Ed's journal

I seem to have a few more EVE buddy codes, allowing me to give away 14 day free trials. Anyone interested in one? (or two, to try it twice).

Lets you create a character, play it for 14 days, and then it costs I think something like £20 for the first month, and £10/month thereafter. But only if you like it. There's a bunch of us who already play, and we'll do our best to introduce you to the complexities of the game (OT: Gaah!) in a way in which we hope you'll enjoy it.

EVE's a space combat and trading game. Perhaps vaguely reminiscent of Elite, only multiplayer. It's more 'strategy like' than 'flying fighters' - the ships are big heavy and powerful, rather than small and zoomy (although there are some that are small and zoomy).

Character advancement is skillpoint based, on a (as far as I'm aware, unique) real time training basis - A skill that takes two hours to finish, takes two hours regardless of whether you're fighting, hauling, idling, or not logged in at all.

There's a certain amount of specialisation to be had, in picking up skills related to an area of gameplay you enjoy, however at no point in the skill tree are any options actually closed off - it's possible to have multiple areas of specialisation, but by it's nature you won't be quite as good at it as someone who's only specialised in that one area.

That said, the skill system is such that each skill goes from level 1 - 5. Going from level 1-4 takes about 20% of the overall time, and the last level takes 80%. So your maxed out specialists, are actaully not as far ahead as you might imagine.

It's a 'player driven' game - it's literally way more open ended than most games of the MMO style. That doesn't suit everyone - there's no one who says 'go do quest X'. Well, actually there _are_ missions, but they're more a side event, of making some money, rather than integral to the game play. The real joy of the game comes in getting involved in the player interaction, and politics. Be it the 'shooting each other in the face' kind, or the 'ripping off your competitors on the market' kind. Or perhaps the 'building a really big bad ship and stomping on your opponents' kind.

Your character is effectively immortal, but your ships and modules are not - losing a ship is a significant loss in EVE. Getting refitted and re-equipped is a notable factor in the combat - it's actively possible to 'win' a war, by destroying all their stuff, so they're not fighting in their top of the line ships.

Been playing for ... well, a while now, and have enjoyed it greatly - I don't buy nearly as many new games nor DvDs which is how I justify the subscription. But I recognise that the style of game is harsh, and dark, and so not to everyone's taste.

I have a bit of a puzzle that I'm trying to figure out.
It's EVE related, but a little more ... annoying.

The problem is this.
When building a starbase, one deploys sentry guns as defenses.
You have a choice of small, medium or large (in a mix if necessary).
A small gun does 1 point of damage, a medium 2, and a large 4.
Each gun uses a certain amount of power. A small uses 1, a medium 2, a large 4.

The problem is this. An attacking ship requires at least 5 points damage to destroy it. (It might be more, but a single large gun cannot do the job). (Otherwise it can run away and repair, come back and repeat).

Against a single ship, there's no difference at all in damage dealt. However, when one is faced by an attacking fleet of 10, 20, 30, 40 or 50, is having 40 small guns doing 1 point each, better than 10 large doing 4 each.

Each gun selects a target entirely at random.

Now, the first stage, is figuring out how many different 'sets' there are. Which is fairly easy, it's number of ships to the power of the number of guns. Easy enough really.

The thing I'm having trouble figuring out is how many 'sets' the same ship is picked multiple times.

I started on permutations (N!/(N!-K!)) in the hopes of excluding all the permutations where multiple aren't picked, however that doesn't really help when I'm trying to fit the cases where '3 or more the same' are picked.

To take the simple case, with 3 guns, and 3 ships, and 2 on the same target needed to destroy:
( Read more... )

The purpose of the puzzle, is to figure out if a starbase populated entirely with 'small' guns is 'better' than a starbase populated with 'large' guns. (Intuitively I'm thinking yes, because 'efficiency' of distribution is better, but if more guns will probably lead to evening out of damage, and I need 'spikes' to destroy ships)