There's a huge difference between lurking and trolling. Hell, they are almost diametrically opposed, as almost by definition one needs to post to troll, and lurking is defined as following topics without posting.

I don't participate much because I never joined the empire, despite several invitations. And I don't play ZYW games, so most of the conversation doesn't really interest me. That doesn't mean none of it ever will.

But at least I made it into the credits, which is probably more than you did

@Willy: Sorry for the spoilers, but any topic is fair game here, especially sci-fi related things.  There will always be a chance that you might read spoilers about something or other.  You have always been welcome here, and always will be.

@Neilo: That last post was not necessary.  If you want to intentionally try to aggravate people you need to be doing it in other threads.

If either of you want to continue this squabble, take it to PMs.

Sentient species taste better...

fasteddie wished to rephrase this posting because it was rude. fasteddie wants to join this empire and be nice.

So just in case you are reading we need to watch what topics we discuss? You happened into our discussion. It was your fault not ours. We should not have to quell a topic for the fear others may not want to know about it.

The fact that you beleive we should have proves how insignificant you are.

@KP not necassary in your opinion maybe, but justified in mine.

Fast Eddie, you were the victim of a situation out of your control. You just made a bad call and went about things the wrong way. Best as i can tell that situation was resolved with little harm done.

For the Record, i act for me, no one else. My comments are mine and not the ToE's. The ToE will treat others as they themselves are treated.

Anyway, i hate folks acting in a manner that i do not like in my empire thread so i will take my leave of the Kzin.

Good choice, FastEddie111.  I'm looking forward to meeting you on the field of battle.  It'll be glorious.    

I realize my perspective is somewhat skewed from the norm here. I spend more time at gamefaqs than I do here, so their rules strike me as the usual way of buisiness - no wonder, as I'm on the mod staff there. By their standards, half the last page would have been deleted as spoilers without warning, and probably a third of the post count on the entire site would go due to profanity or other things they consider offensive, or trolling, or flaming. So from that perspective, dropping something like this without even the courtesy of a spoiler tag is a serious violation of their ToU.

My original complaint was meant half jokingly anyway, because I *do* realize I'm not on my home turf, so to speak. BSG is probably the only currently running (well, not any more) show that I would have cared about anyway. So spoil away, and I'll just read at my own risk.

fasteddie's hoarde of yor minions already decimating the hapless dreadlords game creatures. fasteddie post big score soon. fasteddie knows that motti is the "One". fasteddie not the One. no, not the One. but fasteddie fights on with grim determination in the face of being stomped by the One. fasteddie not afraid. no shame in losing to the One.

Ahh...Yor.  I used to play as the Yor quite often.  I might take them up again as a race.  Having the enemy slow to a crawl when they get within my sites is a thing of beauty.  Sitting ducks, just waiting to be harvested. 

*sigh*

Thanks to SS's observation, I discovered that I have been making a terrible strategic error. It would seem that the kilzone computers and like modules do not actually add to the military score.

*sigh*

To determine if they do anything at all, I am going to conduct some experiments using a cheat-enabled ToA game. I will build a giant ship to give to the AI, then attack it with lesser ships. Some will have the atlas modules, others will not. The after-combat stats should tell me how many HP each type of ship inflicted prior to being destroyed. I will also mod myself and the AI to have 100% luck to ensure full weapon power.

*sigh*

And here I was being all smug, thinking I had the military scoring figured out.

i am playing the dread lords version since i own the game of the year edition. i think it will be the best way to develop good scoring habits. no fancy bells and whistles for zathros. old school all the way. give me a 2x4 soaked in motor oil, a decent home planet, and i'm good.

 @ FastEddie, Zathros, that's is name I have heard in long time since Babylon 4 disappered a thousand years into the past. "He's not the one"

@Snark - What?!?! The Killzone computers don't help military score???? OMG.  (Here CL breaks down into whimpers of frustration and pain). I've been patiently nurturing the Korath for the last two weeks and the last two games trying to get them to build Killzone's for me. I could have finished both these games much earlier if I had known this. Thank you for bringing this to my attention (and thanks to SS for discovering it). Good karma to you and bad cess to SD for nerfing so many things in TA.

Thanks, CL!

Here's how I confirmed it. I started a game using the Drengins in ToA. I gave myself all techs and 200,000 bc. I designed two Rangers w/BHGs. One had the KzCs, and one or 2 less BHG's. Then I quicksaved (over a couple of years worth of Kang's game - just damn). I rush-bought a ranger w/o KzCs, played 20 turns, and retired. I opened the save, rush-bought the other ranger, played 20 turns, and retired. The military score was higher with the ship that did NOT have the atlas module. I was so dismayed that I repeated, hoping for a more desirable outcome, to no avail.

@ Willy,  I've seen you on GameFaqs many times. I also know that you've been here for quite a while if not on the last ten pages of this thread. As KP said, you are always wecome here.

As a member of this empire now, I'd like to appologize for the way you were spoken to while here. For the record I "heard" the tone of humor or semi-humor in your post. While I feel for you, though, I would have to agree with KP's post. However, I'd hardly call you a troll by any means.

Wow.  Sorry to read about your dissappointment, snark. 

And yours, clanlindsey. 

Hopefully, the rest of your strats will pull mega scores from your games anyway.  I'm confident that they will.

Welcome FastEddie111!  Fight with honor and bravery, show no mercy to our enemies, and you will serve the Empire well.

@GmOOnii: B5 was one of my favorite sci-fi series.  One of my favorite quotes is from Mr. Morden, going around and asking representatives of the major powers, "What do you want?"  None of them knew the enormity and importance of that seemingly innocuous question.

@CaptainYar: Well said.  I expressed much the same sentiments to Willy in a PM.

Sentient species taste better...

I sure wish I'd know about killzone not adding to score a lot earlier. At least now I know I don't have to worry about it. I assume the same holds true for all attack and defense fleet modules?

And guys, really. I *can* be offended, but someone would have to try a lot harder than that to do it. I just hope Neilo isn't pissed off enough to avoid this topic.

Correct.  They're a firepower bonus, but it doesn't factor into military might.  Snark is going to see if he can do some testing on seeing if even the firepower bonus works properly.

I told a couple of people that in my testing it wasn't increasing military might, but got some contradictory responses, so I wanted independent confirmation.  Snark's is one, certainly, but the more the merrier-two games being bugged is almost as likely as one being bugged.  So if anyone else wants to test it, I'd appreciate it.

~rubs temples~  Man, a small wrench in the works for this friggin' 2009 tax cut portion of the stimulus bill.

Ok, so the speal is, $400 for a single person, $800 for a couple.  You could take that as a simple $400 a head, but if 1 of the couple doesn't work, then that mentality would put the couple at $400, so instead someone filing married gets $800 out over a year.  The problem with that part of it is that if both work and are filing as Married, then both get $800 over a year, putting the couple's total to $1,600, leading to underpaying one's taxes...

~rubs temples~

I understand that this method would give the tax break to someone who is working all year long instead of someone who works for a portion of the year like last year's check's did, but this small little 'oops' is goingto cause so much heartache next year during income tax season.

It's actually a good thing in disguise. Imagine being married to a demonic shrike who spends her spare time servicing scruffy truckers in exchange for...well....pretty much nothing. As bad as it is to discover this unpleasant truth during the honeymoon, it would be much worse to discover it years later.

I appreciate the vote of confidence! I'll get that million-pointer someday.

@SS: I was using the latest version from Impulse. It may well be that earlier versions behave differently. I second the desire to hear from others regarding their experiences.

well, i'm satisfied this little strategy i originally suggested for TA is in fact bunk, at least with regard to its effect on military score--which is a shame, really. it's the sort of thing i'd request they change, but i feel it'd fall on deaf ears. while there's still at least one update on its way, i don't get the impression the devs would be interested in a way to open up still higher MV scores. i don't wish to be insulting, so this shouldn't be read that way: the past pattern has been towards diminishing potential scores (recent records not withstanding) rather than openning up new possibilites. still, if anyone wanted to put this in as a dev request, i'd get behind it. IMO it's not even just an MV score issue; the relationship is also important to how the AI evaluates potential threats. AFAIK they use those numbers. if it turns out they don't even have an impact in combat, that's definitely a bug that should be addressed.

Indeed.  If Snark doesn't get around to testing it soon, I may have to.

Also a valid point-the only thing against it is that it's easy enough to get a large enough military value to make the AI bend over backwards without them.  It would be a relatively rare instance where you'd place one of these on a sub-20 attack ship, or so I would imagine.  (But I could well be wrong.)

The first test:

Attacking ships were large w/10 BHGs. One had an added Killzone Computer. We'll call it the KZL.

Defending ship: Huge w/1 BHG and a bunch of armor.

I ran this several times on the Full Fleet Battle setting. I did not mod the "luck". The KZL caused 90 HP of damage in the first round of attack in every test. The other Large only caused 62.

Therefore, it would seem that this particular atlas module works in combat.

true, but i think you're also looking at it from a point-farming perspective. i've played more classic games where i neglected to stay competative militarily, or just didn't try and hammer out my domination immediately -- and in those cases building a military force suddenly and up to snuff compared to an aggressive AI that had plenty of time to expand wasn't so easy.

My question is even if the military might formula did factor in attack modules, how much of an effect would that have?  How much scarier would you look to the AI?  It's either going to be not enough, or you're so far beyond that point that it doesn't matter.  IMHO, anyway.