MiniSec

Last updated: 28 Jan 2007 - For AI Competition

MiniSec is a very simple testing game for Thousand Parsec. It is designed to exercise many of the basic features of the Thousand Parsec framework. Some of these features are,

• Ability to give orders.
• Messages result from actions.
• Simple combat.

MiniSec was updated on the 28th of January 2007 to make it easier to understand (and a little more advanced) for the Thousand Parsec AI Programming competition.

Table of Contents

• Winning
• Ships
• Scout
• Frigate
• Battleship
• Planets
• Fleets
• Building
• Colonising
• Combat
• Example of combat

Winning

The game is won by destroying all other players. The definition of players being destroyed is server (or even game) dependent. Some possible definitions are as follows:

• All your planets are destroyed. (This is the definition used in the AI competition.)
• Your home world is destroyed.
• All your planets are destroyed and you have no frigates.
• All your planets and fleets are destroyed.

Ships

Scout

Scout ships allow your fleets to escape harm. When your ships win a combat round they will have a chance to escape. The formula for this chance is as follows

For example,

Scouts are nothing more then some sensors strapped to a massive engine. They are the fastest ships in the MiniSec universe, able to go more then twice the speed of Frigates (the slowest ships).

Frigate

Frigates are the primary ships in the MiniSec universe. Able to do some damage and being quite hardy. They are also the only ship which can colonise an unpopulated planet.

The extra space taken up by the colonisation module means that there isn't much space left for the engines making frigates the slowest moving of all ships.

One Frigate is used for every planet colonised. For example, a fleet of 3 Frigates and 2 Battleships tries to colonise a planet. The fleet would now only have 2 Frigates and 2 Battleships.

Battleship

Battleships are the largest and most hardy ship in the MiniSec universe. They have so much firepower that even when a draw occurs they are able to do some damage.

Battleships also have huge engines, which means even though they are much bigger and more armed than frigates they can move faster.

Planets

Colonised Planets can also participate in combat with anti-ship batteries. Each battery is equivalent to a battleship and can be destroyed separately. Planets behave exactly as multiple battleships except they are the last items to be targeted.

Normal planets are considered to be equivalent to 2 battleships. Home world planet (The planet you start with at the beginning of the game) is considered 5 battleships.

An example, when a planet suffers 6 HP of damage a battery is destroyed, this means that the amount of damage planet does on a win is reduced by 3HP (exactly like a one battleship being destroyed in normal battle).

When a planet loses a battle is becomes unpopulated.

Fleets

Ships are grouped together in Fleets. A ship by itself does not exist (but a Fleet with 1 ship in it can exist).

Fleets move at the speed of the slowest ship in the fleet. For example, a Scout, a Frigate and a Battleship in the same fleet still only move at 2 Units per turn.

Building

Once a planet has been colonised it can build fleets. Fleets contain any number of ships and are only "launched" when all ships in a Fleet are complete. The number of turns taken to build a fleet is dependent on its contents.

Colonising

To expand your empire you will need to colonise planets. A Frigate is used to colonise a planet, a Frigate is used up in the process. Only unpopulated planets can be colonised.

Planets can become unpopulated by wining in combat against them. Colonisation occurs after combat, so you can depopulate a planet via combat and colonise it in the same turn.

Combat

When does it occur?

Combat occurs when two enemies are at the same location. Combat can occur between any number of parties at the same time.

The process

If two fleets owned by the same player are at the same location when combat occurs, they will be merged for the period of combat.

During combat the fleets play rounds of rock, paper, scissors against each other. Each fleet selects rock, paper or scissors at random. Damage is then delt by the winning side to the losing side.

Damage is always assigned in whole lots. For example, a Battleship does 3HP damage on each shot, however it can still only destroy 1 Scout each turn (as the overflow is lost).

Damage is always assigned to the least damaged strongest enemy ships first. If there are multiple choices one (of the possible choices) is chosen is at random.

Winning Combat

Combat ends when one side destroys the other or the ships escape.

After Combat

After combat all ships orbiting a planet that the player owns repair to full strength. All planets also heal to full strength (rebuilding any destroyed batteries).

Example of combat

Fleet 1 = 2 Battleships
Fleet 2 = 1 Scout, 2 Frigate

Damage Numbers

• Numbers in ascending order of hitpoints (battleship-frigate-scout)
• D - Dead
• (x) - Overflow damage