KAHUNA gameplay discussion

[gm_al]

Now that KAHUNA finally seems to be going smooth *crosses fingers* Id like to invite you to post your comments on gameplay here. Keep the bug reports to the other thread plz.

For now I find a much more increased pace of the game, but the rest is still to be seen. Sure looks like a real challenge to me now.

[Mullog]

My first concern in the default HUNT PLANTS order. I ended up hunting all plants in my square, something I had not planned for. So be carfeul!

[Duke]

Dont trust any posts from a Norwegian today. He might have taken a sip from the "bottle of fun".

[killerbee]

me seeing next turn in -564 minutes and staying on turn 483 until forever !

BUG BUG BUG

dangnabbit and that at the moment of migrating to omnivore #->

Please any one with contact to the server dev team forward this info and ask them to fix it / bring me back into game

[Hamster]

I already informed about it last night at midnight on another thread.

It's seems fixed now (20 mins ago).

[korexus]

Yup, all fixed now. There was a missing 'W' in a line of code. Computers are stupid things and just can't do what you mean instead of what you say.

However, it should be running properly now. Allisters extra turns have been removed so hopefully we can continue as though nothing ever happened.

korexus.

[Hamster]

Yup, all fixed now. There was a missing 'W' in a line of code. Computers are stupid things and just can't do what you mean instead of what you say.
korexus.

Can't agree even 1% with you. It's quite opposite - they're smart because of this feature. And whenever is something going wrong there is 98% that you made the mistake by yourself, and 2% that it's by the system (which is also made by humans).

[Dameon]

I'm interested to know what the actual death rate percentages are. I was told it was around 15% for BS1, and in my experiences that has been pretty accurete. I just (finally) got BS2 though, and my first cycle with it I lost....15% of my specimens. I thought the death rates decreased with larger sizes? I know there is some variation, but I figured the number for BS2 would be less for sure. In fact, if you go by pure percentages I lost a higher percent of my specimens with BS2 than I did my final two cycles of BS1 (I haven't compared any further back than that). It will be interesting to see what percentage of my specimens die in the future cycles, and compare the average percentages. My first experience may have been the exception rather than the rule, but in the meantime I guess it's time to pump my fertility again. Either that, or I got it backwards and bigger BS means more deaths.

Edited to add: After going through four cycles now, I can confirm that the death percentages are the same for BS 1 and BS 2. Once might have been an anomoly, but my average is still at 15% at BS 2 after four cycles. The average death percentage is a bit higher if anything- either this is the way it is supposed to be, or there's a bug in the coding.

[Dameon]

I'm going to try posting to this thread again even though my last one got ignored- this time about spying. I tried to spy a square this round that had another species in it, and I got

"You learned nothing new and lost 3% instinct"

Now, as I recall, there's two ways to fail spying. One is if you simply don't succeed, and the second is if you've already been in said square and know about the plants there. IIRC, the message I got was in line with the second situation there. So basically, if I am understanding this correctly, if you spy on another square you have already been through before, you automatically fail. I wasn't trying to spy on the plants, I was trying to see what species was in that square without having to move there.

This would become even more of an issue if spying reveals the number of plants in a square, which is constantly changing. I think the spying concept needs to be reworked a bit so you can spy to see what species are in neighboring squares (not to gain their info, that should be a same-square spy too, but just to see WHO they are, y'know?). It would just make it more versatile, which I think is fair when you consider it takes four turns to do right now. If I am wrong about my assumptions here and I just happened to fail on both spy attempts, I apologize. But my success chance was about 80% both times, and as I said I vaguely recall there being a different message resulting from a failed attempt, as opposed to an attempt to spy out a square you have already been through.

[korexus]

I missed the first post, so I never replied, but I can say that I have *not* been having the same death rates at BS 1 and 2. Sorry.

As for the second, the only way to fail spying is to fail the roll, so that's what you did.


korexus.

[Dameon]

Dang that bad luck. And Korexus, please check my data file and do the calculations yourself. I haven't been tracking my death rates the entire time, but just from the last two I can see I also averaged at 15%, as my first two did. I am pretty sure that the entire time I have been BS2 it has been at 15%, just as it was when I was BS1 If for some reason my species has higher BS2 death rates, I want to know why. Is it something I did, or is it just a bug? If you don't believe me, check my numbers for yourself and you should come up with that 15% average.

[korexus]

Hmm, interesting. Now I know what Dameon's doing.


Anyway, back to the growth rates...

Turn 1536: Specimen 242, Birth 16%, Death 13%, net 3% growth = 7.

Okaay, that looks in order. There may be a bug further back, but looking through your log and doing calculations is tedious at 3am in the morning so I'll leave the rest for tomorrow. If there's any specific cycles which you remember being wrong then post the numbers here, it'll make life much easier to check. (You shouldn't have any death rates higher than 17% if I remember the numbers correctly...)


korexus.

[Donut]

What are you talking about Kor??? 3 am is prime time to start doing calculations...

WTF am I saying... I hate those nights

Donut

[Dameon]

Heh my strategy this game was to buy as many skills as possible to see if they work, and are worth the amount of SPs they cost. No big secrets.

Anyway, Kor, yes there are some cycles when it is under 15%, but for every one of those there is one that it is over 15%. My point is, the average is about 15%. Here's the last turn cycles (all rounded):

Turn 1152: Death rate 15%
Turn 1200: Death rate 12%
Turn 1258: Death rate 17%
Turn 1296: Death rate 14%
Turn 1344: Death rate 14%
Turn 1392: Death rate 11%
Turn 1440: Death rate 15%
Turn 1488: Death rate 16%
Turn 1536: Death rate 13%
Turn 1584: Death rate 16%

The average for that is 14%. OK, so that's 1 percentage point less than 15%, but let's see how ten of my BS1 cycles average out:

Turn 192: Death rate 15%
Turn 240: Death rate 17%
Turn 288: Death rate 12%
Turn 336: Death rate 16%
Turn 384: Death rate 15%
Turn 432: Death rate 13%
Turn 480: Death rate 13%
Turn 528: Death rate 15%
Turn 576: Death rate 13%
Turn 624: Death rate 12%

The average for those is also 14%, the exact same as it was for BS2.

The point is, there is no statistical difference for the death rates between BS1 and BS2, at least for me. It looks like your averaging coding isn't working very well, or I did something to break it. 10 cycles is more than three days worth of playtime, and therefore the numbers really should come to averages that are different if they are intended to be.

Like I said I don't know what the intended numbers are (I did hear 15% tossed about for BS1, not sure if that is accurate), but in practice it turns out that the average death rate is the same for both BS1 and BS2, at least for me.

[Mullog]

Interesting interesting!
I'm sorry that I did not reply to your previous posts, but I did also miss them.

Now, the death rates for BS1 species varies between 12% and 18% with an average of 15%. Each BS reduces these numbers by 1% so BS2 have death rates between 11% and 17% with an average of 14%.
Your death rates at BS2 varies from 11% to 17% so they seem correct, and at BS1 they vary from 12% to 17% with also seems correct and a bit lucky since you never got the 18%.

As for the spying there is only one message when you fail regardless of wether you spy on other species or in a direction. The loss is always 3% for failure, and there is no check to see if you already know the square. That would be stupid!
I agree that the text "but learned nothing new" is misleading, so I will change it to "but failed".

Edit: I do all changes to the next beta now, so they will not be visible in the Kahuna game.

[korexus]

It's a bit hard to get statistical significance from data sets that small, espeacially in a case like this, where the distributions are very similar anyway...

There may be a case for the change in death rates being too small currently, but as I'm sure you can appreciate, we can't make the change much bigger without either increasing the death rate at BS 1 still further or having the death rate for large creatures being almost 0.

I've suggested two possible alternatives to Al and Rune, we'll see where things go...


korexus.

[Hamster]

Seems some work is currently in progress on the game.
Few changes noticed:
- your image on the map is changed again (to the one we already saw)
- Saturation reporting changed (limits implemented)
- Incompatible food part missing
- and the biggest change (even was seen before too) - THE TURNS ARE STOPED!!!

[Dameon]

Well, if the averages are only supposed to be 1% apart, then I agree with you on your analysis here Korexus. I thought there was an actual statistical difference between the two. If the difference is only 1% though, then I don't think you can actually expect to see a difference as with the type of numbers we are working with 1% is really almost unnoticable. So, my take on this is that if you are going to change the death rates between BS, there should be between a 2-4% differece, instead of 1%. That way players are going to notice it no matter what.

[korexus]

Seems some work is currently in progress on the game.
Few changes noticed:
- your image on the map is changed again (to the one we already saw)
- Saturation reporting changed (limits implemented)
- Incompatible food part missing
- and the biggest change (even was seen before too) - THE TURNS ARE STOPED!!!

- Rune must have overwritten the newer version of the little man when he uploaded the modified game files.
- Stomach is here
- Missing or removed?
- Yup. Kahuna is dead. Long live Mojave!

my take on this is that if you are going to change the death rates between BS, there should be between a 2-4% differece, instead of 1%. That way players are going to notice it no matter what.

The problem with that is that it requires even higher death rates at small BS. The model we're considering now won't have much change between BS 1 and 2 (that mutation already has a large number of benefits!) and similarly BS 2 to 3 probably won't change a huge amount, but after that the death rates will drop more drastically. -Players then get a trade off of harder hunting against lower death rates...



korexus.