RE: Computer Full Thrust

On Saturday, January 17, 1998 9:31 PM, TJ [SMTP:redleg7@bigfoot.com]
wrote:

This is a bit late due to the fact I've been away 2wks (having a baby)
and had
580 FT messages to wade through!

> 
> Ship Editor
> I wonder why no one has made a program for ship designs.  I've seen 
> the spreadsheets, 

Best candidate to what you describe so far 

http://netnow.micron.net/~ericski/full.htm

See windows 95 ship creator

> 
> CFT Graphics
> It would be nice to capture that miniatures feel in CFT, but I don't 
> think it's necessary.  A simple overhead view using a hex based map 

Don't know if we really need hex maps. The best candidate to what you
describe 
so far 

http://www.york.ac.uk/~mkh100/newweb/FTMAP.frames.html

Also there was a Java Full Thrust Battle Computer which was
pretty good for tactical planning but not graphics rich, no URL?

> 
> AI
> Always an issue in computer games.  Most of the space empire games 
> I've seen (Stars! and SE) have "battle logic" or "battleplans" that 
> are programmed by the player.  I'm thinking along the same lines 
> except with a little more detail added.  Of course in a game like CFT 
> you wouldn't need  these battleplans because the player is 
> controlling every aspect of the ships operation.  You could develop 
> what I call Battle Drills that could be used to make the computer 
> play better.	In a campaign game you could use these battle drills to 
> automate combat.  A collection of  battle drills covering certain 
> situations would be called a doctrine template.  This is the players
> warfighting philosophy directly translated into AI form.  The idea is 
> to get the computer to fight as if the player was actually 
> controlling the ships.

The other approach is robot ships (anyone played xpilot). It
would be quite simple to program a computer to place a ship so that 
its maximum number of its weapons can bear and the minimum of the
enemies, 
that would make the robots hard to beat in a broadside knife fight.
There are
some solo play robot rules knocking 'bout

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/pdga6560/ftrobot.html

I like your idea of doctrine templates, they could also be modified for 
xeno types. 

> 
> Hope I didn't offend anyone by my ideas.  

Great people talk about ideas, Average people talk about things, 
Small people talk about people.

sincerely
tim jones
--
Reality is for those who can't cope with Science Fiction.