Does anyone know the formula SEIV uses to calculate score?

[raynor]

I understand that the Twin Galaxies tournament requires every ship to be filled full of components. This was done to prevent the scoring loophole whereby a starbase with just a computer affected the score more than a fully loaded ship which took much longer to build.

But is that rule enough of a restriction to obtain an honest score?

I'm guessing that if an empty Star Base contributes more to your score than a fully loaded cruiser, then this also means that a fully loaded cruiser which took 20 turns to build contributes the same score as one which took only 2 turns to build.

I should think the score should be based on the total resources required to build the ship. Until it does so, a much more honest score would be the one obtained if the player scrapped all ships and units before submitting the save game.

(Granted, the retrofit loophole is still present in this score...)

[raynor]

In a prevous post, Nyx quoted another person who said:

--- <Begin manual quote> ---
I also have done some work on what combination of ship size to component arrangement gives you the most bang for the
buck in score to maint ratio.

Then, Nyx said that he thought this was the sign of a good player.
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I would agree that he is a skillful competitor in the Twin Galaxies tournament, but I might not agree that he is a good SE IV player. Here is why:

I think he is saying that he has figured out which components take the most space but cost the least amount of minerals. In other words, he is meeting the requirements of the Twin Galaxies Tournament by filling up his ships. But he is still exploiting a fundamental problem in how the game calculates the score.

For example, let's say that I spend 20 turns building a ship with a stellar manipulation component. My total ship cost is 60,000 minerals, and my maintenance each turn is 15,000 minerals. But this ship is just a 300 KT destroyer class ship which contributes *exactly* the same to the score as a destroyer loaded up with cheap cargo bay components which might only cost 4000 minerals to build with a maintenance of 1000 minerals per turn.

I'm impressed that he found this loophole in how SE IV calculates the score and hope he uses it to skillfully win the Twin Galaxies Tournament. But I wouldn't call him a good SE IV player.

My definition of a good player is someone who designs a 15KT ship which he uses to destroy a much more expensive enemy ship.

Just my two cents worth...

[geoschmo]

Well I can't speak for Nyx, but I am the one he was quoting.

I would agree with you 110% that it doesn't make me a better SEIV player. I would no doubt get my behind spanked by many of you in a multi-player game.

However, in a multi-player game I would never dream of using some of the strategies that would make one be succesful in a tournament such as the one twingalaxies is hosting.

The fact is though that if you are going to have a competition open to all, you have to come up with some way of figuring out who was the winner. They have just decided that score is the way they are going to do that. So it makes sense for us to discuss various strategies to accoplish that goal. It doesn't mean your way of rating players is any less valid.

IDIC right?

I think this is just because twingalaxies has been around for a long time and this is what they are used to doing. It makes sense in pinball or other video games to use score.(Really it wouldn't make sense to use anything else in those games. Maybe how many beers you drink while playing?)

My favorite thing about Space Empires is the flexibiltiy it gives you. It has something for everybody. Ability to mod, different victory conditions, and so on.

[This message has been edited by geoschmo (edited 25 January 2001).]

[This message has been edited by geoschmo (edited 25 January 2001).]

[Drake]

I guess it doesn't matter all that much what method you use to determine the winner. Whatever you choose, the better players will just adapt their strategy to suit the situation.

Even by adding the latest restriction to the rules concerning outfitting ships, people are still going to build ships which maximize their score/cost ratio as opposed to ships which would be most useful in battle. I wasn't the one who sent in the score obtained by 2000 empty battle stations, but that's just because I hadn't gotten to turn 150 yet.

Now we have to pretend that what we're building has some use. It seems a bit contrived, but if they say I just have to fill the hull, I'll be creating an empire-wide shortage on organic armor. (now there's a balance idea - make components more expensive the more you use them, heh)

-Drake

[Nyx]

quote:

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I understand that the Twin Galaxies tournament requires every ship to be filled full of components

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Not true, a destroyer needs 210, more than would fit on a frigate. Not completely full, just enough to require the hull chosen. There's a big difference. Thanks for the post though, this one's going in the FAQ.

quote:

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I guess what I'm getting at is I find this to be a little... well, arrogant. The tone implies that there's a line that should be clearly drawn, and if you don't see it, you're a 'cheater' not a 'champion'. No hard feelings here, but while most would agree on the infinite retrofit being a cheat, I think you'd see a lot of different opinions on things like maintenance, taking advantage of AI, and the like.

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Well, arrogant wasn't intended, elitist was. A champion at anything is a rolemodel. In an ideal world they'd be both skilled and morally upstanding. This isn't always the case, but it is what we, as an officiating body, are obligated to aim at. A number of our best players, Billy Mitchell, Ron Corcoran, "Captain Canada," and Ben Addair, to name a small number off the top of my head, are really great guys who help out a lot in ensuring things are don fairly, making sure that the person who really is the best player gets the credit, not just someone who knows all the best rules exploits. Not all our world record holders are that kind of person, but that's what we aim for. And I definitely appreciate bringing the subject up (hopefully you could tell I was inspired by the length of my response) and I'm really enjoying people's thoughts.

The more I deal with this contest the more I'm becomming aware of the difference between you guys and the people playing our other World Championship (Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2) We've got people in that group cussing out our refs for catching them cheating and telling us that we're not running a fair contest because they can't avoid using the bug we caught them using so we should have made it legal in the contest. All the rules changes we've made for SE4 came when people e-mailed me about bugs they discovered with the scoring system. Not once have they come up because we caught someone "cheating."

quote:

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I'm guessing that if an empty Star Base contributes more to your score than a fully loaded cruiser, then this also means that a fully loaded cruiser which took 20 turns to build contributes the same score as one which took only 2 turns to build.

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As well it should. Score is *supposed* to represent your power in the game. How long that cruiser took to build shouldn't impact that, IMO (though I think total shipyard capacity would be an interesting value to add to score). By your premise, anything built at a shipyard 2 should only provide 2/3 the score points of the exact same ship built at the lower tech shipyard. And anyone with temporal tech and their 4xs speed shipyards would be realy screwed.

quote:

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I would agree that he is a skillful competitor in the Twin Galaxies tournament, but I might not agree that he is a good SE IV player.

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A good strategist knows how to alter his strategies to fit the required victory conditions. Those strats that will give you a fast military victory aren't as valuable in a game where the only victory condition is first one to reach a specific % of the tech tree. The better players recognize what is required to win, and find the strategy that will achieve that victory fastest and most securely. When victory is defined purely by tactical combat, your definition holds true, but what good does it do if he uses his knowledge of score manipulation to get such a high score so swiftly that three AI players surrender to him and your "perfect" destroyer, able to kill cruisers one on one, gets attacked by huge fleets of cruisers, more than it can handle? He beat you with economics. Tactics is battlefield only, Space Empires is a strategy game, economy and diplomacy and many other variables are important. mastery of only one is not the same as mastery of all. So your fleets are indestructable, fine, do you have enough of an economy to defeat me in a war of attrition? Can you withstand my intelligence onslaught? Can you protect your stars from my stellar weapons? Do you control the pace of the game or do you only react to your opponent's actions? IMO, limiting skill to one strategy alone is not a good idea.

And I said that Geo's behavior was *a* sign of a good player, not the only one. And I didn't mean score tweaking itself. Taking the time to figure out what exactly are the best methods to achieve the required victory condition, that's what I was complimenting. In this application it meant learning the ins and outs of the scoring system, but that same behavior would also apply to learning which weapons provide the best range, reload, damage, tonnage, and research costs. I've seen a lot of info on range and damage, bt very little on research costs. In a Last-man standing game is the wave motion gun really all that good? I'll top out on the psychic weapon tree about the same time you've just gotten access to ripper beams. It gets back to the question of is a dreagnaught really better than a cruiser, the cruiser may well obliterate the shipyard before it finishes the dreadnaught. In a purely tactical situation, the dreadnaught is always superior, but this isn't a tactical game, its strategic.

quote:

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Really it wouldn't make sense to use anything else in those games. Maybe how many beers you drink while playing?

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What a great idea! Sadly we had to ban marathon games, but I think a contest to see who could drink the most beers while playing pinball might enable a comeback of the marathon-style contest! JK

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Compete in the Space Empires IV World Championship at www.twingalaxies.com.

[raynor]

I said:

I'm guessing that if an empty Star Base contributes more to your score than a fully loaded cruiser, then this also means that a fully loaded cruiser which took 20 turns to build contributes the same score as one which took only 2 turns to build.

Then, Nyx said:

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As well it should. Score is *supposed* to represent your power in the game. How long that cruiser took to build shouldn't impact that, IMO (though I think total shipyard capacity would be an interesting value to add to score). By your premise, anything built at a shipyard 2 should only provide 2/3 the score points of the exact same ship built at the lower tech shipyard. And anyone with temporal tech and their 4xs speed shipyards would be realy screwed.
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What I meant was that a ship that takes ten times as long to build costs ten times as many minerals. Sorry for not being more clear!

I think the cost of a ship in minerals should significantly impact the score. For example:

Empire 1 has maxed out his tech and is pulling in an impressive 2,000,000 minerals each turn. Let's say that they build a cruiser loaded up with the latest high tech gadgets so that their ships are KT for KT the baddest thing in space. Let's say that a single 300KT ship costs a ridiculous 50,000 minerals to build.

Now, Empire 2 is stuck in the stone age. They're still building 150KT ships which cost 5,000 minerals to build.

So, Empire 1 has 20 300KT ships patrolling its borders. These ships cost an even million minerals to build *and* 250,000 minerals per turn in maintenance.

Empire 2 also has 20 300KT ships patrolling its borders. These ships cost a total of 100,000 minerals to build and 25,000 minerals per turn for maintenance.

Clearly, Empire 1 is going to have the larger score because they will have more systems, planets, population, tech level, resource production, intel production, etcetera.

But both empires are going to have IDENTICAL scores for their ships.

Does the number and type of ships from contribute equally to each empire's power?

If you can convince me they do, I'm going to consider you one heck of a salesman. :-)

[This message has been edited by raynor (edited 25 January 2001).]

[Nyx]

One problem complicating that scenario is that many advanced Versions of technologies cost exactly the same as the simpler ones, sometimes they cost less. For example, angine III costs less than engine I, shouldn't it give you a higher score representing your higher tech ship? Same with the guns, a wavemotion III costs the same as wavemotion I, shouldn't you get a higher score for the more advanced gun? If you go by the resource cost (and I assume that you were only using minerals as an example, not claiming that only minerals should be counted) then the advanced ships will often cost the same as a basic ship.

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Compete in the Space Empires IV World Championship at www.twingalaxies.com.