point, and we started to bomb away on our first target.
Lo and Behold - When we finally break through the SD, Midnight Rider is sitting in a stealth in the front of his SG (why do people do that!). Universal attacks and defeats Midnight Rider and it turns out that Midnight Rider was floating around without and escape pod! Ruh Ro! All of his planets turn instant indie and the race was on to run around the Universe cleaning up Midnight Rider indies.
During this time period, I unluckily discovered that Kor had us in his sights through my ingenious use of my ship as a Nova Bomb detonation detector. This was soon to be the theme of my day. Max peeled off and took up a position as a cover ship where he would located where they were bombing from and then counter attack, while I would concentrate on fortifying the forward door of the newly taken over SG's and Universal would beat on the secondary doors. After I was done fortifying I would also begin to work on the secondary doors.
This proved to be an expensive undertaking. Between Corn and Kor I was hit by Nova Bombs 4 times. So - 2 IGB loans, 1 loan from Universal, and an EXCEL later (I cloaked instead of attacked and run - DOH!) I had spent over 9T and was left quite broke. My score dropped 1.5M points even though I had captured a decent amount of planets. I should rename my ship to "Nova Magnet".
Did I mention that I am starting to seriously dislike not being able to blow up planets with a Genesis Torpedo? All people do is take over the same planets again and again.
The finally tally of planets taken was:
Kwae Zar: 35
Universal: 31
Max: 7 (he was covering our attacks!)
What I learned is what Universal mentioned to me in chat after all the destruction abated - "Attacking is very different from building".
Yeah. Yeah it is. *nods in newly discovered agreement*
Entry Edited 5 times - Edited on Jul 15, 2004 - 12:37 am
Jul 11, 2004 - 6:50 pmDark Elves
Bad timing is the theme for today.
After Tempests announcment that he was going to go on a rampage, I made sure that I was present on the server to see it and attempt to stop it if need be!
Tempest warmed up a bit on some single planets in Real Space then he moved into some lair work. Of course one of the lairs that he started beating into was Diablo's (my teammate). I stripped 28 trillion credits off of all my planets, upgraded the Excel and flew in to defend my teammates lair.
I found Tempest on no less than 6 or 7 occassions and attempted to attack him but each time his mammoth Excel "evaded" (*hahahahaha whatever!!*) my attacks. So I used some time to get ahead of him in the Diablo's lair and start taking money off of the planets.
Forum discussion about that here:
http://www.aatraders.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2154
Tempest, being a little more seasoned than me, backed off. I thought I had fought him off so I went to the front of the SG cluster to refill my torps and fighters when I got a message:
"Temptest is Nova Bombing this sector"
OMG! Noooooooo....... I dropped from level 36 everything to level 32. I lost nearly 2M in score. And not to mention I did all this trying to save about 7T from Diablo's SG.
Ug.
The good news came later, as I had to leave because I was painting the baby's room, when Tempest said that he had given up on attacking my lair because the defenses were too troublesome to attempt to continue to attack.
I must admit I put alot of thought into defenses, and I would LOVE to test this in the team tourney that is coming up. If it works there then I will share it.
Kitty Matrix
Space Trash is experiencing the same thing that I did; it is tough to get a foothold on this server. The Evil Traders are so well entrenched that all they do is spend time scanning the fairly small galaxy.
Oh well - I will continue with my hit and run gameplay style. Nothing like being a little gnat that no one can seem to swat. *smile*
Entry Edited 2 times - Edited on Jul 11, 2004 - 6:51 pm
Jul 10, 2004 - 12:31 amDark Elves
Oatmeal (Phaser) has come within 300K of my top score. We are both in the 10M range in score now with other top players only about 5-15% behind.
Tempest announced in the shoutbox that fireworks are going to fly this weekend as he is cashing in and going on the offensive. For some reason - I believe him. 
So! Primary doors are going to go up to 2B SD and 2nd/3rd/4th doors will go up to 1B each.
I hope he is a patient man.
Kitty Matrix
I just couldn't go against the Evil Trader sectors alone. It was taking 100B in Nova's just to wittle down a few low value targets.
So - after amassing 4 pages of spy info, I took up an offer to join Space Trash! This team seems to be the only tangible resistance to the Evil Traders.
I am happy to say that merging with them was a "win-win" situation as Space Trash was happy to have my data and I was happy to have some offensive and defensive support.
Nambia has really bloomed his score in the past few days. He is over 8M while the next closest person is at 4.9M.
I hope that the Space Trash's late push toward the top is still possible!
Rah! Rah! Goooooo Space Trash!
Entry Edited 1 time - Edited on Jul 10, 2004 - 12:34 am
Jul 8, 2004 - 11:06 amDark Elves
I had turns to burn and decided to make a 4th set of doors in my "main" SG cluster. As I push deeper and deeper into my lair I throw up security doors in Upgrade sectors and then make complete new areas off of that.
It creates for a very robust defensive situation but it is getting to the point where the twists and turns are gonna force me to MAP out my own lair.
Instead I went through EVERY SG and maxed out its link capacity starting from top to bottom. This did two things - first it gave me a uniform numbering system and second people won't be able to make Real Space links back out of the lair when attacking it. This is going to force people to run all the way back out of my lair and all the way back into again to do Nova or A&R runs. Every minute they spend in my lair equals a higher chance of me logging in and catching them.
Oatmeal (Phaser) continues to grow by leaps and bounds. I don't think that he is out producing my planets. But rather he gains on my lead because I waste credit production staying at 100% for several hours before I log in again.
Tempest and Diablo both went Debris Hunting and got burned big time. I think Tempest had a 38 ECM level with a fighter level of 31 by the time he was done!
Kitty Matrix
In a funny twist of fate - my standard way of operating saved my butt.
I have slowly been gathering intel about the Evil Empire and I have actually amassed quite a bit of sector information. My intel boom came when I had a few planets taken over by them and two of their players picked up spies. Niether of them did a clean before they ran around to all their sectors. I ended up with several pages of spy info out of it.
So - of course - I had to go out and make some one way links in various sectors to see what kind of SD was out there. In several sectors I made two way links back to sol, an SD port, and a device port and the other 7 links were Evil Trader sectors.
So last night I was visiting all these sectors to see what was new, and if any SD amounts degraded, etc... When I jumped into one of the sectors and it had like a billion mines from 3 different players in it with a Space Beacon that said "Boo!". Of course if I hadn't been in my stealth which has a lower average tech level that would trigger the mines it would have been all over.
Alot of work must have went into putting that failed trap up as it wasn't in an upgrade port!
Just goes to show that you don't even have to attack to be a thorn in someones side.
Entry Edited 2 times - Edited on Jul 8, 2004 - 11:14 am
Jul 7, 2004 - 2:44 pmDark Elves
Tempest and Oatmeal (Phaser) decided that they had a little chump change burning a hole in their pockets so they both decided to spend their extra earnings on some nice bounties!
I am sure that the Federation will put those funds to good use.
Meanwhile - I did a classic IGB mistake. Instead of collecting 20% of the credits from planets that were at 99% of the credit cap - I decided to collect 99% of all funds from planets that were at the 20% cap. HAHA!
So I spent a good hour or more going to each little nook and cranny of my lairs and putting money back on my planets. *ug*
Kitty Matrix
Dern quiet! That can only mean that people are either:
1) Feeling pretty comfortable and doing a little credit farming
-OR-
2) Scouting and gearing up for a major onslaught.
Luckily for me - I put all my funds into my ship and have been living off meager earnings. I plan to continue to be a thorn in the side of the leaders.
Jul 6, 2004 - 12:19 pmDark Elves
Oatmeal (Phaser) decided to sit down and make about 130 credit producing planets. He is QUICKLY catching up in score and if I don't either out-produce him or find his lair, I can kiss my number 1 spot bye-bye. Tempest continues to cruise along farming credits, and hunting for debris. Its funny to watch him jump from 1 million points down to just 100k behind me after spending just a few hundred turns online.
They should have a new strategy name - Along with Builder, Banker and Trader we should have a Scavenger strategy.
Kitty Matrix
Its tough as nails to get a foot hold on this server. 20% of the active players are all on one team. This allows for these guys to actively scan the entire universe everyday with each member using only 2000 turns.
With that in mind. I got nailed by a 4 person collobrative effort. I lost 1/2 my planets but only a 1/3 of my wealth.
In a very "Big" like move - I sold EVERYTHING and gathered ALL my credits and went hunting. 20 planets and 1 kill later, I logged out.
I don't think I like servers where you can't destroy the planets with a Genesis Torp. So instead I set the little workers to 100% ore and they can just starve to death while they work. Muuhahahhahaaa!!!!
Jul 2, 2004 - 2:51 pmSoftball
Every Thurday night for the past 10 weeks - I have been playing in a softball league. I finished the season in second place with a .846 batting average. I went 33/39 batting with 24 runs scored and 20 RBI's. The guy above me pulled down an .856 average! Last season I had a .744 average. And I will be starting a double-header only league which running through the summer starting next week. An average softball hitting average is about .600
So what is the secret you ask? Well before I answer that let me tell you a thing or two about my physical attributes. I am 31 years old, 6'7" and 240 pounds. So what do you think the outfielders do when I get up? Yeeeup - the move back. So I get alot of room to dink line drives right up the middle. Not exactly a glorious thing but hey, getting a runner on base is the one of the objects of the game.
But the true secret is not using one of those silly double-walled juiced up 32oz bats that everyone is using now-a-days. Batswing speed is all the craze in the last 5 years. Sure sure - you can get some SERIOUS hang-time and distance with them but most often or not - you hit it like that once and the outfields are all over that strategy for the next 3 or 4 at bats. Predicatability = outs. I tried one of those bats for 10 games 3 season ago and did REALLY poorly (under .500). No matter how you hit the dern ball nearly every hit ends up being a deep fly. Some leagues have even banned various versions of these bats because people were consistanly hitting the ball over the 350 fence with a resitricted flight softball (generally you can't hit em more than 280 feet).
The next 5 closest people the top three all used these juiced bats. None of them were hitting over 600 - which is pretty average in softball.
My secret is using a STIFF circa 1990's 38oz bat (as heavy as they make) which my dad used when he was playing softball. When I connect with the ball it is hit HARD with lots and lots of spin. Generally this will create a line drive hit that drops in front of the outfielders. I would say I got ~20 hits that way. And if it stays in the infield the spin actually creates for a very "hot" ball and very little reaction time for the infielders. If an infielder gets a mit on my ball it has so much spin on it that they can't field it cleanly. In fact all season long I have NEVER been thrown out at first. Its those long legs. :wink:
Dark Elves
Tempest continues to cheat... errm... I mean lead the game. Not much chance at catching the little bugger. He is even taunting us all in chat now by telling us that he is putting 1T credits on random real space planets with no SD. Save me the trouble of looking and just send me the sector numbers!
Diablo (my teammate), has recreated himself a very profitable credit making empire. His score is really taking off now and he will soon out pace me as well.
Kitty Matrix
This is turning out to be a tough server to get a foot hold in playing solo and without the benefits of teammate.
I think in the 3000 sectors or so that I have uncovered I have litterally only found 4 upgrade ports! The pickings are thin. Combine that with the 1000% increase in price to the SG Torps and you end up with having to start out with planets in less than optimal growth areas. Not to mention the "grow your own" SD's that you pretty much have to do because Upgrade ports are so hard to find.
Just last night Kor (with the help of his Ferangi strong-arm Nambia) thumped my top producing planet. DOH! 150B credits down the drain. And just that evening as I was sitting at my desk to log out, I SERIOUSLY paused and thought - do I take the money off of this planet and invest it in a Voy? Naahh... I will wait ONE MORE NIGHT.
Well that will teach me.
Entry Edited 4 times - Edited on Jul 2, 2004 - 3:05 pm
Jul 1, 2004 - 3:06 pmDark Elves
It looks like Tempest and I stretched our legs last night. Between us - I think we thumped 30 some planets.
I will say this about my experience from last nights raiding...
LINKING ONE OF YOUR SECTORS TO ANOTHER ONE OF YOUR SECTORS CREATES AN UNNECESSARY RISK SCENARIO
All I did last night was find one location, beat it up, do a full scan, find another set of planets that were linked, and repeat.
I found no less than 5 enemy sectors because they were linked to each other.
Kitty Matrix
Grow little planets, grow! I started a day late on this server but with careful tending I have risen to 3rd place.
Tempests Blog and Editorial
Tempest has posted another great installment of an AAT guide. Take a look at the July 1st 2004 update here:
http://www.aatraders.com/readblog.php?player_id=534
Personally, I agree with 95% of the stuff he has said. The other 5% is just play style differences.
1) I believe in trading a bit more early - so that I can "seed" my planets with enough cash so that they are at the 50% level. This gets things going a little faster. So, basically, I start up a planet, to get the colonists reproducing, go trade for a few hundred more turns, and come back and seed my planets with some cash.
As people may or may not know you gain a 5% credit production increase for every 10% of max credits you have on a planet after the initial first 10%. So if you have 70% of Max Credits on a planet you get a 30% boost to credit production.\
-- begin edited note --
DarkSoul was kind enough to point out that there are normally 6 "steps" to credit production based on "max credits" on the planet. The current tournament is using 15 different steps.
The information I gave above is based off of Tarnus blog entree dated Dec 27, 2003.
Either way DarkSoul and I both agree that we wished this information was disclosed in the "settings" page!
-- end edited note --
2) I like to use dignitaries on my early planets. The population boosters and credit increasers really get the monetary juices flowing. And since I am logging in every 30-40 minutes to increase planetary tech levels I can watch for embezzlers. I watch for embezzlers by simply noting what my credit levels were at before I logged out. If I can't get a spy to catch the specific embezzler for me, I just fire ALL the dignitaries for that planet. Even if I have to fire all those little digi's every tenth turn I am still ahead of where I would be without them.
Of course using Digi's on bank planets later in the game is nearly suicidal. And I don't recommend it at all!
3) Whereas I do agree with Tempest about 2 or 3 layers of D, I also like to make "surprise" pockets of resistance deeper in my SG. This is a gameplay style where, I might gain a little more time when someone hits a 4th wall of defenders in a random SG sector but at the same time, I just took another SG sector away from myself that could be earning credits at an optimum rate.
Entry Edited 4 times - Edited on Jul 1, 2004 - 11:52 pm
Jun 30, 2004 - 1:49 pmIcon Change
Ok ok - I bowed to the pressure and odd looks I got for having a female avatar for a female character being played by a guy.
So! Kwae Zar has turned into a non-gender specified spatial anomaly. Just like Quasars are in real life. It took a bit of hunting but I finally found a great shot from the HST Radio Telescope array of a well developed quasar.
The highest quality pic was 77MB!! Man I should find a link. The detail was just incredible. Of course they saved the thing in some sort of non-compression format which once it was a jpg went down to under 10MB. Then I had to crop it into a format that AAT would take and got it down to under 10kb. From 77MB to 10KB!
Dark Elves
Activity picked up on DE. I over took Tempest's #1 spot merely because he was spending time to create a new lair. Of course once it matures I am going to be quickly outpaced once again.
Tempest answered my protocol question about whether or not attacking a ex-teammates grotto is fair play. Basically - he asked for a few days to move stuff around and then he said I had a green light to "Try and get in". Sounds like fun!
Kitty Matrix
Some serious building going on. I finally had to spend some money on upgrades to my little Columbus which got me booted from my nice safe Sol hidey-hole. But my planets can support plenty of SD now so the timing was right.
There still is something goofy with base creation on that server. I gen torped a new planet. And dropped 10,000 units of materials on it, then attempted to place 10M credits on the planet to build a base. The server wants 100K units and 100M credits to build a base but the big issue is that you are NOT allowed to place anymore credits on the planet via transfer. When you press the button it says "Credits Transferred" but the transfer never actually takes place.
None the less. I shall press on. And Man! That Kor guy can be brutal in the shoutbox. I feel that I have verbally already lost a Voyager to him and his Klingon taunting and boasting. Jun 29, 2004 - 11:12 amDark Elves
Game News
Had a bit of excitement today. Not2go decided to attempt to fry a few of Diablo's planets. Diablo sent out a APB and I came flying into the sector to find out that Diablo had Nova'ed Not2go just a few seconds earlier. I took over the remaining Not2go planet, (badly damaged!), and then starting deploying SD's.
I was actually so frantically replacing SD's that when Diablo came in to join me and help me replace SD's I totally freaked out and flinched and attacked him. He evaded - and then I attacked him again. Luckily - he evaded. And then I gave myself a mental slap and actually READ the name under the ship. I immediately sent out a "SORRRY about that!" note.
The whole time I am replacing SD, I had two little voices in my mind saying to me - GET OUT OF THIS SECTOR - no wait just a few more sd runs - GET OUT OF THIS SECTOR YOU IDIOT!- almost done! just a few more runs - LEAVE LEAVE LEAVE! HE WILL COME BACK! - one more sd run...
*You Have a Message*
Oh! &@*! Not2go has just Nova Bombed this sector.
DOH! Why didn't I leave.
On the good side - I was barely scratched by the Not2Go nova. However, Not2go lost about 33% of his score with the blow that Diablo landed. Those are the breaks...
Other Going On's
Tempest bowed out. He left the team. But kept his character on so as to credit collect. I don't blame him. Sounds like he has had a rough few days.
The team turned over to my control. I pretty much decided that during the next login I will pass the reigns over to Diablo since he has more experience than me. He certainly seems like a competent player.
This raises an interesting protocol question. I know where two of Tempests lairs are at due to the fact that I was on his team. At what point are his planets "fair game" - if ever? Do I allow him a few days to move his grotto?
For now I believe I will leave him alone. For two reasons really.
1 - I gained the information in GOOD FAITH while being on his team. If he would have left the team for dubious reasons (traitor, team killer, etc...) this reason for not attacking would be moot.
2 - He helped me hone my planet building skills. I certainly have never seen such an efficient way to start a game. The stratgey works well into the second week of a fast game, I only wish I could have seen what he does after he gets bored building! 
But if someone else nails his planets first - I will be right there cleaning up.
Kitty Matrix
Fired up a game in Kitty Matrix. I started a day late but quickly caught up. Kitty has some interesting settings. One that you will see right away is a +12 BASE bonus.
Yikes. Gonna be some tough planets out there.
Some wierdness with planet creation - I was unable to put the credits on the planet after creation. Instead I was forced to jack up the credit production rate to get enough money to create a base. So watch out for that!
Entry Edited 7 times - Edited on Jun 29, 2004 - 2:27 pm
Jun 28, 2004 - 2:01 pmCruising along in DE. This server is set up for some fast fast gameplay. So far I am 2nd place behind Tempest who is acting as my mentor. His style of play certainly is working well for me. I see some tweaks I would like to attempt. Gonna try hitting Kitty and seeing what happens.
I am about 1 week away from trying out some new ideas. I wonder if the AAT 2 team tourney will last that long. Hmmm. Jun 24, 2004 - 12:50 pmGeneral News
Had a little chat with Phaser the other day.
It seems we both had the same ideas about how to best utilize the up and coming autotrade changes to manage colonist population.
I bounced a few of my current colonist management ideas that are part of my "in-work" Macro Banker scheme off of him and Phaser said he would like to try it out himself.
I guess the idea is sound. Now to see how it performs on the battlefield.
Dark Elves News:
Even after a really bad start (needing to move my lair because I had spies on my ship from debris hunting), I am really seeing some leaps and bounds in my credit production.
I have to thank Tempest for answering some very specific questions that I had (even after reading his great Blog!) which really helped me get the game do the work for me. In the past I just couldn't keep my hands off of the keyboard and would trade trade trade and boost my planet levels too high early on and lose alot of the credit production that you get by having 80% or 90% of the planets max.
Finally - the best shoutbox quote:
Scene: Tempest found and destroyed a bunch of Big's planets at a time where most players were still scraping together a few billion credits?
Big: Where did you get the credits for the Voy?
Tempest: It's only 100B.
Pfft! Only 100B! Well - ok - maybe it is only funny to me. 8)
Note to Langel
When talking about oneself, one should use an upper case "I" and not a lower case "i".
Sorry! Couldn't help myself. *grin*
Entry Edited 2 times - Edited on Jun 24, 2004 - 12:52 pm
Jun 22, 2004 - 1:07 pmIn my ongoing effort to improve my game I have joined the Dark Elves server.
Right off the bat - I drained my turns making a nice little SG cluster that I am less than proud of. The SG gods just weren't with me. Out of 6 level 2 and 12 level 3 SG's I have ONE blue sector and ONE green sector. Whee. =(
These are the types of things that I need to learn. Does one just give up on this SG and move on now? Or does one continue building in this SG knowing full well that he/she will have to move the lair later on to something more secure? Or do you stop pouring money into it but allow for a modest credit boost and move on?
I do know that this setup won't last once people start getting attack based ships in the high 20's. The question is when do I move?
----
Thanks goes out to Tempest for picking up a fairly green teammate. I have played on the AAT Main server before with another alias but I was extremely ineffective as it was my first time in AAT after playing BNT for a year or so. Since then I played on smaller servers with traditional settings to get a feel for the game.
My #1 concern is not screwing up the game for my teammates.
While my #2 goal is to learn what I can about stealth, concealment, building, and when to make the jump from credit farming to another game play style.
My #3 goal is to become an asset to the team and be allowed to join his team in a team tournament. I know that good players like to be surround themselves with familiar players and hopefully I can become that if not for this next team tournament (Late July) or the next one.
Finally, my #4 goal is attempt to setup a special area for Macro Banking so as to continue to test and tweak my ideas for what I believe is a gameplay style that will accel in the AAT version to come.
Entry Edited 2 times - Edited on Jun 22, 2004 - 1:13 pm
Jun 18, 2004 - 12:29 amI have had a few inquiries as to what macro banking is. Seems I raised a few eyebrows with my choice of words.
When I say "Macro" I use it to mean the opposite of "Micro".
I certainly DO NOT mean creating and using an automated method to play the game through a script like tool.
Micro Banker/Builders are people like fiveeyes and tempest. They are both incredibly skilled, patient and have the time to log in every few hours to do planetary management. They deal with MANY planets that generally are at or less than level 20. So when I say Micro, I am refering to the point that they are dealing with lots of little bits and pieces to scrape together a very large sum of cash.
That method either makes me fall asleep at night or makes me lose intrest in the game.
So, I came across a hybrid method that starts pretty much the same as a Micro Builder but later deviates hugely. As I said in an earlier blog I am trying to develop a new method based on the hints that are being dropped by the developers as to what the next version of AAT is like.
Some things to consider are:
Huge Planets - Way more colonists than ever before. 1 Billion for a level 0 planet and 50M for each tech level. So a level 20 planet is going to get ya 2 Billion on the planet.
Builder Penalty - If you have over 50 planets total and any of them are over the 90% population mark - YOU WILL experience a revolt/apocolypse on one of the planets during the normal check time period (30 min).
Builder Penalty 2 - Planets will go independent no matter what their tech level happens to be if you have too many planets to manage. At 600 planets each will have about a 1 in 4 chance of going indy no matter what. While with 100 planets there is a 1 in 84 chance of them going indy. 51 planets has a 1 in 92 chance of a planet going indy. Anything below or equal to 50 planets will use the current tech level checks.
Trade Router Changes - You will need to buy a cargo ship for every item you trade. Cargo ships will just carry cargo of any type (colonists, energy, goods, torps, etc...)to
auto trades with other planets and/or ports.
Think about these changes and mull over in your mind what you think would be a new successful strategy. I can tell you that Micro Builders are in trouble. 100-400 planets sitting in a lair (grotto, etc...) will just not be something that someone is going to be able to put the same amount of time into that they do now and make money.
In addition to the current workload that they manage they will now have to chase down 5-6 indie planets a login, more apocolypses; basically more bumps in the road.
I am not ready to reveal macro banking just yet but basically I just took a look at the game in a different way.
Hopefully it works. <grin>
Jun 16, 2004 - 9:19 amI know I know...
I made a pact to myself to raise all key planets to 28th level before going on the offensive - but a few planets were just begging to be taken over, ransacked and forgotten about.
I am scaring off all the competition on this server. They are mostly newbies so I kinda feel bad about it. I asked the admin to end the game and start a new one. If he does that I won't go back. I need to get my feet wet in a higher population server.
But I have learned alot from this outing. After reading several peoples blogs to get a general feel of how people do things now, (got some good links from Langel's blog) I feel I have created a mildly successful banker variant. I am trying to align my new strategy with what I believe the next version of AAT will bring. If I had to give my strategy a name I would call it Macro Banker.
I would rather not give out the details right now because it really needs to be tested against a more cunning pool of opposition.
Note to Langel:
Kwae Zar is a female character. However, Kwae Zar is played by a guy. 31 years old. Married. 1 kid, 1 on the way. Own a house in the suburbs, 2 cars, work 50 hours a week at the worlds largest aerospace company. So as you can see, I am not some crazy wierdo.
I am a guy playing a girl character because I am a lesbian trapped in a man's body! *grin*. Besides - there is just something more ruthless about a girl trader that can turn vile at any given moment.
My other main identity which I have had since Tradewars BBS in the early 90's is quite male. I used him to play BNT for the past 6 or 7 months before I found AAT. Kwae Zar (pronounced Quasar like the spacial phenominom) is a recent character built first in the MMPoRPG DAoC (Dark Ages of Camelot).
There ya go! More than you ever wanted to know.
Entry Edited 1 time - Edited on Jun 16, 2004 - 9:27 am
Jun 10, 2004 - 6:04 pmThe question I posed to myself was to:
1) attack and decimate
- or -
2) attack and hold
While I pondered options 1 and 2, a third and obvious answer occured to me; Cover my rear.
Waiting is the right thing to do.
Too many battles are lost because someone over extends thier empire instead of stopping and fortifying what they have.
Recent events on my server have show that I was neglecting to adequately solidify my defenses. I want all my planets to be at level 28+ before I start an offensive campaign.
So the fortification begins.
Jun 8, 2004 - 10:22 amDid a little math - *gasp*
Option #1
If I were to commence with my attack 2 days hence I wouldn't be able to retain any of the planets that I captured but rather only take the credits and destruct them from orbit.
Option #2
Or - I could belay my attack accumulate more wealth (at the risk that they fortify further)and not only take over their planets but keep a few of them as well.
Option #1 Pro's - Quick, effective. Allows me to focus on my planets instead of defending new ones which will likely be the targets of future assault.
Option #2 Pro's - Free Goods, Ore and Organics galore. For whatever reason this team does 10% on all items and doesn't appear to use autotrades so they have billions of items for me to sell while putting my credit manufacturing to the max.
Hmmm.... Gonna have to think about this one.
Jun 5, 2004 - 11:22 pmYou know the saying - "There is light at the end of the tunnel"?
Sometimes I wonder if that light is an oncoming train.
But not on this day - This day the light is a ray of hope.
The gambit that cost me my ship has paid me richly in intel. I not only managed to put spies on the top ship but it seems that the planet that I lost my ship over successfully putting spies on was a team bank.
All the little worker bees of thier team flocked into the sector in the last 24 hours, moving the money to different areas. Namely - new areas that I did not know about. Namely - areas that they don't know that I know about. Which in the intel game = advantage.
My scrimping and saving has begun. In a few more days I will have enough money and turns to wipe out everything they have in one night.
This time - no mercy. Jun 3, 2004 - 11:49 pmFinally found a major sector of the guy who has been tailing my top spot. I set up my sniper post to target his sector and low and behold *BONUS*. He is sitting in the sector that I am about to start Nova Bombing.
I rattle off my first two Nova Bombs without a hitch - about half of his SD is gone and both hits nail his ship. The third SD backfires, I quickly repair up, reequipt and fire off two more Nova's that hit both the SD and his ship.
At this point - I decide to pull funds from my banks, and other planets and raise my fighters, torps and shields and just bust into the sector with brute force.
I jump in using cloak and I successfully get in. There sits his Voyager.... A scan reveals that I had done CONSIDERABLE damage. His hull is at 17, his engines were at 12 and just about everything else was reduced below 20.
My mistake was that I got greedy for intel. I figured he hasn't moved his voyager because he was AFK.
So instead of taking over one of his planets to create a war zone situation that would have let me attack his ship (because the sector was set to 'no attack');, I decided that he was going to attempt to repair his planets and maybe I could get a spy onto his ship to find MORE of his stuff.
So I set out placing spies on his planet.
And WHAT do you think happened?
Yeeup! That crafty bastard went out - repaired his ship, came back and launched a volley of fighters against me, refilled his torps and fighters and did it two more times....
I was staring at sector 1. Doh!
Because I was in the spy screens I never saw a message about being attacked.
Well the good news is that he lost about 20% of his score repairing all the damage I did. I however lost 30% of my score by getting smoked.
Conclusion:
Mercy is a bad thing. Only ruthlessness can keep you alive.
If I was thinking straight I should have taken one of his planets over, WAXED his voyager and THEN put spies on his remaining planets.
Yeeeeup - I have only myself to blame for that error in judgement!
Entry Edited 2 times - Edited on Jun 3, 2004 - 11:54 pm
Jun 3, 2004 - 2:44 pmAbout a month ago - I joined a server that had normal server settings when the game started. After about 2 weeks of playing the game the admin was convinced by a player to take off the IGB cap.
Turns out the ringleader wanted to be able to save all his money without having to worry about losing it in a ship explosion or planets going Indie. Basically - no risk.
http://lonaf.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=9422&sid=75b22dc71d26ae11735973954312616b
This got my goat at the time - but I continued to play realizing that this server was catering to alot of first time players.
So a few weeks pass and I decide to show these new players that keeping all your planets at level 15 isn't a smart idea. So I attack a few. I was royally lambasted in both thier forums and in the shoutbox.
http://lonaf.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=9452&sid=75b22dc71d26ae11735973954312616b
Well, I backed off quite a bit after this. Not wanting to hurt anyones feelings. But low and behold one of the top players (the same one that convinced the admin to take off the IGB cap) decided to start racking up Fed Bounties. And rather than pay the bounty he tried to find a loophole to get out of it.
http://lonaf.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=9686&sid=fe8837efc3eb108ad17bdb78f5b7ab20
His loophole ultimately failed. He ended up in some psuedo-state where his character still exists but is stuck in Sector 1 and the Feds attack him but they do 0 damage.
Of course what gets my goat is that I get screamed at for taking out a few planets but he wracks up so many bounties that he quits and starts a new character.
Ug... I would have left long ago if I didn't feel that I had something to prove to myself.
Well! Nonetheless, I am trying to work on my learning curve so that I can compete on a team in an AAT tourney.
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