August 17, 2002
My goal today is to build a bomber and take a look around.
I'm back after a 4 days of relaxation while waiting for my time to accumulate. I now have 47 movement time, and 14 update time. Remember the basic steps..
- Use movement time
- Make sector designation changes
- Use update timeHere's how the island looks before we start. I'm not going to show all the examples because you've seen in in previous days. I first look for docks, mines and other industries that need 100 civilians, and gather those civilians from sectors with more than 100 civilians.
When I was done shifting population, I had some more movement time so I may as well spread out placing 1 civilians in each new sector. After I spread - it looks like this (see below). Notice, I've now used all 47 of my movement time units, and they have shifted to the right where I now have 61 update time units.
Before I update, I want to designate the new rural sectors. I start by stipulating all sectors with an ore sample greater than 9%, then I use the ANALYSIS command to see if I have enough ore to turn the rest of the rurals into industries.
You can see above that I have the potential to produce 56.5 unit of ore per update, and I have 39 rurals, which would require 39 units of ore per turn to operate fully. I'm set for ore.
First I'll designate some docks on the coast.
Then, I'll designate the remaining 37 rurals as industries. Normally I strive for the following ratios:
Docks - on the coast as desired (depends on how many ships you are planning for)
1/3 as many artillery plants as docks.
3 Times as many explosive plants as docks.
Everything else - Plane factories.
Now that I have designated, the island looks like this (see below).
OK - It's time to update. I prefer blocks of at least 50 time units.
Now I have enough production to build a bomber.
Bombers have much greater RADAR range than radar installations. We should be able to see a distance of 100 from the bomber's airport.
Look at all the islands I see in the RADAR above. The only ship I see is my trusty PT boat which I drove back to my home island and docked. I'm sure I will be able to find a new mission for that boat.
Now that I know the location of several new islands, it might be better to use the WORLD command to see the islands in relation to each other a little clearer. I'm going to use two command options (REGION, and WIDTH) to make the world map as viewable as possible.
In the map below, the vertical (!) and horizontal (-) tick marks each represent a distance of 10. As with the RADAR command, the islands appear as numbers, the least significant digit of the island number. This means island 3, 83, and 243 would all appear as "3" on the map.
To help relate the numbers on the map to islands, we will also display an ISLAND INDEX.
Notice in the island index (above), there are islands which nations other than Park Rangers have naming rights to. This means these nations were the first to reach the island (or more likely, their sanctuaries dropped on the island). This means Sysop[1] is on the island due east of my home island, and Blisstonia[20] is on the island northwest of my home world. This means competition for land in this region may be intense.
It would be best to get my flag stuck in some of these undiscovered islands, to help strengthen my claim that they would best be used as national parks. I'll check my docks for likely PT boat launching points. I want a dock with only 50 production because I am saving the docks with 100 production to launch Liners and Submarines (which cost 200 production).
I launch a second PT (above) which is PT Boat #13 (lucky me).
Let's use PT #13 to establish capitols on the three large islands to the south.
Since the first one is a little west, I'll need to start out sailing southwest. You'll see below, that I perform much of this SAIL, 1 sector at a time. There is a reason for this. It's to save fuel. This is sort of an old trick of Empire Classic. I'll explain.
It takes .1 units of ore to move a ship 1 sector. The ship record only stores fuel to a resolution of 1/10th. Thus, if you move diagonally a distance of 1, the actual fuel which should be consumed is .14, but since the ship record only stores one digit to the right of the decimal point, the consumption is rounded to .1 (thus saving .04 units of fuel per diagonal sector moved). If you had moved diagonally 3 sector all at once, you destination would be the same as two 1 sector diagonal moves, but you would have saved .1 entire unit of fuel. By moving one sector at a time diagonally, you save about 29%.
Note, if you are moving horizontally or vertically, there is not fuel savings by moving on sector at a time.
I stop my one sector at a time moves to take a quick RADAR.
Seeing that I have a ways to go, I use the reset of my time, one diagonal sector at a time.
Note - I'm not saving time, only fuel. Time synchronization information is stored in a floating point value, and therefore can extract the right amount of time for the move.
Now that Ship #13 is out of time, I take a SHIP report to locate my other PT.
We might as well put this ship to work too. First, let top off the tanks.
I SAIL PT Boat #2 north (not shown), and then take a RADAR.
Since I didn't reach the new island, I'll set a COURSE for the south east corner. Notice in the sequence below that I "fat fingered" the destination, but caught it before I committed the course. To correct the error, I used the "//" to back up two questions, reenter the correct destination, and the committed the course.
I'm done updating my land, and I've moved my ships. I should see what else is happening in the world. First, lets see how the new POWER report came out.
I've jumped from 12th place to 7th place, not a huge surprise. One bonus is, that since I am one of the 7 most powerful nations, I'm named to the Security Council. The Council is just an honorary title at this point, which is attached to your names when you make ANNOUNCEMENTs in the news, or when displaying the nation names on an island report. (see below).
A quick NAVIES command shows who else has PT Boats running around. Tyland[4] has the most ships with 4 PT Boats. Unlike the POWER report which is only calculated every 100 time units, the NAVIES report is calculated each time it is displayed.
Well, I'm done. I'll come back later to move those PT Boats again.
Not bad - only 19 minutes.
I welcome comments: ranger@empireclassic.com
