UPDATE

The first Ship Design Contest has ended, with Eugene Chin the victorious champion. Full results are here. The submissions can be found in one plug-in file in the second link there as well.

Dear Escape Velocity Nova developers,

I cordially invite you to participate in a truly multi-player challenge. The goal is this: design the best possible ship with limited resources. You have 1,000 points to spend; as shown below each shield costs one point, each top speed a fifth of a point, each ammunition one point, and so forth. In order to simplify the competition, only certain fields in the shïp and wëap resources are permitted. That means no submunitions, no burstcounts, and no cloaking devices.

All the ships in the contest will be designed by EV Nova players and developers, and they will engage in direct combat against one another under the control of the Nova AI. You know how the AI works, you know how to beat it, but do you know how to design AI ships that can beat other AI ships?

The following screenshots from MissionComputer have been given rectangular outlines to show the fields that may be modified. The point-costs for each field are shown in blue. The letter N here stands for the number you put in the field. Every field will have an integer point-cost, rounded up from any fraction, and no field will have a negative point-cost. An asterisk means the point-cost is too long to fit in the space on the image, but it is described in the official documentation. A flag that is already checked costs the number of points shown next to it in order to clear the checkbox.

Green outlines mean you have large freedom to choose values for the field. Purple outlines mean I have restricted your options. For example, the name of your ship must be your username, which also must be the name of the file you submit.

The contest will be open for submissions until April 30th, 2010. After that I will duel ships against each other and determine the winner. Details are provided below. I have attached the files you need to get started. This has the documentation and two plug-ins. One has the base ship and weapon as they were when the screenshots were taken, and from which you may build your ship. Remember the 1,000 point limit. The other plug-in has the supporting resources necessary to hold the duels, so you may try it out and see for yourself.

Ship_Design_Contest.zip (5.35K)
Number of downloads: 19
Update 3/12/10: ProxRad, BlastRad, and related fields disallowed.
Update 3/13/10: Negative inaccuracy disallowed.

In order to run a duel, there must be ships 700 and 710, which should use weapons 350 and 360 respectively. I will take care of the higher values for the actual tournament, so when you submit just use 700 and 350. I repeat: your ship must be ID 700, and your weapon ID 350.

Now that I've explained the basics, here are screenshots showing what resource fields you can use and how much they cost. Anything not in a box, you don't even have to think about. I did my best to make this as simple as possible. If any of these links stop working, send me an email and I'll give you the pictures.

Ship field costs
Ship armament costs
Weapon field costs Updated March 12: ProxRad, BlastRad, and related fields disallowed.
Weapon guidance costs

Further detailed information is found in the attached Ship Design Contest.zip archive, including text describing the more-complicated costs such as ship mass, weapon reload, and inaccuracy. Ammunition is simple enough: a weapon that uses its own ammunition costs no extra points, but each ammo on the ship costs one point. On the other hand a weapon that uses no ammunition costs double the points. All other ammunition options are disallowed.

I'm sure there are parts I did not explain clearly, so feel free to ask any questions you may have. Good luck!

This post has been edited by Qaanol : 04 May 2010 - 08:59 PM

Question; mass values under 10 will result in a negative number of points deducted for that field. Was this intentional?

This post has been edited by JacaByte : 12 March 2010 - 12:15 PM

QUOTE

Every field will have an integer point-cost, rounded up from any fraction, and no field will have a negative point-cost.

So I'm guessing that anything under 10 for the mass value will round to 0, or 1.

This post has been edited by Technomancer : 12 March 2010 - 01:13 PM

Interesting. For clarification, limited to only a single weapon or can we use more?

Seems to be single weapon.

(EDIT) This assertion reinforced by the fact that the submission can only have one weapon (RID 350).

This post has been edited by Eugene Chin : 12 March 2010 - 04:30 PM

If you really need a second weapon, you may use ID 351.

QUOTE (JacaByte @ Mar 12 2010, 12:15 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Question; mass values under 10 will result in a negative number of points deducted for that field. Was this intentional?

I apologize for any ambiguity. For ship mass my description says
Mass:
If at least 10: N - 10 points, so one point per increase
If under 10: (1000/N) - 100 points, rounded up.

So this means

CODE

Mass Points
1 900
2 400
3 234
4 150
5 100
6 67
7 43
8 25
9 12
10 0
11 1
12 2
…
99 89
100 90
101 91
…
1000 990
…

Negative masses and mass zero are not allowed.

Ahh, okay. That makes a whole lot more sense.

Just noticed something in the weapons costs documentation:

Are you sure that the price for every point of prox radius is zero? Is this as you intended?

QUOTE (Eugene Chin @ Mar 12 2010, 06:50 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Just noticed something in the weapons costs documentation:

Are you sure that the price for every point of prox radius is zero? Is this as you intended?

Good catch.

Edit: After a bit of testing, it seems weapons will in fact damage the ship that triggers their Proximity Radius even when out of BlastRadius. To make things simple and fair with respect to the range of weapons, I'm going to scrap everything related to blast and prox radius altogether. The following fields may not be used:

Doesn't hurt firing ship
Proximity ignores asteroids
Triggered only by target
Blast radius
Prox radius
Prox safety

The original post, its attachments, and images have been updated to reflect this. The changes were confined to Weapon field costs.png and Weapon costs.txt.

This post has been edited by Qaanol : 12 March 2010 - 08:24 PM

Can I use beam weapons?

QUOTE (oryhara @ Mar 12 2010, 07:54 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Can I use beam weapons?

No.

Weapon guidance costs.

Oh, sorry

Can I use bays?

QUOTE (Captain Zaphod Beeblebrox @ Mar 12 2010, 08:11 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Can I use bays?

Yes, go right ahead.

and get dqed'

This post has been edited by oryhara : 12 March 2010 - 08:20 PM

QUOTE (Captain Zaphod Beeblebrox @ Mar 12 2010, 08:11 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Can I use bays?

No.

Weapon guidance costs.

QUOTE (Qaanol @ Mar 12 2010, 07:53 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Good catch.

Edit: After a bit of testing, it seems weapons will in fact damage the ship that triggers their Proximity Radius even when out of BlastRadius. Also, to make things simple and fair with respect to the range of weapons, I'm going to scrap BlastRadius and Proximity Radius and Proximity Safety altogether. Those fields may not be used.

Heh. I thought that was a mistake when I saw it.

Of course, setting the Prox Radius to 32765 and naming the contestant's ship subtitle "The Haxxorcist" would have been funny, if it had been allowed. Completely unfair, but funny.

QUOTE (Qaanol @ Mar 12 2010, 05:21 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

No.

Good call. I would've made it so that, basically, my ship was an infinite number of Firebirds, or something.

By the way, if I remember correctly, the A.I. won't use free-fall bomb weapons. So, allowing those may not be a good idea.

Well, allow them, just don't use them.

Well, I don't have time to construct a ship for this, but here's my idea

Weapon:
turreted dumb projectile
very high speed, no reload, long life
high shield/armor damage
No other cost fields.

Ship:
0 speed, turn, accel
1 armor (no shields)
0 armor recharge (this would have the majority of points spent in these boxes)

The idea of this ship is one-shot-kill. I'm betting on the nova AI not being smart enough to dodge the first shot. This ships effectiveness entirely depends on the ability of the enemy to dodge, which isn't the AI's strong point.