PNN Headline News
Mountain of Power, Plundaria Prime

 Ugwart reined in his mount and gazed across the steppes at
 the expanding blight on the world. His cousins from the overlands
 and even the reclusive mountain folk had seen the same horrors.
 These hivelike swarms of man creatures seemed to appear from nowhere
 in once fertile wilderness and began their systematic destruction.
 Cries to POGO had gone unheard. No one dared to invoke Hanuman or
worse
 Plundaria for aid, for that was the path to certain ruin. Some of the
 younger, more brash warriors had ridden to fight the invaders, some
of
 them had met with success and claimed many trophies, most where never
 heard from again. Soon though, he knew, the tide would turn. As his
 fathers fathers had learned in the past, never cross the Mach-Ene.
 The unfathomable Mach-Ene creatures refused parlay as always, but
they
 kept to their own lands - as long as you didn't delve into the
 forbidden arts or cross into their lands. As his fathers fathers
 learned, that path brought the rolling thunders, the fire-mushrooms,
 and the invisible death that drove them from their homes long ago,
 that forced them into the nomadic lifestyle. These man things were
 starting the forbidden rituals, so soon these man things would
 be gone, then Ugwart would hunt the wilderness again. Then all would
be
 right once more.

                -- Plunderbot Hive Mind Sorosub cultural memory rip
archive
                        hvy core world 2 circa cycle 3

Hvy Metal II has seen three updates so far.  Players have encountered
small bands of Nomads, hardy Montagnards, and Plunderbot, a strange
artificial intelligence stubbornly resisting incursions into its land.
Rumors of Plunderbot atrocities against captured civilians have not
been substantiated so far.

The power chart, as of right before the third update, is still led by
Plunderbot.

      - = [   Empire Power Report   ] = -
       as of Fri May  9 14:02:05 2008

         sects  eff civ  mil  shell gun pet  iron dust oil  pln ship
unit money
Plunderbo 575    2%   8  4.9K 1.0K 120    0    0    0    0    0    0
60  240K
DonQuixot 215   15%  12K 300    0    0    0  1.1K 2.8K  50    0
0    0   20K
   Xymaca 190   10%  12K 100    0    0    0  1.1K 2.9K 150    0
0    0   25K
  Lowland 215   12%  12K  50    0    0    0  1.1K 1.6K   0    0
0    0   20K
1EyedMons 215   11%  12K 100    0    0    0  2.5K 1.9K 100    0
0    0   25K
   Aridon 205    9%  12K 150    0    0    0  2.7K 2.6K  16    0
0    0   25K
Metallica 215   12%  12K 300    0    0    0  3.2K 1.9K  50    0
0    0   20K
 Baldoria 205   15%  12K 150    0    0    0  950  2.0K 100    0
0    0   25K
 Dethklok 215   10%  12K 100    0    0    0  2.1K 1.7K 600    0
0    0   20K
TheDiplom 200   10%  12K 150    0    0    0  1.4K 2.4K 100    0
0    0   25K
HeavyBarr 215    8%  12K 150    0    0    0  1.9K 1.8K 200    0
0    0   25K
     beep 215   17%  12K 200    0    0    0  3.0K 600    0    0
0    0   20K
Dentrassi 210   10%  12K 100    0    0    0  2.4K 1.6K 200    0
0    0   25K
  Loc-Nar 210   18%  12K 150    0    0    0  1.3K 850   20    0
0    0   20K
Fighting_ 140   20%  12K 150    0    0    0  2.2K 1.3K 1.1K   0
0    0   25K
  Beehive 210    9%  12K 100    0    0    0  3.6K 1.0K   0    0
0    0   25K
    Wales 215    8%  12K 150    0    0    0  3.7K 1.3K 200    0
0    0   25K
  RimFire 180   11%  12K 100    0    0    0  3.2K 1.1K 200    0
0    0   25K
BlackComp 215   14%  12K 400    0    0    0  1.6K 1.1K  50    0
0    0   20K
  Council 135   17%  12K  23    0    0    0  400  850    0    0
0    0   25K
               ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
---- ----
worldwide 4.4K  11% 225K 7.9K 1.0K 120    0   40K  31K 3.2K   0    0
60  675K

========================================================
Announcements since Wed Dec 31 19:00:00 1969

Feed your people folks!

Since this game is so heavily customized, here are a few hints.  If
you're a veteran, it may well be all old news for you.  Or not, who
knows.

In case you brought your early game cookie cutter, take good care of
it, you may need it in your next game.

In case you played the blitz, be warned that we changed a few details
based on player feedback and our own trials.

If you played Hvy Metal I, many things will be familiar.  But don't be
sad, we got a few surprises for you as well.

Read info Hvy-Metal.  Then read it again, slowly.  Then read these
hints, slowly.  If you don't understand something, ask the deities.
We're not going to play the game for you, but we're happy to explain
its rules.

You start with quite a few people.  You want to put all your people to
work on something immediately useful.  Your mobility should suffice to
do that, if you use it wisely.  It takes an efficient sector 40 mob to
move 1000c to an adjacent 0% sector, and another 2-3 to move their
food.  An inefficient sector (<60%) takes ten times as much mobility
for moving civilians.  It's quite easy to get a big pile of people
stuck in an awkward place.

Think about the merits of just-in-time production, and how to apply it
to Empire.

Because tech yield is highly non-linear in investment, you really want
to make it steadily, starting as early as possible.  Figure out what
you need for that, and how to produce it.

Non-renewable resources (gold, oil, uran) are not nearly as scarce as
you might think.  Each point of gold represents five times as much
dust as usual.  Same for uran/rad.  2.5 times for ocontents/oil.

Your start island is good for a bit less than 5000o.  Keep that in
mind when gearing up your economy.  You might find more oil out there,
and you'll eventually perfect biofuel technology (if you live that
long).

Letting your people starve makes you everybody's favourite target.
Use the starvation command.

Watch your food supply!  You start with a substantial reserve, but
once that's gone, you will need more than just one agribusiness.  100
people need approximately 3f per update.  A farmer in a 100% fertility
aggie or plains can feed five people including himself initially, more
as technology improves.

There is some free land for you to explore right away, but soon enough
you'll run into the natives or the competition.  Git thar fust with
the most men.

Having military costs you a fortune.  Not having military costs you a
kingdom.  Adapt expense to the threat.  Military reserves are your
friend.  Military payroll savings recoup demobilization expense in
just one update.

If your enemy brings fireworks to the party, and you don't, you die.

Watch the power report.  If everybody except you got something, think
about why that might be so, and whether it's a good thing.

Short recycle to fix origin back to player instead of deity.

speaking of Heavy Metal... how many little dictators saw the South
Park
episode on "cheesing"...

and how many decided it was worth a try?

Bzzz...
Bzzz...

You gotta love that virtual Heavy Metal!

bzzzzz...

Update schedule is somewhat misleading for next week.
We are in fast start mode until first contact, with one
update per weekday until players contact one another.
The update schedule will be displayed correctly at the
next server restart.

Contact is of the first blood type, not diplomatic.
Although some diplomats are more into full contact diplomacy
rather than the chatty type, or so I hear.

The Nation of Council will not tolerate POGO Nomads!

winace is great.  can't even break without causing an exception

we agree; being exceptional is a good thing.

anyone else notice no btu production?

I just assumed Almighty POGO doesn't want us to have btus so we
can't kill his minions.

BTUs are limited prior to the first update due to
some strange feature tied to the EPOCH.
This is silly.
So prior to the first update we will grant free BTU's
to those that need them.
After the first update, things should be back to normal.
And the deities will no longer be kind.

Translation of Deities anno:
"BTUs are limited prior to the first update due to
some strange feature tied to the EPOCH.
This is silly."

A specific resource is badly programmed in the present
form of the code, we are implementing.

"So prior to the first update we will grant free BTU's
to those that need them."

Due to this programming error, all must pray to the gods
for personal dispensations, at our whim.

"After the first update, things should be back to normal.
And the deities will no longer be kind."

Later on, we will remind you that our benevolence but
never again will it be so.

Damn gods,  just like 3000 years ago. Messing around with
the mere mortals.

Bzzz.

lastly, I didn't read the anno of the game, bungies teles, or rge too
closely
but it appears that 1.) Bungie might be playing as he is not god,
2.) there are more than one diety?
3.) Pludaria is the primary deity.
4.) the god lands are actually bot played so they can develop
resources?
do I have this correct?
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.....

1.) yes
2.) yes
3.) yes
4.) you'll find out soon enough

"Due to this programming error" --- well, it's not a programming
error, it's a programmer's error (mine).  The Empire clock starts at
the Epoch, unless I reset it to another time.  If I simply let it
start at the Epoch, no BTUs are produced before the first update.  Do
I have to bother?  Who would ever need more than 640 just to break?

Now we know.

co-deiting... that's even more unclean than co-ruling.

all praise POGO, the one true god!!

...

You forgot an important part of those answers.

MUAHAHAHAHAHAA!

There that's better.

For those using WinACE, make sure you are using Version 2.5.50
and set Theme Game to HeavyMetal.

Versions earlier then 2.5.48 will have problems loading some of the
data from xdump.  These are server upgrades that have been
incorporated
into 2.5.48.

Also HeavyMetal has some special options which the Heavy Metal theme
game deals with.  There are more changes in 2.5.48 and 2.5.50 to deal
with the some of the new changes for Heavy Metal II.

Ron K.

HOW TO USE 640 MOBILITY TO OPEN:
1.) move groups of civs one sectors (stop) repeat outward
to ring your country with civs ready to explore
(saves the mobility of the 'important' sectors but cost mobility over
all and
btus.
[total civs moved: 134
total sectors moved TO: 65  {think mv 10 c 0,0 2,0; mv 10 c 2,0 40, mv
10 c 4,0 6,0}
total btu's consumed in ONLY moving civs: 190
Now explore into 134 sectors.
134 btus
Now carefully probe each and every NOMAD sector to see what is really
there.
72 btus.
Just to be sure do spy * to find those che
No set up distribution by hand for all new sectors.
134 btus.
now set up your country and move civs to new important sectors
and bang... your at 600 used btus....
:)

que?

A player inquired about biofuel, whether oil is scarce, and whether
ships and land units use fuel.

1. Ships and land units do NOT use fuel.

2. Whether oil is scarce is for you to find out.  To estimate known
   reserves in the ground, total ocontent (column oil in output of
   resource) and multiply by 25.  Expect to get a bit less due to
   rounding.  Your start area is good for almost 5000o.

3. The biofuel plant comes into play after tech 150.  Production
   efficiency is zero at tech 150, and improves to 0.5 at tech 230.
   It's up to you to figure out how much oil you can burn per turn,
   and whether and when you need biofuel.

Hint: the sinfrastructure command shows sector mobility cost for
moving stuff in column road, and for marching trains in column rail
mcost.

A player asked whether the number of operational railways connected to
a sector (selector track; see info Railroad) makes a difference for
trains marching across the sector.  The answer is no.  One is just as
good as many.

can gods do a power new before the update?

The gods can do a power new at any time.
However, hvy_metal code delays updates to the power chart
by 1 update to prevent tactical abuse.

no biofuel until tech 150? the deities must be republicans.

i'm coming for you

Tick Tock, Tick Tock

? Announcement from Plundaria, (#21)  dated Wed May  7 13:34:54 2008
? Tick Tock, Tick Tock
Did you feed your peeps?  Try the starve command!

"starve" is not a legal command

not sure i can last the 5 minute wait

OK, starv or starvation, your choice...

This is wierd.  I'm sitting here watching my btus disappear
while not doing anything.  Several drain away each second.

you think the government bureaucracy stops poking its fingers into
peoples lives just because _you_ aren't doing anything at the moment?

Weird says no update scheduled? Any idea? I thought it was tommorow
same time?

Attention, WinACE users!  It looks like several of you have it
configured to run a strength command whenever it syncs its database
with the server.  That is a serious BTU sink.  You might wish to
switch it off.  I don't know where the switch is, as I'm not using it
myself.

Next update is tomorrow same time (14:00 server time).  The schedule
file is being fixed.

To switch of the automatic Strength refresh: check Options->Updating-

"btu waste!" impossible situation.
bzzzz.

Hah,

First Plunderbot blood!!!

There's people here using winace? Pagan unbelievers!
Deuteronomy 14:7 "Thou shalt use raw telnet to connect to an Empire
game!"

Raw telnet is like raw sushi, it's an acquired taste.

And now that you are asking, I'll have a cheeseburger.

...and a side of cholesterol.

Lard, food of the gods...

change coun Loc-Lard

I'll drink to that...

change coun Sangria

I'm a wine!

Or, is that whine?

Because of the slower dust depletion, WinACE will tell you that
you have excess civs in your gold mines when you don't.

See? If you'd use raw telnet you'd not have that problem!

Make the Deity Chucke Pre-first update awards
There was a big pool of bars available.

We did not award the whole pool, however.

We did award 5 bars for various prompt and
discrete bug reports.

On to the winners:

Two winners in the humor catagories
The translation announcement from Beehive.

Excellent understanding of the tone and context
the original announcement was made in.

And

beep

A nice twist on his old stand-by and an empire political
statement as well.

Each winner needs to contact the awarding deity and advise where
they want their award.

Bars are still available for this turn. Prance to entertain the
deities and gain material rewards!

re: motd
KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid
What's screwed up in the game now that will cause us all pain?

This game is running "slightly" modified 4.3.14 Wolfpack Empire code.
The patch is available at
http://heathers.stdio.com/~rhyatt/empire/hvy_metalII/hvy-metal-2.0.patch

The code is also in my public Git repository on branch hvy-metal-2:
http://git.pond.sub.org/?p=empserver;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/hvy-metal-2

Enjoy!

metal-2.0.patch
Err
http://www.stdio.com/~rhyatt/empire/hvy_metalII/hvy-metal-2.0.patch

The latter is the better link.

speaking of kiss have you seen gene simmons in family jewels?

his wife is trying to get him to give up meat to help with his
heart condition. when asked what the hardest part of a vegetable
was to eat, he replied "the wheelchair".

Attention, WinACE users!
Attention, WinACE users!
Attention, WinACE users!
I strongly suggest you make the change in winace to avoid
BTU sucking.

So a fodderous player let Winace strength 0 his btus while
he had 1 civ in his capital.
extra points for knowing why is sometimes a good idea.

I have laughed at his email muchly and will award him the
DUM-MASS award at the end of the game.

However since it is a client-interaction issue and very early
in the game I feel it is not a serious balance issue to grant
them back a small percentage of the btus burned by strength
(as fetched from a quick scan of the server journal)

Further in interest of fairness, I will grant back BTU's this
update to anyone affected by this. Total btus to grant are
76.

Mercifulness. I'm not used to this. Leaves a bad taste.
Unclean.

If anyone feels this is unfair, please state that fact in
announcements/telegrams/emails I will entertain differing
points of view. I'm trying to host a fun game for everyone.

WinACE - Strength command

You can tell if the Strength command refresh is enabled or not.

The right most Column of the Sector form (Upper Right area) which
starts with Un: is black the Strength Command refresh is enabled
which uses BTUs.  If it is blue then Strength Command refresh is
disabled, no BTUs.

When WinACE needs to update the sector information in its local
database, it does a xdump and a strength command unless it is
suppressed.  Strength command uses BTUs, but xdump does not.

Ron K.

wait wait wait....
we TALKED about this BEFore the update! and YOU your PROMISED
to be a sactimonious asshole!  Now we have what, a pussy plundarious?
Sheezz...
bzzzzz..

winace gives some weird response sometimes.

"starve" is not a legal command

"piss-off" is not a legal command
sheezz...
bzzzz....

plundaria is getting soft. from personal
experience i know that is a bad thing.

they got drugs for that now...

(rimshot)

I have no problem with granting whomever it was the extra btus.
As you said, it's a client issue and seems fair to me.
I'm just glad I noticed the btu drain.

? "starve" is not a legal command
? "piss-off" is not a legal command

hokie-doke smart person, how did you do that?

the citizen leader supports any deity policy which helps
to prevent other petty dictators from identifying the
fodder.

may see some weirdness...

"bmap #"

okay, i admit to confusion. when i read _some_ annos/teles that
contain
phrases in double quotes, WinACE spits out a message saying blah-blah
is not
a legal command. very disturbing, like it actually tried to execute
the command.
but when i explicitly try to test it, no such result. go back and re-
read
all the days annos... still get blah-blah is not a legal command

stupid citizen leader brain hurt. fire bad! fire bad!

gawd-almighty, it picked the entire line that contained the ellipses
and generated the is not a legal command thingy. i have no idea if any
one else is even seeing it. extreme weirdness

jesus h. christ this is fucking bizarre

From The Capitol City - Kill 'Em All, Tunisia
TheDeathAngel strode up the capitol steps with
his gun in hand. He kicked open the ornate doors
and walked into the assembly Hall. With a steely
glare he strode up to the podium where the
President snored lightly, the sound echoing through
the chamber speakers. TheDeathAngel frowned slightly
and flicked off the safety.

"Mr President," He said.

The President snapped his head up with a start and
looked blearily over at TheDeathAngel, not yet
noticing the gun in hand. "You!" He exlaimed. "We
Sent you in exile with Mirkwood."

TheDeathAngel shrug and took another step, "Ten Years
since I last stepped onto this ground. Ten Years."
He paused and raised the gun for effect. "And the
person I trusted to keep my people safe."

He moved next to the President who tried to step back
only to find himself at the edge of the Dias.

TheDeathangel put his hand out, "You're asleep
at the wheel."

BANG *thud* One Civilian shot dead in sector 0,0

At The Capitol City, Kill 'Em All, Tunisia

TheDeathAngel mutters to himself as he tries to figure
out just how much rust he has.

"Map? Check"
"cen? Check"
"Move? check"

TheDeathAngel paused, "Units? what are units? Back in
my day we had mil and we were happy. Let me tell you..."

An Aide taps TheDeathAngel on his shoulder and whispers
fiercely.

"Oh, right, Now damnit I know we can change the country
name, how how in the bloody blazes do I do it?"

He shouts after the retreating aide, "And somebody
get Afrika Corps on the line, we need the Terminator
Script!"

it's Afrika Korps, old man. ask beep. i think they
have drugs for that too.

Frak!

Starbuck will find Earth, but not before we have a few more
weeks of fantasizing about strapping her naked over the
front end of a Viper and helping to restore the population
of the Colonial refugee fleet by the most basic means.

what? you're saying that's just me thinking that??

oh, and that should be

frack you, asshole

WinACE users!  I still see quite a few strength commands in the logs.
RimFire announced how to switch that off.  If you run yourself out of
BTUs that way now, you have nobody to blame but yourself!

If you made this mistake, you can beg the deities to bestow up to 76
BTUs on you, depending on what we find in our logs.

Notice of country name changes:

The hopeful leader of Sangolia had to excuse himself.  The country was
taken over by new leadership in an orderly fashion, and now styles
itself Dentrassi.

The worthless leader of Tunisia didn't bother to show up.  The country
was set up for the first update by the deities.  It is now ruled by
TheDeathAngel of Metallica.

The strange display WinACE behavior described by beep
is happening to my lower-right pane as well.  I think the
parser is looking for keywords and putting the strings in that
pane.
BTW, is beep an imposter?  He is using capital letters.

WinACE users

... is not legal command

I will investigate this evening once I get home from work.

Ron K.

yeah, and next you'll tell us that
Arrakis is back.....

Its Springtime in Alaska - his computer should have thawed out by now.

described by beep!
ackk....hmmm....
carefully submitted for your review by
ahemm....

bzzz.....

get your fricking factoids straight.

This is a test of the 'buffer-over-flow error'
this is only a test...
if it screws up your country, that is ok.

"probe 16,0"

"des 0,0 +"

"probe 16,0"

"probe beep"

"total weirdness"

sheez..
bz...

Beehive inventor/philosopher archimebees has discovered the perfect
geometric space is a hexagon.

All hexagons are holy to Beehive,  Beehive is Supreme,
blessings on our Queen.

Due to the holy nature of the hexagon.  Beehive religious leaders
have declared all charts that naturally contain the hexagon must
therefore
be deemed: Land destined for all honor to Our Blessed Queen. (OBQ)
Blessings on our Q (BooQ)

Beehive military drones have determined large swatches of land
naturall
configured tot he hexagon shape and hence operations are commencing
for the proper aquiring of these land for OBQ, BooQ.

Beehive Airwaves, AM 1320  (BAAM)
BooQ

The world is a funny place.
Instead of a sports car I decided to get a degree for my midlife
crisis.
One of my classes is "Game Design"
It gets worse.
I have to present a topic as part of the graduate class.
My given topic:

International Multiplayer Game hosting.

Life is good.

Anyone up for a survey I might use in the presenation?

you should have gone with the audi r8 instead. it's
a fast, hard, exhilating ride. the best kind.

Where is Afrika Korps when you need a well worded statement.

Ok get this. Just ran a wire for the last ten days
and winace processed the following errors

quotes_around(starve)
quotes_around(starve)  (yes second one)
quotes_around(piss-off)
Leading(?) quotes_around(starve)
Leading(?) quotes_around(piss-off) second

bzz...

and my wire failed to include the followignn I typed:
quotes_around(all the days annos...)
sorry above should read no_quotes_around(all the days anno...)
no_quotes_around(and generated the )

have no idea how they still keep getting process
cuz i don't see them in beeps anno. either.
bzzzzz....

a raw telnet to the server and a wire should
grab what is actually being sent to winace...
uses of telnet...:)

How do you toggle a beehive to off position?

info toggle.
Oh, I thought you said beep, not beehive.

still, *shutter*

i excel at turning things off. especially beep.

The lower-right pane normally displays commands executed
and communications like teles and flash.  I think it is
being triggered by the word 'command' at some point in
the parsing of incoming text.  Every line we are seeing
displayed contains the word 'command'.  Since this appears
to be intentional, we will have to live with the clutter.
(Unless Ron finds a simple way to discern the difference.)

What's really the scariest thing
is how much you actually to remember

does anyone else use the good ole empclient
with no extras?

TheDeathAngel

yes.

telnet alien.stdio.com 6777

;)

if there were several EyedMonsters in this game
we might be worried, but since there is only one
no problems are anticipated.

Catching up on a few annos...

Re: "Sangoria was taken over in an orderly fashion"
And the leader was turned into a stew, yes.

Re: Plundaria's survey for his class
Answer: Do you *really* want Empire players polluting your data?

And regarding the pane in Dethlok's lower-right:
Well, at least it's not all the diodes on your left side. Stop
whining!

Wait...wait...  beep and Metallica are both in this game?
Ok, that means beep loses automatically and Metallica gets
over run by Redline.

Meanwhile, back at Metallica Central, the not-so-focused
leader asks the rock star he's interviewing when his next
update will be.

I've been run over by so many different countries
who hasn't beaten me? :)

More importantly, who has beaten you that you didn't enjoy?

scrap plane * ?eff>40

:)))

Or, tangentially, was that chest beating and dick waving
or dick beating and chest waving? You GT people are so confused...

Yes. Yes I do. I think we have an *interesting* dataset here.

These annos are dredging up some awful old memories...

"My conclusions based on the hystericalgram analaysis are that the
average mentality
of an international multiplayer game hoster is equivalent to that of
an educated sheep"

Dethlok: So the therapy wasn't successful then?

ok, that someone remembers when I did that
that just plain spooky

You're infamous :)

It was classic.

Feed your people folks.
Unless you want relief efforts to arrive sooner
rather than later.

i can't speak for the angelic one but i love
being beaten. and i encourage all of you to
beat your local 1eyedmonster.

I'm a one eyed, one horned, flying purple 1EyedMonster eater

Why not just run a Myanmar Act Alike Contest?

note to self: dentrassi eats 1eyedmonsters

Not before turning them into a wonderful side dish, serving it with a
drink
made from dried metallic testicles
;)

All we need now is for Pat to roll out the Empire Alphabet and
we can all regress to the last century...

isn't that the symbol on the mexican flag? a 1eyedsnake grasped
by beak and dried metallica testicles clutched by talon?

And a guy with bunny slippers, an uzi tucked into his boxer
shorts, and resplendent in a purple robe to walk in and on
seeing this Empire world say, "Right, it'll have to go"

I think so. At least it's better than the Georgia Tech sports
logo, which features its very own pin dick.

Command: version
[...]
Options enabled in this game:
        ALL_BLEED, AUTO_POWER, FALLOUT, GODNEWS, INTERDICT_ATT,
CANNIBALISM

^^^^^^^^^^^
[...]

What the hell is that?

ieee1284*q1098320mcu98y&()^PbAgAu*&huf9sorosub~w87hpoiuj
c2po.asdf78;r2d2hjasdf;k**rs232mcuf b****~~
<connected>
<P-Bot>.<sync>
<P-Bot> interface online
<P-bot> Request mission parameters
Transmit QuietRiot.txt. Encoded scope. Checksum 42
<P-Bot> Received. Evaluating. Checksum confirmed
<P-Bot> Adaptive responses: Requesting mission
change:fullaggressivemode(AuII)
Deny
<P-Bot> Adaptive responses: Requesting mission
change:fullaggressivemode(AuII)Deny
<P-Bot> Adaptive responses: Requesting mission
change:fullaggressivemode(AuII)
shoot Adaptive responses heuristics  1
<P-Bot> *bang* *thump* Adaptive responses terminated.
<P-Bot> Processing
<P-Bot> Accepting mission AuII "Noble Metal"
<P-Bot> Connecting to game...
<P-Bot> Processing intel....

Sigh. Ray's reading his version or porn again.

<P-bot> Alert:Territorial integrity breached.
<P-bot> Alert:Invoking Evict Squatters Response

who the heck is squatting? i prefer standing at attention.

Wow. Coverage of Wolfpack Empire on Wikipedia is miserable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_Classic_%28computer_game%29

Apparently, Ray squats when reading porn.

Mon May  5 14:03  beep sacrifices to Hanuman

Ok, maybe there's more to this porn thing than I thought...
<shudder>

plunderbot is a cylon!!!

Ok, now that's just sick.

The blond one isn't too bad.

as a former landmine victim, i'm glad they are not included
in empire. it was a pretty tramatic experience. when i woke
up from surgery i freaked out.

i told the doctor that something was wrong... i couldn't feel
my legs. he responded, "yes, we've had to amputate both your
arms."

Ahh
the feel of excitement as the Update nears
the tension, the anticipation.

why am I here again? :)

Definition of a Kentucky Geek Version:
  "A geek that can't catch up to a cylon"

Sigh. Damn fingers.

Definition of a Kentucky Geek VIRGIN:
  "A geek that can't catch up to a cylon"

OH MY GOD! THERE'S NO MARKET!

(where the hell am I going to get olives for the drinks?)

Thu May  8 18:15  Plunderbot infantry beaten back by beep troops two
times

stupid cylon, must be an early model centurion instead of one of the
skin jobs.

i liked it better when he had the buffy fixation

never had a buffy fixation, had a willow/cordelia three-way fixation

WinACE users

The "is not a legal  command" text is not
security issue.  The text pattern is searched
for in  the server ouptut in order to redirect
that information to the telegram/flash output window.

If the text happens to be in telegram or an announcement
the line containing the text will be redirected to the
telegram/flash output window.

There is no issue with double quotes.

Ron K.

But do tell us: what text is causing this and
why are you parsing for it?  Seems interesting actually.
I was about to consider trying somemore 'buffer over run' tests
to get beep to dissolve.
bzzzz....

incase some of you missed it.
"Plunderbot troops capture..."
"Plunderbot troops beaten..."
it may actually be a bot or the gods have some
peon come on and have limited fun.
bzzzz....

? But do tell us: what text is causing this and
? why are you parsing for it?  Seems interesting actually.
? I was about to consider trying somemore 'buffer over run' tests
? to get beep to dissolve.

WinACE parses for the some strings to ensure they do not get
buried in the other parsing routines.

In this particular case, "is not a legal  command" is not printed
in the command area (lower left) when you issue an invalid command.
WinACE compensates for this by looking for this output and printing
it on the right side so you do not miss it.

Ron K.

? to get beep to dissolve.

the citizen leader feels hurt, and might
cry real tears. i hope you're proud of
yourself.

? it may actually be a bot

in one of his last games, Soxland claimed he had
improved his a.i. to the point where it had actually
managed to conquer another country.

I have some solutions to the WinAce and BTU's problem:

1- Either the players need to stop suckling on the teat of mommy and
learn to play the game and use their clients, or the game needs to
send a "spawn paper-clip-assisto-icon" command so that their clients
can tell the users that the client is wasting their BTUs after exces-
sive stupid commands for no good reason.  But it should not be the
server's responsibility to fix a dumb user/client.

2- Or either Winace needs to be fixed to not be in "shaft the n00bs"
mode and not have these DUM-MASS so called "features" enabled by
default.
No other clients do this!  Why should Winace (which is supposed to be
easy to use)?  Or at least have a menu item that only auto-issues the
strength command when BTUs are above some configurable level, maybe
500 (by default)?

Back in my day, we didn't have these fodders on crutches whining about
their inability to play due to their clients sending too many commands
and they ran out of BTUs.  We killed them before that.  Hell, you were
_lucky_ to even *CONNECT* for hours at a time.  "Oh, my connection to
the server latency is too high, it takes 2 seconds to update my
bmap..."
Try doing a "bmap *" over a 1200 baud!  Ever wonder why there are 50
realms?

Take the land, that must be taken.
Devour worlds, smite forsaken.

Plunderbot seems awfully happy, perhaps there is something to cylon
skin job
behind the lines theory. Or maybe it's just smugness....

Dethklok needs
a.) more beer
b.) more patience
c.) more youth (ful women)
or
d.) more functioning brain tissue.

bzzz....

although I agree with a passive default mode.

? Fri May  9 10:11  Dethklok gets serious with Plunderbot and declares
WAR
We are now at DEFCON 1
What will Plunderbot do now?

Make the Deities Chuckle Awards!

1EyedMonster receives five bars of gold for making a long, hard effort
at milking any and all opportunities to score, uh, wordplays.

Metallica receives five bars of gold for entering the game in
classical style.

it's nice to be rewarded for being the head of the
class

1.5 hours (ish) until the update
For the love of Sally "The Hutt" Struthers,
feed your people!

5 Bars of gold
woot!

5 Bars more for someone to take when I get blitzed
:D

TheDeathAngel

Well, now the Myanmar Look Alike Contest has to include government
seizure of aid.

ok,

so what's up with these '~' thingies
and what's this light infantry unit?

that's an odd plane name?

The "~" thingies are lettuce. Add them to your fodder.

leftover bits from the fall of the romaine empire, no doubt...

Caused by a stray iceberg, of course.

actually i was tossing my salad last night. made a mess.

guess you don't know beans about how to do that, then.

i'm pretty sure beans aren't involved.

Beans are a useful ingredient for some salads in the Dentrassi kitchen

It's 14:00. Do you know where your update is?

picking up candy from strangers?

that's some strong mountain men...

So far I have been scouring the countryside
in search of food for widows and orphans.

Now me must unsheath our sword, for vermin
like mountain men are up to no good.

For honor and right

Defender of all that is good.
Quixote of LaMancha

FYI all,
You all really need to think about how quickly your world will
be full.
Pun intended.
bzzz....

BoQ

anyone else notice how president roslin's mother looked exactly like
Barbara Bush?  the Bush's are cylons!

Yeah, more proof they are known to sell out...

Anyone else getting WinACE error messages like below related to
telegrams:

Log Entry 06:54:25  saturday, may 10 2008 version: 2.5.50
VB Error: 13 - Type mismatch
Routine: IncomingTelegramLine

BUG ALERT: xdump is broken for relations.  I'm told this affect
WinACE: it does not bring up the chat window.  The bug will be fixed
as soon as possible.

If you missted the hints I posted when the game started, read your old
announcements with "wire 99".  It's the second one.

One paragraph in particular is worth repeating another time:

    Watch your food supply!  You start with a substantial reserve, but
    once that's gone, you will need more than just one agribusiness.
    100 people need approximately 3f per update.  A farmer in a 100%
    fertility aggie or plains can feed five people including himself
    initially, more as technology improves.

Also at http://stdio.com/~rhyatt/empire/hvy_metalII/Hints

Note to self: don't use the anno command before being properly
caffeinated.  You type like an imbecile then.

Note to wannabe cheaters (not that we had the slightest sign that any
of those are among us): there's quite a bit more monitoring and sanity
checking code the server than it used to be.  Think twice before
attempting to pull a Barsoom on us.

Or maybe Barbarba just gas money to make it to her granddaughter's
wedding. Also, it seems Galatica made an off camera supply stop at
DS9.

Dentrassi was walking down a country road in HvyMetal, when he
happened to glance over the fence and see a beep goin' at it with a
sheep.

Dentrassi is pretty upset by this, so he climbs the fence and walks
over to beep.

He taps him on the shoulder and says, "You know mate, back home, we
shear those!"

beep looks around and says, "I'm not bloody SHEARING this with no
one!"

Protector of sheep (not Bungy)
Quixote of LaMancha

What do we have here?

 ~ ~ # # ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
# # # ^ # # # # ^ # # ~
 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ # # ~ ~

1.      A new form of impressionist ASCII art.
2.      A bridge to nowhere.
3.      A bridge to long.
4.      A bridge not quite long enough yet.

Designers' Notes for Hvy Metal I for your enjoyment and education:
http://stdio.com/~rhyatt/empire/hvy_metal/designersnotes.txt

Make that http://www.stdio.com/~rhyatt/empire/hvy_metal/designersnotes.txt

The update schedule has beed slowed to three updates a week: Monday,
Wednesday and Friday.  There will be no update on Memorial Day (May
26).  Use "show updates" to view the update schedule.

hanuman speaking ebonics again

it be slow
it beed slow
it has beed slow
it will have beeded slow

What do you expect from the *Monkey* God?  Orthography Lessons?

A player inquired about details of food production.  The monkey good
feels particularly benevolent today, and takes pity on his confusion.

Production depends on sector efficiency, resource contents (some
products), available work, a technology or education level production
efficiency (some products), a sector type production efficiency, and
availability of the product's raw materials.

The fine print is all in show sect c, but it's a bit cryptic:

                                                 --- level
---          reso
  sector type             product use1 use2 use3 level min lag eff% $$
$ dep c
a agribusiness            food                   tech  -10  10   50
0   0 f
~ plains                  food                   tech  -10  10  100
0   0 f

Let's read this slowly.  Both agribusiness and plains make a product
called "food" (column product), which is really food (the "f" in the
last column).

Columns use1 to use3 are empty, which tells us that we don't use any
raw materials.
The level columns tell us that level production efficiency is
(tech+10)/(tech+20).  It's 0.5 at tech 0, and grows quickly as tech
increases, reaching 0.75 at tech 20.

The eff% column is the sector type production efficiency.  Plains are
better than agribusinesses.

The $$$ column tells us that making food costs no money.

The reso dep column tells us that farming does not deplete fertility.

Now let's put this together with an example.  Consider an agribusiness
and two plains, all fully populated and efficient, one plains with 40
fertility, the other two sectors with 100 fertility.  Tech level is
zero.

PRODUCTION SIMULATION
   sect  des eff avail  make p.e. cost   use1 use2 use3  max1 max2
max3   max
   2,0    a 100%   600  150f 0.25
$0                                      150
  -3,43   ~ 100%    60   30f 0.50
$0                                       30
 -14,2    ~  40%    60   12f 0.50
$0                                       12
Column eff shows sector efficiency and fertility combined.  100%
efficiency with 100 fertility make 100%, and 40% with 40 fertility.

Column p.e. shows tech level production efficiency and sector type
production efficiency combined.  The former is 0.5, the latter is 50%
for aggie and 100% for plains, yielding 0.25 and 0.50.

Since the agribusiness holds ten times as many people as plains, it
makes ten times as much work: 600 vs. 60, in column avail.

Production is avail * eff * p.e.  The aggie makes 600 * 100% * 0.25 =
150.  The fertile plains makes 60 * 100% * 0.50 = 30.  The less
fertile plains makes 60 * 40% * 0.50 = 12.

At tech level 20, level p.e. is 0.75 instead of 0.50, so you harvest
50% more food.

The Queen (blessed are her Larva, woe to her drones) has asked
that vast areas of the Beehive begin making honey immediately.
Grand Eunich Bzzzrightyear. Has located vast stretch of buttercup
flowers in our landscape.  If by chance nearby peasants hear the low
pitched buzz of our workers,  just ignore them.  We do not harm
HUmANs.

Bzzzz...

i hate bees because of their little pricks

RimFire and Wales earn three bars of gold each for identifying and
reporting a new bug.

I see bees in the Beehive.  1000's of them.  Send 3000 gold bars to
our bank for ientifying and reporting these bugs.

Ard

Rail - WinACE

I had a question about displaying rail in the WinACE.

The rail value shows number of the sectors reachable
from this sector including itself.

Simple interpretation
rail = 0 - not reachable by Rail
rail > 0 - reachable by Rail

When you look at the map there will be some sectors you
expect to have a rail value but don't.  IIRC, the sector
must be at least 60% before the rail can be used.

Markus, step in if I made any mistakes.

Ron K.

Ron's simple interpretation of "rail value" is correct.  The server
calls that value "track".

Your highway, freeway and bridge span sectors form your railway
network.  Such a sector needs 5% efficiency for its track to be
operational, and it then also extends track into adjacent own sectors
with at least 60% efficiency.

Selector track simply counts the number of operational railways within
range 1.  Trains can run when that value is not zero.

Example: Right after break, your 0,0 had track 6.  It wasnt a railway
itself, but it was >=60% efficient, and all six neighbors were
railways (highways >=5%).

Example: Your -2,0 had track 3.  It was a railway (highway >=5%), and
had two neighbors that were railways (-1,-1 and -1,1).

Example: Your -4,0 had track 0.  It was a highway, but not efficient
enough to be a railway, let alone to get track from your railway -2,0.

WinACE - Rail

If the rail value is not showing in your WinACE,
it is possible that you do not have theme game set
to Heavy Metal.  As a turns out the rail value
displayed in WinACE is actually computed in WinACE
when Theme Game option is set to HeavyMetal.

Ron K.

==========================================================

All slots are filled in this game. We are accepting players onto the
standby/replacement  list.
Email emp...@wophr.carnage.stdio.com to be added.