SC 2.9 FAQ

What's New
Motivation
Features & Status
Current Bugs
Plans

Servers

The primary test server is at SC 2.9

Beta Status, no more

No one reported any bugs after many games, I didn't see any in my testing and I don't plan on adding any new features at this time. So, it is out of beta.

Fixes

This is a bit subjective but these are 'fixes' to the 2.8 code.

1. The code actually uses the home_rsrc for setting up the homeworld.
2. Other users can not tell what is being built during this turn.
3. 'Invasion/multiple nuke' bug fixed.
4. Players who are idle (more than 3 turns typically) and are nuked, are considered both nuked and ruined. Note that the converse is not true, if a player ruins it does not count as a nuke against them.
5. Attempt to add comments to parts of the code that are changed.

Features

These are new aspects to the game.

1. Mirror world code for 2 players working.
2. Multiworld start for mirror games. Note: Multiworld games are meant to be fast paced deadly games. You receive an initial jump in resources by starting on multiple planets but if any of your initial planets are nuked, then you are nuked. This may seem extreme, but it is still fair since multiworld are currently only in mirror games.
3. Listing of who is in a game on the Game List screen.
4. Planets in the mirror games have the stats determined as in the regular games with the following exceptions.
   
   • Buffer systems (random 0 and MAX/2) + MAX/4
   • Homeworld in traditional is MAX (e.g. 100) and overwrites whatever value was there.
   • Homeworld(s) in multi are +MAX/4
5. Player's use of html is disabled.
6. Surrender and Tie options. In a draw none of the stats change. You can draw if you have allies also. If you surrender in a 2 person game, it is as if the other person nuked you. If you surrender in a more than 2 person game it is as if whoever colonizes your homeplanet (a random homeplanet in multi start) had nuked you.
   Surrender happens whenever you offer surrender to any 1 player and an end turn occurs. The other player doesn't have to do anything to accept the surrender. The decision to surrender is totally in the hands of the player surrendering.
7. Time limit and overtime. After a certain amount of time the amount of time a turn is changes to the new value.
8. (optional) upper limit on ag growth.

Installation Notes

Notes for people setting up servers

• Mirror games only work for 2 person games. It doesn't hurt to use the Mirror layout for more than 2 person games, as it is ignored, but it can be misleading.
• Multiworld starts are only supported for mirror games.
• The overtime and time limit should not be left blank or at 0. If you don't want to use these features, then set both to be the same as the turn time.
• The minimum agriculture is only used in multiworld games. It has no effect on other games.
• Maximum ag ratio will limit the ag ratio of a game to that value. The series setup will not allow a value less than 1.0. Low values (1.0-2.0) tend to make colonization more of a long term investment and also limit people from pop-tricking. A high value (5-50) should have little effect on the game. Note that with a value of 1.0 the population will still grow by 1 each turn (given sufficient ag)
• If the encode/decode worked on your systems and you have databases encoded that way then you probably want to uncomment them so you can use them. Both Rowan and I were unable to make use of them. I suspect it has something to do with how your server is setup, but noone on the list was able to provide any info on this. Of course it goes without saying that if you have a current database that you should copy the dump files while making the transition. If you have problems with this I'll try to help, but most likely it would be the roxen people who know the most about this problem.