Stellar manip and movement in simultaneous game

[douglas]

I just tested it, and retrofitting does not change ship ID. Note that ship ID is NOT strictly by build order, as any destroyed ship's ID becomes available again.

[ToddT]

I think your over looking a little detail, i think retrofit occurs before ship under construction completes. constructed items complete at end of turn, retrofit occurs at begining, so its possible under your test id gets reassigned to the retrofitshiped, if id's do change with retrofit. joachims sm ship has been around since before turn 66 i know his 4 ships other than the sm where designed and built afterward. There may be a ship or two of mine that predates it but not likely.

[geoschmo]

Douglas, how are you testing Ship ID#. This isn't something that is visible is it?

ToddT, your assumption seems to be that retrofit changes ship ID becasue you believe that Joachims ship predated "most if not all" of your ships that got away. However, if Douglas is correct, you'd have to be 100% sure that all your ships were newer than Joachims. Not just some, but all, since according to his info the fleet moves with the lowest ID ship. You are positive that you didn't have any ships in that fleet that had been around for a while in the game? An old LC that you had brought up to date or something?

[douglas]

douglas said:
A ship's ID number is a unique identifier assigned to ships when they are built. It is not visible to the player. The first available ID is the one assigned. When a ship is destroyed, its ID becomes available again.

Now for a way to make all this information actually useful: Ships are sorted in the fleet transfer screen by ID number, lowest ID at the top.

I tested retrofitting's effect on ship ID by building three ships and scrapping the first. The two ships remaining had ID number 2 and 3 (assume for this discussion that ID's start at 1). I then retrofitted ship 3 to another design. It was still listed after ship 2 in the fleet transfer screen, so its ID was >2. I then built two more ships. The order in the fleet transfer screen was then first new ship, ship 2, retrofitted ship 3, second new ship. The retrofitted ship's ID was therefore 3 both before and after the retrofit, even though ID 1 was available when the retrofit was done. Note that each action (scrap, retrofit, build, etc.) was done on a separate turn to make absolutely sure that order of events within a turn would have no effect on the trial.

geoschmo said:
ToddT, your assumption seems to be that retrofit changes ship ID becasue you believe that Joachims ship predated "most if not all" of your ships that got away. However, if Douglas is correct, you'd have to be 100% sure that all your ships were newer than Joachims. Not just some, but all, since according to his info the fleet moves with the lowest ID ship. You are positive that you didn't have any ships in that fleet that had been around for a while in the game? An old LC that you had brought up to date or something?

Once again, I reiterate that relative AGE DOES NOT CORRESPOND DIRECTLY TO SHIP ID. Suppose you have ships 1, 2, 3, and 4. 2 gets destroyed. Another ship gets built. The new ship WILL NOT be ship 5. Instead, it will take 2's empty slot. The new ship 2 was built after 3 and 4, but has a lower ID number.

[geoschmo]

douglas said:
Once again, I reiterate that relative AGE DOES NOT CORRESPOND DIRECTLY TO SHIP ID. Suppose you have ships 1, 2, 3, and 4. 2 gets destroyed. Another ship gets built. The new ship WILL NOT be ship 5. Instead, it will take 2's empty slot. The new ship 2 was built after 3 and 4, but has a lower ID number.

So basically there is nothing you can do to guarantee your ship will have a lower ID number. An older ship might, but you can't be sure it will because of ID# reuse.

So because of this "feature" there is a bit of a random element at play here. You are taking a chance with your stellar manip trap unless you can catch the other guys fleet somewhere other than sitting on a warp point. He might be able to get away, and he might not.

I actually don't hate that now that we know. It was just really frustrating not knowing one way or the other.

[Slick]

Not only can you not guarantee the placement of your ship, but it could be affected by the destruction of an enemy ship whose empire you haven't even met yet.

I would think that in the mid-game and beyond where combat is common, new ships are quasi-randomly distributed throughout the list with a tendency to be at the bottom since in general more ships are built than destroyed as the game progresses. A massive fleet battle would open up lots of intermeidate slots, though. I really don't see what a player could do with that information to make any significant difference in a game; especially since you can't know the position of any other empire's ships.

[ToddT]

So its safe say that FAQ isn't really wrong, its just how Stardestroyer works as advertised in theory, but in practice, its essentially irrelevant, leaving a decent window for possible escape.

joachim had 4 ships there that moved once before being vaporized and those designs where built after his SM ship for sure, i had a couple BB's with dubious pedigrees so who knows. there where lots of battles prior to that, so its safe to say ship id's are fairly random.

[Slick]

I'm including all the important points here in the new update. I'd say that since it lead to a problem in a game it at least needs to be modified. Keep in mind that this ship ID concept is a pretty new discovery in the history of the game and nobody except MM really knows the mechanisms behind the game.

Going OT for a moment. Take the idea of fleet experience. Many of us had tried to figure it out by testing and nobody could come up with how it worked. One day Aaron replied to an email question and then we found that: for each kill made by a ship in a fleet, there is a 25% chance that the fleet gets 0.1% experience. [It's in the "Updated the FAQ" thread and it's already included in the new update.] But who would have been able to figure this out by testing??? It is very obscure I remember testing this myself and others posting their results; nobody was able to reproduce other's results. It was a mystery. I'm sure there are other parts of this game that don't really work the way they seem; and every once in a while we all see something that just doesn't look right but can't duplicate it.

[douglas]

ToddT said:
there where lots of battles prior to that, so its safe to say ship id's are fairly random.

Not quite. I have just tested it, and I have confirmed that construction is handled one player at a time in order by player number, regardless of order of colonization of planets belonging to different empires (I didn't test order of construction within an empire). This means that ships belonging to players higher up on the list, particularly player 1, tend to have lower ID's, and therefore have an easier time escaping star destruction death traps but a harder time pursuing enemies in certain circumstances.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

You're all crazy and obsessed.