@Babbuc49 I don't doubt that this site was made according to the best available info. Just thought at first it might be a bug.
And, with respect to the authors : this satellite rule could be so simple. Just point to some planets that fulfill the minimum condition for a federation, and connect them with the minimum number of sat.
When I first heard of the auction rule, I thought it was great.
But having experienced it now a few times, I find that what often happens, is that one player picks a particularly bad tribe (for that map), and then starts bidding heavily for a better tribe.
Now I understand that this can add another interesting strategic element to the game : try to stick someone with a bad tribe, and see if he blinks in the bidding.
But I do think it is kind of contary to the intention of the auction, namely: to prevent the players who have to pick later from having a disadvantage in picking the best tribes.
So I wonder if the following improvement to the auction was ever considered : whenever someone bids zero for a tribe that he did not pick himself, he is allowed to change that tribe to one of the tribes that was not in the initial selection.
@Molfo But the "last player rotates sectors" option is extremely flawed too, because it only works when the last player acts in an optimal manner. If the last player somehow favors the player who picked the best faction anyway, player 2 and 3 are left in the dust through no fault of their own.
I think a good solution to the auction problem is already in this thread - the post by AntoineBR. It is an improved version of my initial idea.
When I first heard of the auction rule, I thought it was great.
But having experienced it now a few times, I find that what often happens, is that one player picks a particularly bad tribe (for that map), and then starts bidding heavily for a better tribe.
Now I understand that this can add another interesting strategic element to the game : try to stick someone with a bad tribe, and see if he blinks in the bidding.
But I do think it is kind of contary to the intention of the auction, namely: to prevent the players who have to pick later from having a disadvantage in picking the best tribes.
So I wonder if the following improvement to the auction was ever considered : whenever someone bids zero for a tribe that he did not pick himself, he is allowed to change that tribe to one of the tribes that was not in the initial selection.
Q: The path with the fewest satellites to link my chosen planets will touch a planet that I did not wish to include in my federation, can I choose the shortest path that skips this planet?
A: No, If the "extra" planet cluster is not already a part of a federation, then you must choose the path with the fewest satellites to link your planets, even if it includes extra planets
Understood, this supports the implementation exactly.
Whether this set of rules is ideal is another discussion
Also agreed
I don't want to drag this out, and so I will be ok to not get an answer to this. I am extremely appreciative of this website and all the work that has gone into it, it is near perfect.
But I will just note that the (Hadsch Halla) example I am attaching now has me thinking again that my previous (Gleen) example was a bug after all.
In the Hadsch Halla example the big federation to the right has just been formed. If the federation forming had worked as in the Gleen example, I should not have been able to make a fed with so many sattelites, since by using the planet in the top middle of the map, a more logical fed could have been formed that uses 3 sats less. (And by using the blue planet halfway, a fed could have been formed that uses 2 sats less). It seems very arbitrary that I was able to make the longer fed, connecting the planet in the lower right instead. However, when I read the game rules, this is exactly how I would expect it to work : choosing which planets will make up 7 is arbitrary, only connecting those with the smallest number of sats is mandated.
So in summary, I think the Hadsch Halla example I posted does not follow the same rules as the Gleen example, and the Gleen example is a bug.
@Babbuc49 I don't doubt that this site was made according to the best available info. Just thought at first it might be a bug.
And, with respect to the authors : this satellite rule could be so simple. Just point to some planets that fulfill the minimum condition for a federation, and connect them with the minimum number of sat.
I learned in a private message that this is not a bug. The implementation has been made as : trace a path with the least number satellites, and when on the way you encounter a quicker path with other planets than those you want to use, using some of your selected planets is not allowed.
Personally, I think this a mistake in the implementation, but I am still happy to learn that it is not an unintentional bug.
PS I don't have the tile that makes 3-power buildings go to 4 -power
I think I should be able to build this federation with the 7 satellites shown. The error message is not comprehensible to me.