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I'm in a duel with Sabelkatten as the last two players alive in VP game 4861, and several turns ago there was something odd that I'd like to discuss. That game has the experimental level 4 rules active, so we have to be aware of the chit colors of the moves we make. As I understand those rules, after you use any red chit you may only use green chits on the next turn. The moves the game allowed Sabelkatten to make on turns 13 and 14 seem to be incompatible with that rule, since they appeared to use a red chit on turn 13 and a yellow one on turn 14. I don't think there was any sort of cheating involved, but rather that there is a bug in either the engine or the game UI.

Sabelkatten's fighter is a custom Comcon design that has dual thrusters and power spinners, giving him a maneuver code of 4D1(4). He can thrust twice with green chits and twice more with red chits. He has one green turn chit, one yellow one and two red ones.

On turn 13 of our game he maneuvered a net of two hexes, one forwards and one forwards-left. I assumed that he entered the maneuver Thrust-Left, Thrust-Left, Thrust-Right, using both green thrust chits and one of the red ones. The top part of the Battle Log for that turn listed his maneuver as 3F, 0T (meaning three thrusts and zero turns). That can't be seen any more, unfortunately, since the game only keeps the Battle Log for three turns in the past. On turn 14 the mouse-over information for his ship's had all of the non-green chits blacked out as unusable (this you can still see, by hovering over Sabelkatten's ship while viewing turn 14).

On Turn 14 his maneuver is one I didn't think was possible. His momentum was carrying him through an asteroid, which I though he could only avoid by going to the right. Instead, he was able to dodge leftwards. He turned twice, using a green and a yellow turn chit and then thrusted twice using both green thrust chits. The whole maneuver was Turn-Right, Turn-Right, Thrust-Right, Thrust-Right. If the move from turn 13 had indeed used a red chit, this shouldn't be allowed, since you can only use green chits on a turn following the use of a red chit.

There is a way to look at the events I described in a way that is consistent with the rules, but not with the historic details of VP's implementation. If Sabelkatten entered his turn 13 move as Thrust-Left, Turn-Left, Thrust-Right, Turn-Right it would only have needed green and yellow chits, not any red ones. This would make it perfectly legal to use another yellow chit on turn 14.

The trouble with that explanation is that the VP game engine has always ignored the exact sequence of moves entered by the player. Instead it calculates for itself a move that goes from the starting position and orientation to the requested ending ones, finding one that uses as few chits as possible, and preferring one that makes the fewest turns (it doesn't make the selection correctly for a few unusual maneuvers, but this was not one of them). In this situation, the desired movement on turn 13 was possible without any turns, using three thrusts rather than two thrusts and two turns.

The game's UI, both on the main screen and on the Battle Log screen, clearly implied that a red chit had been played, since it blacked out the yellow turn chit on turn 14 and showed the maneuver as having been 3F 0T. The three thrust interpretation effected the HMS bonuses of both ships when they fired on turn 13, so it would have made an additional game difference if that was not what Sabelkatten had intended. It doesn't seem likely that the game uses a different rule for calculating what color chit was used, but that's the only way I can understand it allowing Sabelkatten's turn 14 maneuver.

Anyway, I wanted to post here to raise the issue to Neko's awareness and also to see if anyone else has seen weird game behavior on Experimental mode. I don't really like experimental mode much, as I think the chit colors are very punishing. If the colors were shifted so that every fighter had at least two green chits of each type and usually only one red of each, then I think it would be less annoying.

BlckKnght wrote:


I totally agree on this.