Is this supposed to happen?

[TechSY730]

That "Ratioed random number generator" seems like a bad idea. I would think it would be pretty easy to "game" that system once you get a feel for how it does things.

EDIT: Is this why you don't use it?

[hullu]

Actually it being multifactor doesn't affect any of the odds at all, thinking it like that just makes it more sane for our brains. You getting ten sixes out of d6 in a row is still the same slim chance even if all the numbers of 1-5 were thrown between those sixes.

Although, I think that was pretty much what you were saying, just perhaps with different words, it just somehow sounded like you were telling people that multifactorthing made a difference, which it of course doesn't, unless the RNG is flawed/ratioed.

And while I'm nitpicking and being a general ass!

If you roll that die 2 billion times and it's always 6, you have a problem.

Nah, you're only just likely to have a problem

[hullu]

Oh, back to the above:

Taking random numbers in a seemingly random sequence can result in enough random even if the generator is flawed. Generally in games where things happen in seemingly random order(most games) you can get away with a lot of RNG flawedness, a lot.

Never really paid much attention what the problem you fixed in RNG was, but the above can be part of a reason why an RNG bug isn't obvious. Since even randoming a solid stream of 1,2,3,4,5,6 and repeat wouldn't necessarily be obvious if the 'random' numbers were used in random enough order.

Oh, this is getting out of hand, this train of thought, I need to calm down now!

[Reality]

If a 6 came up 50 times out of 100 on a 6 sided die, you could just run a chi square analysis which would tell you that the probability of those results occuring with an unloaded die is about .5% or some such (I can't be bothered opening SPSS right now ). Yay for 4 years of college stats courses

[yllamana]

Discussions about random numbers aside, we're having a similar-sounding issue in our two-player game (it's actually why I came to the forums). Our AIs are only on difficulty 7, but after about 12 minutes we get attacked by ~500-1000 enemy ships in four simultaneous waves, including enemy starships. We're on Conquest mode, normal difficulty, with zillions of the minor faction menu things enabled (all expansions, latest beta, both Mac version), but none of the other menu things (wave size, etc).

This has happened four games in a row now and the first three resulted in us losing one or both home command stations. In the fourth game we decided to just turtle up, reach our ship caps and make some defenses - not leaving our systems with anything other than scouts - and it still happened (though we managed to rescue the home command station on red health).

Are we just awful at the game (a possibility)? I sort of expected us to lose, but not on the very first attack. In the past we haven't had a problem surviving until at least the mid game.

[TechSY730]

Hmm. Assuming you are playing a highish difficulty (7.3 or so and up) 100-200 ships for the first sacs does sounds about right for the first wave. Multiply that by 4, and you get 400-800. So, not too far off, and you could easily get the ranges you are seeing with random factors. 4 waves at once is also right. You would get 2 waves around the same time when there is 1 player (1 for each AI). Because there are 2 of you, you now get double that (2 for each AI). Another reason why more players does not always make it easier to win.

[BobTheJanitor]

First time I started a difficulty 7 game (a week or so ago) I noticed that the waves seemed pretty huge compared to what I was used to. But I just assumed that was correct and made sure I built more tractors and had a big enough guard force to handle them. So far they've been quite manageable.

[yllamana]

We're playing on exactly 7. It took us by surprise because as far as I know, 7 is what we've pretty much always played on, and suddenly we're having to devote all our resources to defense right off the bat to survive the first wave (which I'm sure is partly because we're not very good, but it's a big change from the old waves, which weren't very dangerous for a fair while).

It's definitely made the start of the game more exciting, that's for sure.

[x4000]

One of our goals was to make it so that things weren't too deceptively easy at the start where players would then get stomped a bit further down the line in the same game.  Playing for two hours to find out you're hopelessly out of your depth on a difficulty was a problem, basically.

Well, that, paired with the fact that waves were way too pushover for the last while in general, to the point where a lot of players hardly even noticed them.

[yllamana]

That's excellent. The game always did seem to start off a little slowly, and losing almost all of your starting base except for the command station on red is a pretty exciting start.

After that, we had time to expand a little, set up some strategic positions and the waves, while intimidating, have been pretty manageable since that first crazy one. We just had so much difficulty with it that we weren't sure if there was something wrong.

Thanks for the replies!

[Red Spot]

Also note that in most cases your mobile defenders (fleet ship) will do better than static defences.
So going heavy on turrets early may actually cost you, besides that, with turrets you cant conquer the next planet. How your position will be when the next wave comes can be a lot different based on if you initially start building turrets or go on a more agressive tour.

Turrets are nice to defend a planet that sees an occasional foe, or in places where you really spam turrets (add some water and a fort). For the rest they are really weak without the aid of some fleetship. So always make sure you create that backbone of fleet ship first.

[x4000]

Awesome!  Glad that's working out well, even though it is different, yllamana.  It's always tricky making a change like that, but you're exactly right that we did want to "get to the good part" a lot faster in the game lately.

[Nalgas]

If you roll that die 2 billion times and it's always 6, you have a problem.

Nah, you're only just likely to have a problem

I'm pretty sure you definitely have a problem if you roll a die two billion times no matter what the result, or at least way too much free time.

Awesome!  Glad that's working out well, even though it is different, yllamana.  It's always tricky making a change like that, but you're exactly right that we did want to "get to the good part" a lot faster in the game lately.

Praise Jebus for that.  It's generally been fine previously in multiplayer, in my opinion, although that's probably helped by having my friends to talk to while building up, especially when we have someone new join us who's never played anything beyond the tutorial and needs to be taught how to play.

I've never been able to play by myself without getting really, really bored at some point, though.  Every time I get inspired to start a single-player game to try some stuff out, I end up getting bored waiting for something interesting to happen in the first hour or two, then give up and decide to just wait until our weekly game night.  I think it's at least partly because I'm spoiled by just how much more stuff you have available to you right from the start when you have four or five people playing.  I'm determined to go through all the LotS stuff myself after the final version is out, though (any day now...), so hopefully that'll work out better with the recent changes in the game and my ADD meds.  Heh.