Paul,
Neat. Can you tell us which rating and can you list the buckets? Thanks.

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Tuesday, June 04, 2013 - 06:36 pm: Edit

New Player (i.e. no rating): Cadet
0-1699: Ensign
1700-1999: Lieutenant
2000-2299: Commander
2300-2599: Captain
2600-2799: Admiral
2800-?: Fleet Admiral

By Francois Lemay (Princeton) on Tuesday, June 04, 2013 - 08:26 pm: Edit

Where are these SUPR ratings found ?

Thanks.

Cheers
Frank

By Josh Driscol (Gfb) on Tuesday, June 04, 2013 - 09:23 pm: Edit

http://home.comcast.net/~rwschirmer/SUPR_INDEX.htm

By Mike Kenyon (Mikek) on Tuesday, June 04, 2013 - 11:55 pm: Edit

Looks like Omega p3s (not p1s) don't count at all for the phaser capacitor management. They don't get added to the capacitor or subtracted from when fired.

Tested on the Maesron TC.

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Wednesday, June 05, 2013 - 06:36 am: Edit

Ok. Found the issue. It will be fixed in the next release.

By Mike Kenyon (Mikek) on Wednesday, June 05, 2013 - 02:55 pm: Edit

Thanks! Much appreciated.

By Stephen McCann (Moose) on Wednesday, June 05, 2013 - 03:23 pm: Edit

Paul F. In a game today I found that the automatic phaser cap thing doesn't work with a gat. Even when I selected 4 pulse mode it only deducted .25 from the caps.

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Wednesday, June 05, 2013 - 04:10 pm: Edit

Stephen,
Yeah. I need to work on that one.

By Josh Driscol (Gfb) on Sunday, June 09, 2013 - 01:32 pm: Edit

Is there any way to set a shuttles speed plot at EA like a ship?

By Josh Driscol (Gfb) on Friday, July 12, 2013 - 02:31 pm: Edit

I've been trying to make user defined fighters for awhile and cant seem to get the SFB fighter tool to work.

The SFB Fighter tool doesn't have an edit or tool menu, most of the others have them and they really help align the boxes and resize the boxes when the auto detect doesn't work.

Are there any tricks to using the fighter tool that I don't how to use?

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Saturday, July 13, 2013 - 04:33 pm: Edit

Josh,
Currently, the only way to set a speed plot for a shuttle is to right-click on the shuttle and select "Change Speed Plot..."

When it comes to the fighter def tool, it is a rather simple tool. You select the type of box that you want to add and click on the box that is that type. If you need to move boxes, just select a type OTHER THAN "Delete Box" and click on the box and drag it to the new location. If you adding a weapon that is on the SSD remember to select a weapon number for each box. Then define any other weapon on the "Non-SSD Weapons" tab.

That is all there is to the tool.

By Josh Driscol (Gfb) on Saturday, July 13, 2013 - 04:40 pm: Edit

What do you do if the box size auto detection creats a box that's not the right size?

That's the problem I have had, I could just change my fighters to use the box size the Fighter tool suggests I think its 12 x 13.

I didn't realize you could drag the boxes around, that will help with aligning them properly.

Thanks Paul

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Tuesday, July 23, 2013 - 06:57 pm: Edit

Josh,
The only way to change the box size is to edit the .fighter_def file in a text editor.

By Josh Driscol (Gfb) on Wednesday, July 24, 2013 - 11:43 am: Edit

We are still having the problem with generic counters for units that should have counters made.

For some reason I seem to be immune to the problems, but many of my opponents are not.

My experience is that if they are in the room when I add the ships they see them fine, but if they join the game after I've added the units, then they cant see my counters. Resynchronizing the board doesn't fix it.

Thanks for looking into the Fighter_def issue, now all I need to do is learn to use a text editor.

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Wednesday, July 24, 2013 - 12:29 pm: Edit

Josh,
Please read the "Bug Reports" topic. I said I found the issue. It is related to the fix that I put in place for local counters not being loaded. I am still looking into how to fix it.

By Josh Driscol (Gfb) on Wednesday, July 24, 2013 - 12:59 pm: Edit

Oh I'm sorry, I didn't notice that you had responded over there.

By Josh Driscol (Gfb) on Saturday, August 10, 2013 - 09:54 pm: Edit

I recently played a game with alot of Hydran Stinger fighters and started to realize how clunky allocating fire for them can be.

Each fighter has 7 weapon lines 4 for fusion charges, 2 for the fusion beams, and one for the phaser. If there was a way to reduce the number of weapon boxes you had to check to allocate each fighters weapons it would save time allocating fire.

I wondered if it would be possible to make charges part of a new mode function for the fighter fusion's and other fighter weapons which use charges. There would be only 2 modes for fusions, 1 charge or 2, but it would greatly reduce the length of the Hydrans weapon status tab and the time it takes to allocate fire for a large group of stingers.

Another improvement that would help with fighters is if their graphical display could show charges used with either a red or yellow marking and show that color on the weapon status tab for each weapon.

Something else that would help with all fighter games for me is if you could double click a fighter on the map and have the graphic fighter image pop up the way it does for ships or as an individual window that would float above the map.

These suggestions for changes are to speed up the process of allocating direct fire and knowing what fighters can fire without having to consult the very long weapon status display and map. You would still have to do some checking but this would hopefully make the information easier to get.

If it would be too hard to program fighter's weapon charges into a new mode function perhaps you could add one new line to the fighter's weapons table, a unit alpha strike button. Then it would check all the weapon boxes for that particular fighter and if you wanted to not fire the phaser you uncheck that weapon box. That's 2 clicks of the mouse from 6 the way things work now.

Another idea is visual improvement to the weapon status tab where you use alternate background shades between different units on the list to make it easier to see the break between the weapons of one unit and the next down the list.

The last idea I had was a simplification for MW release. If the client could have a table made for that segment with all shuttlecraft prepared as SP shuttles and all MW drones and it could automatically blossom the SP immediately after you make the announcement it would save a bit of time finding the right MW drone or SP shuttle and blossoming it manually.

By Clayton Krueger (Krieg) on Friday, August 16, 2013 - 12:39 pm: Edit

The log within the client only shows 'allocation of damage' (including shield damage, reinforcement and remaining shield strength) for the owning player and not his opponent. Could 'allocation of damage' be shown in the log for one's opponent?

Then both players would be able to review how much reinforcement energy was used by their opponent during the turn.

By David Zimdars (Zimdarsdavid) on Saturday, August 24, 2013 - 05:18 pm: Edit

Paul,

I'm really not too enthusiastic about the new automatic phaser capacitor accounting. I find it counterintuitive about how it works now, and it is prone to ambiguity when auditing your opponent's EA.

The old way I used to do it manually was:
Start Cap = Previous End Cap + Allocated Power
Cap Used = Cumulative phaser energy used during turn
End Cap = Start Cap - Cap Used + Reserve Power allocated to Pcap in notes section.

If you use this method, it is pretty easy to audit because it clearly shows what happened in that single turn. Here Start Pcap clearly corresponds to immediately after EA and End cap corresponds to EOT.

The new method is, as I understand:
Start Cap = [automated previous end cap] OR [whatever player types]
Cap Used = [game calculation from IA input] OR [whatever player types]
End Cap = [Start Cap] - [Cap Used] => calculated each impulse and not editable.

Here's the problem:
(for example)

EOT Turn 4
End Cap =3

then...

Turn 5 (after EA)
Start Cap = 3
Cap Used = 0
End Cap = 4

(player put 1 pt of energy in EA phaser line ). This table of values really doesn't seem intuitive to me (now start cap is before EA - isn't that last turn? and End Cap is *this instant* whic really isn't the end of anything) but that isn't the big problem.

then...

Turn 5 (say impulse 25)
Start Cap = 3
Cap Used = 7 (automatically calculated from IA)
End Cap = -3

The player used 3 batteries to add to the pcap this impulse. Hopefully he typed into notes "3 batteries to pcap", quite a few players don't really note *where* the reserve power goes, they just note the total used.

then...

Now there are 2 ways the player can proceed to reconcile the power.

A) He reduces the cap used immediately so that the End Cap is correct on turn 5:
Start Cap = 3
Cap Used = 4
End Cap =0

Now if a player uses this method, when trying to audit, A) you have to inconveniently look back at the phaser power line at the top of the form AND B) cap used bears no relation to the actual capacitor used and you'd have to go back to the log to see what this is.

OR

B) He corrects the start Cap on Turn 6 EA
Turn 6 (EA prior to correction)
Start Pcap = preloaded with -3
Cap Used = 0
End Cap = StartCap + phaser line.

then... (if player is honest)
he looks back on previous turn notes, which state 3 batteries to pcap.

then.. he types in 0 for start pcap, so

Turn 6 (corrected)
Start Pcap = 0
Cap Used = 0
End Cap = StartCap + phaser line.

Which looks better, but when auditing the prior turn must should look like End Cap = -3 with Note: used 3 batts fpr pcap.

Which system of reserve power accounting should the player use? A or B? How does any one player know what to do? God forbid they use both methods.

To my mind, this system is no less prone to ignorance, mistakes or shenanigans than the old system. Worse, now it extends the possibilities of ignorance, mistakes or shenanigans over two turns because now the proper way is to make a note and fix it 30-60 minutes later (or if saved, days later).

Quite honestly, I like the old system better.

-Dave

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Sunday, August 25, 2013 - 12:09 pm: Edit

David,
I agree that use of reserve power for firing phasers is difficult. So thank you, for pointing this out. I will be adding a new EA line for adding power to the phaser capacitor via reserve power to make it easier to track the phase capacitor usage.

By Andrew J Koch (Droid) on Sunday, August 25, 2013 - 11:04 pm: Edit

Thanks Paul. I appreciate your efforts despite the constant criticism!

By Josh Driscol (Gfb) on Tuesday, August 27, 2013 - 02:27 pm: Edit

Hi Paul,

I noticed a problem with the New graphical SSD definition tool's import old definition feature.

When it places the scanner track countdown box its showing the highest numbered box but the scanner track start at 0.

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Monday, October 14, 2013 - 11:02 am: Edit

Paul,

Is there a way to make the client automatically place newly launched shuttles on top of the ship launching them?

I was just playing a game where we were in a range 1 scrum, and some drones were launched, we both launched shuttles, and then we fired at things, but I didn't see that his shuttle was launched in the dialogue box (as I also launched a shuttle and it went by quick), didn't shoot it down (as I didn't even know it was there), and would have been killed by it on the next impulse without me even knowing it was there in the first place (if I hadn't resigned that impulse upon 2 of my 3 UIM OLs missing...).

Thanks!

By Paul Scott (The_Rock) on Monday, October 14, 2013 - 02:52 pm: Edit

Peter,
Did you see my comments in the section where you described your game? You may wish to request Paul do this anyway, but since their are pluses and minuses to putting things like shuttles on top, I thought I'd see if you considered the text/background color thing.