Has anyone given any thought to a method of solitaire Full Thrust?
Weapons firing for 'robotic' ships would be fairly simple. Rules could be in
place for targeting the closest ship, or targeting a specific ship until it's
destroyed.
Movement for ships could be done with a dice roll against a table based on
which arc the target ship was in, relative velocities, or other criteria.
Fore Port Starboard Aft Die
0 0+0 P1+2 S1+2 Pmax-1
1 0+0 P2-1 S2-1 Pmax+0
2 0+1 Pmax Smax Smax-1
3 0-1 Pmax Smax Smax+0
4. 5. 6. 7 8 9
Fighters could simply choose a target and move accordingly.
Missiles would be a problem as would other weapons like the Wave Gun.
One way to playtest this would to take a player cruiser against a
'robotic' battleship in a single ship-to-ship combat. Or a
cruiser vs. cruiser match with one or more ships per side.
Just some brainstorms....
> On Wed, 13 Nov 1996, Jonathan Davis wrote:
> Has anyone given any thought to a method of solitaire Full Thrust?
This would not be a bad idea. Many a time have I gone to the gamestore for a
game of FT and find that no one is intersted in playing.
> Weapons firing for 'robotic' ships would be fairly simple. Rules
Perhaps we can create a version of the priority rules from DSII or SGII.
> Movement for ships could be done with a dice roll against a table
I don't know....this would make things a little too random. Does anyone have
the "Robot" ship rules from SFB? Maybe we can do some adaptation of that.
Later,
One problem with simple rules for determining what
an enemy will do is that there can be no long-term
strategy without you being in on it. Each turn the opponent makes "decisions"
on what to do based purely on the current situation. It also can't keep any
secrets from you.
Seems to me that Full Thrust would not be too hard to write a computer
opponent for. Well, I mean that it doesn't have the complexities of other
games. No or little line of sight to worry about. No terrain types. You could
have some format for describing the scenario, and just enter your orders and
results of firing at appropriate times. It gives you the orders for its ships
(except cloaked ones). All you need is a grid system for initial placement,
and then be careful with your measuring so you don't deviate from where the
computer thinks you are. If you're close, you wouldn't have to
re-enter positions, just your orders.
The computer could have its own strategy, which you wouldn't have to be
involved with. Of course, how good that is depends on the prorammer. You'd
only have the orders each turn, so you wouldn't know what it was up to.
I think with the limited number of ships and the simplicity of the field, this
wouldn't be too hard to implement, or have significant computation speed
constraints. Not that I'm going to do it, though I
might give it some thought. :-) It isn't as
simple as a few rules to take with you, but if you've got a computer in the
room, it wouldn't be too clumsy to play, either.
> Andy Skinner wrote:
<A whole bunch of stuff about a FT AI.>
If you're going to go to all the trouble of designing an AI and having it keep
track of postions, speeds, ship damage, etc (so it can make decisions), you
might as well get rid of the minitures and play on screen. Which of course
leads to hot seat, modem play, LAN support, Internet....
Also, for anyone interested in programming starship combat tactics, there is a
game available called Starships. The last version I've seen was 3.0, and that
was several years ago. I haven't looked on the 'Net for it (probably will
after finishing this post:)), but it is probably out there. The preperation
for the game consists of writing the controlling routine for 1 or more
starships, using a sort of specialized
assembly code (not as daunting as it sounds.) The ships are then loaded
into a master module that runs the combat according to the programmed
instructions. The game is very instructional in just what a task good AI is.
Anyway, my 2 pennies,
> Scott wrote:
> was 3.0, and that was several years ago. I haven't looked on the 'Net
Ever try Trek28, PRobot or CRobot? Trek28 came out several years ago and had
computer oponent option as well as modem play. You managed small fleets in
combat as well as exploration. Great game for the time. I wonder if it was
ever improved upon? The latter two taught the user a little Pascal or C
language in order to give your robot AI that would instruct it how to fight
against other robots(programs).
> Ever try Trek28, PRobot or CRobot? Trek28 came out several years ago
My initial thoughts on this matter were based from the solitaire rules for
Ogre published in one of the Space Gamer magazines many years ago.
Based on a die roll, the Ogre would make a random move from a lookup table and
fire its weapons at the conventional targets. The beauty of that system
is that the objective is simple for the Ogre - destruction of the human
command port.
Objectives are much more harder to identify in a Full Thrust scenario.
I have some initial ideas for a random table that I can think about and test
on the gaming table. I think I'll define several tables with the overall
objective for the 'robot' ship, such as full forward attack, oblique attack,
withdraw, and others.
Again, this generates a loose strategy for the 'robot' ship, but not an
overall scenario strategy.
> Scott wrote:
Scott do you have a pointer yet? I couldn't find it on the WWW.
> Ever try Trek28, PRobot or CRobot?
I used trek73 that is based on SFB, text based game but it had a pretty good
AI enough to challenge you, horrid control system made it harder. All it
needed was a
Graphical interface - now wire it up as a CGI program and you could have
a decent WWW combat sim.
For Solitare games I either play 'schitzo' trying to forget what the
opposition is doing (it doesn't really work but is OK for practice), Using
Borgs like in the SFB rules (I can post a version if there is interest). For
the Borgs I created a set of random tactic and event cards to try and add a
level of uncertainty. Using Games Theory I reckon you could program a near
invincible FT opponent as long as you explained the rules to it.
> On Thu, 14 Nov 1996, Mike Miserendino wrote:
> Scott wrote:
> >instructions. The game is very instructional in just what a task
How about "The Cosmic Balance"? It was a game on the Apple platform
(*gawd*, 14-15 years ago) that has some of the feel of FT (and possibly
SFB, but I've never played the latter). It was modelled more on the Star
Trek universe, though. Basically, you controlled 1-3 ships against an
opponent (don't remember if there was an AI). You programmed your ships at the
beginning of the turn, your opponent does the same, then the computer plays
the turn out. I remember it being alot of fun, though I was in junior high
back then.;) I think there was eventually a DOS version as well.
On a whim, I looked for TCB on the web last night, and found a current version
on the Windows platform. I don't know much about it (I just downloaded it last
night), but it looks pretty similar to the old one. Anyone who'se seen it have
any thoughts on it before I look at it more tonight?
> timj@uk.gdscorp.com wrote:
> At 05:16 PM 11/14/96 +0000, you wrote:
> How about "The Cosmic Balance"? It was a game on the Apple platform
Could you tell me where you found the Cosmic Balance? I played that game when
I was a kid in eighth grade and it was great!
Thanks,
James
> J. Scott Miller wrote:
I still have the ZIP file, and it's shareware, so
> it could be distributed or put on a web site if people were
I'm interested and I bet you I'm not the only one. If you haven't got a
website yourself, send it to me by private email and I'll put it on mine.
> On Fri, 15 Nov 1996, JAMES BUTLER wrote:
> Could you tell me where you found the Cosmic Balance? I played
So did I -- So did I (thoughtful look). I had a few request for the
URL, so now everyone can see it:
http://w3.one.net/~swright/cosmic/cosmic.html
The zipfile can be downloaded from there. As I've said to someone else, I
haven't had much chance to look at it. I've personally just unzipped it,
looked at the *.doc and checked out the interface. Seems like the same
game (though I'm talking from 15-year old memory), though it isn't
exactly the same. It's in Windows as well.