GOATS (and other ungulates) IN VGAP4 ==================================== Stardate: October 2002. In a thread on Contraband Mechanics, Cody Kosinski finished his posting thus: "...blah blah blah I decided to try and cause fluctuations in more types of contraband - however, much to my chagrin, this caused the price fluctations to freeze at their current values. Try it out yourself, it works! Cody "The goats you buy shed a perfume that makes Marxism so terribly clear to me." " ---- Well, I just had to rise to the bait. I posted back: Re: Goats (was: contraband mechanics) Cody Kosinski writes > > You might want to add ... > that you CAN disrupt a wildly fluctuating contraband market ... >"The goats you buy shed a perfume that makes Marxism so terribly clear to me." OK, I have added this [to a webpage on contraband] - see URL below. The only thing that's not clear to me is how the goats relate to all this. Should I be investing in goats, or selling them madly, and if so how do I tell when a goat is about to crash? What has the historical trend of goats been and are they generally a volatile market? Is there any prospect of a Futures market in goats? Is this a technical term like a "Bull" market and a "Bear" market? Is there an exotic tech with which I can manipulate goats and or is goat-manipulation generally considered a criminal offence under the Obscene Acts Act of 1867? ---- This kicked off a stream of replies: Alfred the Great: No, no, no. You missed the tiny little printing at the bottom of the Player's guide. The Goats are part of the Victory conditions. Each player starts with one goat on his Homeworld. You can move the goat, but only on ships of Hull tech 9 or above (this is unfair to the Scavengers who rarely build high tech hulls but they can use a loaned one from an ally). If you "get the other player's goat" he is out of the game. I find it reasonable that the Privateer Goat-Napper can get other player's goats from up to 150 LY (under host 743). However I think it is an exploitable bug to be able to nap the goats off completely cloaked ships. But I understand fixing this would make the anti-Borg Lobby steal everyone's laptop in revenge so we are probably stuck with this feature. ---- Traks: Yes, as you already know goats are extremely important part of every culture in universe. Only best representatives of every nation are called "goats", as a praise. So selling goats is a criminal offense and treachery to your nation. Even more, taking another nations goats is an act of heroism. I hope that this will make a matter more clear :) ---- Roger Norris: The true beauty of the little-known goat scheme is its subtleness. To an outside observer, it would appear that one was simply trying to manipulate the goat market. Your enemies, seeing the large quantity of goats that you're accumulating, may also try to manipulate the goats to see what advantage can be had. With little knowledge of what they're actually doing, their attempts at goat manipulation may end up with them hurting themselves. The secret, however, is that it's not the goats themselves we're interested in. We manipulate the goats merely to produce vast quantities of goat milk. Combined with the huge surge in Scavenger population in mid to late game, goat cheese produced from our now plentiful supply of goat milk will give us all the income we need. ---- Alfred the Great: I would warn newbies that Roger Norris clever scheme (the Scavenger-Brie Ploy) now has a counter under Host 73490 and later. Under the latest host one of your enemies can trigger the exotic tech "HooFnm0uth" (spelling courtesy of ScriptZ0r) which forces you to not only burn all your goats, but to pay the colonists 3 MC/Goat burned thereby devastating your economy. I just love how there is a counter to every "perfect strategy" in this game if you just think long and hard about the problem (unless you are a Scot in which case I presume you are thinking mostly about the goats). I have been running a few scripted games with Goats. But I have to script them by hand since the current version of ScriptZ0r doesn't automate these. I would suggest "Alt-G" add a goat to any planet. The proper scripting code if you wish to run some test games yourself (before using Goats in a real game) is: Begin Thing name = "Billy" x = 16480 y = 16409 flavor = 2 smell = 89 beard = 7 'length in centimeters damage = 0 ' damage TO the goat, not damaged CAUSED by the goat mass = 85 energy = 500 'high energy is more effective in Ram Attacks life = 4 crew = 3 riding crew = 2 leading crew = 1 '"crew" must equal "riding crew" + "leading crew" or Master.exe will abort with error code 4B speed = 2 xway = 16410 yway = 16480 marker = 1 ' 1 = bell, 2 = ribbon, 0 = no marker info1 = "Goat" 'options are: Goat, Bighorn, Merino info2 = "Stable" 'options are: Stable, Ornery, Mean, Hungry stealth = 50000 'High stealth improves odds in Ram Attacks edge = 5 'How close to the Goat one can approach without being overwhelmed by the smell. For Privateers this is how close the Privateer can approach before the Goat is overwhelmed by the smell. parent = 2 ' It's always 2. But the mommy goat and the daddy goat have to love each other very much binfile = "Ungulate" data1 = "Brie" ' One may enter any goat (not cow's milk) cheese supported by the current host. If your host is out of goat Cheese it would be courteous to bring some (and a nice red wine) End ---- Alfred the Grate asked me (by email): >From your lack of intimate knowledge of goats and other ungulates I >presume you are English and not a Scot? (I am given to understand the >Scots are more "familiar" with the cloven hoofed species than most >peoples). Actually I am indeed Scottish and thus it is perfectly OK for me to share the following wee jest with ye. A researcher is conducting a survey into goat shagging. First of all he visits a Cornish farmer. "So, Cornish farmer, how do you shag your goats?" "Well, I take the hind legs of the goat and put them down my wellie boot and take the front legs of the goat and put them over a wall." "That's very interesting," replies the researcher and he leaves the Cornish farmer. Then he meets a Midlands Farmer. "So, Midlands farmer, how do you shag your goats?" "Well, I take the hind legs of the goat and put them down my wellie boots and take the front legs of the goat and put them over a wall." "That's very interesting," replies the researcher. "That's how they do it in Cornwall too." And he leaves the Midlands farmer. Then he meets a farmer from Abergaveny. "So, Abergaveny farmer, how do you shag your goats?" "Well, I take the hind legs of the goat and put them down my wellie boots and take the front legs of the goat and put them over my shoulders." "Over your shoulders?" replies the researcher. "Don't you put them over a wall like everyone else?" "What?" says the farmer. "And miss out on all the kissing?!" ---- Axel: Actually, all this is only part of a much bigger story... http://www.goatism.org/ ---- J. K. Hollanti: I've just heard that in addition to the goats Tim is about to add a llama feature to the host 117. This will cause a random llama to appear on any CoM ship with a guest capacity of, or exceedind, 100, 000. The appearance of Llama starts off a fairly complex chain reaction. Firstly the location on llama (ship) is revealed to all of the borg cube class ships. As pointed out in Star Trek TNG, episode 302.3, by the Q continuun, borgs cannot resist the assimilation a llamas, tyrellian catfish or squarrels. This has been intergrated to host 117 in such away that any borg cube built (anni, bio) has a 80% change of laying a intercept course to the llama ship. This will happen at the beginning of turn. (Warp is also set to maximum). At the same time the colonist on board the CoM ship will begin a llama hunt. Lllama hunt seases the breeding, training and possible mc/gc production. The purpose of the lama hunt is to capture the animal and eject it through airlock before the expected borg attack. The chance for llama cature is 100*(col+crew/100 000), every high guard aboard adds only 0,1% to the succesful capture - these are fast animals. If the poor animal isn't captured in 3 turns the crew decides it best to jettison the population and destroy the ship. If the ship has pod bays, colonist and crew aboard will be rescued to life pods along with troops and HG. the pods are created automatically. At the turn 2 since the llama sighting, if this valiant mountain animal is still alive, all "good" races are informed of the violation of animal rights aboard CoM ship. This causes immediate reformation of the galactic amnesty federation, upon which all hostile actions among G.A.F members are ceased and Colonies of Men are suggested to end the violence to towards animals. This will be done by extensive spamming both through the messaging system in the game and also to the players personal email. If after this the CoM ship is evacuated and exploded with the poor animal on board all members of amnesty fedaration are forced to declare a full scale war against the player in question. Yes, I'm currently heavily drunk. ---- I feel the Hollanti Variation will add scope, realism and an unprecedented depth of vision to the game. We are all glad Tim is working to expand the game's repertoire of strategies, counter strategies and ruminants, maintaining VGAP as the premiere game of choice amongst strategy PBM'ers. It does, of course, raise the issue of the interaction between cloven hoofed ungulates and the new HYP and boarding rules. Careful Beta testing will have to be used to ensure there are no loopholes or bugs like, for example, the act of boarding ships with hyperdrive-equipped Llamas on movement phase 50 generating negative goats. ---- In another thread ("I've Gotta Ask") Cylon put the question: "Anway.........my question is WHY do YOU play VGAP 3/4.* today given the otehr games out there with similar complexity, strategic components, vastly superior graphics, vastly superior sounds, and as good or better play-by internet options." To which there were several serious answers, plus this one... "I've yet to find a game in which the important roles of goats and llamas in todays world are simulated so carefully. Thanks, Tim! Axel"