Host order of events

Updated April 2005.  This list was compiled starting with the "host.log" file generated each turn, and a lot of annotations contributed by Diverse Folk from their observations within games, and subtle experiments to resolve issues.

1. Book keeping...
1. Calculate resource points (moved hereabouts in Host 209)
2. AgeMessages
3. Count Global People
4. Count Wings and Limit
5. Count Ships
6. Read TRN
7. Filter Out Bad Incoming Commands in the TRN files
2. Outfit pod launching moved to before ship building to prevent quick build ships from using the parts that were suppose to be on outfit pods causing all sorts of strangeness, like pods not launching and then launching a few turns later after the required parts are built.
3. Ship Building (normal and Quick Build). No, this happens after minefield detonation - as proved by Dan Hammond with Host 178 because minefields detonated round a base building ships do not damage the new ships.But it is not clear whether I should move just "Ship Building" to after item 20 (Minefields Detonate), or all the stages in between too. Note: a Slayer, or other ship with a Dry Dock capable of building other ships, builds ships before it moves or HYPs. They will appear floating in space where it started its turn. If the Slayer moves during that turn, it will leave behind a ship(s) with just 30 fuel each, and the Ord, Repair Units etc may not be distributed as you wish. Note: Since Quick Build happens at the very beginning of the turn, before any transfers are carried out, metals and money must be in place at the beginning of the turn.
4. Pod Launching. Freshly launched Pods can sometimes dock with ships about to Hyperjump in the same turn, but they can't dock with ships which Chunnel. I say "sometimes" because there is a long-standing bug which seems to make this dock-the-same-turn-you're-launched feature only work about 50% of the time. So I usually leave a ship in orbit an extra turn to make sure the pods are definitely docked. Apparently there are two pod docing phases, one before hyperjumps.
5. Contraband buy and sell
6. Wings are formed
7. Tax Collection and transfer of some to the Central Account. Borg Kings' Palaces probably create mc at this time too. My experiments (Host 199) imply cities generate cash AFTER gov centres transfer cash so if you have 1000mc on your base, but will generate 2000mc with cities, you can only transfer 1000mc that turn.
8. CrewReport, HostReport
9. Exotic Tech maintenence happens now - BEFORE your central account is topped up from the government center transfers [confirmed by David O in a test game] - so make sure you have a float of cash in your central account at the end of each turn, to cover ET maintenance at this point next turn. But ET maintenance happens after the central account gets a boost from normal taxation.
10. The introduction of new Exotic Tech occurs before combat, so you can turn on a new one just before a decisive battle. See note 1. But new ET purchases occur BEFORE Government Centers transfer cash to the central account [confirmed by David O in test game], so make sure your central account 'float' covers them. Fortunately new ET purchases occur after normal taxation transfers some money to the central account.
11. Money is transferred by government centres to the Central Account
12. Normal techs are purchased after all money has been transferred to the central account.
13. Pop growth on all bases and planets (after the Crew Report - so that report is always a turn behind!)
14. Certain ship devices and actions - boarding lasers, etc - but most happen after movement.
15. Borg Assimilation of Natives (the normal way, where Borg colonists simply assimilate a percentage Natives on the same planet)
    
16. Transfer fuel and cargo to / from planets to ships (but Admiral Quixote suspects that ship-to-ship transfers occur after chunnel). Azuremonster found that ships transfer personnel before Wing formation (stage 6), so this entire step (16) may be placed too late in this list.
    
17. X Fields Steal repair units after transfers (but it is not clear if this is after ship-to-ship transfers too).
    
18. Minefield Decloaking, Deactivating, or re-cloaking and re-activating seems to come at the start of a turn before ships can move (reports David Ouimet)
19. Fighters and weapons are made. (I'm not really sure if this happens before or after tax collection, which would affect how many you could build if you were desperate for a few.)
20. Minefields detonate before warp chunnel and other movement. If you lay a cloaked barbitic minefield the next turn you can detonate it an clear the area of all minefields and not have to worry about hitting a mine during movement. This makes it much easier to blast through enemy minefields. However, this also means that if you are in a minefield the owner of the minefield has the power to detonate the minefield before you can sweep it.
21. Wings dock with ships. (Mark MacWilliam pointed out this phase was missing off this list. We're not sure quite where it happens, but by experiment, he and I agree Wings dock before hyperjump.)
22. Dustoff device works before movement (note it also works after movement)
    
23. Movement:
1. Ship to ship transfer happens before chunnel as I have often transferred fuel to a firecloud and then chunneled with it. I know this works. - Andrew de Boer - Question: does anyone know if it happens before Hyperjumps?
2. Note: Boarding laser ships transport attempts take place before ships that do not have boarding lasers if they both are within transporter range at the same time.
   
3. Warp Chunnel (ships, not ground base chunnel). See note 2
4. Grav Well generators work to block bypassing hyperships throughout movement.
5. Set Scanner Levels and Sensor Images
6. TachyonScan (Loki) decloaks ships: one of the very few devices which works befor emovement.  (Throughout movement, I suspect.)
7. Planet Hides Ships
8. DetectSelf ( I can see my own stuff)
9. Shared data is sent to friends before and after movement
10. Pods can undock before hyperjump, if they are at their Drop target
11. MOVEMENT PHASES: movement is split into 200 sub phases. During each of these, the following is checked:
1. All transfers, movement, pod docking
2. Special hyperdrive rule for "fast" ships: Rebel Falcon and Privateer MCBR hyperjump on movement phase zero, then move normally for the remaining 200 phases.
   
3. Most Hyderdrive / all Jumppoint ships jump on movement phase 100 (of 200). That means a HYP ship can move a bit, then HYP. However HYP ships cannot move in the last 100 movement phases. They can Intercept whilst using normal warp drive in the first 100 movement phases, ie half their rated distance under normal warp drive. If they choose not to turn on their hyperdrive, they can move for the entire 200 phases under normal drive. If you choose to use hyperdrive, your scanners only work at one quarter normal efficiency afterwards, and so you often can't see anything.
4. Ships only sent out 40 scanning pulses during the 200 movement phases. For more info see Tim's help files, here . However, Roger Norris points out that a detailed analysis and knowledge pooling on the Newsgroup ages ago, concluded that there's actually a "1 in 40 chance of sending out a pulse every movement phase, so even though the doc files say 40 pulses, it's actually an average of 5 pulses per ship per turn".
5. COMBAT. See note 3.
6. Virgo Light Speed: this is just very fast "normal" movement at 400 LY / turn. It happens at the same time, over ticks 1-200, like using a Gravitonic Accelerator.
24. Bases merge, so that landing pods can gather together to face amorphous worms and other threats. (Introduced in Host 136.) Host.exe 4.000.137: Base merge event moved to just after movement ends, so that landing pods can gather together quickly to face amorphous worms and other threats.
    
25. Ships repair themselves - see note 5 . Note that ships repair themselves BEFORE devices such as, crucially, the Crystal X-Field work. (X-Field sucks 500 repair units out of ships.) (source: Azuremonster)
    
26. After movement phases the following items happen. The order that ships take actions are based on the ship's skill, experience, and high guard on the ship. Ships with more skill, experience and high guard will take their actions last. They will sweep mines last, they will lay mines last. The order is no longer determined by ship ID number, which led to people manipulating the system, or random, which didn't reward good players.
1. Most Ship Devices [includes minesweeping / laying devices, minefield destabilisers, glory devices, Mind Crushers, Borg Assimilation Beams, Siren HAARP...]. Actually Devices may act nearer the point when Ground (Base) chunnel occurs, but the important thing is that it's after Movement!
2. Dustoff device works after movement (note it also works before movement)
3. Like most Devices, Crystal X Fields capture ships after movement.Ships need to have >100% engine damage.This happens before ships have a chance to repair themselves.
   
4. Alchemy [a ship device] will use supplies before a planet can build structures with them
5. Ship Happiness calculations
6. Ship LifeSupport calculations
7. Ships Undock Pods
8. Ship Command Codes are processed
9. Ships with Borlox Armour (an Exotic Tech) auto-repair it
10. Protomatter Cannons build new planets
11. Superlasers kill planets
12. Protomatter cannons rebuild planets. A planet can get destroyed by superlaser and rebuilt by PMC in a single turn.
13. Antimatter Mauls recover metals and destroy jumpgates
14. Cyborg ships do Cyborgy things (repair armour for free with Duranium?)
15. Bird ships do Birdy things
16. Ships auto-BeamUpOrd (using the BUO command code)
17. Ships auto-BeamUpS (using the BUS command code)
18. Ships Replenish Fighters
19. Recycle ships
27. Pod Landing At Base. (Remember to switch their orbital thrusters off.) This can't be right. Jon Nunn reports "I've been able to safely land pods before detonating glory devices which would have otherwise destroyed them." Also Drew Sullivan has seen ship Devices acting on Bases formed by dropping Pods the same turn. So this may happen within the 200 Movement phases?
28. Detect Self
29. Fire World Crusher
30. Ground Combat. Note: Assault Pods and Dustoff Pods which form bases cannot ground assault the same turn. They used to - but this led to abuses where people would sacrifice a cheap ship to land an assault force on an enemy homeworld, and take over the homeworld with (say) the EE's free assault Bots. Nothing wrong with that per se, except that any defending ships in orbit never got a chance to fire on the enemy ground base before it attacked their home base, because all ship combat is finished by this phase. If you land assault pods on an enemy world, use KKK mode to capture. Pods containing just High Guard (and maybe troops and mechs) will automatically create a base set to KKK, but the presence of Colonists or Crew in your pod will make the resultant base Peaceful.
    
31. Base Jobs ( Build new buildings, building do their jobs ) Buildings are built first
32. Soil Reformers improve soil rating of planets [Determined from experiments by Martin Pedersen]
33. Bases Scan Planets
34. High Guard Return Home - see note 6
35. Hide Docked Pods
36. Base Scans Own Planet
37. Delete Hull Plans
38. Instant Assimilation of Natives (Humanoids, Ghips) by the Borg King takes place somewhere between Movement and Ground Base Chunnelling.
    
39. Jumpgate movement (definitely before ground chunnel). If someone creates a jumpgate over a planet – which I recommend AGAINST – you can send a firestorm to appear at that jumpgate and base chunnel to that planet. See note 4.
40. Wormhole movement
    
41. Chunnel Bases
42. Lock Bases To Planets
43. Victory points calculated (Azuremonster's tests show it is sometime after movement. I'm guessing it's after chunnelling, wormhole and jumpgate movement too.)
44. Check Spy
45. Share Data With Friends
46. Check Boost Targets (If they are still there)
47. Auto pilot
48. Contraband Maintain
49. Advance To Next Turn
50. Delete Old Vcr Files
51. SaveYig
52. ZIPYIG

Unanswered questions - anyone know the answers so we can post 'em here?

• Exactly which ship devices work before movement and which after? For example the Crew Abductor could have a major influence on combat if it's before.

Note 1. Money is dropped into the central account before you upgrade normal techs, so you can actually buy an upgrade for a NON exotic tech (eg Hull tech) when you don't have the cash on hand. But EXOTIC tech is paid BEFORE you transfer money with government centers. Fortunately Taxes are collected before exotic spending. So you should get a few thousand in your central account from normal taxation, to cover ET maintenance. But it's still advisable to keep a "float" of a few thousand in the central account at the end of the turn, if you are spending more on ET's than you can support from simple taxation.

Note 2. You can hyp or Warp Chunnel then move via normal space drive into combat. Ie you can Warp Chunnel ships to a new location and then move further through normal space, to attack a target some way from the Firecloud you chunnel to. Alternatively they can be set to Intercept or Escort a ship near the Firecloud you a chunnelling to.
"Ships are not suppose to move after chunnel. . . if there were you were taking advantage of a flaw in the system." - Tim, newsgroup posting Nov 2003

The chunnelling ship has to be at speed zero (but can be towed by another ship at the far end). The one at the end point does not need to be.

What does work very nicely is to tow the receiving base chunnel firestorm with a cube. That way you have a base with a mobility of 190 LY a turn. If you manage to borrow a PAX from one of your good friends that goes up to 650+ LY a turn.

Ground Chunnelling a Base does not move the ships and vice-versa: you need 2 Firestorms to do that: one for the base, one for the ships.

I think ships emerging from a chunnel have half strength shields that turn, so they are weaker in a fight.

Note 3. Combat only occurs if 2 units are within attack range (5LY) for at least 20 movement phases, otherwise they fly by too fast. Note also that combat does not occur until phase 50, so capturing ships by transferring troops are best done before then, or you may engage in combat instead. So if a HYP ship arrives on movement phase 0, the defender has 50 movement phases for reinforcements to arrive, perhaps because they are on auto-intercept, before combat begins. It's not possible to say if warp chunnel happens before or after HYP, but for combat purposes it is probably irrelevant. Note also that Cloakers will only initiate combat if ATTACK SHIPS is ON (unless set to Flee too, so don't do that).

Note 4. This means that you can move to a Jumpgate, end your movement phase at the gate, and then jump to a different gate all in the same turn. It also means that you can find you have chunnelled a base, or moved ships with a jumpgate to a position occupied by hostile forces, but no combat will occur: you all stare at each other over the barrels of your lasers until next turn.

A tactic someone has used is to build a Jumpgate during their turn as an escape route for a fleet in dire straights. By setting their command codes to the "address" of another gate, their fleet fell through the new gate and reappeared in a safe area at the end of the turn!

Note 5. Ships repair with repair units AFTER movement. So if they hit mines during movement, and have a fight, they will be fighting while damaged - they only get a chance to repair if they survive the entire 200 movement phases plus any fights.

Note 6. Like Captain Kirk, these heroes rarely die, they have personal escape pods and show up a few turns later on nearby bases. (However they can be killed during the hand-to-hand combat of ship captures.)

Author: Paul Honigmann. Based on Sidewinder's list version 4 (date 042700) with added info plundered from comments by Deneb, David Ouimet, Don Humes, Andrew de Boer, Al Evans, Martin Schuster, Admiral Quixote, Mark MacWilliam, Tim et alia in the mailing list; experiments, examining host logs etc. And lots of extra help and tests from David Ouimet.