CalifDude

I'm resigning from Team A. When I joined MVL, which features teams, rules, scores and a commissioner, I assumed the games would be played on a level playing field and there would be a fair-minded commissioner. I do not feel that has been true in my case. I was subjected to a drastic penalty not incurred by anything I did, and to which other players were not at risk. Where's the fun in that? Many thanks to my teammates on Team A...Mumblefratz, DethAdder, PlayJeff and Piznit...who hav

Thanks, guys.

The Manual and everyone here insist that resource starbases built on galactic resources are powerful and very much worth having, so I've built them when available. But I don't see any of the benefits showing up in the details screens of my colonies. Several times I've had a resource starbase with a module near a colony, within the 8 pc range, but no bonus showed up in the colony details. Is there any way to verify the benefit you are getting from these bases?

Are you sure you were playing Dark Avatar? I've played only DA and never heard of The Tactician, Qolventz or Armorfiends.

SB, you will see my post expressing outrage at the perceived unfairness of the Round 7 game placing the DA players in jeopardy of mega events after the Jagged Knife struck me in mid coitus. Mumblefratz calmed me down by pointing out that all I had to do was load my previous autosave and continue...which I did. I assumed that they would always strike at the same turn, but did not happen...they did strike two more times but each time I simply went to the autosave, so no real harm done. My rant

Can anyone explain the difference between an ARC and a mod? If you play anything else but what you downloaded from Stardock or came off of the CD, aren't you playing a modded game? Where does it end? In Round 8, a player called Einstein figures out a little tweak of the .bcd files. No big deal. Just that when he captures an AI colony he gets 3 of their techs instead of one. In Round 9, a player called Paris Hilton diddles with the .xyz files. Very minor, not a mod or anything

I feel strongly about this issue. To me, if you modify a game file you are no longer playing DA you are playing some other game. I don't know what an xml file is and don't think I or any other player should be expected to learn to be a junior hacker and risk screwing up his DA download to keep up with the other players. If anyone wants to play on their own with mods or ARC's that is up to them, but I think those have no place in a competition with a common set of rules and an honor system.<br/

And in other news...CalifDude is alive and well. He has survived the unfairness of Round 7 enabling mega events in DA, and is back on the job carrying the water bucket and towel for Team A.

A very good explanation, thanks.

Neilo, I've never played DL and I'm not interested in...oh, forget it.

I stayed up till 2 am this morning to work on a good DA game I have going, by far my personal best game...and then got hit with Jagged Knife. The Knife took 4 of my 12 colonies and 40% of my population, and a huge bite into my economy. There's no way I can maintain my fleet. I had built up every possible bonus for soldiering, which under the rules of the Jagged Knife Mega Event means that the Knife's soldiers will have all those bonuses if I try to take back my colonies. I might be able to

Has anybody had any experience with this ability? If I understand it right, it gives you a chance of picking up a free tech sometime...is that correct? Do you think it is worth picking up if you have one of your ten ability points left and no good place to use it? Thanks for replies.

First question is, did you replay the movies of the battles and see the sequence of shots by each ship, damage done and so forth? I would think that would have given you the answers to your questions. In your first example, seems you should have won, but were unlucky with the roll. It is possible that the random number generator makes the same roll when you restart and replay, so not as perfectly random as one would like...that's the only explanation I can think of for your result. I

I'm no expert but my advice would be to just ignore them. Here's what I've learned from some very good players: It is not worth the number of turns to gain the techs to colonize these planets, partly because even when you colonize them, they are of poor quality, meaning that they don't produce as much as habitable planets...so don't colonize them. Secondly: Some of the AI races (Krynn for one) make a habit of going after them...this makes the AI easier prey for you because they spend so man

Thanks to all for a good discussion.

In many posts in these forums, you read about the "all factories" game. That could mean more than one thing, so my question is, exatly what do you mean when you use that term? You have three ways, at least, of going all out for factories: By using all of your social production to build and rush-buy factories (no labs or research centers?); by keeping the slide bar set for something like 100% social production or 50% military and 50% social

DA, Crippling Level. I captured two uninhabitable planets that had been colonized by AI, a Class 18 and a Class 20, after AI had had them for a while. The capture was by normal invasion so the invasions didn't reduce the quality of the planets. Both colonies had nice arrays of buildings: manufacturing centers, research academies, fusion power plants etc.. Their tiles were colored, one green and one blue to signify their condition of being barren or aquatic or whatever.

Thanks to all for an interesting discussion with different points of view. I'm glad I posted the question.

Thank you.

How effective do you find having trade routes with the AI's to keep them from declaring war on you? I haven't been using trade for several games now, but IIRC having trade routes going with AI's didn't stop them from attacking me. What do you say? Thanks for replies.

I've disabled Mega Events in all my games so far because I don't want my keen eye and steady hand disrupted by something beyond my control. But I will be playing a game with Mega Events so I ask you, are they always bad; sometimes good, sometimes bad; or always good? Are there so many different kinds and so unpredictable that there is no known strategy for dealing with them? Or are there certain precautions good players take when Mega Events are possible? Thank

I agree with Neilo, an invalid game is the same as no submission at all. Justinsane's valid game is all that counts. For M: There are pleasure piers set up for restaurants and retail fish markets, souvenir shops, kids, fishing off the pier, tourists etc. with parking and safety rails. There are commercial piers set up for unloading fish, loading ice and bait and nets, truck traffic and fish processing sheds...not the best place for Aunt Verna and her two kids from Dubuque.

[quote]Oh, thanks! I should have thought of that myself. The timestamp on my game was 2/19/2008 at 10:58:59 AM. My JustinSane5 character is Metaverse League/tournament exclusive, and I'd not been planning on playing another game on that character until round 8, but this makes a lot more sense.[/quote] Um...I'm wondering if there is ...um...a typo here, in that a time stamp of 2/19 is about ten days before the specs for Round 7 were posted on...um... 2/29.

Being new to the group, I hesitate to make suggestions about the game, I prefer to go along with whatever the old hands want to do, but I feel strongly enough about the scoring of the ties in Round 6 to speak up. I coach softball and have directed tournaments for many years and have the scars to show from having had to deal with tie scores. IMHO: Basically, a team or player earns one-half point for a tie. Suppose you agree that lowest average submission rank gets one bonus point.

Hey, Kzinti...isn't it out of character for you to be cozying up to the AI's with trade routes? I thoght you cats were EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVVVVVVVVVVVIIIIIIIIL!!