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Red Planet Master

or Why I need 16000

I just stumbled across an old email from Syscrusher, with advice on how to pass the Red Planet Masters Trials. The advice deals with details of the 4.0 system. ( Basically, go fast, don’t give up, don’t give away points.)

Why am I blogging about a defunct game?

Because it was friggen cool, and a ton of fun. There used to be a really good international community of players.

VWE sponsored World Championships with the 3.0 software, with teams from Japan, UK, Australia, and several US teams competing.

A company called VirtualWorld (VWE) had two games you could play in their system: BattleTech(BT) and Red Planet. (RP).

BattleTech is/was a fighting robot game, set in the BattleTech universe. I’ve played both version 3 and Tesla 4 (4.6, 4.7, 4.8…) for both BT and RP. My first game was December 24th, 1997. I took an Avatar, and finished 4th place, 2 kills 1 death, 3109 points. I was hooked. I played another 557 games during the next year, moving from Standard to Expert. (Over 400 were in Expert, which adds heat management to the game, making you pick your shots) I stopped actively playing in December of 2002, with a total of 2424 missions. Yes, I logged every game in Excel and Access. Didn't everybody?












Currently I have 2464 BT missions, and 1014 RP missions. I haven’t played since 9/11/2003. I played BT: Firestorm. Much better graphics compared to Tesla. It’s basically a port of Mechwarrior:4. Still like the gameplay of Tesla, but that’s what I’m used too.

I’ve Mastered in BT in the Satyr, Avatar, Madcat, Summoner, and Sunder. I Mastered in RP in the Quark.

Quick summary of Master Trials.

For Battletech, it’s 3 v 2, with 4 pilots. To pass, the candidate must defeat 2 Masters, and survive until the end of the 10 minute trial. The candidate gets 2 mechs, each of the 3 Masters gets 1 mech. A typical way to pass is the candidate calls out 1 Master, they duel, candidate defeats 1st Master. Candidate calls out 2nd Master, does as much damage as possible, dies, gets 2nd Mech, kills 2nd Master and runs out the clock.

For Red Planet, it’s a 8 person race. 4 candidates, 4 Masters. Candidates must beat 3 of 4 Masters to pass, so 1st or 2nd place is a guaranteed pass. What makes it fun is all the players are anonymous for a Trial, so it is difficult to know who is a Master and who is a candidate. And you can only see your score, and the scores of people ahead of you. If your in first, you don’t know where 2nd place is, so you have to keep pushing, and taking risks to win.



If you never seen RP, think about racing at Indy speeds. On a 1 mile drag strip. Where the most laps (down and back) wins. And you can take Formula 1, NASCAR, jet engine semi trucks, all on the same course. With rocket boosters. And some of the cars have weapons…..


It’s insane.





Which is why it’s a great game.




Paingod's Passage is the classic RP 4.0 Master Trial track, with two 90 degree turns, and 2 straightaways for speed.



Brewer's Bane is another Master level course. You can power slide through the big 90 bend.







Important point: the amount of points gained from going fast is based on the square of the speed. The amount of points lost in a collision is equal to the damage suffered in the collision, which is again based upon the square of the speed of impact.
“Go really, really fast, get big points. Screw up going really fast, lose even more points."


Now this is why I need $16,000

http://www.classicbattletech.com/cbt_update_announce.html
http://www.mechjock.com/

I can get 8 pods, and start playing
The. Greatest. Game. Ever.

Martian Football.

Again.


Red Planet is a racing game set on Mars. The races are really just training for Martian Football, TGGE.

Game theory behind BT and RP
http://www.research.scea.com/research/pdfs/Bleeding%20Edge%20Part%202%20(game%20design).pdf

Red Planet’s Martian Football
• Each team had a “runner” who scored by
going fast and not getting killed.
• “Crushers” got points by killing the runner.
• “Blockers” got points by killing “Crushers”
• Blockers and crushers lost no points for
dieing and had an unlimited booster supply.
• Every lap completed without being killed
raised the runner’s score multiplier.
• Players constantly overloaded and near
panic for the whole game.
The Adrenalin junkies loved this game.
• You never got a break, someone was always
flying straight at you at extreme speed.
• People would sometimes exit the pod
covered in sweat or visibly shaking.
• It was quite a spectacle for people watching.
• The noise (from screaming players and
spectators) was unbelievable.
• It was what convinced many people to try
the game


Want to see some replays of a Football game?
Look for Chicago, Games 1 and 4.

Oh, and why is this blog called Piper's Musing's?

Because Piper is my call-sign. And I love crushing little bugs.

The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster

The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster: "My name is Anakin Skywalker.

I was born forty-nine years ago, less a day. I was born a slave, as billions are born slaves."


Too freakin cool. Well done.

Modest Proposal to save our schools

I've never broken down my school's budget. Maybe I should.

2004/05 school year
$2,829,982 total budget
for 555 students, and 33.4 FTE teaching salaries, another 7.4 support FTE.
$5099 per student.

(h/t
The Smallest Minority)

Here's the entire article. Well worth reading.

A Modest Proposal for Saving Our Schools

The multi-million dollar campaign paid by starving teachers’ unions has finally placed our sadly neglected schools at the center of the budget debate.

Across California, children are bringing home notes warning of dire consequences if Gov. Schwarzenegger’s scorched earth budget is approved – a budget that slashes Proposition 98 public school spending from $42.2 billion this year all the way down to $44.7 billion next year. That should be proof enough that our math programs are suffering.

As a public school parent, I have given this crisis a great deal of thought and have a modest suggestion to help weather these dark days.

Maybe – as a temporary measure only – we should spend our school dollars on our schools. I realize that this is a radical departure from current practice, but desperate times require desperate measures.

The Governor proposed spending $10,084 per student from all sources. Devoting all of this money to the classroom would require turning tens of thousands of school bureaucrats, consultants, advisors and specialists onto the streets with no means of support or marketable job skills, something that no enlightened social democracy should allow.

So I will begin by excluding from this discussion the entire budget of the State Department of Education, as well as the pension system, debt service, special education, child care, nutrition programs and adult education. I also propose setting aside $3 billion to pay an additional 30,000 school bureaucrats $100,000-per-year (roughly the population of Monterey) with the proviso that they stay away from the classroom and pay their own hotel bills at conferences.

This leaves a mere $6,937 per student, which, for the duration of the funding crisis, I propose devoting to the classroom.

To illustrate how we might scrape by at this subsistence level, let’s use a hypothetical school of 180 students with only $1.2 million to get through the year.

We have all seen the pictures of filthy bathrooms, leaky roofs, peeling paint and crumbling plaster to which our children have been condemned. I propose that we rescue them from this squalor by leasing out luxury commercial office space. Our school will need 4,800 square feet for five classrooms (the sixth class is gym). At $33 per foot, an annual lease will cost $158,400.

This will provide executive washrooms, around-the-clock janitorial service, wall-to-wall carpeting, utilities and music in the elevators. We’ll also need new desks to preserve the professional ambiance.

Next, we’ll need to hire five teachers – but not just any teachers. I propose hiring only associate professors from the California State University at their level of pay. Since university professors generally assign more reading, we’ll need 12 of the latest edition, hardcover books for each student at an average $75 per book, plus an extra $5 to have the student’s name engraved in gold leaf on the cover.

Since our conventional gym classes haven’t stemmed the childhood obesity epidemic, I propose replacing them with an annual membership at a private health club for $39.95 per month. This would provide our children with a trained and courteous staff of nutrition and fitness counselors, aerobics classes and the latest in cardiovascular training technology.

Finally, we’ll hire an $80,000 administrator with a $40,000 secretary because – well, I don’t know exactly why, but we always have.

Our bare-bones budget comes to this:

5 classrooms $158,400
150 Desks @ $130 $19,500
180 annual health club memberships @ $480
$86,400
2,160 textbooks @ $80
$172,800
5 C.S.U. Associate Professors @ $67,093
$335,465
1 Administrator $80,000
1 Secretary $40,000
24% faculty and staff benefits
$109,312
Offices, expenses and insurance
$30,000
TOTAL $1,031,877

This budget leaves a razor-thin reserve of just $216,703 or $1,204 per pupil, which can pay for necessities like paper, pencils, personal computers and extra-curricular travel. After all, what’s the point of taking four years of French if you can’t see Paris in the spring?

The school I have just described is the school we’re paying for. Maybe it’s time to ask why it’s not the school we’re getting.

Other, wiser, governors have made the prudent decision not to ask such embarrassing questions of the education-industrial complex because it makes them very angry. Apparently the unions believe that with enough of a beating, Gov. Schwarzenegger will see things the same way.

Perhaps. But there’s an old saying that you can’t fill a broken bucket by pouring more water into it. Maybe it’s time to fix the bucket.