Ambrosia Software Web Board: The Hideout - Ambrosia Software Web Board

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9/29/02

I'm keeping records of the INN, for historical purposes. So far, I have [url="http://"http://idisk.mac.com/sfiera/Public/inn/09-29-02.html"]09-29-02[/url], [url="http://"http://idisk.mac.com/sfiera/Public/inn/09-30-02.html"]09-30-02[/url], and [url="http://"http://idisk.mac.com/sfiera/Public/inn/10-01-02.html"]10-01-02[/url].

I think that, so far, our only intentions are the smacklist and official neutrality. However, if there's anything else that should be mentioned, we should try to think of it now.

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"All truths are relative, except for this one."

~w00tage!~

Trojen Defeats Volkov.

Current Positions:

• Volkov: Volkov drifted in his escape pod until he reached the Tron system.
  
• Trojen: Struting around in the Jagros system.

He got what he deserved.

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"All truths are relative, except for this one."

Should I put all attacks on the smacklist or just successful attacks? Volkov was planning to wipe the walls with Trojen, there, even if he didn't succeed.

Perhaps we could put something in so that independent players can pay a small amount of money to put an attack on our smacklist, so that we'll hit the pirate back that hit them and such. Although money transfering isn't up, yet.

And the other potential item to put on our intentions would be destroying pirates that come into our territory, which is anything within 2 jumps of Tralf, as well as anything else that's way up north (there's one or two extra northern systems that are more than 2 jumps from Tralf).

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"Typical Americanism. Somebody else does it so we have to do it wrong."

Only successful attacks should go on the smacklist. See, Volkov attacked Trojen, so that means that he gets +1 on the smacklist. However, Trojen killed him, so that's -1 on the smacklist. No effect.

For the time being, we should base any policies on features that don't yet exist. We may consider the independent smacklist idea later, but there's no reason to discuss it now.

Protecting our territory is a nice idea, but unfortunately, we can't really enforce it. Pirates can be up there and out again before we have the opportunity to react, or even know they went there. Besides, we're behind LN territory, which might be discouraging to pirates already.

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"All truths are relative, except for this one."

The 1,000,000 credits have been paid and the details have been hammered out. Colony ship launches soon.

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See I'm the king of the swingers, the Jungle V.I.P.,
But I've reached the top and had to stop,
And that's what's
botherin' me.

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I think it would be best defined as attacks in which the pirate didn't die. It might be possible for both ships to be blown up at the same time, and somebody could potentially be successful in running away.

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Aight.

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True, unfortunately.

So that leaves us with just the smacklist and the neutrality. That's all I can think of.

We should probably message the non-ares members of UNSET with links to this topic.
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Limax: Put a few light rocket launchers on that ship of yours, as well as 999 light rockets, and you've got a pretty nice ship going.

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"Typical Americanism. Somebody else does it so we have to do it wrong."

[This message has been edited by Mag Steelglass (edited 10-02-2002).]

[This message has been edited by Mag Steelglass (edited 10-02-2002).]

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That's just amazing.

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"I hate that! Your answers are always short, precise, and utterly useless!"
"Yes."

Is there a way to donate cash to our government? I find myself with 900,000+ credits, which is not a good amount to be carrying around the galaxy (especially not in a small ship like mine), so if I could find some way to use it soon...

Perhaps we could launch another colony ship?

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"I hate that! Your answers are always short, precise, and utterly useless!"
"Yes."

[This message has been edited by Avatara (edited 10-02-2002).]

A statement of policy should be as vague and boring as possible, at least in the interest of playing the political game. We want other governments, for starters anyway, to look at us as just another goverment, albiet with a stance of neutrality. Outside this statement we may take any action we want, although if it's somehow in contrast to our mission statement we should probably use a covert approach. All that aside, an alliance with Limax's gov probably isn't a bad idea, although we may want to keep it unofficial.

Avatara: I'll chip in the extra 100k to the colony ship if you really feel like spending that much.

Oh, and Volkov hit me on two seperate occasions. Mr. Woodly was the bastard who destroyed my scout.

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[url="http://"http://www.leapinglaughter.org"]Dig a little deeper[/url]
As below, so above.

Sarg, you're still showing up as independent on the universal scan, have you signed up to switch, yet?

I'm not sure if we're doing the list for attacks starting recently or for the whole game, so I'm not sure if I should load in those attacks. Mr. Woodly doesn't even appear to be in the game, can't find him on the universal scan.

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"Typical Americanism. Somebody else does it so we have to do it wrong."

Yeah, I'm willing to spend at least 800k of it, otherwise I'll just lose it soon. I've accidentially made myself a target, Volkov doesn't like being beaten.

I should be safe now, and don't intend to use my turn for a bit, just to be on the safe side.

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"I hate that! Your answers are always short, precise, and utterly useless!"
"Yes."

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I was just browsing the old Hideout website: [url="http://"http://hideout.magleague.com"]http://hideout.magleague.com[/url]
Not only does it contain a more complete backround story for the Hideout (very worth reading!), but it also has a list of active fleets and what systems they were assigned to patrol. Consotrium and NA maintained 3 each, LN had 2. CheesEv did say he was working on the fleet scripting, so its possible that, in the near future, we could have a fleet patroling our system, with orders to attack pirates on sight.

[EDIT] Limax: Good luck with that government! Will you be running it yourself, or taking in new members?

[This message has been edited by Dan-D-Man (edited 10-03-2002).]

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Er, oops, that's what I meant

Avatara: please message CheesEv and ask him to take 800,000 creds from you and 200,000 from me to launch a colony ship to Danath. Please dont lift off before the creds are taken so that the cash is secure

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lala i need a sig...maybe i should put random snippets of code from my "undisclosed project" down here

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A new background story for a new hideout is coming. It'll be by the same author as the first. (should be a nice read )

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Fleets are on my big hideout to do list. Unfortunately, I keep getting more problems or things to add that I can't get around to adding new features.

[EDIT]I don't know where you people are getting all of these leadership positions. As of now, the only thing a leader can do is manage the economy of their gov.

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[url="http://"http://www.stonfire.net"]The Hideout[/url]
Why are you here?
"Because a big clown hit me!" - The Tick

[This message has been edited by CheesEv (edited 10-03-2002).]

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As I said, the only position that exists is the financial position (Chancellor of the Exchequer). The Hideout specifically supports this, meaning that the position has actual power, instead of power by consent.

However, a good government would likely have people dictating military and political policy as well. The political and military leaders (President and Admiral) derive their power from their subordinate's willingness to follow, not any actual power invested in them.

(Sorry about that little lecture, we're just getting to the constitution in AHAP.)

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200K-250K credits from me wouldn't interfere with my plans to buy a Cruiser very soon. As long as I keep the 20K to pay my runabouts, I'm fine. To Danath! (And maybe Eeun!)

Which reminds me, not only have we not renamed Tralf yet, we don't have description for it, and that means we don't have a clue what tech level it is. I'd assume it's 0, which brings me to another point.

The Unset missions don't differ from the independent missions in any way other that the fact that only we can get them. I'd like it if there were more missions designed to start/end at Tralf (or whatever we eventually call it), in order to gradually improve it. 5K credits per day is a very small amount for any planet to produce (only enough for a single Shrike), and a tech of 0 or 1 isn't very fitting for a captial planet.

Mission ideas:
+Colonizations missions- Bring 50 tons of passengers and terraforming supplies to planet. Reward: 50K cash, increase of 2.5K/day planet income.
+Satellite delivery- Bring 35 tons of satellite equipment to our planet, leave in orbit (no need to land at destination) Reward: 60K cash, tech level +0.05.
+Diplomatic missions- bring a diplomat and his entourage (5 tons) to a planet to represent the Unset. Reward: 40K cash
+Shipyard delivery- bring 200 tons of construction equipemnt to our planet. Reward: 150K cash, tech level +0.15.

As our tech level/income gets higher, those missions should gradually be phased out in favor of ones less inclined towards development.

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"All truths are relative, except for this one."

Oops, already sent the message asking for 800k from me and 200k from Patrick. Oh well...

I don't think CheesEV will get to our colony ship right away, he sounds like he has lots of other important things to work on. I'm content with not using a turn until then though.

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"I hate that! Your answers are always short, precise, and utterly useless!"
"Yes."

It's easy enough taking the money, and once he's done that, you can move. You won't have to wait for the colony ship to get launched (almost certainly a weekend thing).

CheesEv: If I may ask, is there any way I can help with coding for the Hideout? Obviously, you can't give me access to the main php files themselves. However if you give me a few guidelines, I can produce php functions that you could include. Mission generation and combat functions would seem to be the most obvious, but I could work on others.

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"All truths are relative, except for this one."

Guys, I think we are making a strategic error in colonizing Danath.
Notice how it is located in the center of LN space, which would make defining our borders rather difficult. Also notice that Danath and Eeun have very harsh planet environments, so we'd have do dig deep underground cities if we were to colonize.

Now, the Fatax-Lutra-Osculiath triangle looks very promising indeed. Once colonised, we could move our capitol there, and have a strong center, with one distant colony, kind of like the New Alliance. Remember, like Washington DC, capitols do not have to be the largest of the bunch.

Don't be so sure of that. Remember, the LN is simply an organization of planets that don't want to get pirated and that prefer not to get involved in the New Alliance/Consortium struggle. There aren't any "LN players."

What does this mean? It means that, if we can organize successful expeditions against pirates and fend off NA/Con advances without making any advances by ourselves, there is a legitimate possibility that some LN planets would want to join us. If LN and Unset space were already intermingled, it would make it that much easier. We wouldn't likely get Tangier or Wiggin, but Utopos and Quadros are already developed planets that are situated in the center of prospective Unset space.

Now, I don't deny that the Fatax-Lutra-Osculiath triangle would make a good centralized power. However, Fatax is on the main route between NA/Con space. Putting ourselves in there would mean that we would almost certainly have to either ally with or fight against the NA, which is undesirable. It's also not as defensible - we'd need more fleet power to defend fewer planets.

Note that I'm assuming that we would either have [Tralf, Utopos, Quadros, Danath, Montar, and Turok], OR [Fatax, Osculiath, Lutra, Lorry, and Glycol].

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"All truths are relative, except for this one."

You raise a very valid point: It would be difficult to maintain neutrality in the Fatax triangle. However, colonizing Danath and Eeun would effectively make us an extension of the LN. I also think that it would be difficult (especially without anyone playing the LN) to convince the League of Nations to give us half of their planets. It would be hard to persuade any colonised planet to join us, for that matter, but Lorry and Glycol might be easier since they are independent.

So, in short, I don't think that colonising Danath is such a great move, but since I don't have much else to suggest, I'll shut up about it.

The colony ship has been funded, should launch sometime this weekend.

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"I hate that! Your answers are always short, precise, and utterly useless!"
"Yes."

I never gotten the impression that the LN was particularly unified. I'd imagine that, if Utopos and Quadros thought they were better off with us, they would break away and join us. It's not an action of the LN itself, but it still gets us the planets. Convincing the planets would essentially mean convincing CheesEv - this would be accomplished by establishing a clear policy of neutrality and adhering to it, as well as going out of our way to kill pirates.

Note that, when we colonize Danath, we will hold the key to Montar and Turok. One well-placed fleet in Danath secures that entire region. It's the same deal as with Lorry and Glycol, except closer to Tralf.

After thinking about it, colonizing Eeun would be a mistake, since it's not at all defensible. However, Danath is the most defensible system on the map, since there are two decent systems behind with no other paths out.

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"All truths are relative, except for this one."

So we can break this all down into:
Danath/Eeun area: intermingles with LN space, making defining border space difficult, but keeps our territory centralized.
Fatax/Lutra/Osculiath triangle: might give us some influence over the colony worlds, but its location means we'd be spread out and at a disadvantage in the war.

So Danath/Eeun's main disadvantage is intermingling with LN territory. I'm not really sure how this is a disadvantage. People could consider the general area mixed territory.
Fatax/Lutra/Osculiath's main disadvantages are spreading us out, which I'm not sure if it's that big a disadvantage, and shmucking us in the war, which I know is.

So I vote for Danath/Eeun.
.

On a somewhat unrelated topic, I think we should avoid piracy, unlike the Consortium and NA, except for pirating pirates and such.

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"Typical Americanism. Somebody else does it so we have to do it wrong."

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Another point - the LN won't really care if we're in the same area, and we get the use of their fleets as a defense against pirates.

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Agreed - we want to use netrality as a playing card as long as possible. First, we can use it to discourage the NA and the Consortium from angering us, and it also serves as an argument to claim Utopos and Quadros. Pirating pirates is only fair, plus it earns us kudos for maintaining galactic order and such.

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"All truths are relative, except for this one."

I think one of the future updates is going to be a larger galaxy. The current one is a bit small indeed, and when CheesEV gets around to expanding the universe (which'll take some time, seeing as how he's bogged down enough now) we'll have other places we can try to expand.

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"I hate that! Your answers are always short, precise, and utterly useless!"
"Yes."