Pmaster.cfg for PHost

(Some TimMaster settings are also discussed.)

Some introducing words for a special target

Beginner Games:

• use a Disunited Kingdom for players with a bad economic strategy.
• use extra rich settings
• maybe offer some freithers at the beginning

Expert Games/ Tournaments:

Offering an expert game/ tournament a host has a high responsibility to choose a good and fair setting. Luck should be reduced onto a minimum at the first turns (!) for all players have the chance to survive the first 30 turns.
At a tournament the best player or diplomate should win and not the luckiest one!

Some hints you have to look for as host to reduce luck:

• create a good map without areas of high planet densities or black holes.
• use maps having a size of at least 1800x1800 LY (squared)
• set the homeworld locations by hand at least 500 LY distance - never in a circle and at least 2 planets in 81 LY range
• offer enough money (10000+), minerals on your own choise
• use a disunited kingdom (+ 3 planets), if you can't check the homeworld surrounding by an editor. Maybe you can offer all players the same planets.
• after mastering, check the planets near the homeworlds. For the disunited kingdom the 3 owned planets, for other games the next 5 nearest planets.
  Do a remaster if:
  - there are any useful natives or to many e.g. 3 bovionids
  - are very less or much minerals
  - are bad temperature for more than 60% of the planets
• never play in your own expert game

Comments on parameters

Scenario

Classic: Each race gets one homeworld.
Disunited Kingdom: Each race starts with a homeworld and some number of planets near to the homeworld.
Wandering Tribes: no starbase, but some freighters with colonist. Borg become very strong in this kind of game.

Passwords

Set a secret password for the players, if players can download all rst's. In some automated games is this unfortunately possible.

Non-homeworld planets

Use default settings. As lower ores are chosen as more a game becomes expert level.
Don't enrich minerals and densities to very rich, also not for PList games.

Random: a bit more interesting due to the luck factor
All the same: can be used for tourments and ranking games.

The (suggested) mineral distribution is for THost and PHost non-linear.
Unfortunately, in some "Planet Editors" this kind of distribution can not be set.

NativesOnPlanetFrequency=60

Don't vary the relative native frequency to much (55-65%). If many planets have no natives, races like cyborg and crystal, which are very dependent on people or money, become too weak. I saw, so named "expert games", NativesOnPlanetFrequency was set on 25%. That's only an expert game for the instanced races. Lizard is laughing.

NativeTypeFrequencies=25, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 25

We mostly use the same chance for all natives.

NativeGovFrequencies=25, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 25

Don't unequal and move this distribution to worse or better governments.
Sometimes we use an gaussian distribution. E.g.: 25, 40, 50, 55, 60, 55, 50, 40, 25

Determining homeworlds

Don't use the function: HomeworldsRadius=x for Classic or Disunited scenarios. Reasons you will find at Choice of the xyplan.dat at my Hints for hosts.

Homeworld setting

Suggested settings are fine. Density can't be set in PMaster! (BUG!)
StartingEngineTech could be rised on 10 for rich games.
For standard games TwoFreeShips=Yes push several races in a good way.