Imperium Twelve: Results

[sargon0]

Something just struck me on the no-weapons variant (which I still think is doable and could be lots of fun to play). If we try it, it should definitely be done with events off. (Likewise for ... force fields, I think?) I don't think I've ever actually seen the Derelict event benefit the player, but if we play an Imperium with a weapons tech scoring penalty, you know it'll happen to somebody!

You could just turn off the Derelict event only in the original savefile! It doesn't seem to happen until later anyway, maybe 2450+, so a bonus for early finishers!

[dathon]

*perks ears up*

You can disable events in the save file? Praytell, how can you do this? And is it possible to build in a delay aka no events before 2400?

dathon

[sargon0]

Well the guide says each event can only happen once per game (true), the chance of an event is based on the length of time since the last event (true) but events will not start before turn 50 (false) so some information on the current state has to be recorded.

DE80 Turn number of last event - 40 at game start which is 2339 although I believe can only happen on next turn so I think of it as 2340 (E232 is current game turn number)
Events - first address is flag (0=not yet, 1=occurred), second address is parameters for that event
DE86 DEAC Plague ............ parms: active flag (2=active, 0=complete), planetary index, research
DE88 DEB6 Quake ............. parms: player number, planetary index
DE8A DEBA Nova .............. parms: active flag, player number, planetary index, turns, research
DE8C DEC4 Accident ......... parms: active flag, player number, planetary index
DE8E DECC Assassination ... parms: player numbers (who/by)
DE90 DED2 Virus ............... parms: player number, research field (0/2/4/5)
DE92 DED6 Comet ............. parms: active flag, player number, planetary index, turns, hit points, damage
DE94 DEE2 Pirates ............. parms: active flag, zero?, planetary index, hit points
DE96 DEEC Derelict ............ parms: player number
DE98 ....... Rebellion .......... parms: none
DE9A DEEE Space Crystal ... parms: active flag, x co-ordinate, y co-ordinate, turn counter?, zero?, planetary index, count of slagged planets
DE9C DEFC Space Amoeba .. parms: active flag, x co-ordinate, y co-ordinate, turn counter?, zero?, planetary index, count of slagged planets
DE9E DF0C Fertile .............. parms: planetary index
DEA0 DF10 Rich ................. parms: planetary index
DEA2 DF14 Merchant .......... parms: player number
DEA4 DF18 Poor ................ parms: planetary index

So to start events at a certain time change DE80 to the turn number required eg. x'64' for 2400. To disable events change the flag address for that event to one eg. DE96=1 means no Derelict. To 'trial' events set DE80 much lower than turn number at E232 (or up turn number), disable events not interested in, but still may take a few turns to appear. Some events seem to have a time threshold before which they will not appear - my current estimates are:
monsters - 2500
derelict - 2450
comet - 2400

Note player numbers are as MAP display from zero for human player up to 5. Planetary index is number of planet starting from zero for first planet in save; it is usually stored at offset x'5C' from planet name but this is actually index of RELOC planet.

My interest was peaked by events in my game in Imperium 12, particularly the Comet event. The guide says Comet has random 400 to 600 hit points and war ships reduce this by 1/5/25/125 per turn for small/medium/large/huge. So I left a huge warship at my homeworld and it took 5 turns to destroy Comet but I was curious. After the game I used above info to generate a few (30+ actually!) Comets. The good news was that hit points were always a multiple of 25 between 350 and 450. The bad news is a huge did varying amounts of damage - I recorded values up to 122 and down to 4! So it looks like the guide is quoting the maximum damage and actual damage varies randomly from 1 to that number. So an average 63 damage per turn would not have destroyed my Imperium 12 Comet (which actually had 375 hp) in time to save my homeworld and who wants to leave their homeworld to luck of RNG. Lucky me! It looks like smalls are a more certain way of dealing with Comets (not tested).

[pkrcel]

Would that really work?
I mean the mechanics you explain are more than clear but I got two distinct Merchant events in Imperium 12....would the flag bit really disable the event? Is this not depending on the event type?

[sargon0]

While compiling the list I disabled sometimes one, sometimes up to 15 of the 16 events and generated dozens of events each time. Never did any of the 'disabled' events re-occur so I think it is reliable. However testing is limited to set conditions which may not reflect an entire game and I would never rule out an exception with this game but from my testing I would have to conclude the guide is right.

[RefSteel]

Intriguing data here for future Imperium building. How do we resolve pkrcel's experience of two Merchant events with Sargon's extensive testing? I'd look for something in the testing environment that might make it different from events "in the field." As a hypothesis, what if there's a bug in the merchant event code that fails to write "1" under "already happened" in the save file? This would account for multiple merchant events in the same game, without affecting edited tests (and would still mean Sargon's method could successfully be used to disable events for Imperia). To explode or support this hypothesis, we could check saves where the merchant event is known to have occurred in-game (possibly creating them by disabling all other events and setting the "last event year" counter far below the "current year" if I understand Sargon's explanations correctly) and see if they consistently show a "1" or "0" for "already happened."

[sargon0]

Certainly during the testing the Merchant event updated the occurred flag, that's how I knew where its flag was. My only theory would be some events re-enabling under certain conditions or after a passage of time, although pkrcel's events were very close together. I do run quick tests to check how things happen but to determine this would take intensive testing; I think you can only choose a path until something shows a repeated variation. I do think this could be used for future Imperium, as could Personalities/Objectives and starting relations, all customisable in starting save.

[RefSteel]

Aha! So my hypothesis was exploded in advance! It does sound like it would take a lot more testing to even guess at the circumstances that change it though. Just one more item to keep things unpredictable then, which is a good thing, really.

[pkrcel]

One thing came to my mind actually.

I had a desktop crash when playing this Imperium (and several others later on, which caused the delay in my reporting).

I can't be 100% sure but it was in not in the whenabouts of the Merchant event...I had to recover the game from the autosave....namely the "continue game" in the first game screen, it was one or two turns earlier than I was playing when desktop crashed...so basically I had no great change on the gameplay.

I am failry sure I DID take advantage of the first merchant and got the 2nd merchant event close to my re-game from the autosave.

Maybe a glitch in the autosave code that fails to update correctly the events?

I would ditch the bug in a specific event code as per refSteel hypotesis, cause if handeled correctly in code, there woudl be an "event manager" code that takes care of the occured events in the allocated save memory table, that in turn gets into the savefile when engaging the save-game code.

But what do I know

[AlanSHB]

Being able to customize events has some serious potential for extending the imperia variety.

Playtesting a no-weapons game as the mighty klackons shows some potential for that idea, win via domination and a metric ton of pulsar ships.

Silicoids are a thematicly interesting choice:

"What is laser compared to rock? Rock is right!"

but for the average design of bio weapons and clean bombers you do need some miniaturization, which their poor across the board scientists might not be able to provide in a timely fashion, on the upside - not having to research landing tech means you'll very likely see diseases.