QUOTE (Chamrin @ Apr 30 2010, 02:38 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I will be submitting an entry tomorrow.

Duelly noted.

Will you be posting the submitted designs after the contest is run?

Submitted. Competition prepare to be crushed.

The month of May has officially begun where I am, but I will accept entries until the end of the day in order to be fair to people in other time zones.

QUOTE (Eugene Chin @ Apr 30 2010, 10:32 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Will you be posting the submitted designs after the contest is run?

Yes. Furthermore, if you would like to send me your alternate design, I will report back how it fared against the competition.

Crap, I've got nothing ready. There's no way I can make something combat-worthy in a day. Any chance you can extend the deadline a bit, Qaanol?

Do it in like the next hour or something, he'll probably still accept it.

QUOTE (Chamrin @ May 1 2010, 12:16 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Do it in like the next hour or something, he'll probably still accept it.

QUOTE (darthkev @ May 1 2010, 12:04 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

There's no way I can make something combat-worthy in a day.

QUOTE (darthkev @ May 1 2010, 03:04 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Crap, I've got nothing ready. There's no way I can make something combat-worthy in a day. Any chance you can extend the deadline a bit, Qaanol?

For starters, there really are not very many fields you have to deal with. Just pick some style or strategy you want your ship to use, pick some point values for each field, and plug them in. You don’t even really have to test your ship except maybe to verify that things do what you want.

But you can just test it against itself, and the ship contest base file already has everything you need ready to go. Just duplicate your ship plugin and change the shïp ID to 710 (you won’t even have to change the weapon ID or anything since both would be identical in a testing-against-itself situation.)

The official contest will end tonight, but I think you can make something before the deadline if you try. If you make significant progress tonight but don’t quite have time to finish, let me know and I’ll keep the contest open until tomorrow (that goes for anyone who is considering a last-minute entry).

The first Ship Design Contest has ended. Three ships were submitted, one each by Terek E`Ban, Eugene Chin, and Chamrin, plus Eugene Chin’s alternate design. All four ships are in this file: Ship_Design_May_2010.zip (11.28K)
Number of downloads: 4
The above file has each submission as a separate plug-in, with both red and gold versions. To use them, exactly one red and exactly one gold should be put in the plug-ins folder together with the previously-uploaded DesignSupport plug-in. That is how the actual contest was run. However, after the contest, I put everything together into one file, and included a few extra goodies so there can be massive battles. That is here: Ship_Design_Contest_May_2010.rez.zip (4.58K)
Number of downloads: 3
Chamrin’s ship moves slowly and fires quickly, with a long-range weapon. It has by far the most powerful offensive output of the submissions. He spent 200 points on Reload alone, and 250 on damage, out of 879 total on the weapon and ammunition, which had a range of 2,320 pixels. Only 89 points went to defense (shields, armor, or either type of recharge).

Terek’s ship moves at a medium speed and fires at a medium speed, with a fairly short-range weapon. It has the most developed ship, with only 489 points spent on the weapon and ammunition. In particular, 250 points were spent on defense.

Eugene’s official submission is unequivocally the fastest ship in the contest, having used 180 points on speed. Additionally, its weapon has long range, reaching 2,250 pixels, with 627 total points spent on weapon and ammunition. Defense got 117 points. The crux of the strategy employed by this ship is to have low acceleration, but high recoil from the weapon.

Eugene’s alternate design spent 706 points on weapon and ammo, with the weapon having a range of 2,722.5 pixels. This ship is rather slow, with only 20 points spent on top speed, but 199 points went to defense.

In the round-robin, Terek and Chamrin fought, with Chamrin winning handily by using superior range. In fact Terek never got off a shot. It was over quickly. This was similar for both starting-in-system and jumping-in-after-delay. This was two 2-point victories for Chamrin, scoring 4 points.

When Terek fought Eugene, the battle was much different. Every time Eugene fired, his recoil pushed him backwards quickly until he was out of range. Terek was unable to get close enough to fire a shot. However, the low acceleration of Eugene’s ship meant that by the time he closed back within range of his own weapon, Terek had regenerated to full health. In the battle where one of each ship starts in the system, it was a draw with both ships alive. In the battle where one of each ship jumps into the system, it was a draw for the same reason. For the tie-breaker, when one of each ship started in the system and then another one of each ship jumped in, though, the pair of Eugene Chins was able to kill one of the Tereks relatively quickly. Even then, they could not take out the second Terek due to its shield recharge rate. Thus a partial victory was had, scoring 1 point for Eugene.

In the final showdown, Eugene fought Chamrin. Here both ships had long-range weapons, with Chamrin’s being the longer by 70 pixels. Chamrin moves slowly, whereas Eugene moves backward quickly but accelerates forward slowly. When both started in-system, Eugene’s recoil caused him to flee more quickly than Chamrin’s shots could catch. Indeed, once Eugene was out of range, he never had to come back to finish the job, because his own shots already fired while fleeing were sufficient to kill Chamrin. When both ships jumped in after a delay, the results were similar. Eugene retreated too quickly for Chamrin, and fired enough to kill. Thus Eugene earned 4 points, bringing his total to 5.

The top two ships after the round-robin were Eugene and Chamrin. So they went into the tournament for the championship. The results were as before, with Eugene winning handily. For fun, I decided to try having a two-on-two battle between these ships, and again Eugene dominated.

The winner of Qaanol’s First Ship Design Contest is Eugene Chin. Congratulations!

Eugene’s alternate design would have tied for second. Against Chamrin all ships ended up dead (almost) every time, resulting in draws. Occasionally when one of each entered after a short delay, if they began on nearly-opposite sides, Eugene’s alternate design would win. One time I saw Chamrin win when both entered from the same direction with Chamrin slightly behind. Against Terek, Eugene’s alternate design won easily. Against Eugene’s first design, his alternate lost, but his first design always stopped attacking when the alternate was disabled, except in the 2-on-2 battle one of the alternate design ships was killed and the other disabled, with no losses for the first design.

So, congratulations again to Eugene Chin, and thanks to everyone who participated.

The next ship design contest will be with a 2,000 point cap. However, there will be some changes to the rules, and I’d like to hear input and suggestions. Some of the things I noticed were:

Chamrin called it to my attention that a ship with 0 MaxIonize cannot ever be ionized. Thus in future contests the default value will be 1 (I checked and all the battles would have had the same result either way this time around.)

When ships start on the stations, they face random directions. This can give one ship an advantage if it is already facing toward the other, but the other has to spend time turning around. In future contests they will face either toward each other from the start or away from each other, or parallel to each other, or at some fixed angle. I am open to suggests as to what would be a good starting position.

Everyone used a guided missile. That means the GuidanceType point costs need serious adjustment. I am open to suggestions.

Eugene Chin demonstrated how to make the AI use the Monty-Python maneuver. Kudos to him for that. I think next time ships will start with more mass, perhaps 100.

Also, weapon ranges were quite long, and in the future I want to make that cost more points. There will be changes to weapon speed and count costs, and probably ship speed costs as well.

Ammunition was cheap, so it made sense to make weapons powerful and then cheaply stock up on ammo. I want to make a change so there is more of a trade-off. In particular, I’d like to make ammoless weapons at least conceivably desirable.

Oh, that is another thing. In the next contest, multiple weapons will be allowed. So I want to make it reasonable for a ship to use two different weapons. Perhaps if shields and armor became cheaper, then ammoless weapons would be needed to guarantee the ability to kill tough ships, but ammo-using weapons would get better damage-per-second, and hence lead to faster kills. Also, if anyone can come up with a way to make having multiple copies of the same weapon viable, please let me know.

And there may be more features allowed. Perhaps submunitions, perhaps proximity and blast radius, perhaps something you convince me would be nice. I’m all ears.

QUOTE (Qaanol @ May 2 2010, 10:53 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Eugene Chin demonstrated how to make the AI use the Monty-Python maneuver. Kudos to him for that. I think next time ships will start with more mass, perhaps 100.

:huh: "Monty Python" maneuver? Whassat?

"Monty Python" in EV terms means shooting at an enemy while flying backwards. It's a tactic players can use to avoid getting swarmed, and kill enemy fighters while running.

When I read that Chamrin's entry had longer range, I was worried. In my own iterating design / counter design phases between the "Hit_And_Fade" series and the "Snipah" series, Snipah designs could match or exceed the range of the Hit_And_Fade, and still have points left over for defense and damage, while the Hit_And_Fade series bankrupted itself in exchange for the speed and range necessary to escape an opposing Snipah's opening shots. And, if the Snipah's range exceeded that of the Hit_And_Fade's, then the Hit_And_Fade would stop firing, stop running away, and then get hit by the enemy and die.

It came down to who could invest more into range, and the Hit_And_Fade also had to invest massively into speed to make its strategy work.

The designs I submitted do not represent the extremes that these design philosophies could have reached, as I wanted a more rounded design for the competition. The more extreme-end designs sacrificed any defense at all for much greater range. (The most extreme case, M.A.D. Snipah, had a range of 3610, and still did 30 energy and mass damage each hit.)

If the Snipah had a long enough range that it could hit the Hit_And_Fade even as it fled, the battle would go the the Snipah. I chose Hit_And_Fade anyway, as I didn't believe anybody else would think to invest more than 300 points into their range.

I also realized that two contestants of the Snipah philosophy were likely to mutually annihilate each other.

This post has been edited by Eugene Chin : 02 May 2010 - 11:24 PM

QUOTE (Eugene Chin @ May 2 2010, 11:36 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

"Monty Python" in EV terms means shooting at an enemy while flying backwards.

What amazes me is not the innovation of the tactic. I've done that myself; it's a good way to fight when you're outnumbered.

What amazes me is that somebody thought up a name for it.

Have you seen the movie 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail'? If not, you need to see that to fully understand. If you have, then you should remember the line, "Run away!" This was said when King Arthur and his men were trying to gain entrance to a castle occupied by French soldiers. They had sent in a wooden animal (I think it was a cow) in an attempt to copy the Trojans. They were dumb enough, however, to forget to get inside the animal before giving it to the Frenchmen. The Frenchmen next launched the animal over the wall via catapult. Arthur then yelled, "Run away!"

Because this line was said in response to an enemy attack right after their own attack (hey, they tried) this term is used for a maneuver in EV where you run from the enemy, sit in wait a bit till they come in range, fire, and then run away again once they fly within their own range. At least, that's how I understand it all.

** Edit:** Man, reading Qaanol's post made me take too long.

This post has been edited by darthkev : 02 May 2010 - 10:53 PM

(Further notes):

QUOTE (Qaanol @ May 2 2010, 10:53 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Everyone used a guided missile. That means the GuidanceType point costs need serious adjustment. I am open to suggestions.

In response to Qaanol's comment about everybody using guided weapons: this is a side effect of the inaccuracy rules-as-written.

On the one hand, you could spend 90 points for a weapon accurate up to 1º, and still miss a lot of the time because of the AI.

On the other, you could spend 2 points for a weapon with 45º inaccuracy, and then spend 20 for homing, 40 for turn speed, and 5 for 'doesn't loose lock', for a total of 67, and hit with every single shot. Because of the high price and low returns of accuracy, guided weapons were both cheaper and more reliable.

It's telling that all entries had weapon turn-rate's no less than 40, and the 'doesn't loose lock' trait, while not investing at all into accuracy. Terek spent the most on accuracy, 9 points for 10º.

QUOTE

Also, weapon ranges were quite long, and in the future I want to make that cost more points. There will be changes to weapon speed and count costs, and probably ship speed costs as well.

I toyed around with short-ranged designs for a while, but still with guided shots because of the price-of-accuracy issues. It was actually LNSU's description that got me looking at a long ranged weapon. The turret got dumped quickly, as Nova's turret's have issues, and the price-of-accuracy was still a factor there. So, to test my own designs against in the event LNSU submitted something, or in case somebody else listened to him, I implemented something along LNSU's description, but using a guided weapon instead.

The short ranged designs got mulched.

It was all too easy to put a powerful long-ranged weapon on a ship, and kill a short ranged design before it ever got within firing range. No matter what I tried, I couldn't make a short-ranged design that could kill LNSU's Sniper. (I even called it "LNSU's Snipah" for my own testing. That moniker stuck when I started looking at 'Snipah's' to enter as one of my own.)

I tried to design a hypothetical short-ranged contestant that could survive long enough, and close fast enough, to at least hit the long-ranged design ("Speedy" series). It didn't have enough points left for damage to kill a reasonably defended 'Snipah,' often overshot the target and needed to close the range again, and couldn't catch up with a 'Hit_And_Fade' at all (I'd already had the concept of the Recoil-based Hit_And_Fade, but the range was strictly 1000 then).

After watching that, a design with a range less than 1000 didn't even seem feasible anymore.

QUOTE

Ammunition was cheap, so it made sense to make weapons powerful and then cheaply stock up on ammo. I want to make a change so there is more of a trade-off. In particular, I’d like to make ammoless weapons at least conceivably desirable.

Doubling the price of the weapon for unlimited ammunition means that the price of unlimited ammo is the same as if you had invested $(weapon_price) points into ammo.

If you wanted a weapon with a minimum of 1000 range, that right there is a 200 point investment, minimum.
If you wanted a weapon with a damage of 5 for both types, that right there is a 50 point investment, minimum.

Nobody needed 200 ammo. I think I'm the only one who bothered to spend more than 50 points on ammo (60, for both designs).

The price of an unlimited-fire weapon was simply unfeasible, especially when points taken out of ammo could be reinvested back into the weapon. (Everybody's weapon exceeded 500 points in price, without ammo. We wouldn't have been able to afford unlimited-fire weapons).

For the second tournament, I suggest point values on missile-type weapons be severely restricted to make them more balanced. Competitors should still be able to make a missile that will always hit its target (as long as that target is in range) but it will cost them in terms of points left over for damage and the ship.

I'd also like to suggest, in the event a second weapon is allowed, only one of the weapons is customizable by competitors. By this I mean one weapon will be similar to the weapons in this tournament. The other will simply be a choice of three balanced weapons you make, Qaanol.

As an example, competitors could pick from the following:
• A standard forward-firing gun, severely short range
• A forward-swivel gun, short range
• A shotgun-type weapon, moderate range

These don't have to be the types provided, but they should all be relatively short range weapons and have infinite ammo as well as low damage. This is to allow competitors a way to fire at opponents indefinitely as long as they get within range.

The end result is every ship would be armed with at least one short-range, infinite-ammo weapon as well as one other weapon of the competitor's design. This will allow for 'Rambo'-type craft that go all out on guns/turrets, 'Vanguard'-type craft that use heavy ordnance (missiles or heavy damage rockets) in addition to their short-range defense weapon, and LNSU's and Eugene's 'Snipah'-type craft which use long-range weaponry as well as the tournament-provided defensive weapon. Other combinations could be created, as well, these three are just what comes to mind with the possibilities above.

A final note, competitor-designed weapons should use ammo as a rule, I think, so as to provoke situations where competitors are forced to use their defensive weapons to win the fight.

This post has been edited by darthkev : 03 May 2010 - 12:57 AM

My ship has failed in all fights...
Well, dunno what else to say but... damn it

Oops, I meant to enter this contest, but then I forgot. My design would have been similar to Eugene's though, so I'll take vicarious satisfaction from his success.

QUOTE (Qaanol @ May 2 2010, 10:53 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Chamrin called it to my attention that a ship with 0 MaxIonize cannot ever be ionized. Thus in future contests the default value will be 1 (I checked and all the battles would have had the same result either way this time around.)

You obviously haven't realized that more MaxIonize is bad (unless Ionization and DeIonize are very expensive and MaxIonize is very cheap and starts at a large value).

QUOTE (Qaanol @ May 2 2010, 10:53 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

When ships start on the stations, they face random directions. This can give one ship an advantage if it is already facing toward the other, but the other has to spend time turning around. In future contests they will face either toward each other from the start or away from each other, or parallel to each other, or at some fixed angle. I am open to suggests as to what would be a good starting position.

Is this even possible? If range is expensive enough and they start far enough apart, it should be irrelevant though.

QUOTE (Qaanol @ May 2 2010, 10:53 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Everyone used a guided missile. That means the GuidanceType point costs need serious adjustment. I am open to suggestions.

You could nerf missiles by having some of the fights take place in systems with asteroids and/or interference. You could also allow point defense, which would encourage people to use at least 2 different weapons.

QUOTE (Qaanol @ May 2 2010, 10:53 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Oh, that is another thing. In the next contest, multiple weapons will be allowed. So I want to make it reasonable for a ship to use two different weapons. Perhaps if shields and armor became cheaper, then ammoless weapons would be needed to guarantee the ability to kill tough ships, but ammo-using weapons would get better damage-per-second, and hence lead to faster kills.

For this contest I considered having a long range weapon with positive recoil and a longer ranged weapon with a smaller amount of negative recoil, in order to avoid the problem of it pushing itself out of range and the enemy regenerating. The cost of buying so much range for two weapons was prohibitive though. And if range gets more expensive, that will probably continue to be the case.

Other than point defense or submunitions, I can't think of a good reason to use different weapons unless you require each ship to use weapons of specific types and spend a certain number of points on each.

QUOTE (Qaanol @ May 2 2010, 10:53 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Also, if anyone can come up with a way to make having multiple copies of the same weapon viable, please let me know.

Sure, make each additional copy cost a fixed number of points. In this contest it was always better to just buy more Reload.

QUOTE (Qaanol @ May 2 2010, 10:53 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

And there may be more features allowed. Perhaps submunitions, perhaps proximity and blast radius, perhaps something you convince me would be nice. I’m all ears.

Submunitions could be a lot of fun, but you'd have to make rules about recursion and price things very carefully. ProxRadius could be useful for unguided weapons, but I thought it was determined that if a ship triggered the ProxRadius, it would take damage regardless of BlastRadius.

Nice to hear my idea worked. IIRC, the nova AI can't dodge missiles. It can jam them, outrun them in rare cases, and shoot them with PD, but I haven't ever seen it dodge.

I would have submitted a ship based on my idea (A stationary turret with recoil), or better yet, a stationary missile platform with recoil and 1-armor, but I didn't have time to build it. I'd bet though that even 2 or 3 shots of ammo would be enough with high enough damage. Spend the rest on range and guidance.

I suppose a nova-playing human could beat it using rush tactics easily, as its not too hard to dodge missiles in nova. I wouldn't bet on any close-range AI ship beating it without PD or a huge amount spent on shields and shield recharge.

QUOTE (NMS @ May 3 2010, 11:29 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You obviously haven't realized that more MaxIonize is bad (unless Ionization and DeIonize are very expensive and MaxIonize is very cheap and starts at a large value).

I am under the impression that larger values of MaxIonize mean that as you get ionized the effect it has on your ship is diminished, but it does not actually cap the total ionization you have received. So a ship with 1 MaxIonize will be fully ionized by any ionizing shot, whereas a ship with 100 MaxIonize will barely be ionized at all by 1 ionization. If both ships take 100 ionization then they will both be fully ionized. If they have the same DeIonize rate then they will both take the same length of time to get back to normal. However during that time the ship with 1 MaxIonize will be fully ionized all they way until it is suddenly fixed, whereas the ship with 100 MaxIonize will be only partly ionized and recover steadily. You are right that the pricing should be cheaper for MaxIonize.

QUOTE (NMS @ May 3 2010, 11:29 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Is this even possible? If range is expensive enough and they start far enough apart, it should be irrelevant though.

CustSndID.

QUOTE (NMS @ May 3 2010, 11:29 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You could nerf missiles by having some of the fights take place in systems with asteroids and/or interference. You could also allow point defense, which would encourage people to use at least 2 different weapons.

Excellent.

QUOTE (NMS @ May 3 2010, 11:29 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

For this contest I considered having a long range weapon with positive recoil and a longer ranged weapon with a smaller amount of negative recoil, in order to avoid the problem of it pushing itself out of range and the enemy regenerating. The cost of buying so much range for two weapons was prohibitive though. And if range gets more expensive, that will probably continue to be the case.

Indeed, if range gets more expensive for everyone, it should stay exactly the same case.

QUOTE (NMS @ May 3 2010, 11:29 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Other than point defense or submunitions, I can't think of a good reason to use different weapons unless you require each ship to use weapons of specific types and spend a certain number of points on each.

I had thought about capping the points that can be spent per-weapon. What do people think?

QUOTE (NMS @ May 3 2010, 11:29 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Sure, make each additional copy cost a fixed number of points. In this contest it was always better to just buy more Reload.

Good thought.

QUOTE (NMS @ May 3 2010, 11:29 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Submunitions could be a lot of fun, but you'd have to make rules about recursion and price things very carefully. ProxRadius could be useful for unguided weapons, but I thought it was determined that if a ship triggered the ProxRadius, it would take damage regardless of BlastRadius.

I agree on all counts.

QUOTE (Qaanol)

Indeed, if range gets more expensive for everyone, it should stay exactly the same case.

Point costs for weapon speed and lifespan would need more than just an uptick in current point-cost prices.

Right now, range is maximized by investing equal points into both weapon speed and weapon life. Under this implementation, weapon range is proportional to the square of the points invested into the weapon.

As an example, say somebody spent 200 points evenly split between weapon speed and life. They'll have a range of 1000. A range of 1000 is enough to shoot at an opponent immediately when both ships start on the stations. If they had spend 100 points, though, they'd have a range of 250.

Increasing investment into range has increasing returns.

Now, say we double the point costs for each point of weapon life and speed. Under the same investment numbers, 200 points into weapon range is now 250 range. The poor schmuck who only invested 100 points now has a range of 62.5.

A range of 1000 would cost 400 points. You can still afford decent damage and reload on the remaining 600.

And in the mean time, the ranges on the short-ranged ships have gotten even shorter, making getting to firing range of the enemy that much harder to do.

If you don't want long-ranged ships dominating, you need to change the costs to make range proportional to the point cost, not to the square of the point cost.

This post has been edited by Eugene Chin : 03 May 2010 - 01:20 PM