Does Critical Mass end?

dpm_dpmartin · Post by **dpm_dpmartin** » Thu Jun 15, 2006 5:27 pm

I understand that part of the appeal of Critical Mass is the ability to partly define your own game, with your own ships and missions. However, after 150+ missions - and a four-strong fleet of just under 300 credit ships, which are shielded-up so well I would have to intentionally become a bit of a sitting duck to get taken-out - I am now starting to wonder whether Critical Mass ends.

For example... if I won the mission for Attack Enemy Planet three times or something like that... would, in effect, all my enemies be vanquished and then my race would be the ruler of the Universe or something like that?

I'm only curious as I'm a person that likes a bit of closure - I got that hit of closure with Slay and, to a certain level, with Conquest... I mean, how many times do you have to take out those Cadet Pilots or Transmitters before you just don't go back to it 'cos it's a little bit 'samey'?

It seems a real shame to leave my Commander festering away on disk just 'cos I might one day lose interest - but there would be no excuse for me to lose interest if I knew there was the possibility of closure... of winning, as it were. To see the screen that says... "You've done it!"

ima_gnu · Post by **ima_gnu** » Fri Jun 16, 2006 7:44 am

the game ends at approximately 1x10^50 missions. And you need 100% sucess rate.

dpm_dpmartin · Post by **dpm_dpmartin** » Fri Jun 16, 2006 8:51 am

I'm actually only a few missions away from that - with 100% success rate - so I guess I'll keep on playing to see if what you say is true... I will post a screenshot so others on the Forum can see it - although your reply seems to infer that you've seen it already.

Post by **Sean OConnor** » Fri Jun 16, 2006 9:53 am

I see your point dpm_dpmartin but I think people might be unhappy with playing for say 100 missions and then being told that's it, it's all over, you've got to start again now.

dpm_dpmartin · Post by **dpm_dpmartin** » Fri Jun 16, 2006 10:19 am

And I do see both sides of the coin too. I wonder, if in a future possible version of Critical Mass, there might ever be a "Campaign Mode" or "Tour Of Duty Mode" to have as an option alongside the "Will The Fighting Never End Mode"..?

Possibly, the missions in a Campaign would not be randomised, but be quite specifically ordered (with logic trees at decision points to change the way the Campaign goes)... people could then design Campaigns where, say, mission 2 always follows mission 1 and mission 1 is where a politician is assassinated and then the war escalates and, finally, you end up invading the enemy planet... or, possibly, due to how bad you've been playing, defending your home planet...

A Campaign Editor could be provided in line with the Mission Editor to create logic trees of missions - 1, followed by 2, if success at 2 - go to 4, if fail - go to 3... just lists and pointers to Missions / Mission files.

Version 5, huh? It'd be really good, Sean, to understand your current focus (under NDA of course!) on your set of games. Congratulations on many of them... some I love... a few I can live without - but I bought the bundle anyway... they really do make the train journeys fly by.

ima_gnu · Post by **ima_gnu** » Fri Jun 16, 2006 11:01 am

you are getting close? to 1x10^50? Wow, pwn sauce. (cs moment)

I'm going to break that number down, as much for me as anything. 10^50 is a one with fifty-one zeros.

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

wow. K now. I dont think anyone has made it to mission ten thousand yet, so I'm going to benchmark from there. Lets say you can do a mission in ten seconds. Which is feasible, if you created a mission with no enemies. That way, as soon as you click "End Turn" and the first turn ends, you win. Ten seconds per mission.

Thats one hundred thousand seconds for ten thousand missions. (breaks out TI-91 Supercalculator) One Hundred Thousand Seconds = about Twenty-Seven Hours and Forty-Eight Minutes. Nonstop. Ten-second missions.

(I'm going to try to do this without making my calculator go "E15" because thats too imprecise.)

One Hundred Million Missions = Just OVER 761 Years. Which by itself means you started playing CM Nonstop in the same year as King Henry III Rebuilt Westminster Abbey. Nonstop Cm since then. And thats only One Hundred Million Missions!

One Hundred Million to the power of Six is only 9x10^51 too far, which in these terms isnt far at all.

SO!

761^6 is more or less (calculator cant handle it) 194,226,256,900,000,000 years. Amd tjat number is about Bing Bang Til Now Times A Million.

SO!

Had you been getting close to 1x10^50 Missions, and you had been playing on mission every ten seconds NONSTOP...you would have started (this is tough on my head) nearly a million times LONGER than the current count of the universe - ago.

GOOD ON YA MATE!

...that was hard for my brain to do. Its 3 in the morning

(Let me know where my math screwed up, I'm SURE that that final number cant be right. Though I did have a SuperCalculator to assist me.)

dpm_dpmartin · Post by **dpm_dpmartin** » Fri Jun 16, 2006 11:07 am

Tsk... was a lil' bit of good-humoured sarcasm - as well you know...

King Henry III? I knew his dad, we used to go drinking together and talk about fighting the French... Straylians weren't around in those days - or so I was told.

TheKangaroo · Post by **TheKangaroo** » Fri Jun 16, 2006 2:51 pm

That just remembered me of the TV series 'Mad About You':
?I know that since my parents used to play bridge with them: the Buchmans and the Duc Thos...?

Fusion_power · Post by **Fusion_power** » Fri Jun 16, 2006 7:14 pm

I guess I'll have to dust off that old photo I have. You know, one of those where I was a young man riding my first dinosaur.

LOL

Fusion

umeboshi110 · Post by **umeboshi110** » Sat Jun 17, 2006 1:18 am

well ill have you know me and my buddy thought long and hard before creating the universe

ima_gnu · Post by **ima_gnu** » Sat Jun 17, 2006 3:01 am

Akfrost · Post by **Akfrost** » Sat Jun 17, 2006 5:42 am

hey guys I'm new, but I also love this game.

Maybe you should bring back retirement from before, except perhaps you could activate it again somehow. You need to acknowlege the living commanders as well. lol.

jftsang · Post by **jftsang** » Sun Oct 15, 2006 11:21 pm

ima_gnu wrote:the game ends at approximately 1x10^50 missions. And you need 100% sucess rate.

is there a mistake, or do you MEAN 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
missons?

Scuffer · Post by **Scuffer** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 11:33 pm

He's joking. It never ends. War is tradegy

________
list of penny stocks

dpm_dpmartin · Post by **dpm_dpmartin** » Fri Oct 20, 2006 10:43 pm

It never ends!

Except in your commander's miserable death... trying to save a planet he might never have seen, saving a population he probably doesn't care about, killing other aliens he bears absolutely no personal grudge against.

Of course, he could simply be in it for the money... some kind of intergalactic mercenary for hire... after all - there are credits.

Game over, man! Game over!

Mission 908... yup, you guessed it, Attack Frikking Radar Base again.

Sean O'Connor's Games

Does Critical Mass end?

Does Critical Mass end?

I'll keep going then...

There's many sides to a coin...

No, really... I'm 2 missions away from that number...

You wanted closure... stick it in your pipe and smoke it.